Incinerator Drone

Yeah I'm looking through your guides now Zircon. Seems to be a lot of help in there, but also a lot of stuff I don't understand at ALL. Just as a quick example... 'Generally, it's not a bad idea to EQ down the low frequencies of harmony instruments, such as synth pads, strings, choirs, and rhythm guitars. This would be around 20-250 Hz.' Would I be safe in assuming that, as per that picture I posted earlier, the "low" frequencies are what is labeled the "low mid"? Hmm, and why does high mid have an extra button, "Q"? I've been reading elsewhere that the built-in equalizers are mostly garbage and you should really get a plugin and use it on each track individually... does that sound about right? I know I have a few EQ plugins, I'll have to take a look when I get home and see what I have.

And I guess overall what I mean by "learn" isn't "I want to produce awesome sounding albums." More like "I want to be able to create songs/demos/whatever that don't sound like total garbage." For now. I'll decide on where to go once I get that far. Even just basic stuff like... keep all sounds under 0db, ok I do that but then my final cut is way too quiet. So compress that or boost that to get the volume up without clipping and/or turning it into mud, right? I don't know how to do that. That's the kind of stuff I'd like to learn right now. There's a big gap in between sounding like garbage and sounding awesome, and I'm not sure awesome is my goal quite yet. I have to get to mediocre first, and then work from there. This is where I'm at, but it does sound very, very raw. Dry? http://www.negativeworld.org/mymp3s/Forever.mp3

Ok to get the basics of EQ, well... here is what my Orion looks like. Is there anything wrong with just using the built-in EQ on the master window to get started? Or should I be doing it with plugins track per track?

Well I don't actually even think about most of the plugins I have, I just keep them around for when I can't find anything in what I do use regularly that comes even close to what I want. Like I have one that emulates the sounds of old computers... worthless for most songs I write, but fun when I need some beeps and bloops. And right now with drums and bass I'm pretty much just using the same limited drum set and the same bass plugin (with the same settings) on all of my songs, I know that isn't the ideal longterm but it doesn't really get in the way of what I'm trying to focus on right now which is A. continuing to write music (otherwise I lose motivation) and B. learning the basics of production. As for effects, outside simple ones like delay, chorus, and reverb I don't even touch them really. I messed around with some of the others when I first got them but for the most part I couldn't figure them out. They either seemed to do nothing... or did very insane things. But I do definitely want to focus on a limited amount of effects right now and just learning how to get them working together. I'm not sure my brothers label is harebrained per se, he has been running it for 10 years and has like 30 releases out and DJs globally... but from an investment standpoint you're right, things can change, and fast. Considering I "lost" (until things turn around, if ever) a couple thousand in the stock market over the last few years, I'm not exactly secure with the idea of putting money into a small business that may or may not be here 5 or 10 years from now. Well yeah, of course in the end I can only believe my own ears, but it's good to have a path for trying things out. I already tried the "randomly move levers around on plugins I don't understand" path and that one goes nowhere fast. Somewhere out there are people who probably know a great deal about these things and though there may not be one set path to getting a good sound quality, there are probably tips that help out a lot.

Hmm, thanks. See, this is the kind of thing that helps... '1. Fix with panning. By moving things left or right you can cure many masking problems. But not all. You can't move the kick of bass or vocal too far from the center or the whole mix gets lopsided. But you can move rhythm guitars, synths and percussion way off center and it helps.' I already kind of figured that out from messing around, but it is good to hear someone else say it. '2. Fix with EQ. Bass removal from your tracks does wonders. At minimum put a low cut (high pass) filter on every track except the kick and bass (which get their own more extensive treatment).' Do you agree with that? I'm a bit confused as to how to do it though, I have like... a ton of Waves effects including that Bass EQ he posted in the article, but like I said, not quite sure what most of them do. '3. Fix by dropping one instrument for part of the mix so both the mask and masked are not playing simultaneously.' Hmm, yeah, that's kind of obvious advice, though it might not always fit the song to drop it. Not that I'm, trying to oversimplify a complicated process, but I need SOMEWHERE to start. Little tips like these that are simple things I can actually do without being overwhelmed are nice.

Oh sorry, I'm posting at work and kind of have my head in the middle of a billion work projects. I'm using Orion, and I have an M-Audio 410 firewire external sound card. I have a bunch of software synths, the ones I seem to use the most are the Korg Legacy Collection synths. Drums... honestly not sure, my brother just sent over a ton of folders and they're labeled "01" and on and on. I'd have to check on the rest at home, I have way more VST synths,etc. than I know what to do with, and a few hundred effects. Hmm, well my brother is very big on using software pre-amps. I can't tell you what they do or don't do, but I am fairly certain he used one on the song. Applied might not be the correct way to look at it. I did save the song, but I had a massive computer crash and pretty much had to rebuild everything from scratch. Ug. And nah, I mean my brother won't even tell me what he did in the 10 minutes last time. He has this... interesting... philosophy on music which involves wanting me to get a billion other things "wrong" with my life in order before I even think about making music, therefore he won't help me with the music. I put wrong in parenthesis because most average people would not find anything wrong with my life, but my brother is the type with weird views, like for instance... the fact that I work a 9-5 job is "wrong" and counterproductive to realizing my true potential. The fact that I haven't invested money into his record label is "wrong" and proves I'm not serious about music. Etc. I have been messing around with the effects a bit, but I have so many of them and most of them have no noticable effect... when I use them, and yet I'm certain they have a purpose. Hmm. I think I just need some basic understanding/theory at the moment. I have heard, for instance, that you should probably compress your drums... which is a nice tidbit but I don't understand WHY that is (or if its even true.) And my brother seems to be a huge fan of throwing reverb onto everything (in small doses) but I don't quite grasp why. And then moving onto equalization... no clue what any of that actually does. Hmm. Maybe I should be asking for suggestions on books to read.

Yeah yeah I know, there are a billion things to learn, but hear me out. I've been writing music for 10 years or so, so I'm ok with coming up with melodies, arrangements, etc. But most of what I did was in bands and we never got around to recording so I never learned the production side of things. Now that I'm getting into electronic I want to learn, but so far I've just been writing a ton of songs by just putting together drums and synths and whatever and not using additional effects (outside obvious ones I have experience with from guitar like delay, etc.) If you're interested in my actual song-writing here is something I'm working on at the moment, it's a bit messy since I just started it a few days ago but it works... http://www.negativeworld.org/mymp3s/Forever.mp3 Anyway, the other day I was in the middle of a song, and my brother (self taught record label owner / producer) walked in and said "what in god's name are you doing to that song? Are you just using the raw sounds?!" and I said "uh... yeah. Cause I don't know what else to do." So he took over, yada yada yada and 10 minutes later it sounded about 100 times better. I'm not sure exactly what he did since but I think he applied a pre-amp to the whole song, then applied a few effects to the whole song and then a few more to individual tracks. UNFORTUNATELY we aren't always on the best of terms and he is being weird and refusing to give me any help at the moment. But, even knowing that there is a ton to learn, if he can do this in 10 minutes with a handful of effects there has to be a nice starting point, right? Basically I'm not trying to learn everything overnight, I just need a good solid starting point so my songs don't sound so raw. Anyone?

Hmm yeah, thanks for the advice. The production side is pretty new to me and that song is well... not produced at all. And pretty rushed. I'm supposed to be meeting with my brother (record producer) sometime next week and I think he is going to show me some stuff because he liked a few of my original works and wants to see if I can get them in better shape on my own. But yeah, I do tend to run into the volume problem and I was never quite sure how to manage that, so I'll look into your advice and see what my brother says as well.

This is a sort of never finished because it was a bit too messy and I moved onto other things project. Maybe someday I will actually finish and submit a song, imagine that! http://negativeworld.org/mymp3s/Fly%20You%20Fools.mp3 I'm not sure if I can get away on the technicality that there are LOTR video games. Does it count if I thought of this site before I started the song? Ah well, I'm not planning on submitting it for review anyway. What do you guys think?

Pardon my ignorance, what do you mean by get a "setup?"

Well I like it but you know... in the same way my grandma likes Tetris. Which is to say, she doesn't understand video games at all so she jumps on the first one that sort of makes sense to her, but that doesn't really mean it is the best choice. Plus I'm still new to recording so there might be some secret reason I don't understand why certain guitars record better than others or something. I did try out a few though, and it was nice. But honestly a lot of what I am basing it on was that I could actually play it... usually acoustics strings are way too tight and require too much pressure to hold for me (I'm used to electric.) But does that even have much to do with the guitar? Or is it just the string gauge? See... clueless.

Here is what I am looking for... +Preferably in the $200-$400 range +Sounds decent both plugged in and unplugged I was playing around with a few at Guitar Center the other day and this $400 Takamine sounded pretty sweet... anyone know anything about those? I'm pretty clueless when it comes to acoustic guitars. Also, anyone know a place to get a guitar for Cheaper than Guitar Center. I try not to pay full price for things, especially with the Internet around.

Lufia seriously has the best music ever. It's part of why I can't get into modern RPGs, their music all sucks next to Lufia / Chrono / Mana.

I was just saying to my brother that Lufia had the absolute best one two punch with intro songs. First that slow one while the story was being told, and then it goes right into the BEST VIDEO GAME SONG EVER while you play through the Sinstral castle. OMG BEST RPG EVER MADE. I'M SERIOUS.

Wuh... buh... confused?! Almost everyone I hear on here is MUCH better on guitar than I am! Then again I mostly only hear the accepted tracks, I guess a lot of the not-accepted ones might be sketchier. Anyway I'm kind of trying to focus on my original music project at the moment, it might be awhile before I crack back into the video game remixing. Though I do already have a short Zelda rock tabbed out. HMM.

Yeah I don't really understand a lot of this stuff, I'm winging it. The lead guitars I would have one left and one right but the rhythm was just one guitar and I kept it in the middle. I actually recorded two and tried a one L one R thing but they were both essentially doing the same thing and it sounded cleaner without the other one. It's very possible I somehow lost the panning, I don't fully understand this stuff. For instance, if you record something in stereo and then use it as a wav in another recording, does it lose the stereo? I ended up having to kind of mini-mix some parts into wav and then use those wavs in the final mix because my Orion was all blah blah blah out of memory... come on Orion, I only had like TWENTY TRACKS RUNNING AT ONCE.

I'm a bit hesitant to post this because it definitely isn't quite up to par with a lot of what I have heard on here, but I will never learn if I don't get some advice, eh? http://www.myspace.com/incineratordrone It is the one at the bottom. This is only the second song I have ever recorded real guitars on seriously, and the first I actually arranged and recorded guitars on, so I think it turned out pretty good overall, for a total NOOB. I'm not planning on submitting it or anything (actually I'm pretty done with it, I need to get back to my own stuff,) just wanted some feedback... what was done right, what was done wrong (though I probably know what SOUNDS wrong, more like... how do I fix it?) and how interesting the entire arrangement overall is, etc.

I think I got it working sweet now I CAN'T WAIT TO MAKE SOME KICKASS MUSIC.

Thanks for the help, I'll try some of this out. I don't mind recording a clean signal then processing it afterwards, that is what I was doing before I got Guitar Rig, but I prefer hearing direct feedback for guitars so I'd like to try to get it working that way if possible. Is there an ideal buffer size for the sound card or is that just something you have to mess around with and figure out on a case by case basis?

Hey, I already posted this to NI tech support and on the NI help forums but I have bad luck with actually getting help from help forums in general. It does seem to be a somewhat common problem so maybe someone here has gotten past it before or would have some ideas. I'm trying to get Guitar Rig 3 set up and I'm not sure if what I'm experiencing is a set up problem or what, I didn't really understand the set up and was kind of winging it, and I'm pretty new to home recording / sound cards / etc. in general. Basically I am having two issues, not sure if they are related. One is when trying to input guitars there is a constant sort of clipping sound going on. The other is when I try to input there is a huge lag between what I play and when I hear it and it often cuts out entirely, not sure if this is an input or output lag. Combined they make the program basically unusable in its current form. I have a Sony Vaio with XP, 2 GB RAM, etc. there should be no problems there, and an M-Audio 410 firewire external sound card. The sound card works fine for recording guitar into other programs like Cool Edit, etc. Any help with basic set up / these specific issues would be appreciated. Thanks!

1. I have the Simulanalog Guitar Suite linked in that big thread. The distortions on that are too 70s fuzzyish for me, I really want two distortions... a clean distortion for the more melodic stuff and a metal distortion for the heavy stuff. 2. As far as actual pedals I have a Danelectro Fab Tone for the softer sounds and a Boss Metal Zone for the straight up metal. I don't know if I'm happy with them over anything else since I honestly only tried out a handful of pedals before buying, but if I could get something close on my computer that would be sweet. I want to be able to record clean and then add the distortion though. 3. Where to look though... 4. My brother actually gave me Guitar Rig but um... since it isn't mine it is technically illegal. And you need some product key or something which I don't have. How much does the actual version cost? 5. Hopefully getting there, slowly but surely. At least my clean guitar doesn't sound like total ass anymore.

Yeah I checked there, couldn't find much that works for punk and metal though.

I'm using Orion, I have a lot of effects but the only distortion on there is like... classic rock type distortion, even turned full up it is more fuzz than the kind of stuff modern punk rock, etc. use. I want something that would sound like well... Green Day guitars and such. Anyone have suggestions?

Hmmm. I'm pretty much downloading everything on that page now. I really don't have any idea how to use the stuff though. Very confused.

Here is what I have right now... Epiphone Les Paul into Danelectro distortion (sounds great on my amps) into Presonus pre-amp into M-Audio external sound card into Cool Edit Pro I have all the levels set so it barely goes into the red when I'm playing heavy. And it sounds like ass. I have no idea how to get a good distortion recorded. It is making me sad. Any hints? Tips? Techniques? ANYTHING?