Harmony

The transitions are so friggin' nice. I love how even when the lead drops out, we get that little hint of the theme in the subtle distorted synths. That's just awesome writing. And 3:58-4:40 = Hot. My favorite Rayza mix? Yeah, probably.

Trent Reznor has no space. so unless your place looks like that, you need to find a wall or a roomate or or something to tack the Trinity to

Nice photography. In addition the equipment question ^ I'm curious as to what type of post-processing was done on the model photos to get that perfectly creamy skin.

Is the link busted for anyone else, or is that just me?

From their licensing page, iZotope appears to be just as focused on audio processing research as on plugin development. “VocalRemover” appears to be just a name for an algorithm that they’ve developed that a plugin designer can purchase a license for and integrate into a usable plugin. That would explain why they mention that VocalRemover is available “in both SDK [software development kit] and embedded implementations” Anyone got any Windows API programming experience?

Around 25:00 when the lead fell into almost a slow motion droning, the haunting rendition of the theme almost felt familiar…until the note at 26:47 hung for what seemed like an eternity of unresolved melody. What an enveloping piece. Nice work CotMM.

~Soy un hombre muy honrado, que me gusta lo mejor Ahh, didn't catch those before. Very nice indeed.

It was a 60Hz hum, so if you were listening on cheap headphones or speakers with underrepresented bass it may not have been that noticeable.

RX looks useful, and you’re right it doesn’t’ look like it uses the stereo channel inversion, but I don't think its algorithms necessarily mean the vocal removal tool will be that great. It looks like they are doing 2 things to removed the background noises with spectral repair: 1) sampling the offending frequencies and quieting them, similar to what can be done with a multiband compressor 2) interpolating the good frequencies through the gap to preserve more of the sound you actually wanted, like what they showed at the end with fixing the gap in the opera singer sample. If indeed that is the majority of what they are doing, then I think it would be difficult to apply the same thing to a mix and isolate the vocals. In their example, there was a low-mid freq piano with some high freq noise. Not a really big challenge to pick the right frequencies and kill them. In a typical song though, guitars, pianos, synths, drums, and a ton of other things can share the same frequency space with vocals so it's a real headache to pull them out via frequency spectrum analysis. [/naysaying] I am impressed with their buzz removal tool. The one I use in CoolEdit 2000 (admittedly very old) cuts a lot of high freqs and leaves most samples sounding like a 64kbps mp3. iZotope's was pretty transparent from what I heard.

Oh yeah, and the one thing I wish that every sequencer had is FL Studio's "slide" notes. So simple. So useful. Rather than fighting SONAR to get the same job done, there has been many a time where it has been easier for me to open FL Studio, import a midi track, apply slides, export as audio, and bring it back to SONAR. I didn't see anything like that in SONAR 7's new features list. Geez Cakewalk, get on the ball. Unless I'm missing some simple equivalent in SONAR that everyone knows about except me?

True indeed. Fortunately, SONAR 7 looks to have also .

Zircon. As far as I know, the note velocity editing in Sonar 6 is pretty limited. I would love to be able to click a few notes and change only their velocities in the controller/velocity pane as in FL Studio. The other functions you mentioned though are similar in Sonar 6. Using only the draw tool in PRV: * Left click to create a note. SONAR: same * Left click and hold while creating a note to drag it around; as you move through new pitches, you hear the note sound off. (VERY IMPORTANT!) SONAR: no equivalent but is accomplished by next bullet * Left click and hold on an existing note to move it. SONAR: same * Left click and hold from the right edge of a note to resize it. SONAR: same. Also, clicking near left edge resizes from left. * Left click and hold through the velocity lane to edit an entire group of note velocities at the same time. SONAR: same. group not selectable though, i.e. all notes in that time range are affected. * Left click on an existing note to hear it sound off. Preview duration is based on how long you hold. SONAR: same * Right click and drag through the velocity lane to create a smooth line. SONAR: alt+left click. * Right click to delete a note. SONAR: alt+right click * Mass velocity editing by pressing Ctrl+X (scale velocities); change relative dynamics, do an offset, etc. SONAR: similar, but slower. velocity editor is accesed through main menu * One-click quantizing to snap value OR to customizable grooves. SONAR: same. never used the grooves though so I'm not sure how easy it is to use.

Whatever my favorite guitar is at the time; currently it's my Fender DG-20CE. Pretty much every piece of music I've written in the last 5 years has started out as a melody that was played first on guitar then translated to whatever. The fact that I can play it anywhere, without power, makes it tremendously useful. The fact that I can also take the same instrument that I used as a sketchpad and use it in the final mix, makes it invaluable to me.

Way too soon for me. I'm gonna have to let my Sonar 6 box collect a little dust before upgrading Yeah I'd like to know how they worked that out. In 6 they seemed to claim that the lack of true sidechaining was a limitation of DX and VST architechtures (see the sonitus gate help menu). Yeah, MIDI cut/glue/mute looks nice, the new velocity editing will probably get used a lot, and I will welcome the multiple controller panes in the piano-roll with open arms. But honestly, aside from personal preference, I've never really understood the supposed advantages of the FL Studio piano-roll to that in previous Sonar versions, especially Sonar 6. What is 7 bringing that will change the PRV workflow that significantly? What was Sonar 6's PRV missing that prevented the same workflow speed as FL?

Aww c'mon MikeV! <shakes head> You had me fooled. And that's all I'll say about that. In the interest of constructive criticism, here we go: You're missing tune, tone, and technique. Like Electric Zer0Bit said, your axe is out of tune. Once that's fixed, tone is easy enough to improve. With that really weak sounding distortion, or anytime you want some good-n-powerful rhythm guitars, you're going to need to layer them. Record the same part at least three times and pan them symmetrically (one hard left, one hard right, one center). If you've never done it, you will be blown away by the difference in can make. That will even help mask minor tuning issues. Also, play around with the eq on the distortion pedal/amp/VST/whatever. Pick a song you like and try to get it to sound like that. This this and this might help with getting a good tone. As far as technique goes, you've gotta get some other chords in there, you've gotta play them more cleanly and you've gotta give them some life! Palm mute some of them, try strumming above the pickups, or closer to the bridge. Try slightly bending some of the power chords. And do me a favor, if you're going to only play simple power chords, at least add a 9 or 6 in there once in a while. It'll sound cool, give you some variety and let people know that you know a little something about your instrument. Example: Change this: 577XXX to this: 579XXX or this: 587XXX The backing track isn't all that terrible so far, assuming this is in its earlier wip stages. It's just really weak and in need of some meat. Beef up the bass with some distortion, layering or even a little chorus. And you have to compress those drums. With metal, I don't think you can go wrong in this area. Set the ratio to something ridiculous like 20:1, drop the threshold until you think the drums sound squashed...then drop it another 10dB and you're good

Gotta disagree with MikeViper on that one. If you're going to play power chords your entire life then fine, you don't need chords, but by the same token you wouldn't need a tutor or tutorials either. IMO, One of the first and most important things for you to do is learn the basic chords Am,A,C,D,Dm,E,Em,G and how to transition smoothly between them. With that, you'll be able to play a decent amount of popular music. When your fingers get used to the feel of those chords, move on to some tougher ones like F,Fm,B,Bm (these require using your pointer finger to 'bar' some strings which can be tricky at first) and then you'll be able to play an overwhelming majority of just about anything. Power chords are the basis for those last four chords btw. In anycase, once you start learning about modes, scales, add9 dimished 13 blah blah blah, I think you'll find that having a good fundamental knowledge of simple chords will only help move you along even faster. To summarize: 1) Learn to play Am,A,C,D,Dm,E,Em,G 2) Learn to play F,Fm,B,Bm 3) ... 4) Profit

Had it and it worked fine but I returned it after finding a good deal on a better interface. Just so you know, the ua-1ex is usb 1.0. That shouldn't negatively affect latency (I got 2.9ms with the AISO drivers), but it won't allow you to have simultaneous I/O at 96kHz, say, for recording live vocals during your sets. Why would you want to record at 96kHz during a live show? I dunno, just something to consider

I agree, FL Studio is a good low priced sequencer that's great for beginners and veterans alike. If you have the money though, I prefer Sonar. It has always been more usable to me for my style of music making. As far as hardware, if you want to record the sounds from the Casio, in addition to the MIDI cable you're gonna need an audio cable to connect the output of your keyboard to your soundcard. What type of cable depends on your soundcard. Looks like that keyboard has a 1/4" lineout jack, so one end of the cable should be a 1/4" male plug. The other end connects to your soundcard's input/line-in/etc jack so you need to make sure the other end of the cable will fit, or at least buy the correct adapter. If you haven't seen the tweakheadz guide to the home studio, it's an excellent resource for beginners. If you start with the intro and read the first few "lessons" you should be up and running in no time. Have fun.

Right, but specifically it usually means to progressivly decrease the volume of the frequencies beyond some threshhold. In your case, you could have done what Zircon suggested by applying a highpass filter starting at 40Hz. Then, stuff at 40Hz gets reduced a little, 30Hz gets reduced more, 20Hz gets reduced even more, etc. Its easy to see in a graphical equalizer. In this image, the low-freq roll-off basically starts at 70Hz for the pink and orange curves.

So...you're already 33% done with your life. Nice! Here's to the other 67%. Cheers.

Nice Sonic 1 TAS. I especially like the fall through the bricks trick at 4:41. 7:53 is cool too. Happy b-day. Welcome to the end of your "early" 20s.

For Harmony's defense, he's probably about as busy as I am with studies. Sadly that's true. In fact, the only thing harder than grad school is trying to figure out all of the time signatures in Sam's Hunter's Community Chest

HaPPY B-DaY (please resubmit...more mixes)

Yeah, it sounds like that's exactly what they're doing; using triggers and environment to control limiters, eq, etc. Very cool. Here's a rundown of the first 50min (total 117min) of the podcast in case anyone wants to skip to the music related stuff: 16:50 Marty interview starts 23:36 Marty talks about his part in Halo 3 audio production and vg music in general. 31:20 Talks about his creative process as a composer in general and for the E3 trailer 35:30 Gives his 2 cents on vg audio from other composers/games 37:20 Marty discusses what he calls the "mistake" of the "non-stop" music in Japanese games 38:55 Discusses writing music thats not annoying when looped, and designing interactive music 47:11 Talks about how music has changed over the past 15 years and the dawn of the digital age 47:55 Starts talking about Halo 3's use of Waves plugins. 53:15 While Marty is talking about designing environmentally accurate audio, Brandon gets tired and stops the podcast

Screw X-Fi. For my money, its SoundBlaster Live ftw.