Digital Sound Recording woes...

Cafe Society
1

Hello all,

I teach film studies and we’ve recently decided to give kids the opportunity to record musical soundtracks to accompany their movies, rather than just pinching mp3 from the internet. We’ve decided this whilst equipped with a total lack of knowledge about how to do it, however.

We have - computers running Vista, a Korg Triton Le keyboard and a little gizmo called a USB Midi Interface. What else do we need? Are there free sound editing progs we can use (is Audacity okay for this sort of thing?) or do we need to spend more money? How, basically, do we get the music FROM the keyboard TO the computer?

Thanks for any help, and apologies for my complete ignorance. Baby steps are key, people!

2

LOVE your username. You have no idea how much I worship that show.

With regards to your question, I work with a guy who owns his own recording studio and is a techno junkie, and he’s recommended Audacity to me more than once, so that’s probably a good choice for an editing software.

BUT (I may be completely wrong about this, so you might want to wait for a Doper who knows more than me) if you’re transferring data from the keyboard to the computer, it’s going to be in MIDI format, and I don’t know if that counts as an “audio” file. You may not be able to manipulate it the same way as a .wav or .mp3 file using Audacity; you might need a program specifically for MIDI files. And it won’t sound the same as an audio recording of a piano, but I guess you know that already. Anyway, good luck with your endeavor, I hope you get some better advice than mine! :smiley:

P.S. Ever drunk Bailey’s from a shoe?

3

You have some options. If you intend to record the on-board sounds from the Korg Triton, you’re going to need more than the USB MIDI Interface. Through a MIDI Interface you can only send data for a sequencer, like when a note is pressed and released, rather than the audio coming out of the keyboard. To capture the actual audio you’re going to need a digital audio recording interface, like the ones here:

Or, if sound quality isn’t a big issue, and the computer’s soundcard has a microphone input, you could just use that (but I wouldn’t recommend it–inputs on soundcards tend to be very noisy).

Once you have an interface, then you can record the audio output from the Triton using a digital audio recording program like Audacity. I would actually recommend you stick with Audacity. There are fancier recording programs on the market (Cubase, Logic, Sonar, etc), but I find Audacity gets the job done for simple projects, and you can’t beat the price.

Your other choice, if you don’t want to buy a recording interface, would be to use software synthesizers with the Korg Triton as your MIDI controller. This is where your USB MIDI controller comes in handy. Instead of hooking up the audio output from the Triton to the computer, you hook up the MIDI output from the Triton, so that a software synthesizer can generate audio output using the Triton as its input. I might actually recommend this method, as it will probably be easier for your students to structure their music this way.

If you want to take this approach, you’re going to need to get a decent DAW (digital audio workstation). I would recommend FL Studio, because it’s relatively inexpensive ($50-$150, depending on the version), quick to learn, easy to use, and has plenty of built-in sound generators and effects. Only drawback is that it is tailored to make electronica and hip-hop, so it is laid out in a way that might not helpful for someone trying to make, say, classical music, but I would say it is flexible enough to accommodate the different styles of music your students may want to make for their films.

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Thanks, guys. Totoismomo, I’ve now got FL Studio (well, the demo, anyway) and it’s a lot of fun (in an extremely complicated, frustrating sort of way). The samples are definitely dance / house orientated, which is useful, but we’ll need some more. I’m having some trouble getting samples from audacity into FL - is there any way of converting wav files to flp?

Also, when I use the Triton to control FL, there’s a lot of unpredictability as to whether it will actually play the sound, and there seems to be quite a lag between hitting the key and getting the sound. I suspect this is something to do with the settings on the Triton, but I’m a bit bewildered. Any ideas?

Queen, glad to find another Boosh fan. It’s pure genius. And thanks for the heads up about what a Midi file actually is - it’s all becoming clearer!

Any more ideas gratefully received - remember, we’re doing it for the kids! (Well, so they can write strange music to go with their strange films.)

5

There’s no way you can change a wav file by controlling it in FL Studio as a song, but if you want to import, say, a synth sound into FL Studio do this: Go to the Step Sequencer and right click on one of the selected instruments on the left. Select Load Sample and find your wav file.

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No need to convert files. If you want to add a sample to play during a certain part of the song, you can just drag and drop wav files into the playlist from windows explorer, or from the file browser in FL Studio (press F8 to bring it up).

If you want to add a short sample to be triggered, like a drum sound, you can just add a Sampler channel (Channels->Add One->Sampler, then open up the channel settings box, and load your sample in there), and trigger it using the step sequencer, the piano roll, or your keyboard.

The lag your experiencing with the keyboard is called latency, and is the bane of every user of soft synths. It’s not because of the Triton, but because of your sound card and processing power. Due to the processing invovled in generating sound, your computer can’t respond instantly to the input from the keyboard, so there will always be a delay between when press a key and when sound is produced. The best you can do is try and minimize it by changing the audio buffer length (Under Options->Audio Settings), and if your sound card and computer are fast enough, you can usually get the delay down to a few milliseconds without sacrificing sound quality. Be careful though, setting the buffer too low will create garbled audio (but setting it too high will make the delay too long).

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I would recommend - at first - NOT dealing with the real-time playing of soft synths and latency and the tweaks and the gazillion things that can go wrong. You’ll end up wanting to throw everything out the window including yourself. And you’ll be a million miles from scoring a film.

Start with a midi sequencer, something like Sonar, and use it to control the Triton. It will be easy on your system and the Triton should have enough sounds to play around with. Once you’re comfortable with that you can move on. First you should get the basics down and start to learn what you’re going to try to do.

One work-around around the latency issue is to play the music using the Triton as the source, then assign the midi track to one of the soft synth patches for playback. For instance use a string patch on the Triton to input the midi, then assign the track to a string patch in the computer.

Also, someone should have a laptop or another computer, so another thing you can do is use the other computer to play the Triton via midi, then run a stereo out from the triton and record the audio on the main computer.

Believe me, a PC/Mac-based DAW is a wonderful thing but you need a higher end system and someone capable to do the geek work from time to time, especially when setting the system up.