SnappleMan

As far as music goes, the project is 90% done. As far as overall, I'd say about 80%. There's all the site and release work we gotta do now. KFC and hadyn are the two who are really gonna get this together.

Or get a real guitar... :\ Cmon, for $100 you can get a full pack from Guitar Center. It's easy to learn how to strum chords...

Velocity helps too. Not every string will be plucked with the same exact ammount of force.

Well, it aint rocket science, junior. slap the notes into your piano roll, then unclick the Snap To Grid button, and gently move each note a few clicks from the root till it sounds like you want it to. Make sure each note is progressively later than the previous, because when I strum a chord on guitar, there's no way I can hit every string at the same time.

What ever happened to Coolio?

No worries man. you're already doing so much for the project that I think we can spare a bit of time for you to get your things done. I have to now really g through all these tracks and start analyzing them. Then contacting whichever artists THOUGHT they were finished and nicely asking for a change or two... which never goes well. Anyway, yeah, release is gonna be soon. Not right away, but soon enough so that people will FINALLY get to hear this amazing album.

I've downloaded everything but can't really listen to shit till the weekend, Joker. Worry not, I'll let you know how it is then. EDIT: hahahaha oh man.... listening to some of these final tracks... I'm shitting my pants at how good this project is gonna be when we launch it. You fucks are so lucky...

Some fruity shit indeed o_O I also asked Zircon to throw together a Lava Reef track for us. Last minute tracks always come out the coolest

Awesome shit dude! If I can make somewhat decent music on my crappy ass setup, you'll be ripping out assholes once you get this studio together.

I have the flu. I'm allowed to screw up.

..... Dude, wh... how do.... there's no bassis.....g....ughh... You fail.

Hey Compy, nice way to argue with yourself

You've encountered a topic to which SnappleMan does not know the answer to. Please contact your product vendor. Seriously though, I wish this trend of overcompressed music would end.

Rock music and orchestral music should be listened to very differently. People who seriously listen to orchrstral music know enough to turn up the volume.

The MDR 7506 are a great value. They work pretty good for referancing (I wouldn't mix a paying project with them), and they're comfortable.

Nothing to flame over, it's a simple matter of preferance. The big point that I think comes out of this thread is that people confuse loudness and compression with punch and energy. A well mixed track hardly needs ANY mastering to sound really good. Mastering is just supposed to smooth out the rough edges and add some elements which make a track seem complete. Creating a punchy song is easy when you know the proper way to mix the instruments together (and knowing somewhat of how to compose it).

Cool Edit is a great tool for mastering, you just have to make sure you know what you're doing before you start. Normalizing does not increase the volume of a track the way you need it to. It just equally boosts everything until the peaks are at whatever volume you specified. What you want to do is compress and limit the track. Something else you should look into is a maximizer. Maximizer plugins are designed to make your tracks sound really nice and loud without losing too much dynamics. The one I use and recommend is the Waves L2 Ultramaximizer, check that one out, it'll do exactly what you need it to.

I'm gonna probably repeat what's been said a few times over in this thread, but I'm gonna give you my process of dealing with clipping and mastering in general. The mixing process of a song is the most important, because that's where you should add your EQ, effects and per channel compression. The way I do things is, I do all of my mixing work without any clipping. Meaning, the tracks peak is always at about -.2 to -.3 dB, never any higher. This means that it's the entire songs peak, not the individual tracks, which makes the RMS very low (the way it should be for a pre-mastered track). I get it to sound the way I want here. I turn my amp volume high up so I can hear everything in the track without compressing it, and I mix it like this. Now that it's mixed properly, and the peak is at that level, I bounce everything to the main mix track, and I start the mastering process. When mastering, the only thing I do is add compression, and slightly tweak the track's EQ to shape the sound how I want. The amount of dynamics that I'm willing to sacrifice will determine the loudness of the track. If I feel that the track isn't as loud as I want it, and if more compression will ruin too many of the dynamic elements, I GO BACK AND REMIX THE TRACK! I can't stress that enough, the mixing stage is where all of the most important work should take place. Mastering is only there to make it loud and bring out some things that mixing cannot. Always mix your track at a safe volume, otherwise you'll end up with an overall bad song that doesn't sound good mastered.

Now that the deadline is here, we are collecting completed songs, and beginning to work on the release. And Gecko, I'd prefer if you used a PM to give us your info anyway.

Well, although my songs are done, I can't mix them because I haven't the samples I need. So I gotta wait for my CDs to be shipped back to me and then I'll get to finish them all up. I'm also getting completed tracks from other members now, so that makes me happy. READ THIS, PEOPLE! I need info from you! All of you. Read the first post and find out what you gotta send me. If you dont have a pic or don't want one displayed, it's not a problem, just make sure you give me info! AND PLEASE SEND IT TO BOTH ME AND KFC!

I'm now forced to delete my work and do a bad job just to spite you.

Your shit is jacked.

Is it acoustic or electric? Can you post a picture so I can see what you mean?

I usually write the bass first. A solid rhythm section is key to a good song. I usually go pretty far on bass, adding sweep arpeggios, chords, melodic lead runs and harmonies. It's easy to overdo these things in a song, and completely ruin the flow, but if you use the techniques in a subtle manner and know how to break between a rhythmic run and a melodic run, you should have some outstanding music. Just look at Iron Maiden. Every single song is centered around the bass guitar (since Steve Harris, the bassist, writes almost all of the songs).