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Komplete is suite of software which includes all kinds of great Native Instruments virtual instruments. What I love about it is that it really includes just about everything I would ever need to use when combined with the effects that come with REAPER (my DAW of choice.) And it's all really quality stuff too.

If you're like I was and you're looking for an "all in one" solution to all of your sampler, synth, drum machine, and guitar amp sim needs then I definitely recommend the latest version of this software suite (Komplete 6 as of this writing.)

Komplete 6 Features

Kontakt: Includes samples of just about any kind of instrument you can imagine.

Guitar rig: Amp sims and effects for guitars or bass guitars.

Battery: Drum machine with a huge selection of drum samples. Highly tweakable.

Synths: All kinds of different synths including Absynth and FM8.

Akoustik: Four different acoustic pianos which sound great.

I've found (like many others before me) that it's helpful to have a song to reference in your head when you're learning the musical intervals (a great example is how "here comes" in "here comes the bride" is a perfect 4th.)

This lead me to the idea that it would be good to reference a melody that everyone knows to help memorize the intervals that are in that melody. This is my first attempt at putting this idea to work.

The song I'm using is "Happy Birthday" which is arguably the most well known melody in the world so I think it should do the trick.

For my example version I decided to have the first note be a C (which puts the song in the key of F) as that makes it easy to follow.

The first two notes ("hap-py") are on C and then the third note is a D ("birth.") This is a major 2nd interval. The melody then goes back down to a C ("day") before climbing up a perfect 4th to F ("to") and then dropping to an E (which from the perspective of the starting note C is a major 3rd.)

The second time through the "to you" lyric is sang higher. It's a G to an F which is a perfect 5th to a perfect 4th from the starting note ("hap-py" is always a C throughout the song.)

The third (and final) time through the "birth" in "birth-day" isn't a major 2nd up to a D like it is the first two times through, instead it's a leap up to an A which is a major 6th up.

Hopefully you are able to get something out of using "Happy Birthday" as an interval reference. I'm including a video I've put together today as a guide below.

Recommended Ear Training Software

I've been using some ear training software called EarMaster EarTraining which I find works very well. I like the way it's constantly testing me so I can get a real feeling of progress as my ear improves.

I just finished reading a book called Guitar Man about a 34 year old English man who is inspired by Davey Graham's "Anji" to try to learn how to play the guitar well enough to do a live show within six months.

It's a non-fiction self narrative sort of deal and it's filled with lots of interesting history about the guitar and great interviews with all kinds of different guitarists (Johnny Marr, Les Paul, Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, Dan Auerbach, T. Model Ford, and more.)

I found it to be simultaneously hilarious, interesting, and inspiring. If you're at all interested in playing guitar (especially if you are a beginner or someone who has played a bit but never taken it real seriously) I think you'll probably love this book like I did. I definitely recommend it.

In fact, I loved the book so much that when I looked the author up (Will Hodgkinson) after I was done reading it and found he had a book called Song Man (which looks to be a similar theme but with the focus being songwriting instead of playing guitar) I wasted no time ordering it on Amazon (it should be here in a few days.)

And the book has got me getting serious about my guitar playing again. I'm one of those types who has been playing guitar for a long time but never really bothered trying to take it to the "next level." This book inspired me to start pushing myself a lot harder to get better.

Actually part of the reason I've not been updating this blog as much as I thought I was going to be is that lately my attention has been more on making music than on recording it. Although, I'm quite certain I'm going to be getting my head deeply into recording at some point in the future and the recording related entries will start coming a lot faster.

My next gear purchase for my home studio is going to be this Vox AC4TV Tube Amp. I've heard great things about it and it looks like exactly what I want. Great tone at a low volume (and an affordable price.) Why low volume? Well I'm looking to use this amp just for recording, not for live performances and for recording there's really no reason to go really loud.

This thing can be set at a 4, 1, or 1/4 watt output level. Yes, you read that correctly: 1/4 watt! I'm excited about the prospect of being able to put the amp at max gain and have it still be at a manageable volume. This seems to me like it will be perfect for recording in my home studio.

When I actually start recording with it, I'll let you know how it goes.

This Is Your Brain On Music (which I recently finished reading) mentioned something called the "10,000 hour rule" which I first came across while reading Outliers by Malcom Gladwell. What is this "10,000 hour rule"? The idea behind it is that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a true expert at anything (anything that requires a great deal of skill that is, I don't think anyone would claim it takes 10,000 hours to master tic-tac-toe.)

In This Is Your Brain On Music, the author (Daniel J. Levitin) references this rule when talking about people's perception of "talent." When most people see someone performing with a great deal of skill (example: Eddie Van Halen playing a guitar solo) they think "wow, that guy is so incredibly talented, I could never do that."

People seem to want to think that people are born with such skills but the truth is that kind of skill comes from long hours of practice. There is no one who has that level of skill without putting in the hard work.

This is not to discount genetic factors entirely. Certainly there may be some people who are more predisposed to certain types of skills, but all of the scientific evidence (read these two books for the details) shows that time spent practicing is far more important than genetic factors.

Sadly, it's doesn't seem to be the case that all practice is created equal. The general rule is that the earlier you start practicing the more effective it seems to be. When people think of a young person as being extremely "talented" at something it's really because they started practicing at a very young age (because they have an adult mentor, consider that Mozart's father was considered to be the best music teacher around.) Children can often pick up new skills with more ease than adults.

That said, regardless of your age I believe that if you really want to be great at something, then it's very likely that you can be. There's probably nothing stopping you but your own lack of resolve (aka laziness.)

It's this resolve that really what sets the "talented" apart from the rest of us. They have a true dedication that has pushed them to practice until they become a master.

Finally I want to leave you with this nugget of wisdom I took from This Is Your Brain On Music: Successful people tend to fail far more often than unsuccessful people. I think when you consider this in light of what it takes to become a true master then it becomes clear that failure is really just a lack of trying.

I've just started reading a book titled This Is Your Brain On Music which was written by a musician turned producer turned neuroscientist named Daniel Levitin. I'm really into learning about the science of music at the moment. I've recently read two other books on this topic: Musicophilia & Music, The Brain, and Ecstasy.

It's a very good sign that I'm going to really love this book that on page two of the introduction I've already found something in it that "clicked" with me to the point where I want to share it here.

This little tidbit may be quite obvious to most of you reading this, and it probably should be obvious to me but for whatever reason I never quite thought about it like this.

The author was talking about listening to music on headphones for the first time and he wrote about how he could clearly hear "the placement of the instruments both in the left-right field and in the front-back field (reverberant) space."

It's that bit about thinking of the "front-back field" in that way that got my attention. This is something I already know really (a dry sound is more up front while a reverb sound is farther back) but yet it still seems like a revelation in a way. Like something that will help me when I'm doing my mixes. To think not only in left-right terms but in front-back as well.

What this really leads to is thinking more clearly about when and how to use reverb. I've already been experimenting with different amounts of pre-delay on my reverb lately and how that can make a huge difference in the sound. And reading this makes me want to go further with this experimentation.

As you can surely tell, this blog post is not really meant to be a "how to" lesson from me (like some of my other posts are.) This is more about a cerebral thing just to get you thinking (and to try to get whatever I'm thinking more clear to me.) I love thinking about mixing in different ways. I think that this can help open up new possibilities.

It's important to be open to learning new things and to be open to looking at what you think you already know from new perspectives. To never think you have it all figured out. I've noticed that some people are inclined to thinking they've got it all figured out when they've really only scratched the surface and this keeps them from progressing. Don't fall into this trap! (I say this to myself as much as to anyone reading this entry.)

While putting together some ideas for the interval ear training program I want to create (which I mentioned in my last post) I noticed that a descending major 3rd interval sounds like a doorbell ("ding dong.")

I think that these sorts of comparisons are really helpful because the big key with ear training is to get these interval relationships into your long term memory and something like the sound of a doorbell is probably already in your long term memory so if you can correlate this interval to that sound then you're set.

This is the basic idea behind the interval ear training program I am working on.

It will probably be some time before I complete this project but I'm leaning towards making it a really good program which is worth paying for rather than just throwing together something and making it available for free.

This program will be intended to be used as a companion to the EarMaster Ear Training Software which I strongly recommend to anyone who is working on improving their ears. It really lets you see if you're really improving (by testing you) or if you just think you're improving. It's nice to have a "measuring stick" to work with.

My last post was on ear training from the recording/mixing perspective (more about frequencies than notes, of course notes are frequencies too but I hope you know what I mean) this post is on the type of ear training that most people think about when they hear the term.

This ear training tip isn't an original idea but it's something that I've found to be very useful. And since I'm not someone who has a "naturally" good ear, I've had to work on it so I figure what works for me could be useful for other people who may struggle with it.

The tip is to associate hooks from well known melodies with intervals. For example I like to use "O COME" that begins the Christmas song "O Come All Ye Faithful" to help me remember what a descending perfect 4th sounds like. I found that by using this song association trick I was able to get through the interval training with the EarMaster software much quicker.

How does it work? When I'm not quite hearing the interval clearly I like to try to sing the song to the notes to see if it "fits." For example if I hear a descending interval and I'm not quite sure what it is but I think it may be a perfect 4th down then I can try singing "O COME" over it to see if it fits. If it does, then it is! If it doesn't then it must be something else.

Of course if you are going to go with this method to learn all of the intervals you will need to come up with song associations for every interval, but I think you should probably just start off with one or two to see how it works for you.

I kind of want to create some sort of training tools (perhaps like a YouTube video, or something that can be downloaded - perhaps for a price if it's good enough and worth it - but more likely just for free) using this concept but it's on a long list of ideas I may never get to.

In this post I'm talking about ear training in the recording/mixing engineer sense rather than in the musician sense (I'm a big fan of EarMaster software to help with that, by the way.)

Ideally you want to know what moving the EQ around is going to sound like before you do it. Instead of blindly sweeping the EQ around you want to go in with laser focus and move exactly the band that will get the track sounding the way you want it to within the mix (and that's important to remember; you don't care what it sounds like when it's soloed only how it sounds within the mix as a whole.)

Being able to do this will save you a lot of time that you would have been spending randomly sweeping EQs around looking for the sweet spot and it will also keep your ears fresher.

I believe this ear training method I'm about to share with you will help you to reach that ideal by training your ear to hear exactly what each EQ band sounds like so that you'll know where you want to cut or boost the EQ.

This is how it works:

(1) Bypass your EQ plugin.
(2) Picture the EQ cut or boost you want in your mind.
(3) Move the EQ so that you think it will sound that way.
(4) Activate the plugin.

At this point you want to notice the difference between how it actually sounds and how you thought it would sound.

Keep at this until you are able to consistently EQ to the sound that you want with your EQ bypassed.

People (including myself) love quick "takeaway" ideas that they can apply to whatever they are doing right away. That's the idea with these seven tips. Hopefully you'll find at least one these tips to be something you haven't tried before, something that you can try out on your next project.

#1 Cut Bass EQ When The Bass Is Muddy

I've found that many of the best mixing tips I've come across are also some of the most counter intuitive ones. This actually makes sense because counter intuitive ideas are the hardest ones to come up with on your own.

This tip is a good example of this concept. If you've got a muddy bass sound in your mix then your first instinct may be to try to pump the bass instrument up higher. But you may be better off actually cutting the bass EQ. Not on the bass or the kick drum but on everything else.

By cutting out the bass on other parts that don't necessarily need the bass part of their frequency spectrum you can open up more space for the bass parts you really want to hear.

In a similar way it's often a good idea to try to sculpt the EQs of your kick drum and your bass so that they each have their own space. This should provide more clarity and a stronger, clearer bass sound.

By the way, this tip also works for the high end. The first instinct when you've got no highs shining through may be to raise them, but you will probably get better results by cutting back some of the highs you don't need. This will leave more space for the highs you want to be heard.

#2 Panning In Mono

This may be the king of counter intuitive tips. I've found that I can often get the perfect panning arrangement by actually flipping REAPER over to mono and then moving the panning around until everything sits just right in mono.

When I flip it back to stereo I've got a nice rich stereo spectrum that isn't too wide and isn't too narrow. And of course I already know it works perfectly in mono too.

#3 You Don't Have To Include Everything In The Final Mix

Just because it was recorded doesn't mean it has to be included in the final mix. You know that old saying "less is more"? It's probably more applicable to mixing than just about anything else.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you need to have spare mixes. A lot of my favorite music is quite busy. All I mean is that you don't want to be wed to including every single part that was recorded in the mix. A lot of times the best thing you can do to make a mix come to life is to remove something that may be holding it down.

#4 Level Matching

When you add effects to a track be sure you adjust the output so the volume is the same as the bypassed version of the track. This allows you to listen to a good A/B comparison to make sure that you really like what the effect is doing rather than just getting excited about it being louder.

#5 Mix At A Normal Listening Volume

Or even a bit lower.

It's not a good idea to mix while listening to the music at a very loud volume for a number of reasons. One of those is that you will fatigue your ear very quickly. Another is that it's much easier to make something sound "good" when it's loud. It's more of a challenge to make it sound good when it's quiet. If you can do that, it will sound good when it's loud too.

#6 Don't "Perfect" Soloed Tracks

Nobody's going to be listening to the guitar by itself, they are going to be listening to the guitar within the mix. It doesn't matter how it sounds when it's soloed, it only matters how it sounds in the mix. You can waste a lot of time perfecting a soloed track only to realize that it's in the way of everything else when you bring everything else back up.