Week 142: What Is the Sound of Two Hands Clapping?
 
Probably not all that great, if you’ve tried to add handclaps from actual humanoid bipeds (not the handclap sound from a drum machine) to a project. It might seem that recording handclaps would be easy…actually, it’s not. However, handclaps can add some really useful percussive accents or even reinforce the backbeat, and they also seem to have some kind of Pavlovian response that makes listeners clap along. Listener involvement is good! So here are some tips on how to improve the sound of recorded handclaps.
 
SET LEVELS CONSERVATIVELY
 
Even if you think you’re clapping with a consistent level, you’re not. If you’ve enlisted another person in your clapological endeavors, the levels will be even more inconsistent, depending on whether the claps hit at exactly the same time. Set levels so that what you think are the loudest claps hit at -12 dB or so and you’ll probably be okay. You'll end up mixing them fairly low anyway. 
 
FOUR HANDS ARE BETTER THAN TWO
 
Everybody can clap hands—so grab a spouse, kid, or even the neighbor next door who will be thrilled to be part of an actual recording session, to thicken up the sound. Even if the claps are off, hey, you have SONAR—split the claps, and adjust the timing as desired.
 
ACOUSTICS CAN BE A PROBLEM…OR NOT
 
A sharp impulse noise like a clap is going to bounce off walls and give a lot of ambience. This may be a good thing, but if it’s a problem, I find using something like Primacoustic’s VoxGuard (an acoustic treatment that wraps around a mic to minimize room reflect pickup) really helps.
 
TRANSPOSE DOWNWARD
 

 
Claps often end up sounding thin on playback, but transposing down a few semitones can give a more corpulent sound, as well as tame the transient a bit. I’ve done as much a -5 semitones, but ewven a semitone or two can help. Also, if you need to overdub several passes of claps to make it sound like you’re really a big group of people instead of just someone sitting a studio, doing different transpositions for the different overdubs can really help.
 
MORE MEAT
 

 
Boosting in the lower mids can add “meat” to the sound of a clap so it doesn’t sound as thin.
 
INCREASE REVERB DIFFUSION
 

 
Because handclaps are so percussive, you need a lot of diffusion to create a smooth reverb sound (assuming that’s what you want). Lesser amounts of diffusion can give the “marbles bounding on a steel plate” effect.
 
So now that I’ve handed over these six tips ("handed"—get it?), go forth and practice better clapology! 

Lots of clap samples out there, but this instrument is particularly good:
http://www.pluginboutique.com/products/1353
 

Soundwise
Lots of clap samples out there, but this instrument is particularly good:
http://www.pluginboutique.com/products/1353
 

Also available free from the developers direct without having to sign up:
 
http://99sounds.org/vst-plugins/

Wait a minute!  Are you guys saying you just plug in a microphone and record actual stuff? When did that start?!?

Week 143: Using BLE-MIDI (Bluetooth MIDI) Devices in SONAR
 
No, it’s not the old school Bluetooth with the unacceptable audio latency, but Bluetooth MIDI which is efficient and offers very low latency. It’s been in the Mac for a while, and Windows 10 Anniversary edition introduced it to the Windows platform. If you’re interested in the nuts and bolts, The MIDI Association has published an article with the basics, but there’s also a very informative blog post from Noel Borthwick here on the Cakewalk site.
 
With products from Zivix, Korg, and CME, BLE-MIDI is making inroads and SONAR supports it, assuming you’re using Windows 10 Anniversary edition or later. Let’s look at the step-by-step process for connecting a BLE-MIDI device to SONAR (Bluetooth Audio is a separate topic—we’ll stick with MIDI for now).
 

 
1. Pair your BLE-MIDI device with Windows. To do this, in Windows choose Start > Settings > Devices > Bluetooth, then pair the device. After pairing, Windows will show the device as connected. In this screen shot, the Jamstik is connected to Windows.
 

 
Note that rom the Media Creators update onwards, Microsoft changed how you pair to Bluetooth devices. You no longer see new devices in the standard show Bluetooth devices window, but you need to click the “Add Bluetooth or other device” button there to add the device first.
 
2. In SONAR, choose the UWP driver mode under Preferences > MIDI > Playback and Recording.
 

 
3. Your BLE-MIDI device will appear under Preferences > MIDI > Devices.
 

 
4. Now you can use your BLE-MIDI device as a MIDI track input. You’re good to go!
 
However, note that there are some potential issues when using UWP:
 

• Not every existing MIDI device is guaranteed to play nice with UWP; multi-port MIDI devices may show up with all ports showing the same name (this is a Windows issue that has been logged with Microsoft). For now, I use UWP only when connecting BLE-MIDI devices; otherwise, I use MME.
• If you try to open SONAR with UWP set in Preferences, SONAR may hang if you have a BLE-MIDI device selected as a MIDI input or output and the device is not connected via Bluetooth (note that connected and paired are two different states in Windows 10). The easiest way to solve this hang is to turn on the device before starting SONAR, and then switch to MME mode before turning off this device. Another tip: The hang/crash only occurs when using a Bluetooth MIDI output port. If only a MIDI input is used it will not hang, but will report that the port is not available on loading SONAR.
• If SONAR gets hung to the point where you can’t go into Preferences and return to MME, open the registry and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\SONAR\Platinum. Click on Platinum, and set CoreMIDI to 0.

 

 
Microsoft is aware of this bug, so given their "rolling updates" approach, I hope it will be fixed sooner rather than later.