timaeus222

This sounds great! There's a good sense of progression, the 'performances' (the 'live' MIDI, I should say) were solid IMO, and the stereo field is clear. Awesome job man! =)

Happy birthday! (I'd link ProtoDome's 8-bit Happy Birthday Remix, but I can't find it! )

If you have any other background information you can share, that would be great.

I just noticed this yesterday when I had more than one instance of FluidR3 loaded into FL Studio 11. I started with one instance. Played fine, polyphony was all good, sounded normal. I loaded a second instance, and tried to play something polyphonic. It played monophonically, and if I asdfasdfasdfed on my keyboard, the mess of notes then turned into resonant bitcrush-y left-panned buzzing that just won't stop. The weird thing is, the first instance played fine, even with the second instance loaded. I guess I should say that I had a lot of other stuff loaded at the same time that wasn't soundfonts. However, I haven't had memory issues since I got some more RAM. I'll have to try recreating this situation again in an empty project file later. Anyone get this resolved before? I just want to use a harp, and I'm having to use a sample library harp sometimes (which I actually don't prefer over FluidR3's harp---no kidding!).

Well, I distinctly remember having a project file of mine working well when I opened it in FL 10, which I specifically labeled as "extended memory" because of how it supported more than 4GB RAM, but when I upgraded to FL 11, it didn't open because of memory issues, and it gave me all sorts of completely wrong errors (stuff like Fruity Delay 2 being not installed, etc.). I had kept FL 10 installed just in case, and so I just worked in that project file with FL 10 until I figured it out. It took a while, but I opened the same project file in FL 11 using the *other* .exe file, simply called "FL.exe", and it worked. So, yeah, try that!

You don't have to, but it helps speed up the loading times. I've batch-compressed every library that I had gotten as WAVs into NCWs, and it's essentially halved my loading times. For me there's just a bit of a pause for about... 20~30 seconds, then the samples load within the next 5~10 seconds. Are you using the non-compability mode version? I recall Kristina telling me how the versions were switched or something, when FL 10 was updated to FL 11. EDIT: Yeah, it's the info at the very bottom here.

I can think of three potential problems: 1) Not enough or not a lot of RAM. What are your specs? 2) Slow processor speed and loading uncompressed samples. What's your processor speed? Are you using WAVs, NCWs, or compressed library files (I think they were NKX or something)? 3) Windows 8 compatibility (maybe)

The vocals sound a lil choppy, as if you sliced your vocals to line up the transients, and that sounds unnatural to me. There's quite a bit of midrange in the backing instruments that is cluttering the soundscape and obscuring the important frequencies of all the vocals, so it's hard to understand them without trying to compare to the lyrics. Also, there's an unusual atmosphere to the reverb. The vocals sound distant and washy, especially in the backing vocals. The backing vocals sound almost like they were recorded in a tiled bathroom, with some additional chorus effects or something. As a whole, it feels muddy. Even if you can hear certain desirable elements in a song, I know this may sound condescending, but you have to keep the support instruments in mind and mix them to the best of your ability to sound as clear you can manage, as well. I'm not particularly fond of the reverb tone on the vocals, but it's fine. I'd just say we need more clarity in the vocals, some mud needs to be cleared up, and perhaps, the track can have some more progression throughout. The drums sound pretty simply written, even for trance, and some rhythmic variation would help. You could always change the hi hat rhythm, add an open hi hat, add snare rolls, change up the drum samples, etc.

I thought Eino had some great sound design, but Tuberz had the more solid production. Eino's arrangement was kinda same-y throughout, but Tuberz's arrangement felt more plodding in the slower sections (needed more progression). I dunno, I just chose the one that I nitpicked less.

True, but at least for Argle and I, we both love doing it, and I'd give props to Argle's production if he wanted me to.

My gut says no. I think I recall Japanese copyright to be really strange. http://www.worldipreview.com/news/japan-considers-copyright-law-extension http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Japan#Author.27s_rights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Japan#Public_domain

To be honest, I feel the same way. I love production.

Oh plz I support him simply because he's Alexander Brandon. Need I say more?

Personally I feel like if you can find the part of the production process that you are slowest at, and work at it until you can do it as if it were second nature, that'll be a huge hurdle you just eliminated and your workflow speed will increase most because of that improvement. It was EQ in general for me in the past. Now the only thing holding me back with EQ is the extreme low bass and extreme high treble, and I'm already working towards improving that.

Couldn't tell. On another note, I used to be pretty disorganized in my large (40+ layers) project files, and I separated patterns from automation clips instead of pairing related objects together. These days I try to at least put related objects near each other (but not overlapping each other), if not label the patterns I make, so that I at least know what's associated with what. EX: A bass clarinet and its expression (CC11) automation clip on adjacent layers. I sometimes also associate one automation clip with many similar automations so I can have one automation clip labeled to automate more than one knob.

Yeaaaaah, that can happen too; keeping backups: great idea!

Motifs. Yes. Easy example: Beethoven's 5th Symphony (more of a leitmotif, but a similar concept of using motifs for a sense of familiarity).

Certainly. It took me forever to finally develop the mindset to just "go with the flow". If you don't know what to do next, write SOMETHING after the current section in your song. One musical line, whatever it may be, could inspire many more (or a few more, YMMV---literally). @Gecko: The funny thing about synthesis is that there is definitely more than one way to do many many things in synthesis. You can "fake" a synthesis method with creative manipulations. For example, you can draw a wavetable ranging from a pulse wave to a square wave, tween them, route an LFO to modulate the wavetable position, and call that Pulse-Width Modulation. There might already be a PWM knob on your synth---you're just manually doing the same thing.

Yeah, I'll likely be trying more of FM and focus on lead sounds for a few weeks.

Kind of, except a piano will mainly remain as a piano used in many roles (ambient texture, jazz lead, solo piano, etc.), while FM literally can take up quite a lot of REALLY different timbres.

Totally not dumb. If you wait for inspiration to hit, you could bust out this awesome thing that you never knew you could do. Now, of course, it doesn't come *just like that*, but when it does... Inspiration isn't the only thing that gives you good reason to write music. You could be motivated by some sort of incredible event that just transpired (like OverClocked Records opening, for instance!). I hear just occasionally varying your day-to-day activities could help instill some creativity in your brain. Quoooooting myself. Clear acknowledgement before the fact. Juuuust saying.

I'm not saying that. I'm saying in my encounters with FM synthesis, I've never explicitly made a lead with FM. That's all. Go look at that post again, I edited it a good 1.5 hours ago. I never intentionally meant to say anything like that.

Who's this Keiji TaeKwongDo again?

I've tried before, it turned out tinny. I've probably accidentally created a lead sound that could otherwise be made with FM, but I just never heard of FM doing leads before.

Hehe, I just went for the "find one do-it-all synth" approach. Got close, but close is good enough for me. Zebra, 'nuff said about it. =) I think I have like 6 (not including the VSTs, which are of course separate from VSTi's) and use about 2 of them regularly. xD