Audiomancer   Members

Disclosure, I is noob:) Cakewalk is now free. It used to be a program you used to have to pay for, but through foreign corporate acquisition, you can get it as "Cakewalk by Bandlab", free. You'll have to set up a Bandlab account, and then the DAW is yours. LMMS is also free, but it's VST capabilities are horrid. However, it's built in synths and soundfont support are awesome. There are VST's for SF support in other DAWS, but LMMS seems to do it the best and most consistently. You can always use both:) If you don't like them, you are out zero dollars. VST's are important, that's where you'll get the most of your sounds, and there are many good free ones out there for beginners, like us:) It's great we live in a time and age when we can get our feet wet for free. I've not paid a dime for anything, and I think my stuff keeps sounding better and better through practice with the tools I have. Full disclosure, I'm not posted on OCR yet (I hope it happens), but I'm working on it, and I have made it a mission to do so without paying anything, so that everyone else knows that it can be done for free, also. TL;DR. You can try Cakewalk and LMMS for free, and they both have their strengths.

I've always liked this tune, and I put together something incorporating two ideas. Edit 4 25 19 Ok, so this is a rough section/rendition that I have posted at the bottom, I am mainly wondering about the "lead guitar". I don't know if it's up to par...besides that, I don't think the balance is quite right.. I am going to have/already have more than this: I am concerned about elec guitar lead...Thanks!:) Edit 4 27 19 I'm still wondering about the guitar mentioned above, but this time I have added an acoustic guitar/flute section at the beginning. That is me playing the flute here:) The timing is slightly off at the beginning...I now realize I had different drivers for playback and recording activated while recording the flute, and with baby, I have so little mic time Looking for feedback on this WIP. My goal is to expand on this idea, lengthen the tune, and have the guitar and flute playing together/question answer each other. Edit 4 28 19 I just figured out that I can just move the flute audio track in the DAW, so now it lines up better. At least the driver issue I mentioned didn't actually stretch the timing of the recording. Since I was in there, I also added a little acoustic guitar to "play" along with the flute. Feedback welcome, as always!:) Edit 7 4 19 Latest version is in the most recent of my posts in this thread, along with the original...as per Ready For Review instructions. Edit 10-17-2019 - Latest version posted here, along with original. The actual WAV sounds a little better than this Soundcloud link,(the pads are marginalized, and the bass seems emphasized) but the idea is clear:) Thanks for feedback! Edit 10-20-2019 Changed the lead, and am sharing as a Google Drive link, so the file can be downloaded and listened to with proper software (ASIO) Remix https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zVoo5F2Ob8DtAtERdNmM0TtSxI5X20Ao/view?usp=sharing Original

I'm a novice with electronic music production, but from my limited experience... LMMS has a soundfont player built in, and it works very well, as far as I can tell. It lets you open up all banks in a soundfont easily (for those with multiple banks), whereas soundfont paying plugins for I have tried with Cakewalk seem to have trouble with that. Those plugins have other oddities as well...some won't let you play more than one note at a time, some will only output to the left speaker, some will only let you have one instance open, etc. LMMS is free, and it lets you use soundfonts perfectly, but for most anything else, you'll want to use something different, because LMMS' VST support is pretty terrible. Only one out of every 5 work correctly...and working correctly means it has to work when reopening a project, not just when you fire up a vst for the first time.

I am inexperienced with this sort of thing, but with the cymbals, would it be possible to eq out some of the low end (Ha, low end of cymbals), so you have more of a "shimmer" type of sound, instead of an aggressive percussive sound on them? Sounds nice overall:) As for the ending you possibly could "calm into" a lightly arranged major chord pattern/arpeggio/pad, with F in the bass, and an F major chord in the treble as the base of your arranged pattern, perhaps with a 6th or 7th added in for flavor, giving a picardy third kind of vibe?:) Oh, one more thing I just thought of...on the snare, perhaps you might like the sound of a brush snare (the kind you hear in soft jazz) instead of a standard snare?

I've always liked this tune, and I put together something incorporating two ideas. Edit 4 25 19 Ok, so this is a rough section/rendition that I have posted at the bottom, I am mainly wondering about the "lead guitar". I don't know if it's up to par...besides that, I don't think the balance is quite right.. I am going to have/already have more than this: I am concerned about elec guitar lead...Thanks!:) Edit 4 27 19 I'm still wondering about the guitar mentioned above, but this time I have added an acoustic guitar/flute section at the beginning. That is me playing the flute here:) The timing is slightly off at the beginning...I now realize I had different drivers for playback and recording activated while recording the flute, and with baby, I have so little mic time Looking for feedback on this WIP. My goal is to expand on this idea, lengthen the tune, and have the guitar and flute playing together/question answer each other.

I made a small adjustment to the lower frequency EQ, one that's only slightly noticeable, taking into consideration what XPRTNovice said about their headphones. I also added a small spoken intro to the second "improv" part that should have been there before. I have submitted this mix, and thank you for your time, ear, and -ahem- XPRTise:)

I just noticed something when listening to my track today...does it seem panned slightly to the left for anyone else, or is that a peculiarity with my headphones? It's nothing too distracting, but I noticed it today. I can also see a discrepancy when I look at the left and right waveforms, leading me to believe it's not the headphones, but it's still something I thought about. I have an updated version I might post that sounds more even between the left and right channels to me, I'll post it if someone else notices the panning issue. Thanks! I decided to upload and post:) https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nHURd09pcMxso4k32o9CuwqUvuTeNww-

I did do some different stuff with the mixing of this this last time. I had some different ideas with eq, compression, and limiting that I hadn't done before, and I think it helped with the overall tonality of the tune. It really is all trial and error for me, I have no training at all when it comes to music production:) As for the goal of this project, I sure would like it to be accepted some day by the panel:-D By the way, I notice that you provide a lot of detailed feedback to many folks, that is really cool, and appreciated.

My latest version is right here:) https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nHURd09pcMxso4k32o9CuwqUvuTeNww- I had to do it through google drive this time because when I tried to convert to mp3, it added unwanted audio artifacts, for lack of a better term. Also, when I tried to upload a WAV to Soundcloud, it did the same thing. Per the advice given by Gario, this is a different arrangement; instead of more than one theme, I just used one, and had some fun with it. Also, I mostly went with synths, except for the choir and organ sounds, which were mentioned as not being too bad. I look forward to constructive feedback on this:)

This has a nice ethereal quality to it, sounds nice:)

Thanks so much for the reply!:) I really appreciate the constructive feedback and yes, everything I used is free stuff;) I do have some other free instruments that sound more realistic; I chose to avoid those because of what I have read about the "uncanny valley" from other posts on these forums. I've heard that term when the subject is robotics, but it makes perfect sense here, too. I'm not sure if I'm going to do any more with this track..it was basically a learning experience, and it was fun to take into consideration the feedback that I have gotten, as well as the advice that I have read on these forums. I am a severe amateur, so it was great to have you say that the production on this track isn't terrible:-D I think my next crack at something will be with me playing the flute; I've been experimenting with that lately, I've posted a couple rough things in the original music section of the forums. I HAVE to get a decent mic for that, I used the USB one that comes with the Rock Band video game, and it's really not very well suited at all:) Again, thanks for the feedback!

Hmmm, I might try to take a shot at this, and this is plenty of warning. I already have ideas:)

I took another shot at this. The bottom one of my original post is my most recent version. There's a couple notes I can't get to sound exactly how I want. They're supposed to be dissonant against the oboe countermelody..but every take it's just not quite right..and it's the same notes every time:) They're at 0:35 and 0:55. I've adjusted my pitch both ways on the notes in question, always sounds "off". I'm putting this take up because thunder struck nearby while I was recording towards the end, and it almost sounds like it was on purpose.

An extremely rough first draft. I'm playing the flute...but I don't have a mic right now, so I recorded my playing with a cell phone, and it shows. Wow, it sure sounds different on SoundCloud, the EQ is even more harsh. Oh well, it's a work in progress, after all:-D Edit 4-29-18 Redid this with a cheap mic I found laying around the house. Sounds a little better, I think. I'm going to redo this at some point this coming week if I have the time, the performance here has some rough spots.

Changed prefix to Ready for Review. Thanks for constructive advice ahead of time!:)

I know I'm new here, and this is an old thread, but Zircon in his original post mentioned in bold print "picking up an instrument like piano or guitar." I believe he specified those two instruments for a couple of reasons. One of them is that you can play more than one pitch at a time, therefore getting yourself used to hearing and playing multiple notes at the same time/chords. Number two is that you can "see" the music theory right in front of you. Moving from one key to the very next on a keyboard (including black keys) is a half step, and every fret on a guitar is a half step. The only extra thing on guitar is knowing what pitch the different strings are:)

Latest version up! Thanks for feedback:)

I'm using LMMS. It's free, and I don't know if others do this, but it allows me to directly use SoundFonts, and I don't have to worry about bank switching. Some soundfonts are put together differently than others, and my noob self can't figure out how to use them correctly with proper notation software. LMMS is a step sequencer, and I'm still getting used to using that, instead of something like Sibeleus or Musescore. It's a learning experience that I have honestly enjoyed:)

Ha! This is something I did quite a while ago, and when I was listening to it, I thought to myself, "Hmm, I think I noticed some similarities with the DW piece I've been working on;) I noticed the lack of discernible articulation as well...I wonder what my thought was on that, why my articulation was so faint, or if somehow I "produced" it out of the music...I don't know how/why I would have done that. The whole accompaniment was just a Roland keyboard MIDI interfaced with notation software (including the middle section), then recorded and played along with. I was, and still very much am, new to the arranging and production of music. I had a few years where I wasn't doing really anything musical at all, and now I'm getting back into it. I'm really enjoying trial and erroring my way through the using of digital audio software:) Thanks for the comment!

Something I wrote and did a while back. I'm playing the flute, and I wrote the background music. If I recall correctly for the background music, used notation software to command a Roland keyboard, and recorded the result.

Thanks for the feedback! Good, that's the one I was hoping would come across as better sounding. I've been fiddling with different compression settings, as well as figuring out what to adjust and when to adjust it in the mixing process. Someone else above mentioned something about a reference track, but didn't mention the regularity of switching back and forth between the reference track and the track you are working on. I think I have it (my desired EQ) pretty close...I have a couple different styles in the mix I am working on, and I've done my best to make sure they all sound good. I've also taken a break working on it/listening to it, and then listen to it "fresh" after a couple days. Thanks again for taking the time to listen and comment:)

Edit 3-28-18 Changed some EQ again...I have two versions posted in my original post now. I have the one labeled Latest Edit, and I have one below that labeled Different EQ. If I could get some feedback on the EQ on those, and be told which one sounds better EQ-wise (not taking into consideration overall volume), that would be greatly appreciated:) I want to know which headphone set is steering me more in the correct direction, as far as sound is concerned.

Vidilian, What you said about cleaning up the reverb made sense to me...at least I think it did;) I changed some of the reverb parameters as suggested, and also played with the EQ a bit more. Also changed a section of drums I decided needed change, Again, thanks for the continued feedback. I've actually been enjoying playing with all of this stuff, the more I learn, the better I might do:)

Vidilian, I added the reverb on a instrument by instrument basis, so lessening the reverb on the lower pitched instruments shouldn't be too much of an issue to solve. Thanks for the continued feedback!:)

This sounds nice:) What kind of instrument are you playing on, if I might ask?