timaeus222

I'ma make you blush even moar You were the first major person to help me improve mah music making

Simple answer: take jazz choir and try out for a solo! Just kidding, unless you really want to, as I did. It helped my improvisational abilities with bass lines; I had to develop intuition for chord progressions on my own though. Real answer: Study melodies you deem good and figure out why they're good. Does the rhythm keep you interested? Are there awkward intervals? Does the flow make sense? Does it evoke the quality you want from it? Does it make you grin with its impressiveness? Example of a melody/solo I was especially happy with in the end @ 1:39

Well, I did then learn from you that Reese basses are for more than just Drum & Bass! Dynamics, though, seems like a broad, umbrella term used in place of something more elaborate---you may have meant dynamic flow, which is larger-scale dynamics, but you may have also meant a flat/static or expressive/dynamic quality to the timbre created by its envelope, LFO, or occasionally filter choice. Either one is fine!

Things I noticed: - The dubstep wobble pacing is plodding from the never-changing rhythm - Some elements are too quiet or pushed too far back - This is mixed quietly, aside from some select few elements. - The "snares" at 0:10 came in too late. It's off the rhythm and playing in between a down beat and its next up beat. - The snare at 0:14 sounds like it's clipping the track, or it has a little too much distortion that it sounds like actual clipping. Not bad, but the textures could use some more nuance and the mixing could be more calculated/purposeful.

I agree with Gario on each point, and I would place the harmony repetition at the highest priority here as well. There's room for improvement, but ultimately it's not bad. Things that could be improved on though, some of which would help significantly: - The piano in the intro is acting as the lead, and it's actually a little bit too distant. It seems like your intention for a distant piano there, but I feel like it's pushed a tiny bit too far back. - At 0:46, bells cover up the piano a little bit, but at the same time, expose that its high end isn't super prevalent in the original sample. You may need a better sample. Here are some free ones that I personally like. You'll need reverb, but otherwise, they're actually quite good, for free soundfonts! - At 1:29, the piano feels narrow in comparison to the pads. Some minor stereo widening on the piano could enhance the expansiveness of that section overall. - At 2:12, the piano is a little bit mechanical in its note lengths. It seems like each note ends approximately where the next note starts, while in real life a pianist's previous note overlaps with the next note for a few milliseconds. It may also help, if you haven't done so already, to vary the note's "start-time"---when the note starts relative to the quantization grid. Since humans don't play rigidly, that adds a human, random element. - At 2:55, the piano is quite buried, and it's playing the melody. This is where the overly loud choir is most detrimental to the source usage. - At 3:37, the woodwind is a bit buried, but not as much as the piano was earlier. - At 4:19, the piano is buried to a similar extent as at 2:55. - The fade-out ending didn't bother me that much. It's not helpful to the arrangement, but ultimately it isn't enough basis for a rejection by itself. I feel like any sort of NO (resubmit) would come mostly from the piano's mixing and sequencing, as well as the chord progression overall.

In my personal opinion, the reese isn't super powerful, but it's an intermediate power in my own personal hierarchy that goes basic wobble < reese-like < bitcrushed FM/comb < FM/comb. It's what I would describe as "transparent", for which if I try to visualize what it represents, it would look like something I can see through. It's still pretty good, though, and with some refinement on the strength of the overall harmonics it can be even stronger. Truth be told, dubstep isn't all wobbles. There are also what I like to call drifters, scrapers, and... yes, I'm going to say "dancers". Can't really clarify these without examples! Drifters travel through the stereo field as essentially wobbles with longer LFOs or just a long envelope instead. Example @ ~1:05.5 Scrapers do what their name says: they are essentially scraping your ears with their heaviness, and can be accomplished in some uncommon cases where oscillator sync on an FM bass actually works out this way. Example 1 @ 0:57 Example 2 @ 1:49 Dancers is a little bit weird of a description, but they sound like they're dancing and surrounding your ears. A little more straight forward to make, but possibly a result of meticulous glitching techniques centered on controlled gating that has a longer-than-usual release. Example @ 1:57 In my humble opinion, this is a fantastic representation of the diversity of dubstep basses (dubstep basses start at 0:49). They don't have to be dark. They can be playful too! 2:06 is the best part, IMO. (Pay attention to the pattern that is in this track; the wobbles usually show up on the second and fourth up beats)

I'm gonna try to find time for this. Should be fun to try full dubstep for the first time.

Another thing about dubstep basses is that there are some "pitfalls" that many people do, which turns at least me off in those particular cases: - Too much resonance --- it's gonna hurt, and you get why. - Siren-like timbres, but that's just personal taste. - Using the same one over and over again at a plodding rhythm --- variety helps keep attention as you well know. You could glitch up the bass perhaps, vary the cutoff filter envelope length or LFO rate, etc. - Tiny little missed details such as harsh treble from excess distortion or harsh treble resonances from bitcrushing (I personally am not bothered by non-excessive bitcrushing) --- minor nitpicks, but it couldn't hurt to be detailed. It also allows hi hats to come through, as a benefit. Some things you could try while experimenting: - With FM, it helps to slightly detune the input oscillator that came previously in the serial oscillator layout and use multiple voices for a thicker timbre. - With comb filters, if you have one, depending on the sound you currently have, it may thicken the sound to detune the comb filter. explains the comb filter pretty well (I'm actually learning more about it that I didn't know).

You j00jes caught up with 3 months of stuff in a month. Not good enough.

I've found that the really rich, gritty, unforgiving basses are made with FM synthesis or comb filters. Waveshaping/Distortion really adds to the raw meatiness of the sound, while occasionally (but not always), oscillator sync adds a sort of "scraping" effect to the sound. Maybe this could help give you ideas for techniques you can reapply.

Whoo! This was fun, actually.

You're using an acoustic kick with an electronic clap in an ambient track. That's why it's not clicking. The rhythm also sounds awkward to me. It's hip-hop-ish in 6/4, and for a long time. It's cool for a while, then it gets plodding. Just a thought.

I'm grateful too, for this opportunity. This is motivating me to work on my album until I'm completely satisfied with it!

I should be home at 8:30PM on your side (in 1.5 hours hopefully), and we'll have 3.5 hours to get it done and submitted. We don't have to get a length of 3 mins; that's just my own ideal. ~2:30 is fine and doable.

From this, it seems like your polyphony is limited by your settings on Garageband? Or a VST?

Reiterating this. I actually only have 5 GB RAM, and I've never needed more than that. Of course, I generally write electronic music, but I did write an FFCC track recently that used the most RAM I've ever used (2.8GB unbridged just because), and even then it wasn't too much. I've never reached above 3GB RAM used, with or without bridging. So obviously, YMMV, and just figure out how you want to use libraries you want to get, and make your judgments based on that.

This is really helpful! I didn't know you could tag patches like you can in Guitar Rig, though I was really hoping you could!

That's true, though it just means they're being realistic and fair, IMO. After getting my first pass (which actually isn't posted yet), I looked into the production, and it actually did have some flaws, especially because I'm much more objective about my own music than I used to be, but the important thing is, it was surprisingly well-received by Larry, even with those flaws. I'm not going to say the OCR bar is low, but I'm also not going to say it's too high. They're high to beginners and intermediates, but not to those people who have figured out how to be objective with their own music. It actually made me reflect on which flaws I point out at certain times in anyone's music, including mine, are big or not-so-big deals. After that, I actually realized that not everything has to be perfect. If it nearly is, then great, and that's why I'm so picky, yet helpful in intention. Personally though, I do feel the judges, or at least the younger ones (who have a wider frequency range of hearing), like Vig and WillRock, are on par with those "real mixing/mastering engineers", using your wording, but being more lenient and humble about it so that it's not impossible to get a mixpost. As you learn to mix, eventually it gets to the point where whether or not you dive into the extremes of bass and treble mixing (if you're a perfectionist), and how much, determines how much of an overall perspective you have about "high-level" producers because you start to hear more of a distinction between very subtle aspects of production. Sound design helps in that aspect of distinguishing subtle aspects of production too---in training your ears to like what could sound good to many people. It's kind of out there (I don't really want to call it "exclusive" or "obscure", per se), but if you get serious about the extreme ends of the frequency spectrum, you do get a clearer idea of who has more technical know-how or resources than who when you hear the subtle differences in treble and bass clarity because it would have to mean that they hear it too, and you just have to dial it down a bit to keep your reservations within the realm of what people [who aren't into that] know and to stay modest, basically. Those "real mixing/mastering engineers", I believe, are at that "level", and that "level" is what I believe those OC ReMixers with "killer studio chops" are at, because they're so detail-oriented and meticulous and picky and want to continually improve (like me, apparently, personality-wise; though I'm actually a nice guy), so that's why I think those OC ReMixers at least on par with those professional engineers. However, although context usually matters, it's what you do with that context that actually matters. Using your example, people who take in others' feedback, whether from compos or workshop, just to get on OCR aren't necessarily heavily influenced by the OCR standards. If those people can step away from conforming to guidelines and get objective about their music, they can get a clearer perspective of what the bar truly is---a "level" where the average listener has no major issues with the music they're presented with. In a sense, and you're certainly right about this, the context of remixing for OCR is, in fact, a barrier to really becoming "professional", and you really only get past that barrier when you can critique your own music to continually get better objectively and of your own accord, like zircon once said on an OCR Talkback, rather than simply to get on OCR. Actually, if you look in the About page on my website, I go into detail on the progression of my music production experiences with months and who helped me and stuff, and eventually you'll see that I start to get independent with my learning; that's approximately when objectivity started for me. I hope you guys don't take this as sort of a hierarchical statement about OCR; I'm just trying to provide a larger perspective for people to consider and contextualize. Not trying to be arrogant here, either.

Okay. And I would be referring to people like zircon, bLiNd, Joshua Morse, and PrototypeRaptor (among others) when I say "killer studio chops". That said, I honestly strongly believe the judges panel definitely know what they're doing in both arrangement and production.

Exactly what I was thinking. I was like, "Man, Jordan, why you go and win djp over? You're making us pale in comparison. D=<"

Dunno if you have anyone mastering this album yet, but I would be up for it if you don't have anyone already. Probably won't have time to actually write a track, but I can at least contribute that. Music examples on my website in my signature (not necessarily the mastering examples). Hear them how you will; that's why there's a whole bunch of examples. The Free ReMixes page has the largest variety you'll find on there, so if I were to suggest any page that best represents what kind of songs I've finalized before, that would be the one.

I said this earlier, but that's something that I started working on a few months ago, so there's something to look forward to. Probably won't be done for another two years or so, but eh, it's on the way, and I'm very excited to work on it with Chimpazilla. That said, I actually haven't read any actual books on what I learned in the past two years and 9 months. It was either internet articles, experimentation, or the OCR Workshop Forums. The last textbook I read, or book of any sort, on music production was an old textbook from when my sister took music production in the early 2000's. I still have it, but it's definitely way too general for what you're looking for. It's certainly interesting, but you already know about half of it. The other half is like microphone setup, reverb, delay, EQ, etc., but in the sense of helping people get to grips with it rather than the kind of case-by-case application you want to know. Lest I make the statement that OCR producers and composers have some killer studio chops in comparison to some pop music producers and composers (most pop artists got their fame by connections, marketing, and sheer timing, IMO). If any books are available that show you how to do what you want to do, they'll probably be written by one of us.

Yeah, but then you have to think about who's using which hand... and for what.

Okay, well, I'm pretty sure you summed up the OP as: "Is there some resource out there that can tell me how to write and produce music using a DAW that sounds good in the objective sense, both in production and arrangement?" (honestly, writing good music in the subjective sense is too hard to predictably do, no matter how good you are. It's literally luck here) And at some point you wanted one way each to do certain things generally, allowing you to get the hang of it and do it multiple times yourself, and from there you can experiment with that and adapt it to other contexts. As far as I know, there aren't books for this, but then again, I did actually figure it out myself just from reading online articles. It may be a bit of a cop-out, but all I did was learn the ins and outs of my DAW (FL Studio) and any plugins I download or buy, and get some help from OCR over the years. It's not that complicated of a process, actually. I could honestly describe this way of learning production as simply trial-and-error. It's such a modern thing that I'm pretty sure people haven't written "guides" for this. Some examples: To learn how to EQ quickly in FL, I worked to connect what I see on the Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to what I hear on it. Since I'm a visual person, I could shape the EQ how I picture it in my head, and based on that, it ends up sounding how I want it to sound. That's one way, and it worked for me. To learn how to use compressors (or any other plugin), I downloaded smexoscope and studied how the waveform changes when I tweak knobs on a compressor. Practice that enough, and it registers into muscle memory. Then, I put that all together to do something specific. I do an A/B comparison and toggle on/off to get the difference in my head, and after doing it so many times, your brain just wants that quality of compression to be applied to everything similar to what you just did it to. If I were to refer you to any sort of production resource, http://soundonsound.com/ articles are fantastic for production values and sound design. I've found stuff on synthesizer basics, FM synthesis, compressors, EQ, reverb, delay, speakers vs. headphones, etc. I haven't even read everything there yet. For example, something on parallel compression on the master track. As for arrangement, generic answer incoming: I studied other people's music and recomposed it by ear, learning what type of harmonies and melodies make it sound good at particular points in the song. I go into melodic contour and harmonic sensibility, and once I've done that, I just repeat this process until my ears are used to the stuff I deem good. I don't think there's a book out there with the kind of advice you're looking for because everyone learns with different methods. Some people are more visual than others, and some are lazier than others, etc. If a book were to sum all that up, it may have to present multiple methods for each general situation, which would be quite long, like Neblix hinted at.

It may just be me, but I'd rather receive very few nitpicks on a mixpost whenever possible. Obviously, the less nitpicks, the more passable, so... you know, every little bit counts. I think that if you choose to not fix a significant nitpick, then there may be a chance of you missing that detail again.