Just thought I’d celebrate my latest release with Toby Tobias by dishing out the horn sample we used for the downbeat of the drop. We’re calling ourselves Badnonday and the track is called Albondigas. Too early to say how it’s doing but it’s the first record on Phonica’s homepage as I write this now which is a pretty good sign!

The horn is a long sample that rises towards the end and pans slightly from right to left. It really gives the drop an uplifting feel by bringing out the major chord but you can’t really hear it unless you’re listening out for it.

Download the horn sample HERE

Audition or buy Albondigas HERE

Norman Jay MBE dropped in to grab his copy early. There may have been a football match on too that day but we won’t talk about that. Since then he’s played it at Glastonbury and reports are that it went down a storm. I still haven’t heard it on a big system and I can’t wait to hear it at Good Times at the Notting Hill Carnival. I’m going on the Sunday and we’re both DJing at the Good Times after party at the William IV if anyone else is about…

In my latest video on Reaktor 5 available in Native Instruments’ Komplete 6 bundle, my voice goes high pitched when I say ‘hi’ and then it settles down to what it’s normally like. I also say “crack it open” rather a lot for some reason.

Anyone can build an Ensemble (synth, FX unit, sequencer etc) in Reaktor just like anyone can build an application for an iPhone. The difference is that Native Instruments don’t police or make money out of the distribution like Apple do for their apps. You can imagine there are a hell of a lot out there. I have uploaded all my synths beginning with the letter S for you to download. I can’t give you my whole library because it’s over 9 gb. I’m giving you a selection of synths because they’re probably more useful to you than sequencers or samplers and I picked the letter S randomly.

When I mention Reaktor, my students on the Logic course at Garnish School of Sound tend to glaze over before I’ve said anything more – they associate it with geeks who want to spend all of their life building synths. It is for geeks who like building synths (I don’t think many make records) but who is going to be playing with these lovely creations after they have been built? The answer is you and me. So in this video, I scratch the surface of Reaktor 5, talk through some of the bizarre terminology, show you how to navigate to your sounds and FX (ensembles) and how to flick through the presets (or snapshots in Reaktor land)

Once I settle on a bass, I show you how easy it is to assign controllers in Reaktor, I send the signal to an aux and pop in a reverb on the insert demonstrating reaktor as an FX unit too. I do dip my toe into the building blocks but just show you how to access them. In my Dance Music Sound Design course, we cover Reaktor in depth and even get synth building!

Watch the video HERE

Download over 100 Reaktor synths HERE

I’ve been making some records with Toby Tobias recently which seem be be getting picked up by labels before we’ve even had a chance to mix! I know I can’t complain but he does have this habit of playing very rough demos to labels, then we’re up against it to finish the master because everyone is excited and people want to put the record out. It does say a lot for the A&R guys these days when they can hear the potential from such a rough demo. We are going to be called Badonday, our first tune is called Albondigas and will be out on Flashback after we have mixed the dub and it has been cut!

Toby is THE Ableton man and although I have used Ableton to warp mark mutitrack drums in my time (and very nice it is too), I’ve not made any records using it alone. I have purchased a copy now with a view to rewire it into Logic and use it as a slave. Now it looks like Toby and I are going to be working together a lot, it makes sense to make a system which works for both of us. Next project is immensely exciting btw – same vibe, he’s played it to some labels before we even arranged it – I don’t even think Ableton Live was out of session mode! I previously dismissed Ableton as a bit of a toy, it didn’t sound great and was only good for warp marking drums and fiddling about with loops quickly. But seeing Toby Tobias on the mouse…. no, it’s great, version 8 sounds much better so now i’m going to include it here at Garnish School of Sound!

I’ve persuaded the Tobias to write up some courses with me and I’m aiming to have 6 workshops ready for mid July, and best of all, he has agreed to take at least the first set of workshops!! Amazing Ableton Live news from Garnish School of Sound!

Just a quick note to let you know that you can see some of George’s favorite Pro Tools mixing and mastering key commands here in his blog. Also check out his chilled out band project ‘Sundae Club’ and the fab work he has done for the Haiti appeal!

I was always obsessed with my key commands in Logic, I used to swap key command ideas with my mates and I guess I ended up with a completely different set of key commands that the original Emagic ones. I actually learnt Logic in the early 90′s mainly by changing all the main key commands so they were the same as the old Cubase, which was sequencer of choice back in the day. Obviously when I move to another sequencer, none of the key commands are ‘right’ so I got round this by having my Logic preferences handy. Most recently by having a copy emailed to myself to my Hotmail account.

Last year when I started to teach, I found that my system of having my Logic preferences uploaded somewhere wasn’t convenient enough when I was having to constantly hop from one Logic workstation to another so I had to learn the standard ones all over again! Once exception though; I still HAVE to have my stop as ‘zero’ and play as ‘enter’ on the numeric keypad.

I’ve just got a youtube channel organised and my first video is all about mixing vocals using audio compression in your home recording studio.

I only scratch the surface and I think I need to work on my presenting skills but I played it to a musician friend of mine who said he learnt loads about mixing vocals using audio compression – that’s the important thing I guess. I keep saying that there’s no time and don’t explain why. There was not enough time because youtube only let you upload a maximum of 10 minutes at a time and not because my dinner was on and I didn’t want to ruin it!

In the video I go through the various hardware emulations, talk about the threshold, ratio, attack and release parameters and the gain reduction meter of Logic Studio 9′s built in compressor. How I get my Lead Vocal to sit in the mix. When not to use a spectrum analyser and use your ears!

As I mentioned in the video, we spend 4 hours on audio compression in our mixing and mastering course now here at Garnish School of Sound so if you get the feeling I’m going too fast in the video, I probably am and now you know why!

Watch the video HERE

Music Theory Practice part 2 – Extended chords:

Just some more music theory rules. You will need to have some music theory knowledge or you could always book workshop 4 of my Logic 9 Music Production course. These notes are for recap purposes.

7 chords have the 7^th note in the scale FLATTENED

9 chords have the 7^th note in the scale FLATTENED and the 9th ADDED

11 chords have the 7^th note in the scale FLATTENED, the 9th ADDED and the 11 ADDED

13 chords have the 7^th note in the scale FLATTENED, the 9, 11 and 13 ADDED

Major 7 chords have the 7^th note in the scale ADDED

Major 9 chords have the 7^th note in the scale and 9^t note in the scale ^h ADDED

Major 11 chords have the 7^th, note in the scale 9^th note in the scale and 11^th note in the scale ADDED

Major 13 chords have the 7^th, note in the scale 9^th note in the scale,11^th, note in the scale and 13^th note in the scale ADDED

Suspended 2 = add the 2^nd note in the scale and suspend (lose) the 3^rd (mediant)

Suspended 4 = add the 4^th note in the scale and suspend (lose) the 3^rd (mediant)

Always count the root.

You can add notes to chords:

C add 11 you would add the 11^th NOTE only

C add 13 you would add the 13^th NOTE only.

Augmented is when you sharpen the 5^th (dominant)

Diminished is when you flatten the 3^rd (mediant) and the 5^th (dominant)

Root is always the tonic. If it’s the first note it is called the major root. We will mainly be working like this in this course. Don’t worry about “tonic”, “mediant” and “dominant” now. The chances are that you will never need to know and most hit song writers haven’t heard of them either! I just mentioned them in case some of you were interested and wanted to look them up one day.

http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano/

A ‘+’ sign means sharpen and ‘-‘ means flatten the note.

Using the piano chord URL to see your major scales, work out the following chords:

Am, Gb7, E11, F sharp M-9, BbM9-5, CM maj7

To work out your major scales you can use the following rule starting on the root and working your way up in these steps:

Tone, Tone, Semitone, Tone, Tone, Tone, and semitone.

Now, work out the following chords WITHOUT using the piano chord URL.

Cm b9, Eb7, Fsharp M11, Db major7 add13, EbM7-13

Some of you may want to talk about voicing and inversions and we can later in the course. For now, here’s a brief summery below:

The terms “voicing” and “inversions” are often used interchangeably. However, the term inversions refers to the lowest note sounding in the chord (whether it’s the root or not). A chord with the root as the lowest note is said to be in root position; with the 3^rd as the lowest note it’s called first inversion; with the 5^th as the lowest note it’s called the second inversion; and with the 7^th as the lowest note it’s called the third inversion.

To play in a different key the easy way on the keyboard, you have a transpose button. So, to play your chord you’ve written in C and you want it to be played in D, you press your transpose button UP twice to go UP two semitones. To play your chord sequence you’ve written in C and you want it to be played in A flat, you press you transpose DOWN button four times so you go DOWN four semitones and so on.

Chords in  the key of:

http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/chords/chordchart.htm

Relative minor is the minor chord which uses most of the same notes as the major scale. It has a lot in common with it’s relative. The same rule applies in reverse so C major is the relative major of the Am and Am is the relative minor of the C major. The reason it sounds ‘minor’ is because of the starting position (or root note) is different and is in a different place so in perspective it sounds ‘minor’

Look at the chords chorus of hotel California while I play it:

Chorus :

G                        D

Welcome to the Hotel California.

Em                   Bm7

Such a lovely place, such a lovely face

G                               D

Plenty of room at the Hotel California

Em                                      F#

Any time of year (any time of year) you can find it here

Listen to how the G and Em ‘relate’ to each other and the D and Bm7 ‘relate’ to each other too.

To work out a chord sequence by ear, I firstly figure out what the root note is for each chord and write it down. You can usually tell which note is the root note because the root note sounds the most like the whole chord! Then you have to figure out if it is a major or minor chord by listening and experimenting. Most of you should be able to do this with some practice and a bit of patience!

A music production college I worked at in London a while back asked me to teach a Music Theory and Music Composition course with chord progressions, keys & scales. I know my way around a fretboard of a guitar and used to play in jazz bands before I discovered turntables, so I thought I give it a whirl!

I looked on the internet for ages for good simple rules for chords, scales and extended chords but couldn’t find anything that I thought would be easy for the students to understand, so I wrote my own. These are recap notes written so students can refer to them after my lecture so you probably need to have some knowledge to begin with or you could always book workshop 4 of my Logic 9 Music Production course.

Working out basic chords quickly using semitones:

Major:             Root + 4 (3^rd) + 3 ( 5^th)

Minor:             Root + 3 (3^rd) + 4 (5^th)

Dim:                Root + 3 (3^rd) + 3 (5^th)

Augmented            Root + 4 (3^rd) + 4 (5^th)

To flatten a note you go down one semitone and to sharpen you go up a semitone.

Important:-

-                  Semitones are always the next key up or down on the keyboard; black notes AND white notes included. COUNT THEM ALL! We use semitones in the example above.

-                  Tones are two semitones (really?!) or two steps on the keys so a tone up from the note of C is D. A tone up from an E is an F sharp.

-                  When I say notes, I am referring to notes in a scale so you only count those. You will need to skip notes that are not in the scale. You will probably need to refer to a major scale chart or the first url in this work sheet to figure out which notes to count while working out more complex (extended) chords explained in the example below.

-                  Start off working out extended chords which are C. ie C11 or Cmaj7 etc.

A brief rule which you can use without the need for a chart is:

Root, +tone, +tone, +semitone, +tone, +tone, +tone (and +semitone to resolve back to the root up one octave)

For ‘Sound of Music’ fans, the notes should sound like:

Doh, ray, me, far, so, la, ti, doh!

Note that the “Doh” and the “doh” are the same note but one octave apart.

Okay, that’s enough of Music Theory for now. I will do extended chords next time…

My music production courses and Logic Training are packed with tips and tricks in London can help you with your music production whether you’re a DJ wanting to make your own productions to take you to the next level or a Song Writer looking to make better demos of your songs.

This is what we can look at:-

-Basic Synthesis (ES1, ES2, Juno 106, Korg Monopoly) Sound Design, creating your own unique sound.

-Apple Loops.

-Logic Instrument plug ins

-Programming Beats

-Logic Basics in music produciton

-Reverbs, delays and Dynamics (gates, compression, side chaining, side chain compression)
-Chords and keys the easy way. Melody and lyrics

-Advanced Logic and other plugins

-EXS 24 Sampling, Chopping up loops, hiding your sampled loops, filtering

-Sound Engineering, Recording, Outboard and microphones.

-Mixing

-Arranging

Lots of music production tips and tricks – Beginner to Advanced

I provide music production courses in London. I’m Dave Garnish and I provide a range of music production course lessons for people of all abilities. If you’re looking for private lessons or group lessons, or are just keen for an introduction to music production.

Update:

I now have joined forces with SSR. Please see the SSR London site for more information on music production courses, audio courses, sound engineering degrees and electronic music production courses.