Audio and MIDI tracks combined

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Audio and MIDI tracks combined

Once a large collection of MIDI instruments are combined as an ensemble, it soon becomes obvious, even to the untrained ear, that synthesized sounds are being used. In Jack's case hiring 17 musicians is out of the question so he decides to ask his friend to replace the virtual saxophone section with the real thing. Five saxes are used in the score, two altos, two tenors and one baritone. He doesn't own a baritone so they decide to leave that as it is.

  • Open Logic Song File bigband/jitterbug (Figure 8.1).

    Figure 8.1. jittter.lso

    graphic/08fig01.gif


Titled 'Jitterbug Jump' this is a 29 second 'sting,' composed in a 1940s big band swing style and originally intended for use as library music. It's very similar to Jack's tune!

Jitterbug Jump

This version has in fact been heavily edited from around five minutes to 30 seconds to achieve a punchy fast moving soundtrack suitable for the role of background music to a radio jingle or similar use. This editing requires a great deal of savagery on the part of the composer. It's no good being precious about one's art in a commercial world. Things have to go. In this case it was four and a half minutes of music including a tenor saxophone jazz chorus. The Marker track indicates the construction.

NOTE

Table .

Intro

This was reduced from four bars to two.

A

The main tune, carried by trumpets, backed by riffing saxes and wailing trombones and reduced from 16 bars to eight.

B

The bridge, eight bars long and carried by saxophones survives intact!

C

A huge cut to a coda and ending.


By moving quickly from one section to another within a 30 second framework, the listener's attention is kept throughout. Of course it all gets shoved in the background behind somebody talking anyway, and that's another reason to not get too intense about cutting things out.

From top to bottom we have two audio tracks, 11 MIDI tracks and three drum tracks.

The first track contains two alto saxophones and the second, two tenor saxophones. You may be wondering if I used two players on each track. I did not. Neither did I play two saxophones at once! 'Jitterbug Jump' was originally recorded on a 16 track analog tape machine and each saxophone had its own track. To save unnecessary overload on my computer CPU (and yours) I doubled them up while transferring them across to Logic.

It's worth taking a closer look at 'Jitterbug Jump' because many of the topics and principles discussed in this book so far are used here.

The saxophone section

Just as a magician distracts our attention away from what he does not wish us to see, the same technique is used here. By keeping the saxophone section fairly prominent (but never dominant) our attention is focused on these 'real' instruments rather than the artificial ones. Even the fifth member of the section the sampled baritone sax is not really noticeable as such. There is a fair bit of unison doubling throughout and had this been a MIDI saxophone section, much pruning would have been needed to 'thin' the texture at those points. With real saxes it doesn't matter. The more the merrier.

The trumpet section

Only the lead trumpet has been assigned to the GM pre-set 'Trumpet' (Prg. 56). This sets it apart from trumpets 2, 3 and 4, which use the 'Brass Section' pre-set (Prg. 61). Where unison doubling occurs, care has been taken to avoid using the same GM voice. For example, in the opening bars, only trumpet 1 and 3 are playing. If trumpets 2 and 4 were added, MIDI soup would result. However, if this were a real brass trumpet section, all four trumpets would be playing in unison here.

The trombone section

Trombones 1 and 2 have been assigned to the GM pre-set 'Trombone' (Prg. 57) and trombones 3 and 4 to the 'Brass Section' pre-set (Prg. 61). As with the trumpets, although unison doubling does occur, it only happens on separate pre-sets to avoid unnecessary thickening of the texture. Pitch bend was used between bars 2 and 11 to create the slurs. Viewed in the Score window, the notes are displayed at a constant pitch. Use either the Matrix, Event List or Hyper editors to view the pitch bend data. However, the acoustic guitar provides all the rhythm and harmony needed

The rhythm section

Piano has been omitted. In a real big band it would very likely be used. here along with acoustic bass. Guitar chord voicing is mostly open and restricted, in the main, to four notes.

The drums have been split over three tracks. In this kind of music a real drummer may well play his snare drum on all four beats in a bar and accent the second and fourth. However we achieve much the same effect here by omitting the first and third beats.

The mix

The instruments are panned roughly as a big band would be seated. The only exception being bass and drums, which are placed in the center for balance. Modest amounts of reverb have been added to MIDI instruments and the saxophones are treated with a small dose of Logic's AVerb. Any more would have created too much of a distancing effect.

75% compression was added to all the MIDI tracks as they were played and smoothes out any jerkiness due to my keyboard playing shortcomings!

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Creative Projects with Logic Audio
Creative Projects with Logic Audio
ISBN: 1929685793
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 239

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