My name is Michael Rasbury, and I play with a band called “The Lightnin’ Bugs” in Ruston, Louisiana.  With “The Lightnin’ Bugs,” I have performed at two New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festivals and all over the southern United States. But this is not all I do.  I am a sound designer and composer, and I have toured Europe and North America with the legendary Merce Cunnigham and the John Cage Trust.  Along with a group of sound designers and composers, I had the privilege of finishing a John Cage composition entitled An Alphabet.  I have been the graphic designer, engineer, and musician for several musical recordings, and have employed technology on all of them.

        Since the advent of digital audio, many of the techniques developed for manipulating analog audio recordings have been made “visual.”  With today’s personal computer, the user can view a two-dimensional picture of a sound and manipulate it in a variety of ways.  Modern digital audio workstation software (DAW) has transformed the field of sound design and composition by combining digital audio recording technology with an earlier advancement in music technology called Musical Instrument Digital Interface.

        In the early eighties, most synthesizers made use of microprocessors to determine the sonic musical qualities of pitch, duration, velocity, etc.  In order remain competitive and unique, synthesizer manufacturers made use of these microprocessors in different ways and there was no way to link two or more keyboards together.  Keyboard companies were also beginning to add small computer chips to their synthesizers allowing users to record a “sequence” of information about a musician’s performance.

        Various groups began to experiment with the idea of making synthesizers more compatible with each other.  This way a user could connect a cable from one synthesizer to another and the receiving keyboard would be able to imitate the performance being sent to it.  With this capability, musicians could control two synthesizers at once by playing one keyboard.  The idea became popular and a new industry protocol was developed called MIDI or musical instrument digital interface.

        MIDI is very useful for recording musical performances.  A MIDI sequencer is a piece of software with a primary purpose of storing a list of characteristics about a musician’s performance.  It does this by recording “descriptors” of the performance while referencing an internal clock.  When this information is viewed in graphic form, it looks similar to an antique player piano scroll.

        A MIDI sequencer stores information in a similar fashion to a player piano scroll.  You can use a player piano to record a performance by punching holes in a piano roll.  This roll can then be used by another player piano to reproduce the performance.  If there were such an instrument as a player harpsichord, the data on the roll could be used to reproduce the performance using a harpsichord timbre.

        It is important to remember that like a player piano scroll, MIDI messages contain no recording of the timbre of a sound but rather which note was played, how hard it was struck, how long it was sustained, etc.  A sequence of MIDI events is analogous to this.  When the sequence of MIDI events is sent back to the keyboard, the current selected sound will be heard.  This means a performance originally recorded using a string ensemble sound can be sent to other sounds, such as guitar or piano timbres. The player piano scroll analogy is the equivalent to one track or performance with sequencing software.  Modern sequencers allow many tracks to be played back at one time.  The final MIDI composition may contain performance descriptions of an entire orchestra of instruments, all recorded by one person, one track at a time.

        MIDI sequencing has revolutionized the way people make music.  Since MIDI does not record audio, the resulting list of MIDI signals describing a performance can easily be edited.  If a single note was missed, it can be corrected in seconds by moving it to the correct pitch via the computer’s mouse.  Every note can be “quantized” or moved to the nearest user-defined moment in time.  Entire musical phrases can be copied from one part of the recording and moved to another.  Any performance can be reassigned to another timbre.  The dynamics of a passage or even a particular note can be changed.  The MIDI protocol and software allows composers to fine-tune their creations.

        Another type of musical keyboard appeared around the same time MIDI was being implemented.  The “sampler” keyboard also incorporated the MIDI standard and stored digitized samples of actual instruments.  As the capacity of random access memory chips (RAM) expanded, larger samples of acoustic instruments could be “sampled,” resulting in keyboards with better timbres.  Some keyboard manufactures combined the best qualities of synthesizers and samplers to create better sounds.

        All of this music technology has greatly impacted music.  For nearly a decade, much pop music employed the use of MIDI enabled synthesizers in search of new styles, cost effectiveness, and experimentation.  However, an “old-fashioned” analog tape deck remained the most widely used tool for recording the actual audio (vocal tracks, real instruments, etc.) necessary to complete a recording.  Since the early 1990’s and the digital audio revolution for consumers, MIDI sequencing software has evolved into a virtual recording studio for recording both audio and MIDI.  In my opinion, advancements in personal computer technology propel composers further away from the actual studio and closer to the virtual one within the computer.

        I have been making music and controlling audio this way since 1990.  I started with the MIDI and analog tape studio set-up, but with every update to my digital audio workstation software, I lose the necessity of another piece of expensive outboard studio equipment.  All of the expensive electronic gadgets (devoid of the computer) for creating reverb, effects, and mastering of final recordings have been recreated virtually inside the software.  The software designers have even be nice enough to include the familiar user interfaces found on the actual equipment.  Now, instead of physically turning a potentiometer on a piece of physical equipment, I turn a virtual representation of one on the computer’s screen using the mouse.

        The modern digital audio workstation software presents the viewer with graphical representations (as well as other views) of each MIDI track in tandem with tracks represented by audio waveforms as stored on the computer’s hard drive.  When the “play” button is pressed, the stored sequence of MIDI performances begin triggering the chosen sounds on electronic keyboards while playing in sync with digitally recorded audio.

        Waveforms representing digitized audio can be manipulated visually on the computer screen.  For instance, the repeating chorus of a song can be sung once, and then “copied” and “pasted” elsewhere.  There are even supplementary programs called “plug-ins” that can be applied to each individual audio track.  These “plug-ins” allow the user to do incredible things.  Some of these programs can morph the original audio into other forms or even correct pitch.  The computer generates all of these effects in real-time as the audio is being played.

        Digital audio workstation software now has the ability to drive software for virtual synthesizers and samplers.  Currently on my computer’s hard drive, there are approximately 2.1 gigabytes of digitized samples representing nearly every instrument you can imagine.  I can use any MIDI keyboard to trigger these samples in real time.  The virtual sampler is controlled using a graphic interface and provides the same user functions found on physical sampling keyboards.

        How has this technology transformed my physical recording studio?  When I started, the necessary components included:  a personal computer, one or more synthesizers, a MIDI interface for communication between computer and synthesizer, MIDI sequencing software, librarian software for managing the sounds in the synthesizer, multi-track audio recorder, audio sound mixer, microphones, digital signal processing using (for reverb, delay, etc.), compressor, limiter, and some sort of two-track master audio recorder.  Other than the software, each of these pieces of hardware used physical space in my studio.  My current studio primarily resides in the Apple Titanium Powerbook I am using to create this report.  The only additional hardware I have is a couple of MIDI keyboards, an audio/MIDI interface, and microphones.

        The new technology is remarkable.  An artist can literally start with a “blank slate,” and end up with a total recording, complete with self-designed print material for the project.
My personal computer contains graphic design software, as well as the audio/MIDI software, and with these I can retain full artistic over-sight of an entire project.

        I will provide an example of my own use of music technology to illustrate the importance of “virtual” recording.   My band, “The Lightnin’ Bugs” decided to record a collection of original Louisiana folk music.  We started with many ideas but settled on eleven songs to record.  After rehearsing the songs, we started recording using the computer.  Over a series of two weekends, the bassist, drummer and myself recorded the rhythm tracks for our songs.

        My recording studio resides within one room of my house so we had to put the instruments in other rooms to allow for monitoring away from the original source of sound.  I employed a small headphone amplifier to create a system of communication between the musicians in separate rooms.  I used an audio interface connected directly to my computer to digitize the sound of the drums and bass; each placed on separate tracks for later editing.  Rather than digitizing the sound of the keyboard, I recorded MIDI data to “capture” my part of the performance.  This meant my performance could later be interpreted by another sound on my keyboard in order to be more compatible with the final mix of the other instruments.  As we recorded in this fashion, I also digitized the audio of a “scratch” vocal for reference.  Before we added other instruments, I spent time copying good musical passages for pasting over average ones.  The end result of my editing was a much “tighter” sounding rhythm section.

        After the rhythm tracks were acceptable, we began adding trombone and violin.  I recorded these tracks in a similar fashion; the trombonist and violinist were placed in separate rooms.  At this point, they simply played along with the rhythm track recording as I digitized the sound of their instruments on separate tracks.  Their performances were also edited later using “copy and paste” techniques.

        As the songs began to take shape, we recorded final vocal tracks.  We even doubled some harmonies by repeating them on separate tracks.  I made some “rough” mixes on compact disc and sent them to a professional guitar player in Texas who had agreed to create some guitar parts for our songs.  Using similar techniques to our process, he and his sound engineer digitized the guitar parts and sent them back to me as computer data on a compact disc recordable medium.  These files were copied to my computer and imported into our project.  I simply “pasted” his performance on a new track aligned with the tempo of the current recorded song.

        The final part of the recording process was the creation of the master archive.  Hours are spent mixing the separate audio files into one final stereo file.  During this process, great attention is given to detail, especially since it is the final chance to repair errors.  We created the master and used the computer’s built-in compact disc recorder to “burn” a compact disc master for duplication.

        Until recently, the process I have overviewed in this document would have cost thousands of dollars in studio time and equipment.  The computer has facilitated the process and therefore creativity.  MIDI and audio software has made the art of making music available to anyone, including those previously considered non-musicians.  Music technology has served music teachers by providing new and useful tools for teaching.  It has allowed artists to create new types of music not achievable by standard practices.  Music technology has been used throughout the fields of music and other entertainment industries to supplement video games, films, theme parks, business presentations, and musical recordings.  We will continue to see the evolution of this new musical environment and should expect to witness an increasing number of electronic and acoustic instruments of music be emulated by virtual representations of the same.