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First things first, stay the hell away from M-Audio. Abysmal, life-draining drivers and support, and some of the hardware isn't good either. That being said, 61 keys are the minimum I can recommend. The one I use has octave shift keys that I use quite a bit. I very, very occasionally feel like there are too few keys, so if your style is very wide, consider going bigger. Weighted does feel a lot nicer when playing and I have never noticed any issues playing quick notes—caveat: I don't actually record a lot of stuff, I usually improvise on the keys and then use the mouse and piano roll to sequence.
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Sep 17, 2015 20:29
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Stay away from Alesis as well. 61 keys is a good medium for me. I've pretty much never wanted to go lower and higher at the same time. I am also very happy that the Roland A-800 Pro I have doesn't even begin to bother trying to emulate a weighted or hammer action keyboard, but sticks to real nice synth action. I feel preference for this really depends on what you're playing. If it is all synth sounds galore, hammer action won't bring you anything meaningful imho. I've had the chance to touch a couple of real pianos recently and it actually annoyed me that they are, as far as touch goes, a percussion instrument. That makes it harder to play them softly than a synth controller that you essentially can almost trigger with pure pressure rather than carefully judged velocity above a certain minimum level.
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Sep 17, 2015 23:38
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I'm thinking of looking for a Fatar SL-990. There's one for $400 nearby which is probably at the high end of my budget but if I'm going to rule out Alesis and MAudio I think I can justify it. Everything else seems to be an 88 key synth that happens to output MIDI instead of work as a MIDI controller only, and I'm not sure I need any extra synths other than the VSTs I'm using now. I definitely don't think I'm going to go below 61, but if I'm going to go with hammer action then honestly there's no real game other than a full 88 that I've found. I'd be okay with semi-weighted but if my Akai is anything to go by I'm not really going to enjoy "playing" a non-weighted keyboard at all. Feels very tight and unpleasant to play. Honestly it's probably fine if I'm going to use the keys to trigger drum samples or something but I can't imagine trying to make a melody on them. some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Sep 17, 2015 |
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Sep 17, 2015 23:42
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stickyfngrdboy posted:right up my alley, this. Thanks!
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Sep 18, 2015 09:31
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Thanks for the advice to steer clear of M-Audio. Picked up a Fatar Numa 88 key for relatively cheap and I'm pretty happy with it from the 10 minutes I've been plonking away with a Piano VST.
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Sep 18, 2015 19:08
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This is good and cool, and I really like the bass in your track Landshark too - nice to see another Australian techno producer! Since we've been chatting about darker minimal stuff itt, I thought I'd ask for some feedback on this track I'm working on. I've listened to it too much and honestly can't tell if there is too much or too little going on, anymore. I think a lot of the sounds are still too "big", and I need some more interesting edits. Probably some modulation, somewhere, to separate the textures a little more. https://soundcloud.com/fieldbalm/valwip/s-tgP7d E: updated field balm fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Sep 19, 2015 |
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Sep 19, 2015 05:16
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dopeness... at least until it was removed
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Sep 28, 2015 14:52
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This is something really curious to me- I really like this song. I just love the chord progression/vocal melody. It just feels impossibly catchy and whenever I listen to it it brings back memories of a certain time when I first found it and binge-listened for ages. I've always noticed that no matter what, every recording I find has this feeling of being super blown out and weird-sounding, not necessarily in a bad way but definitely noticeable. Recently I was messing with it in FL studio and saw this:  Right after 15kHz the producer seems to have just completely chopped out everything. This explains why it sounds so weird to me, but does anyone know why someone would ever want to do this? I will say it basically never achieved ear fatigue for me even though I listened to it as much as many similarly ear-wormy songs that gave me significant ear fatigue after a lot of repeated listens. Whereas a lot of songs I used to love in an ear wormy way now feel completely stale, boring and gross to me, this song still makes me feel how it used to. I know it's common to kill 20hz+18kHz or 40hz+18kHz but this seems much wider of a cut than that. I've been avoiding actually posting the song because it's embarassing Jpop, but it's "Kiss Your Mind" by Kis-My-Ft2 if anyone feels like looking it up. Is this just common for overproduced pop songs? I've heard of the volume war and of similar things but not sure I've ever heard of just intentionally putting a huge filter on your song. I guess it's possible I just have a low quality file? But I can't seem to find a 'high quality' version that exists at all. They all sound like this. Lavender Philtrum fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Sep 29, 2015 |
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Sep 29, 2015 06:43
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To be honest, I don't know. But my first thought is pressing for vinyl - I know it is common to cut at around 12k for vinyl. I usually cut at 17k for mp3 conversion, but these numbers are probably arbitrary and just come from reading internet poo poo,
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Sep 29, 2015 11:01
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Filtering out inaudible frequencies is a normal part of the mp3 (or other lossy codec) encoding process. 16kHz was a default setting for lower quality encodings, like 128kbps. You're not supposed to be able to hear this and it is unlikely that you are (unless maybe in a direct comparison with an uncompressed version, which you don't have). For higher quality mp3s this can be bumped up to the 18kHz you mentioned, or even 20kHz. But your perception of this song sounding different is probably related to some other part of the production. Looking up the song, it's compressed (dynamically) into oblivion with a lot of crunch. It's possible that the other songs that gave you listening fatigue are simply even more heavy handed with the limiting or whatever. Something or other. I don't think the filtering was a conscious act of a producer anyway and it does seem feasible for a medium quality mp3 to be the only officially released version of a song, especially if it has some age. Bandpassing music is done on occasion, but it's almost always directly related to technical limitations/specifications of the target encoder or the playback medium. Like when downsampling from a higher sample rate, to prevent aliasing. Which is why it's usually part of that process, rather than a manual intervention at some point. If it were an artistic choice, it also would have more likely been a gentle roll off, rather than a brick wall. Anyway, don't go all tinfoil hat over a technical artifact being an indicator of this one weird trick producers don't want you to know about. Again, you're not likely to even hear it and most music doesn't have a lot of meaningful content in that frequency band anyway. The way human hearing works you're way more likely to notice if the song, say, on average uses a quarter dB higher or lower level of 12kHz than the others than that it had everything above 16kHz filtered off.
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Sep 29, 2015 11:37
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field balm posted:Since we've been chatting about darker minimal stuff itt, I thought I'd ask for some feedback on this track I'm working on. I've listened to it too much and honestly can't tell if there is too much or too little going on, anymore. I think a lot of the sounds are still too "big", and I need some more interesting edits. Probably some modulation, somewhere, to separate the textures a little more. From what I remember I thought you had enough elements there for a good track. It could maybe do with a some low-end boost, and it sounded like a percussion snippet/loop fell out of time during a couple parts, but otherwise I think the track's worth finishing.
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Oct 3, 2015 08:45
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I set out to try to make something other than trance, since I haven't been happy with my trance output, and obvi I ended up making trance. Spark & Groove Comments requested. I hit a point about 10 hours in where I didn't really know what to do next. I know there are a lot of areas I could improve on but I'm sort of stuck on which ones are most important now. Like, should the melodies have more variation? Should I work on the drums more (and in what way)? Does my nonexistent sound design (I basically just used a bunch of presets I'd previously mined from factory libraries) need to become more ... existent? Is my arrangement actually terrible and I should just  ?I'm sure I could sit here, listening to it and then tweaking a few things here and there, for another ten hours, but I think I'll learn more by getting feedback on this one and then just making another. I'm actually happy enough with this one that it might see the inside of a DJ set or two. I probably wouldn't play it if it was someone else's track, but it's the best I've ever produced.
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Oct 5, 2015 03:10
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Trance is absolutely not my thing so take these with a grain of salt: -Kick drum needs to bang harder -This is a taste thing, but all the synths sound very "soft" (not volume wise), and the piano patch especially sticks out as not being treble-y enough. -Something about the chord progression that starts at around 2:30 is wrong. Too many major chords, or something - it sounds much better in the variation that starts at 5:30ish, which I think is a single note instead of chords and avoids the voicing thing What is the deal with yungcloud? I always get salty about the modern state of soundcloud being full of huge name artists, is this a new alternative for the little guy?
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Oct 5, 2015 03:48
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The thing really hitting me in the face is how the hihats and the crashes sit wa-a-ay too forward in the mix. Pull those levels down and soften them up with some room reverb. In general the drum sounds seem to be bone loving dry. Don't like how the piano sound and its strict mechanical playing give it that lullaby feeling. Would almost entirely replace that with something more abstract and synthy or go the other way and try to really humanize the piano, doing anything to get away from that musicbox thing. At 4:20 the syncopated trance synth coming in feels out of time/groove. Shifting that 1/32nd forward or backward might sound better, not sure. There's a bunch of things you do right too, to the point I think you can push this up to another level with some work.
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Oct 5, 2015 10:06
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I noticed something odd about one of my recent tracks (https://soundcloud.com/bittern/quirk) When I open it up in Audacity, it looks like this:  The waveform seems lop-sided, as if it's biased towards negative numbers. I've tried fixing the DC offset but that doesn't seem to do anything. Does anyone know what might be causing this? Everything's done in Reaper with VSTs; no microphones or external sound modules.
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Oct 6, 2015 01:23
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One possibility it's that it's just an artifact of how audacity is displaying it, try zooming in on it significantly and see if it evens out. If not, asymmetrical waveforms are a thing. It's not a problem per se except that large spikes like that will probably limit the volume you can get out of the track. It's not uncommon on percussion for example. If it is in a percussion sample and it's causing you trouble, sometimes the easiest thing to do is just get in there with an audio editor and smooth out the bit that's causing it by scaling down a little section of the waveform or whatever. Otherwise pretty much anything that smears phase can help, for example any non-linear-phase EQ or filter, with varying degrees of audibility.
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Oct 6, 2015 01:53
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field balm posted:Trance is absolutely not my thing so take these with a grain of salt: "Working on it" entailed starting out trying to layer kick drums and then compare to a professionally produced track - and then I just decided to copy-paste the reference kick, because  and that way lies madness tonight.As for the synths and piano being soft - hey, what do you know, I left the lowpass filter dialed way too far down on the main lead (I think I meant to map a macro control to it), and the brightness/hardness controls at 0 on the piano. It definitely sounds better with those adjusted. Thanks! quote:-Something about the chord progression that starts at around 2:30 is wrong. Too many major chords, or something - it sounds much better in the variation that starts at 5:30ish, which I think is a single note instead of chords and avoids the voicing thing Maybe I need to do less inversions, or add more root notes to those chords, though. I played with it a little bit and I think it sounds better with a couple of added notes. quote:What is the deal with yungcloud? I always get salty about the modern state of soundcloud being full of huge name artists, is this a new alternative for the little guy? Yeah, I became rather disenchanted with Soundcloud after they started putting ads in my music and didn't bother asking me how I felt about that. That + the recent heavy copyright crackdowns were enough to get me to look elsewhere, and I saw yungcloud suggested somewhere. It works well enough; I don't really care about exposure right now (actually less of it is probably better at this point) Flipperwaldt posted:The thing really hitting me in the face is how the hihats and the crashes sit wa-a-ay too forward in the mix. Pull those levels down and soften them up with some room reverb. In general the drum sounds seem to be bone loving dry. Yep! Also I think I hosed up my routing so the compressor I had on the percussion was doubling the volume and not really ... compressing. I always forget reverb... or I overdo it and you can't really hear the hihats at all. quote:Don't like how the piano sound and its strict mechanical playing give it that lullaby feeling. Would almost entirely replace that with something more abstract and synthy or go the other way and try to really humanize the piano, doing anything to get away from that musicbox thing. Definitely know what you mean by the music box lullaby feeling I feel like I could start singing any of a number of nursery rhymes to it. Changing the sound helped a lot with that. quote:At 4:20 the syncopated trance synth coming in feels out of time/groove. Shifting that 1/32nd forward or backward might sound better, not sure. Seriously I shifted it back in time 1/32 and it changes nothing and everything at the same time. Amazing. Thanks! quote:There's a bunch of things you do right too, to the point I think you can push this up to another level with some work. With these pointers it definitely sounds significantly better!  Here's the improved version: Spark & Groove I will probably go over it a bit more and eq some things, fix up some levels... but the neighbors keep banging on my door for some reason?? So that'll have to wait until tomorrow.
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Oct 6, 2015 06:46
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Boi Hole posted:Does anyone know what might be causing this? Everything's done in Reaper with VSTs; no microphones or external sound modules. I've run into this problem before. Usually you can fix it by dropping a highpass filter on whatever track is causing the offset and cutting the extremely low frequencies (40hz or below). I did a little mix last month for a label I've released a few tracks on. Thought I might share it here as it includes a few goon artists (Mathbonus, Percival Pembroke). It's mostly ambient and downtempo type music. https://www.mixcloud.com/thealleys/the-alleys-show-009-sinerider/
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Oct 7, 2015 15:04
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I've been trying to figure out how to get fuzzy drums with filters or bit crushers etc. and I just can't get the nice grindy shifting sound that I hear in a lot of songs. Here's an example with the hi-hats and snare hits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBPNdGUT4uI e; or this mix at like 22:50 https://soundcloud.com/supreems/mistmix Any ideas? Blowdryer fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 17:38
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Blowdryer posted:I've been trying to figure out how to get fuzzy drums with filters or bit crushers etc. and I just can't get the nice grindy shifting sound that I hear in a lot of songs. Those are more like glitches. Trying throwing some distortion on your drums and export it out. Then pull short snippets of each shot and use those. So your samples should start after the percussion sound happens but before the end/decay. So you have really short clips from the middle of each percussion sound. The shifting sound I think is a low-fi delay on the hi-hat sound. So just hit the hi hate on quarter or half notes and then put a eight or quarter note delay on it.
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Oct 18, 2015 19:28
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Blowdryer posted:I've been trying to figure out how to get fuzzy drums with filters or bit crushers etc. and I just can't get the nice grindy shifting sound that I hear in a lot of songs. This is the type of stuff that i always set out to make, really nice, warm, chill out music. instead i just make obnoxious trap garbage https://soundcloud.com/vapor-chamber/evil-twin-trapped-the-heck-out-remix 
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Oct 20, 2015 08:49
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wayfinder posted:First things first, stay the hell away from M-Audio. Abysmal, life-draining drivers and support, and some of the hardware isn't good either. I was going to grab an Axiom 25 (I don't have space for anything larger) but this has discouraged me. I had an Axiom 49 back in the day and really liked it. What would you suggest as far as smaller ones go?
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Oct 28, 2015 19:51
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I don't have a lot of experience with other gear, the Novation stuff I've used was pretty good though.
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Oct 28, 2015 21:06
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Just in case any Mac users missed it, they released a beta build for the 64-bit version of Sylenth in September. It was drat near unusable in Logic for me before with that bit bridge crap, but the update has made all the difference. Now it's as light-weight as I've always thought it should be. The interface is a little cleaner too. Good stuff.
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Oct 29, 2015 14:01
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Making more deeper stuff! It's what I first wanted to make so I'm content with where I'm at in producing it. Does anyone else continually listen to their songs over and over? NYNJ - I was listening to the interview and had music playing and was like that's cool https://soundcloud.com/swanconnley/nynj/ I have this habit of just making a bassline be the melody. https://soundcloud.com/swanconnley/bad-move Been throwing the vinyl effect over my tops and it gives a nice effect. Blowdryer fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Oct 29, 2015 |
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Oct 29, 2015 20:54
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Here's some new music from me! -> https://soundcloud.com/wayfu/wayfinder-goldeater It's progressive house. Enjoy!
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Oct 31, 2015 10:03
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wayfinder posted:Here's some new music from me! -> https://soundcloud.com/wayfu/wayfinder-goldeater Your production is tight, smooth, clean, cool and good as always. I really like the percussion, it is super snappy (I think you said somewhere you use drumatic for your synth drums, right?), but I'm not one for progressive, uplifting stuff so I can't really comment on the melodic parts! Blowdryer posted:I have this habit of just making a bassline be the melody. This is sick, the vinyl thing gives a nice sound to the top end of the drums. This track makes me realise how low/strangely I mix my treble. I don't know if it's an ear thing or a monitoring thing, unfortunately I think it's the first. I finished (read: couldn't be bothered working on any further) a two track today. It's called Genocide City, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the 1176. It's a dark, 140bpm techno/tech house thing. Lots of found sound percussion and synth stuff, and I've really started experimenting with extreme buss and parallel processing. Feedback would be welcomed!  https://soundcloud.com/fieldbalm/sets/genocide-city field balm fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Nov 1, 2015 |
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Nov 1, 2015 09:55
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field balm posted:Your production is tight, smooth, clean, cool and good as always. I really like the percussion, it is super snappy (I think you said somewhere you use drumatic for your synth drums, right?), but I'm not one for progressive, uplifting stuff so I can't really comment on the melodic parts! 
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Nov 1, 2015 14:24
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Must be me, always harping on about how great Drumatic is. How flattering to be confused with Wayfinder!
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Nov 1, 2015 15:36
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Is it worth using something free like LMMS or cheap like Garageband if I'm just starting out, or should I go for higher-quality DAW software (OSX)? I really dislike Garageband's interface and the fact that it obfuscates plugins/VSTs annoys me, while LMMS just crashes all the loving time (as does Garageband from time to time). I know the OP recommends software like Logic and Live, but on the other hand, that's way too expensive for someone like me who's just starting out/playing around with basic synth stuff. There's also Audacity, I guess, but I never thought that Audacity was as full-featured as something like Logic or FL Studio.
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Nov 1, 2015 23:36
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I feel like Reaper is the elephant in the room.
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Nov 1, 2015 23:45
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Pollyanna posted:Is it worth using something free like LMMS or cheap like Garageband if I'm just starting out, or should I go for higher-quality DAW software (OSX)? I really dislike Garageband's interface and the fact that it obfuscates plugins/VSTs annoys me, while LMMS just crashes all the loving time (as does Garageband from time to time). I know the OP recommends software like Logic and Live, but on the other hand, that's way too expensive for someone like me who's just starting out/playing around with basic synth stuff. Flipperwaldt pretty much hit it on the head. I think for what you'd be doing Reaper would be a good place to at least start looking. It's not break-the-bank expensive, but it's very full-featured and very customizable to how you want to work. Audacity is basically just a wave editor so it's not going to be useful for actually constructing a song. Otherwise, FL Studio is probably the next price-point up from Reaper, and is another legitimate, if very different option, for someone who is just kind of starting out, though I know depending on where you're coming from even $100 for a DAW is a bit much. LMMS is, in theory, a sort of free recreation of FL Studio so if you like how it works, it might be worth checking out an FL Studio demo. Hit me up in IRC if you want to chat more about it, maybe I can finally find a use for my poor buying decisions and the 6 different DAWs I've cycled through in my past.
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Nov 2, 2015 08:13
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Pollyanna posted:Is it worth using something free like LMMS or cheap like Garageband if I'm just starting out, or should I go for higher-quality DAW software (OSX)? I really dislike Garageband's interface and the fact that it obfuscates plugins/VSTs annoys me, while LMMS just crashes all the loving time (as does Garageband from time to time). I know the OP recommends software like Logic and Live, but on the other hand, that's way too expensive for someone like me who's just starting out/playing around with basic synth stuff. If you want an Ableton Lite license hit me up. I'm pretty sure I have a serial that I never used.
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Nov 2, 2015 16:00
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Mulab Free might be another option for cheap/free DAW. up to 4 tracks and 8 Vsts. Less can be more?
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Nov 3, 2015 00:54
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I've begun collecting the pieces to build my 90S/00S HOUSE RAVE TECHNO dream studio. First thing is outboard effects because they are cheap and take up less space. Here's my list so far. Any recommendations?! Alexis 3630 Alexis Quadraverb Electrix Filter Factory Electrix MoFX Electrix Warp Factory Ensoniq DP 4 Lexicon MPX 1 a_pineapple fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Nov 3, 2015 |
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Nov 3, 2015 02:29
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You need a proco rat (or a cheap chinese clone)! I love the wierd grainy sound of rhe microverb, its all over my stuff - i think alesis stuff in general is the good sort of cheap. Any of those boxes do hood dubby delay? If not you defs need a analog bbd with knobs to tweak! Whats the plan for sources? An s900 or something would be cool as hell with that kit.
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Nov 4, 2015 00:48
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vas0line posted:I've begun collecting the pieces to build my 90S/00S HOUSE RAVE TECHNO dream studio. First thing is outboard effects because they are cheap and take up less space. I would personally add a Korg M1 to the list (the VST version is great also). It's a great synth in itself but also has some essential sounds, like the piano rave sound, and "Organ 2" (think the very recognizable organ lead in songs like Robin S - Show Me Love). I also have an E-MU Orbit 9090 rack module which is amazing. Got it for like $70 off of Ebay and it's such a RAVE sounding thing. I mean it even says "The Dance Planet" on the front of the box!
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Nov 4, 2015 16:52
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Get a Sherman FilterBank.
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Nov 4, 2015 17:52
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I've always wondered how people with multiple hardware synths handle integration into a modern DAW. I've only ever had exposure to VSTs so just throwing an instrument into Ableton and messing with effects is second nature, but the whole concept of actually having something generate audio, then having to interface that into a DAW feels really foreign to me. I gather that there's a multi-port audio interface involved, but how do you guys handle MIDI controls of every device? Is it a kind of "select a patch on my hardware synth, have midi play it, and record it in my DAW, then move on to the next patch" kind of thing, or do you have a way to play multiple patches at the same time to different audio outputs? I guess that's kind of dependant on the synth, but the whole logistics of routing audio around just kind of escapes me. I'm probably not articulating the question correctly since even reading it now makes me feel like it's a really dumb question, but since it's literally baby's first midi 101 I guess that's pretty apt.
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Nov 5, 2015 00:34
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I use Reaper as my DAW and have multiple hardware synths. A Scarlett 18i6 acts as the interface between them. MIDI notes from Reaper go out USB to the Scarlett, which passes them on through its 5pin DIN output to a MIDI splitter that feeds synths that don't have USB connectors. MIDI also goes back via USB from the Scarlett and my workstation synth which has USB MIDI. Audio from the synths goes in the Scarlett (there's 4 stereo pairs of input plus Firewire), which sends USB audio to the DAW on multiple channels. Some hardware synths are multi-timbral and also have multiple audio outputs. Each of those outputs can go to a different audio input on an interface and be recorded separately in the DAW. I can record several mono or stereo tracks of audio and the MIDI notes for those tracks simultaneously in Reaper. That's useful for jamming. For composing and building a song in the DAW, I usually record just one sound plus the MIDI that generated it. I can then tweak the MIDI notes, add CC messages, and rerecord the audio as needed.
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Nov 5, 2015 02:22
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