Splunkle

Everynow and then there is a thread that comes up that has a bunch of really good techniques. For example, there was one a while back about how to program for guitar on the piano roll. It stayed up the top for a week or so, then disapered under a mass of nooby threads. Its probably deleted now. Anyways, my point is that even if this did nothing but mirror those most excellent threads, it would be worth its weight in gold. So I say, go crazy.

Yes, yes, yes. Much much better than when I last heard it. Can't remember when that was. ANYWAYS: Love the piano chord change - Along with the new piano bits, it really fixes up that problem with the track not going anywhere. I think there is one note that is off towards at the end, around 1:15. But the second half, from when the bass and stuff come in, just isn't as good. I'm quite sure there is stil some sort of timeing badness going on there. And it still sounds disjointed. The bass does sound better though. So keep at it. The first half, apart form the one note, is officially awesome.

Just a quick note: If something is clipping, drop a fruity soft clipper on the FX channel. Its a soft limiter, which means it compresses gradually as the signal apporaches the threshold. I doesn't effect the sound too much, unless you put WAYYYY to much through it, and its really easy on the CPU as well. I would still reccomend using a compressor for the master track, but Fruity soft clipper is rather nice for individual FX channels where I just want something to stop clipping. Good luck with the reworking!

Doomsday has it right, but I'll just talk a bit more here, as you seem a little confused. Effects are thigns that change sounds - delay, reverb, distortion and the like. Automation is something that controls a parameter. Since tempo is a parameter, you want to automate it. One way is the event editor. Another way is to use automation clips. I suppose you could even bind it to another controller, but that would end up with WHACK effects.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean that they oscillate up and down in time with the beat? If so, then just whack down an fruity peak controller, set the LFO to the time you want - it will tell you how large the period is in beats:steps up in the info box. Then just link the right controller to the LFO of the Fruity Peak Controller. Easy. Well, for volume and panning anyways. Delay is already in time with the beat - see how it says 3 steps? That means it delays the note 3 steps before playing it again. Phasing and flanging is tricky. Your best bet would be to find some VST that has speed in steps, not seconds or hertz.

How about a .RAR as well? That should be fairly easy. And everyone can use a RAR.

Okay, while the heartbeat kick drum is nice, some may disagree with the way its half out of sync with the piano. But I like it. Vocal sample struck me as cheesy. Others may like it though, so if it rocks your boat, leave it. Very nice drop into the main theme... but then it just kinda stays there. Where are we going? Sure, a lot of ambiant tracks don't have that much direction, but that melody there is full of direction. It goes somewhere... but the track doesn't follow. It just repeats. =/ Don't be afraid to write a whole bit to follow on form the introduction. Even if its all orginal, its interpretation, so its all good. Hell, its to be encoraged. Write some nice bridgey bits for that piano to go between the parts, so it doens't sound so disjointed. Mad props go to that backing thing - sounds like some kind of FM xylophone, but I can't be sure. Hey! the ending has direction. The two pads kinda swell up a bit much... you might want to compress them a little. But the track just kinda ends. 'Salgood, since this is a WIP, but make sure you fix it. Summary: you have the atmosphere thing fairly downpat, but work on the direction a bit more.

Just finished listening. Another quality episode, so good work guys. But I was wondering if I could get some sound bites from flow basket, so we could post them everytime somebody makes a thread in remixing called "FLstudio vs Reason?" or something similarly annoying. I would do it myself, but I'm away from my music machine with its wave editors...

I <3 the metroid prime 2 opening theme, so I'm rather familar with the soruce. It is one of those themes that seems deceptively simple, but is actually really freaking pro. But enough of this, onto the mix itself: Timing is definatly strange. Check your time signature, and make sure everything is coming in when it should. Something is off, but I can't put my finger on it. Also the mix is REALLY empty. But not in a good way. If you are going for that ambient soundscape thing, fill it up with the appropriate backing stuff - light percussion (hevay filtering is your freind), paddy things, or random sound FX - just try not to make it sound to corny. Also remember that Reverb is usually very important in an ambient song - so make sure its sounds good and consistant. Else it will sound disjointed. As for arrangement, you haven't really done much here. There is a bit of nice stuff going on at the end with the piano, but that needs to happen earlier, and there needs to be more of it. I know its hard, because the theme is kinda crazy, but keep at it until you get some results. With hard work, this could be awesome. Keep at it.

If you are running one process, its better to have a really fast single core. But nobody does that anymore. Oh sure, FL isn't optimised for using both cores... its not that big a loss though. Think about it. How much crap are you running in the background? Virus scanner, firewall, internet browser, word processor, etc, etc. All those can run on your other core, while FL runns on one. Now, I doubt that lal your background crap will use much of the total capacity of the core. But its not like the core is doing nothing but twiddling its thumbs. So generally, its better, in terms of dollar performance, to go dual core. Unless you get a really cheap single core or something.

If you are using a front audio output for you headphones, its probably noise from your computer. I noticed that I was getting some noise whenever my hardrive was reading or writing... so now I use the back port for my headphones. Bit of a tangle if I want to change to speakers, but totally worth it for sound quality.

To be fair, Compy, he didn't say there isn't anything written about it, just that he couldn't find anything. Subtle difference there. Anyways, QK, this question has been answered many a time before. What you want is a compressor, or limiter. I owuld recoomend you go check out part 5 (I think, might be part 4) of Zircon's tips and tricks. Its stickeyed up at the top of the forum. That should explain what compressors and limiters do, and how they work. Then play around with them until you vaugely know what you are doing, and if that doesn't work, then come back here and talk to us. Cool?

Nice find, very old school.

Voted. Currently you guys are sitting in at number 10. Good job.

Many ideas. NFI which one is right. Post up a .flp and lets have a look at that, hmmm? Also, you should probably have asked this over at the FL sticky.

That entire second paragraph of the first tutorial makes me want to stab something in the face. The paragraph on clipping and normalisation is similar. That being said, your second tutorial - though its really more of a bunch of collected thoughts - makes some good points, particularly on repitition. But a few corrections for the first tutorial: 1) While Fruityloops and Reason are the largest camps in game-mixer-ville, there are other camps. And claiming Reason is better for you if you have some form of MIDI input, while fruity is better if you don't is downright silly, not to mention the following claim that "People with a lot of musical experience, or people with a background of playing keyboard will probably feel limited with fruityloops". WTF. The main differences between the two programs are design philosophy and interface. In brief: Fruity tries to let everything plug into it, and its interface tends to oragnise everything into "pages" or "tabs". Reason tries to do everything it needs to internally, and tends to emulate hardware in interface, which usually means everything is front of you at once. 2) Normalisation does not remove clipping. Nor does it prevent it. In fact, it has absolutely nothign to do with clipping, save that they are both related to volume. Normalisation is just a process whereby the loudest peak of the song is brought up to a predefined level, usually -0.2dB or thereabouts. Notice how I said "brought up". If your song gets quieter when you normalise, you have done something very, very wrong. 3) Compressors aren't Limiters. Similar, but different. This has been explained far better by others, so I will merely tell you to go look at Zircon's mixing tips part 5. 4) Your analogy between overdrive and clipping is kinda dodgy - yes, they are both produced by pushing the volume high, but they are VERY different in both sound and how they are produced. In all honesty, I can't reccomend people read the first one. Theres just too many glaring errors and instances of opinion stated as fact. I appreciate that you probably just want to help people get started - but it is rather important to get it right.

Yes. From the Fruity loops help file:

FX is often needed regardless of the synth or sample - it depends on what sound you are going for. Why do people thnk soundfonts are special? They are just a sample format; that is all they are. To get an idea of when to use FX, read Zircon's guide on the matter, its in the stickies. That should at least point you in the right direction.

It does work. I've seen it work with FL 5 and Reason 2.5. Make sure you have everything set up correctly, then just change the tempo in fruity using the event editor. The problem is that Reason does some strange things when you change the tempo mid-song, particularly with the delay unit. So as Mr. Zenith said, be careful.

Uhhhhh.... I think he is talking about volume when he says "high" and "mid". I think he wants to make the quiet bit louder. In which case, he has a few options: 1) Leave it alone. Depending on style, mood, etc, it could still be good quiet. But it is, of course, your own choice. 2) Automate the Volume. Just crank the volume up during the quiet bits. Easy. 3) Compression. This is really, really easy. Also, its not reverse - what you want to do is just normal compression. Lets revise a little, hmmm? Taken from Zircon's mixing tips part 5: So what you want to do is LOWER the THRESHOLD value so it is beneath the level of the quiet bits, and then SET the RATIO so that the louder bits are still noticably louder, but not too much louder, and then BOOST the GAIN so everything sits at a nice volume. Easy. I'm not familar with the Reason compressor, as its new to 3.0 and I'm only a little familar with 2.5, but the knobs shoud still be called the same thing. EDIT: yes, compressors always effect the high volumes - but thats the point. By making them quieter, you bring them closer to the low volume parts. Then you boost the whole lot by increasing the gain.

Is there any way to make a note crescendo in the middle of it without having to use the event editor? Yes.... sorta. By playing with your volume envelope, you can get it to cresendo mid-note - but it will do that for every note. You could clone the channel though, have one cresendo midnote, the other not. Then use each when necessary. You could also drop a slide on the same note with increased volume - that could sound dodgy though, depending on the instrument. Is there a way to have a note only play as long as its respective note in the piano roll shows? Does it depend on the instrument? I'm trying to get a TS404 to have a sharp beginning and ending. Most instruments do play for as long as the note is held, the TS404 is the exception, not the rule. The TS404's sustain time will end either when you release the note, in which case it moves onto the release parameter, or when its time is up, when it will go onto the realase bit again. You can mitgate this somewhat by just setting the sustain knob to max, but there will still be an upper limit. If you want an abrupt ending, then make sure the release is set to zero. How do you make/use automation clips? I saw a little about it in the beginning of this thread, but I'm still confused about it. Firstly, if you're happy with the even editor, you can use that for everything auto clips do. But auto clips are more convinient for some stuff, so heres how you do them: 1) right click on the knob you want to automate. 2) select "make automation clip" 3) put the automation clip in the playlist. They go in the bottom bit, like audio clips. 4) make the auto clip so it does what you want it to. I won't describe how to do that, it is all fairly easy. I should probably be PMing Rellik for this one, but here goes anyway... How do you do those awesome glitching effects like in Mirror and Transparent by Rellik? Don't know that track, nor have any pratice at glitching, but I think it can be done with dedicated effects (VST's and so forth, or the fruity granulizer), crazy event editoring (I'm thinking volume control and some spastic settings on the LFO command), automation (Fruity formula controler ), or simple manipulation of audio clips in the playlist. Just a few ideas to get you started. EDIT: This thread may be of interest to you, as its talking about a glitcher.

I also use FL studio for everything. Not that I have anything posted on OCR, yet. But I do have a two WIPs you could check out, if you click the linky in my sig. Declaration of Intent uses The Papelmedia Ahhh Choir soundfont, few sampels from old drum and a huge number of synths and samples that came with fruity. I <3 Sytrus. Electrosonic Therapy uses the jr_electric_piano soundfont from Darkesword's site (thanks, Darke) and a bunch of native FL stuff. Both only use the FX that came with FL studio, with the exception of the PSP vintage meter VST. But you only want something like that if you are crazy fussy about your levels like me. Out of interest, what sort of music are you looking at making? Because if you are interested in making orchestral, then you are going to want different soundfonts and VST's then if you where making ambiant. Not that I am trying to suggest that you limit yourself to one area, but it helps to have direction when looking for samples and stuff, I think.

dgxdx: Yes, you usually have to add effects to get a certain sound. If everyone used dry samples, everything would sound really boring. Also, the effects used can help to produce that sound you are giong for. Listen to the style of the music you are trying to produce, and think about the important points that make it sound like that. Then use your effects to make what samples you have available sound like that. And yes, unless you have a soundfont player that can do multiple outputs, you will have to load up an instance of NS_kit7 for each FX channel you want. So if you want to process the kick, snare and cymbals differently, you would need 3 instances of kit7. Which will really hurt when it comes to RAM. =(

DGXDX: I know you are using FL studio, so I'll tell you that you can get some nice rock drum sounds out of FPC, provided you get the effects right. Try putting some very light distortion on the snare, compressing the kick drum a lot, and makign sure the EQ setting on the cymbals - especially the ride - are right. Then make sure you have your velocity settings right, and you should get some nice rock sounds. NS_kit7 is very nice, though rather large. Just google it to find it.

Thank you very much, Compy. I've grabbed that PSP vintage meter now, and it seems to be exactly what I need. For those of you you too lazy to google it, it can be found here. Also, if you are a mac user, don't panic there is a version for you guys too. 3 versions, in fact. It also does VST, so maybe they have updated it since Compy's version. Actually, I would recomend everyone gets this plugin - it is quite remarkable the different readings I am getting. -6 dB on the Fruity dB meter is coming in at 0 dB when I have it set to K-14, which would be -14 dB. Quite a difference. Aye, perhaps it is an exception, but Led Zepplin's "Remasters" was done back in 1990, so it is a reasonable volume. Especially in comparisson to The Stroke's latest single. My ear is not the best, or even anywhere near the best, and even I can hear the painful distortion going on there. But I shouldn't rant in Seph's Thread.