Want to start making music with your computer? So you get yourself some software and a keyboard with a MIDI connection to your computer. But when you start to play that keyboard you realise that when you play the note on the keyboard it doesn’t play the note on the computer until a second later because of a delay caused by the latency of the card. This is what happened to me about 6 years ago when I started making music with a computer, I had a Soundblaster Live back then which came with the computer and the MIDI latency was around 130ms which is pretty unplayable. So I thought there was nothing else I could do but go and buy a brand new soundcard.

That’s when I first came across The KX Project. A set of drivers that “Expands The Potential” of any EMU10K1 and EMU10K2-based soundcards. Anyway I gave them a try and uninstalled the ones that came from Creative Labs.

I could not believe what a difference a set of drivers could do to my system. Suddenly my soundcard could cope with 5.33ms latency. I couldn’t believe it. It was as if the manufacturer had purposely slowed down the card to sell other more expensive “musician” cards on purpose.

So anyone starting out who can’t afford to buy a top of the range sound card and all you need is good latency and only a couple of inputs and you have one of the supported cards. I would suggest giving The KX Project Drivers a try. You might just be amazed like I was.

Article written by Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation.

Every computer musician needs to have in their collection of tools a audio editor to be able to see and edit the waveform of their sound files as well as record straight in via their soundcard from an external source. Audacity is an open source/free piece of software developed by a group of volunteers and distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

When you start Audacity you will see that it doesn’t look amazing and whilst some of the paid for alternatives have more features, Audacity has some amazing features which can certainly be a benefit to musicians and what Audacity does, it does well. Check out their feature list. Audacity is certainly a great add-on application for users of programs like Propellerheads Reason as they can then go and edit, cut-up and tweak samples. It may not have all the features and plugins of programs like Soundforge but it certainly can do the everyday stuff and I would certainly recommend it to musicians on a budget or anyone who doesn’t need those extra features.

What is good about Audacity

• It’s Free/Open Source Software
• Its fast (at loading, editing, zooming etc)
• Easy to use and simple layout
• Multiple operating systems supported

What is bad about Audacity

• I’m not keen on the look of the interface (Not that it matters)
• It is missing a few features of paid for applications (But it’s free)

You can download Audacity from the Audacity web site.

As our internet connections have became faster and internet technology has grown, more and more computer applications have started to become on-line in the web browser. We have seen on-line email applications, office applications and on-line music and video players. But never did I think we would see the on-line music sequencer and that’s exactly what Splice is and because of this I have decided to award splice a place in the hall of fame because it is very innovative.

It is written in flash and you can access the sequencer by going to the main sequencer window. From here you can see we have the basic layout of a music sequencer. On the right we have instruments and effects which we can drag to our left main window. The control bar is located above our left main window.

There is a public library of sound samples which are easily searchable to use, as well as some instruments (Cheap Piano, Sinusoid Synth and a Basic Sampler). There are also some simple effects which you can place in your tracks too.

All in all it is a nice simple sequencer but it’s not going to be used by people who are serious about music production. The reason why I featured this piece of software was because I was quite impressed (for an on-line application) and it shows a possible future for sequencers, as well as showing that in the future musicians may be creating music together from around the world whilst seeing the same screen.

I won’t write any more about it as you can go and try it yourself

What is Good about Splice

• Very innovative (First time I’ve seen an On-line Sequencer)
• Works well and reasonably fast for being an on-line application
• Public sound library to include in tracks.
• You can share tracks by saving them as public.

What is Bad about Splice

• I can’t see it being used by any serious music producers.
• Needs a drum machine.