Jake Weston

Keyscape includes 36 different models of keyboard-based instruments for you to call up at your whim. There’s a pretty huge library of patches with well over 500 iterations of these deeply sampled instruments (which have then been modeled in their STEAM engine) for you to choose from, and pretty much none of them are ‘duds’. This is an instrument that was clearly meticulously sampled, cleverly programed, and highly optimized. There’s a reason that every single world-class keyboard player in the Spectrasonics preview video for this instrument has a smile from ear-to-ear. The sounds are stunning and highly playable.

Key Takeaways:

• Having waited almost four years to move from Omnisphere 1.5 to version 2, it would be fair to say that Spectrasonics doesn’t exactly like to rush its creative process.
• Keys-cape is available as a download direct from the Spectrasonics site, or as boxed edition, with the content supplied on two USB drives.
• Keys-cape is a software instrument that demands to be played. We could wax lyrical about the quality of the sounds, of course, but what immediately grabs you is how good Keys-cape feels underneath your fingers.

“When it comes to upright pianos, some alternative libraries can disappoint, often sounding dull and clunky rather than capturing the quirky charm of a real upright piano. Keyscape’s Wing Upright, though, is a real triumph, with all the rough-and-ready edges of an upright piano, but with a distinctly hi-fi tone that sits perfectly in the mix.”

http://www.musictech.net/2016/10/spectrasonics-keyscape-review/

What are stems? Stems are simply elements of a final mix that have been isolated as their own stereo mix. These stems can then be combined in parallel, using the same starting point, to create a similar version of the main stereo mix but with slight changes as needed. Stems are elements of the final mix broken out into various subgroups. Dialog, music, sound effects, background sounds and such are all submixed into surround or stereo tracks for ease of final film audio mixing. This allows for control over the sound without having to monitor hundreds, or thousands, of tracks.

Key Takeaways:

• When considering how you want to divide and organise your mix, do not balancing too many stems against too few by seperating the principle instrument groups off key parts of the track.
• Remember to stay within the confines of the stem and decide whether to pack the reverb into the same Track Stack or keep the reverbs and delays running free from the folder
• We want is a means of exporting the mix in one pass, but rather than creating a single stereo file we need the mix rendered as a series of files

“For the application of effects, you need to remember to stay within the confines of the stem. So, rather than having a single reverb for the whole mix routed to the stereo outputs, you’ll need an individual reverb instance for each stem, itself routed to the corresponding stem bus.”

http://www.musictech.net/2016/10/logic-stem-mixing/

In the Mixing With 5 Plug-ins course, the last section is on the different ways you can use saturation apps to create and layer musical effects. There are pros and cons to these and the author will discuss them, as well as some general tips to increase musical texture without sacraficing quality of sound.

Key Takeaways:

• Three different saturation plugins are useful in audio mixing, as per the author’s list.
• Some audio effects, like scraping, need some discernment to use well. Always review mixes for gain-staging.
• There is a community referenced that aids in mixing using specific plugins soliciting new membership.

“The Kramer Tape also adds a cool delay element so you can create cool slap echo tones the Saturn doesn’t do.”

http://www.audio-issues.com/music-mixing/3-rules-of-using-saturation-effectively-in-your-mix/