[MUSIC] In future content, we will be investigating how DAWs or sequencers can be integrated into teaching and learning in music. In this video I'm going to introduce all of the essentials. While nowadays we say DAW or sequencer, in the past, these were two different kinds of computer programs. A DAW, or digital audio workstation, specialized in audio recording, often with specialist hardware to add to your computer, which could take care of digital signal processing, DSP, for audio effects like reverb and EQ. Sequencers, on the other hand, were first concerned with connecting all of your synthesizers and other MIDI keyboards and modules together, and giving you an interface to make music with them all at once. In the 1990s the programs that had begun as sequences, like Steinberg's Pro 16, added audio capabilities and were re-branded as DAWs and sequencers, in that case, as Cubase. Programs that were originally most powerful with audio such as Pro Tools, added MIDI sequencing features. So, while there are still unique features from one software title to the next, I'm putting them all under one banner for the purposes of this MOOC. And thinking about how they can used best in music classroom. Although most DAWs or sequencers look quite different on the surface, they share several structural features. And once you know these, it's easy to get around many of them. Usually, on the left hand side, is a space where you can load tracks. Each track will be able to hold its own recording. So when we talk about a multi-track recording, we are talking about a final recording that actually holds lots of individual recordings. Each track is set up as a MIDI track or an audio track. The difference between MIDI and audio is really easy to understand. MIDI isn't actually a recording of music at all. It's computer data about notes that will be played back on a MIDI device or virtual instrument. It's computer data that says things like, play this pitch for this long and this loudly. The great thing about MIDI, therefore, is that after you record, you can fix up notes which are usually represented in grid bar notation. Which in itself is easily relatable to the proportional time unit box system, or TUBS, which we're going to discuss in a minute. Audio, on the other hand, is a real recording of sound. So while it's much more difficult to go changing notes after you've recorded, you have the real sound of a real instrument or a voice. Not a synthesized sound or a sample. The music is recorded from left to right in a linear manner. Usually there's a timeline at the top to measure the length of the recording in time, or even in bars and beats, if you've recorded to a backing click track. Even the most basic sequencers' track controls will have a name, a relative volume, and they pan left and right. Nowadays, the main limitation on the number of tracks that you can add, is how fast your computer is. At the top of the screen, beside the metronome that I added, there will probably be some other controls, with the minimum being Play and/or Pause, Stop, and Record. The bottom half of the screen is usually saved for fine grain editing. You can view WAV forms close up, or edit each individual MIDI note. In some programs, the bottom half of the screen can also be used to display music notation of MIDI tracks. To provide a more detailed mixer, or to provide access to effects and virtual instruments, without the requirement of floating windows. The wire frame for a typical DAW interface that I've created here, is a visual literacy that you can learn. If we compare it to Soundtrap, the online sequencer that I introduced in the last video, it's clear that it's very similar. The same can be said for one of the most popular consumer sequencers, GarageBand, its bigger professional brother, Logic, or even the darling of many studios, Pro Tools. Of course, there are sequencers and DAWs that are a little more unique, but if you remember the elements shown here, the tracks, the linear recording area with timeline, the control buttons, sometimes called the transport. And the idea of having a detailed editing and effects area, you can probably still work out how to use any DAW, even if these things move around. For example, in Ableton Live, we'd want to move the tracks to the right-hand side of the recordings. Ableton Live also has a clips view that is unique to only a few other sequencers, where each rectangle represents a single musical cell, or ostinato. And these can be combined to improvise and compose songs on the fly as we saw when we visited Adam Mags at Live School. Another form of technology related to music notation is the step sequencer, which was developed from the drum machine. In a drum machine, the four beats of a 4/4 meter are each divided into 16th notes or semiquavers, represented here by 16 buttons. I can tap the buttons to turn individual sounds on and off. [MUSIC] Step sequences are available as software too, and are a great way for students to discover all kinds of rhythm-based music theory. And, like our wire frame sequencer, these steps sequence a grid, or proportional Time Unit Box System, as it is sometimes known, is a concrete way to begin teaching music notation that can easily be transformed into traditional music notation if need be. [MUSIC]
