Discuss Notion Music Composition Software here.
4 posts
Page 1 of 1
I did a bit of research and verified that Studio One 6 does not support ReWire, but so what . . . :reading:

THOUGHTS

[NOTE: Until the official demo for Studio One Professional 6 is released by PreSonus, there are two ways to get Studio One Professional 6: (a) purchase the full version at retail or upgrade pricing from PreSonus or (b) subscribe to PreSonus Sphere . . . ]

The Studio One 6.0 Reference Manual has references to ReWire; but I subscribed to PreSonus Sphere; downloaded and installed Studio One Professional 6; and verified that it does not support ReWire, even though the current version of the Studio One 6 Reference Manual has information on ReWire . . .

[NOTE: The Studio One 6 Reference Manual needs to be updated to remove the now erroneous ReWire information . . . ]

Considering that in some respects I am the self-annointed King of ReWire, one might expect this would be the worst thing ever in my universe, but (a) Studio One Professional 5 supports ReWire--so I can use it while making sense of not using it--and (b) connecting some dots; being optimistic; and doing a few experiments with Studio One Professional 5 to determine what looks to be an attractive alternate strategy is very encouraging, especially after observing that Studio One Professional 6 now has a set of Full Score View options for its music notation editor, where in the same way that tracks in the Studio One Professional 6 Mixer can be hidden and shown, viewing the stave(s) of a score maps to being able to view only one stave, several selected staves, or all staves . . .

As is obvious in the YouTube videos of the new chapters in my science fiction radio play ("Extreme Graviy"), working in ReWire sessions where Studio One Professional 5 is the ReWire host controller and NOTION is the ReWire helper device is a very good strategy for what I need to do; although I think there is another way to do essentially the same thing with Studio One Professional 6--but in a different way, where Studio One Professional 6 becomes the primary, standalone composing, arranging, producing, audio engineering, mixing, and mastering environment, and perhaps NOTION is not needed, at all . . .

[NOTE: If Studio One Professional 6 does what I expect it will do, then NOTION probably will not be needed for what I do. The key functionality in this regard is the ability to see and to edit the music notation on multiple staves, which was present in Studio One Professional 5.5--so is not new in Studio One Professional 6--but is new to me, since ReWire is supported in Studio One Professional 5.5, hence there was no need for me to consider an alternative non-ReWire strategy . . . ]

So long as the new strategy works in macOS Catalina, I think everything will be good, although if a faster Mac is required or desired, then it's possible to get a newer Mac than my current 2013 Apple 27" iMac with a 4TB internal drive and quad Intel E4 processors; and Other World Computing (OWC) has some attractively priced 2019 iMac 27" models with peppy options, lots of storage, and an extended warranty for approximately $1,500 (USD) in mint condition should a newer and faster 27" iMac be needed . . .

The key to understanding this is based on knowing what I actually need to do, as contrasted to what I was doing or might want to do:

(1) Since I start a new song with no music notation, I can do this In Studio One Professional 6. I have user-defined templates (Studio One Professional 5.5 and NOTION) that I use to start a ReWire session for a new song or science fiction radio play; and I can use some of them to create a set of user-defined templates for using standalone Studio One Professional 6 to do everything. Once I determine the correct stave naming scheme for NOTION-to-Studio One Professional 6 sending and receiving, I can do this easily to get started with creating a new set of templates for Studio One Professional 6. For reference, I did some of this already, but so far the transfers are not so ideal in the sense of occurring but not working as I expected--a minor problem that I correct by creating a new Instrument Track and then copying the transferred music notation onto the music notation stave for the new, correctly configured Instrument Track, which works nicely. The more experiments I perform, the more the definitive set of rules will be revealed. Mostly, this is a matter of not having done it this way, hence not having much experience with it, other than doing a few experiments to help folks transfer Piano and Bass staves. In the same way as there was a learning curve for doing ReWire sessions, there is a learning curve for doing everything exclusively with standalone Studio One Professional 6; hence the rules will make sense in a while with some experimenting . . .

(2) I need to be able to add new instruments and corresponding music notation, as well as to edit the music notation of already existing instruments in the Studio One Professional 6 project (which for me is the ".song").

(3) At times I need to see the entire score--or at least parts of it. Specifically, the more I discover about the music notation functionality in Studio One Professional 6, the more obvious it becomes that for all practical purposes PreSonus has devised a way to package the music notation abilities of NOTION inside Studio One Professional, where expanding the music notation Editor essentially maps to the practical flavor of NOTION, at least for what I need to do; and regarding the Graphic User Interface (GUI) design, (a) I like it and (b) it does not require doing the NOTION-style right-clicking to display the notation toolkit, which is very nice. Explained as clearly as possible, I think the PreSonus software engineers have folded NOTION into Studio One Professional 6, which I think is excellent. :+1

(4) Since I do not use articulations, dynamic marks, playing styles, and all that stuff in music notation, I think the Studio One Professional 6 music notation will be good.

[NOTE: In an ongoing effort to keep music notation as simple as possible, I use a set of VSTI virtual instrument sampled-sounds in specific articulations, dynamics, and playing styles combined with VST effects plug-ins for compressing, limiting, equalizing, "ducking", and so forth, all hosted directly in Studio One Professional. This is the 1960s and 1970s flavor of the way everything was done with magnetic tape machines and overdubbing. For what I need to do, this accomplishes the same thing as devoting hours and hours to elaborate music notation and creating custom rules; and once you understand the strategy, it becomes intuitive and relatively easy to implement--provided you either (a) can remember every individual flavor of instruments and sampled-sound libraries or (b) are good at browsing available types of instruments, articulations, dynamics, playing styles, and so forth, which when one has everything IK Multimedia makes, everything in EW CloudComposer X, and a good bit of Kontakt (Native Instruments), including at least some of its Instrument Collections, as well as a good bit of the UVI VSTI virtual instruments, and so forth, this is a lot of instruments and samples, which probably is at least 100,000 instruments and variations of samples, which even for me is too much to remember in specific detail . . . ]

(5) I do not need to print sheet music.

(6) Here in the sound isolation studio, notes in music notation are like fingers, guitar picks, and drum sticks; and notes are what I use to play the VSTi virtual instruments.

(7) Except for my favorite virtual soprano--Realivox Blue (RealiTone)--I prefer to do everything on treble staves; and (a) this is supported nicely in NOTION and (b) this is supported in Studio One Professional 6. Realivox Blue is controlled via bass clef keyswitches, hence the need for a grand staff, which Studio One Professional 6 supports. For example, when working with electric guitar, I set transposition to one-octave lower; but for bass, I set transposition to two-octaves lower than notated. I prefer to work with soprano treble staves, because I learned music notation when I was in a liturgical boys choir; hence it's the only clef which for me is intuitive in the sense that here in the sound isolation studio, there are 12 notes in an octave and perhaps 10 octaves. Octaves determine how low or high each of the 12 notes sounds in terms of pitch; and for purposes of sight-reading, the intuitive range runs from Middle C to the C above the staff, with a few notes below and above being somewhat intuitive, which overall is a bit more than a two-octave intuitive working range. By setting transposition to two-octaves lower than notated, (a) electric or string bass is intuitive and (b) I know the notes are low-pitch, hence there is no need to see the notes on a bass clef stave, which actually makes no sense to me even though bass is the instrument I have played the longest--going back over 60 years. One might think I should be proficient in reading bass clef notation, but (a) it makes no intuitive sense to me and (b) every time I look at a note on a bass clef staff, I have to devote several seconds or longer to remembering whether the note on the staff is a whole step higher or lower than it would be on a treble clef staff; yet put the note on a treble clef staff, and I can sight-sing it or play it without any specific conscious thought, although playing the note on an electric bass by reading the notation is not so intuitive as sight-singing it. In retrospect, I am annoyed that none of the music teachers had the sense to ask me if I could sight-sing music--which I certainly could do and continue to be able to do. Connecting a few more dots and discovering I do this for treble clef staves, one might expect or hope that one of them would suggest doing what I eventually discovered, which is to do evelrything on soprano treble staves with the knowledge that bass notes sound two-octaves lower than notated. Eventually, perhaps 50 years later, I connected the dots, which in some respects should not have been so difficult--except that the "traditional" music notation folks and music theorists continue to make ruthlessly diligent efforts to make everything as difficult as possible, which started centuries ago with what one might call "woke music theory", where the primary goal was to discourage the proletariat from become trained musicians and singers. On the good side, this led directly to what colloquially is called "folk music". Yet, the fact of the matter is that there is no need for 88 separate and individual notes. It's too confusing and too difficult to memorize; where in great contrast, 12 notes and 10 octaves is sufficient and mathematically elegant. I play electric bass, string bass, electric guitar, and understand soprano singing; and I know how the notes sound; so why do I need to put the notes on three different-clef staves? It's stupid, and I don't do it. In a real sense, having a virtual festival of clefs is a strange and bizarre type of job security for musicians, singers, conductors, composers, and arrangers, where only the conductors, composers, and arrangers are proficient in all the clefs, while everyone else becomes proficient only in their respective clef. In mathematics, it would be like having a separate set of variables for each range of numbers, where there would be an "x" for integers with values ranging from negative one million to positive one million; another "x" for a different range; and so forth. It's completely and totally stupid.

SUMMARY

On a related note, I had cataract surgery about six weeks ago, and my vision is like it was over half a century ago, which makes me in a very happy mood, hence adjusting to the changes in Studio One Professional 6 is easy . . .

Using an analogy, metaphor, simile, or parable, I suppose it's like baking a potato before there were microwave ovens . . .

In some respects, I think the gold standard for baked potatoes is baking the potatoes with butter and salt, wrapped in aluminum foil--except for potato salad, where the gold standard is cooking the potatoes in a pressure cooker . . .

Yet, microwaving is faster, and for the most part it's equivalent . . .

This is a good analogy, but it's not perfect; and it's not perfect because in contrast to microwaving potatoes versus baking or pressure-cooking potatoes, I think doing the work in Studio One Professional 6 provides the chef with all the options . . .

I will have a more accurate perspective when I do more experiments with Studio One Professional 6, of course; but for now I think it's going to be very good, if not better than the ReWire strategy, at least for what I need to do . . .

Explained yet another way, this is even more exciting than discovering Pretzilla® Sausage Buns and realizing they are perfect for making Pastrami and Swiss Cheese sandwiches with thin slices of white onion, KFC®-style Original Recipe coleslaw, and Kraft® Thousand Island with Bacon dressing, which when steamed to soften the bun and to melt the Swiss Cheese and warm the Pastrami is an epic culinary treat, said "steaming" done is a specific two-phase sequence, of course, to avoid heating the coleslaw and over-softening the bun . . .

Image

Pretzilla® Sausage Buns

After subscribing to PreSonus Sphere and running Studio One Professional 6 using the ".song" I created to do some experiments with Studio One Professional 5, (a) everything is looking good and (b) I was able to see the entire score in the Editor, which is excellent . . .

[NOTE: Subscribing to PreSonus Sphere was easy, but the download was a bit messy and did not work; so I did a cold boot and created a subfolder named "PreSonus Hub", as described in one of my recent posts; deleted the stalled download; and then redid the download, which worked. There is nothing in the "PreSonus Hub" subfolder, so I am not certain it does anything, but so what. Perhaps doing a cold boot of the MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012) running macOS Catalina (10.15.7) and deleting the stalled download solved the problem? Regardless, it's working, and it took perhaps 15 minutes. I need to do this on the 2013 Apple 27" iMac in the sound isolation studio, and if it works nicely on that Mac, then I might keep the PreSonus Sphere subscription for a while so I can run Studio One Professional 6. I am intrigued by the new Vocoder effect. Studio One Professional 6 runs nicely on the 2012 MacBook Pro, so I'm happy; and if all goes well on the 2013 Apple 27" iMac, also running the current version of macOS Catalina, then I might do "Chapter 13: The Happy Valley" of my science fiction radio play, "Extreme Gravity", exclusively in Studio One Professional 6 . . . :D ]

I made some changes to the music notation in the various staves in Studio One Professional 6, and everything is working nicely without NOTION . . .

Lots of FUN! :)

P. S. To avoid any confusion, (a) nobody, including PreSonus, gives me free stuff; (b) nobody, including PreSonus, pays me to write stuff; (c) if I use something, then I purchased it with my own money; and (d) if I write that I like something, then I actually like it and use it, although after sending the Pretzilla folks a lengthy treatise on "The Perfect Pastrami and Swiss Cheese Sandwich", they sent me a courtesy box of Pretzilla buns, and the KFC folks and a few other food companies have sent me coupons when I either (a) compliment them or (b) complain about their total lack of pristine quality control, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous! :+1

Surf.Whammy's YouTube Channel

The Surf Whammys

Sinkhorn's Dilemma: Every paradox has at least one non-trivial solution!
User avatar
by Surf.Whammy on Thu Oct 06, 2022 5:05 am
I installed PreSonus Sphere on the Apple 27" iMac (2013) here in the sound isolation studio and did the Studio One Professional 6 prototype of the Intro and Outro for "Chapter 13: The Happy Valley" . . . :)

THOUGHTS

I created a NOTION score using the instruments on ReWire MIDI staves from the previous chapter, which I am finishing and then sent them to Studio One Professional 6 . . .

Everything was sent and received, but the mappings for the VSTi virtual instruments were not configured . . .

After a bit of experimenting, I discovered that configuring the VSTI virtual instruments is just a matter of using the Browser to select and then drag-and-drop the VSTi virtual instruments, one-at-a-time to the corresponding Instrument Track in what I call the "Track Lane" . . .

Once the correct VSTi virtual instrument is mapped, I then selected the specific instrument, and everything else happened automagically, which is excellent . . .

Specifically, the channels aligned, and the music notation is present . . .

In other words, once I set an Instrument Track to the correct VSTi virtual instrument and then inside the VSTi virtual instrument engine set the specific instrument, everything else happened automagically . . .

I did some experimenting with the music notation (Edit) window, and got it working nicely . . .

Once a specific set of instruments is selected for viewing in the Edit window, the set can be locked so that after saving the ".song"; exiting; and then reopening the ".song", the Edit window is restored correctly, and Studio One Professional 6 remembers what it was doing . . .

This is done exclusively in Studio One Professional 6, so (a) it's not a ReWire session and (b) NOTION is not involved, at all . . .

Image

From what I have determined and verified so far, there is no need for NOTION, because everything is done in Studio One Professional 6, which from my perspective is mind-bogglingly amazing . . .

In fact, it's superb software engineering and Graphic User Interface (GUI) designing! :+1

[NOTE: This is mixed specifically for headphone and Apple AirPods listening . . . ]

phpBB [video]


I am going to finish "Chapter 12: The Slammers Attack Ranivir" using Studio One Professional 5.5 and NOTION in a ReWire session; but I am doing "Chapter 13: The Happy Valley" exclusively in Studio One Professional 6 without NOTION . . .

[NOTE: This is the current version of "Chapter 13: The Happy Valley", which I am developing in my mind. There is more to it, but I have not transcribed it, yet . . . ]

"Chapter 13: The Happy Valley" (PDF, 4 pages)

Lots of FUN! :)

Surf.Whammy's YouTube Channel

The Surf Whammys

Sinkhorn's Dilemma: Every paradox has at least one non-trivial solution!
User avatar
by Surf.Whammy on Mon Oct 24, 2022 10:44 am
I generally make an effort to avoid double-posting, but this is a logical exception . . . :)

THOUGHTS

Now that I have done 10 or so minutes of a new chapter of my science fiction radio play exclusively in Studio One Professional 6, I can write definitely that it's all good--no ReWire and no NOTION . . . :+1

There were a few things that took me a while to discover, and one of them is that in Studio One Professional 6 the primary focus is not on music notation and the way composers conceptualize music notation . . .

This mostly, if not entirely, is a matter or semantics, terminology, and concepts . . .

As explained in a different post, instead of referring to inserting measures, barlines, and related music notation concepts and activities, the focus in Studio One Professional 6 is on inserting and working with "silence" . . .

It's the same thing; and inserting "silence" quickly adds new measures and barlines--plus it's faster than doing this in NOTION . . .

There are other nuances; so coming from NOTION will take a bit of adjusting to the different perspectives and concept for doing essentially and literally the same activities . . .

It's a bit like discovering how to drive a car in England or Australia when you only have driven cars in the US . . .

After using the Studio One Professional 6 music notation Graphic User Interface (GUI) for a while, I prefer it . . .

Key notating and editing activities are streamlined and are more efficient, which is excellent . . .

And you can send the music notation from Studio One Professional 6 to NOTION if you need to do something specific to NOTION . . .

However, I think the best strategy for so-called "popular music" is to do everything within Studio One Professional 6 . . .

[NOTE: This is done solely within Studio One Professional 6--just a few days ago--and it is indicative of everything I need to do. As always, it's mixed for listening with studio-quality headphones and Apple AirPods, since I mix for headphone "stereo" listening. It's the first version and is about half of the story, so there is more work to do. For reference, I use the rhythm section as a type of metronome, hence at present it's monotone; but I plan to add more chords, a set of foley sounds, and lots of other stuff . . . ]

phpBB [video]


Lots of FUN! :)

Surf.Whammy's YouTube Channel

The Surf Whammys

Sinkhorn's Dilemma: Every paradox has at least one non-trivial solution!
User avatar
by leedickholtz on Sun Apr 16, 2023 1:15 pm
Glad for your informative posts, as always, Surf Whammy.

As much as I like Notion, I've often lost copious amounts of time trying to dance around so many bugs in Notion. In terms of the PreSonus product line, my thoughts often turn to 'red-haired stepchild', when working with Notion.

Thanks for the encouragement to spend less time in Notion. I think it's time for me to really get the hang of using the notation editor in Studio One.

Really happy with Sphere. I always buy my annual subscription during the Black Friday sale, then keep the renewal code handy, so I can use it when my existing subscription times out, in March.

Glad for cataract surgery results. Got that in my future.

4 posts
Page 1 of 1

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests