The Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 is a portable USB-powered two input/output audio interface from UK-based Focusrite. It’s the perfect unit for a small home studio setup, especially for singer-songwriters who don’t need more than two preamplifier channels at a time. It’s rugged enough to take with you on the road, and the included headphone output means you can work on music any time of the day without disturbing anyone.
AudioQuest DragonFly USB DAC Review
The AudioQuest DragonFly is a portable USB DAC (digital to analog converter) and headphone amplifier for high quality audio on the go. I purchased the DragonFly to accompany my Future Sonics mg6pro in-ear monitors. They’re really sensitive IEMs, and the headphone output on my MacBook Pro is too noisy – especially for keyboard programming work. I couldn’t have asked for more in such an affordable USB DAC. The AudioQuest DragonFly feels solid, sounds great, and takes much very little space.
MainStage for Musical Theatre — Sequencing Harp Glissandi
Harp glissandi are frequently written into musical theatre keyboard books. Most of the time, they’re prerecorded and triggered. There are a few different ways to sequence harp glissandi, but the easiest (and cheapest) way is using Matthew J. Pool’s harp pedal script in Apple MainStage 3. You’ll also need an audio editor like Audacity to chop off excess audio.
MainStage for Musical Theatre — Mapping Sound Effects & Harp Glissandi
When programming keyboard books, you’ll sometimes encounter a sound effect that needs to be mapped to a specific key. The best way to do this in MainStage is to create an EXS24 instrument for your sound effect(s). First, let’s go through some basic terminology.
MainStage for Musical Theatre — Using High Pass EQ
As music directors and pit musicians, we sometimes encounter situations where there isn’t a sound engineer to make everything sound nice and coherent. I’ve been in quite a few productions where my own personal amplifier was used as a monitor and as a PA for the house. If you’re tucked inside the wing of a small theatre, this can be an absolute nightmare. There’s nothing like boomy sub-bass frequencies in small enclosed spaces. Here’s a quick tip to get a cleaner mix by filtering out those unneeded bass frequencies.
MainStage for Musical Theatre — Using Aliases
In Apple MainStage, aliases are linked shortcuts to a sound patch that can be reused, without the need for new instances of the instrument and plugins used on the channel strip. They are extremely useful for reoccurring sounds, and help to reduce CPU load and RAM usage.
Say you have an acoustic piano patch that shows up in every single song. Instead of creating a unique patch for each instance, you can use an alias to tell MainStage…”Hey, just take this earlier piano patch and use it here!”. This means there won’t be any duplicate instances of effects on the piano patch taking up resources.
MainStage for Musical Theatre — Filtering Controllers
By default, MIDI controllers such as sustain pedals, expression pedals, and modulation wheels affect every channel strip in a patch. Sometimes it’s useful to be able to filter out certain controllers in a patch. Apple MainStage lets you do the channel strip level. I’ve been programming keyboards in MainStage for a production of Bat Boy over the past few weeks. One of the patches in the Keyboard 2 book calls for winds over strings. I try not to use the sustain pedal when playing strings, but I have to in this situation. There’s a page turn in the middle of a held string chord. I only wanted the sustain pedal to affect the strings, so I had to filter out the sustain pedal for the wind channel strips. Here’s how I did it. It’s really simple.
MainStage for Musical Theatre — The Importance of Panning
An often overlooked part of creating sound patches in Apple MainStage is panning individual instruments across the stereo image. Sample libraries are usually recorded from center perspective. If your sound patch consists of strings, flutes, clarinets, and a celeste, it’s going to sound pretty muddy if they’re all sounding from center perspective. Panning is the process of moving sounds across the stereo image, and it will help you create better sounding patches.
MainStage for Musical Theatre — Pitch Bends in EXS24
I programmed keyboards in Apple MainStage for a production of The Wedding Singer two years ago. In “Saturday Night in the City,” the Keyboard 2 book starts off with a huge synth lead pitch bend from to A2 to A5, and then another pitch bend from A5 to D6. EXS24’s standard pitch bend parameters allow bending up one octave, and bending down three octaves. Take a look at this screenshot of the EXS24 interface.
MainStage for Musical Theatre — Customizing Velocity Curves
There are 128 velocity values in the MIDI specification, and these values range from 0 to 127. When a virtual instrument is played, 128 different volumes that theoretically be achieved. Sometimes, changing the response (velocity curve) of an virtual instrument makes them easier or more expressive to play. Here’s an example of an Apple MainStage velocity graph.