SnappleMan

You two are always so cute. I'm waiting for the big magfest argument that turns into a passionate kiss.

Louder is almost always better. Higher RMS values are not louder, just more compressed. Real dynamic loudness is possible when there is room for it, otherwise you're just bombarding your brain with clipped distortion that damages your ears and the quality of the music.

Well in that case what you want is a sequecer, like Sonar, Cubase, Logic, FLStudio etc. That's the first step. Since you have SonarX3 then you need to learn which samples came with it. Which version of SonarX3 do you have?

The best "tutorial" is to listen to the music you like and break the drum parts down. Drums are very easy to do on a basic level, but it's impossible to fake what a drummer does in terms of feel and timing. So your goal should be to study as many grooves as you can, and then slowly try to re-create them. I assume you're going after acoustic sounding drums (rock drums). To get these right you usually need to invest in a decent sample library. I recommend EZDrummer 2.

I did what Brandon said: Got good at mixing and now I offer those services to local bands and to a few select VGM bands. If you're good at what you do, and you know* you're good, then go to local colleges, libraries, bars, clubs and post papers with your contact info and skillset. Note that your rates are fair and negotiable, you work within any budget, etc. Also do the same thing online by posting on social media, forums like OCR, and very tastefully offer your services to bands who you feel could use it. Buy their album and email them "Hey just bought your album and it sounds great! You guys have a unique sound that could really catch on. If you don't mind me asking, what was your production process like?" and then you can slowly suggest that you would love to mix their stuff (it REALLY helps to actually like the music, since you will naturally do a better job). All you need are a couple of people to hire you before you start forming a repertoire and a reputation. Getting started will be slow and tough, but once you do get going you'll have a good side income, and eventually you'll be able to support yourself if things take off for you. If you're an instrumentalist your route is different: play in bands and practice till your fingers fall off/limbs explode/lungs combust/throat vaporizes etc. And then start playing with bands to build your chops and get your name out, and then start uploading performance videos on youtube of you playing your own songs, cover songs, giving lessons. Eventually you can start getting into session work and then you can make it as a session musician. If you're a composer than write music 24/7, put it out for free everywhere you can, make sure your name is on it, get as much exposure as you can and start doing as many projects as you can. Work for little, work for free (for a VERY short time), until you get somewhat of a name for yourself, then start charging a fair rate. If you want to be more involved with sound design and the technical side of music, learn to program sound drivers in game engines like unity. Learn to implement MIDI into all kinds of programs, learn how to create sound effects and how to program them into a game environment. Most importantly stick with learning how to write good sound drivers and audio environments. Learn how to sample properly and build sample libraries if you want to get into that field. Everything here takes a LONG time to get good at and a long time to get into professionally, so be prepared to give 100% at all times. From my experience there's no such thing as luck. Get to know yourself, your skills, your talents and your level of commitment, and then get to know other people, as many as you possibly can who are involved in some way with what you're aiming to do. *knowing means that you have a valid frame of reference and external unbiased factors that give you confidence in your abilities.

All that matters is the pursuit if perfection. Whatever perfection means to you. Early on I was content to just make music that was pretty bad just because I hadn't experienced discouragement. It wasn't till I started confronting myself with the reality of "what sets my music apart from the music I love listening to?" that I started challenging myself to get better at every aspect of music. As far as meteoxavier goes I don't take him seriously enough to read his posts or respond to him. But bitl3gs you have to understand that when you commit to becoming a serious musician you enter a very competitive yet friendly race to learn more, improve, and keep up. It doesn't matter if you feel like you should be in this race, or if you want to be in this race, you are in it. And unless you challenge yourself to keep expanding your musical mind, your peers will be too far gone in no time. The competition is not won by "being better" than anyone. You win the race by having an open mind and understanding that you have an infinite amount to learn. And there is no finite victory, you win every time you feel the joy of going one step farther than you did before. Realizing your momentary personal best is the key to being able to release a song at your current level, be happy with it, move on and try to outdo yourself the next time. None of this means that you have to conform to anything, or try to beat other people at something, it's all about constant self improvement without making excuses.

What separates an amateur from a professional is one's response to failure/discouragement. When someone hears a piece of music that's in some way beyond what they're capable of, they tend to default to one of two general frames of mind: A) I would do something this good if I had that massive budget/expensive gear/talented session musicians/experience/talent/random excuse. Time to break this down to every possible component and learn what makes it better than what I can currently do. Fact of the matter is, whenever any of us hear a piece of music, we compare it to what we're capable of on some level.

It's not about comparing yourself to other people or their work, it's about comparing yourself to what you believe is a level you can't reach. Everyone has music that they listen to and love which is not their own. And everyone has some music that they listen to which seems to be beyond their abilities. Compare yourself to that. The standard that you feel you can't attain for whatever reason.

The "best" doesn't mean commercial success, it means to hold yourself to the absolute highest standards. I have no respect for people who settle when it comes to their creative input and output.

Always compare yourself to the very best. Work until you get there because you CAN get there with enough practice. The only hard part (aside from decades of relentless practice and study) is to make sure you're practicing and learning correctly, so make sure you get your information from multiple sources and study the things that are universally accepted as "right". The longer you work on something, the less chance there is of it getting done, and the worse it'll sound relative to your abilities when it is done. Your goal is to work as quickly as you can while trying (and usually failing) to retain a constant level of quality. Give yourself a month per song, finish it within a month, release it as is, move on. Doing it this way will force you to improve at a much faster rate since a new song will more easily allow for implementation of your slightly improved skills since starting the last one. If you work on the same song over and over till it's "good" you wont be able to adapt your own improving skills to it without overhauling it, and then you're pretty much stuck in a cycle of redoing a song that should have been released months/years ago.

1. Play in key 2. Play out of key 3. Incorporate elements of theme/melody of the song The key to a good guitar solo is to understand that you do not have to strictly follow the scale of the key that you're playing in. As long as the first and last note of your lick are in the scale you can do whatever you want between them, so when adding tasteful dissonance your guitar solos pop and sound even better.

Working in 24bit resolution and using 24bit samples are two different things. You will get a massive and noticeable improvement when switching from 16bit to 24bit depth, but in terms of 16bit vs 24bit samples you will not hear much of a difference at all unless you're in a very well tuned and very expensive studio.

Your most important mission is to think about polyphony and orchestral section relationships at all times. Consider violins as an example. An orchestra will have two violin sections, each with 11-20 players (sometimes more sometimes less), so that means in total they have around 20-30 voices. So what does that mean? 1. Violins can play a 30 tone chord. That chord will sound terrible and be all over the spectrum, that's why this usually isn't done. 2. Violins can play a single note with 30 voices. This is a nice sound that sounds rich and alive. This is done often. Violin sections will sometimes play single note lines. 3. Violins can play a nice 3-5 tone chord. This will sound better than a 30 tone chord, but might still be too much depending on what's going on with the rest of the orchestra. 4. Violins can play a 2 voice harmony, split between first and second violins. Leading tone on first violins, harmony on second. The second violins are often used to support the first violins. These are just a few things you should be aware of, but they don't all translate well into using samples in a DAW. When using orchestral samples in a DAW you have to consider the following: 1. Orchestral samples are usually sampled by section, so you get one patch for first violins, one patch for second violins. This gives you 2 'real' voices (as compared to a live orchestras 30). If you play a 3 voice chord, you're already adding another 10 violins, which is already too big. Playing a full 5-6 voice chord means you're using 80+ violins, this is very unrealistic and doesn't work. 2. Break up duties among first and second violins, think of each of them as monophonic whenever you can, this will definitely add to the realism, and INTELLIGENTLY thinning out the harmonic content of your music really makes it sound stronger and bolder. 3. If your library has real sampled divisi, use it. LASS and Hollywood strings have sampled divisi. In this context Divisi means that instead of sampling the entire first violins in one shot, they broke the musicians up into groups of 3-4, and sampled each group individually. Same with second violins (also violas etc). This gives you true increased polyphony, so you can play more complex chords as a real orchestra would. 4. Stay within the most frequently used registers and voice your phrases in the most common structured way to suit the instrument. There is a reason why all orchestral violin writing uses certain scale shapes and voicings. It comes down to what's realistically playable on the instrument and how high it goes. 5. Some libraries let you use the pitch wheel to slightly change the pitch of the samples, not enough to do any interval jumps but maybe +-20 cents. This is useful when trying to emulate a real performance because the faster a violinist plays the more he/she goes out of tune. This is called intonation. The intonation of an instrument is how it stays in tune with itself as it plays up and down its register. So when doing fast note runs you can use the pitch wheel to slightly change the pitch of the notes, simulating the action of a real player going too fast to make sure his/her fingerings are right on the mark. 6. Properly learn the intended uses for short articulations: portato, staccato, staccatissimo, spiccato, pizzicato. When you listen to an orchestra playing you're hearing naturally flowing changes in articulation. Don't simply think "Well this is a melodic line so I'll use a legato patch." Your lines need to have the proper movement to sound natural, and using short articulations where they're needed is the key. That's just for the violins. Every section of the orchestra follows those rules. You should listen to a lot of classical music and study how it is voiced among the entire orchestra. Violins can be doubled by flutes for a nice sound. Basses have a really large range and can be used to double cello lines or even play along with the violas. There are many traditional pairings that you can read up on and study. For the most part though, you want to write parts specifically for each section based on their ranges and timbres. Most sample libraries will be sampled as: Strings - First Violins Second Violins Violas Cellos (Celli) Basses Brass - French Horns Trumpets Trombones Tuba Woodwinds - Flutes Clarinets Oboes English Horn Bassoons Piccolo Think of each one of those as a monophonic voice to get the most authentic sound. Sometimes they will add Solo versions of each instrument, that gives you a true second voice to use for harmonies if you see fit. So when shopping for libraries, make sure you get ones that have more divisi options. This doesn't mean you should only use single note lines on every instrument, but be aware that you're compromising realism whenever you choose to multiply the number of musicians you're using. Most importantly you have to learn how to properly orchestrate, and you do this by reading scores. Download some PDFs of Beethoven's symphonies and learn how he voices his chords, pairs sections, designates counter melodies. You don't have to be able to sight read, just learn to read very basic notes, so that you can see the harmonic relationships.

Onboard soundcards like that can definitely cause noise. You really should get a nice external USB interface. Which DAW are you using?

It depends on what you're using now as a soundcard. If you're using onboard audio (from your motheroard) then yes, you need to upgrade your sound card.

This is a great sounding piano. There are so many versions of this that are all great sounding that there's no reason to bitch. If you're gonna be doing a full mix with all kinds of drums and basses and bagpipes then you can use a simpler piano and get away with it, but if you're doing a piano piece you definitely want something with this level of detail, and for that it's very worthwhile. But yeah, I'm definitely picking up one of the lighter versions of this plugin sometime.

My music sounds terrible to me. I have an incredibly long way to go in every aspect of music. I'll most likely never get to where I want to be but it's all about the journey!

Hakstok is right. Moving the master fader down to reduce clipping doesn't help you when it comes to using compression or limiting on that channel because your tracks are already going into that bus too hot and that'll eat up bandwidth on your compressors. The master fader in most DAWs is a POST fader. If your tracks are clipping going in to it, they are still technically clipping even when you move that fader down. This means that your tracks are using too bandwidth and it gives your plugins on the master channel less resolution to do what they need to do properly, and this gives you a less than ideal mix. To solve this you should get the tracks balanced how you want, and then group them together and move them down so that the master bus is not clipping. This will keep your mix identical but will clean up the signal going into the master bus and let your plugins work better.

At first glance this topic is a little strange because of course the more sounds you add the louder a song will be, but it raises a good question that I frequently get asked and I will repeat my advice here for the 200th time on OCR. When you're mixing always make sure that your master volume meter stays below 0dB. Never lower the master fader, instead lower all your tracks evenly so all together they do not cause the master level to go above 0db. This gives your a lot more headroom in the stereo bus and allows for your master limiters and compressors to work better and helps you get an overall cleaner and punchier mix.

It's a combination of both as far as I would guess. When the tracks in your mix are balanced well before they reach the stereo bus you generally don't have to use as much master compression or saturation to get good results.

I think it's important that we start using "Stereo Bus" or "Master Bus" instead of "Mastering Chain". Having a compressor/limiter on the master bus is not the same as mastering a track. Too many people confuse the act of gently rounding a mix out with mastering, and they end up smashing the life out of it for the sake of volume.

Everything in mixing and mastering can be looked at as a battle for headroom. Mastering to -0.2dBfs is done to make sure things stay safe as noted earlier. What's more important are the terms RMS and crest factor. RMS is more of an estimation of your general loudness, when you use a plugin to gauge RMS and loudness what it's really doing is showing you a value based on multiple readings, one being the crest factor. The crest factor is the dynamic range between the peaks and the RMS (or the headroom between the two). Anyway, to make your music louder you need to understand what music does. All musicians today have a set hard limit that we cant go over: 0db. You cannot go past 0dB. When you create a song you see a lot of peaks and valleys in your waveforms, these are great things to have in music because they produce clarity and fidelity to our ears, but each one of them has the potential to hit 0dB. If they go over 0dB then you get painful clipping and you can damage your speakers, so we use normalization which raises or lowers the volume of your song with respect to the highest peak. This means that if you have one really loud sound in your mix that's far above the rest of the sounds, your song will be too quiet because the volume level is based around that loudest sound. To get around that issue we have Limiters. a limiter will create a virtual ceiling for your peaks by cutting them off after a certain point. This lets you raise the volume of all the softer sounds in your mix, but now you've cut off all the clarity of the louder sounds, so your song will sound weaker (but "louder"). This is why limiting properly is very hard and requires a lot of skill. To get around the issue OF limiters, we have distortion. What distortion does is take your peaks and "moves them around" the spectrum by boosting different harmonics in the sound. There are many different kinds of distortion, not just the one used for electric guitars. So now you have your loud sound with the high peak, you apply distortion to it and what happens is that different harmonics in the sound start to become louder, so the peak is not the only thing that carries that important sonic information. Now your sound is fatter and the peak is a little less "important". What you can do now is lower the overall volume of that sound and it'll still be clear and audible in the mix, which means you can now raise the overall volume of every track and get a louder mix. So to get your songs louder, spend more time with your individual tracks. Use compression and subtle distortion to fatten up sounds individually before mixing them together and they will be heard much easier, reducing the need for extreme amounts of clipping. Also, look into "maximizers" or harmonic distortion limiters. A maximizer more or less does what I said above about distortion but you can use it on the entire mix, this really helps you get stupid high volumes in your tracks.

Cut 2khz, boost the low fundamental (anywhere between 300-800hz).

It really comes down to the dimensions of the space. Have you done some basic testing to find the most prominent reflection points? Are you planning to insulate and/or put up sheetrock? If the dimensions of the room allow for a good amount of space for the sound to flow around in, there's absolutely no reason you can't turn that into a great studio. The major thing you want to avoid is not having enough room for speaker placement. If the sound coming from your speakers bounces back at about 20-30ms or faster, you'll have definitely imaging problems that cant be solved by acoustic treatment. The angled ceiling can be a plus if it's high enough and if you use it correctly (acoustic paneling and speaker placement are important here too). But yeah it really comes down to the size. Even if the room feel big now, try to imagine it with a good deal of gear bulking everything up. If that gives you a claustrophobic feeling then it's probably not big enough. If the ceiling in there gives you anywhere between 8-12 feet, you're generally good.

I got a pair of K240s and they were good for a while but the bass response on them is too exaggerated. They're a very dark sounding pair of headphones and I can't really mix on them anymore. For $100 I recommend the classic MDR7506, you can't go wrong with those. They're very well balanced and have a natural enough sound that you could mix on them.