MUS221: Working in a DAW (digital audio workstations) (Week 5)

Notation

Composing and arranging using traditional music notation (e.g. Finale, MuseScore)

• Plug-Ins

• Software that adds functionality to DAWs, typically in the form of instruments and effects

• Coding Languages and Environments

• Often used to create custom interfaces and processing pipelines (e.g. Max, Pure Data, SuperCollider)

• Digital Audio Workstation

• Multi-track recording applications for editing, processing, and mixing audio and MIDI

• Before the DAW

• Reel-to-reel analog tape

• Cassette-based Portastudios

• Standalone digital recorders

• Other devices that recorded to hard drives and other physical media like Compact Flash and SD cards soon followed

• Everything was commercially available

The introduction of Pro Tools with the AudioMedia card

• in 1991, marked the shift toward affordable, computer-based recording

• he implications of analog vs. digital recording? Graphical interface vs. none?

• Analog can change and will never sound the same. Analog will wear old and get old.

• Digital recordings can be recorded over

browser

• provides access to factory, third-party, and personal content, including loops, samples, instruments, and effects

Tracks

• contains clips with audio (actual recordings) or MIDI (musical data used by software instruments)

transport

• controls playback and recording and can display time in different formats (depending on the DAW and project configuration):

  • Real time (minutes and seconds)

  • Musical time (bars and beats)

  • SMPTE (video frames)

gridlines

what Bars and beats are represented

mixer

• where you can adjust individual track levels and stereo panning

clipping

Anything exceeding 0db

• Many engineers leave some headroom to prevent this