davidoff

I'd second that. It's like really harsh, electronic acid jazz. Let's call it hydrofluoric electrojazz. Anyway, I love this. It's like a bunch of major seventh/ninth(?) chords punching me in the face (in a good way).

That's mostly Greek to me, but it gives me some stuff to look up and figure out and play around with -- I've been scared to touch compression and EQ because I haven't had a good introduction to using them, but I guess it's about time to grow up and jump in, right? I'm amazed by how quickly you were able to figure all that out -- thanks so much! I should've specified: it's all MIDI; there are no mics involved. I don't know if that makes a difference or not.

I'm not trying to plug anything here, I'm just genuinely curious why this recording came out so quiet: http://soundcloud.com/david-s-conway/the-last-rose-of-summer I have it so that the max volume goes as close as possible to 0.0 dB without going over. If I pump that up any higher, there is extremely noticeable distortion, which is why I'm confused. I also find it curious that it sounds kind of the same volume throughout: the "loud" parts sound fuller and more intense, but not actually louder, if that makes any sense. The piano is the GPO4 Steinway, if that makes any difference. Could it just be that the piano sample itself is very quiet? It also sounds kind of muddy on lower-quality speakers/headphones. If anyone has any ideas how I might approach solving these issues to create a respectable-sounding recording, I'd be extremely grateful.

I'm a pretty serious pianist who's done a fair amount of composing for piano and would be more than happy to review anything you've written and give you feedback, if you'd like. You're probably tired of hearing it at this point, but I'm going to echo everyone else and say you should learn some piano basics -- obviously that won't open up to you the full range of what's possible for two hands to do, but it will teach you what hand positions and basic line shapes and types of movements are comfortable. Plus, it really helps with harmony-building and harmonic recognition.

I know we're a bit past Christmas, but I didn't get around to making a recording of this until this past week. I'm happy with the composition itself but would love some pointers on the recording. It's the first digital recording I've ever made! I did it in REAPER using the GPO4 Steinway piano. Depending on the speakers/headphones I listen to it on, I think it may need less reverb, some compression, or some EQ, but I'm really not sure. Any tips on those would be highly appreciated! Here it is!

Holy shit, this guy can play. Amazing clarity.

I'm such an idiot: I thought I'd been using ASIO, but it turns out that wasn't the default device in REAPER. When I switched to ASIO and reduced the buffer time to 5ms (1ms was glitching, for whatever reason), it became perfect. So I don't need to mute tracks and record them deaf against a metronome anymore (yay)!

Nice, mellow sound that appropriately evokes the intended atmosphere. Nice work!

That second one is so freaking awesome. Listening to some Shadow of the Colossus OST myself.

Chiming in to agree with you two. It's all classical and film/game soundtracks for me...

So if I want a human-sounding orchestral piece, and I record all the parts, what's the best way to get everything to be pretty close to matching up? Just hours of manual editing? A big part of the problem right now is the delay from keyboard to speakers. Makes it really hard to, say, play a violin part on top of a piano part, especially if they're complicated. I've heard Firewire can help (I'm using USB right now), but does the delay ever get small enough to be perceived as instantaneous?

If a DAW has a quantization option, does that mean that when you record in real-time, it automatically "snaps" your note attacks to a certain fraction of the beat? I ask because I think it may save me a ton of time, haha. I always record myself playing a part naturally first, because I get the most realistic velocities that way, but when I check out the piano roll (I use REAPER, for what it's worth), there are these teeny, minute differences in the attacks of the notes. Generally not an issue for a single part, but it's a real hassle when I'm trying to line up a bunch of tracks and have to manually drag hundreds of notes around. Is that what quantization fixes?

On a quick listen with no keyboard verification, I'm hearing: Eb6, EM7, Eb6, EM7, D6, Eb6, D6, Eb6, then it repeats. The sixes don't sound like they're in the pads, but in whatever the plucked instrument is. The pads may also have some 7s or 9s in there. In any case, it's only the three chords. If you don't know what those chords are, here are the individual pitches that make them up: Eb6: Eb, G, Bb, C EM7: E, G#, B, D# (could also be spelled as Fb, Ab, Cb, Eb to keep it more "in the key") D6: D, F#, A, B Not guaranteed to be 100% accurate, but if it gives you a good jumping off point, I'm glad to have helped!

This is fantastic, except for the stupid fade-out ending. If you like this jazz/classical hybrid style (I don't consider it full on jazz, personally), check out the music of Nikolai Kapustin (tons on YouTube). Similar style (on a much higher plane), brilliant stuff. He's still alive and still composing, too!

I love the atmospheric quality you get by having the piano be rhythmically ambiguous, for what it's worth. That's this piece's "thing." My main complaint would be lack of any real climax, or direction. It's 20 seconds of intro and then 3 minutes of pretty much the same exact thing. I think you could do more with the string parts than just sustained tones, too.