I was talking to a friend of mine about how one of her best friends has changed for the worst. I have friends that have changed for the worst as well. To be honest though, I've had friends change for better and for worse.
When do people cross that line? Maybe one that says, "Alcohol" or "Pot". I don't know what your lines say or what your friends lines say, but the thing is we tend to cross those lines. Who can just stay confined in a box? Here's the thing though, you probably don't consider those to be real lines at all, just as a seasoned musician wouldn't really consider changing chords a difficult thing. She's way beyond changing chords she doesn't even remember when she learned. The same is true for crossing certain lines.
Usually, when someone turns 21, they go get wasted, and post pictures displaying how retarded they were all over Facebook. They've probably had beer before, but now they've crossed that line. Now it's acceptable, and they don't consider they're partying to cause their personality to veer off the path of who they originally were.
The same can be said for an extreme, like a murderer, or rapist, a drug dealer, or something like that. They just cross lines, and that's all that makes them different from you, or me. This is illustrated in a song by Sufjan Stevens called "John Wayne Gacy Jr." which is about the famous serial killer who lived in Illinois. After describing what John Wayne Gacy Jr. did to boys by dressing up as a clown and killing them, and hiding them under the house, Sufjan goes on to say this;
"And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look underneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid."
Now, this is not Sufjan coming out and declaring that he's a serial killer. He's simply saying (if my interpretation stands as correct) that John Wayne Gacy Jr. was not a horrible person, he just did horrible things, and we all do. John Wayne Gacy Jr. just crossed more lines than most of us. The more lines you cross, the closer you are to who you probably never wanted to be, but are you a different person inwardly? Probably not by as much as you are outwardly.
This topic is so far off from my last topic. Unless you are a sophisticated audio engineer, why are you reading this blog? I don't even know how I keep interest. I probably don't. I barely get feedback, so by that standard, not many people really care. Anyways, I've made my point about people changing. I don't have a conclusion, I just wanted to get that seed of thought into your head. It's thoughts like these that bug me at night, along with thoughts like, does a plane add weight to the overall mass of the atmosphere, or how simple would it be to get into a magazine?
We'll see, folks, we'll see.
In other news, I've been working on a myspace page for my audio engineering. It's got two examples of my work up and some pictures of projects I've worked on.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Syncing Logic Pro to Pro-Tools
Hey nerds.
In this blog post I'm going to show you in detail what I did today. I took on the task of syncing Logic Pro (8) to Pro Tools (8). I got a little side tracked, and I'm going to show you an example of how that happens to me.
Speaking of side-tracked, here's something (sort-of) cool. http://trendfo.com/vu_meter_c is a blog, or collection of blogs about VU meters. I found my blog on there! So at least people are getting use out of my random postings. Let's get back to it, shall we?
SYNCING LOGIC TO PRO TOOLS LIKE NOBODY'S BUSINESS
Alright, so let's start with the Pro Tools side. Open up your session and either at the start up window or if you hit "Command-(numeric pad) 2" change your startup timecode to be one hour. If you're doing music production set the frame rate to 30-ND (for non-drop cause we're not snoop dog) which is for music, unless you're doing NTSC video in which case you will choose 29.97. Choose your bit depth and sample rate (remember, multiples of 44.1 for audio and multiples of 48 for video) and honestly I don't really care what it is, just remember what you chose. Moving on!
Actually, I skipped a step, but it doesn't matter as long as we remember to do it now. Go to the Audio/MIDI Setup found in your applications folder and enable the IAC driver. Make sure the driver is online and the IAC Bus 1 has been created. You can create more if you'd like. It's fun.
Alright, so we've got the bus through which our SMPTE timecode will be transmitted from Pro Tools to Logic. Inside of Pro Tools, go to setup>peripherals>synchronization. Set both the MTC Reader And Generator Ports to the IAC Driver, Bus 1. I don't really know if you need to do both of them, but I figure it doesn't hurt. You probably only need the generator port, but in case we're trying to slave Pro Tools instead of Logic, we'll need the reader port to be Bus 1.
Now we've got our MTC Generator all set up to generate SMPTE timecode at 30ND starting at one hour. Open the transport window "Command-(numeric pad) 1"and click on the disclosure triangle on the upper right hand side, make sure "synchronization" is checked. Click the GEN MTC button so it turns blue.
Logic time:
Go over to Logic, click Settings>synchronization. Under the General tab, which will be the first to pop up, set the sync mode to MTC, the Frame Rate to the same you did in Pro Tools (30ND) and set the "plays at SMPTE to one hour, just like we did in Pro Tools. We have almost arrived. Control click the transport bar and click the pop down menu that says "Customize Transport Bar...". In there under "Modes and Functions" enable Sync. Click ok and go and press the Sync button in the transport bar. The bar ruler at the top will turn a nice blue color. Press play in Pro Tools and Logics transport will follow!
Why the heck would I do that?
I don't know. I've done it before in a pinch when I needed more inputs and all I had was a firepod. Anyways, the reason I wanted to do this in the first place was to play Logic's instrument plugins while working in Pro Tools. So this is what I came up with after much Google searching:
MAKE LOGIC YOUR SLAVE WITHOUT EVEN USING IT
I don't like using Logic that much, but it's got some pretty sweet plugins. They just sound better, but who wants to work in Logic unless they're a musician or a circuit junkie?
Logic Pro comes with a program called Mainstage that tries to act like Digidesign's Eleven, or Native Instrument's Guitar Rig, but it's like comparing Photoshop to iPhoto. Anyways, it will work for our purposes, you don't need to even run Logic. Logic is a giant CPU beast anyways.
Using our IAC Driver Bus, we can route the output of a new Instrument channel in Pro Tools to whichever IAC bus we want. I don't like using bus 1, since that's my timecode bus. Just make a new one and name it whatever you like. The input is set to all on my machine because I only have 1 MIDI device. Set up your Logic instrument of choice by making it the input of your channel strip. You can make as many as you like. (remember though, unless you use the split keyboard function, they'll all receive the same MIDI information, but you can route them to different outputs.) So in Preferences, make your output the Digidesign whatever you have.
Here comes the headache. Unless you've got something that has more than "output 1-2" on it, you can only record back into Pro Tools 2 mono channels or 1 stereo channel at a time. If you have 3-4, 5-6 or whatever, you have more options to chose from, including the option to continue listening to your Pro Tools stereo output 1-2 while recording the outputs of different MIDI instruments. Basically what you do is patch the input to the output, and record it in Pro Tools. In Mainstage, route the outputs of the different instruments to separate outputs, and record them back into Pro Tools using the physical output to input connection.
If you can manage to do that, you're awesome! Basically you can record all the MIDI you want into Pro Tools, and on new Audio tracks monitor or record the output of Mainstage's channels using Logic's plugins.
Yeah, ok, I'm done. There is nothing else I would even consider wanting to do between Logic and Pro Tools now. Unless you want to bus audio between the actual two programs, at which point I say, "No." (But you can...)
-Steve
In this blog post I'm going to show you in detail what I did today. I took on the task of syncing Logic Pro (8) to Pro Tools (8). I got a little side tracked, and I'm going to show you an example of how that happens to me.
Speaking of side-tracked, here's something (sort-of) cool. http://trendfo.com/vu_meter_c is a blog, or collection of blogs about VU meters. I found my blog on there! So at least people are getting use out of my random postings. Let's get back to it, shall we?
SYNCING LOGIC TO PRO TOOLS LIKE NOBODY'S BUSINESS
Alright, so let's start with the Pro Tools side. Open up your session and either at the start up window or if you hit "Command-(numeric pad) 2" change your startup timecode to be one hour. If you're doing music production set the frame rate to 30-ND (for non-drop cause we're not snoop dog) which is for music, unless you're doing NTSC video in which case you will choose 29.97. Choose your bit depth and sample rate (remember, multiples of 44.1 for audio and multiples of 48 for video) and honestly I don't really care what it is, just remember what you chose. Moving on!
Actually, I skipped a step, but it doesn't matter as long as we remember to do it now. Go to the Audio/MIDI Setup found in your applications folder and enable the IAC driver. Make sure the driver is online and the IAC Bus 1 has been created. You can create more if you'd like. It's fun.
Alright, so we've got the bus through which our SMPTE timecode will be transmitted from Pro Tools to Logic. Inside of Pro Tools, go to setup>peripherals>synchronization. Set both the MTC Reader And Generator Ports to the IAC Driver, Bus 1. I don't really know if you need to do both of them, but I figure it doesn't hurt. You probably only need the generator port, but in case we're trying to slave Pro Tools instead of Logic, we'll need the reader port to be Bus 1.
Now we've got our MTC Generator all set up to generate SMPTE timecode at 30ND starting at one hour. Open the transport window "Command-(numeric pad) 1"and click on the disclosure triangle on the upper right hand side, make sure "synchronization" is checked. Click the GEN MTC button so it turns blue.
Logic time:
Go over to Logic, click Settings>synchronization. Under the General tab, which will be the first to pop up, set the sync mode to MTC, the Frame Rate to the same you did in Pro Tools (30ND) and set the "plays at SMPTE to one hour, just like we did in Pro Tools. We have almost arrived. Control click the transport bar and click the pop down menu that says "Customize Transport Bar...". In there under "Modes and Functions" enable Sync. Click ok and go and press the Sync button in the transport bar. The bar ruler at the top will turn a nice blue color. Press play in Pro Tools and Logics transport will follow!
Why the heck would I do that?
I don't know. I've done it before in a pinch when I needed more inputs and all I had was a firepod. Anyways, the reason I wanted to do this in the first place was to play Logic's instrument plugins while working in Pro Tools. So this is what I came up with after much Google searching:
MAKE LOGIC YOUR SLAVE WITHOUT EVEN USING IT
I don't like using Logic that much, but it's got some pretty sweet plugins. They just sound better, but who wants to work in Logic unless they're a musician or a circuit junkie?
Logic Pro comes with a program called Mainstage that tries to act like Digidesign's Eleven, or Native Instrument's Guitar Rig, but it's like comparing Photoshop to iPhoto. Anyways, it will work for our purposes, you don't need to even run Logic. Logic is a giant CPU beast anyways.
Using our IAC Driver Bus, we can route the output of a new Instrument channel in Pro Tools to whichever IAC bus we want. I don't like using bus 1, since that's my timecode bus. Just make a new one and name it whatever you like. The input is set to all on my machine because I only have 1 MIDI device. Set up your Logic instrument of choice by making it the input of your channel strip. You can make as many as you like. (remember though, unless you use the split keyboard function, they'll all receive the same MIDI information, but you can route them to different outputs.) So in Preferences, make your output the Digidesign whatever you have.
Here comes the headache. Unless you've got something that has more than "output 1-2" on it, you can only record back into Pro Tools 2 mono channels or 1 stereo channel at a time. If you have 3-4, 5-6 or whatever, you have more options to chose from, including the option to continue listening to your Pro Tools stereo output 1-2 while recording the outputs of different MIDI instruments. Basically what you do is patch the input to the output, and record it in Pro Tools. In Mainstage, route the outputs of the different instruments to separate outputs, and record them back into Pro Tools using the physical output to input connection.
If you can manage to do that, you're awesome! Basically you can record all the MIDI you want into Pro Tools, and on new Audio tracks monitor or record the output of Mainstage's channels using Logic's plugins.
Yeah, ok, I'm done. There is nothing else I would even consider wanting to do between Logic and Pro Tools now. Unless you want to bus audio between the actual two programs, at which point I say, "No." (But you can...)
-Steve
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