Update

So I've written all the scores now for the longer pieces, need to give them all a proof read and make sure everything is ok, but I should be able to take the book to the printers on Tuesday and get a couple of copies printed!

I recorded the drums for the duets yesterday, think I'll do the main mix in the room mics and just use the others to boost any quieter drums (I'm aiming for it to sound like another drummer is in the room with the player). Will be cutting the recordings up today and getting it all organised.

Also today I will be finishing off the last of my exercise scores (may leave some for tomorrow, depending on how I get on - the printers won't be open until Tuesday anyway).

I've done some of the recordings for the pieces, duets and exercises, need to blast through that starting Monday.

All going well I should have all the work finished by Wednesday, which will leave me 4 or 5 days to go through it all and make sure it's well organised and how I want it.

I need to dedicate an hour or two a day to report writing among all this, but should be able to write enough over Thursday and Friday.

I want to finish the report by Saturday morning so I can get it printed before Monday (no chance I'm leaving it until Monday morning!)

Yes, so a busy and pretty hectic week ahead, but I have plenty of coffee and know what needs to be done.

Progress report

Quick update on where I'm at:

• Finished the later long piece scores and one of the duets, I need to write the score for a second one.
• Need to finish the second beginner duet too, once that's done I'll be getting in the studio to record the drum parts.
• Samples almost finished, sounding good!
• Need to bust out a few exercises to lead up to my extended pieces: want to do ones that practice changing time signatures.
• I've realised the best target audience for this book is actually going to be for drum tutors to use as a teaching aid, although that doesn't mean it won't be useful for people looking to teach themselves.
• Will start recording the earlier exercises this week,

Urrgh, I've left things really late -______-

Still, I think it's realistic that I will have every bit of score written out by Friday, then I can really focus on the CD part.

My samples work!

I've only done the bass drum so far, but I've managed to create a working .gog file within Drumagog and tested it with a track of midi bass drum hits at varying velocities and everything is fine. I can't figure out how to get CamStudio to record sound, but you can pretty much see what's going on in this blurry video.

It's not clear enough to see in the video, but I've set some room samples (from the overheads L+R) to each sample, so you can adjust how much of the room mics you want to hear on each beat.

Margins, hey?

Here is a print screen of the first piece from my book. I've also finished the scores for all the exercises leading up to this piece. I won't show them on here though, because blogger doesn't like to upload .pdf's and I don't want to print screen everything for the sake of it.

It may still need a tiny bit of modifying, but yeah this is what I'm doing.

Upcoming Presentation

Just going to bullet point a few things here to remind myself of the things I should talk about in next weeks' viva:

• Case Studies of other books; how I decided on what to include in my book, and also which kit notation to use (and how Cubase does it wrong when taking it directly from midi)
• Research into Multisampling (how to do it, best software available for drums, etc)
• Use of MuseScore, including pdf's of completed pages so far
• Process of recording my drum samples
• Create a screen capture video of Drumagog in use.
• How my gantt chart has changed (with the decision to include sampling)
• Why I chose to use samples instead of a live recording (felt that good timing would be crucial, etc)
• Composition process: writing final pieces, using as basis for exercises, making sure I cover everything that's found in other books (either a similar thing or a variation of it; i.e. if other book has a 6/4 rhythm, I do either a few other 6/4 rhythms or some other time signature like 7/4, 5/4, etc).

Umm... that's all I can think of for now, will edit this post if more comes to mind.

Samples recorded

I spent Saturday (17th March) recording my drum samples back in Chippenham. It took a while but I got my kit sounding really good and I have a lot of great sounding, clean samples.

I initially thought that Drumagog was able to read an audio file and figure out where each sample was itself, but having played around with it a little more I think I'm going to have to cut the samples myself and load them in individually. I will spend tomorrow getting through this.

I looked into free score writing software since last week too, and have gotten a fair chunk of my exercises for the first chapter written out now using MuseScore. This software is functionally the same as Sibelius, but is available as a free download. I figured, even though I'm not including the business element of my book in my Major Project, since the end result is something that would be sold, this would be a cost saving measure.

It's going to be a busy week for me, as I am hoping to have finished scoring chapter one by the time it comes to the viva (giving me... a week - give or take a couple of days), as well as being able to play the audio for at least one exercise from this chapter.

I'm currently at a bit of an annoying stage where everything I'm doing requires a lot of work in order to actually do it, without a tremendous amount to show for it at the end. Once I've done this initial work (i.e. cutting up my samples, programming what I've scored out) the work-to-output ratio will be much more rewarding, as I will be easily able to open templates, apply presets, etc and the plan is to be pumping out a lot of work over the Easter break.