Elements of Digital Songwriting

Video Transcript

"Hi this is David Jackel on behalf of Expert Village and I'm going to talk to you about the basic elements of digital recording. Now, first of all, when you're recording digitally, there are two main ways you can do it. One is audio. That's where you get an audio wave signal from a something like a microphone that goes into your audio interface into your computer and it looks like a lot of jagged lines. It looks like a heartbeat. The other thing you can do is something called MIDI. And, MIDI notes are placeholders that you create usually with a computer or a MIDI controller where you have these notes go across your screen and then afterwards you can put any kind of sound you want on them. So, if you have a MIDI sequence you can later on fill it up with a piano sound you can make it into bass you can make it into a violin, anything you want. These are both very useful tools for writing. So sitting here at my computer I can show you there are several different basic tools for using the digital stuff once you have it onto your computer. Whether you are working with MIDI like a file like this or an audio file, what you are working with are loops. And loops are clumps of sound that you've recorded that you can manipulate in different ways. For example, lets take this beat right here. Now one thing I can do with this segment is I can loop it where I go on the end of it and then I just repeat it. So once I grab that I can pull it, and now I have a copy of it directly afterwards. And I can do that indefinitely to just drag out that same part over and over and over again. That's the wonderful thing about a loop. But, let's say I don't like all of it. Then, another thing I can do is I can cut it in half. Put my divider over there. And, now it's cut in half. I can drag the part around however I want. This is like cutting a piece of tape back in the old analog days. The only difference is, it's not a permanent cut. I can undo it and I can paste it however I want really easy. I can switch it so the end is now the beginning like that. I can put it over here completely different. So, this is much easier than the old days where people would actually chop up tape and have to very carefully reassemble it and everything was painstaking. Here you can do it so fast. If it doesn't work you can try it again. Nothing is permanent. There is no damage. It's very easy to work with these signals once they are on your computer. And you can manipulate them and affect them however you like."