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I'm trying my hand at some melodic DnBish stuff, would appreciate any feedback! http://soundcloud.com/joelsimon/surface
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Aug 23, 2012 21:08
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xpander posted:maybe do something like add a second top bass after the short breakdown, fade it in, and give both basses some modulation/lfo/wobble. Maybe add a stinger or two. Also I'd chop/glitch the vocals to hell and back for the second half. thanks, I think stuff like this is pretty much what I already knew it needed to progress nicely, I just needed an outside perspective to reinforce it in my mind Horrido posted:God I love your music! One thing I'm not feeling is the Trap-like Hi-hats. I'd go for a nice long ride, just sitting in the back, barely audible. thanks for the kind words! Yeah the machine gun high hats are definitely a bold choice and I don't imagine they'll please everyone, and I used to not mess with them because I thought they sounded cheesy, but I'm starting to really like how they sound in certain contexts like over slow chord progressions.
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Aug 23, 2012 21:36
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slardel posted:song I dig your stuff man! But in this one I think you need more variation or weird effects or something on that fast high-hat stuff towards the end. Also this is maybe personal preference but I'd like the snare to be something with less dominated by its low-end, especially with the big reverb you have going on with the drums. Edit: I've been working on some more chilled out stuff than I usually do, any thoughts? Both pretty rough around the edges!
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Aug 23, 2012 21:44
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^ I'm planning on adding variation in the timing of the hats at the end so it's not just straight up 32nd notes or whatever, what kind of effects did you have in mind? re:snares yeah I haven't even given any thought towards the actual mixdown yet aside from compression, I'll be sure to pay attention to what you're talking about with the snare when I get there. Gonna listen to your stuff now. edit: quote:thoughts This is tight, has a nice rising action film score vibe. Some more pad work over the top of that rolling bassline might sound cool as it progresses. real nap shit fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Aug 23, 2012 |
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Aug 23, 2012 22:02
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slardel posted:This is tight, has a nice rising action film score vibe. Some more pad work over the top of that rolling bassline might sound cool as it progresses. Thanks man. Yeah that's a good idea and I was also wondering about having some more high-end drums but it sounds so deep and spacious without I'll have to experiment. As for your hihat effects you could go wild with some dry/wet automated delays or reverbs and sidechain a phaser on it or something, or go more glitchy, use your judgement!
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Aug 24, 2012 00:17
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LL Fiesta! posted:Thanks for listening! Are you referring to the hi-hats from the beginning, or the more rapid percussion that comes in later? Perhaps I'll bring down the later percussion. I'll think about varying the synths a bit more, but I'm about ready to call it done and I'm not sure i want to get deep back into it. I never would have imagined female vocals with it, but yes that sounds interesting in my head. I think I'm gonna leave that out because I'm gonna send it to my sister as a gift for her baby, and I think vocals would be out of place in that context. Yeah I mean the hI-hats as whole are bit too high. But maybe that's me, usually my hi-hats are far behind everything else. Actually I'm in *love* with that snare. I think it fits perfectly. Everything sounds weird because it's kind of an awkward composition, It's a bit too sparse, tomorrow I'll try to wip up some more synths to fill it. Here's an updated version, with bonus tribal breakdown awkwardly shoehorned in: http://soundcloud.com/rpblc/they-roam-1-8/s-xQ6ua Thanks for the feedback! e: english is hard at 3am Horrido fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Aug 24, 2012 |
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Aug 24, 2012 01:48
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LL Fiesta! posted:It's pretty....happy. Nice, it reminds me a bit of I am Robot and Proud
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Aug 24, 2012 02:26
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Horrido posted:Actually I'm in *love* with that snare. I think it fits perfectly. By all means keep rockin the snare then. I really like the sound of that tom fill that plays fully right before the second drop. It would be fun if you did some more with it, like chop it up and splash it around during the main bassy part. Sounding good. Lump Shaker posted:Nice, it reminds me a bit of I am Robot and Proud Thanks. I just youtubed him (them?) and it sounds pretty good. Any particular album I should get?
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Aug 24, 2012 05:57
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Sub-bass question inbound: So I'm writing a jump-up D&B tune in the key of B. The low note some of the 808 and sine subs I'm using is B-1, around 30Hz if Ableton's Spectrum is accurate. I have a decent subwoofer, but it seems that the low B lacks volume even though it's just as loud according to the software. Is this just poor acoustics messing with me, or what? Should I adjust the note velocity to even out the perceived volume, transpose to a different key, or trust the meter? This also got me wondering about how low it's really worthwhile to make a sub-bass. I know stereo companies tend to advertise '20Hz-20kHz' and lots of venues have bigass subs, but what's 'too low' before things start to roll off in most PAs? And don't mastering engineers tend to do that at like 30Hz anyway? Mister Speaker fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Aug 25, 2012 |
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Aug 25, 2012 19:01
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I'd try listening on a different setup if you can or with a good pair of headphones, I think you should definitely be able to feel/hear 30hz. If you're working with a pure sine tone down there, there are various ways to generate some harmonics to make it a bit more audible.
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Aug 26, 2012 00:30
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Does anyone have any pointers on making a really deep bass-y 808 kick? I've been messing around with an 808 sample and a sine wave but I'm pretty clueless.
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Aug 26, 2012 03:05
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Thoogsby posted:Does anyone have any pointers on making a really deep bass-y 808 kick? I've been messing around with an 808 sample and a sine wave but I'm pretty clueless. I think a really important part of that kind of kick is getting a nice punchy transient, something I've done in the past is just highpass and layer a short kick sample over a sine sub bass and compress the hell out of it with a high attack to get a nice punch edit: I don't really have anything better to do so I just did a quick and dirty version - first the highpassed kicks, then the sub, then together http://soundcloud.com/mathbonus/kicks/s-tbqLp idk, feel free to disregard if it's not what you're looking for real nap shit fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Aug 26, 2012 |
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Aug 26, 2012 03:35
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slardel posted:I think a really important part of that kind of kick is getting a nice punchy transient, something I've done in the past is just highpass and layer a short kick sample over a sine sub bass and compress the hell out of it with a high attack to get a nice punch Did you take it down?
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Aug 26, 2012 17:12
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oh, I'm an idiot. http://soundcloud.com/mathbonus/kicks/s-tbqLp
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Aug 26, 2012 22:08
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What's a good source for drum samples? The ones that come with Ableton are kind of crap.
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Aug 27, 2012 01:41
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Typo92 posted:I'm trying my hand at some melodic DnBish stuff, would appreciate any feedback! I like this. Without trying to tell you how to write melodic DnB (I don't have much, if any, of a clue) I think maybe the snare could be more...snappy? I'm thinking 909/standard pendusnare. A bit more high end on it. Content: Here's something I've been cooking up. Dubstep or something. http://soundcloud.com/ellywu2/600adubstep-1
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Aug 27, 2012 01:52
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This started off as an experiment in sound design but very rapidly turned into techno. A lot of massive and bouncing audio down. It's real dark. Probably a bit too dark. http://soundcloud.com/downpour/no-children how is it? cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Aug 27, 2012 |
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Aug 27, 2012 05:34
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cubicle gangster posted:This started off as an experiment in sound design but very rapidly turned into techno. A lot of massive and bouncing audio down. I like it, the dark sounds kind of remind me of really early Delirium or Front Line Assembly. I think the part from 1:50-2:50ish could stand to be cleaned up a little bit though, it's tough to make out some of the sounds.
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Aug 27, 2012 06:10
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Hi all, new track up. It's a kind of housey techno thing. Spent the weekend mastering it up as best I could, think it turned out alright? Would love some feedback. https://soundcloud.com/careyb/bill-carey-bedtime-story
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Aug 28, 2012 11:14
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CareyB posted:Hi all, new track up. It's a kind of housey techno thing. Spent the weekend mastering it up as best I could, think it turned out alright? Would love some feedback. Percussion on this is pretty top notch. Started a new electrohouse track today. I can't decide if I want to keep working on it or scrap it. http://soundcloud.com/heyitsben/double-whatevs-duncare
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Aug 30, 2012 23:35
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Dubstep: http://tindeck.com/listen/qubs Let me know what yall think. edit: it keeps crackling from tindeck, but the mp3 sounds fine on my computer. let me know if thats happening to you. oredun fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Aug 31, 2012 |
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Aug 30, 2012 23:58
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Thoogsby posted:Percussion on this is pretty top notch. Cheers! Yours sounds good up to the drop, but the synth you bring in after seems out of key and the bass is way too dry and clicky. I'd feel it more if it boomed through me rather than passed by overhead... if that makes any sense.
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Aug 31, 2012 16:09
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Hey guys, can you help me out? Over at my friend's house, he doesn't have the funds for a proper audio interface and we have a cheap amazon USB -> Midi cable for his keyboard that acts as our midi controller.  This is what happens when I play a note on every beat - it's just a tiny bit off. I've got no idea how to fix this, can anyone help me out? I just need to compensate for that little bit of lag somehow and I don't know what menu or option to go into and set to fix that. Thanks in advance, guys.
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Sep 1, 2012 01:45
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So I started something this morning as kind of a sketch and it ended up sounding like a good start to something. The only problem is I can't figure out how to stop it from running in the red the entire time, I love the kicks as booming as they are but I can't really add in some bass without causing a clipping mess just due to volume (the sample here isn't set up for bass, there's not much of a filter on the lows of the lead). http://soundcloud.com/wafflehound/2-1 Also the obvious problem is here: 
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Sep 1, 2012 03:41
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WickedIcon posted:What's a good source for drum samples? The ones that come with Ableton are kind of crap. What kind of drum samples? Goldbaby has some very nice samples of classic drum machines, including a bunch of freebies. For acoustic kit drums, I usually Battery (Native Instruments); Drumkit From Hell (Toontrack) and BFD (FXPansion) are also pretty popular. Lavender Philtrum posted:Hey guys, can you help me out? You can try installing ASIO4ALL drivers for your sound card. The delay is being caused by latency in the audio drivers, so you either need better drivers or a different interface. h_double fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Sep 1, 2012 |
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Sep 1, 2012 06:47
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:So I started something this morning as kind of a sketch and it ended up sounding like a good start to something. The only problem is I can't figure out how to stop it from running in the red the entire time, I love the kicks as booming as they are but I can't really add in some bass without causing a clipping mess just due to volume (the sample here isn't set up for bass, there's not much of a filter on the lows of the lead). There are a few things you can try: 1. Turn down the levels on the individual tracks. It's good practice to turn all of your track faders down to around -12dB as a matter of course, to give yourself more headroom. You can always turn up your monitors to compensate. 2. Use selective EQ to carve out breathing room for the different parts. Maybe the kick drum has a lot of energy around 80Hz and the fundamental frequency of the bass is around 200Hz (you can measure this with Live's "Spectrum" effect or something like Voxengo SPAN), in that case you'd want to cut or highpass EQ the bass around 80Hz and cut some frequencies around 200Hz for the kick. 3. Arrange your track so the kick and bass aren't playing at the same time, e.g. have the kick on the 1-2-3-4 beats, and the bass on the eighth notes ("and" beats) in between. You can hear this on a lot of trance records. 4. Use a sidechain compressor on the bass so its level ducks when the kick triggers. This can be used deliberately for effect, but don't automatically use it as a go-to solution on every track. Similarly, you can use compression or a limiter to tame the peaks on a part, but I recommend using this for deliberate tone shaping rather than problem solving, because it can suck the energy out of a track if you overdo it. Turn poo poo down and look at your EQ situation first and foremost.
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Sep 1, 2012 07:06
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EDIT Oh wow, where did the time go? Beaten severely.Lavender Philtrum posted:he doesn't have the funds for a proper audio interface WAFFLEHOUND posted:The only problem is I can't figure out how to stop it from running in the red the entire time, I love the kicks as booming as they are but I can't really add in some bass without causing a clipping mess just due to volume  Turn everything down by the same amount.
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Sep 1, 2012 07:33
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:So I started something this morning as kind of a sketch and it ended up sounding like a good start to something. The only problem is I can't figure out how to stop it from running in the red the entire time, I love the kicks as booming as they are but I can't really add in some bass without causing a clipping mess just due to volume (the sample here isn't set up for bass, there's not much of a filter on the lows of the lead). Put a compressor on it then a limiter. Thats all ya gotta do.
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Sep 1, 2012 07:37
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colonp fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Mar 8, 2014 |
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Sep 1, 2012 09:53
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Thanks for the advice everyone, I'll go ahead and turn everything down. It may seem obvious to you but we all have to start somewhere. <  >
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Sep 1, 2012 12:20
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oredun posted:Put a compressor on it then a limiter. Thats all ya gotta do. THIS.
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Sep 1, 2012 17:28
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Asking this straight up, how the gently caress do I master a track?
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Sep 1, 2012 17:30
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And how the gently caress do I compress things, I don't get the knobs in the compressor. 
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Sep 1, 2012 18:43
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:And how the gently caress do I compress things, I don't get the knobs in the compressor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v-1Y8fa3aw
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Sep 1, 2012 19:44
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Thoogsby posted:Asking this straight up, how the gently caress do I master a track? You don't - at least you shouldn't. True mastering is an arcane art, and requires a properly trained mastering engineer. Mixing is likely what you're referring to, which is a largely separate process - deciding on the balance of different elements in the mix, applying EQ, compression etc. to individual tracks. Essentially, what you naturally do as you work through the process of composing your tracks. Mastering is a different beast, involving subtle application of compression, limiting, and EQ over the entire track. Your track should be completed to your satisfaction when you hand it over to a mastering engineer - they won't fix your mistakes, but they will make your work sound finished, cohesive and professional.
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Sep 1, 2012 19:44
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When you get picked up by a label they can hook you up with someone to master your tracks. You might have to pay for it, but they'll know a dude. Dont worry about it, just make your poo poo sound as good as possible.
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Sep 1, 2012 19:54
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Thanks for the replies. Is there anything worth exploring with mastering plugins like Izotope Ozone?
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Sep 1, 2012 20:04
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Absolutely - they'll help you make your stuff sound better. It wont be good enough for release, but it'll be more than good enough to make your stuff sound big and get you noticed.
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Sep 1, 2012 20:14
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:And how the gently caress do I compress things, I don't get the knobs in the compressor. First, make sure you understand what compression is. Compression, classically, is about maintaining a consistent volume profile throughout a song. A popular misconception is that compression makes things louder, which technically is completely inaccurate - simply put, what it really does is even out the overall volume of your track by smoothing out the high peaks in amplitude. If you understand that, the controls on a compressor are fairly straighforward. Here's what you're looking at on an average compressor: Threshold - This determines at what point an incoming signal triggers compression. For example, if your threshold is 0 dB, anything over that level will cause the compressor to kick in. Ratio - This determines the actual volume output based on how far over the threshold your signal is. 4:1, for example, is a common ratio, meaning that if your signal is 4 dB over the threshold it only results in a 1 dB increase in volume. Attack / Release - Fairly straightforward if you're already familiar with volume envelopes on synthesizers. Essentially, how long it takes for compression to kick in after reaching the threshold and how long it takes to stop after going below the threshold. Different compressors may be more or less complex but those are the settings that are pretty constant through almost all of them. Play around with them a bit and you'll get a feel for how things work.
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Sep 1, 2012 20:25
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WAFFLEHOUND posted:Thanks for the advice everyone, I'll go ahead and turn everything down. If you want to hear the mix loudly, crank up your monitors instead of the level of every separate track. There's no need to go in the red at all, you don't even have to go near it. It's all floating points math (well, when everything is "in the box" and you're barely fighting noise levels) and, staying away from unreasonable extremes, it scales up pretty nice afterwards. If, on the other hand, your mix results in a clipping wave, information is lost and you can't scale back down to regain that information. Although compressing/limiting the kick is something you typically would do, I'm not jumping on that as a solution, because it changes the character of the sound. And you explicitly said you wanted to keep the kick the way it was. As per the whole floating point thing, you don't really need compressors and limiters in an in the box mix. You can keep that poo poo under control by programming and setting your levels properly (everything downwards if necessary, as I said, it doesn't really have negative side effects). Which is why I would advocate only using compressors if your whole point is to change the internal dynamics and character of the sound. Explicitly not for damage control. Note that this is different if some of your material is outboard gear and crosses digital/analog/digital boundaries. Because in that case having too low of an input signal can mean you're also amplifying noise later. Compressing a kick also makes total sense, but it implies that you'll end up with a different kick. You should do that if that's what you want. It's also probably going to be a practical thing, because keeping that kick cover that whole dynamic range will end up defining a pretty unconventional mix. But fixing the levels first makes sense, because you can choose a compromise later instead of being forced into it.
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Sep 1, 2012 21:45
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