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I took some of Quincy Smallvoice's and Your Computer's advice and worked on another mix of that remix track. Better, or worse?
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Mar 6, 2012 00:17
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Currently working on a remix of Night by Night by Chromeo, this is all I have done so far. http://soundcloud.com/shreddie-mercury/chromeo-night-by-night
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Mar 6, 2012 01:49
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In case you need inspiration or to get out of a rut, here's Tom Cosm building an entire track using only a kick drum in one midi channel. The man's brilliant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzvvnk6rdNE&feature=g-u&context=G2a08295FUAAAAAAAAAA
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Mar 6, 2012 12:22
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbMa8g_jV2I gently caress yeah!
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Mar 6, 2012 16:38
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Does this AudioGL business interest anyone who makes music seriously, or is it going to be viewed mostly as a toy? http://www.indiegogo.com/AudioGL-Crowdfunding-Campaign As a "never ever" tinkerer it seems pretty darn neat to me and I can't wait to give it a try when it's out.
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Mar 6, 2012 17:26
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xzzy posted:Does this AudioGL business interest anyone who makes music seriously, or is it going to be viewed mostly as a toy? Wow it looks complicated as hell. Can't wait to try the demo. Beef Log Boy posted:Currently working on a remix of Night by Night by Chromeo, this is all I have done so far. Banger! Great job as usual! EDIT: That saturator looks really cool, any info on the release date/price? properEDIT:I was looking for a vocoder, any tips? Horrido fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Mar 7, 2012 |
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Mar 6, 2012 22:09
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renderful posted:http://d16.pl/index.php?menu=153 thanks again for recommending this! I really love it. here's a track I made with it, booty/tech house: 
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Mar 8, 2012 19:04
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^^^ ahahaha love the build up I'm hitching for some feedback: http://soundcloud.com/rpblc/dancefloo-1-7-6/s-UCXU9 Vocals are still a mess tho, she's still learning them (she doesn't speak english at all) and i'll probably scrap and redo them. But still, i like it, and working with a singer was fun. Horrido fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Mar 8, 2012 |
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Mar 8, 2012 22:13
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Horrido posted:^^^ ahahaha love the build up The piano melody that comes in when the drums stop is a little confusing at first. Try keeping the drums there or some kind of subtle rhythmic element to keep melody from drifting off. You've got some pretty cool musical ideas going on in the drop, I like it. However, it sounds like there's too much reverb on your synths in the drop. Are you using Nexus? All their synths are superloaded with reverb. The pause in between each measure in the drop is nice, but it could use some variation. Try having a bass pitch downward in the gap of silence for some of the pauses. One last critique is that your clap in the beginning could use some work. Give it some layers or try out different sounds! d0grent fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Mar 9, 2012 |
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Mar 9, 2012 09:09
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d0grent posted:The piano melody that comes in when the drums stop is a little confusing at first. Try keeping the drums there or some kind of subtle rhythmic element to keep melody from drifting off. d0grent posted:You've got some pretty cool musical ideas going on in the drop, I like it. However, it sounds like there's too much reverb on your synths in the drop. Are you using Nexus? All their synths are superloaded with reverb. d0grent posted:The pause in between each measure in the drop is nice, but it could use some variation. Try having a bass pitch downward in the gap of silence for some of the pauses. d0grent posted:One last critique is that your clap in the beginning could use some work. Give it some layers or try out different sounds! Thanks man!
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Mar 9, 2012 12:39
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Anyone have any experience with isolating a computer? I built a PC for my studio (loving awesome!), but it's loud as hell. Ideas?
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Mar 10, 2012 05:58
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Water cooling, larger and slower fans, drilling a hole into the wall and putting the tower in another room...
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Mar 10, 2012 08:29
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EDIT: ^^^Dammit, beat me by one second. Drill a couple of holes in the wall, and put the computer case outside the room?
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Mar 10, 2012 08:30
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Interesting ideas. Drilling a hole in the wall isn't an option (it's a rental), but liquid cooling is a neat idea. I was already considering it for overclocking purposes, but the noise factor is another good thing to consider.
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Mar 10, 2012 17:42
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While it might be a bit late since you've built the thing already and I don't know what you've built, but a lot of high end cases put a focus on acoustic dampening and reducing noise levels. Could be something to look into if you haven't already. They can get pretty pricey but maybe look at some of those, read some reviews of them (many of which will have dB levels measured on idle and in use) etc. That plus maybe look into water cooling, seeing if maybe you'd be better off with a graphics card that's got passive cooling (probably not so good for the latest video games, but I'd imagine more than good enough to run anything else) or spending a bit more on quieter and/or larger fans, or even better, trying to remove any unneeded fans already in the casing would do it (sometimes you just need to ask yourself if that sixth 120mm fan going at full clip is really needed).
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Mar 10, 2012 18:26
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Can I just butt in here to subject something to the scrutiny of the collective? I've been in a rut for many a year until I got a new laptop last year. I finally finished something in the summer and I was pretty happy with it. Reading this thread spurred me on to revisit it with a new mix to start things up again. I'm -again- pretty happy with it as it is now, but I have absolutely no idea what genre it belongs to. I'd love to hear other people making things in approximately this genre, but I wouldn't know what or who to search for. I'm guessing, whatever it is, it's probably dated. It's certainly no dubstep. Influences are (progressive and anthemic) trance (ca. 1999) and a bit of techno (ca. 2004), but I have no clue whether I'm stepping on a lot of conventions about these or not. Another thing I'm wondering about is whether this track has an appropriate level of variation, arrangement wise. Or is it just me hearing the things that change because I put them there and is this plainly boring to a casual listener? I'm afraid I lost sight of that completely after hearing this so many times. Cantaloup - Wren (About 7min / 10MB) Any comment at all would be fantastic, learning is fun and all.
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Mar 10, 2012 19:23
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Flipperwaldt posted:
I'm bad with genres. This might be progressive house or electro-house or something. Sometimes I just call my poo poo "electro" when I don't know what else to call it. As far as the track itself goes, I thought it sounded decent, well-mixed to my yeoman's ear at least. If I had any complaints, I'd say it sounds a little "thin". The bass is up front and noticeable, the high frequencies are there if not prominent, but I kind of feel like there could be more in the middle. Or, if not that, maybe a little more atmosphere in the track? A little more "space"? I think it has decent variation and works well as a more minimal track, but I might add some airy stuff to it to give it more depth.
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Mar 11, 2012 13:26
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Anal Surgery posted:As far as the track itself goes, I thought it sounded decent, well-mixed to my yeoman's ear at least. Anal Surgery posted:If I had any complaints, I'd say it sounds a little "thin". The bass is up front and noticeable, the high frequencies are there if not prominent, but I kind of feel like there could be more in the middle. Anal Surgery posted:Or, if not that, maybe a little more atmosphere in the track? A little more "space"? I think the proper solution to both issues above, is in taking these things into account when picking/editing the instruments. I did that for this track on laptop speakers, that's probably not the best idea. I don't think I'll dig back into this track to that level (as said, I can't even play it properly anymore without bouncing the tracks individually); maybe some adjustments to the EQ and it will have to do. My priority now is to have something I can call finished, no matter to what standard. I'll make good use of these suggestions in new projects though and again, thanks for that. Anal Surgery posted:I think it has decent variation and works well as a more minimal track, but I might add some airy stuff to it to give it more depth. As you seem to have picked up on absolutely every suspicion I had, I'd say you have a remarkably good ear for these things. Totally fake edit: While I'm here, let me recommend some books:
If you're up to scratch with mixing, I still recommend Rob Young's book, as this may completely change your look on how the subtleties of what's exactly in the piano roll profoundly influence the sound you create and how spending time there might give you a lot of control over things you otherwise would try to fix with messing with your synthesizer or effects.
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Mar 11, 2012 16:32
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Flipperwaldt posted:
This might be really interesting, but I'm not sure I really understand what this is about. Is it a book on synthesis and how to play synth patches on a keyboard and program them so that it sounds natural? Could you post an example of something you learned about editing midi that you didn't realize was important before? I just can't wrap my head around what could be in here, and amazon doesn't have a "look inside" section.
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Mar 11, 2012 17:34
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The Mystery Date posted:This might be really interesting, but I'm not sure I really understand what this is about. Is it a book on synthesis and how to play synth patches on a keyboard and program them so that it sounds natural? Could you post an example of something you learned about editing midi that you didn't realize was important before? I just can't wrap my head around what could be in here, and amazon doesn't have a "look inside" section. As a go-to example, I'll use the guitar again. The book describes how making something sound like it's played on a rhythm guitar by spacing the notes slightly, so they're strummed in the direction a guitar player's hand would move. How to adjust the velocities accordingly. How to space the chords in a natural groove. Fret noises. How to use pitch bend to create naturally occurring glides, simulate a tremolo effect using the expression controller or wah using the filter cutoff. All these things make a massive difference in convincing the listener that what's played is a guitar, even if the patch used sounds crap. The demo midi files included demonstrate this in an astonishing way. It is, as I see it, a very important, but often neglected insight. So, how does this benefit someone making electronic music? The above mentioned massive difference can be made with any instrument you're working with. Instead of clicking notes in place on a strictly quantized grid (and adding mechanized swing an randomness later) or recording things from a keyboard, you can give things a completely different feel by pretending it was played on an instrument with a totally different input paradigm. You can put (a temporary) swing on one rhytmic element and not the rest of the track. You can add delay to arpeggiated melodies, dropping individual delays in and out, so they become part of the melody. Arpeggiators are a shortcut intended for live play. Write arpeggio's out yourself! You can add interest to hihat lines, just by playing with velocities. You can simply layer different sounds from the same synthesizer, if it's multitimbral. Add midi tracks for sounds that are artifacts for other instrument tracks (in analogy with the fret noises). You can use and reuse clips of midi automation in sequencers that otherwise only offer a continuous linear automation curve (don't know if there are any of these left these days). When I used Nuendo back in the days, I abused the option to have multiple takes simultaneously on one track to layer different clips of midi data, which gives an immense flexibility in working with drum rolls, flams and flourishes from the track view. You certainly can do some of those things through other means, but why not try to get the most out of every synthesizer, plugin and stage in the process? I see production as something in layers, where quality builds upon the layer below it. Just as picking the right sounds from the start is better than trying to equalize it out in the mix, or mixing 'properly' is better than trying to fix it in the mastering stage, it's better to add interest by starting on the midi layer than to slap another effect plugin on top to try to camouflage a lackluster melody. Someone earlier in this thread suggested you couldn't write a techno track on the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synthesizer. You totally can. And I did, for a while. A lot of the musical cues for a genre aren't in the exact sounds, but in the rhythms, the tempo and the complexity of the chords and melodies. It will be a techno track, possibly even a great one. Will it sound great? Not exactly, but you can go a surprisingly long way within the limitations of any sound source by means of what you send to it as midi data (see also: 4channel chiptunes). And if it works bare naked, upgrading it with more sophisticated sounds becomes easy. I've seen the recommendation many times to limit yourself to one or two synthesizer plugins before buying or downloading new ones. Keeping the focus on midi first is another (artificial) limitation that works the same way. Not as a permanent limit, but as one that will teach you a lot, not in the least about how some things work behind the scenes, but also about aspects of why things sound like they sound. It's the step between learning about music theory/composition and learning about sound(design). It's rather important to know about if you intend to connect these two worlds. All this is not necessarily what the book says, but it is what I took away from reading it. I feel the tendency is too often to play some (musically correct) notes and then to start messing with whatever produces the sounds. This is easy. It's also skipping a step and it can be a bit lazy, considering how much better or more interesting some tracks can be made by spending some time in the piano roll window. This book rebalances that common extreme focus on sounds and timbres by coming from the opposite direction. Do I practise what I preach? Obviously not always, sometimes the most fun is in messing with sounds and I'm plenty as lazy as anybody else. But I've read this book at an impressionable age and it's certainly one of the reasons I religiously prefer the minimal, midi only SEQ24 as my sequencer these days. And when trying to find an interesting sound, I'll always have made a pattern before that, that outlines what rhythm and melody the sound is going to play. Because that dictates more or less which sound to pick. Many people do this the other way round. Which can work as well (hell, genres have evolved from doing it that way), but it might explain why sometimes people paint themselves into a corner sonically and end up thinking they can make interesting tracks but can't ever work out a good melody for it. Which brings me to another tip I picked up from this book: work from left to right, start to end when laying out song structure. Make a few bars, listen to what it needs, make a few more bars and so on. Sort of an additive approach, rather than subtractive (ie. make all the loops, then smear them out over a few minutes). This leaves the door open for unexpected variations. I'm not arguing everybody should be a fanatic about it as I am, but if you currently see midi as 'that note stuff thingy on a grid', there's potentially a world of possibilities and a complementary line of thinking you at least should be aware of. You could take this at face value from what I said, if you 'get' what I'm talking about and that's cool. You'll only need the book if this fascinates you and you want to delve toward the bottom of it all (there's a chapter about writing System Exclusive messages from scratch  ). And even then, you'll have to get over the fact that you'll have to translate and interpret every technique in the book for use in electronic music yourself.I'm rambling on, but I hope this helps someone, whether they were interested in the book to begin with or not. Because I'm guessing it addresses things most people hardly ever think about, as DAWs today tend to want to shield people from the technical aspects of midi. vvvvv Can't go wrong at that price. I'm sort of hyping this because of what I learnt from it, but I obviously can't promise a similar life changing experience  In the end it's, of course, just a book about midi. Still, I hope there's something in there for you too.
Flipperwaldt fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Mar 12, 2012 |
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Mar 11, 2012 22:30
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Since there were used copies of the book for under a buck, I went ahead and ordered a copy.
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Mar 11, 2012 23:32
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Shovelbearer posted:Since there were used copies of the book for under a buck, I went ahead and ordered a copy. Thanks for the tip. When I realized this I went ahead and got one for ~$5 shipped. I actually already use the piano roll to edit a lot (I didn't know people didn't...), so I'm not sure if I'll get a ton out of this, but for that price I'll give it a shot. If I learn just one new trick it'll be worth it.
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Mar 12, 2012 01:40
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Flipperwaldt posted:Can I just butt in here to subject something to the scrutiny of the collective? I've been in a rut for many a year until I got a new laptop last year. I finally finished something in the summer and I was pretty happy with it. Reading this thread spurred me on to revisit it with a new mix to start things up again. first the foremost its incredibly thin sounding. it basically sounds like a demo song to an old groovebox or something. secondly, the sounds are very dated and boring sounding. again, like you took them unchanged off an old groovebox or something really cheap. thirdly, its just not very interesting. It has enough of groove but then towards the middle any discernable groove disappears and then its just kicks and bass and noises, but nothing that makes you move your head. lastly, what is the musical idea here? the only think i can figure is the bassline? its the loudest sometimes and other times its that offbeat gated synth thing, which doesnt provide any real musical content other than noise. So i think you need to REALLY beef up the sounds, because even if the song was very musically interesting, its production values are about 15 years late. Also, in addition to the sounds themselves, you need an interesting groove and an interesting musical idea, actually this is more important than the sounds. What i would recommend is making a song with a piano, a generic bass, and a few other very very simple sounds(acoustic guitars are great for this) until the song itself is worth listening to. Then start putting in synths and samples. And work on making the sounds more complex as they are very simple and bland. Something that really helps is using like 3-4 sounds for the same sound, this is an overlooked fact by many amateur producers. Like when you watch producer masterclasses on youtube youll see they have like 50 channels but it only sounds like ~8. And its because they use 5 synths for every sound. And like delays, filter sweeps, big reverbs, big breakdowns, your song has none of these things, its just really static sounding. Overall i wouldnt say it was bad, but i will say i think it has little to no appeal to just about everyone. I can tell you have a pretty good idea on whats going on and youre really drat close its just that last like 10% that makes a song sound like yours(or mine) and someone who sells records or has 10000 followers on soundcloud. hope that helps, and not trying to being negative or anything just being critical.
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Mar 12, 2012 02:51
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oredun posted:thirdly, its just not very interesting. It has enough of groove but then towards the middle any discernable groove disappears and then its just kicks and bass and noises, but nothing that makes you move your head. oredun posted:Something that really helps is using like 3-4 sounds for the same sound, this is an overlooked fact by many amateur producers. Like when you watch producer masterclasses on youtube youll see they have like 50 channels but it only sounds like ~8. And its because they use 5 synths for every sound. And like delays, filter sweeps, big reverbs, big breakdowns, your song has none of these things, its just really static sounding. oredun posted:Overall i wouldnt say it was bad, but i will say i think it has little to no appeal to just about everyone. I can tell you have a pretty good idea on whats going on and youre really drat close its just that last like 10% that makes a song sound like yours(or mine) and someone who sells records or has 10000 followers on soundcloud. oredun posted:hope that helps, and not trying to being negative or anything just being critical.
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Mar 12, 2012 04:36
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Dirty basses, half-time feels and rapid pitch drops/shifts. Then it goes four to the floor in places because why not. Also autotuned speech generators saying inside jokes. --- Mix critics are always appreciated. e: updated 
Weird BIAS fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Mar 13, 2012 |
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Mar 12, 2012 07:12
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Weird BIAS posted:Dirty basses, half-time feels and rapid pitch drops/shifts. Then it goes four to the floor in places because why not. Also autotuned speech generators saying inside jokes. Feel free to disagree with any of this (or to find out some of it doesn'n work as intended), it's just some things I would try and I'm not a professional by any means. There's certainly nothing wrong with the mix as it is. Should you try any of it and it turns out it was totally unhelpful, let me know, so I don't go around bothering anyone else with tips like this. The vinyl slowdown/stop effect is cool, but gets a bit overused in this track to my taste (4:20-4:50), interrupting the flow. It's likely I don't get this genre, though, so another massive grain of salt to take that with. Super kick, by the way!
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Mar 12, 2012 15:23
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Weird BIAS posted:Dirty basses, half-time feels and rapid pitch drops/shifts. Then it goes four to the floor in places because why not. Also autotuned speech generators saying inside jokes. You need to dig out your drums from under all those effects. That is a good song man, but the mix really sucks and doesn't do it justice. Sounds like you have the drums all under one reverb and under your filters. If the drums were up front and coming through clean when you were doing those filter sweeps over the synths, this track would be banging about twice as hard.
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Mar 12, 2012 16:51
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Agreeing that that song is conceptually pretty loving awesome I really like it, but there's too much reverb everything sounds muffled because of it, and the weirdo pitch/up/down crazythings are cool but kind of overused, most of the other song elements stop when they happen and it really interrupts the flow like the guy above said, I'd either stick to having them at the end of phrases or else have less stuff drop out/fill the jarring space when they happen in the middle of things
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Mar 12, 2012 19:40
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One more for you guys! I'm really loving this electronic music business, and this thread too, been learning a lot about the dos and don'ts. This new one I made I pretty much finished in about 3-4 hours, and I'm kind of at a loss about what to change/improve on so any feedback would be great! This one was heavily, HEAVILY influenced by dark garage/older dubstep like El-B and Horsepower Productions http://soundcloud.com/stosz/you-are-not-alone
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Mar 12, 2012 20:45
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Take 2! Basically followed all of the advice given above. The 4:20-4:50 section I decided to apply only the time shift to the vocals and everything at the end of phrases. There is only one pitch drop before the outro that the drums are affected by.
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Mar 13, 2012 02:34
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dk2m posted:One more for you guys! I'm really loving this electronic music business, and this thread too, been learning a lot about the dos and don'ts. This new one I made I pretty much finished in about 3-4 hours, and I'm kind of at a loss about what to change/improve on so any feedback would be great! This one was heavily, HEAVILY influenced by dark garage/older dubstep like El-B and Horsepower Productions I like it, the mix feels pretty spacious and the bass sounds good. I can definitely hear your influences on this one. The only thing I'm not a huge fan of is the "slap bass" sounding bass notes. Weird BIAS posted:Take 2! This is pretty mental in a good way. Very well produced but also pretty unique. I like when the vocals do that weird kind of dissonant scale going up.
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Mar 13, 2012 02:42
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dk2m posted:http://soundcloud.com/stosz/you-are-not-alone Weird BIAS posted:Take 2!
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Mar 13, 2012 18:22
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We just finished up our live demo, which we recorded to put in the hands of festivals and other promoters, and to show off our new stuff. We liked the idea of a mini-mix, so it's 4 tracks mashed into 12 minutes. It's got a bit of a moody start, then picks up on the back end with big beats and bass. I'd call it breakbeat and bass music. http://soundcloud.com/glyphrojas/live-demo-2012 Hope you guys likey!
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Mar 16, 2012 05:54
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Here's a dubstep remix of "Jay Z and Kanye West - Niggas in Paris" that I made. First dubstep tune I've actually made all the way through actually. It's as bro-step as you could possibly get, so be warned. Otherwise, enjoy! http://soundcloud.com/thevandalsquad/kanye-west-jay-z-niggas-in GbrushTwood fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Mar 16, 2012 |
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Mar 16, 2012 07:54
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Heres a pretty heavy electro/dubstep thing i made. I cannot for the life of me get a mix im satisfied with. I feel like the song and sounds are there but the mix isnt. http://tindeck.com/listen/sypd
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Mar 16, 2012 09:46
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This is silly but fun. A guy wrote a speech synthesizer in 1k of javascript code: http://www.p01.org/releases/JS1K_Speech_Synthesizer/JS1K_Speech_Synthesizer.htm It's not great at doing actual speech synthesis, but it has a hidden bonus: it can function as a simple beat box. Wait for it to finish its little introductory speech, then click on the line of text at the bottom, delete it all, then paste in this and hit enter: m s m s m s m ssm s m s m s m ssm ssm ssm ssm ssm m m m m m m m a i a i a i a aia aim aia aim ai ai o i a i o i aoaoaoaoaoaoaoaoa e m s m e m s m e m e m e m s m e ee m e ee s m e ee m ee m 
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Mar 16, 2012 16:05
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xzzy posted:This is silly but fun. A guy wrote a speech synthesizer in 1k of javascript code: Have some industrial p csf w pwcsf w p csf w pwkwf w p csf w pwcsf w p csf w pwkwf w
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Mar 16, 2012 19:29
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oredun posted:Heres a pretty heavy electro/dubstep thing i made. I cannot for the life of me get a mix im satisfied with. I feel like the song and sounds are there but the mix isnt. xpander posted:http://soundcloud.com/glyphrojas/live-demo-2012
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Mar 17, 2012 00:06
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Flipperwaldt posted:Genre-wise not as much a fan of the first and last number as the middle two. Those are good, I like, and would dance to. Awesome, thanks for the feedback! It's definitely a mixed bag, but that was on purpose - we wanted to try and showcase what we could do. I hope it's not too schizophrenic. We think it's mixed well and has good flow, even if each track isn't to everyone's taste.
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Mar 18, 2012 01:08
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I guess this is the last version of this for now, cut the the highs in the drums a bunch:
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Mar 18, 2012 01:53
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