What is MIDI? a guide for dummies

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
I have realized that during those years we have been talking a lot about MIDI, but we have actually never made an article with a brief explaination of what it is: here it is.

First off: MIDI is an acronym: it stands for MUSICAL INSTRUMENT DIGITAL INTERFACE, and it is the standard protocol for interaction between electronic music instruments, and between them and a computer.
This standard was created in the '80, but somehow it got so popular and widespread that still today it's the standard for electronic instruments (and not only, also for routing the signals and creating patches that controls also analog devices, through a dedicated hardware, or for controlling lights in a concert etc.).
Some of the biggest perks of this protocol that granted such a long lasting success are in facts the reliability, the lightweight of the data and the low production costs, that allows every hardware and software producer to work with it, also because it's supported by an infinity of freeware tools.

So the basic concept here is that MIDI is a Standard: no other standard has been able to replace it so far (even if the technology has advanced and in theory Midi could have been improved in several ways), and at the beginning in the early 80s there has also been a sort of a war similar to the Vhs vs Betamax one, but the Midi standard got the upper hand and was adopted by the majority of music instrument producers (Yamaha, Roland, Kawai and so on).

Without the need of getting too technical the connection is a 5 poles DIN cable, which was commonly used in the early 80s, only 3 of which are actually used by the Midi, and these cables are able to connect to the serial ports in 3 ways: In (to send the signal to a Midi device), Out (to send out the informations), Thru (to allow the device to send its signal to the In port of another Midi device).

The Midi data that flows through these ports contain the informations that must be received from a device like a Synth, a Sampler or a Sequencer, which can be hardware (for example an electronic keyboard or a synth) or software (a computer), and the information is contained in a Midi File, a file that supports up to 16 channels (meaning that can send at the same time notes that can be played for example by up to 16 virtual instruments at the same time). Modern Daws can play hundreds of Midi tracks at the same time, using as many virtual instruments as the computer can support, leading to an infinite amount of sound possibilities that until few years ago was unimaginable.
A Midi file can also send for example the lyrics of a song synchronized with a music, and it is a standard widely used also for Karaoke, or it can be used to control the lights in a concert.

A Midi can be played in real time through a Midi controller (for example a keyboard), or it can be written in a Daw via a notation software (the best Daws allows also to manipulate it modifying the variables from a minimum value of 1 to a maximum of 127, creating automations and articulations), or it can also be programmed in a sequencer.

For more informations about the Midi standard you can visit the official website Midi.org, which has an infinity of resources for those who want to go more technical or in general to have more knowledge about this formidable tool.


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Review: Mesa Boogie Quad Preamp

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are going to review a classic Mesa Boogie preamp (now discontinued but still quite easy to find in the used market), that has appeared on countless hard rock and heavy metal albums. from the late '80s Metallica to the early Dream Theater, Red hot Chili Peppers and so on: The Mesa Boogie Quad Preamp!

The Mesa Quad is an all tube preamp (it has 8 12AX7 Tubes) that is based on an expanded version of the Mesa Mark III circuitry, and it features two channels and six modes: Rhythm Channel 1, Lead
Channel 1, Rhythm Channel 2, Lead Channel 2, Eq1 on the active channel, Eq2 on the active channel.
Each channel has a separate graphic and parametric equalization that can be activated or deactivated with a switch, doubling the amounts of tones achievable, a boost function and a reverb.

Each channel has also a "bright switch" and a "deep switch, which emphasize respectively the high and the low end, adding more sparkle or more thump.
On the back, besides the classic inputs, outputs and effect loop we can find a MIDI switching out, quite rare for that time, and an equally rare recording output which simulates the sound of a Mesa 4x12 cabinet, to be used straight in the recording interface.

The sound is typical Mesa Boogie: cleans are very clean and dynamic, overdrive and crunches are dark and fat, with a lot of growl and low end, and actually the graphic equalizer is a unique feature that has been a Mesa prerogative for years, that adds a huge amount of flexibility in terms of the tone we can achieve: the classic early Metallica sound, called "V shaped" because it had the mids scooped, comes from this graphic equalizer, that was present in Mesa amps since the Mark II.

Today, looking at this preamp that was considered back then top-notch for any guitarist, we can't help but think that the world of tube guitar amplifiers hasn't evolved that much: it has expanded touching territories of solid state and digital that doesn't sound like crap (unlike the early models), but fundamentally what people looks for in their quest for the best tone it's the same: a well crafted tube preamp with a lot of flexibility and tone shaping functions, plus all the goodies that the guitarists of any moment in history needs.

This unit still today could be sold as a new product and be credible, plus it has a legacy of legendary albums in which it has been used that has very few equals, the only downside could be the weight, that is considerable, and a not total MIDI integration, but besides that it is still a killer preamp, which still represents one of the best gems Mesa Boogie has ever produced.

Thumbs up!


Specs:


- two channels, six modes

- eight 12AX7 preamp tubes

- reverb

- both a parametric and a 5 band graphic equalization per channel

- bright and deep switches

- recording out

- based on the Mesa Boogie Mark III circuit


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Difference between Synth and Sampler

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
In this article we are going to see the differences between a Synth and a Sampler, since sometimes there's confusion between these tools.

Let's start by saying that both these pieces of software (or hardware) are sound sources, and they can achieve also fairly similar results (e.g. a Strings ensemble sound): it's the process to get to the result that is different.

The earliest synthesizers were first introduced at the end of 19th century, but they got their moment of glory around 60 years later, with progressive bands like Pink Floyd or Van Der Graaf Generator, and they became increasingly popular until the '80s, period in which they were present in almost any music production.
A synthesizer (or synth) generates a noise waveform (there can be several according to their shape: sine, square, sawtooth, triangle..., each one with different characteristics) through one or more oscillators (which vary from synth to synth) and then applies a serie of processors (filters, modulations and so on) to shape it, so that the starting noise is twisted and turned until it sounds like a snare, a violin, any other instrument or a completely virtual sound that has nothing to do with any real world instrument.

Samplers obtain similar results with a totally different approach: instead of taking the original noise and, like a piece of stone, carving it until it sounds similar to the tone we have in mind, a sampler starts from the end: it takes a pre existing sound (a sample, like a piano key) and applies it, through a serie of techniques, to a keyboard or to any kind of sampler device we want.
The first prototype of a sampler was the Mellotron, which was a keyboard with every key tied to a tape mechanism which would reproduce a sound when hit.
Samplers can be considered as an evolution of synthesizers considering that the technology used in the early models were called "sample based synthesis", meaning that they were applying the tone shaping criteria of synths to a sample, instead of a noise.
Samplers became very popular in the '80s, when the producers discovered they could replace a drummer with drum samples obtaining a very fresh and specific type of electronic drum sound that still today dominates in pop and dance music, but it would be unfair to reduce them to that: with the recent technology, samplers are today capable of pre-loading extremely heavy sound libraries (we're talking about hundreds of GB of samples) containing any kind of articulation and variation, allowing us to create for example complex orchestrations to a level of detail that makes them completely impossible to tell from a real one, for an untrained ear.
In conclusion, what started with a single sample (due to the computing restrictions of that time), for example a single piano key that was applied, shifting the pitch, to the whole keyboard, is today a very heavy collection of many samples ("multisampling"), often with different dynamics in order to change sample also according to how hard or soft the key is pressed.

Are today synths still relevant?
OF COURSE THEY ARE! Besides the '80s revival that is dominating today's pop scene, there are certain vintage sounds, certain synthetic textures that can be achieved only by a synth, or if it's in a sampler, the sample is still created obviously with a synth.
The main difference between synths and samplers therefore is the application.
If we need a realistic sound, something that needs to be microphoned in the real world, a sampler is fundamental, while if we need a tone that sounds synthetic, computer generated, good for a science fiction soundtrack, a synth is the right choice, and luckily internet is full of Vst choices for every pocket, both free and paid, with literally an ocean of sounds to dive in.

I hope this was helpful!


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Review: Marshall 8008 power amp

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are going to review a solid state power amp, one of the cheapest and easiest to find in the used market: the Marshall 8008!

This unit, now discontinued but still very popular in the used market, is often referred as one of the safest "entry level" if you need a cheap (around 100$), light and very reliable rack power amp. 

The Valvestate 8008 has enough power (80w per channel) to be used both at home and on stage, and it can drive a stereo cab or two cabs at the same time, giving us a good flexibility. 

The technology used is Valvestate, the second, (after AVT) Marshall attempt in recreating with a solid state circuitry the response of a tube amp, and the switch in the back activates this feature or leaves the power amp linear; when the switch is on the power amp adds some extra harmonics in the mid range and tries to push the overall sound slightly to the "Marshall territory", but the difference is very subtle, so most of the people just leaves it on to have a final tone less hi-fi (unless you're using a digital modeling preamp, in which case it could create conflicts, since the modeling preamp will already have its internal tube emulation).

Considering how the technology evolved with Marshall amps (the Mg serie), it is safe to say that the Valvestate is the best version of tube emulation ever developed by the brand.

I have bought this unit used several years ago and it has been part of my rack for some year before switching to a tube head, and I must say the power amp did its job, it was worth the money and it was extremely solid and reliable, but the overall sound was very "transistor", and trying my preamp in a tube poweramp made me understand how important are tubes in a power amp: most of the tone characteristics I love in a tube amp comes from the tube power amp, rather then from the preamplifier (but this is just my personal opinion based on empyric tests, I will make a more scientific analysis in the future).

Would I suggest it today as a power amp for a main rig? Probably not, unless you need a very inexpensive 1 rack unit power amp, but if you have some specific need in terms of weight, hi-fi sound or space, this can still be an interesting choice to evaluate.

Specs:

- 2 Channels Stereo, 80w each.

- 2 volume knobs

- on/off switch

- 2 input switch

- 2 output switch (4 Ohm)

- linear/valvestate switch

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6 Tips to customize the look of Presonus Studio One

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
This time we're going to make an addition to our Project Preparation Article focusing on how to improve-customize the look of our daw, and in this case we will use the Presonus Studio One interface, but most of these changes can be performed in any commercial Daw.


1) From the file brower on the right go on Files->Colours and from there you can drag and drop the various skins in the tracklist view to change the appearence of the Daw. You can change drastically the colour code with these presets.

2) Options->General->Appearence: from here you can create your own colour style using controls similar to those in Photoshop: Hue, Saturation, Luminance, Contrast and so on, you can also save your own preset.

3) Options->Advanced->Editing tab: from here you can tick or untick "draw events translucent" to make the events transparent and see the grid behind (good for editing).

4) Options->Advanced->Editing tab: from here you can tick or untick "don't show event names", to remove the file name label from the events. By ticking this the look of our project will become suddenly much cleaner.

5) In the console area (in the lower part), if you go to the far left part there is a wrench icon, if you click there you can tick the box "Colorize channel Strips" in order to turn the colour of each channel into the one of the channel label; this is very useful when the project is very large, to find faster the track we need. This same function can be used for the tracks in the Tracklist View by clicking on the wrench icon on the top left corner and ticking "colorize track controls".

6) In the lower right corner of the tracklist view there is a slider. This slider increase and decreases the size of the waveform without touching the gain, so you can see better the transient.

I hope this was helpful!


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Review: Rocktron Xpression

Welcome to this week's article!
Today we are talking about a rack multi effect which is now discontinued but very easy to find on the second hand market at a good price, and that has been for years the main contender, together with the Tc Electronics G-Major, for the role of best selling rack multi effect in the market.

Rack modules has become very popular among guitarists between the second half of the 80s and the first half of the 90s, due to the fact that they were easier to carry around, extremely customizable (it's an orgasm inducing feeling to assembly your favourite preamp, your favourite power amp and your favourite multi effect and create the perfect routing and the perfect presets) and offered an infinite flexibility, thanks especially to the MIDI presets storage, compared to the classic combination of guitar head and stompbox effects that was the standard since the 60s.

During the 90s racks had become so popular among guitar geeks that was very common to see huge flight cases, as big as refrigerators, behind the guitar heroes, before the rack fashion started to lose popularity and since the second half of the 2000s people started going back to the classic guitar amp heads (which in the meanwhile got enriched often by a lot of functions that made the rack preamps, which were much more complicated to setup, less and less appealing).  

What is left today of that golden age of guitar heroism? 

Several all in one systems that integrates in two rack units preamp and multieffect with the best of the digital amp technology around (Kemper, Fractal, Line6) going usually directly in the PA, some other guitarist playing live through the computer using Vst Amp Simulators, and of course an infinity of discontinued, good (and less good) quality rack products that still are available in the market for our delight. 

Today we are talking about one of the most popular of them: Rocktron Xpression, the final evolution of a serie that spanned two decades, and that included the Intelliverb, Intellifex, Intellifex Online and Replifex.

The Xpression was the apex of Rocktron effects technology, and was one of the very few ones that allowed a flexible chain of 10 effects at the same time, 128 presets for guitar and bass fully editable, speaker simulator and 24 bit processing.

In terms of tone the unit sounds still today competitive: the effects are transparent and crystalline (if you don't choose vintage style effects), and provides anything a guitarist could need, from a switch in the input for active and passive pickups (to optimize the input gain) to one of the best noisegate algorythm in the market (Hush), from infinite delays (with tap tempo) to ultra clean reverbs.

The only "defect" I could think of, as of today, is the fact that it cannot be connected to a pc for quick editing, which leaves us fiddling with an ingenious but very complex system of menus and submenus accessible by combining the movement of two knobs, that takes some time and patience to master, and that maybe is ultimately the reason why many guitarists have switched back to the more straightforward head-stompbox system.

In conclusion this unit is a nice piece of guitar effects history, and you should definitely give it a try if you have the chance!

Thumbs up!

Specifications:


- 128 presets for guitar and bass

- Up to 10 effects together

- Vintage and classic stompbox-style effects models

- Multivoiced delay and chorus

- Delay and Rate tap tempo controls

- 4-band parametric EQ

- Active/passive input switch

- D.I. out with speaker simulator

- Analog bypass

- Hush noise reduction

- 24-bit DSP processing

- MIDI programmable


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Review: Fabfilter Pro-R

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're checking out a new plugin by Fabfilter, the Reverb Pro-R!

The panorama of Vst Reverbs is probably the widest of all: the easiest reverb algorithms are teached in many IT college as part of the exams, and it has been probably one of the first effects to have ever been created, to the point that literally every Daw in the market offers some form bundled, plus with the advent of Impulse Responses the offer has become even more various:
with these premises the task of creating a reverb software that can really make the difference in today's crowded panorama seems extremely hard, and yet Fabfilter once again has proven us to be up to the challenge, with its Pro-R.

How did Fabfilter differentiate their reverb from the others?
The same way they do with all of their plugins: with a beautiful interface, very intuitive and far from any useless scheumorphism, and with features that almost no other reverb has, starting with an integrated eq with spectrum analyzer to correct real time the way the effect processes the signal (for example filtering out the amount of reverb that affects the low end) and that also lets us modify independently the decay curve, allowing us to shape in detail the reverb tail and also to create some creative effect, to the point that it can be almost used as a transient shaper.

The main knobs are seven: Brightness, that adjust the amount of sparkle in the effect, Character, that affects the effect "colour" by adding some modulation, Distance, that allows us to adjust the perceived distance of the source, Decay rate, that affects the tail of the effect, Stereo width that controls how wide is the sound, Mix, that obviously lets us choose the wet/dry ratio, and the most importan of all: Space, that lets us set the room size.

On top of all these features the plugin features a wide array of presets for every kind of instrument, and they are a great place to begin with, before proceeding with further tweakings.

All in all another very useful plugin that has everything you'd expect and much more from a reverb, in a beautiful interface.
How does it sounds? It sounds extremely well and realistic, and the tools lets you tweak a lot, so that you can have a very transparent reverb, or a very coloured one, with a hint of echo or chorus, and on top of that the plugin is surprisingly light on the cpu compared to other high end reverb units, which usually can be some of the heaviest processors that can be loaded in a Daw.

Thumbs up!


Key Features taken from the website:


- Beautifully designed room models, ranging from small ambiences and rooms to large concert halls and huge cathedrals.

- Carefully developed to easily fit in the mix, without causing undesirable coloration, density or phase problems.Gorgeou Retina interface with large interactive reverb display featuring Decay Rate EQ and Post EQ curves.

- Stepless Space control, which smartly and smoothly combines the room model and decay time of the reverb. You can choose from over a dozen
- carefully designed room models and seamlessly vary between them, without hearing clicks or unwanted artifacts.

- Decay Rate control, changing the overall decay time from 50% to 200% of the current Space setting.

- Intelligent Stereo Width control, ranging from pure mono to true stereo and beyond.

- Distance control to adjust the proximity to the sound source in the selected space.

- The Character control changes the sound from a clean, transparent decay, to a lively reverb with pronounced reflections and echoes, all the way to an over-modulated chorus-like effect.

- Perfectly tuned Brightness knob, affecting not only overall brightness, but also the decay of high frequencies.

- Mix knob with a Lock Mix option, which prevents preset loading from overriding the current mix setting.

- Predelay control via the bottom bar, ranging from 0 to 500 ms, with optional host tempo sync.

- Innovative six-band Decay Rate EQ, giving you full control over the decay rate at different frequencies.

- Six-band Post EQ to equalize the final reverb sound. Together with the Decay Rate EQ, this lets you design reverbs of any style or character.

- Real-time spectrum analyzer that also visualizes the decay time at different frequencies.

- Full Screen mode, offering a large analyzer display and Decay Rate EQ and Post EQ controller.

- Multiple interface sizes: Medium, Large and Extra Large.

- Stereo and mono plug-ins available.

- MIDI Learn.

- Undo/redo and A/B comparison.

- Smart Parameter Interpolation.

- Sample-accurate automation of all parameters.


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