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Harmony

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Posts posted by Harmony

    Michael Jackson dead at 50

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Regardless of quality, even the briefest of glances at the way his music evolved in general sound and structure throughout his career amidst changing producers makes it all too apparent just how big of a role they had.
    I disagree. For a career that lasted as long as his, I don't think his core sound evolved very much at all. Especially considering that his characteristic sound came through so clearly, even when working with people notorious for coloring the sound of those they work with (Glen Ballard, I'm looking at you). The similarity across the years is actually a minor gripe I have with his work.

    But an artist's "sound" is somewhat subjective, so if you feel that his sound actually has significantly changed, how do you know that this doesn't simply indicate in large part an evolution of the artist?

    Michael Jackson dead at 50

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I've come to the conclusion that it wasn't him that I was a fan of, it was his producers. Soooo... *shrug* R.I.P.
    That's a valid point -- the people that shaped and created some of his music are epic in their own right (Quincey Jones, I'm looking at you). But with the longevity, scope and originality of his music, I can't reasonably come to the conclusion that his producers were primarily responsible for what I see as unparalleled musicianship, all the way through Dangerous.

    Is Malaise and Detachment Normal during Composition?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    I look at last.fm and see plenty of artists on there with 5-6 minute tracks that are just drone, piano, occasional sitar gliss and a bodhran. 4-5 instruments at most in some cases.

    And they're not even real pianos or bodhrans. I'd bet its someone like me doing it on FL and getting professional mastering. And they have like 9,000 listens on last.fm and 3-4 albums out.

    I hear you, and it sounds like you've got your head in the right place, but this is exactly my point about this terrible idea of quality. Brittney Spears has sold millions of records, not because of the quality of her production techniques or the instruments(or rather, of those of the people that produce for her). She creates music that lots of people enjoy, and to me that's all you can really measure if you're going to try to compare your tracks to other people's tracks. I'm not sure if it's relevant for you or not, but I just wouldn't want anyone at your level of musical proficiency approaching music making thinking that the best way to improve their sound would be to improve the "quality" of their samples or their production. To me, those are secondary to the core or the issue...making music that has some sort of indescribable instinctive connection to listeners and yourself.
    The hand drums not changing throughout Espers in the first 5 is not really accurate, but it just means my goal of changing up the rhythms without break the flow seems to have worked.
    Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that they actually don't change; they do, and I did notice that. But as you said, I don't think it was enough to keep them from sounding overly repetitive after minute 4.

    Is Malaise and Detachment Normal during Composition?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    While the songs are downloading, I'll say that regardless of what I think of the songs, I think it's a dangerous slippery slope to go around comparing your art work to others' in terms of "quality". You can't define that, and if you think in terms of your tracks having better "quality" than someone else's, that is an excellent way to drive yourself up the wall.

    All that should matter when making music for fun is whether it moves you. All that should matter if you're just trying to make money is whether it moves a lot of the people that listen to it. The best case scenario of course is to balance these two (not necessarily mutually exclusive) desires. "Quality" doesn't have anything to do with it, imo.

    I won't go into any deep critiques of the songs, but I did like them both, especially Perchance. Great mix of synthetic and organic textures, especially for the latter half. Didn't like the super plain lead that comes in at 4:10 though. It is blown out of the water by every other lead (like the violin that comes in right after it, or the flute, or whatever reed that is that comes in at 5:21), making it feel like the unwanted child.

    Espers is, for the most part, very rich. The hand percussion pattern that starts out the track goes essentially unchanged for the first 5 mins, which I understand serves as an element to ground the track, but its so strong that it stands out and starts to get slightly repetitive around the 4 min mark. I LOVE that the percussion pattern is swapped out for a chromatic percussion version of basically the same thing at 5:08. Very cool transition to the chilled extended outro.

    Hope you don't go insane before you finish the album. My tracks usually move me more in retrospect, so hopefully you get a little of that hindsight love for your music once this is all done. Good luck.

    texture?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    In this case, I think what Larry meant by fleshing out your sparse textures is that you don't have many other sonic elements other than the distorted guitar so everything sounds really same-ish. While this is definitely a cool track, it could be a lot more interesting with different sounds. Even if you still want to go the entirely guitar driven route, having significantly different FX chains on some of the guitars would mix things up a bit.

    There's also the issue of mixing that was brought up. The melodic elements, like the awesome guitar solos, are buried behind the overpowering lower freq rhythm guitars. No excuse for that man -- don't hide your most important melody-carrying elements! Listening for balance in your mix takes practice, but it's essential to producing consistently good tracks. Aside from going back and modifying the EQ and volume on some of the individual tracks, Palpable's maximizer plugin idea might help, but I'd also suggest a multi-band compressor like t-sledge (use one of the mastering presets) which can selectively lower the low frequencies, pump up the mid and high frequencies, and in general try to give you a more balanced sound.

    EDIT: Here's the link. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DR1N8OR2

    Garret, when you have a problem like that, you can click "Disable smilies in text" to keep it from automatically putting them in.

    OC ReMix Special on NEW Groove Bias Drum Library! (Now With Freebies)

    in Announcements

    Posted

    Sweet, front page video pimpage! :D

    I absolutely LOVED the Spies video. Just wanted to say that.
    I saw Harmony's video a while back and was disgustingly impressed with his playing
    Thanks :)
    I don't have any of the programs for which there are patches, and have no interest in getting them. Are the WAV files at least organized into folders? Is there any kind of naming convention otherwise?
    I can't use any of the mentioned formats, either, … Soundfonts
    The folder and naming scheme is very logical and easy to follow so if you had the raw samples, it would be incredibly easy to pick through them and throw them into whatever sampler you want. However, zircon mentioned the possibility of getting this converted to SFZ which would solve both of you guys’ problem. The player is free, the format is even more customizable than soundfonts, and in my experience, the format handles most of the features of the Kontakt library perfectly.
    I'm thinking these might be great source material for distorting and mangling into phat electronic sounds.
    tefnek’s demo is crazy phat, check that out if you haven’t already.

    Getting good bass/sub-bass sounds?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    My favorite bass waveform is constructed using one or two pulse width modulation oscillators (pulses w/ LFO -> pulse width), filtered using a lowpass filter. Very phat.
    That's pulse width modulation and that's a cool sounding effect. We'll probably cover that in another tutorial...
    My entire musical life has stagnated without the PWM tut that was promised to us. Are you holding out on us, or have you made it and I just missed it?

    Best Monitors for $350?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    I guess my question would be, how do you know that the added sub "compliments it perfectly"? Did you measure the freq response before and after adding the sub and find that you were able to get a flatter bass response without adding any unwanted peaks? If so, how did you measure that? And what about room dynamics. That is just as important as the monitors themselves.

    Best Monitors for $350?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    Also, I have a nice home theater sub I can hook up and use with the monitors, so the very low end will be taken care of.
    I'm not very experienced with monitors, but it sounds like that would defeat the purpose of buying monitors. You want an accurate response, which you're going to have a tough enough time getting with lower-end monitors. Adding bass from some random other source would probably just make that tougher.
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