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Hello thread. I'm wondering if anyone can give me some feedback on this one: https://soundcloud.com/stosz/insidewip3/s-AwtMv Some sort of 80BPM nonsense, but I've been playing around a lot with different reese sounds and tried to make something outside of conventional song structure. My ears are too used to it now, so any feedback would be awesome!
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May 11, 2017 15:45
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| # ? May 25, 2024 05:18 |
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everyone should check out this recent podcast w/ Mr Bill: http://edmprod.com/podcast/
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May 24, 2017 14:21
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I just started playing guitar seriously last fall after a long hiatus from my teenage years, and just a month ago I got a keyboard hoping to get into making electronic music. A few days ago I hooked it up to a DAW for the first time and I had a lot of fun putting something together. I'd love any feedback anyone is willing to offer. Not sure how I would classify it, it's synthy, upbeat, and a little akin to video game music. dk2m posted:Hello thread. I'm wondering if anyone can give me some feedback on this one: I'm pretty new to making music myself, but since I'm asking for a critique it's only fair I try and reciprocate. I like the moodiness of this. There's seems to be a lot of depth layered behind the drums. The first half and the second seem a little disconnected to me though. The melodic (guitar?) parts at the beginning sort of disappear into the background and never really resolve. Then again the focus is obviously on the beat and, as you say, you set out to make something with an unconventional structure. Still, the ending of the song doesn't really hit me. I come away with an appreciation for the mental space the drums and sounds (especially the sound that is similar to a boat motor) put me in, but it's like a snapshot, it doesn't really take me on a journey. Also the drums sound a little anemic to me. You might be able to enrich them a little in an EQ, though I just started playing around with that myself so I'm not sure I have any specific advice about that. Overall the song reminds me of something like The Chemical Brothers crossed with some of the percussive elements and atmosphere of Radiohead. It's not my type of thing honestly, but there are definitely things I like about it. If I had to reduce my critique to a single take away I would maybe say try and pinpoint an element that you can develop and resolve to add a bit more of a trip for the listener to go on. That might fight with your desire to have an unconventional structure though. The Super-Id fucked around with this message at 10:47 on May 28, 2017 |
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May 28, 2017 04:08
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A couple of weeks ago I was straightening up my workstation and dug through an external HDD, where I found some project files for tracks that I thought I'd completely lost in a drive failure. I was super stoked to find these and polish them up a bit: https://hearthis.at/killhamster/rbm-left-above-killhamsters-above-all-else-remix/ https://hearthis.at/killhamster/vimanas/
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May 29, 2017 22:28
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dk2m posted:Hello thread. I'm wondering if anyone can give me some feedback on this one: this is cool
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Jun 14, 2017 11:23
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something a bit different from my usual 125 bpm atonal minimal techno: http://tindeck.com/listen/mblbv
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Jun 14, 2017 11:27
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dk2m posted:Hello thread. I'm wondering if anyone can give me some feedback on this one: I really like this, but i feel like the plucked strings need a little love once give drums come in. the kick especially is really eating into their territory. idk if the solution is as simple as lowering the kick with a bit of side chaining to let it cut through, or maybe to add a bit more dry signal to the plucked stuff, but it might be. the vibe is cool as hell though. i dig it.
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Jun 15, 2017 23:00
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Thank you everyone for the feedback! Especially the Super-Id and the suggestion on the drums. Somehow, all of the samples I made got corrupted in the track file so I have to recreate it them all, and fuuuuck that. The reese samples alone took the better part of 2 days. I'm just gonna let this one go and learn from it. I definitely agree with the point of having a resolution - I'm still learning on good composition and songwriting so I'll be more conscious of that in the future. This kind of super technical sculpting is just so draining, I'm looking forward to getting back into more minimalist, deeper stuff.
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Jun 17, 2017 07:12
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Tace Vim posted:something a bit different from my usual 125 bpm atonal minimal techno: http://tindeck.com/listen/mblbv I like the overall feel of this, the way it builds up, but the rhythmic elements are too regular for me. From the very beginning the rhythm follows the same course through and I sort of lost interest in it half way through. I like the way the sound evolves, but the saw(?) that comes in part way and starts responding to the main bell like instrument sounds a little underdeveloped. It has much more of a toy instrument feel to it than the rest of what you have going on and it's a bit distracting. Listening to it a second time, the voicing on the saw is a bigger problem for me than the sameness of the rhythm. I could see this track playing through a quiet dramatic moment in film or tv, but the saw draws too much attention. Also I think you could do more to bring it back down before the end. The volume drops out which is nice, but maybe you could also bring the instruments out the same way you brought them in at the beginning.
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Jun 19, 2017 20:18
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The Super-Id posted:I like the overall feel of this, the way it builds up, but the rhythmic elements are too regular for me. From the very beginning the rhythm follows the same course through and I sort of lost interest in it half way through. I like the way the sound evolves, but the saw(?) that comes in part way and starts responding to the main bell like instrument sounds a little underdeveloped. It has much more of a toy instrument feel to it than the rest of what you have going on and it's a bit distracting. Thanks for the feedback. I'll have a play around with the sounds and progression.
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Jun 20, 2017 10:55
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Was wondering if anyone else has this problem and felt like this thread was probably the best place for it. I use a Launchpad S with a drum rack in Ableton for sketching out drum beats a lot of the time because I am way more creative finger-tapping than drawing poo poo out. However, one issue I am having is that the Launchpad S has velocity tracking and I find it very difficult to have a consistent (not looking for perfect) velocity so you don't have noticeably loud hits followed by a quiet hit. I am using Ableton so I could edit the velocity points but that would take forever, especially across several tracks. Any suggestions? I have a simlar issue when using my keyboard as a MIDI controller but that has more to do with me sucking at playing keyboard.
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Jun 20, 2017 17:57
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Do you know of Live's built-in Velocity MIDI effect? It allows incoming velocities to be manipulated, including mapping imprecise dynamics to smaller controlled ranges.
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Jun 20, 2017 18:02
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I am quite ignorant of Live's MIDI effects so thank you for the reminder that I really need to dive into those and experiment. I will definitely check out the Velocity effect and report back.
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Jun 20, 2017 19:02
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I'm a complete newbie to electronic music production, and I'm having a lot of fun messing around with the trials for Ableton and Serum. It's easy for me to see that, if I need a synthy lead or bassline sound, Serum is perfect for that. But when you have more than a dozen tracks going, is it common for people to just use a synth like Serum for every single one of those? Is it common to use Serum to make all your drum sounds too, or do people typically use samples for drums (or are there synths that are more amenable to making drum sounds?)? I guess what I'm saying is: it feels like I can do everything with Serum. Is it common to work this way, or are there other instruments/tools that I should try to learn to be more productive?
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Jun 29, 2017 15:43
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I don't think that's especially common. Samples for drums will always be a popular option, because of the convenience and the wide range of sounds you wouldn't easily get out of a single synthesis engine. There is also a bunch of plugins that might not only be more convenient for specific tasks, but also less heavy on the cpu than some major general purpose flagship synth. On the other hand, if you feel everything you want is easily within reach using Serum only, there's no pressing need to change anything. I really like Drumatic for drum synthesis. Generally, even the same synth engine with a different user interface will make you end up with different sounds. That's a thing you can use to your advantage if you like.
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Jun 29, 2017 16:18
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It makes perfect sense that different interfaces influence your output. I guess the main thing is that I don't know what I'm actually missing out on with my current flow. I'm so new to this that, if I find something difficult or non-intuitive, I don't know whether it's because I'm just inexperienced or that I'm using the wrong tool for the job. How do y'all learn about new tools? Also I will check out drumatic, thanks! Is it easy to explain what makes it good for drum sounds specifically, or do I just need to use it to understand?
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Jun 29, 2017 16:49
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giogadi posted:Also I will check out drumatic, thanks! Is it easy to explain what makes it good for drum sounds specifically, or do I just need to use it to understand?  If I want to make a drum sound from scratch, I don't have to find out what a typical setup would look like, because it's already there. A tonal component, a transient component and two noise sections. All layered in parallel, going through three separate parallel filters, with all relevant envelopes properly visualised. Signal flow is left to right. I don't have to map or route anything myself. There are basically limited selections and ranges of everything. You see how on the middle envelope you've got that repeated start? That's a typical element of a clap sound. It is only available on the 'clap' tab because it doesn't make sense anywhere else. And it cleverly incorporates pre-sampled partials where it adds color that is hard to get with basic waveforms. It's also in what isn't there. A modulation matrix or LFOs or filter types you won't be using aren't cluttering up your interface. It doesn't bother with effects, because you probably have excellent ones built into your DAW anyway. It doesn't bother with a built in sequencer, because you're in a god drat DAW. If you want to load samples, complement it with one of the numerous (drum) sampler options; this is a drum synth. Of course you have a reasonably full electronic drum kit in a single instance of the plugin with multiple outputs. With the sounds already mapped to the keyboard according to the General Midi standard (remappable should you want to). Leaving you the choice of putting all your different drum notes in a single clip or not, depending on what you prefer. It doesn't help at all that most other drum synths really have poo poo interfaces and/or limited options, often because they want to skeuomorphically imitate some classic hardware counterpart or are covered in programmer art. I hope I conceptually made my point, but it really can't hurt to get in there, set up some drum pattern and then twist and drag what can be twisted and dragged and right click stuff to see what's what. As far as I'm concerned it's got what I need where I want it. Can it do everything? Definitely not. Will it cover 85% of your electronic drum needs without even going into samples? Probably, yeah. It has a handful of preset kits, but you could probably recreate each of them in ten-fifteen minutes from scratch if you knew exactly what you wanted. I can imagine making a drum sound in a general purpose synth, but just setting up a whole kit from multiple instances seems like a huge hassle in comparison.
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Jun 29, 2017 19:48
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I think there is a lot of value in minimizing the number of tools you use, especially at first, because it helps you maximize what you can get out of each one. By all means explore other options if you like, but you shouldn't feel like anything is wrong with sticking with what you've already got. I think a good point to explore other options is when you feel like you haven't been improving for a while. Not that something new will make you better in and of itself, but that's a good time to broaden your horizons.
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Jun 30, 2017 02:47
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giogadi posted:I'm a complete newbie to electronic music production, and I'm having a lot of fun messing around with the trials for Ableton and Serum. It's easy for me to see that, if I need a synthy lead or bassline sound, Serum is perfect for that. But when you have more than a dozen tracks going, is it common for people to just use a synth like Serum for every single one of those? Is it common to use Serum to make all your drum sounds too, or do people typically use samples for drums (or are there synths that are more amenable to making drum sounds?)? It's not very common to use only one tool (like Serum) to create all of your tracks. While Serum is incredibly versatile and you COULD create a track using nothing but Serum, you are going to find that while it is great for a lot of things, there are other tools (even Native DAW tools) that will provide a better workflow or a more intuitive method for certain elements. You can definitely make drum sounds in Serum and it can be a lot of fun, but unless you want to spend every waking moment creating your own samples, this is going to get boring quick. You are most likely going to want to work with samples at some point and for that, you will want to use something like the Ableton Simpler/Sampler or work with the audio directly. In addition to the instruments you will use to build tracks, each track is going to have its own set of effects and routing. There are a lot of effects that come with the various DAWs as well as an overwhelming number of plug-ins. I would highly recommend creating a splice account and experimenting with some of the free plugins they have on their site. The gear that you get is going to be directly related to what you want to do with music. Are you interested in sound design? Production? Mastering? Writing music? Or some combination of those? Depending on your goals, you will want to prioritize gear that will help you best achieve them.
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Jun 30, 2017 03:00
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Just so we're clear: probably 99% of tracks use samples for drums. Sometimes it's a mix of sampled/synthed, but the vast majority of producers will reach into the sample bucket for percussion.
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Jun 30, 2017 09:19
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Thanks a lot for the insight everyone! And I really appreciate the write-up on drumatic; I have a better idea now of what makes a tool right for the job. I'm gonna play with both sampling and drum synthesis and see how they feel.
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Jun 30, 2017 15:58
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While it's not a normal way to work, every once in a while picking a single vst and trying to make a 1 minute long bit of track only using that is a great exercise and forces you to think about how sounds fit together differently.
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Jul 6, 2017 19:26
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That's how this thing came about : https://soundcloud.com/wayfu/operator-rough?in=wayfu/sets/variety-of-sound All Ableton Operator
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Jul 6, 2017 19:39
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That's one of my production favourite games to play! Although, it can be taken a little too far: https://soundcloud.com/ynohtna/aleph-null-bow-cell
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Jul 6, 2017 19:54
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So I decided to sign up for Sam Matla's EDM Foundations course. It's pricey for something you could probably get from watching a lot of free stuff on youtube, but I found it pretty helpful. He walks you through creating 3 different songs, which are all pretty generic and not great. A house track, a dubstep track, and then a trance track. Then the idea is you do your own track alongside them. I found the exploration of the process really expanded my knowledge about arranging and mixing. Here is the track I made: https://soundcloud.com/distantprojections/lateral-discourse
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Jul 7, 2017 01:18
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Today I watched the SynthMania video Keyboard playing techniques to emulate other instruments, and I realize it kind of blew my mind. While I did know many of the basic things (slightly offset the notes in a guitar chord to simulate a pick running across strings), I learned a lot of cool new bits besides. It made me realize that one thing I wish I had when I was new to this was an 'Encyclopaedia of Sounds'. That is, a vocabulary list of common instruments (acoustic and synth'd) and sounds, with perhaps some real world examples, typical uses, and practical advice. Preferably with some kind of reverse lookup method. Like if you submitted actual audio of the Seinfeld intro, or a search string of 'Bass guitar sound Seinfeld', it would bring up the M1 Bass sample. One of the consistent hurdles I experienced when learning was the 'reverse lookup' of sounds to figure out how to make them. Sure that smooth 80s piano in that song I like was great and I'd like to learn it, but if I didn't know terms like 'Rhodes' or 'Electric Piano' to start with (or didn't realize the sound was one of those), it took me a long time to figure out what it was I was actually looking for. And that was quite frustrating. Now, I know sites like SynthMania exist, but the 'reverse lookup' problem still occurs. Is there any teaching tool out there that are good when you don't know you don't know something?
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Jul 14, 2017 17:37
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https://soundcloud.com/tace/stormbridge-v1
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Jul 26, 2017 10:39
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Were you aiming for this thread? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3360414
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Jul 26, 2017 12:37
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JVNO posted:Now, I know sites like SynthMania exist, but the 'reverse lookup' problem still occurs. Is there any teaching tool out there that are good when you don't know you don't know something? This problem will always be there and it will only get worse because the variety of tools is only increasing. Back in the late 70s some (jazz fusion) albums would have instruments listed per track, and then even frustrating poo poo like "Moog synthesizer played by blah blah" (which Moog you fookin' weapon) would appear, giving you no clue what something sounded like. The only thing that helps is experience. Listen to sounds - any combinations of waveforms with several tuning options and that's just for subtractive. Apply effects - what happens to a saw wave when you put distortion on it? What happens if you do that with two detuned saw waves? What if you put reverb before the distortion, or after the distortion? It's not boring because you can discover an immense range of sounds that way, but it is very time-consuming. I listen to the sound. First I mentally try to strip away the effects. Then I try to determine if it can be done with subtractive synthesis because I am lazy and subtractive is easy. If the sound does not exhibit typical FM, sampled or wavetable properties I don't use those methods because as said, I am lazy and if you cannot hear the difference, why bother. Unless producers go out of their way to achieve something incredibly peculiar - i.e. Autechre but why emulate them anyway, not gonna work - it can usually be approximated. Also, what most people tend to forget: layering is a thing and you are not obliged to get all aspects of a sound out of a single device. Laserjet 4P fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Jul 29, 2017 |
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Jul 29, 2017 20:44
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Spoke Lee posted:This was really good. Do you have a SC or anything? Hey sorry didn't check the thread for months, thanks a lot! I haven't really done much else in the same vein or much in a while but here's my soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/partybrian5000 Also I'm WIP on something along the same lines I'm having trouble turning into a whole track: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6564397/Duty%20Calls.mp3
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Aug 1, 2017 17:27
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I have been working on this little thing for a minute and I think i'm going to take a break from it for a week. https://soundcloud.com/downpour/170805a/s-vc9U9 If anyone has any comments or feedback about what works and what doesn't i'd love to hear it! I think the arrangement could be tidied up a bit and there are a couple synth sounds I think need a tweak and rethink, but it's coming together (i think?)
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Aug 6, 2017 02:39
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Diggin' this, subtle and balanced. Feel like it hits the right note, dark but not dreary. The Super-Id posted:So I decided to sign up for Sam Matla's EDM Foundations course. It's pricey for something you could probably get from watching a lot of free stuff on youtube, but I found it pretty helpful. He walks you through creating 3 different songs, which are all pretty generic and not great. A house track, a dubstep track, and then a trance track. Then the idea is you do your own track alongside them. I found the exploration of the process really expanded my knowledge about arranging and mixing. ------------------- EDIT: gently caress it I'll post in the other thread, they are hip hop beats Radio du Cambodge fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Aug 15, 2017 |
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Aug 15, 2017 01:44
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Radio du Cambodge posted:Diggin' this, subtle and balanced. Feel like it hits the right note, dark but not dreary. Thanks, I'm glad some people like it, as I want to make weirder stuff, and it's a challenge I'm enjoying so far.
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Aug 17, 2017 08:11
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I really want to re-create the bass in this Razer Tutorial with Metro Boomin. It is just a preset from Nexus called "Pridz Sidechain Bass" but it has a deep, subby tone that I am looking for. I don't have Nexus but am looking to re-create it in Serum if someone can give me a few tips. I am terrible with bass sounds.
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Aug 31, 2017 02:46
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MrSargent posted:I really want to re-create the bass in this Razer Tutorial with Metro Boomin. It is just a preset from Nexus called "Pridz Sidechain Bass" but it has a deep, subby tone that I am looking for. I don't have Nexus but am looking to re-create it in Serum if someone can give me a few tips. I am terrible with bass sounds. You've totally lost me. What Razer tutorial? And is the sound from Razer or Nexus? Sounds from Razer can be really tough to recreate, since it's an additive synth.
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Sep 1, 2017 04:34
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Do you mean Razer, the PC peripheral company, or Razor, the NI Reaktor Instrument? It sounds like you're talking about this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HgV0uyHwt0 ???
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Sep 1, 2017 09:44
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I meant Razer tutorial as in these: https://youtu.be/jnt7GddUSDM The sound is from the Nexus VST synth he shows in the video. Edit: Yah, exactly what well why not posted. MrSargent fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Sep 1, 2017 |
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Sep 1, 2017 16:00
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Eric Danger posted:Sounds from Razer can be really tough to recreate, since it's an additive synth. It does have that safe bass feature which is super dope. That kind of sound is pretty simple in massive - stack a couple oscillators detuned half way between sine & square & filter the poo poo out of it. The filter has a slightly slow attack and a little lfo over it. maybe double filter it and put some amp modeling/distortion in between the two to warm it up. if each filter is modulated differently and the distortion is subtle you can get some great movement out of it and it should sound pretty huge. It's going to need a shitload of EQ.
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Sep 1, 2017 19:58
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Radio du Cambodge posted:... Hey, thanks for the feedback on this. Percussion is definitely something I feel lost with a lot. As I've moved further away from having made this the drums have definitely stood out as one of the weaker elements. I also think the exhausting feeling comes from the whole thing being a little more repetitive than I had originally intended. I think I started with a shorter loop than I could have to give the whole thing a more dynamic feel. Could you elaborate on what you mean about the instruments not feeling coherent? Is it that they don't sit well together in the mix, or that the sounds just don't seem like they belong together in a song? Thanks again for listening and commenting!
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Sep 6, 2017 20:34
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| # ? May 25, 2024 05:18 |
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Hello thread! I have been thinking about producing music for quite a while. I'd like to create remixes of songs (currently inspired by those 80s versions of pop songs floating around Youtube), and learn how to compose my own music (no genre in particular, but I'd like to create original scores for, say, fantasy/sci-fi stories). If I am to start with, say, a $100 budget, what can I reasonably get? I'm thinking of getting a MIDI controller and a software suite, but I don't know which one. I don't plan on getting actual instruments either. I have an entry-level Windows gaming laptop, if that helps. Thanks! Lily Catts fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Sep 8, 2017 |
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Sep 8, 2017 03:51
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