ReGgae? JazZ? GO!

We had Mike Onyango over in the studio for some editing works from sessions recorded in Nairobi. It's always nice having this impromptu sessions. We had each other on the phone just earlier this morning and two hours later here he is sweeping away third octaves with his trumpets while I'm scurrying to open the African sessions. We stalled. I only come to learn that they were recorded in Nuendo, thus it cannot be opened in either ProTools or Logic. It would have been wonderful to hear some East African tunes. Bummer. I'll have to seek my Russian sidekick Space Kundun to open up that session in its native DAW and then OMF-export ** the files for use here. So what do we do? Well not a big problem. We had a studio chokeful of toys. What else CAN we do? (More about OMF file exports after the break...)

So what's better than throw some heat to the upcoming reggae festival in Singapore. I opened up an unfinished session which I cooked up 2 days ago, got Mike to listen to it and about an hour later, I was seeing Kenya's Gold on the bass guitar. Wait. Did you not say you're a trumpetist? I never heard any better reggae bass lines than that of 2 days ago when I tried! :) Well little to say, rhythm and groove started rolling and out came the video camera. Oh well, video and sounds better than words. Check out what we did in that time. Think we brewed something as natural can be? Drop your comments over on YouTube if you're pleased. Please.

And to the Mike Onyango's fans from Kenya. Its not a lip-dub. That's your man right there. The multi talented jazz prodigy from Nairobi. I promise you I'll work on that jazz track. But for the meantime. We're just having fun. Lots of fun!

Technical word of advise about OMF exports


** OMF export your audio files when its recorded in other DAWs like Cubase or Nuendo if you want them to be able to be imported into SPOT-enabled session in ProTools. But even then it might get a little finicky. Here's some tips that might help. BTW OMF is Open Media Framework created by AVID's Media/Film Composer suites.


• NAME ALL YOUR TRACK FILES!! Its a good habit to start naming those track before you even press record. Your recorded file will automatically be named when you do this. If you don't, you're bound to get hordes of files with names like "Audio_01", "Audio_02", "Audio_03" so on... Your question later will be. Oh, where's the Bass guitar? Its ONLY good if you dislike grandma's 1000 pcs puzzle.


• If your session consists of stereo tracks/files, split the files into two monos before export. ProTools most often don't support OMF stereo files..


• Try exporting AAF (Advanced Authoring Format). Check that all your files are Time-Stamped Broadcast Wave or SDII and not AIFF. Apple have since changed the AIFF standards and they are sometimes misinterpreted by various apps, resulting in digital white noise with the original signal barely audible.


• ProTools most often doesn't support mixed bit depths, so make sure all files are 16 or better 24 bit throughout. Do this in the audio pool.


• Nuendo / Cubase have the ability to easily export continguous audio files for each track in a project for easy importing into other applications. This consolidates your session tracks into one length timeline through out. Export them as stems. Trust me. This one's your safest bet instead of picking up bits of takes from the audio pool.


• Good Luck.