Matney X

Henry from Silent Hill 4... Despite my best intentions, sometimes I feel like I'm just part of someone else's plot, and I'm never slow with a "what the hell?"

I'm interested, once I get the equipment to do it. Thanks for posting this, though, since without this thread, I don't know if I would have ever heard of Ninjam.

The quickest, and easiest, will be for him to get a loop station and learn how to use it. I hear that Abelton can do this, too, but I haven't played with the live function of it, much, since my desktop is hardly portable. And I don't know much about Apogee. Sorry for not being much more help.

I like it!

Not all the time, but most of it, for sure. Wow... Simply wow. And the lead's not awful; the sound seems solid enough, but the licks just don't fit the piece.

I toyed with the idea a bit, and downloaded the chiptunes and everything... However, I couldn't think about doing anything more than just remaking it with the real instruments, and I figured that had already been done (I was right, apparently.) If someone can remix it, great.

I've got one in the works... Prog rock or Post Rock / Post Hardcore... Whatever you wanna call it, these days.

I tossed around the idea, just this week, of remixing the piano theme from build mode...

I agree that Joe Romersa kinda ruins all the tracks he's on. It's like he's REALLY trying to be Bowie.

The trick of making your guitar parts sound passable is to actually write the music like a guitar would actually be playing it. It's uncommon that a guitar player will ALWAYS use full, 3-note, chords, across two octaves. Most of the guitar you hear on the radio, lead stuff excluded, is just root-fifth-octave. I'd wager that 90+% of all guitar based music written since the 80s is this way.

Proper screaming --the kind that won't lead to vocal chord polyps and voice loss during/after a gig-- is nothing more than really loud whispering, with a bit of throaty growl mixed in. Yeah... it sounds about as weak as it can possibly be, and it doesn't hold with it the physical feedback you'd expect from something so aggressive. That's why most people screaming in music do it wrong, and eventually lose their ability to sing or scream, depending on how their body reacts to the constant trauma. (Actual screaming is to singing as a hard tackle in American football is to running.) To beef it up, and I could be wrong about this (I've got 20 years of "classical" music training, 10 years of gigging, and less than a year of recording/mixing/mastering, so my knowledge is lacking on this end of things), adding a bit of distortion/overdrive and compression should do the trick. Perhaps a quick delay (less than 10 miliseconds) to thicken it up, as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Rock-N-Roll-Singers-Survival-Manual/dp/0793502861/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224699664&sr=8-1 This book, the Rock N Roll Singer's Survival Manual, saved my voice with the techniques it describes. It explains, in layman's terms, everything from chest, head, and falsetto voices to screaming "properly," how to quickly recover from a cold or quit smoking, and what to eat the day of a performance / recording For six bucks used, I can't stress enough that it's worth it to anyone that sings more than just in the shower or car.

It shames me to say this, because it's probably the "worst possible solution," but I record all my guitar stuff with a Boss RC-50 Loop Station, running my guitar directly into it, then uploading the WAV to my computer, and running it through various amp simulators. Even still, it sounds pretty decent. (http://www.looperman.com/tracks_detail.php?tid=12195 for an example; and, yes, I know my horns are off at the end.)

And, if a real guitarist isn't available, it's just finding a good plugin (I really like the Lilac sound on the free Kore Player by Native Instruments... I posted it in another forum, but I feel it deserves repeating), and tweaking it enough to sound "real."

I've got loads of stuff that's been laid down, either digitally or on paper, that I got "half finished" and then moved on. I use it for times when I am totally beat down creatively, and everything I try to write sounds the same; I go back, play what I've got "half finished" and if inspiration strikes me, I'll work on it a bit more. Almost every time I've done this, my understanding of theory has improved enough that I can at least color a few chords better, or add a decorative flourish on the lead line.

No, he uses stacked humbuckers, specifically DiMarzio HS-3 in the bridge, and DiMarzio YJM in the middle in neck. He plays with a lot of gain, though, and that's where the hum could be coming from, but it's not his guitar. Anyway, this isn't a gear/guitar forum, so arguing over what pickups Yngwei uses is pointless. And I'm sticking with my scooped mids for metal comment, noob or not. You don't want to scoop them post, but recording with them scooped from the amp is just fine.

Without being there to test things out, it's hard to say what's really happening with that hum. Have you tried playing at different angles from your amp? Sometimes that helps. Your guitar and pickups sound like humming shouldn't be a problem, but it's still there, so possibly the amp, but amps rarely hum like that, and when they do, it's constant, not intermittent like yours is. Let's hope the new guitar and amp fixes the problem.

It's all dependent on what you classify metal as, as well; most of the time, punk rock actually uses more distortion. And, you're right about Yngwei using stacked humbuckers; they still get the single coil sound, but they're running the current in the same way a humbucker runs it, to cancel out the hum.

Yeah, that's definitely 60-cycle hum. Pretty bad, too; are you near any major power lines, or anything? Also, what kind of guitar (with what kind of pickups) are you using, and what is your effects chain like?

Almost all metal uses "scooped mids", where the mids are turned significantly down on the amp, while the bass and treble is turned up. If your equalizer is the slider type, the presets should be in a V shape. The next step with metal guitars is compression and distortion, obviously. The trick is to not use too much of either; you'd think that by metal they use more distortion that anyone else, and that's just not the case. Finally, the type of pickups in your guitar make a load of difference; humbuckers will almost always sound better playing metal than single coils. There are always exceptions, of course (Yngwei Malmsteen plays single coils, for instance), but the sound that you say you're aiming for is almost certainly played through humbuckers.

Also, check out tweakheadz.com for a really good explanation of firewire vs usb inputs, as well as the what the best bang for your buck is.

I'll wager that what you're hearing is 60-cycle hum... It's caused by magnetic interference in the pickups, and can be caused by things like lights, TVs, cars driving by, cell phones, radios, radio stations in the air... Basically, ANYTHING can cause it. A few options are a) put the noise suppressor VERY FIRST in your line, so the decay from delay and reverb is coming from pristine audio, not the constantly humming signal that's coming from your guitar. Also, unless you're particularly picky with a certain delay pedal or reverb tank, you can do that kinda stuff post. Open up your guitar and shield the crap out of it (guitarnuts.com for a good guide); that requires a bit of skill with a soldering iron, though. Granted... this is just the most common problem with hum/hiss/static, and without hearing your audio samples, I can't totally tell you what it is.

It's on my list of games to get once I get a PS3... By that time, though, I'll probably find it in the used bargain bin.

Yeah, I know, some of these quotes are over a year old, but the questions never seemed to be fully answered. Sorry. In the free Kore Player from Native Instruments, the Latin Kit has a pretty decent whistle. Also, I'm pretty sure there's a handclap in there, somewhere. However, for those three samples, your best bet would be to just do an audio search on Dogpile or something for "whistle" "heartbeat" and "hand clap." You'll probably find some decent WAVs out there. Also in the Kore Player, the Lilac sound is really, really, good. Without a decent keyboard with a modwheel (and possibly expression pedals), it's tough to get an expressive solo, but it works really well for big power chords or simple leads. Finale 2009 can use any VST out there, but nothing before that can. I'm not sure how to add it, though, as I don't actually use Finale (too poor, and I'm against torrenting something I'd happily buy.)

Also, on the note of musicless games. In the Silent Hill series, the actual melodic music (while awesome) almost always seems out of place when it comes in, with the exception of cut scenes. The stuff that sets the mood the best are the ambiant noise pieces that you can't quite focus on. I guess that's the key of it; don't make your music more interesting than the game, at any given point.