Harmony
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Posts posted by Harmony
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Way too soon for me. I'm gonna have to let my Sonar 6 box collect a little dust before upgrading
And the fact that they finally support sidechaining in 7 is really hot imo
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).
The new PRV/smart MIDI and step sequencer supposedly make this very close to FLStudio in terms of workflowYeah, 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?
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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
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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
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I'm actually looking at this now;
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
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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.
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I tried to follow Zircon's advice as much as I could. "Roll off" means decrease right?
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.
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So...you're already 33% done with your life. Nice! Here's to the other 67%. Cheers.
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Everyone doesn't know about Upthorn's SECRET WEAPON! Speedruns!
...while...
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.
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Says the man who needs to sub some mixes as well.
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
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HaPPY B-DaY (please resubmit...more mixes)
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ok, but what's the point? seems like a waste of CPU time when you could just apply the effects and mix down.
unless they're using the EQ for room effects or something.
in which case that is cool.
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
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Screw X-Fi. For my money, its SoundBlaster Live ftw.
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...disturbing...disturbing indeed
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When I jammed with BGC at Dave's house a little while ago, I was freaked out at how musically similar Jimmy and I are. The conclusion, my friend, is that you can't have us both on the panel at the same time. Our votes would be overly synthetic and too 'in phase'You be careful there, Brandon. I'll have to beg you to rejoin the panel.
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The link seems to be working now.
Good foundation Visibore. Off the bat, I can think of a few really simple things to help this arrangement out.
First, the four instrument parts need their own sonic space. Right now everything is sitting in the center and the tone of the two guitar parts is very similar. The result is a jumbled and less interesting performance. Try panning the two guitar parts away from each other, say 60%L/R. The cello should stay relatively centered since it carries a lot of the melody, but play around with the panning on it and the strings as well until something sounds nice.
Secondly, everything sounds pretty dry. Even basic samples such as these can be brought to life with the right amount of reverb. Don't go crazy though. Classical music played from inside a cave = bad.
Third, vary the playing of the guitar parts. They pretty much play eighth notes from start to finish. Gotta switch it up sometimes!
Fourth, to further separate the guitars, try changing the eq of one of them. This will give them each their own character and will keep parts like 3:05-3:09 from sounding overly synthetic and too 'in phase'.
Hope this helps
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A buddy of mine pointed this out to me. 4Front Technologies claims to have a set of drivers that supports a number of audio cards under linux. Their "MIDI support not available" warning is kind of suspect but ignoring that, they appear to support the major Sound Blaster cards as well as some M-Audio cards, both of which are decent for remixing. Of those two brands, M-Audio has more USB options, although many of those are only USB 1.1 (if that is a concern to you).
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What a difference live guitars can make
Love the panned phaser but I could have used more bite in the distorted power chords. They seem to mush together and lose definition, especially on low notes. Probably just need to mess around with the eq.SCREW fingerpicking. =Plol. I'm loving the audio snap in SONAR 6 because it corrects all kinds of timing issues like these. If you have access to it that would be great (I think Cubase has something similar). Otherwise, you can always cut up the guitar audio clips yourself and stretch-slide-tweak until it's fingerpickin' good.
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Cool Springyard mix. Just a few quick thoughts to add to what’s already been said:
First, I don’t think the samples are your biggest concern in terms of this getting posted. The arrangement is what’s not quite there yet. For a 4min jazz song, there isn’t much soloing or improve here. That’s what jazz is al about man. Like Kanthos said, vary the rhythm, throw in some cool harmonies and expand upon the original…make it unique! 2:05-2:24 is a good example of where you’re heading in the right direction. Nice right hand piano harmony with the main theme and a solid left hand to back it up. Also to add to what Kanthos suggested, you really should head over to google video and search for “jazz drumming.” Don’t just listen…watch those guys and understand what feels natural. Try to imagine a flesh and blood human playing your drum part. As it is right now, I can’t see it, can you?
In fact, I think that the drum work is the weakest part of this mix. I don’t hear any triplets, nothing is syncopated and everything is overly quantized. Two examples that really stand out are the tom roll at 1:00 and the snare roll at 2:15. Way too simple and quantized.
Needs a little work but I really do like what I hear so far. Looking forward to updates.
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Wow, I love the ambient build through the intro that gives way to some really trick percussion at 1:08. Although I like the stutter at 1:14 because…well, I like stutters…I’m not sure it fit perfectly with the rest of the mix. A little too dry and staccato, to borrow Jill’s description.
Awesome interpretation of the source. Awesome.
It really sounds like you put some thought into synth automation and FX (lots of cool stuff going on at 1:50-2:18) so props for that. All in all, props for a really cool mix.
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Oooh, good stuff with tons of fluttery percussion and light synths for the win! Nice to see this much reverb used tastefully without mushing everything together.
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Simple and slick. I love when a mix takes a solid underlying groove (like what’s established with the synth that kicks off the source material at 0:09) and runs with it. When that foundation is setup, there’s almost nothing you can do as a musician to screw it up. The guitar breaks at 2:10 and 2:39 are needed to break the monotony and they are great in their own right.
Not sure what you were going for with the decision to add vinyl pops and hisses throughout major portions of this. Yeah, it fills out holes in the soundsscape but at the cost of sound quality. And if it was the lo-fi thing you were after, the rest of the mix just doesn’t echo that. Meh, I’m probably biased after having heard earlier versions sans vinyl effects.
Speaking of that, I have a wip of this titled “Tetraphobia WIP v2.” Where in the timeline of WIP -> VGmix -> OCRemix does that version fall?
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...I concur with my old statement of having said babies....
Yeah...about that...a coupla months ago my leg and I were molested by Taucer in the heart of DC*, and, well...I think he may already be having my man babies. Damn my sexy man voice.
*I HAVE WITNESSES!
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Where did ya go, Harmony? :J
Gone but not forgotten I see
A sincere thanks to Monobrow and everyone else who tosses this remix into the playlist every once in a while.Oh, and as soon as I work up enough cash to bribe Dave and Larry, I'll see if I can get something on the front page again
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Unfortunately, I don’t have anything too decent in the way of brass or woodwinds. Especially if you’ve already googled for them and checked HammerSound.
In defense of that site, yeah, they do have a lot of crap but it’s still a very useful resource. All of these can be found there and are, IMO, worth having on hand if you rely primarily on free samples.
- Yamaha DX7 Electric Piano
- Roland 64 Voice Piano (7mb SF that I use more than 120mb Clavinova, Maestro Concert Grand, or any other piano sample)
- Campbell’s Grand Xylophone
- Naturally Decaying Bass Guitars (very, very nice)
- Cadenza Strings
- JJ's French Horn
- Campbell's Thumb Piano (surprisingly expressive for its filesize)
- Roland Orchestral Rhythm
- BK Junk Kit
- Drum by KEN ARDENCY v2.0
- Roland TD-10 "Woody" Set
- Acoustic Percussion
- Yamaha DX7 Electric Piano
What Is Your Most Important Piece of Music Equipment/Software?
in Music Composition & Production
Posted
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.