Dan's Scans
PreSonus FireStudio Project and GarageBand
Reviewed by Dan Robinson
(This started out as a
narrative . . . and got out of hand.)
Every once in a while, as a
full-time Mac consultant and a sometime performer, serendipity happens.
I knew about Garage Band, and
played with it a bit, doing a four-part harmony, a cappella rendition of Four
Strong Winds. I did it as a demo for our Apple Club meeting several years ago.
Strictly for fun, using the built-in mic on my MacBook Pro.
Last summer, I became involved
with the Carolina Voices organization. CV does a half dozen performances a
year, including the 54-year tradition of Charlotte's Singing Christmas Tree.
Now I'm back in my high school
days and the 1950s, learning music and singing in the chorus. But wait! I have
a Mac!
First, I bought Sibelius,
scanning in sheet music with PhotoScore Ultimate and laboriously correcting its
many errors. We're talking 24-30 hours to polish a more complicated song. I
tried Finale, but not only did it scan in the music badly, it had a much
steeper learning curve.
Then I exported the Sibelius
file in MIDI format and dragged the MIDI file onto a Garage Band project.
Not perfect, but adequate. In
addition to the piano accompaniment, each of the four (or more) voices was
emphasized in turn and an MP3 created for chorus members to download and help
them learn their parts.
Six paragraphs do not cover the
three months of working on the music several hours each night.
There has got be a better way!
There are some people who can
read music well enough to look at a piece of music and hear the right notes. I
wish I were one of them, but I'm not. I have to hear it played.
So for the April concert, we
gathered together the best sight singers in the chorus.
I ran over to Sam Ash to see
what they had.
What they had was the PreSonus
FireStudio Project.
What I had was no time.
I installed the drivers,
installed the included Cubase LE 4 Audio Production Software, plugged it in and
turned it on and tried the easy setup.
Zilch. The sound from the
Microphone(s) was OK, but there was a rhythmic staticky sound. This will not
do! And the documentation gave me no clues to fix the problem.
I tried it from GarageBand and
the sound was beautiful!
I tried it from Logic Pro. The
staticky sound was back.
I have six singers and a
pianist coming tomorrow. GarageBand is elected.
In almost no time at all, I had
a template GarageBand project set up with individual tracks for each performer. ⌘-D in Finder duplicated
the file and I renamed each duplicate for the name of the song to be recorded.
Comes the dawn. I'm up early
and go to the rehearsal hall for the recording session. My MacBook Pro is up
and running. The FireStudio is plugged into the FireWire port. GarageBand is
picking up all eight inputs from the FireStudio. By the way, make sure the
FireStudio is on and connected before you start up GarageBand. Otherwise it
won't see the eight inputs; same thing when shutting down. GarageBand should be
the first to be turned off. If you turn off the FireStudio first, your inputs
will be screwed up and you'll have to reset them in GarageBand one at a time.
The microphones arrive. Two
different makes and three models! Two Shures that didn't take phantom power and
six Electro Voice mics that did. I put one of the Shures inside the grand piano
on a mini desktop tripod standing on a piece of foam. I have yet to listen to
the output on my good speakers, but I'm willing to bet it will be professional
quality. Using GarageBand, I am seriously impressed!
The six singers had the EV
mics. I separated them from each other as much as possible and coached them to
get closer to the mics to decrease the amount of pickup from other singers and
the piano.
They start running through the
first song and I tweak the inputs on GarageBand and FireStudio to give me some
wiggle-room. Then we do the recording for real. I'm here to tell you that it
went beautifully! From nine a.m. to noon, we recorded five songs.
The use of the FireStudio
Project was flat out perfect. There was no learning curve. It was as close to
plug and play as you can hope for. Problems with inputs were quickly identified
and corrected with a tweak of the blue knob. Phantom power?
Press the little
blue button. Really. How much simpler can it get?
This is a piece of professional
sound equipment. Granted it can get a lot more complicated. A professional
recordist will already know Cubase or Logic and not suffer the newbie blues
with which I was afflicted. The on-screen mixer panel that came with it, I
didn't use at all. But I'm looking forward to stretching my wings as we record
the polished songs.
Inputs are eight combination
plugs that take either the standard three-pin XLR microphone plug or a quarter-inch
TRS (phone plug).
GarageBand continues to
impress. It dealt with seven tracks with ease, putting the piano centered and
the emphasized voice 75% on the right channel and the other voices 75% on the
left channel.
See Also
PreSonus FireStudio Project Overview (Video)
PreSonus How to: Recording drums... (Video)
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