timaeus222

Ah, okay. Thanks. I was never in a real music theory class, I was just asked to apply it during my years in choir.

Weird, that actually sounds like a different definition to me. The way you said it, it sounds like your context of "Parallel" is multiple usages in a row, whereas I'm thinking of the interval. I don't think I was ever clearly taught what "parallel" really meant and just heard examples from my teacher, so I assumed it was "parallel thirds", "perfect fourths", and "perfect fifths". I've always thought parallel meant "played at the same time" 'til now.

Just needed to say that it's a "perfect fifth" though. "Perfect" applies to fourths and fifths, and "Parallel" applies to thirds. I just worked on my entry on my own, and sent to my team members for feedback once.

It depends. Are you looking to need a full piano range? Any serious hopes for accurate velocity recordings?

In that case, you could automate the volume multiplier knob and clone some automation clips (MISC tab in the plugin wrapper). It has the smoothest automation curve of all the volume options, from what I've tested. The mixer sliders, knobs, and the volume knobs in the Pattern window have somewhat of a "1/x" slope rather than a "-x" slope.

Wait, you have Fruity Soundfont Player and you didn't know? Yeah, you can just drag soundfonts into FL from the browser as they are. I mean that this bass is the instrument that muds up the frequencies the most. I also edited that post I made earlier about the reverb.

It's fine if you're using a soundfont like that. You just gotta polish your production skills, and that can justify your usage of free low quality material. I'd say the stereo image issues are solved now. At this point, it's down to meticulous attention to detail to polish up the song, so here are my thoughts. I recorded what played onscreen and so I have timestamps, too: The main issue right now is the muddiness of the low mids and bass frequencies and the secondary issue is the dryness of the instruments. Something that would benefit this would be to reflect the ADSR envelope you would expect or want from what you have. For example, what I had called the pad seems like it would work well in the role of a pad sound, so you could, since you're using a soundfont player in FL, just take the time to adjust that. Something else you could do is EQ a little more carefully. This is especially an issue at 0:24. For the most part I can hear instruments rather well, but the bass is the main offender. Since you have FL Studio, you can actually see the frequencies, unlike non-FL users. Use that to your advantage and dip down on the frequencies that you feel are too obtrusive. Think about what you're hearing, what's bothering you, and as you create a notching filter, sweep through the frequency spectrum until you hear the problem fixed, and track down the precise range. One of the easiest things you can do to enhance free samples is the usage of reverb. There's an idea where you use reverb to reflect the "atmosphere" of a real sample when recorded on a professional mic (also called the "air"), and that could be the primary reverb representing the airiness of an actual room. Depending on the role of the instrument, that might be all you need. If the instrument is meant to be backup, think about how far away you want it. The farther away, the longer the reverb decay should be. For example, a typical decay for a snare is 0.4~1.0 seconds (depending on the style of music), a typical decay for a church is ~3 seconds, and for a cathedral it is ~8 seconds (yep, 8!). The longer the decay, the more muddy the mix can get, which can be remedied with how high the Low Cut is. The most common practice is to cut out low end ambience from the reverb as much as you can, and use only as low of a Low Cut as you feel you need to achieve the right sound. If the instrument doesn't ever reach as low a frequency as the low cut currently is, raise it up. For example, if the lowest frequency achieved is 400Hz, it doesn't make sense to have a Low Cut at 20Hz. Bump it up to 320~360Hz or so. The rest of the reverb idea focuses on tonality, accomplished with Damping techniques. There's three main ideas I've drawn from it: low end ambience, midrange early reflections, and high end hiss. The low end ambience is a good way to mud up the mix if it's used on an already low end instrument, but it's primarily applicable to extremely large spaces like churches and cathedrals. The early reflections are the result of too much midrange ambience, which may or may not be a knob in your reverb. The high end hiss is not a huge issue most of the time, but it can create or ruin a "perfect" reverb. Too much and it sounds washy. Too little, and it sounds low quality. If you can't hear it, it's because you have too much treble on your other instruments, or your reverb isn't doing the trick. The High Damping knob is what does this.

Same here. The only thing I really do on the master is a very mild high pass at 30Hz to get a little bit of headroom, some lightly applied parallel compression just to tame any wild waveforms a little, and a simple limiter. You shouldn't need to do more on the master to get your mix to sound good if the mix already sounds good.

A little over two years, but I'm just a fast, super dedicated learner, and people can learn at completely different speeds, of course. Unpanning the brass could be a good idea if it was supposed to be leading, but a brass section type of sound generally is panned so that the higher frequency brass is left and the lower frequency brass is right (trumpets and trombones go left, french horns go right, tuba goes somewhat center but slightly right). In a sense it should be wide in the traditional situation, but with what you have, where it is right now is fine. What you could do to help that is to have something else on the right speaker to balance things out, since it feels awkward to play on only one speaker for too long.

I don't know if this is much help, but have you tried opening Live 8 and then opening a project file from there? Your MAC might recall what folder you viewed latest with Live 8, or is it just the default folder directory which happens to be shared with the update's default folder directory (hopefully not)?

Regarding the brass, it just feels hard-panned to me, even though it visually doesn't look like it on your side. Since the first few seconds had primarily the left speaker playing, that was probably why I felt like it was hard panning. The pad in the first few seconds panned right is what the synth strings sound like. The strings are what appear to be leading, and they're also panned right. The strings come when the playing marker reaches the left side of the "d" in "Aaaand again. Still working...". Some of this I learned by looking up an orchestral diagram when I started to learn how to use an orchestral library, and the rest was intuition after producing music for this length of time.

A guy by the username superscourge300 on YouTube requested me to remix a fan-made character named Sol that he created for his college project. Since I had just gotten Juggernaut, naturally I said yes because it was a great opportunity to put the library to use for the first time. http://soundcloud.com/timaeus222/superscourge300-sols-theme

Right now, it sounds like a pad is panned right, when typically, pads are simply wide (stereo enhancer and/or stereo shaper). The strings are panned right, when typically, violins and violas are left and cellos and double basses are right. These are usually 16~30% pan left and 16~40% pan right. The brass being panned left is kind of awkward, especially because it's hard-panned. It should be closer to 40~60% pan. I'm not asking you to pan for the sake of making room, but for making a reasonable or realistic stereo image, depending on the instruments used. For example, don't just pan some things left and some things right just to make the song wider, and don't pan every single thing wide with stereo enhancement or stereo shaping because someone asks you to make a mix less narrow.

Yeah, I'd be down for that. I've got some good tips I could share.

Actually, I was somewhat thinking it had a Phoenix Wright vibe, so that isn't too far off. Also, I thought about the arrangements a little bit more, and I changed my vote after hearing my top choice mixes again.

I posted my entry on soundcloud if anyone wants a higher encoding. Agreeing with this. I had 70/30 Darkwing Duck to Junk Man, so there. I kept Junk Man in there and well-distributed for most of the track though.

Alright, here's my source breakdown for those who are listening to my entry: 0:00 - 0:11 = Darkwing Duck (0:41.1 - 0:44) [Near loop point of source] 0:11 - 0:16 = Junk Man (0:00 - 0:07) 0:16 - 0:21 = Darkwing Duck (0:41.1 - 0:44) [Near loop point of source] and Junk Man (0:00 - 0:07) 0:21 - 0:28 = Darkwing Duck (0:00 - 0:05.4) 0:28 - 0:32 = Junk Man (0:07 - 0:12) and Darkwing Duck (0:02.8 - 0:03. 0:32 - 0:41.8 = Junk Man (0:22.4 - 0:31.4) 0:41.8 - 0:47.4 = Darkwing Duck (0:15 - 0:16. 0:47.4 - 1:18.4 = Darkwing Duck (0:16.8 - 0:29.9) 1:18.4 - 1:23.2 = Junk Man (0:00 - 0:07) 1:23.2 - 1:28 = Darkwing Duck (0:41.1 - 0:44) [Near loop point of source] and Junk Man (0:00 - 0:07) 1:28 - 1:39.6 = Darkwing Duck (0:29.9 - 0:41.1) 1:39.6 - 1:43.5 = Junk Man (0:48 - 0:53.2) 1:43.5 - 1:47.4 = Darkwing Duck (0:29.9 - 0:41.1) 1:47.4 - 1:51.3 = Junk Man (0:42.9 - 0:48) 1:51.3 - 1:55.2 = Darkwing Duck (0:29.9 - 0:41.1) 1:55.2 - 1:59 = Junk Man (0:48 - 0:53.2) 1:59 - 2:08.7 = Junk Man (0:22.4 - 0:31.4) 2:08.7 - 2:14.5 = Darkwing Duck (0:15 - 0:16. 2:14.5 - 2:30 = Darkwing Duck (0:16.8 - 0:29.9) 2:30 - 2:46.4 = Darkwing Duck (0:41.1 - 0:44) [Near loop point of source]

Oh, there are many different possibilities. You could be possessed into running around the house screaming "poop butts", or even jumping up and down, spinning in circles, and dancing like a monkey climbing an invisible rope. Or, you know, you could be a normal person and blare it in your car.

You're going to do a 360 side breakfall when you hear mine. I sure did. Twice.

I barely had enough money after a really quick trailer job with ACO, so I got pretty lucky there. It's amazing, and an awesome library to shoot for. The bass frequencies on everything are so polished, and to be honest, I'm extremely fond of the Bass synth engine too, because it's a whole 'nother synth for me to work with. Not to mention it's not just for bass.

I'ma shoot for jumping to 3rd place at least. Listen to my entry on the best headphones or speakers you have. Wear loose pants.

I like the DULL-GRAY color scheme, !

I grabbed Juggernaut! Having sooooo much fun with it.

The treble isn't too terribly high, but just slightly too high.

It's just personal preference with me, but I've never really worked that in-depth with Sytrus, and I've found Zebra to have a pretty smooth workflow. But yeah, it's still your choice.