Rozovian

There's a limit to how inharmonic you can make it if you can only use integer multiples of the note pitch. It's there to keep you from making interesting, slightly detuned fm sounds and terrible, terrible noise. You'll find that the cleanest results come from powers of two, and that integers lead to better results than non-integers. Once you know why, you'll understand fm synthesis a lot better. Start thinking about integer multiples, waveforms, and harmonics.

If you mean album, then yay. If you mean in Community... not until you're a posted remixer. Rules.

u can maek musix wit no fl? Really, use something you can use effectively. If you've got Logic skills, you'll probably do better than if you have to get FL skills before you can start making music again. It's not like you'd be the only one here using Logic. Besides, all my mixes were done in Express, some of them with some new instruments but EYOD-Lacrima were all LE iirc.

Try a square and/or driven triangle, or both, filter low), and control both filter and amplitude with a fairly short decay (0.4s and 0.7s respectively works for me). Then just write fast stuff with short notes, at about 160 bpm. That's as close as I get. In Omnisphere, I've got a square-ish waveform, run through a 12dB lowpass filter set to 60Hz, 10% key sensitivity, 15% resonance, 40% envelope sensitivity, and the aforementioned decay times. Those numbers might help. The filter cutoff, type, and envelope are probably the key things here, but idunno. Or you could just ask him.

I suck at writing drums. Or rather, I suck at consistently writing varied enough drums. I record the basic beat with a keyboard, and then adjust whatever needs adjusting. Sometimes, because my fingers don't seem suited for drumming on a keyboard, I record twice, and quantize so they're nice and tight. Because my stuff is more electronic, I can get away with quantized drums, tho a bit of swing helps add a little groove. Sometimes, especially for odd-timed stuff, I just write and mouse-work it until it works. Have a look at the "real" kits in Battery. You should see that they're using multiple sounds for each drum, as if picked up by different mics. The drums are layered and can be linked in a bunch of different ways. I'm still waiting for a physical modeling drum kit, but until they can do 3d waveguides without killing cpus I guess Kontakt, Superior Drummer, Battery, and the Addictive Drums demo will get the job done for me.

Yeah, I'd say it's a no. Not just because of the voice source, but also because I wouldn't say the source here is "identifiable and dominant", as the submissions standards have it. Listen to the stuff that's gotten posted, perhaps most relevantly the occasional raps we've got here, and listen to how the original vgm sources were used.

Sure. On some types of instruments, the sound comes from hitting something - a piano string, a drumskin, or something else. That thing is also where the pitch comes from - different keys hit differently tuned strings, which is why pianos have a ridiculous amount of them. Other types of instruments, such as woodwinds, brass, and bowed strings, make sound separate from where they get their pitch. On string instruments, the left hand sets the pitch of a string, and the right hand plays it with a bow. On woodwinds, your breath sets the volume while your hands set the pitch. Because they're separate, you can crescendo and descrescendo all you want within a note (or at least until you run out of bow or breath), or on a natural exhalation/movement play a lot of notes. The easiest way to work with this is to make sure your instrument responds to a midi cc (expression cc11 tends to be the usual one for this, but for woodwinds you might have the breath controller cc2, and some might have the modulation cc1 routed to do this - just find the right controller thing), and just use that as your bowing/breath strength while the notes themselves have short attack, high sustain, and fairly short release. it means a lot more work with humanizing, but unless you overdo it, or have crappy strings/woodwinds/brass to begin with, it's usually worth it. Because brass sounds a lot different at low breath strength than at high, it's a relatively difficult instrument family to simulate, so the average soundfont probably won't let you do realistic breath changes with it. For this, you might actually get closer to a believable instrument with fm synthesis or a combination of synthesis techniques than with samples without some kind of morphing/crossfade technique. But whatever. Basic answer to the question: Piano makes sound by hitting one thing at pitch x, woodwinds need hands for pitch and breath for sound. it's a natural consequence of how the instruments work, and it gives you some options of how to make different sounds and emote with it.

I read it as Untitled EP, and thought it was a little lame. Checking it out tonight.

Sounds like a recorder. Do note that it doesn't need to be played, nor sampled, with that much breath noise, and a lot of what makes it cool in the special edition intro (and probably the special edition overall wherever else it's used) is the technique used on it. Note pitch and breath timing aren't in sync, which is possible on real instruments but might not be on soundfonts (depending on how your soundfont player/sampler handles them).

Probably not. Depends... I could image this being possible if by mashup you mean utilizing original audio from a game, and by existing song you mean a cappella stuff straight from a game, such as the hymn of the fayth from FFX, or your own a cappella version of a video game song such as Still Alive. Is the existing song from a video game? This would do better in the ASK A JUDGE thread, which the mods will move it to. Eventually. Probably. It'd help them, or me, or anyone else trying to answer this if you could clarify this a bit. What existing song? Whose a cappella version? What do you mean by mashed up?

Now I'm just waiting for teh moneys to arrive at teh paypalz.

A lot of instruments have some low frequency content in them that you can't hear, that doesn't actually contribute to the sound, and that only shifts the rest of the audio towards the compression threshold. Generally, bass and bass drum doesn't do well without at least one of them reaching down to about 40Hz, maybe more, maybe less. On the other hand, when you have high bells, cymbals, or other instruments that really don't benefit any from lows, you can safely roll off the lows on those. Depending on how controlled you want the sound to be, reducing some lows on pads and other instruments that have some useful low frequency content might also be a good thing. Cutting the lows at 70Hz would have you lose valuable bass sound, but on many instruments, you can safely roll off the lows at 400Hz or even higher (depending on the instrument and its notes). Don't do it indiscriminately, just see which tracks don't need stuff under 200Hz and cut everything below that. But my complaint is primarily about the low volume. There's more tricks to getting a little more volume out of a track than to just cut unnecessary lows.

If you know the key, you also know some notes that won't be in the arpeggios... unless it's jazz or jazz-y, where almost anything goes. Learning to recognize some intervals will also help, and you'll work a lot faster already if you can tell if the arpeggio stretches over an octave or stays within one. When you're testing notes, if you can't find a sound that's close enough to the original, use an instrument with a clear sound, like a piano, as your ears will more easily pick up the pitch from the overtones.

Yeah, there's no reason to feed crazy amounts of sound into the master and forcing it down with a limiter or compressor when turning down the volume does most of the same anyway. I'm wondering how much it matter tho. Digital clipping would be as bad for speakers as a square wave with the volume turned up so the output is the same. Does the soundcard receive floating point numbers? Blah blah blah, I keep a limiter on my master anyway, since I'll eventually have to add one there anyway to prevent clipping when I output. And I turn the levels down so the limiter isn't limiting all the time. also: Yoozer, nice analogy.

You stand more to gain from listening and trying to redo stuff than from reading, but they're both important. Try to learn something new every day, write something new every day. Musical modes, time signatures, syncopation, characteristics of different genres... whatever. And every now and then I find I still fall short in some way or another. Like drum writing and mixing. Anyway, when it comes to scales, any series of notes is a scale. Unless you go screwing with the instruments/project's tuning settings, you're likely to just have the usual 12 to work with... which just makes it easier, as most other tunings will probably sound out of tune to unaccustomed ears. Don't start thinking about microtonal scales and that stuff, just make up your own scales with the notes you can do, and see what you can learn from that. Some of the time you'll just make another mode of the same old scale(s), some of the time you'll create an arabian/egyptian-flavored scale, some of the time you might have something more blues/jazz-y, and some of the time it'll sound terrible. When you're more used to thinking about scales (and modes), look them up on wikipedia and recreate the ones you find there, see what you recognize. The most important things, like pacing and dynamics, are more difficult to put into words. Try to feel the music, sketch out how different songs move dynamically, look them up in an audio editor to see where it's loud and where it's soft... study them. What's good about them is good for a reason, try to figure out what that is. What I did during my most creative times, the ones where I was making two or three new tracks every day and made up loads and loads of cool melodies that I still have difficulty surpassing with my more recently acquired production skills, was to just write stuff. Not care so much about the sound, just make a cool melody with whatever sounds I had back then... which all sounded like newby crap tbh, but the melodies were pretty good. So my advice is to write stuff, then try to read something about what you wrote.

Careful with the crescendos, hits and big drums, the first one pushes the compression quite a bit. You could probably shave off some of the lows, and some of the overall level - it's pretty loud. The piano could use some subtle muffling and the flute and trumpet a little volume cut each. Same with guitar, drop its level slightly. Xylophone could have a warmer reverb. trumpet staccatos feel a little lonely, perhaps some low brass or string staccatos to accompany them? Female voice could use some delay, not sure. Worth trying tho. Careful about exposing your kick drum too much. it sounds ok when used with the snare, but when it's just two kick notes, you're exposing it a bit too much, breaking the big and more epic sound you'd otherwise have. Nice arrangement, nice track overall, gets really exciting at times. It just needs some subtle edits to stuff for it all to fall into place.

It's nice. More dynamics in the instruments would improve it further. It'd add some human qualities to it. Imagine playing the flute - when would you play loud, when soft? Adjust the expression controller (if available) and note velocity accordingly. Do the same with other important instruments - especially the harp, as its ostinato quickly sounds mechanical and artificial.

I also hear a distinct flavor of Song of Healing in this. It might be a little too minimal with some background rhythm stuff, lead, and drums, some more distinct melody running in the background would help bridge the foreground and background some. Cool concept, and I can hear it in the execution too. Success. Think you can make a complete track out of this? Cuz it would be sub material.

Loong intro, and the detuned saw sounds a bit newby. The square lead kind'a draws the track into a more chippy sound, dunno if that's your intention. Beyond that, I think you've got something pretty good here. If you have enough creative juice left to keep things fresh, this could turn out great. I like it, the chords coming in under the square lead add a flavor beyond 4 on the floor with detuned saw, which this otherwise might be leaning too hard towards. Good start, keep it up. And yes, I'll get to your GRMRB tracks.

Yo econcerto. It's sad, but it is also harsh. The bass and the bass drum are both too heavy, and there's some tuning issues in the non-electronic portion of the track. Guitar sound needs some work to fit into the electronic bits, it sounds to muffled to fit the synth sounds. Guitar lead in an electronic track? Cool idea, cool track overall, but you need to work on the sound design some more.

My dictionary says percussion is a "musical instruments played by striking with the hand or with a hand-held or pedal-operated stick or beater, or by shaking, including drums, cymbals, xylophones, gongs, bells, and rattles". So yes. And when you do something that makes it sound better, you're probably making it sound better. Learn to tell when something sounds good or bad, learn to figure out how it would sound better, learn the tools so you know how to make it sound better, and learn to trust your ears and your abilities. basically, learn stuff. If it sounds better, it probably is better. Took me a few years, but you're in the right place if you wanna learn stuff. ppl here will comment on all kinds of problems they hear in your track. Not all of it will be accurate or necessary, but much of it will be, and everything is worth considering. My advice: try to understand everything, and fix what you can agree with.

Everything takes practice. Some ppl learn lots from imitation and redoing other ppl's tracks as closely as possible, so that's worth a shot. Pick the artists with the style you wanna do, and try to recreate their tracks. Or you could just do your own flavor of it, nitpicking the whole thing apart and trying to fix everything little thing that annoys you. After a few tracks like that, you'll have grown in skill a lot. Worked for me, anyway. And as for most successful electronic genre, this changes every few years, so it's probably better to learn to do good music than to learn to just do genre x. As for what qualities about them make them successful, it's probably that they stick in ppl's heads and that ppl can dance to them. I wonder how my 7/8 electronic track would fare on the dancefloor...

Now we're getting somewhere.

Suggesting I not reference well-produced albums, suggesting lack of experience is a good thing, suggesting a book I already have (), suggesting mastering is so subjective anything goes, suggesting zircon who's already at the top of my list... Yeah, no. Thanks, but this isn't was I was looking for with this thread, guys. I kind'a need more references because I honestly don't have that large a library of electronic music and not necessarily the ears yet to tell which albums are the best produced. Lemme rephrase... What are the best produced electronic albums out there?

...and mixing, sure, that too. Basically, I'm looking for albums that are mixed and mastered really well. Dynamic but competitively loud, balanced, all that jazz. For ocr it's relatively easy to just dig up a handful of recent tracks and compare, but I need some professional works to reference while working on my original album. Dunno yet if I'll learn to master it myself or hand it over to a pro, depends on whether my ears and mastering stuff are any good. I know I probably _should_ let a pro master it, but I'm thinking I could learn at least some of it. I'm looking for electronic music, but if this is gonna be a helpful thread for others, it might as well cover any and all sounds. edit: to clarify: What are the best produced electronic albums out there?