EFFECTS (REVERB,
CHORUS, ECHO)
US-
224
INSTRUMENTS
MICROPHONES
MONITOR SPEAKERS/HEADPHONES
CASSETTE DECK
OR CD BURNER
MULTITRACK
RECORDER & MIXER
BUILT INTO
DAW SOFTWARE
DAW SOFTWARE
MIDI SEQUENCER
12
13
Getting your music
into and out of a
computer with the
US-
224
, US-
428
and
US-
122
.
Number of tracks:
8-24 depending on
your computer
Number of inputs:
2 to 4
Recording medium:
computer hard drive,
back-up by CD-R or
DVD-R
Mixdown to: computer
CD-R or DVD-R drive
Extras: mixer automa-
tion, plug-in effects,
MIDI sequencing, MIDI
inputs and outputs
Personal computers are every-
where today...they’re incredibly pow-
erful, reliable, and relatively inexpen-
sive. Computers and music make a
natural combination because music
can be expressed in numbers. Many
of the best software programmers
are also musicians, so as a result
there’s a lot of great music software
around. Software such as Steinberg’s
Cubase® and Nuendo® has made
it easier to compose and arrange
music...and lets the composer hear
the “orchestra” as they write.
The software program that writes
and plays back the notes is called a
sequencer
. Almost every electronic
sequencer
sequencer
instrument (keyboard, organ, piano,
drum machine) has a MIDI IN jack so
it can be “played” by a sequencer and
a MIDI OUT jack so anything played
on the keyboard can be recorded by
the sequencer.
How a computer sequencer
helps you write and record
your music.
This might be a little confusing,
but keep in mind: a MIDI sequencer
doesn’t record the sound of the key-
board. Instead, the computer is tell-
ing the keyboard things like, “
Play a
low G# now.
” The computer is acting
like “virtual fi ngers” on the keyboard.
The sound is generated directly from
the keyboard itself, “live.”
If you’re not a keyboard player,
but you do understand basic harmo-
nies and music theory, a computer
sequencer will let you enter notes
one at a time, placed exactly where
you want them. It will then play
back the sequence of notes, and let
you make changes on the computer
screen. If you read standard music
notation, many sequencers will let
you enter the data by placing notes
on a staff. Most programs also fea-
ture a “grid” of notes that many mu-
sicians fi nd easier to deal with.
If you
do
play keyboards, a se-
do
do
quencer can edit out mistakes, like
a word processor, making correc-
tions you couldn’t make with a
multitrack—such as erasing a single
wrong note inside a chord. Sequenc-
ers also allow you to quantize the
notes: if you play a little bit off the
beat, the computer can “pull” your
notes so they hit right on the beat.
Once you’ve entered the notes
into the sequencer, you can change
the speed or tempo of the music,
without changing the key (some-
thing you couldn’t do with an analog
tape recorder).
Going beyond sequencers:
Digital audio workstations.
A MIDI sequence can be a great
basic track to a song, and may be
all you need for an instrumental
track. But not everything can be se-
quenced, notably guitars and vocals.
That’s where the marriage between
a MIDI sequencer and digital audio
recording comes in.
A human being singing into a
microphone is still the most
important part of a successful
Compare this drawing to the one on
page 3 of this booklet.
Same six components but now some
of the functions are being handled by
the computer.
Multitrack recording is now a func-
tion of the Digital Audio Workstation
(DAW) program and your computer’s
The components of a multi track studio revisited.