How do you guys handle quick sketching of ideas etc..?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

It is what it is, man. You say sketch and writers think creation. I've also worked as an audio guy in many capacities (no pun intended) and never thought of my setups as "sketches." Their setups and often each one is different (I'm sorry for those where that his NOT true).

So are we talking technical setups of mics, etc., here? Levels? Sends, returns, plugs, etc? I mean seriously, can we stop beating around the bush and get specific if you're going to moan about going o/t? What exactly are you having trouble figuring out? You know, there's a book for that...



Sorry to be a little hostile, but if you ask a general question you'll get a general answer. The topic doesn't need to be longer, the initial post needs to be more specific, And please, don't point fingers at the folks who took the time to answer honestly in an effort to help because you insult our intelligence.

[Henry Robinett]

It should be clearer now.... I was responding to this:

My ideas aren't musical ideas, they are usually ideas regarding how something sounds or could sound when recorded or modified. I mostly do tracking of bands and sample libraries. So I'm almost never on the end of composing the musical ideas.

I do appreciate the ideas thusfar, but I'd like to make it clear what it is that I do, so that this question has some more context.

I figured. I wasn't assuming you were referring to me. I was just clarifying for myself, IF this was in reference to me!


All the best,
www.henryrobinett.com
Check out my latest CD on iTunes.
I Have Known Mountains by Henry Robinett
https://itun.es/us/pi6C_

[Tobor]

I keep a current folder of templates set up for different tasks, or with different plug ins loaded, i.e. my favorite piano of the moment, along with my fave drum programs etc. Since I'm also testing out new plugs or instruments I make new templates labeled with the new plugs. I might be looking to grab one or the other depending on whether I'm at the keyboard, doing a VO, or strumming a guitar at the time.

I have been tinkering with this concept over time, and realized that it was a rally killer waiting for DP to load 10 plugins when booting up a file. So now my templates have a number of chunks reflecting the different setups, but also include a chunk with no plugs activated as the default chunk. It boots in a jiffy and I'm set to go. I've also taken to deactivating the drum plugs as well, both within the various chunks and in the V-Racks. Then if I want to jam to Stylus, for example, I just click the enable button and am good to go in a few seconds. MIDI and Audio tracks are pre-routed.

Many times when I've wanted to test out a new delay or something, I play a simple chord progression on a pad or piano part, and start jamming. Invariably after playing for a few minutes I'll go back and listen and realize I'm halfway towards a finished cue.

Short story is to set up a template with your favorite plugs and routing but deactivate almost all of them. You get a quick boot time, then simply enable what you want for the project at hand.

[Tobor]

DP is a virtual studio. You can be a player in the studio or a producer in the studio. Most of us end up wearing both hats.

Robert seems to be coming at it from the producer side of things. My suggestions above are just as valid. Oftentimes I'll put up a file of a horn track, or guitar, or drums, and then shoot out various EQs, Comps, Reverbs and the like to see what floats my boat for optimum sound quality and impact. Maybe save a Mixbus preset or a drum processing preset for when I want that sound in a hurry down the line.

Textbook thread. Can we continue without the hostility please.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

OK, but I REFUSE to continue without passion. Often that gets the better of me when it comes to talking "shop." LOL

[Tobor]

You've got passion, I'll give you that! LOL

And a great and generous contributor when you "accentuate the positive". Robert has also been a consistently positive presence on the board and I'd like to see him stick around.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

He doesn't strike me as the kind of person who scares easily... LOL And seriously, I never mean to insult anyone in particular, just people in general... LOL

J/K!!!! Dammit Jim, I'm a musician, not some half-baked comedian.

[mikehalloran]

Back to what I think is the OP ?!?!?

All my projects start by cloning an existing project. There are projects that I keep around for that purpose, with different time signatures in different chunks, etc.

I use a variation on that sometimes. I have a few templates otherwise. I am up and running quickly and never start from scratch with a blank New Project.

If I composed from a keyboard, I could see using DP as a scratchpad but I can't compose from any instrument anymore . . . unless you count notation software as my instrument.

[Guitar Gaz]

Perhaps I missed something with all this talk about writing notation on paper - I thought this thread was about sketching musical ideas in DP.

For most of us, it appears that the answer is, 'We don't'.

Man - now I'm really confused. I answer a thread which appears to be about musical ideas and using DP to sketch these out quickly so the idea does not get lost in the moment - a useful subject to help those use DP more efficiently and to show how DP can be as good as other DAW's for complex projects and quick sketches.

But apparently now it's not about musical ideas, and not about using DP. Clearly I am wasting my time in responding.

[Robert Randolph]

It is what it is, man. You say sketch and writers think creation. I've also worked as an audio guy in many capacities (no pun intended) and never thought of my setups as "sketches." Their setups and often each one is different (I'm sorry for those where that his NOT true).

So are we talking technical setups of mics, etc., here? Levels? Sends, returns, plugs, etc? I mean seriously, can we stop beating around the bush and get specific if you're going to moan about going o/t? What exactly are you having trouble figuring out? You know, there's a book for that...



Sorry to be a little hostile, but if you ask a general question you'll get a general answer. The topic doesn't need to be longer, the initial post needs to be more specific, And please, don't point fingers at the folks who took the time to answer honestly in an effort to help because you insult our intelligence.

Ok, so I'll put out a few scenarios here.

* Band has gone home for the night. DP is closed. Most equipment is turned off. BOOM! I have this idea how to mic the kick drum for this ballad, and I just wanna try it out real quick.

* Sitting here chatting before a session with a producer about a track in progress and he makes a comment about how another track has some specific panning or some other analyzable attribute.

* Hanging out in the studio with a buddy and he busts out this crazy riff that I want to record ASAP. (I have a nice sony hand held recorder I use for this, but it's not always sitting where I want it )

* Sitting here by myself working and I just want to quickly capture some audio. Maybe a squeeky noise that I think is neat, interesting weather sounds or... anything.

* Chatting with someone online and they send me a file, I want to quickly check it with an analysis plugin for some reason.

* Quickly referencing a plugin while writing a post on some forum to aid someone. Likewise making small screencasts that I do when helping out on forums.

* Plenty of other small things that happen throughout the day and whatnot. I'm sure by now you can imagine what little things I'm talking about.

---

So currently what I do is open up Reaрer and do these things. Why? Because it starts very fast, I don't have to create a project, I don't have to select a template, add any tracks and when I'm done it deletes all evidence that the project existed.

The issue here is: I hate Reaрer. Ugh. I'm sure most people understand that.

So I'm trying to figure out how to get these little things done in DP where I'm more comfortable. The 'problem' is that with DP I have to start it (relatively slow here), create a project, save the project then eventually find the project and delete it.

Hopefully this gives better insight.

p.s. I don't care about hostility at all. I'm more annoyed that I feel like I'm not communicating my question well.

There's been plenty of great suggestions for other quick sketching problems, and hopefully those will aid other folks that stumble upon this thread!

[bayswater]

I simply want to be able to use DP without the rigamarole of creating a new project, then eventually deleting all the project assets manually.

Before I took the time to set up the right templates, it was a rigamarole. By time I had things set up to record, the moment was lost.

My default template has a lot of stuff in it, including inactive V-Racked piano, organs, strings, winds, bass & drums, but it comes up ready to record, without a click, whatever guitar is connected to a specific input on my patch bay. All I have to do it launch DP, press Keypad 3 and play. If I want to record something else, all I have to do is press the up and down arrow keys, down once to get to a bass connected to another patch bay input, once again to get to an old Proformance piano, and one more to get to an old DM-5.

Worrying about Mic placements, effects, routing, the tone of specific instruments, etc. doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with the quick sketching of ideas.

[Robert Randolph]

Perhaps I missed something with all this talk about writing notation on paper - I thought this thread was about sketching musical ideas in DP.

For most of us, it appears that the answer is, 'We don't'.

Man - now I'm really confused. I answer a thread which appears to be about musical ideas and using DP to sketch these out quickly so the idea does not get lost in the moment - a useful subject to help those use DP more efficiently and to show how DP can be as good as other DAW's for complex projects and quick sketches.

But apparently now it's not about musical ideas, and not about using DP. Clearly I am wasting my time in responding.

I also started to get slightly bothered by the way the thread was going, but I think there's 2 camps here: The folks responding to the thread title, and the folks trying to figure out what I was asking in the OP.

You were clearly trying to answer the latter, and lots of folks chimed in with the former.

Honestly I don't think it matters too much. Some time in the future someone will stumble upon this thread and perhaps the variety of interpretations of the question will be more likely to help them.

ALSO, your chunk idea is very useful. There are definitely times where I'm in a project and I wanna do some little side thing that's tangentially related to the project. Currently I open Reaрer... which is really dumb. I could just be using another chunk!

It's so obvious that it almost shames me to acknowledge it as a useful suggestion.

[Robert Randolph]

I simply want to be able to use DP without the rigamarole of creating a new project, then eventually deleting all the project assets manually.

Worrying about Mic placements, effects, routing, the tone of specific instruments, etc. doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with the quick sketching of ideas.

I do recording of audio primarily. Mic placements, effects, routing, sound analysis etc... are the musical ideas that I'm responsible for.

I understand that's where the confusion came from with this topic. What I see as an idea I want to try out, is very different from what the average DP user would consider as an idea to sketch out.

90% of the time I'm in my studio, I'm not the musician making the noise. I totally did not consider that most DP users use DP while they themselves are the musician making the noise.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

OK, now that we're on the same page, I'd use the PRODUCTION (or project?) notes built into DP 9 for that kind of stuff, as well as track notes. In fact, I'd probably use paper and pencil to jot the ideas down as well.

[Henry Robinett]

Man. I don't understand what the deal is. If the session has closed and they've gone home and I want to try different mic placements, I just open up the file, save it under a different name and experiment.

THE PROBLEM with trying mic placement with no one there to play the drum or whatever, you don't get the real reference. You NEED the player there. It's the way he hits the drum or the guitar. Each person plays differently. So it's hard to experiment with placement with air.

It seems as though all the examples you gave are very simple and direct. ALSO I normally leave DP open a lot. It does take a while to open, so I keep it open until that point I know for sure I'm shutting down. Then the first thing I do before setting up mics etc is I launch DP. But it really only takes a couple of minutes.


All the best,
http://www.henryrobinett.com
Check out my latest CD on iTunes.
I Have Known Mountains by Henry Robinett
https://itun.es/us/pi6C_