ectogemia

Thanks, fish. Very useful info. I had surmised most of that after seeing the first half of virt's seminar linked earlier in the thread, but I hadn't heard about the modulation index. I've just been doing FM by detuning the modulator by even octaves which maintains the integer ratio, but I guess I've been missing some potential timbres in doing that. Do some FM synthesizers come with tweakable modulation index parameters or do they tend to expect the user to tweak the frequency of the modulator by hand?

Hmm, I think I'm looking to get back into Minecraft a little. username = nabecker210 Let me know when I'm white-listed. IF I'm white-listed...

Hey, cool, the best musician I've ever heard released a new album. DOWNLOADING.

Now that ben has commented, the 9bit circle is complete (claims the unposted remixer). hal-see, I hereby challenge you to end this mix with something other than the drums filtering out! God damn it, you're just gonna switch it to a high-pass aren't you...

One of my favorite sources ever. Nice. I wasn't a huge fan of the swing at the beginning ex-pecially given the straight groove of the rest of the remix. Maybe it's just because I'm so fond of the source as it is that the shuffle kind of bothered me since it didn't belie the rhythm I expected. It seems a bit sparse in the area around 0:45. The percussion could use some more variationfrom 0:45-1:45ish. You like glitching stuff. GLITCH IT. GLIIIIIIIITTCHHH IIITTTTTTttttttttt. Slick transition to the double-time business around 2:15. When the wubzywubbbzzz come in around 2:35, I thought that it and the percussion didn't gel very well. Dub-step wubz are very percussive, and it felt for a bit like there were two different rhythmic ideas going on between the wubz and drums. I know shit-all about production and hardly any more about sound design, so I can't much comment in those areas. I enjoyed it, but in my opinion, there's still some work to be done. Hah, and just a random thing I noticed recently is that almost all of your mixes end with the drums filtering out. Always a cool effect, but every time??!

I can't really add much to young neblix's advice other than a) stick with it; you're at the beginning of a brutally tough learning curve and seek out project files from other remixers who are willing to give them to you, if at the very least to see how they sequence their MIDI data and automation. Despite the fact I rarely had the artist's plugins, and as such, the file I got was little more than the arrangment and MIDI data, this analytical process was and still is critical for me. It just requires PMing someone who wrote one of your favorite remixes and asking if they'd be a sweetie and send the project file or MIDI data for it your way. Don't be surprised if someone says no, but you'll get a yes for sure. Then, it's time to study, study, study.

Depends upon what subject area you're trying to learn about. Where would you say you stand at the moment in FL Studio, and what, specifically, are you looking to learn about?

Well, I think you just about hit it. I rarely play new video games anymore because I think they're all missing something, or rather they're all packed with too much crap. When I play anything but an RPG, all I care about is gameplay that challenges me and forces me to be creative. That just about never happens anymore -- instead, you get a focus on shock value and graphics. Woooo... :/ Buuut I digress. RPGs today don't seem to take many risks, and the world-building is fairly derivative and superficial. Take PT as an example. Derivative? Uhhhhh, never seen anything like it. Superficial? It was hardly a game at all, but rather an animated novel. If you're in to that kind of medium, the experience will be a memorable and lasting one. BG2 is more of the same, but with a somewhat deeper focus on gameplay and less on storyline development. The same can be said of Morrowind vs. Oblivion. Morrowind was more of a first-person animated novel, albeit not as well-written as that of PT, while Oblivion was more of a 'AWWW YEAAAAAAHHHHH' kind of modern game. Morrowind's often vacuous and backwater world was frequently empty, yet profound, evocative, and immersive. Morrowind relied more on the generation of a truly wild and teetering land which made the wandering and adventuring feel genuinely exciting, novel, and heroic. Oblivion's world made you feel like an errand-boy in a Medieval universe you've already experienced a thousand times in books, movies, other games, at Medieval Times (dragon tail soup = the shit), wherever. When it comes down to it, I think it's a question of risk and novelty, and often the two come in tandem. New games are almost always built to sell -- an unfortunate but understandable truth. So it goes with movies and music and almost every other medium. Before the video game market grew into itself as much as it has now, I believe developers were more willing to produce unique worlds and stories because the market itself was composed of more sophisticated gamers on average and the developers were usually fairly small, so there weren't many patriarchal pressures from some owner company like Activision or EA to produce a saccharine product that everyone will want to swallow. Am I on base?

Ooooo, very nice. This is definitely what I was talking about. Mega bonus points for virt being the speaker. Well, if virt is saying that most of the great patches are produced by random tweaking, I believe it. It seems like there's not a lot of rhyme or reason to FM just based on the sideband generation process's nature. Oh, well, it's still fun to screw around with all the knobbies Anyone else have any other resources or tips?

That's honestly mostly what this thread was about. I reached a wall because I was doing Op A --> Op B kinds of synthesis, sometimes with a little Op B --> Op C, but I never really did mix two different carriers' signals. I guess what I'm stabbing for is if there are any predictable ways to manipulate FM at the level you described. It's just such an abstract form of synthesis that I was hoping for a few guidelines to go by instead of having to really get into it all on my own. Because when I finally produced some FM patches that didn't suck, it got me really excited about using FM as a source for a ton of new sounds. I suppose I just don't know at this point if I'm complicating things to the point of diminishing returns or not. Hell if I know I just started with FM, so I'm not sure what the possibilities are. Browsing through Sytrus presets blew my mind, and perhaps it's because I'm not entirely familiar with Sytrus's interface, but some of those impressive sounds seemed to come from pretty complex-looking FM matrices. At least that's my novice estimation. Maybe it was just creative effects processing of simple FM modulation? Maybe one or both?

Hah, I just watched that on Friday. It was so good, I took notes. It absolutely helped, and I've even been able to apply some of the harmonic principles he talked about, but I still can't conceive of how to apply that to an FM mod matrix.

So I've read half a dozen articles on FM synthesis, and I understand the physics and math of it just fine. Unfortunately, that theoretical knowledge doesn't quite translate to producing a target sound quite like it does for most other synthesis methods. I've been practicing with it over the past week or so, and while I'm certainly getting better at coaxing cool things out of it, I feel like I'm hitting a wall. It's probably worth saying that I've been doing all of my FM synthesis out of Zebra2.5 which only has a very basic FM synth within it -- no crazy FM mod matrix in the conventional sense. Could that be what's holding me back? Is anyone aware of any tips, tricks, tutorials, common approaches, etc. to producing different types of sounds out of an FM synth? Perhaps some advice on how to wrap my mind around the mod matrix in more complex FM synths and how to use it predictably and effectively?

Album get. Ever since I heard Sweet Dream Lullaby, I've been a huge fan.

Fair 'nuff.

But: Just saying.

Tune it, filter it, rez it, modulate it, pan it... so good. And you can even put in triplets!! Such a premium feature.

<3 <3 listen to the man.

That's a hell of an idea that had never occurred to me. Smart thinkin'. But yeaaaah, probably figure out the rhythm, then start plugging away. Having a good set of ears helps, and if you don't really have that skill yet, practice by transcribing or improvising. While doing either, THINK, don't just plunk at keys. You'll start to narrow the range of intervals you can distinguish from one another, you'll recognize harmonies, blah blah. If it's any consolation, a year ago I sucked at transcribing, but now, after a lot of improv and transcription, it's no biggie unless it's particularly crazy jazziness. You will get better. Just keep at it.

Any plans for zippable hoodies? New technology, I know, but I like to keep on the cutting-edge.

There are an absurd number of people from Indianapolis on OCR. Just saying. And chalk up another one for the anti-step sequencer crowd, woooooo,

Step sequencer is boring It's good for dance music and simple supplementary parts, maybe sometimes for other genres with rudimentary percussion, but that's about it. I like putting weird syncopation and trills and glitches in my drum parts, so my step sequencer is pretty lonely.

video game remix website

I have these on my controller, and I pretty much haven't even touched them except for a test run that didn't work out. In other news, I have horrible rhythm.

I usually sequence everything by hand with random samples I have. It doesn't always sound 100% cohesive, but eh, whatevez. The biggest issue here is that it's insanely cumbersome. I used a soundfont kit a couple of times for some of my earliest mixes. I've started slicing loops recently and rearranging them to my liking. I love that sliced up sound, too, with all of the samples being interrupted and choppy. Very electronic-y. That said, it doesn't sound real because the lack of cohesion is the goal in the first place. I'm curious to see what everyone else says myself. Sequencing a pattern or two by hand, then copying and chopping it sounds cool and is pretty easy as well.

So good bits just right