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Nase

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Posts posted by Nase

  1. I think the "shrieky"-ness that Nase was mentioning is probably the main lead synth maybe being too loud overall?

    Not specifically, I was talking about the whole sound really. That's why I was wondering about your speakers. Because both the lacking and the overly prominent frequencies are consistent throughout the song.

  2. Sound: Too shrieky. I did a bit of EQing on the mp3 out of boredom yesterday, and it sounded better to me with a decent boost at 200-500 Hz and a cut at 2kHz-5kHz (IIRC).

    The way it is now, the drums lack presence and the guitar riffs sound like a puddle of noise. It's hard to make out the notes at times. The EQ settings mentioned above definitely improved on that.

    Try giving the drums a lower mid boost as well.

    Out of interest, are you using cheap speakers? The sound makes for a slightly painful experience on decent ones.

    Talking about the arrangement, some sections are awesome. Good energy in general, loving the breaks. Good drum programming.

    The piece seems to lose focus during all the wankery though. The structure just feels a bit random at times, with one solo after another. I have absolutely nothing against soloing orgies, but some transitions could be better.

  3. Thanks Yoozer. I actually already have ASIO4ALL. I'm not gonna use REAPER because its demo is 30-day. I'm using MULAB. I just can't get a good sounding rhythm guitar out of the free electric guitar VST's I've found

    Get a soundfont player VSTi like this one:

    http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=188856

    Here's a good electric guitar soundfont:

    http://sound.thasauce.net/sf2/ultimate_guitar_kit_2.rar

    Nice for solos, but also ok for basic rhythm guitar. Check out the lower velocity levels at lower registers for palm muted strings.

    It's recorded via direct in, which means you have to use an amp simulator effect. Sampled guitars that are already amped by default have a much more static sound to them, so this is the way to go really.

    Try JMC900 from the bundle you can download here:

    http://www.simulanalog.org/

    Example of what it can sound like:

    http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?oy2jolwwfuz

    Happy chugging :)

    If you're looking for cleaner rhythm sounds, I'm sure the sf can pull that off somewhat convincingly as well, with the right amp settings. Experiment!

  4. A few people at work play this religiously. So I had one give me their 21-day free trial and have been at it for four days going on five.

    I still berate them for playing such a fucking stupid, prosaic, and laughably entertainment-less game.

    Having said that, please, can I hear your best Eve stories. The things that can *only* happen in EVE?

    I think you'd mostly get stories that don't sound too impressive for an outsider, full of EVE-specific terminology and gameplay logic.

    I suppose it's something you really have to get into to understand its appeal.

    I didn't btw, but my friend who plays it religously by now convinced me that it's pretty much the deepest MMO around.

    That doesn't mean that I feel any need to get into it though :P

  5. Most people on this forum [most people being me] use Renoise

    http://www.renoise.com/

    and it's only 49 euros :3

    I love trackers when they control a relatively simple set of parameters, like Famitracker or TFMaker.

    It seems weird and counter-intuitive to me though to use them with polyphonic and feature-rich VSTis. Was it really an easy switch for you, or was it more about geekdom to begin with? ;)

    I'd enjoy a video of someone rocking out with Renoise+VSTs from scratch. After all, trackers are still the fastest sequencers by design, I'd just like to see how well their workflow fuses with modern virtual instruments.

  6. If you mainly want to record, Reaper is the better choice.

    For sequencing via mouse, FL is indeed the best thing I can think of.

    The one terrible thing though about FL is the lack of proper time signature changes during a song. If it weren't for that, I'd probably stick with FL forever and wouldn't be playing around with Reaper at the moment.

    Reaper isn't free, is it? You have to get a license after using it for a month even though the program will still work. If you treat it as free software, that's not that different from using warez.

  7. I use Paulstretch.

    It turns this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75pjo9ReXCg (Bob James - Take Me To the Mardi Gras)

    into this: http://theheartcore.com/music/paulstretch_mardigras.mp3

    Yeahh, this one is awesome.

    Last year I had totally forgotten about my mum's bday until the day before, and Paulstretch saved my ass. She's into ambient music, and I managed to make a nice gloomy ambient album with it by making a couple crappy happy hardcore loops and sending them through it. Took about an hour, lol.

  8. Having a keyboard is nice, but if that isn't available:

    Play a note in the sequencer for a little while to establish that as the root note in your head. Using C will probably the easiest for starters because its octaves are easy to spot in the piano roll.

    Then, think of a melody you want to transcribe. Keep it simple at first. Try humming it in the key of C you established before. You'll have to find out what note the melody starts with, as it's not neccessarily C ;)

    This is one of the crucial parts of understanding melody really, understanding the intervals of notes. Your song can be in C, the first chord might be C as well, but the first note of the melody could be G for example, which would be 7 semitones above the root, and you gotta develop a feeling for stuff like that. You can learn about intervals in music theory, but what's more important is that your ears learn what they sound like.

    It'd be a good exercise to play a root note in FL, then hum a random note, then try to find it in the piano roll. Then determine how many semitones are between the two notes.

    The longer you do this, the less trial and error you'll need to find it, until at some point you'll go 'right, this one is three semitones above the root!'.

    But all this takes time.

    If you keep doing this though (Doesn't have to be a separate exercise, you can do it while making a tune), you'll automatically gain some knowledge on scales as time goes by. You'll find out about the sound of different intervals and eventually combine those into different scales that evoke different feelings.

    Then there's rhythm...Try setting up a metronome or something to that effect, then hum the melody to it. Align the clicks of the metronome to the 4 beats per pattern, mentally. Then, again, try to reproduce what you hummed in the piano roll. Find out which notes sit right on one of the four beats, if there are 2 notes per beat somewhere(8ths), one note sitting right between 2 beats (offbeat), or maybe 3 notes evenly sharing one beat (triplets). Again, a matter of trial and error.

    This is all there is to transcribing melodies...it just takes time and some concentration.

  9. Sam's been showing me some of your tracks, this one included. Just wanted to pop by and say this is h0mgz awesomes, and i hope you continue in this vain :3 I'm a sucker for highly liberal stuff of this type, plus I can take any amount of SoM love. Looking forward to seeing this completed, and anything else you make/have made~

    You're Blitz Lunar! Sam in turn showed me some of your tracks too, I love em! You're a master of everchanging prog-infested chiptunery, man.

    Thanks for the kind words.

  10. Very cool. I guess I feel a little differently about some criticisms. The compression add lots of tension to me, which is a good thing for this frantic piece. Plus, things open up when they need to (1:52-2:10).

    Yes, it's more a matter of finetuning the grade of compression, maybe automating it for a few sections.

    I'm a lazy bastard when it comes to production, the compressor is on the master channel ;) It sounds great to me the way it is at times like 0:37, gives the clav that nice pulsing sound, it just gets a tad heavy sometimes when more instruments join in.

    The melody that comes in at 2:13 feels underdeveloped at first, but it fleshes itself out and resolves nicely by the time it leaves the scene around 2:35. I think what would help it not feel so weak at first is if you hold off on the drums at 2:13 until a few measures later. They're going full steam from the get-go but the newly introduced melody is just building up momentum. IMO, that's a mismatch.

    Good idea.

    I think the ending is fine. It SMACKS of SoM flavor, especially the driving kick and snare dominated percussion palette. awesome :)

    The ending is going to stay there for sure! When I said finale, I meant the 2:13-2:35 bit. I just want to flesh that part out better to not make the 2:35+ resolution seem premature.

    Great to hear you dig it Harmony, esp. considering that you seem to be about as much a SoM fanboy as i am. :)

    Gario: Thanks. I haven't submitted anything until recently. There's a Castlevania mix of mine waiting in the to be posted list, expect it around...Q4 2010? Lol.

  11. In summary--details, yes--but it also feels like a zip compressed musical performance at the end.

    The sweet changes starting at 2:02 could perhaps be taken advantage of more, especially the organ'n'bass break + brass.

    2:13 -- The melodic focus seems to be diminished here--expected it to be the main focus.

    Sounds good.

    Absolutely, spot on. I had the exact same feelings about the final part after I relistened the next day. Guess I rushed it a bit and wanted to get done. I think I'll add another another few measures of the 2:13 progression, vary it up and do something with the counter-melody of the original. It has to feel like a proper finale.

    Thanks y'all, thanks for the support Sam :)

  12. I wanted to do a Famitracker/instrumental band crossover originally, but found that too nerveracking logistically, so now it just has a NES intro.

    The ending is based on 'The Orphan of Storm', the 'Victory!' tune.

    http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?omzddfgytnz

    Original:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5FR_i-EbDc

    I tried to shape the original track into something less dissonant, while keeping its frantic spirit.

    It's pretty liberal at times, people not familiar with the source might have a hard time getting all the links. But whenever there's no melodic/harmonic similarity going on, there's usually a rhythmic one.

    Not sure about the sound yet, the compression makes it sounds pretty meaty but also a bit too muddy and squashed at times. Probably still gonna work on that.

  13. There you guys go again, misunderstanding me like you always do. It's not your fault. It's mine. I KNOW.

    I'm not mature enough to post here. Ya know what? I know that every bit of what you guys is true.

    I'm not gonna lie. I HATE HEARING what you guys say. Absolutely. HATE IT.

    But I'm trying to suck it up because you're trying to help me.

    All I can say is: Deal with it. You've done your job, you don't need to stick around to listen to my crap. Do I deserve a ban? Probably. Why? Because I am being a little brat. Am I being a jerk by posting my crap on other people's threads? Probably. Can I undo everything I said? NO, I can't. I don't know what to do right now. I probably just have to get older so I can stop being such a little brat.

    Did I just realize all of this? No, I've known about my behavior problems for quite a while. I can't do anything to fix it except wait.

    Dude, you're 13. I prefer to not be reminded of what kind of traces *I* left on the net at that age.

    It's pretty usual for a 13 yr old to be bad at taking criticism, so I wouldn't worry too much. (Your tongue-in-cheek detector is going to improve automatically, too ;))

    Been listening to the mix while reading the thread. Not familiar with the sources, but it sounded quite pleasant in the background.

    Soundfonts &lots of Reverb, quite the Darkesword approach ;)

    Drums definitely need work, bit boring. To me, the individual hits are too abrupt and separated from one another for the tunes' style, doesn't sound natural.

    Let me say this too: Your sounds aren't bad, but none of them really stand out either.

    With the sounds you're using and the way you're using them, you really gotta amaze the judges with your arrangements in order to get on the site.

    As becoming an OCRemixer seems to be a major goal for you, you either have to get really good at making mediocre samples sound awesome (Assloads of Reverb/Delay aren't always enough for that), or get some commercial ones sooner or later.

    Keep at it, you clearly have talent.

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