Each selection of music was composed and performed on one of three synthesizers - a Yamaha W7, a Roland FA-76 or a Roland Fantom G7. Most of the sounds you hear were generated by these synthesizers. Each synthesizer has a 16 track sequencer (memory) and a different synthesized instrument can be assigned to each track. I usually assign a piano to one of the tracks and start playing a melody in the record mode. After some music is played in by a piano, I then play it back and play along with it using a different track with a different synthesized instrument such as an acoustic bass, harp, strings or whatever instrument seems to fit the piece. Instruments are added each time the piece is played back until as many tracks are used as needed, up to sixteen. No auto accompaniment or auto harmony is used but after music is played in on a track it can be edited - a note can be moved, changed, made louder, made to sound longer and special effects can be added as well. The tempo and key for the whole piece can be altered and assigned instruments can also changed. This process can take a lot of time. - There are many options and many decisions to make - there are thousands of sounds to select from and many parameters of these sounds can be altered to change them. - Sometimes it can be quite overwhelming but eventually a piece of music gets finished.
The Roland Fantom G7, shown in this picture, actually has a 152 track sequencer with 24 of those being audio tracks. With this machine I can add real instruments, such as a banjo, to the mix. This synthesizer is always connected to the computer by a USB cable. The computer is used for the storage of music data as well as final editing. The recording is all done inside the synthesizer.
The Roland Fantom G7 has a very large display and can use a mouse. This greatly reduces the number of button presses on the synthesizer and speeds up programming. This instrument comes equipped with 2,230 waveforms (sounds) and has a maximum polyphony of 128 voices. When a piece of music is finished it is "resampled" recorded as a wav file inside the synthesizer.
After the music is recorded on the Roland G7 it is then transferred to the computer and edited using "AUDACITY" - free audio editing software available to anyone who wants to download it from the web. Using this software I can add digital silence to the beginning and end of a piece of music as well amplification and filtering if needed. I can also add extra sound effects such as seagulls, loons, peepers or whatever. The music is finished and ready to be added to a CD after this process.
The internal sequencer inside the Roland G7 allows for entire song development and recording to be done inside the machine with no external software or recording devices needed. The song could go straight to a CD through a computer but "AUDACITY" does give it a chance for a final touch-up and review.
Now that the music is in the computer it is added to the list of pieces I have completed. They can then be converted to other formats such as WMA (Windows Media Audio) and mp3 (motion picture experts group, layer III). Different bit rates for these other formats can be set to compress the music files to a smaller size so they can be passed over the internet faster and require less storage space. As the bit rate is reduced the quality of the music is also reduced but that is the trade off to get the files small enough for easy transport over the net.
I'll Take the selection 'LOW RIDER' as an example of the relative sizes for the different formats.
WAV files which are the largest with the highest resolution are the ones used to make a CD for general release.
WHERE DO THE MELODYS COME FROM TO DO THIS MUSIC?
I haven't a clue. I just sit behind a synthesizer and look out at the ocean (only a few meters away) and it happens.
By the way - Low Rider was composed in June of 2005 when the full moon was close to the Summer Solstice and was riding as low across the sky as it had in the last twenty years.
