We covered tempo changes previously, with an emphasis on using tempo changes to add dramatic pauses, and also doing longer changes that are useful with DJ sets when transitioning from one song to another. This week, let’s go one step further.

In the process of researching an article for Sweetwater.com about what made classic rock sound “classic,” I analyzed tempo variations in songs without click tracks. The consistency of these changes was surprising. Although the changes did not have machine-like precision, they were far from being random or sloppy. They tended to follow particular patterns not only in different songs, but different genres.

The most prominent of these was speeding up a bit in the verse before a chorus. Sometimes there would be a slight slowdown after arriving at the chorus, and sometimes it would revert pretty close to the original tempo over the course of the chorus, but the speeding up was evident in virtually all the music I analyzed—rock, pop, R&B, soul, you name it. Also, songs often sped up imperceptibly over the course of a song.

Although you can record while Studio One is doing a tempo change, sometimes it’s a lot easier to play along with a regular click. Fortunately, there’s a way to add these tempo changes after the fact, to the final stereo mix—consider it a mastering technique done in the Song Page, not a tracking or mixing one.

PREPARATION

Working on the mixed track requires the highest fidelity possible. Choose Options > Advanced > Audio and check “Use cache for timestretched audio files.”

This uses a higher-quality timestretch algorithm than what’s used for real-time disk playback.

Next, open up a new song and load your mixed file into a track. It won’t have tempo information embedded so Studio One won’t know how to stretch it, but that doesn’t matter. Open the Inspector (F4), and enter a tempo under File Tempo, for example 120 BPM. It doesn’t have to match the original file’s tempo because we’re just introducing changes, not dealing with absolute tempos.

While you’re in the Inspector, choose Tempo = Timestretch, and Timestretch = Sound.

MAKING CHANGES

I generally do a linear speed up, because the changes (e.g., 2-5%) aren’t big enough that you’d notice a log curve anyway. While holding the Alt/Opt key, click with either the Paint or Line tool where you want the tempo to start speeding up, and drag to where you want the speedup to end. Note that you can also drag up or down to fine-tune the end tempo, and if you also hold Shift while doing this, you can change tempo in 0.1 BPM increments.

While the range of tempo changes is still selected, zoom in on the very first change. It will be slightly more than the tempo before it, which is usually what you want. If not, hover over the top of the first tempo change until it turns into a double up/down arrow. Click, and drag downward to even out the first tempo change with the tempo change right before it. The selected changes will follow along to preserve the line’s slope. Remember, we’re talking about small changes here that are more felt than heard as obvious tempo shifts. You can be off by a few tenths of a BPM, or even more—no one will notice.

The screen shot shows a mastered song after having tempo changes made. I like to extend the tempo track height as much as possible so it’s easy to make fairly precise changes. Note the linear changes that happen before the two choruses about 1/3 and 2/3 through the song, and then another before the final fadeout on the main riff. In the middle, there’s also a slightly slower tempo change during the solo.

Try this technique on your finished songs—you might be surprised about how these can help a song “breathe” and flow more, even if it was recorded to a click track.

Click here for more!

New from PreSonus – Tom Brechtlein Drum Loops

Get Tom Brechtlein’s Drums HERE! 

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Okay, Studio One isn’t lacking for reverb. Nor is the rest of the world. But we also aren’t lacking for tools to make new kinds of reverb sounds, and that’s what this week’s tip is all about.

Note that the TonalVerb is a bus effect, so don’t insert it in a track. (Or, do insert it in a track—you never know what might happen!) As with last week’s tip there’s a preset you can download, but I recommend reading about how this preset works. FX Chains are very powerful, and once you learn what you can do with them, you can create your own signature sounds instead of sounding like everyone else.

HOW IT WORKS

A Splitter, set to Normal mode, feeds two Mixverbs in parallel. One of the parallel paths goes through a Mixtool with both channel phases (polarities) inverted, so the summed audio cancels. Except… one Mixverb has damping fixed at 50%, while the other is variable (as set by the FX Chain Tone control). With both Damp controls at 50%, there’s no audio due to cancellation. However setting damping below 50% cancels the low frequency reverb components, yet the high frequency reverb components remain. With damping set above 50%, the reverse occurs—the high frequency reverb components cancel, while the low frequency components remain. The closer Tone is to 50%, the greater the cancellation so you may need to increase the bus level under these conditions.

This effect is very different compared to altering tone via equalization for several reasons, but the main one is that damping varies over time. At the onset of the reverb, there’s more cancellation because the two parallel signals have more in common. This reduces the attack of the signal being reverberated, which has its own uses—for example, you might want the crack of a drum to be more prominent, rather than being washed in reverb. With tone set to 0% and Size at a relatively high value (e.g., 70%), it’s almost like the reverb has an attack time of its own.

Regarding the other FX Chain controls, Predelay, Size, and Width all vary their respective Mixverb controls simultaneously over their full ranges. The only one that works differently, as noted above, is the Tone (damping) control.

So… why be normal? Here’s your chance to try a different type of reverb sound that’s especially well suited to EDM productions.

• Click here to get the Multipreset!

Longtime friend and PreSonus advocate Brian Lorelle of OBEDIA and PC Audio Labs recently interconnected four Quantums and four DigiMax DP88s for a series of test runs in his laboratory in Nashville, taking a close look at CPU usage and latency under varying conditions including different sample rates, plug-in counts, buffer sizes, etc.  If you’ve been looking for a Windows recording solution that takes advantage of the speed and power of Thunderbolt, with tons of I/O, this is a must-watch!

• You can get a Rok Box MC X Pro Audio PC here
• Get one on one training and tech support for PreSonus hardware and software with OBEDIA

Back in the days of variable-speed analog tape, we often cheated and sped up the master just a bit. This had three beneficial effects: it made the tempo a bit more lively, raised the pitch for a slightly brighter sound, and tightened timing. Even a 2% change could make a significant difference. (If you ever tried to play along with an old pop tune and found your instrument had to be tuned somewhat sharp, this is probably why.)

Digital technology gave us a major advance by making it possible to change tempo without changing pitch, or change pitch without changing tempo. Curiously, though, there aren’t as many options if you want to change both simultaneously. Fortunately, Studio One can do this easily.

The key is the Inspector’s Speedup and Tune parameters. A speedup of 2% is about right for making a noticeable, but not obvious change; however many older masters were sped up a lot more than that, so don’t feel too constrained. For Tune, 20 cents works well as a general-purpose setting but again, there are no rules about this other than to use your ears.

If you enter these changes and then go back to 0 for the two settings, the song will sound less lively. However it’s important to acclimate yourself to any changes, either speeding up or “bypassed,”  before making any final decisions about what sounds best.

Note that I much prefer to do any master speed/tune change processing on the finished, two-track mix instead of while working on a song. That way I don’t need to remember to set the Speedup and Tune on each track, or render loops so I can use the needed parameters.

And since we’re in old school territory, consider adding a bit of Console Shaper as well from the Mix FX drop-down. I seldom push drive above 9 o’clock for program material, and some crosstalk makes the sound a bit more speaker-like when wearing headphones (with headphones, you don’t get acoustical crosstalk like you do with speakers, where the left ear hears some of the right speaker, and vice-versa). As to noise…well I’m not a fan of noise, but with some tracks, it does add a little “glue.” Or maybe it just triggers the psychological response of working with older gear.

The audio example plays an excerpt from the remix of “To Say No Would Be a Crime” (from my album “Simplicity”). The first 19 seconds are the original version, the rest of the example speeds it up by 1.02 with a pitch increase of 40 cents. The complete song is available on YouTube/thecraiganderton.

In any case, when you want your music to be a little more lively, brighter, and tighter, try raising the Speedup and Tune parameters just a bit. It really does make a difference.

The day has arrived! Studio One 4 has been released and is available for purchase from your favorite dealer or shop.presonus.com! Version 4 adds a ton of new features (full list is available in a PDF linked below) but some of the things we’re really excited about include:

• Chord track for real-time chord re-harmonization of instrument tracks and audio tracks; chord selector, Song Key Signature, Chord Transposing
• Impact XT Drum Instrument with 8 pad banks, 32 outputs, filters, trigger quantize, real-time time-stretching, and more
• Sample One XT sampler with record page, live sampling from nearly anything, auto-slicing, robust FX section, real-time time-stretching
• New Music Editing Options including  intuitive Drum Editor and Drum and Melodic Patterns
• AAF support and Song Data Import
• New, lighter color options available

Click here to get a complete list of what’s new in Studio One 4. (PDF) 

Where to buy: 

• Click here to shop online.
• To find a dealer in the USA, click here.
• To find a dealer outside the USA, click here.

Click here to watch the live webcast announcement with tons of feature videos, artist performances, and more:

Here’s our Studio One 4 YouTube playlist, with all of the webcast segments plus a whole lot more:

Where to buy:

• Click here to shop online.
• To find a dealer in the USA, click here.
• To find a dealer outside the USA, click here.

I’ve been experimenting with phasers lately, and found some interesting tricks. This week we’ll create a mind-melting phaser-meets-stereo-imager. Next week, we’ll create a super-customizable phaser with continuously variable peaks and notches, so you can obtain specialized vintage sounds like the original Electro-Harmonix Polyphase.

HOW IT WORKS

You can reproduce the sound of a phaser with several tracking notch filters, so instead of using a phase shifter per se, we can use the Pro EQ.

The five parametric stages are set up as notch filters one octave apart, with a sweep range of four octaves. The FX Chain Frequency control sets their frequencies. If you download the multipreset, I highly recommend reverse-engineering it to see how to control multiple filter stages from a single knob.

The FX Chain Q control sets the phase effect’s resonance/sharpness by altering the Q for all five stages simultaneously. Broader Q settings reduce volume, with a less focused, gentler phasing sound. High Q settings are sharper, with a more pronounced phasing effect.

But the secret ingredient here is splitting the signal path into the Pro EQ-meets-phaser and the Mixtool. Inverting the phase for the Mixtool’s left and right channels cancels out any remaining dry signal from the Pro EQ “phaser,” which accents the phasing sound.

If you compare this to the sound of the PreSonus Phaser, it’s like the PreSonus Phaser supplements the audio with the phasing effect, while the Imaging Phaser replaces the audio with the phasing. They both have their uses.

THE IMAGING PHASER

The real mind melt happens if you run program material through the Imaging Phaser and then click the Image Xpand button. This swaps the right and left channels, which because they’re out of phase, creates insane imaging effects. The first time I tried this was on a laptop, and clicking on Image Xpand made it seem like the speakers were located somewhere else in the room. The effect is less dramatic with signals that don’t contain a lot of stereo information and ambiance, or on headphones, but it still makes a difference.

THE AUDIO EXAMPLE

The first part showcases the phaser effect. After the word “Reunited” appears, you’ll hear an unprocessed version of the track for four measures. After that, it’s Image Xpand time, with the FX Chain control being varied to alter the sound somewhat.

And for those without the patience to build their own Imaging Phaser, here’s an FX Chain multipreset you can download. Have fun!

Click here to download the multipreset! 

The Project Page Meets Bluetooth
After mastering a project, I like to check out its suitability in a variety of contexts by listening to it over and over again—in the foreground, in the background while people are talking, while the dishwasher runs, whatever. This can be very instructive when trying for masters that are transportable not just for different playback systems, but for different listening conditions.

And that’s when it hit me: Bluetooth! I have IK Multimedia’s iLoud portable Bluetooth speaker, and carry it around the house to listen to music that’s streaming from a mobile device. Why not carry it around while listening to a mastered Project? Or even loop a Song, so I can get lyric ideas while the instrument tracks play in the background? Or listen over other Bluetooth devices, to get an idea of the type of sonic violence the music will have to endure at the hand of consumers?

Okay, so I was a little slow to tumble to this…but reality checks can indeed be useful, and I hope you find this tip useful as well. We’ll do the Mac first, and then Windows.

Mac
1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences > Bluetooth.
2. Turn on Bluetooth at the Mac if it isn’t already.
3. Turn on your Bluetooth playback device, and enable pairing for it (usually by pressing a pairing button on the device).
4. When the Connection Request appears, click Connect.

5. The Bluetooth window will show the device as connected.
6. In Studio One, choose Preferences.

7. For Playback Device, choose your Bluetooth playback device.

Windows
1. Choose Settings > Devices > Bluetooth & other devices.
2. Turn on Bluetooth in Windows if it isn’t already.
3. Click on Add Bluetooth or other device, then choose Bluetooth when Add a Device appears.
4. Turn on your Bluetooth playback device, and enable pairing for it (usually by pressing a pairing button on the device).

5. Click on the device name to connect it. Once it’s connected, click on Done.
6. In the Windows search box, type Sound and then select Sound Control Panel.

7. Your Bluetooth device should appear in the list of potential playback devices. Click on it, and then click Set Default to make the Bluetooth device your default playback device.
8. Now that Windows is set up, open Studio One, and choose Options. Select Windows Audio for your Audio Device, and you’re good to go.

Vibrato is kind of the forgotten effect. It appeared briefly in Magnatone guitar amps many (many) decades ago, and some effects add it in a way that seems like an afterthought (“Hey, if we include a switch to turn off the dry signal in this flanger, then we’ll get vibrato!”). In fact it’s such a forgotten effect that when I use it on sustained sources like pads and power chords, people often want to know what “that cool new effect” is.

If a program doesn’t have a vibrato plug-in, the usual option is to trick a flanger or chorus into thinking it’s one. However, Studio One’s Flanger and Chorus are designed to give the lush sounds we associate with those effects, so it’s not possible to obtain true vibrato. However, there is a way to do vibrato with the Analog Delay.

The patch is quite simple. Here are the parameter settings.

Time (Beats section): Turn off sync, and enter 1.5 ms. This will delay the audio by 1.5 ms, but that’s only as much as moving your head 18 inches away from a speaker…I can cope.

Set Factor = 1.00, and Inertia = 0.00. Turn Low Cut and High Cut off. Set Feedback and Saturation to 0, and Mix to 100%.

Mod controls the vibrato depth. A maximum of about 37% works for me. If the depth isn’t enough, then enter 2 or 3 ms for the Time parameter. You’ll want the Sine waveform, but the LFO Beats control setting requires some explanation.

With Sync disabled, you can’t increase the LFO rate beyond 5 Hz. Although this will work as vibrato in some cases, generally, you’ll want to be able to go faster. No problem: Turn on Sync, and then you can obtain faster speeds by choosing faster sync values, like 1/8T or 1/16 at 120 BPM.

And that’s all there is to obtaining real vibrato effects with Studio One.

Using DX and DXi Plug-Ins with Studio One

The DX and DXi (instrument) plug-in formats for Windows were developed in the late 18th century, shortly after the invention of the steam-powered computer. Okay, okay…they’re not really that old, but development of new DX plug-ins ceased years ago when VST became the dominant plug-in lifeform for Windows. Regardless, you may still have some DX plug-ins installed on your computer from other programs, and want to use them.

Like many other programs, in theory Studio One doesn’t support DX/DXi plug-ins. However, it does support shell plug-ins (e.g., like Waves uses). This means you can use a wrapper that makes DX plug-ins look like they’re VST types. With this workaround, Studio One can “see” and load DX and DXi plug-ins because it thinks they’re VSTs.

I’ve tested the following with many DX and DXi plug-ins, from several manufacturers, in 64-bit Studio One. They can’t do sidechaining, and 32-bit plug-ins that were never updated to 64 bits aren’t compatible with 64-bit Windows, but otherwise they work as expected. Here’s how to make your DX and DXi plug-ins productive members of Studio One society.

1. Go to https://www.xlutop.com/buzz/zip/
2. Download the zip file dxshell_v1.0.4b.zip
3. Extract it.
4. Copy the files dxshell.x64.dll and dxishell.64x.dll to the folder where Studio One looks for VST plug-ins.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. Open Studio One, and you’ll see all the DX and DXi plug-ins—the screenshot shows plug-ins from Cakewalk, rgc:audio, and Sony. The Instruments tabs will show any available DXi plug-ins.

I don’t have a 32-bit system so I didn’t test this with 32-bit DX shells. But if it works like the 64-bit one, you should be covered there as well.

Granted, this is a bit of a hollow victory because if a DX plug-in’s functionality is available with Studio One’s VST plug-ins, you’re better off using the VST versions. But there are still some DX effects that have no real equivalents in the modern world—and now you can use them.