Category: YoPo Music Blog

It’s easy to smooth the dynamics of midi velocity in Reaper to create a more compressed even sound.
First, open up the item needing compression into the piano roll.

Select all the notes. Then right click on an empty part of the grid (not on a note) and in the dropdown menue select: EVENT PROPERTIES and change the type to NOTE

Then in the Velocity box you can use *(multiply) or / (divide) to reduce the overall dynamic of the velocities. For example using *.25 or /4 will give you a 4:1 compression ratio. Hit apply and the velocities will be squeezed.

Then while everything is selected, grab the velocities and bring them back up to around 75% or wherever suits your piece.

Need more compression – just repeat the process. I usually find this process plus a little bit of manual tweaking is a really quick way to get a more even sound.

For years and years I mostly recorded with Apple’s Logic stock Steinway sampled piano VI – not so much for the sound but for the feel. It’s just always been very playable. All of the piano albums I have done including tracks like Eternity were done on that piano.

But there are now better options and one of those is Fluffy Audio’s ‘Scoring Piano’. It delivers a beautiful rounded rich sound without any harshness and it’s super nice to play. Often you listen to demos of VIs and think they sound amazing but when you come to play them, you eventually feel disappointed. The real test for me is – after a couple of months am I still using it…. and with the Scoring Piano… yes I am. It features in the track below called ‘Sweet Moments’.

Find out more about the Scoring Piano from Fluffy Audio here

Sweet Moment
Composer Jonathan Slatter
Piano, bass and viola played by Jonathan Slatter
Published by Sounds Visual Music Ltd

If you are selling a digital download product on Payhip and want to require the customer to tick a terms and conditions check box before they pay, this is how you can set that up.

Once signed into your Payhip account go to ‘Account’ on the right, and click ‘Settings’. Then select ‘Advanced Settings’ and scroll down to ‘Checkout Settings’. You’ll see an option to:
Display your own questions for customers to answer during checkout.

Once ticked you will be able to add a checkout question which will appear on the checkout pane if a customer buys any of your products, or you make the question only appear for specific products. Very handy if you have different terms for different products. If you choose specific products you’ll then be able to add the relevant products, but you can edit this at any time.

Then add your question. Here I am going to choose ‘Legal’ as I want to ask the customer to agree to my terms in order to purchase:

Then you can type your question or statement. For example: I agree to the terms and conditions.
And if you want to link that text or part of it to a webpage – somewhere where the customer can review the terms – hit the # symbol and enter the URL.
Important! Also make sure to hit the spanner icon and make this a ‘Required’ question – so the customer has to agree to the terms in order to purchase your product. As you make these changes you should see the checkout pane on the right updating with your changes. Once happy – remember to ‘SAVE CHANGES’ – and then SAVE SETTINGS – and that’s it.

If you later add more products and want to add those to your exisiting terms and conditions question – come back into advanced settings – come down to your Checkout settings, and the specific question you wish to add to and click: ‘Edit Checkout Question’. Then click:
Questions will be displayed if one of these products are in cart (edit)

Now you can add and remove products from this question.

It’s a really professional feature and easy to setup on Payhip