Skills Update 2: 3/2/18

Last week, I had said that my focus on Audition and voice editing was perhaps a little limiting in terms of what I can do in 20 hours. Having felt satisfied with my work with Audition, I used this week to learn about synthesizers.

I have gathered more materials, this time for the combination of Ableton Live’s “operator” synthesizer to begin with, and then the Massive synthesizer plugin for Ableton. I was very pleased with what I was able to accomplish this week. At the end of this week, I was able to incorporate the operator into a beat that I had previously made, and I understand the basics of creating a custom synthesizer sound, even if I am bad at it. At the very least, I now can understand how the presets were created.

Skills Log (Partial)

Start time/date	End time/date	Description of focus	Notes on process
2/19/18 8:00 PM	2/19/18 8:45 PM	Audacity refresher	I spent some time reviewing Audacity for class, such as how to move audio, the different selector types, and basic filtering options
2/20/18 10:00 PM	2/20/18 11:59 PM	Audition Lynda tutorials	I started working through the Audition tutorials. I did not work in Audition today, but I learned the basics of how to operate the program
2/22/18 6:00 PM	2/22/18 7:00 PM	Audition Experimenting	I spent some time figuring out the Audition UI and setting up my workstation. I also had to review some Lynda videos to refresh myself on some basics. The goal was to manipulate an mp3 file, such as chopping it, slowing it, and pitching it up and down
2/23/18 11:00 AM	2/23/18 12:00 PM	Directed Audition Experimenting	I worked today to apply a standard equalization, compression, and de-ess chain to a dry vocal track. I mostly spent my time on Google searching specific techniques.
2/25/18 3:00 PM	2/25/18 6:00 PM	Operator Lynda tutorials and experimentation	Today, I dedicated my time to working with the operator in Ableton Live. After watching many of the Lynda tutorials, I then integrated the operator as the bass track to a hip hop beat that I had previously worked on.
2/26/18 9:30 PM	2/26/18 11:15 PM	Massive Lynda tutorial	Today was spent purely watching Lynda tutorials on the Massive synthesizer
2/27/18 2:15 PM	2/27/18 5:00 PM	More Massive tutorials + Using Massive presets to create a bass track	After finishing the relevant Lynda tutorials, I then worked with Massive to use modified presets to replace the bass track I had made 2 days ago with the operator
3/01/18 10:45 PM	3/02/18 1:45 AM	Using Massive and the operator to create an entire synthesized beat	With a good grip on both the operator and Massive, today I spent a few hours working entirely on creating a beat, using synthesizers for both melody, bass, and various instrumentation. I do not have much experience with music theory, so the beat is a bit basic, but I think it turned out well. Click here to listen to the beat.