Rozovian

Nah, the thread was about using specific kinds of samples, like sampled phrases, parts, and loops rather than sampled instruments. At least, that's what the OP was about. First of all, stop using VST as if VST=synth. I used _no_ VSTs in that song. Second, 85 keys * 127 velocities + round robins + resonance + pedals... way too much trouble to avoid "perfection" and "lack of artefacts"... which you could change anyway. You don't think you could detune the a string or add pedal or hammer noise to your liking? Or are you talking about qualities inherent in the sampling itself rather than in the physical instrument? Third, where are you getting " an actual violin" from? If I wanted a violin-sounding instrument, don't you think I could have picked one more violin-like? Maybe I wanted oscillating glasses, or Fourth, my example would sound a lot better if I could actually play piano.

Found some of her former identities, hybridcindyness, sossuzumiya and SOS_S_U_Z_U_M_I_Y_A. She's been around for a while.

What happened to this thread? All sound can be quite accurately represented as sine waves. Squares are odd harmonics of the fundamental, loud; triangles are a softening series of odd harmonics. With both odd and even harmonics, you get saws. Even with frequency-mangling synths like FM you can still recreate the sounds as distinct sine waves, it's just not practical to create those sounds using additive synthesis. Dude, you really need to get out more. Not only are you generalizing all synths under your impression of basic subtractive synths, but you're assuming subtactive synths themselves can't be beautiful. This is a simple all-synth track I made the other day. It sounds like crap, doesn't it?

Most of the project is blue, has been for some time. I still have barely any track notes or artist bios. I'll include examples in the email I'll send out once I have a few to choose from. So far, I've only got both from Jago, and one or the other from a handful of others. Preview comes after I talk to Stevo or someone about the tracks that we have your consent to use, formally and officially and stuff. So go sign the thingy in the first post. Yes, there'll be art in the preview. Have you seen what Keiiii can do? You'll be amazed either way. Welcome Jeffrey Hayat, who just handed me a wav of Female Turbulence. Progress!

Drums and more guitar noise than guitar. Hm... Not epic, but better than i expected (you know, a track promoted as "epic" usually isn't even close). The orchestra seems like an afterthought to a regular youtube metal cover. The metal stuff sounds mixed ok, but the aforementioned noise is pretty detracting. Transition to orchestra is awkward and while it's not a bad orchestral snippet it's far from the alleged awsumness. Doesn't help that you're trying to follow up a loud metal part with a really mellow orchestral part. Not bad, but some perspective would do you good.

Electronic music is about sound design more so than any other kind of music. Not making your own synth patches means you're missing out on a whole creative field. Start doing it. It's not just useful, it's also fun. You do know _most_ piano VSTs use samples, right?

Just wanna say that the price those semi-popular artists have set for their work isn't all that unreasonable considering the hours that go into making a decent track. Just consider the chanting choir you mentioned. Doing it for realz means getting a choir together and recording a few takes to make sure you have good one. Easily a few hours of work just for that, plus that the choir might not wanna do it for free. Or you can record it yourself, a dozen passes, mix them together and put a good reverb on it. Again, hours of work. Or, get a sample package with the appropriate kinds of choir chanting. Easily a few hundred bucks, and the time it takes to learn how to use it, and the time to actually use it for the track. Or free stuff on the net - more hours looking for decent stuff, more time to eliminate problems and to make it sound human enough. Add writing, recording, and mixing everything else, and you've got yourself quite a few hours of work. Not saying you can't find someone to do it cheap or even for free, I'm just saying you often get what you pay for. You've got a decent idea for a youtube show, good luck with it.

There are longer sampled, phrases, parts that don't have to be looped but are still long and elaborate enough to feel like someone else's doing. My advice? Get over it. Write your music, use these samples when you need or want to use them. If you're writing the rest of the music, selecting and placing these sanples, and mixing it yourself, it's yours, isn't it?

Repeating the source with an added effect isn't much of an arrangement. Needs more dynamics, textural difference, stuff like that. If you don't wanna bring in breakbeats, consider other additional instrumentation or taking the source and using parts of it in new ways. Change the sound as it progresses, you can keep it atmospheric and cool without making it repetitive.

Made some Left 4 Dead avatars. Also, for some server reasons, my old urls aren't working. I'm going back to edit them now. LT: Will sort through the mega-pack...

I'm spending half the week 20-26th of June afk. It would be appreciated if i wasn't in that bracket, but I can make it work. Also, I wanna get this started. I'm gonna make salad out of y'all. Except Will. I'ma make puree out of you if I face you.

Yep, subbing to ocr is fine as long as they know it's a project track. And there will be a pre-release mixpost...

Wrote way too much. Here's the "short" version: Get FreeAlpha. Turn everything off in it. Learn what everything does. Use presets, learn to tweak them. Make your own patches with it. Move on to TAL-Eke7ro II, repeat process. Move on to Massive, repeat process. Move on to FM8. Move on to Absynth. Going into Reaktor and spending a few hours on making a simple synth thing there (one oscillator, one envelope, one filter) can teach you a lot about how synths create sound. It's not necessary to make music or to use synths, but it's interesting, fun, and useful. In that order. As for everything else, just listen and compare, imitate or deviate. Listen to newb stuff to learn to tell what's wrong with their tracks and avoid that in your own works, and to tell what they're doing right then try to do it yourself; listen to pro stuff... for the same reasons. Take a mix of yours, throw out all the effects, and mix it again. What will you do different? How will you EQ it this time? There's no magic "improve" knob in an EQ or any tool. Everything requires some knowledge of what it does and the ears to tell if you're making it better. Also, read my guide. Apply everything you learn. I suck at writing short.

K then. Wherewolf, get Reaktor. A bit of a learning curve, but it does everything.

A mod is gonna move this to the Production section, welcome to ocr. If you're looking at Massive, you might as well get all of Komplete, it's more expensive, but you get Massive, FM8 and Absynth (and a lot of other instruments and effects, incl Reaktor where you can build whatever synths you want). Dunno how close to an actual analog sound you can get (or what the difference is, really, besides a vague notion of a "warmer" sound), but Massive is a pretty good choice for a synth overall.

The Sound of Speed has already been done. Also, why does this read more like a project than a request? And why does it seem like you're more concerned with the quality of the file than the quality of the arrangement and mix?

Read everything you can find, experiment with the tools you have, show your stuff to ppl (we have feedback subforums for that), try to understand everything they say even if you don't agree with it, listen to pro stuff, listen to newb stuff, listen to old stuff, listen to new stuff, compare everything, learn from everything, apply everything you learn. There are no shortcuts. Also, I didn't think I had any theory knowledge when i started doing this. You'll learn what you need as you keep making stuff.

Do make sure ppl submit their mixes to ocr in time for there to be tracks from the album to be posted around the release. Even if it's not an ocr album, djp might wanna give it some attention with a mixpost or mixflood or something. Final cutoff July 10th, hm...

I'm not coming. Money and transportation issues. But when I do go to Sweden, I'll let you guys know.

If you have Komplete, you have what you need for now, and then some. Learn to use it better. Also, don't try to learn the synths in Komplete before learning some simpler ones first.

They look pretty much the same. " II" was just, apparently, too much for me to type.

Nope. Some articulations available with keyswitches might line up better, but then it's a different sound. If you want long string notes, you can't solve the timing problem by switching to pizzicato. With humanizing, it might help, depending on what the keyswitches actually do, but it's still just another tool in the toolbox. You still gotta learn to edit the notes so you get a more human sound (velocity, expression), and you gotta learn to tell whether the problem can be solved with technique or if you need different sounds (no amount of sequencing technique in the world is gonna make a single-sample guitar sound like a real guitarist). Listen to stuff. This comes from listening. Listen to stuff, compare it, open it up in your DAW and see how it looks on the spectrum analyzers and whatever tools you've got. At this point, you only need to worry about two things, frequency and amplitude, and neither requires any special software to work with. Brass is difficult to sample because the instrument behaves differently depending on how it's played. If you use it a lot, see if you can find a pro package/instrument for brass. A good one, I mean. It might be better to focus on styles and sounds that you have the resources for. Then again, you might be stuck only doing electronica that way, as I am. But generally, better instruments only gets you so far, and then you might run into hardware limitations instead. While better tools means a better sound, learning to use the tools you have is way more useful than getting new tools all the time. -- edit: go look up screenshots of the synths eilios mentioned (as well as FreeAlpha, TAL-Elek7ro and some other simpler synths), look at the many knobs and windows they have. If you don't understand what they do in basic synths and can't adjust them to make the sound more suitable for the track you're working on, you're certainly not gonna be able to do that in a more advanced synth. That said, synth1 has a terrible interface. edit2: I agree with Moseph, except in the case of cheap samples that weren't recorded together and therefor sound different together. Sometimes, you need a bass boost and other stuff to make a more hall-y sample fit in with more dry samples, or un-dry them with more than just a reverb. But more often than not, an orchestral mix has problems because of how it's written, any technical problems are secondary.

We're 23 now, unless my math is off. Gonna be an interesting competition. DS how are you gonna handle 24 participants? 24->12->6->3...?

Timing. Some samples have a long attack. Either cut the attack (sample start parameter, or cut it manually in the sample itself (on a copy of it)) or move the notes back so they play earlier and their attacks line up better with other instruments. (also what Tensei said) Dynamics. Orchestral musc is all about dynamics, and most music benefits a lot from having softer and louder passages. Even within notes themselves you can build or break down a passage just by how loud a note is. When you're faking a performance, a human player, don't forget that human performers tend to change the pressure of sustained notes. Whether we're talking brass or woodwinds (or organ). Mixing. The more the tracks bleed into each others' space in the frequency range, the more muddy it sounds. Decide which instruments you need up front, which ones can be further back, and use reverb and EQ accordingly. Write and eq the instruments you have so they all have their own place in the frequency range. Don't indiscriminately boost the bass' lows or the hihat's highs. And most, importantly - LISTEN. Learn to listen. Listen to stuff on the wip board, listen to random crap on youtube, listen to professional bands and artists, listen to old remixes here on ocr, listen to the new stuff... listen and try to find stuff that could be better. And read stuff. There's thousands of threads and articles online about this stuff, and should you not find the right guides, you can learn the right principles from the "wrong" guide too.

Do you want/need the hardware? If not, Battery (or the entire Komplete) might be a better option. Depending on what exactly you wanna do with them, there's a range of other products, like those of Toontrack, XLN Audio, and FXpansion.