SnappleMan

Does MIDI CC really count as humanization though? To me that's just standard stylistic stuff that should be mandatory to anyone using MIDI. As far as I'm concerned humanization is more about faking timing, pitch and velocity to emulate natural human error.

I think people here put too much effort into humanization. The only humanization that I think is "necessary" is simply playing your parts on a keyboard (which is much easier than people think). When you do it with a mouse it almost always sounds bad because the key to a good performance is the feel, something you can't ever emulate. If I'm working someplace without access to a midi controller of some kind I always leave the parts un-humanized, though in that case I would definitely go back and take some velocities wherever necessary. As for lengths of sustained notes, I'd just make sure that they're long enough to sound like they're supposed to in the song. If you try to fake realism you'll always fail when someone with experience is listening to your music.

Sup judges.

Problem is that most of the greatest SNK soundtracks got amazing arrange albums, so it's kind of pointless. Good thing Mark of the Wolves never got one... that counts as Fatal Fury, right? I'll see what I can do.

Yo Mark! I don't usually check this forum but in your case I made an exception. Love the idea behind this track, but I think there are a few things that need fixing. 1. EQ on the drums. Your room mics are nice and loud which works well for the style but you got too much low-mid mud going on that masks the tone of the drums. Try cutting at 200hz and 500hz. This should also help clean up the bass since it gets lost in the boomyness of the drum room. 2. Vocals sound good, but I'd tune them a bit since they do go a bit pitchy at times. Also I don't know if your choruses and unisons are intentionally offtime, but I'd try to tighten that up a little, just personal taste there. 3. Too much clipping in the guitars during the solo. 4. Vocal mix gets a little lost when the entire band is playing. Maybe some automation or compression to bring that stuff out? Great song, man. <3 u

Can I enter if I'm already on the project?

Also if it's only on playback then I'd check to make sure that you don't have duplicate events controlling the plugin. Sometimes when I'm in a hurry and just start tracking MIDI I'll leave my input to "omni" (no relation to omnisphere) and record double events (MIDI in and USB in) or in rarer cases I'll record simultaneously in my DAW and on my workstation, so during playback the plugin plays a duplicate set right underneath the main set causing a 2X boost in volume and in turn, clipping/distortion. So yeah, try to move some notes around on the piano roll to see if there are duplicate notes underneath them, and also expand all your tracks in the main FL view to see if you have a second MIDI track that's also routed to omnisphere and making the notes double.

Whenever I have these types of issues it always comes back to the internal sound engine within the plugin. Nomatter how low the master fader in omni is, you want to make sure that each of the channels within it are low enough as not to clip, since you don't know how the plugin is designed and how the internal mixer is routed. So just turn down each patch by 6dB (within omnisphere) and see if you still get the distortion.

I've never used t-racks, but I have had to use ozone a few times. What I love about ozone are the multiband harmonic exciter and the multiband stereo imager. The harmonic exciter specifically is pretty much the best one I've ever used. It has a great sound to it and it doesn't get that ugly distorted cocksmack sound that I hate so much.

I've tried... ughh... a guitar... before... With samples of such dynamic stringed instruments your best bet is to hide them and use them only for the most fundamental and iconic character that they are known for. So when emulating acoustic guitar, you want to accentuate the strum and the top end, have pads and other things carry the harmony that you're going for, that's the key to using samples well.

I'd also embellish the strum even more to maybe try and get some fake string resonance effect going, Since you're using a sample of a single note and not of a chord you're missing all the sympathetic resonance that gives the sound of a real guitar much of its character. But really your best bet is to play it on a MIDI keyboard if you have that option, you'll never get a purely programmed guitar sample to sound real.

Doesn't sound real at all. The vibrato is completely off and artificial, the chorus effect is overdone (guessing to try and mask the sample) and there doesn't seem to be any sense of dynamic variation between the notes (strumming at a constant velocity?). Your last link doesn't work for me, but maybe within the context of a song this would sound better.

I use both workstations and VSTs, and I also use hard synths. For my needs nothing can replace a good keyboard with good built in sounds that I can use at a moments notice without having to boot up a PC and load VSTs. I'll also echo zircons pros and cons, with the exception of integration into my everyday music needs. I find that workstation sounds sit extremely well in any song, as they tend to have a rounder and more "complete" sound than VSTs (though they do lack the realism factor that you get from multisampling and all that jazz that VSTs do). But in the end it's really 80% performance and 20% samples, and when I hear a blatant rompler sound in a song I feel warm and fuzzy cuz it's just a cool sound that's playing a cool passage, but when I hear a blatant VST sound trying desperately to sound real (and 99% of the time VSTs don't sound real) I cringe and can't listen to that song anymore. The only exception to this rule are string and brass sounds. Orchestral VSTs always sound great to me, not real, but great. It's like hearing a really good Neo Geo guitar patch, you know it's fake but it sounds great regardless.

Hah! You've been here long enough to know that no matter how you present something, certain people will get defensive over it.

There's definitely nothing wrong with it. I never said there was. It's funny though, how the most insecure people come out of the woodwork to right away be so defensive about me suggesting that he do it himself.

Not to mention how much transcribing the MIDI helps with your arrangement. As you learn how the song is constructed you naturally come up with ideas on where you feel it should go.

I wonder what jordanrooben is gonna do with all these fish he's being given. Maybe after he eats them all he'll realize that someone should have taught him how to catch his own. But yeah, I guess I am really elitist and arrogant to suggest that someone ought to actually do something musical and not just load a MIDI and change some patches.

In all my many years of me making a living as a musician I've never once had to sight read.

I was most certainly not being sarcastic. There's nothing elitist about knowing the basics of music... especially if you're gonna be posting in a music composition & production workshop forum. Kids these days, I swear.

Make it yourself.

First thing I would do is check your hardware latency and see if that's set too low. Also if soundcloud plays it fine but your audio players don't make sure you don't have some silly EQ or DSP options enabled that could be causing the peaks in the mix to clip.

Don't over think things too much. Take five of the songs you like most (maybe like 3 vg songs and 2 pop/rock songs) and learn them. What that means is to study what makes these songs sound the way they do from a musical point of view (as you study theory). That will help you understand the key concepts like rhythm, structure and harmony. It's not going to be easy and it'll frustrate you a lot so it's also a good test to see how serious you really are about music. Or you can just go the typical OCR route and not know music at all lol.

Just find the sweet spot using EQ and boost it. Also take down your tracks as they're going into the master fader to give the mix more headroom, the bass will come out much cleaner then. And also use distortion. Slight distortion will really make the bass stand out, you just have to make sure that you either use a distortion with a rolled off top end or if not just roll it off yourself, and then mix it in to taste while listening to the complete mix until it sounds present enough for you. There's nothing wrong with your sample.

Like, 4 discs of bullshit and 3 good songs. A+++ OCR project. Oh wait, I should reserve that review for after it's done.