Aster
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Posts posted by Aster
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Okay..So I listen to every genre out there. There's many songs on the radio I don't like, but I can still see why some people would. So I normally never listen to the radio.
BUT SERIOUSLY, what the hell is with the recent abundance of music that nearly everyone agrees is terrible?! First Rebecca Black, then Lulu, now this....
Click that and prepare to suffer.
Really though, I'm genuinely curious to know people's thoughts. There's always been and always will be songs that so many people hate, but I don't think it's ever quite been like it is now.
I mean, the backstreet boys, A*Teens, etc. may have not been Dream Theater or Mozart, but they still had some well composed, performed and produced songs.
What are your thoughts on Pop music today? Do you agree there is an abundance of "bad music" on the radio these days? If so, what do you think is the cause of it? What do you think future pop music will be like?
Music today is better than it has ever been but it's just very tough to find the new wave of great bands and artists. They're mostly unknown or tough to find because the advertising companies keep pushing these inane female dolls to sell discs to the last people stupid enough to still buy them.
I'm a big fan of Periphery, The Fellowship, Young Punx, Nujabes, Bumblefoot, Raconteurs, A very unknown band called Junkboy and a bunch more underrated/obscure artists.
There's a ton of talent still out there, just fly past the female media movement and find the right communities to ask for recommendations.
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I was fortunate enough to see a large return from my end-year Pump Audio royalties. I'm looking to pick up some nice plugins with that.
I need a good virtual guitar amp package. I'm looking at Guitar Rig 5 Pro. Can anyone vouch for it or something similar? http://www.native-instruments.com/#/products/producer/guitar-rig-5-pro/?page=2517&content=1672
Also, the ubiquitous Omnisphere that looks fantastic...is it worth $500? I write a lot of electronic stuff, but certainly am looking to do cinematic/electro-orchestral work. Same with Stylus RMX...I love the idea of customizable and adjustable grooves with different kits. Is it as "endless" as the promotional info suggests? Worth the price?
Thanks!
Guitar Rig 5 is brilliant, the new amp models are incredibly good.
If you buy it, it wouldn't be a bad purchase in the slightest. A lot of the effects would be well suited to vocals and other instruments too.
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I'm not much interested in historical relevance, I just want some impressive drum tracks with hi-hat craziness.
Jeff Thal
He's Ron Thal's brother, love u ron 5ever bro!
Speaking of bf.
D.rumble is a killer drummer. He keeps his parts really interesting to listen to.
Marco Minnemann, he's a boss.
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Hello peeps, I've seen the topic brought up a few times so I'll show you how I quad track rhythm guitars.
This example comes from a collab track where I needed to lay down some thick and solid guitar for the rhythm.
I will record two guitar takes that have very tight timing. I recorded these tracks with the treble pickup and kept a consistent style of pick attack. I have more presence in the patch and more treble.
I then record another two tracks but this time I reduce the treble, I reduce presence, I cut the mids. When playing this set of tracks, I put the rhythm pickup on and I hit the strings a lot harder, the muted notes in this example now have 2 fingers muting the string to cut the note into almost a click sound.
I will have my definition tracks mixed left and right but closer to the middle. Both here are at 45% pan. The bassier tracks are fully panned left and right so they have similar audible volume. The timing is a little looser on the filler tracks.
http://soundcloud.com/asterlius/quad-track-guitars
In the example track you hear the filler first, you can hear there's not much definition, it's very murky.
Then the Definition tracks play and they're really aggressive.
Last you hear both together, it still sounds mostly like the second section but it's much warmer and heavy sounding. Hope this helps someone.
Just remember when mixing to adjust the eq to scoop out some of the 400hz range and 2khz range.
Then add low pass filters to protect the bass and kicks from the rhythm sludge.
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I'm bored so made the illustrated guide to sticking a sock in it. Oh ho, the joy of bad puns.
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Ahh, thanks man! That is actually a really great suggestion, it would work fantastically and fit right in with the style of wind waker I think.
I'll keep an eye out if someone would want to collab on it =)
I'm a harpist! If you do want to collab, I can provide my harping skills.
You see, it's fate. Now play some music.
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version 6(I took out the majority of Ballad of the Goddess. just couldn't make it work):
Near the start there are some dissonant notes that seem out of key.
I had to listen to the source and the characteristics that are prominent is how the solid underlying rhythm of the piano is what drives the song. It's the rhythm doing the work to make the melody sound good. You seem to have stripped the rhythm down to focus more on the melody lines so it has an aimless and feel because it's too distant and isolated. Without a solid trustworthy rhythm and very sparse percussion, the mind has issue trying to feel the timing of the song. Quite a few of the notes are out of time on top of this (or if they are in time, it's implied to be different to my ears)
The arpeggios backing the source are shifting resolution/key but your track is static. The counterpoint of the source is lost without them
Take note of how the and when the melody raises pitch in good balance with how the arpeggios lower in pitch. Notice times when both seem to go up and down together.
Listen to how the note play off each other and set your mind up to be tricked out of predicting the future changes.
The song builds a solid contrast that is consistent before the big counterpoint changes so when they kick in and the two hands go their separate ways, the brain is like 'whoaaa' and it's very pleasant sounding.
Melody itself is embellishment. To have good melody, you need to establish a ground to divert away from.
It's like creating tension and choosing a point of release.
Take the notable source points then basically use this template to create a song structure with established and defined progressions.
Run your midi through a quantizer (icr if that's the right name) and fix the timing up to be tighter.
Sorry for what must seem like harsh criticism but I'm trying to do the opposite, what gets measured gets done.
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I don't know if it helps, but I've been meaning to play the title theme song on violin for a while. So if anyone wants to incorporate a violin similar to the original title theme, then let me know =)
Your playing is amazing btw.
Take the zelda's theme and find a harpist.
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Brilliant, the section after the encounter was the highlight to me. Around 3.15 on
Gave me nostalgia goggles.
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That was just incredible.
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Kennedy Space Center !
Killer Studio Chops ....
Here's one of the lessons from our KSC program, how to totally NOT CHEAT at double tracking a guitar.
If you have a guitar section that perfectly repeats such as a chord sequence, 'ABCD' then you can slice the repeats into sections.
ABCDABCDABCDABCD Becomes
-ABCD--ABCD--ABCD--ABCD-
Then you colour code them (super important tip for killer studio chops) so you get.
-ABCD-ABCD-ABCD-ABCD-
Now if your playing is super killer and consistent, then you can slice and dice thes badboys into a fake doubletrack.
The only requirement to a good sound is to be a bit random with the colour order and never have the same colour playing twice at once.
Also have at least 4 different repeats to mash together.
For example:
Left Track (original)
ABCD-ABCD-ABCD-ABCD
Right Track (Frankenstein's copy and paste experiment)
ABCD-ABCD--ABCD-ABCD
Let's put this bad boy into action.
Here is the audio of this example.
First up is the track simply duplicated into both channels and second is the false double track. Sounds the same as recording twice as long as you have consistent timing and dynamics.
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Using compression will get you some good volume but unless you sort out the guitars, nothing will get that volume increase. Even for a rock track, the guitars are taking up far too much room in the mix (frequency-wise). I'm certainly no pro when it comes to guitars, so take what I say with a pinch of salt. I'm only on my laptop but it seems as though the guitars could maybe do with some/more LP/HP filtering and slight reduction in volume. If the intention is to eventually have a lead guitar that will only add to the dilema. EQ the guitars and perhaps consider going back to having the four tracks.
In regard to mix compression, due to the instrumentation I reckon it would be a bad idea if you're wanting to keep the clarity. The more acoustic instruments will suffer even if you get the mix compression sounding good with the guitars and drums.
In my humble opinion, it just seems as though you need to compromise on certain aspects to really get this balanced and sounding as you would like. I reckon you can still get the power in the guitars that you seem to want without having 6 tracks.
Hopefully that may help, or get you thinking about stuff. Sorry if its useless
The guitars will be redone double tracked with about 3-5db scooped out at 400hz and a highpass added onto it. I'm still learning a lot about mixing but already I have much better guitar patches and track templates.
I think a little compression on the tracks and mixing them at a lower volume will help too but things will improve.
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Writing dual guitar melodies/slow leads.
Remember kiddies, counterpoint basics.
Unison/octave, 3rds, 5ths, 6ths. Stable notes.
No more than three 3rds in a row please, eek.
Avoid when possible two unisons/octaves in a row and try not to go from them to a 5th or vice versa.
Look at the music notation like a picture and try to balance the two parts out.
One goes up, the other would do well to go down an appropriate amount etc.
That's what I was taught at KSC school.
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So you sliced and repositioned for every out-of-phase part? Sounds tedious but the sound is pretty solid. Did you use elastic audio at all?
Yeah, I repositioned all the chords from one track to match the other.
Elastic audio screws with the dynamics. Try to never stretch or shrink the length of a guitar note/chord. You can get away with it subtly but there was one track I listened to here recently where it was very obvious that the part was sped up substantially then repositioned elastically, it seemed like he didn't even bother learning the timing at any speed. I wont publicly say which track but if you're interested for reference then pm me.
If you must speed up a guitar part. Play against a metronome and get the timing as good as possible with solid and consistent dynamics. Try to consciously decrease the dead quiet time between notes and shrink the whole track as one equal part.
If you get the guitar part at 80% speed+ then you're toastieeee.
Some of the best work I've ever heard here has parts that you can faintly tell were elasticated too much.
Don't let your ego get in the way over this touchy subject, I've seen others use these post production techniques to record things that are well within their ability to play organically but wanted to have at a quality level equal to what can be achieved with post production. For some people, 99% is the same as 50%.
This speeding up lark happens all the time in pro recordings. Listen to some dragonforce then watch any herman li lesson, I guarantee he will play like crap with the worst consistency imaginable. I've seen periphery post edit stems and they are hardcore pipe hitting guitar players.
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That's right folks, You too can own a set of studio chops and amaze your friends!
With Killer Studio Chops you can:
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Amaze your friends
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Stick it to some judges with your mad skills
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Receive a complimentary music degree from NO. inc. signed by Zircon and the Birmingham Institute of Music*
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Play crazy guitar licks from the likes of Fred Durst, Herman Li** and Noel Edmunds!***
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Remix songs at +20 DB like a Boss and still have audiences begging for more.
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Drop it like it's hot, burn eardrums with skills that people dedicating 15 years to practicing can only dream of****
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**Requires software to speed up guitar playing.
***Requires a beard.
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Offer ends this Friday, Only one purchase per customer. Purchase does not guarantee a set of killer studio chops. No refunds.
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Amaze your friends
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Sorry if this was posted before. I took a few searches through the forums and didn't see any mentionings of this one.
Recording Revolution did a great series called 5 minutes to a better mix in May. One tip was given each day for a total of 31 easily digestible tips that are aimed towards beginners.
Gain StagingMix CleanupThanks for the links Gar
Some great and simple lessons here.
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I have a related question.
Is there any other way to make the guitar more wider other than recording two identicle rhythms on either speaker? I know it's been asked before but I cant find the thread it was on.
I listen to a lot of Dream Theater and John Petrucci played some of the craziest riffs i've ever heard him play (IE, "Lost Not Forgotten" off their A Dramatic Turn of Events CD) and the guitar sounded so solid and coming through both speakers and sounded as if one guitar was recorded only once. Is there some other trick to it or is JP just that awesome as to play the same riff in the exact same way twice?
Post production. It's mega tough to get fast riffs and solos double tracked perfectly so in the studio, the doubled stems are cut and repositioned so the timing is perfect.
I've seen sometimes that a doubled stem is also stretched to reduce discrepancy of note duration too.
I used this method of post production recently on a track where the chords transcribed proved to be almost impossible to hold with one hand. I had to play them separately and then cut them in place but you can't tell if you do it right.
Look at the two purple tracks (the distortion tracks)
They look almost identical but look close and you'll see they're different recordings double tracked and time adjusted by slicing and repositioning to get perfect timing.
This tiny difference of retiming kicks up the production quality a lot as the notes phase against each other
To get the wider sound I doubled both the left and right track and used two separate patches for each side. One patch was quite distorted and the other quite clean and spanky.
I usually use a combo of mud and clean to get a both a distorted but still very defined sound as it always seems to work better than any single patch I can come up with
You can hear how this double/double tracked rhythm sounds here:
http://soundcloud.com/asterlius/chords-example
That's about as wide a sound I can get before overloading with tracks but I hope this helped
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Some of you have been requesting samples of the tracks I've been collaborating on.
Thanks to PabloComa for giving me permission to link a track we've been working on, I really enjoyed playing in this track and some of the work has been pretty interesting to interpret.
Here's the WIP:
http://soundcloud.com/asterlius/ffvii-aerith-theme
There's a lot going on in the track and it would be perfect to show the work you can expect.
I'm playing the bass, rhythm and melody tracks. Here is a link to the isolated stems.
http://soundcloud.com/asterlius/aerith-guitars
I'm working on a bunch of tracks at the moment and any current requests wont begin until next week.
Although it might seem logical that guitar parts should only take an hour or so to lay down, the records I've been taking show that some projects take above 20 hours of work.
Transcribing, practicing, setting up, amping, tracking then post production editing
..all the DAW macguffins, rendering/processing etc all adds up big time considering I'm using a computer that's about as fast as a russian space heater lol
Seriously, it takes 30 minutes to just load up projects I've been doing. Just to open the files.
God, I miss my 2600k beast machine.
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That was fucking badass, will someone 1up your chops or do they stand uncontested?
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Paul Gilbert brand krazy glue.
I glue my slices too paul, we can be buddies right?
If you want a god tier guitar tip, go to the racer x forum and grab a guitar pro of paul gilberts licks then just speed train the hell out of them.
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Hello, my brother wants to compose music, he lives in another country (USA). He only knows piano, and he's very slow with computers, he doesn't have unlimited funds either, he can pay his piano teacher, but I don't see him buying every instrument ever and learning them, or going to college to learn audio engineering, so I suggested to try the digital route.
There's no getting around learning the basics of software editing and effects if you use a computer and software.
Try getting him a hardware multitrack recorder and a midi rack device. I'm no keyboard player but there's bound to be a rack effects that accepts midi and has instrument patches.
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post tricks
Tricks are for kids.
Get a pair of scissors and cut the top elasticated band off an old sock.
Put it around the neck at the base of the nut and pull it so it gently mutes the strings around fret 1 first half..
Then use a cable tie/twistie/split-pin/stapler to take the slack of the sock band and hold it tight..
2x as good as a hair band for handling noise.
Not to be wasteful, cut the leftover sock so you have a perfect tube at the part where your feet are so it's just the ankle tube left. Cut this tube straight down to leave a perfect soft rectangular piece of cloth.
Open the back plate up and wrap your cloth around your tremelo springs. Reduces handling noise.
If you have a pickguard, take it off and electrically shield it with copper film from a diy store. Fill the cavity with kitchen roll to reduce cavity play in your handling noise. Replace all your switches and pickups unless you have a high end guitar. (expensive ibanez's ..replace the switches too)
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The guitar is simply outstanding here, you have to post your secrets
Seriously though, if you have any threads or posts on your guitar mixing, make me awares.
The section at 2.15 had brilliant soundscaping and meshed great with both the leads and rhythm you introduced.
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This was not lack of planning though that's the way it ended up
I asked Aster to do a guitar track and I have to say it was EXTREMELY TIGHT. How tight? I ran my VST guitar along side his rhythm guitar playing and it never fell out of time!
I'd recommend Aster if I didn't want to bogart his playing for myself!
Thanks
Can you write solos, Aster? Let's say I sent you a bit of a song that I needed a sick solo on. Could you do that and send me a WAV of your guitar track back?Yeah but you'd have to be a bit descriptive of the structure required in the solo like any thematic ideas you'd want included, how much you'd like to be solid basic playing vs more technical/fast stuff, any descriptive information would really be beneficial
Composing music is very subjective and it wouldn't be sensible to play something that's out of character with what's desired.
Even if you'd recommend a guitarist/song that you like the solo from that would result in something more likely to your tastes.
I've also had a request from a pianist who just wanted me to straight up replicate his lead part he improvised, that might be a good idea if you're a keyboard player but try not to go higher than the pitch of the high D on a guitar
Final Fantasy VII - The Rocking Cetra
in Post Your Game ReMixes!
Posted
Do you mean on the melody parts or the rhythm?
Because the rhythm is definitely double tracked.
Anyway, I've rerecorded both melody parts and sent them off.
Tried to get a similar patch now I have guitar rig. Should be good.