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MillimeterCreating Audio Atmospheres
Aug 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Gary Eskow
Scoring a video project doesn't always require a musical background. Three plug-ins from Spectrasonics offer help.
Those of you who read my review of SmartSound Sonicfire Pro 3 (Video Systems, June 2003) know that one of my big interests is helping people get deeper into the process of creating music. Sonicfire Pro certainly does that: It's a fascinating piece of software that lets non-musicians tinker with pre-recorded music tracks and tailor them to the specific timings of a video. Of course, it bears repeating that nothing replaces the collaboration between a producer or director and a gifted composer. All those years spent learning the art and craft of music-making do pay off.
 Atmosphere, a Spectrasonics plug-in that works with Pro Tools and most other DAWs, facilitates the creation of sound textures and offers the feel of "painting with sound." |
However, let's face facts. A lot of jobs simply don't have a budget that will allow for an original score. Under these circumstances, what do you do? This month's column is aimed at two constituencies: the adventurous video producer and the professional composer who somehow hasn't yet heard of Eric Persing and his company, Spectrasonics. Using three new Spectrasonics plug-ins as a starting point, I will examine the current state of professional audio tools and discuss how they can be used by the amateur as well as the music professional to create stings, logos, and music beds.
First, a brief introduction to Eric Persing's work. Persing is generally regarded as the most influential designer of sounds for musical equipment in the history of the business. While holding the position of chief sound designer at Roland, Eric created all of the sounds for several of the company's most popular sample playback devices. His work in this field led Persing to Michael Jackson, who had him perform on and create sounds for Bad.
Persing left Roland in 1994 to form Spectrasonics with his wife, Lorey. The company rocked the music world when they released Distorted Reality in 1995. A collection of unearthly but highly usable samples, Distorted Reality may well have provided sounds for more film and commercial soundtracks than any other disc of its kind.
While Distorted Reality and its follow-up Distorted Reality II were very effective, Persing was looking toward the future, his eye on a time when native computing power would be beefy enough to store and manage samples without relying on external CDs at all. Well, that time is now.
OK, enough background. Let's get down to the important questions. What equipment do you need to use the three Spectrasonics plug-ins — Atmosphere, Stylus, and Trilogy — and how might they be integrated into your productions?
All three plug-ins work with Pro Tools on the Mac and all of the popular host-based digital audio workstations (DAWs), including Nuendo, Logic, Digital Performer, and Cubase. Host-based applications (both PC and Mac) access these plug-ins via Steinberg's VST protocol. For those of you who haven't studied this area of production, Pro Tools has added the MIDI functionality that lets you plug in a keyboard and trigger sounds, and the host-based DAWs I mentioned are software applications that rely on the computer to synchronize video and audio as well as record audio and trigger plug-ins.
If you don't feel that you can justify purchasing a sound card (about $500), a DAW ($750 to about $2,000 for Pro Tools 002 with a physical surface), and an inexpensive keyboard like the M-Audio Oxygen 8 (about $139 street), stop here.
These one-time purchases — along with some additional software and some time spent boning up on audio — will let you clean up dirty tracks, manipulate stock music tracks and effects, and experiment with creating your own music. If that sounds intriguing, this column is for you.
OK, you've outfitted your PC or Mac as a digital audio workstation and learned how to import audio files from a variety of media, including CD and your video camera. You have successfully synched up your video to voiceover, natural tracks you've recorded, and some library tracks. You've learned how to create a composite audio track — for example, multiple takes of voiceover combined to create a single, perfect performance. Here's where audio plug-ins like Stylus, Atmosphere, and Trilogy come in handy. Let's examine each.
Stylus
Rhythm is perhaps the most fundamentally important element of music, so first we'll examine Stylus ($299 MSRP). In short, this plug-in is a drum module that the musician can play from a keyboard. Most of the time, however, users will load pre-performed grooves into Stylus and use them as building blocks for an underscore.
Stylus incorporates a wonderful protocol that Spectrasonics has devised. Known as Groove Control (GC), it lets you load a MIDI file that triggers an associated sound set. What does this potential mean to you? For starters, avoid GC and simply audition the various stereo sound files. These are all limited to one tempo. Then if you like the groove and you're feeling adventurous, load the GC MIDI file into your sequencer and the associated set of sounds into Stylus.
At this point you can change the tempo of your sequence and the groove will match it. How? The MIDI file is now triggering the sounds. Instead of telling a fixed audio file to play, Stylus and your sequencer are interacting on a much more fluid level. Play with GC and you'll find yourself creating odd beats, deleting notes, and even substituting drum sounds in short order. If you're a creative person, I guarantee that with a little time you'll be interacting with your sequencer and Stylus to create drum and percussion tracks that mirror your individual style.
In the old days of hardware-based synthesizers, samplers, and (to a lesser extent) drum machines, modifying sounds was difficult. In most cases the user had to scroll through multiple pages to get to the function he or she wanted to modify, using a small LED screen. Software plug-ins like Stylus generally have fewer parameters to access, and all of the Spectrasonics plug-in parameters are available on the brush-screened surface of the module. You may want to read up on the basics some day, but all you have to do with Stylus is set up a loop and start playing. How does changing the pitch of a loop alter its effect on a piece of video? Even if you've never heard of an ADSR (attack, delay, sustain, release) envelope, moving the onscreen faders to affect these parameters will teach you all you need to know. The same holds true for the filters, panning, and LFOs (low frequency oscillators). Have fun!
Atmosphere
Back in 1988 Roland's D550 sample playback module was the hottest thing going. Tons of musicians (including me) bought these hardware devices. In a very real sense Atmosphere ($399 MSRP) is the direct descendant of the D550, so let's do a bit of comparing.
Eric Persing programmed all of the D550's sounds. It cost about two grand and shipped with — get this — 512kB of memory! Several years into the future, Atmosphere comes with a whopping 3.7GB of sounds.
Then there's the editing. The D550 is a perfect example of the phenomenon I mentioned earlier: Getting at its parameters was extremely difficult. Persing was giving the operator lots of control, but the technology made it tedious to access.
By contrast, all parameters of Atmosphere are on the front panel of the plug-in, as with Stylus. You've already become familiar with ADSR envelopes, filters, and panning via Stylus, so you're ready to edit these same functions in Atmosphere. Atmosphere lets you load sounds, which are laid out in nicely categorized folders, and preview them directly from the plug-in itself.
Atmosphere has loads of textures that evolve beautifully over time. In many cases, triggering them involves striking a single key and holding a note for the length of time that your image requires. Combining two or more textures is where the fun starts. “Let's take a very basic scenario, where you're using library music for the bulk of your score,” says Persing. “That's great. But a problem often arises when you move from one library cue to another unrelated piece of music. Having a sound design element can help the transition enormously.”
As Persing explains, Atmosphere opens up in Pro Tools and most other DAWs. You can open a texture, turn it into an audio file, and continue adding more textures. It's really like painting with sound, keeping in mind that your goal is to glue two different pieces of music together. This has traditionally been the work of a sound designer, but video editors can absolutely do this work as well. “And don't be afraid to experiment,” he adds. “Within Pro Tools, for example, you can chop the audio into pieces using a grid of bars and beats and create interesting effects.”
Do you know what a low-pass filter is? Pretty easy — it lets frequencies below a set threshold pass and eliminates all others. High-pass filters work the opposite way. In no time you will be using these filters within Atmosphere to open up space for voiceovers, the low rumble of a passing train, or other sounds that appear on your video tracks.
Trilogy
I've saved Trilogy for last because it is the one Spectrasonics plug-in that requires musical training to use properly. A bass module, Trilogy ($349 MSRP) mirrors Stylus and Atmosphere in construction. Sounds are previewed from the front panel, and the layout of its filters and envelopes is similar to that of the other two. And it's true that adding a low C on a bass patch, for example, can augment the effect of an Atmosphere patch that's being played on a harmonically related note. Short pieces of music — stings and logos in particular — can benefit from the simple application of a fundamental tone underneath a cloud of upper-frequency data.
But musicians will most appreciate the gorgeous bass sounds that Trilogy yields. They're the only ones capable of taking advantage of a nice twist that this device incorporates. Staccato attacks are laid out in patches along with sustained notes. With a little practice, it's possible to use multiple articulations in a performance, adding to the realism of your tracks.
In the future we'll spend more time examining how tools designed primarily for musicians can be used by the video maker who's willing to spend some time experimenting. To learn more about Spectrasonics and Eric Persing, visit www.spectrasonics.net.
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