Splunkle

I find that immersing myself in others non-musical art helps me a lot. Stories, Pictures and stuff tends to inspire me. Hell, webcomcis inspire me. No idea if it will work for you, but maybe it will. Also, SGX, you mentioned that music gives you shapes and colours in your mind or somesuch. You may be one of hte lucky people with synathesia (I think that is how it is spelt). It means "crossed senses" in greek or something, people who have it associate things to do with one sense - like colour and shapes, which are part of the vision - with things to do with another sense - like music, which is aural. My sister, for example associates colour with music and words. While it is a mental condition, it isn't anything bad; your brain isn't going to explode or anything. But you might want to mention it to your doctor or soemthing, because you might be able to score some money as a research subject or something. Apologies to Zirc for derailing his thread.

This question was unanswered way back on page 154 or something. Anyways, here is an answer: Down the bottom of the mixer, you will have 2 drop down boxes; one labeled in, another labeled out. Anyways, select the FX track you want the sound to go to, grab the in box, and set that to "microphone" or "line in" or somesuch. You may need ASIO drivers to do this, but I think its possible with DX drivers. Also not sure how bad latency is going to be. Good luck anyways.

Hot dang. bLiNd FTW. Quick question to Zircon though: You mentioned that you had a compressor and a limiter on your master track, and that the limiter was there to keep the levels in check. I was under the impression that the compressor would do that for you. But you always have some sort of reason to do something, so I am preety sure I am missing something. Would you mind bringing me up to speed?

Well, I haven't had any trouble the one time I used a Behringer mixer. But I may have just gooten lucky. But the way I understood it, plugging your electric guitar amp straight into the mixer was a Thing Not To Be Done. I'm no guitarist, but I know that a lot of the shaping of the sound comes from the cabinet, so it would probably be better to mic up your cabinet. Not sure if you can afford a mike, but it will probably be better than buying a whole new mixer. Plus you can use a mike for lots of things. Anyways, The other thing I notice is that you are using 1/4" cables. Not so hot. Last time I checked, they were unbalenced, and thus could produce a lot of noise. DI boxes fix this. Which is why, if you have one of those acoustic guitars with an internal mike and 1/4" jack at the bottom, you should have a DI box between the guitar and the mixer. I have NFI if the amp's output is balenced. It will probably be in the amp's manual, if you still have that. Also, quality mikes, like an SM57, use those funky cables with the 3 pins. They are balenced, and so don't use DI boxes with mikes. In fact, the DI boxes I used mike cables as its ouput. In short: Funky mike cables = good. 1/4" cables = bad. Yeah, I know, all the guitars have 1/4 cables going to the amp, but that is different. This quick rule is only with Mixers and the such. I think. As I said, not pro here, so if someone more pro corrects me, go with them. Another thing the hiss could be due to is your sound card. Unless you have a sound card actually desigined for recording, the line is probably going to be preety cheap, and so that could be producing the hiss. Try plugging your speakers straight into the mixer and see if that solves anything. Good luck!

The thing is, the distortion introduced by clippling can't be fixed later. But if the whole mix is quiet, that can be eaisily fixed by normalising, or by compressing, which, as Compy mentioned, are different things - they make the mix sound different in the end. Anyways, lets say you are some classical buff, and thus want your track completely undistorted, and with the dynamics the way they were recorded. Thus, you can't use compression, because that will change the dynamics, but you can normalise. But since you also must avoid clipping, what you do is record everything really low, make sure it is all balanced (you will probably need to turn up the volume on your speakers for this), and then export it. Then you normalise it, which brings the loudest peak up to -0.01 dB or somesuch, and everything else up proportionally, and you will have a track that doesn't clip and has correct dynamics. Now the normalisation will introduce some distortion, but you will not be able to hear it. I've seen tracks that peaked at -32dB be normalised fine. Compy might know just how quiet is too quiet in terms of wanting to normalise it. Now the same thing applies if you want to compress it. Just compress it, instead of normalising it. Done. Disclaimer: I am by no means an expert at mastering. If you think something I have said is wrong, please let me know so that I might learn from it.

Preety much waht Prophet said. Since it seems your sequencer wont let you do any sort of compression/limiting, just turn it all down. Make sure its still balenced, though. If you really want to compress it, you could do that on the wav in cooledit.

One last thing before this thread moves onto bigger and better things: From your discription of the Spacey music you were going for, I direct you towards Vangelis, particularly the Blade Runner Soundtrack., Argitoth

Distorted guitars are reaaly hard to sample. As such, there is nothing free out there (at least, that I am aware of) that will sound good for more than 2 notes. Synth guitars faire a little better, but you will have to lay out some cash for a good one. I only know Slayer, which, under certain very specific circumstances, sometimes doesn't sound horrible. I believe Compyfox would be the person to ask about this. But you will have to shell out some cash.

Ok, Agri, I am going to have to disagree with you. Firstly, still not sure what you mean by "spacey" sounds. But lets take something like the oringinal Dr. Who Theme, which I am fairly sure is spacey. Now it would seem to my humble ear that most of the song is rather simple waveforms (like sine, saw, square, etc) that have had layers of effects added on. Take the spooky lead thing. That sounds like a sine wave that has been filtered, and delayed, maybe verbed. Also, it helps that it slides from note to note - really adds to the spookyness of the tune. Similarly, I think all the other instruments are made the same way - simple waveformes that have then been screwed with. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_who#Music Well, according to that, there was also a piano string sample used. The thing is, all this was really simple waves, using really simple effects. But by using the effects over and over, adding layer upon layer, you can get incredible effects. you have to be really good to pull this off, though. So I have to disagree with you - effects aren't easy. At least not easy to use in this way. Perhaps we are confused here. I was talking about using effects to compeltely transform how an instrument sounds. You seem to think that it is better to get the instrument to sound like that in the first place. I think that would be the wrong approach. As for what synths are desgined to do, yes, they are supposed to transform simple sounds into other sounds. But they do this largely with effects. Just about every synth has a filter unit, but a filter is an effect. Think back to the days of modular synthisis. There was a box called the oscillator, that outputed to a bunch of other boxes, which did stuff to the sound. I define everything that isn't an oscillator as an effect. Thus, even though a synth is a bunch of boxes combined together in a specific way, most of teh work is being done by effects. They are just integrated effects. Whether you use the filter as part of a synth or an external filter, well, both are going to filter. So when Zircon said "Turn even simple waveforms into great sounds" he could have been refering to a synth, or he could not have. The statement really didn't really have anything to do with synths or effects at all, more to do with what is happening to a waveform. Please correct me if I am way off base, Zircon. You diggin' what I am saying, Agri?

I would say that each is more versatile in their own way. Sure you can do all that fancy buiness on a piano, but you can't do a slide, can you? How about one of those thingos with the stick that stretchs the string? Yeah, btw, I am by no means a pro guitarist. The point is, each instrument has its strength and its weaknesses. The trick is to utilise that, eh?

Sorta. If you have ASIO drivers, then you can choose to let mixer channels output too "Left-Right", "Center-LFE" (whatever LFE is) or "Surround Left-Surround Right". The problem is now you have 3 master channels, and you probably want all your music going towards them, but with different levels. Using send channels as your outputs would be best, IMHO. Change their output from master to whatever set of speakers you want, and then use your send knobs to throw stuff at them. Easy.

Define "spacey". When someone says space, I always think of the soundtracks to those early space empire games, Master of Orion, Pax Imperia, etc. Generally they were preety minimal, even for a backing soundtrack. Except for fight music, of course. Anyways, since you were talking about one instrument rather than a whole bunch, I assume you are talking about something else, which I do not grok. Maybe try lots of Verb + Chorus/Unison? Dunno. Try stuff out, I suppose.

Just a quick word to the wise: Papelmedia's, while free for "private home use" (what ever that is), are not free for commercial stuff. Those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, though. Good luck with the composistion.

Soundfonts = Samples. VSTis = Synths (generally). As Overcoat said, soundfonts are samples. Some sort of instrument that has been recorded. Well, usually some sort of instrument. Anyways, VSTis tend to be synths, that is, they produce sound by... syntherising it. They make it up themselves. Damn, go wiki it, I can't explain it very well right now. Of course, this matter is confused becasue some VSTis are samplers. Remember, VST and VSTi are just standards to get various things to talk to each other. It doesn't really matter what these things are, provided they can make sound good and give said sound to the next thing good. Ya dig? So really, you should be asking whether sampels or synths are better. But don't do that, because that would be stupid. It's like asking whether Apples or Beef are better. Well, are you making stew or are you making apple pie? Did that make any sense, or was it way to incoherent?

Also try increasing your audio buffer size. Its in Audio options.

I like Wasp as well. Though I can see how it can be easily abused. But that is true about a great many synths. Should we really be damning a whole bunch of synths just because they tend to be used by people who dont know how to use 'em right?

The thing about 3osc is that its not so much the synth itself that is bad, just the people who can't use it, but try to anyway. That being said, I suppose they have to start somewhere...

uhhhhh... "Bass forum"? As in, a place where bass is discussed? We don't have anything like that as such, but if you want to ask a question about basses, go right ahead. If you just want a nice bass, there are heaps around, and you can often make your own using a synth. I think you mentioned somewhere else that you are using FL, in which case I reccomend BooBass. Its a nice, solid bass, that rarely sounds out of place, and is great if you just want something to be there while you sort your other sounds out. Then you can come back and replace it later with another Bass if you want. Or layer with another, it's great for that too.

Well, if you followed the advice previously given here, and it still doesn't work, not much more we can do. But check your midi device's manual. Mayhaps there is someswitch or something you have to hit on it?

READ THE FORUM POLICY. We do not discuss warez, pirated or otherwise illegal versions of software here. As for learning how to use it, there are several tutorials around. Here's a good place to start: www.google.com. And now for some advice on forum manners: 1) If you posting in a forum for the first time, it would be a wise idea to read the forum rules, and see how the forum works. That way, you won't make an fool of yourself. 2) You have a keyboard with all 26 letters of the alphabet. Use them. on a similar note, puctuation is your friend. 3) If you want people to help you, don't ask hugely general questions. Of course, you would know this if you read the rules, or even thought about it for 2 seconds, but since your brain seems to have been surgically removed I guess we can't expect much from you.

Just create a sine bass with slow sine LFO. Or, if your using FL, try the FL kick plugin. Personally, it annoys me because I can never get it to sound right, but maybe you will have some luck. I know it does that pitch shifting kick action, though.

Well, I have no idea about GPO, but Wet and Dry are often used refering to the output of FX units: wet is the processed ouput, and dry is the unprocessed output. No idea if that helps, but maybe it give you a clue.

Dianabol, if you really wanted to use the step sequencer, you could double your tempo, and treat each bar as a half bar. That way each 1/16th is actually a 1/32nd. Use the beats this pattern thing to make your patterns long enough.

Piano roll = Ace, once you get to know it. It makes sense, what with the length of the note being how long it plays for, and having the testing piano on the left so you can see what each note sounds like, and then note properties on the bottom. It just makes sense. Once you learn how to use it, you shall see how it gives you so much power when composing on the computer. One problem is that you can't see what all your channels are doing at once, which could suck if you werre doing full on orchestra stuff... but if you are FL may not be the best choice for you.

Well, I have little knowledge on the matter, but I hae been told that you can never have to many SM-57s, and with my little experience I am inclined to agree. You will be amazed at how fast you use 'em, particularly when micing up an entire band. Of course, that only matters if you need lots of instruments miked up at once. If you are only going to have one or two plugged in at once, it would probably be better to get fewer, more specialised mics. SM57s are all rounders: you can record just about anything with them, but they aren't OMG WOW at everything.