View All Students
Javier Melendez
Chapter 10 was mostly focused on Pro Tools Plug ins and the sine wave project. After reading about Pro Tools pug ins, such as AudioSuite, I explored the options and tools available to work on my sine wave project. Fist I duplicated the sine wave sample using Command + D until there was enough of a sample to work with. Then I combined all the duplicated clips to consolidate them into one 4 second clip. Using this 4 second clip as my original reference file, I copied the sine wave clip and created 5 new audio tracks to manipulate each clip individually and create my song.
The first sound I created was the kick drum. I used Veri-Fi (one of the pitch shift AudioSuite plug-ins) to slow down a one second clip of the sine wave sample to use as a kick drum sound. A gradual slow down at the end of the clip gave me a sort of "tail" similar to the decay of a drum. Then, I added some reverb to give it a thicker/fuller sound. For a snare drum type of sound, I shortened a sine wave clip to about .13 of a second, then used Lo-Fi under the Harmonics section of AudioSuite to give it a crisp/crunchy sound. After that, I applied an EQ to try to cut out the lower frequencies and leave me with as close to a snare drum sound as I could get. For the start of the synth sound, I used Pitch II (under the pitch shift section of AudioSuite) on two of the 3 second sine wave clips to raise the pitch on one clip and lower it on the other. To create a harmonized synth sound, I routed the output of the three sine wave clips to a bus, and made that bus the input on a stereo instrument channel that I used to record all three sine waves into one harmonized synth sounding clip. Once I arranged the synth clips to fit the overall track, I again used Pitch II to change the sound of the synth every bar. To give it a little different sound and feel, I added some volume automations on the end of every synth clip that gave it a sort of stutter sound. After taking some time to arrange the sounds in the order that made it sound as close to a song as possible, I duplicated the pattern a few times to create a 46 second track. Overall, I kept the sine wave project simple. It probably won't be the next big hit, but working on this project really helped me get familiar with Pro Tools plug ins and basic keyboard short cuts.
The rest of the week I spent reviewing notes and preparing for the midterm. I read over all the notes I had taken the past few weeks and retook the section review quizzes. There was a lot of material covered and a lot of information to remember, but I actually felt confident about the midterm when it was time to take the test. And I actually did pretty good, only missing one question about Pro Line level being +4 dBu.
As far as studio time, I didn't get to sit in on any recording sessions, but I did help Luis clean up Studio C after the chapter review and midterm was done. We put away the spare Cue boxes, headphones, mic cables, and lyric stands that had been left there from a recording session the previous day. It was good practice rolling up cables, and I was able to practice setting up a U87 microphone and patch bay running through a pre amp and compressor ready for a recording session.
