Grayburg

http://tindeck.com/listen/rjmr vs http://tindeck.com/listen/zdsi Just wondering about sound production atm. Personally, I like how the first sounds more, but I usually get criticism about weak sounding guitars. Also, when I compare to other people's tracks, the volume on theirs is just so much louder somehow.. with lots of clarity, too. So, I attempted the second, but I'm probably not approaching increasing the volume on things correctly. The mids are probably too cluttered right now, but actually quite a few of the instruments are cut in various 300-1k frequencies. I made sure the very low instruments weren't wasting volume down there, either. Feedback? ty

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO4XAUwUzKw#t=1m42s Is this some sort of rhodes piano or something in the back? It plays until ~2:05.

It's aight. When I raise the volume up to be able to hear the drums, the bass is really loud compared to everything else. I like what's written for everything, though. ^^

http://tindeck.com/listen/rjmr Did a bit of cleaning up, upped some of the instruments including the rhythm guitar, and reworked the solo. Pretty satisfied with the results. Thanks for the feedback all. ^^ Edit: I didn't like how the panning sounded the morning after, so I brought things closer in. It did show me that the organ had some pretty strange high ends when playing lower notes, though, so I was able to fix some frequencies because of that.

Real Final: http://tindeck.com/listen/rjmr http://tindeck.com/listen/qfkj The song is mostly finished, but I'm just checking around for more things to embellish.. particularly the guitar solo. Pretty content with the production quality. Finally tried out this new set of drum samples, and I'm really loving it. But if something sounds off to you guys, I'd like feedback. Enjoy ^^

lol I thought as much. It even looks like it would be an easy tool to implement.

Agreed. There are bad games, good games, and clones of good games, regardless of generation. Still, all of my friends telling me to get Black Ops.. lol At least we're all going to be playing Gran Turismo 5 now.

I'm more comfortable writing bends like this than to draw pitch bends in an event window, or even down under the piano roll. It gets messy having to draw exactly to which cent you want to land on. Don't you dare draw outside the window, either. Is there a way to convert slide notes into events? Because if I wanted to perhaps save it as a .mid, those slide notes wouldn't be read at all. I'd have to go back and redraw every bend I wanted to have. It's just another part of my inefficient workflow. After this current project, I'm probably going to just stop using those slide notes altogether and just deal with the event editor. Probably just going to use freaking MIDI Out channels, too. Pitch bends written in FL don't exactly bend to the same places when converting a project into a midi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEz2jBNSyco#t=56s Really, I just want to sound exactly like Sakuraba. Generally not so much like his Tales of songs, though, because it sounds like he doesn't try as much with those, or something. Gonna be browsing around for soundfonts and vsts after I get back from finals, but I'm hoping you guys have some suggestions as to what kits have a sound similar. I do know that a lot of a sound comes from the production, but, like, the snares sound really "full"? I'm not sure how to say it.

Interesting stuff. lol, should've worded it better. I did learn how the song I was looking at handled going from a minor key down 3 to another minor key, though. In the key of Am, the progression was first set up to end in i, Am, but when it was ready to modulate, it ended with Asus4, then the next chord dropped that suspended fourth to the major third, making it a regular A major chord. That left an easy modulation down to F#m, being the relative minor of the very brief A major. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFMc40qxJK4#t=50s

Ah, cool. I thought it was supposed to be something easy to get to, because I saw a few songs with modulations down 3 half steps.

Well, I want to modulate from Am to F#m. I wanted to use F#m's vii dim as the pivot chord, which would translate as being Am's 6th, but diminished, right?

Hmm, ok. http://www.mediafire.com/?vtxr51fdhfcrxz6 In this, the first one is preferred over the second one, right? http://www.mediafire.com/?olk233msuiyokh2 and if that were so, Am to F#m might look like this? It sounds a little harsh. Having that 6th being diminished seems really odd for Am to have in there, too. So, should I just not be trying to enter F#m like this?

Just what I was looking for. ^^ I'm still a little scared of using the harmonic and melodic, because they sound so different from natural. Like, I could do without the minor sixth in a minor key, because that thing's a little useless, but I couldn't live without using the minor seventh in my melodies. I think I'm confused about the second example. I understand that F#'s diminished vii would be used if I wanted to move to F# major, but I only want to move to F# minor. So, shouldn't an E major chord be better than an E diminished chord?

I'm not really that fond of naming chords with roman numerals, because it doesn't really mean much to me (not even sure if I label chords correctly all the time, either).. I still think of them as just "six" or "five", not "minor fifth" or whatever.. so, I'm definitely not good enough with theory to be a legit writer. lol You might've listened to a song and recognized it was in, perhaps, the key of C, but then later on, the notes from the C scale weren't matching up at all anymore. At that point, the song probably modulated. Mimicking Motoi Sakuraba's prog rock style requires it. :/

Been in the lab, reading up on some new science, experimenting, etc. I want to make sure I'm understanding how to modulate in the simplest way with the simplest progressions. http://www.mediafire.com/?jwqq279z46qz5nn First example I've got is a progression of a "VI VII v i" then "VI VII i" kind of progression. At bar 8, I used a ii(?) chord instead of a VII again, so that along with the i chord before it, they also act as the iv and v of my desired new key, Em. So, in the new key, there's a "iv v i" that could be set up, so I just used a generic progression starting with the i. http://www.mediafire.com/?l8gknridc5age5v In this one, the first progression repeats basically "i VI" with VII's between them. At the end of that progression, I use v instead of VII, since they function the same way. I decided to have that v act as the VII of the new key, which will have to be F#m. Am I thinking about modulation correctly?

I'm looking for a (cheap?) VST or soundfont? with Motoi Sakuraba's organ sound. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEz2jBNSyco#t=21s It has a pretty distorted sound to it, or something. Seems like he's able to mod the tremelo at will, too? Been using a pretty lame soundfont for a while now. lol

The first 30 seconds = GET HYPE.

cool thanks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGUGAHTPcak#t=3m30s At 3:32 it plays a normal sounding note, but at 3:44, it plays the same note, but with some kind of effect. I've been using random soundfonts for lead guitars, which are.. eh, okay, but I definitely want something new that can play notes like that. If there isn't a soundfont or VST capable of playing that, what's that technique even called?

Not sure how to say this, but I want it so that when I perhaps hold two keys, FL will play the first note, then when the second key is recognized, it will stopplaying the first note, and then play the second note alone. edit: LOL JUST KIDDING. Just found out I was supposed to set the Polyphony to 1.

Ah, nice. Thanks for the info. So chromatic chords are actually allowed.. Most songs just use the occasional chromatic note in melodies, so I didn't know what to make of that chord until now. very interesting 6th = dominant thing.. I guess I was just thinking of other songs that have a similar kind of progression that have the last quarter of the progression with a 5th and then a 7th to fancy it up, while maintaining the same kind of harmony. I'll amend how I think about that stuff from now on. Guess it's just a normal "7 pretending to be a 5th in a minor key" in this case. I know what you mean about an Eb major chord in G minor key calling for an Eb Lydian scale, and that major chord != major scale. It'd make perfect sense if it did play a Lydian scale. Been looking at it more.. the scale starts during the Eb chord, but keeps going as the progression moves into the F chord. Even though it was a major chord in G minor, it's basically left G minor just for those bars to play the F minor scale, which I guess is kind of cool, since it builds tension during the Eb chord, and resolves in the following F (now minor) chord. Then the song goes back to generic chordan' in G minor again. Correct thinking? Damn, talking with the actual note names is so confusing. Constantly alt tabbing back to FL to check what note I'm even referring to.. lol don't know how you guys do it

lol.. Don't worry.. I know AAA is just A + AA, the section in particular I'm interested in is the wild synth melody from A, so.. it's still Amuro's ideas pretty much.

I'm trying to steal some of Dj Amuro's moves from AAA, and most of the song is standard fare (G minor with generic chord proggan'), but this section lost me. Here's a midi of what I wrote down by ear, (even though I don't get how some of it functions) http://www.quickfilepost.com/download.do?get=1dd7a35ed2fe9a6afd6947db1c91f7b0 So, it has a 1 > 7 > 6# > 6 > 7 progression.. what? The progression is acting like that 6 chord is the dominant, but that doesn't make any sense. The 7 at the end at least makes sense as a replacement. I don't know what that 6# chord is doing in there, either. At bar 6, it has that 6#, and the melody is playing an arp forming a minor chord on that 6#, but why is that allowed? It's hitting a major 3rd and major 6th, which shouldn't sound right at all in this G minor key.. Bar 14 and 15 have that 6# playing major 3rd and 6ths again. Then at the very end (bar 16 and 17), it's clearly playing some sort of scale, but da hell kinda scale is dat supposed to be? I think it's the scale of F minor (which is this song's G minor's 7th), but didn't it start while it was still on the 6 chord? That should mean it shouldn't sound good, but it still sounds correct, anyway. I probably made mistakes transcripting, especially likely during the scales (really hard to hear.. lol), so if I just heard something wrong, please let me know.. I'm looking to possibly arrange this as I learn it. ^^

Scrub advise: Just turn up the volume anyway. My master track goes over 0db in most (all?) of my projects, but I never end up raising individual ones near 0db. Live playback and the rendered result don't clip at all.