Moseph

Superman 64 with less Superman 64.

Can you leave the browser open in offline mode without it freezing? (And/or with the ethernet cable yanked or the wireless disabled,)

These are songs that come up fairly frequently on classic hits/80's sorts of radio stations. The Who: Pinball Wizard Blondie: Peter Gabriel: Solsbury Hill The Police: Synchronicity II U2: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For Cyndi Lauper: Girls Just Want to Have Fun Queen: Lynyrd Skynyrd: Sweet Home Alabama Heart: Eurhythmics: Sweet Dreams Pat Benatar: The Eagles: Hotel California Life in the Fast Lane Don Henley: Boys of Summer Derek and the Dominos: Bruce Springsteen: Don McLean: Tom Petty: John Mellencamp: Electric Light Orchestra: Carly Simon: You're So Vain Genesis: Misunderstanding Berlin: (used in Top Gun)

Also, listen to for another asinine and thematically contradictory use of '80's rock. The lyrics of the chorus don't even make sense in the Gym Class Heroes context.

using a song about being a stalker to talk about missing someone you love? ... the hell?

If you evade the police long enough, they'll eventually lose interest in you.

no, fishsticks are what dogphins fetch

It's not GPS, it's a mini-map.

Speaker jack is broken?

This thread is really just about dolphins who are furries.

Dogphins eat catfish, amirite?

No, you won't need MIDI I/O if your keyboard is USB. Don't know if it's an issue for you or not, but having MIDI ports gives you a little more flexibility with older keyboards. I started out with a (lousy) 49-key USB keyboard (more on that below), but my family had an older (slightly better) 76-key keyboard without USB that no one was using, so I eventually took that for myself as well. Since my interface has MIDI ports, I'm able to use the 76-key in addition to the USB one, or I can hook up my non-USB digital piano if I feel like recording with that. My interface, if you're interested, is an EMU 0404 USB, which is the same price as the Mackie you're looking at but also has MIDI, SPDIF, and an 1/8" speaker out (in addition to the normal headphone and 1/4" outs). I have heard that Mackie's preamps are really good for the price, though. One other thing to think about is whether the interface is powered by USB or AC adaptor. It looks like the Onyx is USB powered and the Fast Track can be USB or AC adapter powered. I don't have direct experience with the difference, but I recall reading that USB power is generally less stable than adapter power which can potentially be detrimental to the sound of what you're recording; on the other hand, USB power is more convenient for on-site recording because you don't have to find a wall outlet. I haven't ever used an M-Audio Axiom, but my M-Audio Radium 49 is a piece of crap. Some of the keys stick, the potentiometers don't center in the same place, the mod wheel went out of alignment and had to be disconnected, the keyboard tries to reinstall itself if I don't plug it into the same USB port every time I use it, and the M-Audio driver CD has a bizarre, unevenly weighted label that causes the CD to make a huge racket in the drive. I don't know if M-Audio's higher-end/more recent gear is better than what I have, but personally I would never, ever spend $500 on an M-Audio keyboard. I'm pretty sure you can get something similarly featured from a better company for $400-$600. (Just looking around Musician's Friend, I see a StudioLogic with faders, etc. for $520.)

I use a set of AKG K702 headphones and have been really happy with them, but they're on the expensive side ($250+) and have a lengthy burn-in period.

College student, eh? If your school has a music department, they probably have a grand piano that you can use if you ask. Depending on what programs the music department offers, they may also have students who would be willing to record (or play) things for you. If you want to go the MIDI route and are willing to do some digging around, there is a very good free piano VST called the Giga Continuous Velocity Piano that TASCAM released several years ago (Windows only, unfortunately). TASCAM got bought out, though, and their site no longer offers the download, but you might be able to find it elsewhere online (I haven't looked).

I would assume that they'd format it as part of a refurbishing process. EDIT: Or by "total stranger," do you mean whoever does the refurbishing and not the subsequent purchaser?

Since a couple people were interested in how I did the strings at the start of my track, here's a more complete explanation than I gave in the write-up: Bass/cello (purple) is tremolo, violin 2 (green) is trill, violin 1 (red) is sul ponticello tremolo.

So when is this listening party happening?

Eh, just found a minor rendering error in it. I may take it down and reupload later this evening if I feel like fixing it.

Curse you and your auto-truncation that cuts off my title! *shakes fist some more* Nevertheless, my entry is submitted.

Curse you and your 6 MB size limit! *shakes fist in air*

It's done except for some minor tweaking, level adjusting, etc.; I probably won't upload it until Friday or Saturday. I was holding off on finishing it because I was hoping to get my new computer music-worthy before the deadline, but I need to buy a Sonar upgrade, and the upgrade won't have arrived by then so I've gone back to the old computer to wrap things up.

I feel like I'm on the second dream level and should be expecting a kick.

http://ocremix.org/forums/member.php?u=38251 Only post is an ad in Composition/Production.

Oh, interesting. I can hear the influence of that Lamb of God track in the original mix that you posted -- it helps explain the relative lack of mid-range focus, the wider guitar panning, and the prominence of the kick drum. I focused the guitars in the mid-range, and the Lamb of God track (and your original mix) spread them out a little more. The static-y sound that I mentioned cutting out of the guitars would actually have helped them to sound like the Lamb of God track. Oops. My thinking for the track was more along the lines of (really more hard rock than metal), so my guitar sound tends to be more mid-range-y and up in your face.Glad it was helpful.

This was mostly typed as I mixed. It should help you get an idea of how I approach things. Here's the finished mix. Here is a list of images: Console view in Sonar Kick effects Bass effects Guitar 2 effects Guitar 1 effects Hats effects Overheads effects Snare effects Toms effects Multiband compressor MIXING (Things are shown in the order that I did them) I begin by mixing the kick and the bass with everything else muted. It's generally a good idea to build a mix from nothing, gradually adding in tracks rather than trying to deal with everything all at once. Kick EQ Very low frequencies rolled off to reduce muddiness. High frequencies cut because the kick sounded too treble-heavy to me, but leaving a spike to catch the noise of the beater. Mid-frequencies generally left alone. I suspect the drum VST you use has samples that are already mixed to sound pretty good. Often I have to cut the 400-900 Hz area to reduce the cardboardy sound that sometimes shows up in kick drums, but I didn't have to do that here. Kick compression The initial idea was to bring out the tail of the kick drum sound just a little bit, but by the time I was done mastering, the kick was basically just really squashed so it wouldn't clip things too badly. I hate mixing kick drums. Bass EQ The bass is extremely overpowering in the mid- and lower mid-range area, and that's where I want the guitars to be. I've cut accordingly and again rolled off the low bass to reduce boominess and mud. Bass compression I have, in effect, shortened the bass's attack just a bit (which is to say, the compressor kicks in before the bass's plucked attack has finished -- see the 115.8 ms attack value), which gets rid of some flabbiness in the tone. I put the guitars in the mix before dealing with the other drums. We have here two tracks of what sounds like different amps and/or distortion on the same guitar signal. I'm no guitarist, but the tone strikes me as pretty similar between the two channels with guitar 2 having just a touch more bite. I panned the guitar tracks 50% left and 50% right to fill out the soundfield a little bit. Guitar 2 EQ I'm emphasizing the 1k-2k Hz range to catch the bite that I mentioned. Guitar 1 EQ Kind of the inverse of guitar 2's EQ. Here I'm slightly emphasizing the mids. The effect of both of these EQ settings together is a marked reduction in that static-y sound in the guitars (a sound that I don't particularly like, which is why I'm glad to be rid of it). Hats EQ Low-end rolled off because I didn't need anything more down there. Hats and cymbals are mostly about high frequencies. Highs boosted slightly for more sizzle. Overheads EQ Basically the same idea as the hats. Snare EQ Again, the lows can be rolled off. Slight boosts in the mids and again between 2k and 4k Hz. These tighten the sound, bringing out the ring and the stick hit, respectively. High-end is rolled off because I want the cymbals to dominate there. Snare compression Relatively aggressive compression. The snare badly needed more impact -- it sounded like someone tapping his pencil on the table -- and this fixes that. Toms EQ Rolled off lows and highs because I did't need them. Slight mid-range boost because I like the resonance that it adds. Toms compression Just a bit to tighten the sound. Reverb I'm pretty conservative with the reverb here because I think the mix sounds pretty good dry. I'm not sue what the conventions are for metal. I'm using the SIR convolution reverb plugin (freeware) with a hall impulse response. It's mostly the drums (minus kick) that I've bussed to the reverb, and a very little bit on the guitars. I don't want much on the guitars because I want to keep them up at the front of the mix. For the bass and kick, it's generally best to avoid too much reverb (I'm not using any) because they tend to get really muddy if you use a lot. MASTERING I always put BlueTubes Analog TrackBox on the master because I like the faux analog distortion. I also use a multiband compressor. Really, I have no idea how to use a multiband compressor properly, so I generally just solo out each band, play with the compression settings, then unsolo to make sure the changes I made make the mix sound better. I've found generally that when I get a band's compression settings right, it makes the mix sound, I don't know, more compact is the only way I can think to describe it -- like that part of the frequency spectrum doesn't have extraneous jagged edges on it. Then I make sure the limiter is on and boost the gain on the output until I hear distortion in the cymbals, then back the gain down until the distortion goes away. The whole process takes a lot longer than it sounds because I always have to go back into the mix to tweak levels and compression to get it to the point where I can push the multiband's output gain really high. Then I view the mastered mix's waveform in a wave editor and check it against other recordings. If the level isn't comparable, I continue to tweak things.