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<< Summer 2009 Forums | Fall 2009 Forums
Upcoming Forums
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A look at the new game, World of Zoo for the Wii, DS and PC
presented by George Balavanis (Blue Fang audio director)
& Yan Perchuk (World of Zoo sound designer/mixing engineer & Berklee alum)
Tuesday, November 10th
6:00 - 8:00pm
150 Mass Ave. - Media Lab
- Game Company Production Workflow: From Concept to Polish
- The delicate balance between Ambience, SFX, UI, and Music
- Sound Engines and Implementation
- Backgrounds
- Understanding Demographics & Publishers
- How to break into the industry
- Composing for Games
- Sound Design for Games
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Sound Collage Contest 3 Showcase and Awards Ceremony
Tuesday, November 17th
6:00pm
150 Mass Ave. - Media Lab
Come and hear the finalists' pieces for the Sound Collage Contest, and find out who the winners are. The top three winners will receive Ableton Live Suite 8, Ableton Live 8, and Ableton Live LE.
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Past Forums
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Huston Singletary, Product Specialist from Ableton gave a thorough and in-depth look at Live, covering all aspects of the program. Beggining with a program overview displaying features of Live's session and arangement views, Huston launched into Live's unique global quantize and time warping features. He demonstrated how quickly and intuitively the program works by dropping audio loops in, and having them automatically time stretch and sync to tempo. He made use of Live's scene launching capabilities, and showed effects, automation, signal routing, scoring to picture, and Live's video glitching features. Look for Huston for another Live event in the Spring.
Also, don't forget the Sound Collage Contest deadline is November 6th at 6:00pm. You could win Ableton Suite 8!
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Dave Roberts, Product Specialist of MOTU was on hand to show the new and old features of Digital Performer 7. Explaining signal routing, creating bus and aux tracks, adding plug-in effects, and rewiring Reason, Dave recorded guitar parts, and demonstrated MIDI and audio editing, with a look at DP's new plug-in effects, many for guitarists.
Click here for more information about DP.
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For our Guerilla Mixing Techniques forum, we took a close look at mixing gear, tools and techniques. Examining compression, limiting, EQ and reverb, we discussed common parameters, hardware vs. software plug-ins, and practical techniques for use. We also talked about monitors, headphones, audio interfaces, mixers, control surfaces, and acoustic treatment of your mixing environment. After the presentation, we looked at practical applications by mixing our recording from the Guerilla Recording Techniques forum on October 6th.
Click here for related articles.
Download the Logic session file and audio tracks from the Guerilla Recording Techniques forum here.
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Finale specialist Tom Johnson from MakeMusic put on a whirlwind demonstration, providing everyone in attendance with tips and tricks that are superbly useful for getting the most out of the notation program. Covering everything from getting started with the very informative Quickstart videos, to sound playback engines, selection tool use, a multitude of music entry options, repitch tool, tempo changes, chord tool customization, audio export, file export between Finale and Sibelius and program/document options, the forum easily could have gone on for another several hours. Tom also shared some of the new features in Finale 2010, which will be useful when the program becomes available for all Berklee students sometime over the next semester. Many thanks to Tom and Roger Williams of MakeMusic for coming to Berklee and answering all of the questions thrown at them by the hardcore Finale users in attendance.
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Taking our recording from the October 6 Guerilla Recording Techniques forum, we expounded on editing techniques to solidify the production. First, in Logic we set up beat mapping to compensate for a fluxuating tempo. This allowed us to sequence drum, and keyboard MIDI parts, and still be able to quantize them to lock them in to the performance. We employed drum loops from the Ultrabeat in Logic, and the Dr. rex in Reason, while audience member Thompson Egbo-Egbo volunteered to record an electric keyboard part. Next we recorded an electric guitar part, and used Logic's multi-take comping feature to get the perfect take. After that we bounced out the vocal tracks and looked at Digital Performer's pitch correction features, and lastly, we imported each track's audio into Pro Tools to use the elastic time audio quantization feature.
Make sure to check out next week's Guerilla Production Techniques Part 2: Mixing forum when we go over effects such as reverb, compression, limiting, EQ and delay while mixing down the session to create a final production.
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The first of 3 in our Guerilla Production series drew a packed crowd. Looking at digital audio workstation signal flow, microphones, frequency response and polar patterns, audio interfaces and digital and audio cable connections, we set up and recorded a small acoustic ensemble comprising upright bass, acoustic guitar, cajon and vocals. Using the recording session to explain mic'ing technique preferences and setup, we recorded the tune "Fell in Love With a Boy" by Joss Stone.
For the recording we used mics by SE Electronics, Sterling Audio, and Shure.
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With the annual Sound Collage Contest launched last week, the Learning Center has scheduled a series of sampling and production forums to provide some ideas for those entering the contest. Dr. Andrea Pejrolo, assistant chair of the Contemporary Writing and Production department got things started with an in-depth look at two popular software samplers: Reason's NN-XT from Propellerheads and Kontakt 3 from Native Instruments. Andrea tackled these two powerful yet potentially intimidating virtual devices by breaking each down into a series of smaller modular components. Mapping editors, loop creation, filters, envelopes, LFO's, MIDI control, output sections and effects options were all touched upon in turn. By the end of the presentation many unique patches had been created and saved for future use. Finally, at the end of the night a copy of Dr. Pejrolo's book "Acoustic and MIDI Orchestration for the Contemporary Composer" was given away in a raffle to one lucky attendee.
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Well, the Sound Collage Contest is underway again for the third straight year, and we at the Learning Center are very excited! Don't worry if you missed the forum, you can enter the contest here. Learning Center staff member Blair Pershyn went through a host of techniques to manipulate audio samples with your music, from pitch shifting to effects processing and vocoding, to convolution reverb, and envelope and LFO modulating. For a more in-depth look, sign up for a Kontakt or Reason Sampling class here. Don't miss next week's forum as faculty member Andrea Pejrolo demonstrates Creative Sampling Techniques.
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Prince Charles Alexander has been active in the music business since the early 80's, receiving many professional accolades during that time.
Topics include:
Live Band Production
MIDI Production
Sampling Production
The present impact of technology on music, the music business and career choices.
Prince Charles Alexander:
- B.A., Brandeis University
- Independent record producer/engineer
- Client list includes Mary J. Blige, Destiny's Child, P. Diddy, Alicia Keys, the Notorious B.I.G., and Luther Vandross
- Received three Grammy Awards and seven Grammy nominations
- More than 40 platinum and gold certifications from the RIAA
- Winner of a Victoire de la Musique (French Grammy equivalent)
- Member of the NARAS Grammy Committee Board of Governors
- Member of the Recording Academy Producers and Engineers Wing
- Member of the Audio Engineering Society
- Member of American Federation of Musicians Local 802
- Former Virgin Records recording artist
- Instruments include wind synthesizers, flute, saxophone, and keyboard
The fall forum series got off to an excellent start with our guest, Prince Charles Alexander presenting his talk on music technology. Touching on many ideas and truly covering the progression of technology from the dawn of recording to our modern era, he described the many analog and digital devices which have been used in music production. From synthesis to sampling, from tape recording to Pro Tools, from mixing on a console to mixing in "the box" Prince portrayed where the technology has been and where we are at now. He discussed the four primary production models: the live band model, the MIDI model, the sampling model and the hybrid model. The modern laptop running Logic, Pro Tools, DP, etc., can take advantage of all these different production models quite well and Prince showed us how to beat map as an example in Logic. The Learning Center would like to thank Prince Charles Alexander for taking the time to share his real world experience and technical knowledge.
Download the presentation PDF here.
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