A LOOK INTO THE TOWER MUSIC STUDIO

Here are some shots of where I am working nearly every day, cataloging the samples from Tower Music, and (when that’s done) where I’ll spend many more hours:

  • creating my virtual instrument
  • composing the music
  • creating the sheet music scores
  • pre-mixing the finished audio files for mastering in the studio

Center foreground is my vintage digital keyboard, the Yamaha SY85

BERTOLOZZI - HOME STUDIO WORKSTATION FOR TOWER MUSIC

On the right are assorted pads & writing tools. On the left you’ll see a silver device, the Focusrite “Forte,” a high end audio interface giving me the best sounds from the files in the computer and a couple pitch pipes. Behind it all are my Equator audio monitors (we used to call them “speakers” in the old days!)

Notice the cute golden Eiffel Tower mounted between my video monitors! Keeps me goin’!

A closeup of the left monitor shows, from l.-r.:

BERTOLOZZI - HOME STUDIO: LEFT SCREEN with TOWER MUSIC

  • Photos to help us locate the surfaces for future reference
  • MakeMusic’s “Finale” music notation software, where I write down the notes given by each surface; this is a particularly gnarly set of tones here!

  • The folder where the selected and finished samples reside

A closeup of the right monitor shows, from l.-r.:

BERTOLOZZI - HOME STUDIO: RIGHT SCREEN with TOWER MUSIC

  • Editing software to choose the samples from among the raw choices. This is Native Instrument’s “Kontakt.” Note there are 5 raw samples here. I will listen to them for background noise as well as musical quality. These happen to be very smooth, bell-like tones, as seen in the symmetrically even waveforms. I’ll pick the two best ones, if there are two of them…sometimes I can’t even get a single one.
  • The log showing date, time, scene, take, intensity of hit, type of mallet, surface, playing details, and 3 additional columns to triangulate locations.