I made a new piece of music, you can listen to it on my website. I hope you like it
It ended up being a new age jazzy type of thing. I wanted to make some techno/edm, but I started by improvising a metronome-free chord progressions in Qtractor with a ZynAddSubFX pad, and that put me on a completely different track. After the pads, I layered in some more ZynAddSubFX instruments: a bass pad and a wind noise. With LinuxSampler, I added the glockenspiel from the VSCO community edition. I was still missing an instrument in the medium frequencies (around central C) and then I discovered the VSCO muted French horn. I immediately fell in love with that sound. That was going to be the main instrument. So I improvised a lead voice on top of the chord progression. This required some manual midi-editing afterwards as I wasn't always able to quickly read the chord name from the markers that I had added. Now this muted French horn has only two velocity layers for most notes and these layers don't blend very well: it's either soft or very brassy. I split the sfz file into two sfz files: one with the piano layer and one with the forte layer. I rendered the midi into two audio tracks: one with each sfz file, and then I tried to automate the volume between the two in Ardour. This didn't work out very well since it's hard to synchronise a volume change exactly with a note onset. So I adapted my workflow and did the automation in Qtractor: I split the midi track in three midi tracks: one for each sfz file that I had creaded + I also added the non-muted (sustain) French horn. I then changed the midi velocity and volume (MIDI CC 7 events) for each track. This approach gave me more flexibility than the audio-based approach, since I could for instance stop a note in one layer earlier, which gives a longer time window where I can place the MIDI CC event to turn the volume back up for the next note. By then, I had already recorded the ZynAddSubFX instruments as separate tracks in Ardour and now my setup was Qtractor -> LinuxSampler -> Ardour, where Ardour already contained the ZynAddSubFX instruments as separate audio tracks. Qtractor and Ardour can synchronise with each other, so that if you start playback in one program, the other also starts playing at the same position. I then started mixing. This is very new to me. I added some EQ to the French horn to filter out some unwanted frequencies. I also had to find a solution for the following problem: at the beginning, the French horn is not very loud. If I want it to be clearly audible in that part, I have to mix it very loud compared to the other instruments. The consequence is that the other instruments are very soft at the beginning, but the French horn is still very loud at other times. My "listening panel" (ahem, some family members) turned up the volume at the beginning in order to hear the background instruments and then had to turn down the volume afterwards in order to not become deaf when the French horn reached its peak (I'm maybe exaggerating a little). I now hear all you experienced LinuxMusicians saying to your computers: "Use a compressor, Pieter!". So that's what I did. The compressor makes the soft parts in the French horn track stand out a little more, so that I can turn the overall volume down and it doesn't become uncomfortable when it reaches its peak volume. I also used some reverb and a stereo delay.
What I like about this forum is that there are people in different stages of their (multi-dimensional) learning journey and you can learn from those who are a few steps ahead of you. Some members apologise for explaining their workflow, but I usually find this very interesting, so I've posted my workflow as well.
Lessons learned:
- Sfz files can be edited manually in a couple of minutes if the file is not that complex.
- Manually cross-fading between velocity layers is much easier by editing midi then by volume automation on audio.
- Routing Qtractor midi to a synth and then the audio to Ardour over jack allows to combine the best of Qtractor and Ardour. (A prerequisite is that the synth can work with multiple audio output channels.)
- Use compression to avoid having to choose between drowning the lead track in the background or making your audience deaf when the lead track reaches its peak volume.
- If you want to make EDM, start with a beat and not with a pad, otherwise you will end up making New Age music