Harmony

You know, I was really going for a 311 vibe. However, I've heard this mix compared to Sublime (great thing), Star Salzman (great thing) and now, thanks to Dave's writeup, the world leans towards a comparison with the Barenaked Ladies. The more I listen, the more I hear it so I'm not gonna knock it at all...as long as I can get in tune with Sailor Moon cuz' that cartoon has got the BOOM anime babes, that make me think the wrong thing No worries mate. I hereby grant anyone who quotes Damon Wayans in casual conversation the much envied privilege of of using the exclamation:Black Power!

Personally, I think the best way to go about it is by listening to the parts and trying to reproduce them by ear. It really doesn't take as much practice as you might think, just start with something simple, like a bassline. Take it note by note if you have to. Load up a bass sound in FL and play (or click) around until you find the first note of the bassline, then move to the second, and third, etc. If it's a complex or fast part, I usually record the section I'm trying to reproduce as an audio file, then slow the audio down to the point where I can wrap my head around what's going on in the mix. I also use the trick of EQing out certain instruments. Want to hear the bass without all of those whiny synths, or blaring lead? Run a lowpass filter over the source tune and you're golden. If you want to isolate the lead, you can usually do so with a good notched EQ around the mids combined with a high pass filter to cut out the low stuff. Experiment. Besides, if you do it by ear rather than finding and mangling a midi, you run a much better chance of coming across cool remixing ideas as you make "mistakes" in trying to find the right notes. You'll also get practice effectively using your samples and synths, as well as invaluable practice with listening for detail in songs.

That will do it, but you'll probably get really sloppy transitions between notes unless you actually go into graphical mode and draw in exactly the pitch changes you want. I know it's a headache compared to Retune(Speed)=0, Tracking=relaxed, DONE, but the results are much better when you take the time to do it right. No way! I didn't know they actually used Antares to do the effect. I assumed it was some fancy never-in-my-life-be-able-to-afford piece of pitch correction hardware. I now feel slightly better about the production quality abilities of my homebrew studio

Agreed with analoq. Although I try as hard as I can to play as perfectly as I can, I end up splicing chopping and otherwise modifying lots of the things I perform (piano,voice,guitar,whatever) because it's easier, and often more effective than any other more "pure" method of getting the desired final results. There's no shame in that game. Any wave editor (e.g. CoolEdit) will let you manually quantize to you're heart's content, but I have absolutely fallen in love with SONAR's (new as of version 6) function. It is ridiculously beautiful and simple to use, and can be placed on an entire track, or individual clips for more selective modifications. If you're lazy, you can simply click quantize, set the parameters, and bam! everything is moved to some "correct" timing. Of course you can also get a little more sophisticated by adjusting individual syllables of words and such. Also, the audio stretching routine used to move and correct audio timing can be adjusted to suit the type of audio (vocals, instruments, drums) and the number of artifacts it introduces is minimal at worst.

Thanks OCR, glad you’re enjoying so far! Dave, I’m thoroughly honored by that write-up, it really means a lot to me. Thanks also to Larry and the other J’s that listened to this and gave it the all-clear for a DP. Vocal Pitch-Bending: This song actually started as an attempt to figure out how to do that vox pitch bend at 0:39, and it sounds like everyone thinks the final product is just as cool as I do. I ended up recording me singing “respeeeeeeee”, then carefully looping the last part of that (the “eeeeee”) to create about a 60sec clip, then importing the entire clip into FLStudio as an audio clip. I played the audio clip in the piano roll, then used slide notes at the appropriate times to achieve the effect. The long 60sec clip was required because FLStudio’s pitch slides don’t preserve the clip length (or at least I don’t know how to make them). I like the quality of the pitch bending algorithms in SONAR better than FLStudio, so if anyone has any other suggestions as to how they’d do something similar using other methods, I’m all ears. Drum Kit: If I had it to do all over again, I’d lower the volume on the kit and cut some of the mid-highs; I agree it gets a little grating at times. However, I think the snare sample is absolutely perfect and I’ll defend that choice to the death! I think I know what you mean. The source for White Land is not only in a different key, but the lead for this mix is also played in a different key relative to the bassline. Don’t ask me to go into music theory that I don’t know, but the original had a chilled mixolydian feel to it (for the guitar folk out there). In my adaptation, I sort-of "Americanized" the lead/bass harmonies to a more simplistic major scale deal. I think that all of the harmonies work in context, but if you know and are referencing the original, they may sound odd or off. In the end though, I’ll put it out there that all of the harmonies were either intentionally constructed, or intentionally left in the mix because I liked them, and I’m glad to hear that they aren’t too bothersome <3 Larry. Thank you for your tireless defense of ReMixers against misguided or malicious reviewers. Nevertheless, rofl. Actually all of the guitar work was done with my acoustic guitar.

sig testing 1,2,3...poifect

Some of my favorites that don't really get enough love are (in order from great to not as great): Shatterhand Ice Hockey Legendary Wings Commando (needs some remixes) Life Force Elevator Action (classic) Spyhunter (classic) Lolo (simple but addictive puzzle game) Bad News Baseball (Tom and his .400 batting average = WIN) Total Recall (still haven’t completed it myself) Ultimate Stuntman Caveman Games (best played with a friend, but awesome on your own too!!) California Games (same as caveman games, with a SoCal flavor) Beetlejuice (better than first impressions might lead you to believe)

I've never heard anything but positive comments about Live, and that's more than I can say for any other popular DAW, including of course Cubase. I have Live Lite but I've never bothered to try it, primarily because I heard from what I consider a reliable source, Sound On Sound, that the Lite version doesn't support remote midi control. Ableton only says that Lite doesn't support MIDI sync, but that's not the same thing as not being able to receive and use controller data, right? All of my music equipment is in boxes right now so I can't go try it out, but can anyone confirm or refute what the SoS article says?

Hmm, surprisingly, I haven't thanked everyone yet...what kind of jerk am I !? Hoping that it's never too late, I'd like to throw a hearty Thank You out there to everyone who's taken the time to comment on or listen to NightTime Evolution. Hopefully you all will continue to enjoy for a long time to come

I have the Casio CTK-551 and if your 531 is similar to mine (they look similar from the photos on the website) then I’ll confirm that it doesn’t have a General MIDI soundset, which means that Casio put whatever sounds they wanted in whatever order. That will make it a little more difficult to properly communicate between your sequencer (Anvil) and your keyboard, but it's possible. My Casio receives program (instrument) changes just fine, but I think your problem is how the Casio uses the info it gets from the midi file. When you play midi files in Media Player, it’s probably using your onboard sounds which are general midi, so everything sounds as it should. In Anvil, if you’re playing using the keyboard sounds (not general midi), Anvil may say that program 065=orchestra hit, but the Casio might have program 065=violin (or whatever). Thus, songs written for general midi might be all jacked up when using the Casio to play them. To fix that when writing your own midi files, all you have to do is use the numbers on the keyboard itself to set what instrument you want in Anvil, not whatever Anvil says. I can’t be more specific since I don’t know Anvil, but it shouldn’t be too hard.As far as quality, I actually think some of the Casio sounds are cool; mine has a “pearl drop” and “funny” preset that are fun to play with. However, as you’re discovering, some of the sounds on your soundcard are probably better than those on the Casio. Here’s a song I made a while ago with the only the sounds from my Casio and SoundBlaster Live. Not bad if I do say so myself…and I do. So to answer your original question, yes I think you can make good remixes with what you have right now. Ultimately though, I agree with others that have said that your best bet is to go get some of the great free stuff that's out there and not use either the Casio or your soundcard’s onboard sounds. That’s not a problem, since the J’s shouldn't be concerned with their own standards, only those of the site Yeah, but their job isn’t to help every noob in noobtown (that's your job ). When it comes to the panel, It looks like I'm harsher on the inexperienced than you. I think that the panel can help a musician grow through criticism, but again, that’s not its job, and IMO those who are unsure of their abilities and have not received feedback from somewhere else should steer clear. QFT No offense intended anyone, but I wholeheartedly agree. I also wholeheartedly agree

Understandable. Try judging for 7 months. Or 7 minutes for that matter! I'm surprised some of the more senior J's are still as helpful and newb friendly as they are. What they do without the form letter, god only knows Just want to remind you that I'm primarily talking about people who are not interested in music as a career, submitting anything to this site, or even music as a serious hobby. For those types that may never step foot inside a music store, there is still a world of music making open to them. That said, I agree that the information age allows newbies to get up to speed much faster than I did, and with fewer wrong turns. That's definitely a good thing. It literally took a week for me to figure out why connecting the midi-in from my keyboard to the midi-in from my PC wasn't working Nevertheless, the intarweb has opened a whole new can of worms in the form of the information overload I spoke of before. To use your pool example: What if I just want to learn to swim, but I read tons of articles about how I can't eat 30 mins before going in, and I need the proper SCUBA gear for salt water diving, and some waters are shark infested so the proper precautions are needed, and I have to ascend slow enough to prevent an arterial gas embolism or else I'll DIE! Yeah, that's a serious case of TMI and surely with all of the new people you've helped you must have seen some of these negative effects. Nice. Again, only video evidence would prove to me that he didn't sleep through those studies Exactly. That's what I meant when I said it's not necessarily complicated, but it can be if you want it to be.

Ah cold cold Yoozer. Let the lazy people have their fun too. If learning Dance eJay* is as much effort as they want to put into it, I say have at it!...Just don't submit...please. Maybe. But I think part of the problem is the massive amount of information that newbies get that isn't necessarily directed at them. When they decide to jump into the music world, they'll Google some stuff and come across forum after forum that says that their SoundBlater is worthless, compressors are difficult to master but they are absolutely necessary to make good music, their cheap headphones will completely screw them up, theory theory theory, bits, Hertz, decibles, blah blah blah. None of that applies to a newb. So, understandably, they may come to the conclusion that without the resources or desire necessary to understand the overwhelming amount of info out there (most of which is not needed to get started anyway) they may as well not start at all. Fear based on misinformation may be self imposed, but it's not entirely their fault. I got started before Google and I had only myself to ask questions. In many ways I'm glad that I didn't have the chance to scare myself like some people do today. Pffft. Can't find the video interview I'm looking for, but I think BT would argue with you on that. Exponentially decaying gate effects indeed. video or it didn't happen.* Remember the eJay series?!!! Awesome.

I didn't mean to imply that theory would make you rigid or stifle creativity; only that it is not necessary. I hate to see people scared off thinking that they have to know this or that in order to make music. It doesn't have to be rocket science...but it can if you want it to be. Also, I'm a huge fan of understandability and repeatability, but neither is necessary to create what many consider to be great art

In spite of all of the formalism and technology attached to it, music is at its core an art. As such, to make something beautiful, you don't need anything except creativity, and the patience and practice necessary to be able to translate that creativity into a finished product using what tools you have available. Formal music knowledge, or expensive toys are in absolutely no way required. They may make things easier, but the possibility of greatness is always there without them. Just have fun and the rest will follow.

My hard disk at work just failed Thanks for the New Year's Eve gift Maxtor. /random venting

30megs? Must be a heluva marimba. Where'd you pick that up?

Call me old fashioned, but if it's a soundfont, I'd just open it up in Synthfont/Viena (or Vienna if you have a Creative card) and notch each sample (or group of samples) as I see fit. It's not elegant, but it’s simple, and provided that the soundfont is small, it's quick too.

I'm from the sovereign nation of Texas.

Wow, they really are cool!Of course any minute now we should expect a thread in PPR discussing a news story about how someone is suing the developers for offending them with religious propaganda

Fixed. It needed more Christmas cowbell Merry Christmas all!

Sir, I am in your debt. I've always glossed over that page because I assumed that when the wave profiler sets those values, it automatically optimizes them based on your soundcard. Now I see what you mean by overridding the M-Audio driver (which the lowest setting for me is 128 samples) to reduce the number of buffered samples. Awesome. As a test of the raw power of my DAW, I lowered the the 48kHz 24bit buffer sizes to 32 samples and I'm able to get 0.7ms reported latency! For some reason, lowering it further does not change the reported latency. I loaded up SFZ with ns7free kit (huge soundfont with long cpu hungry sample tails), TASCAM's GVI CV Piano (big VSTi), M-Audio's Drum&Bass Rig, a Sonitus compressor, and an FxReverb on the master bus. Even with all of that, no pops and clicks for a little 8 bar improv I did. Add another SFZ and the pops and clicks showup. Still I'm very glad that you mentioned the driver profile page By estimate I meant that the reported number is only a conversion of the buffer size to milliseconds based on sampling freq: (128samples) * (1sec / 44100samples) * (1ms / 1000sec) ~ 2.9msI don't think this takes into account AD conversion for input or DA conversion on output, so the sound you hear may be offset by something other than this reported value.

The intro to that song rocks...then it goes all typical metal and loses me around 0:58. I'm sure more experienced ears would give you better advice, but assuming you're trying to mimic the synth at 2:34 and not the intro synth, what you have sounds good to me...if a little on the flimsy side. Have you tried beefing it up with some tight chorus and a little distortion?

Nice. And hell, if Mario ain't patriotic, I don't know what is.

Yeah, I'm just looking at the values given in Sonar, which I realize are only estimates. How good of an estimate, I don't know. There should be a more precise way if someone really wanted a solid number. ha, yeah I guess "low to mid-ranged keyboards" and "Casio" are pretty much synonymous. To their credit though I was helping my mother shop for one of their Privia series digital pianos, and the PX-700 felt and sounded everything like what I would call "high-end." Plus it had MIDI ports

Happy Birthday !!!