SnappleMan

The main problem with the submission process here is the mindset of most of the people who are submitting. They spam the panel with 10 awful songs each in the hopes that they'll get lucky and be posted. Status Achieved! You can either spend some time training to become a sharpshooter so you can kill your target in one hit, or be impatient and drive by with an automatic weapon shooting the entire block in the hopes of hitting your target. I guess the worthwhile submitters are the innocent victims of these reckless FLStudio drive-by shootings...

I've really been wondering that myself (same breand sub and monitors). Everyone I've talked to says it doesn't really matter, but you never know. I would assume having the same chassis material and drivers that are selected to work together would be beneficial, but I don't know much about subs.

As far as I know the premier "faking" method is usually an EQ circuit built into the speaker to boost the bass frequencies. Lots of monitors these days come with contour switches which usually scoop the mids a bit and create a "sweeter" sound (or so they claim). I don't know if it's a matter of me lacking skill or training or what, but I always prefer to use monitors with a flat response. Also smaller monitors come with bigger sound holes to get more air out and increase the bass feel more naturally. As for dance music and other like styles I think a sub would be in your favor. Just because a typical listener will only hear your track via shitty earbuds there's no reason not to make sure the bass is where you want it. Someone may want to play it on a home stereo with a sub or maybe at a club with a decent monitor system, so better be prepared. Especially since these styles of music rely on sampled and mixed/edited kick drums that tend to have a ton of things going on below 38hz.

Generally to judge a decent monitor you check the range. Some people assume that the larger range models are better, but that's not true. The range of the speaker should be relative to the size of the speaker. If you see a speaker with a 5" woofer that claims to go down to 20hz, it's gonna sound awful. The laws of physics limit a speaker of that size from naturally producing those frequencies, so what you're hearing is 50hz being EQed and boosted and manipulated to sound lower and to fake the sound of 20hz. Generally, a 4" speaker will have a lower limit of about 52-60hz, 5" will be 50-58hz, 6" should be 48-52hz, 7" is 42-48hz, 8" is 36-42hz. These are just ballpark figures. You'll find some 8" speakers that only go down to 45hz and you'll find some 5" speakers claiming to go down to 45hz.... in that scenario SOMEONE is lying.. Anyway, a speaker going down to 38hz has a pretty good range. When mixing more bass heavy music it's recommended that you get a sub to cover that 20-40hz range that most speakers do not. Most people do not need to mix with subs. Chances are all the most respected music out there has been mixed on speakers that don't go down past 35-40hz. But in the end it all comes down to how much air the woofer can push out, and speaker measurements are based on the diameter of the woofer. Very little in terms of music ever needs to go down past 30hz, unless you're specifically targeting large woofers, because few people have the equipment to correctly push out 20hz.

It makes a big difference whether it is a pitch wheel or pitch stick, regardless of if you play live or not. If you're going to be using keyboard to record MIDI then you are playing live.... Anyway I much prefer a joystick, but that's just my taste. My advice is to go to a music store and try both, then make up your mind.

If you already have a monitor/case/keyboard+mouse and all that kind of stuff, you can build a great DAW for under $700. 8gb of ram is the bare minimum, you need to make sure you have at least 12-16gb. This also means you have to plan out your software options before you do anything else, because you want to make sure that you are going to be using as much of that ram as possible for music. That means having 64bit operating system and 64bit software. The CPU will be the most expensive part, but you do not need something like an i7-3820. Sure it's nice but there are so many incredible options to choose from today that you don't need to buy the latest stuff to get great performance. The problem with the 3820 is that it uses a new socket type which is new and expensive, and you don't want to be paying $300 for a motherboard as well as a processor. So I say stick with the tried and true i7-2600k which costs about $300 and you can get a motherboard for it anywhere from $100-150 that'll be great quality and give you some great options. You pretty much need to get a motherboard that supports 32gb of ram, so as 8gb sticks get cheaper you can max it out and be unstoppable ! So look for something like an Asus P8P67 Deluxe (can probably get an open box one for maybe $125-150). You can get a decent deal on 16gb set of ram (gskill ripjaws are decent) at probably around $70-90. Next up get a 1TB hard drive, about $80-120. And most importantly, you need a decent power supply, about 550-600watts, $50-60. Assuming you have a version of Windows 7 64bit (if not you can get a student version for about $120-150) there's your computer. Stay away from Creative cards, forever. I don't know who in their right mind would recommend them for music but they are wrong. That Roland UA-1G you got is perfect, and infinitely better than anything you can get from Creative. In the end the most important thing you need to make sure of is that all your hardware is suited to work well together, since your system is only as good as the weakest component. Your software needs to be compatible and be 64bit (you can bridge old 32bit plugins to a 64bit host easily with decent results) so you can use the ram well, and get an arguably slight performance boost from the 64bit CPU. All this stuff isn't cheap but it'll be solid and last you for years.

Man what a bunch of bloated responses. Just make music you want to listen to. If someone pays you to write in a specific genre, then do that and then go back to making music you want to listen to.

In that situation you need to make sure you send dry and wet tracks separately. You should be given a tempo sheet of the songs so you can sync your delay effects (delay, chorus etc) and then export just the wet signal to it's own track so you have it like this: lead_dry.wav (this is 100% dry) lead_effects.wav (this is 100% wet) That way the engineer can choose to either use your effects or add them himself (this also saves the engineer/producer the time it takes to sync effects of his own and bounce to audio so he can splice and edit for whatever purpose). The key when working as an instrumentalist is to give options but limit those options within the scope of what you want to sound like, so even if he chooses to add his own effects, he'll use your effects as a reference (same if you're asked to send MIDI, always send an audio track of what you feel the part should sound like so the producer knows what the notes are meant to do).

Many years ago I bought a cheapo $80 bass from musicians friend or someplace similar, it arrived in a thin cardboard box, got a piece of the body chipped off because of the ABSOLUTELY ZERO AMOUNT of packing materials used (it was literally a thin flimsy cardboard box STAPLED TOGETHER). Anyway, this shitty bass was a piece of crap till I followed some youtube tutorial about setting it up properly, and it became a wonderful sounding and playing bass that I still use today! seriously the fucking box it came in was the same thickness of cardboard as a cereal box, no joke... so bad...

Yeah I think shreddage is as good as you're gonna get. They sampled things the way they should be sampled, so it all comes down to you learning the software properly. As far as addictive drums goes, here's what you do: 1. Make sure you have all the outputs for the VST enabled in FL. I don't use FL so someone else will have to help you with that if you don't know how. 2. In AD, go to the kit loading menu and choose INITIALIZE, that'll give you a blank kit. Then load the pieces you want (preferably ones that fit well in the song) and move to the edit window. 3. In the AD edit window, look down at the channel strips and you'll see a button at the bottom of every fader labeled OUT that has a downward pointing arrow. Click that button for ever channel, that will route the output from the MASTER track to it's own individual channel.

He's been doing this for 25 years.

Alright, just listened. I hear a lot of problems here that have very little to do with the guitars. Your main issue here are the drums. You've completely squashed the dynamics out of them, your snare is extremely pumpy, the kick is completely lost, the cymbals are overcompressed and sound ugly. What you're doing wrong here is going way too heavy on the processing (I see you're using Addictive Drums). I never liked the onboard effects in AD, I think they sound crappy and only hurt the sound of the drums. If I were you I'd bus out each of the drum channels out to individual tracks from within AD and mix the drums entirely in FL (maybe use the AD saturation effect a little since it's the only one I think is decent). And it's also not smart to apply such heavy compression to your drums as a whole, it causes the loudest element (usually the snare) to dominate and duck the rest of the drum mix, resulting in awful sounding compressed cymbals. Oh and the AD presets are almost all complete garbage, don't use them. Now on to the guitars. If you're using shreddage then you really should use any double tracked patches it may have, check the manual to see if there are any, I'm sure there would be since Zircon and Sixto know their shit. If the double tracked patches are stereo samples (meaning both left and right guitar sounds are recorded to ONE stereo sample) then make sure you set guitar rig to stereo mode and are using all stereo tracks to make sure you get that desired stereo effect. If the double tracked patches are separate (meaning you get left and right samples separately) then treat them as two individual tracks and pan accordingly. I've never used shreddage so I don't know how it works. Overall the guitar sound is very fake sounding, I know this is the case with all samples but I've heard shreddage users get more realistic rhythm sounds than that, so work on the programming too (velocity, key switching, etc). If you're a guitar player then you understand the importance of controlling your mutes and up/down strokes so that parts are playable, so apply the same principles to how you use the samples. If you can't find double tracked patches in shreddage then you should still pan your guitar off to one side a little bit, it'll open up your mix (pan it in the opposite direction of the hihat). But yeah the first thing I would do here is load up a completely dry patch in AD, use the internal channel routing to route each piece out to it's own track in FL (kick, snare, toms, hihat, cymbals, overheads, room), and mix the kit with just volume till it sounds good, you want to hear that kick above all else. Then bring up your bass guitar so that it's not fighting with the kick drum and both can be heard, and then you have a good base for the mix. Don't worry about EQ and compression till after you've gotten the levels right.

You'll never find a bass VST that sounds real, but you can fool many less experienced people with stuff like Trilian and Shreddage Bass (I recommend Shreddage since it sounds better in the demos I've heard).

The thing I always recommend and I always do first is to start with volume and panning. These are your primary tools in starting a mix, and they help you get the entire image of your mix down in your head before you start polishing your sounds. Another very important thing I go on about and do in my mixes is making sure that the mix going into the master bus is never peaking. If your mix is breaking 0dB at the master fader then you're losing very valuable headroom that would usually go to your bass frequencies that really let the kick and bass guitar play well together. Here are some samples of what I mean. (you may have to turn up your volume to hear the first two samples well, turn back down for the third since it's loud) Sample 1: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32558357/t2_ocrver_UNMIXED.mp3 This first sample is the clip completely unmixed. everything is centered with no volume control. Sample 2: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32558357/t2_ocrver_VOLUME_PAN_ONLY.mp3 This second sample is the same clip but mixed using only volume and panning. No EQ, compression, reverb or any other effects added. Notice how everything already fits together at least a little bit. And also notice how it is not clipping. I made sure to leave headroom on the master bus so it doesn't clip and I don't need a limiter on it (and no need to move the master fader, either, it always stays at 0dB). Sample 3: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32558357/t2_ocrver_MIXED.mp3 This third sample is the same clip but mixed further with EQ, compression, delays, phasers etc etc. At this point any EQ I use is to bring up or hide certain characteristics of the sounds, not so much to "slot" them together, that's what the volume and panning stage was for. Compression is used to add more energy to the drums and even out some of the peaks in the bass (actually I compress my bass so much that it's practically a square wave). This song is not done, I have a lot more layering to add to it as you can hear, but I think it's enough to show you what I mean. Also keep in mind that knowing how to get the proper guitar tone, choosing the right drum sounds, playing your bass correctly, and choosing the right keyboard patches are all critical to getting a song that sounds together. So before you start mixing make sure that the song is there, then you can bring all the elements even closer together by bringing out the best of each individually.

Spectacular PUNCHFEST! as always! Thanks to everyone who made it. I was really busy today doing 10 different things at once but I still managed to get a song done. I should have a finished version of it up within a couple days. Anyway, thanks again, and if you were new to this magfest I hope you "caught the bug" and will be back for more.

Yes, honor system. The point of this is to hone your skills and have fun going crazy trying to put a song together. The time limit of 6 hours is plenty of time for some people to get a complete song done, for others it's not even enough time to get 30 seconds of basic tracks done. In the end all that matters is that you have fun making music with a bunch of people. We thoroughly enjoy every song we listen to, and to this day I don't think anyone has cheated, since that takes away the very essence of what PUNCHFEST is about. But I mean, if you're someone who takes months to get a 3 minute song together for some OCR project and you give me a complete 3-4 minute song in 6 hours, I'll be suspicious.

If you're scared you make yourself enter and try to get over your fears and have an awesome time.

Writing definitely scares me cuz it shows me how bad a musician I really am.

Hell yeah

Do you have enough info to say that we should all be working on our songs? I mean, is it a good idea to continue working as normal or should we hold out while this thing unfolds?

PUNCHFEST 18 is scheduled for SUNDAY AUGUST 12st AT 2PM EST(11AM PST)! THIS WEEKS THEME IS: 1995 GAMES RELEASED IN 1995 Originally Tibone had selected a fantastic theme for PUNCHFEST but I want to save that one for yet even another time (TRUST ME TIBONE NEXT TIME WILL BE IT I SWEAR!). Any game on any platform that was released in 1995 is good. No re-releases and no ports! This is the first in a series of "year" themes that I'm gonna stagger around the next 10 or so PUNCHFESTS. Winner of a year theme picks the next year. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW TO PUNCHFEST!? Basically it's a video game remix/arrangement/cover/yourmom contest that's held on the date above and follows the rules below. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To participate, install an IRC client (mIRC works well) and come into #punchfest on irc.esper.net! IF WE'RE GONNA PLAY THIS GAME, WE NEED SOME RULES - The time between now and PUNCHFEST is just so you can find a song you like. DO NOT START WORKING ON IT UNTIL THE PUNCHFEST BEGINS! - You will have 6 hours to complete your song once we start. Do whatever you want once the thing starts, but when the 6 hour time limit is up you must have submitted something. - You can use anything you want musically. Live instruments, just MIDI, trackers. Just make sure you submit an MP3 file of whatever it is you did. - No minimum song length requirement. - Submission is not anonymous! VOTING - VOTING IS BACK!!!! That's right! Voting is back. I realized that when we had voting, I cared a lot more and I worked a lot harder. When we got rid of voting I found myself wasting 5 hours of PUNCHFEST playing games or whatever and then spending the last hour crapping out some lame entry. I have a feeling that a lot of you feel the same way, voting will surely light a fire under our asses!!! {:-> BONUS <-:} NO BONUS THIS WEEK AS WE ARE VOTING AGAIN AND ALL THAT.

Here, I recorded the part for you: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32558357/pokerofl.mid May be one or two wrong notes but that's as far as I'm willing to care.

You're way overthinking something so simple. The entire section is in F. What you're hearing that might be throwing you are is the harmony when the bass changes to A# giving the part at 1:07 a suspended 4th sound and then going into a Cmaj7 sound with the next note. But that's just the melody and doesn't do anything to change the Fmajor progression going on underneath with the rhythm.

Anyone who's ever been on one of these projects knows that it always takes a lot longer than first specified. That's just how it works when all the people involved have real lives that keep them from being able to make music 24/7 without getting paid for it.

Having straders name on this project is a serious reason why I'm being very apprehensive about actually submitting my track. But I guess I have to get over it because Fishy is the man. Anyway the track has been done for a while but I just sent it to norg for some more solos that he'll record this weekend, so yeah.