As a rocker at heart, I was never much interested in music theory. I picked it up as a matter of requirement throughout my education in bits and dribbles, though it seemed at the end of the day all I could do was read notes off a staff—a musical technology that’s not even really used in my genre.

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When you’re working with loops, particularly drum loops, to form the rhythmic basis of a composition, you often find yourself wishing you could do more to customize the track. Logic Pro 9 has a few tools that allow us to work with audio as if it were MIDI–such as the flex time features–but what about turning the audio into a MIDI-controlled sampler instrument track?

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When it comes to the role of the manager in the studio, the first question to ask is: should managers be in the studio at all?

At the end of the day, it depends on whether the artist is comfortable with their presence. Forgetting the manager’s professional role for a moment, an artist’s good performance in the studio depends on many factors and that includes whether they feel comfortable expressing their creativity in front of those certain individuals they’re with at the time. This is a personal matter, not a professional one.

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Until version 8, Pro Tools didn’t offer any effective comping tools to its users. Now, that’s changed, and you can throw out the old convoluted comping workflows and do it this (much easier) way.

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At the most basic level, the role of the musician in the studio is to deliver a performance of high quality that can be released to the world (or at the very least, be turned into something that can be released).

But the studio can be a daunting place for many musicians, and as a performer there’s a fair bit of pressure on you to, well… perform. Here’s some advice to help you get a grip on your role in the studio and how to make the session productive, effective and comfortable.

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Reason 4’s RPG-8 Arpeggiator device is a useful tool when you want to create any sort of arpeggiated melody from a chord progression or even lead line without hours of painful penciling. The RPG-8 was released with Reason 4 and was the first arpeggiator to come with the software; it’s not hard to use, but many users still approach it with some confusion.

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The producer, whose role we discussed last week, usually has a henchman that we call the studio engineer. In some cases, particularly those cases where the budget is limited or the producer likes to be involved in all aspects of the production, the one person fulfills both roles.

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In Logic Pro 9, Apple included a new speed fade feature which allows you to replicate the effect of a record speeding up or speeding down (at least in some stylized way). This is a common effect in modern music, and it’s worth learning this simple but handy trick.

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The producer has a job that consists of many roles. Some of them happen in the studio, and some of them don’t. I’m going to spend a few articles talking about the various roles in the studio and what to expect from those fulfilling them. These aren’t going to be job descriptions; we’re going to look at the interactions that take place in the studio environment and how to make the most of them.

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A while back we took a look at the most basic lesson in guitar improvisation: the pentatonic scale. Today we’re covering what many would consider the second most basic lesson, and an excellent practice sandbox before you move on to more complicated techniques — the 12 bar blues and blues scale combo.

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