Darangen

If you use less than stellar headphones, yes, they wouldn't be as good. I'd guess that the headphones you and the people you talked to were not using great headphones. But you can buy an amazing top-notch pair of headphones for ~$300, half the cost of mediocre studio monitoring speakers. Like these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000F2BLTM/ If you buy a good pair of headphones, you'll be able to make good mixes with them. The DT-880's are nice because they have a nuetral and linear frequency response, so you know that you're not hearing extra bass like you would with say a pair of DJ headphones. I was skeptical of headphones for a long time, but Zircon showed me that you can make killer mixes with headphones if you just get the right pair. I haven't looked back since.

Try ASIO4all first, see if that fixes it. http://www.asio4all.com/

As others have said, it is most likely a grounding issue. They have grounders you can buy and plug into the socket before you plug in your power cord that might help alleviate the hum. It could also be your sound drivers. Laptops aren't usually fitted with great sound cards. If you're not using ASIO drivers, I'd recommending getting ASIO4all and running that. That could also get rid of the hum.

What's your room setup like? A top notch pair of headphones might be a better option for you. If you're set on monitors, the new Behringer Truths aren't bad. They've stepped it up a bit in their quality over the years. I'd still recommend headphones though.

That's actually quite impressive to me. I wish I could improv more. I'm the "hear it in my head" type.

Your best bet is asking the artists themselves if they have tabs for their work. Just ask nicely and hope for the best. That said, I don't know of anyone who writes their own tabs. I know I don't write tabs for any of my stuff.

That's why she's scary!

This: I've always thought Deia was kinda scary. Even though she's not.

As far as space goes, you just need to make do with what you have if you don't have or can't afford a good space. I've started using a small closet with lots of pillows and blankets to absorb a lot of the reflections until I can afford something better.

In the Post Your Game Remixes forum (If they're from video games) or Post Your Originals forum (If they're not from games).

I doubt I have the old waves, but I'll take a look.

I have Goliath, and it's useful for a few things but it's more like a sample of all of their other libraries. As it was mentioned before, if you're going with a bundle offer it's kinda silly to put a bundle in that bundle.

Keep your left hand doing something interesting instead of just 5th chords or 1-5-8's. With any solo instrumental piece you should make sure that you're changing it up often enough to keep it interesting. That along with the arrangement guidelines should be enough for you to get started. Best thing to do is get a decent one minute or so track going and use the WiP forum and bug people for advice, PM some of the users that Jordanius recommended and ask for tips, they're all cool people.

Jordanrooben might not even be a musician. Might just be a forum lurker/listener. But yeah, people will always read what they want to read in the way they want to read it. Yay internetz.

The only time I'd see a guitarist sight-read is if they're playing classical guitar. Or learning through a series of guitar method books. The only reason I know how to read music and sight read is because I learned to play piano at a young age. I've never really used it for guitar.

Must...resist... Who am I trying to kid, I can't resist.

Pretty sure OA uses SSD. You could try hitting him up for tips. Native Instruments Studio Drummer is a pretty decent library, it runs around the $100 range. They have 3 different kits and a bunch of presets to help you get started.

Not really, I've seen a lot of studio engineers use multiple compressors and limiters to get the sound they wanted. Whether it's more beneficial than just using one more aggressively is beyond my comprehension.

Whenever I want a punchy bass, the only thing that seems to do it for me is lining it up with the kick :/ Do you have a song we could listen to that would give us an idea of the sound you're wanting to achieve? That might help others figure out where you're trying to end up and help you get there.

Try sliding the bass a few milliseconds after the kick hits, sometimes that helps it stick out a bit apart from the kick. Close enough so that it still sounds tight, but far enough apart where they each get their own distinct sound out. How devoted are you to this bass sample? Have you tried others? Tried layering two or more different samples together?

When it's done. And after it's done, when OCR is ready to release it.

Make sure you're rolling the bass of everything else (except the kick) to help make sure the bass punches through. The way I make a bass punchy is lining it up with the kick so you get the beater from the kick popping and the bass booming at the same time. Doesn't work in all styles of music though. Do you have a sample of it with some other instruments?

Yeah, that's not a bad idea. But taking that step after each EQ change or Compression change you make can help you know what's changing instead of doing a ton of work and coming back the next day having to dig around to try and find what you need to fix or tweak. Most effects have a Bypass button, I've made it a point to make it a habit of hitting the bypass when I think I'm done to make sure I haven't EQ'd the original sound out of the track or over compressed a track. Unless that's the sound you're going for, of course. www.therecordingrevolution.com is all about little tips and tricks to making a better mix, and this is just one of those little tips that takes 10 seconds to do and saves you a lot of headaches down the road.

I recently discovered www.therecordingrevolution.com and I've learned a great deal through their free videos and guides. Today they put out an article about EQ and compression that I thought was great advice so I'm posting it here. You can find the article here: http://therecordingrevolution.com/2012/04/09/mixing-memory-loss/ "I’m afraid to tell you that you likely suffer from short term memory loss. More specifically your ears suffer from short term memory loss or bias. If you’ve mixed for even 5 minutes you may have discovered this yourself. It’s a serious problem for all mixing engineers, and one that if properly understood can refrain you from making dumb mixing decisions. A Little Goes A Long Way When you sit down to sculpt a mix together you’re hoping to take solid tracks and turn them into audio gold. At least I know that’s what I’m trying to each time I mix. The problem comes when we believe we have to make drastic changes to our tracks in order for that to happen. We’ll make tweak after tweak after tweak. A little EQ boost there, some compression here, a little saturation there. We just keep going and going with this process without actually comparing our changes to the original sound. This is a problem because we quickly forget where we came from. The 10 Minute Rule This memory loss seems to rear it’s ugly head most aggressively when I’m using EQ. Whether I’m sculpting my kick drum sound or getting my vocal to sit in the mix I quickly can lose perspective. In a matter of just a few minutes I can easily find myself cutting, boosting, and tweaking my tracks too far in the wrong direction. If instead I were to stop what I’m doing and bypass all the effect changes I’ve made in the last 10 minutes in order to compare, I’d realize that I’ve made a drastic change (for better or worse) to my audio and I can decide what to do from there. I call this the 10 minute rule. I simply try to look up at the clock every 10 minutes and stop to assess what kind of “damage” I’ve done in the past 600 seconds. Sometimes it tells me I’ve gone to far with the EQ and I only needed a 2 db cut and not a 6db cut. Sometimes it tells me I can stop tweaking because things are actually sounding just right, even if I thought I hadn’t “done enough.” The Cumulative Effect The more you mix the more you’ll start to realize that it’s not the big sweeping decisions that define your sound, but rather it’s the cumulative effect of small seemingly minor tweaks that lead you to mixing glory. If we aren’t careful we’ll forget just how much we’ve changed the sound and we will lose perspetive on where the mix is going. Don’t let your ears’ natural bias dictate your mixing. Instead, stop, refresh, and track your progress to see whether you’re heading where you really want to go."

Love it! Keeps the peaceful feeling of the original while giving it something new.