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Darangen

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Posts posted by Darangen

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. I'm not scared of writing music. However, I do feel very outclassed by many composers because I rarely hear melodies or arrangements in my head. 99% of what I write comes from pure improvisation. This makes me feel inferior to people who can have an entire song in their head.

    That's actually quite impressive to me. I wish I could improv more.

    I'm the "hear it in my head" type.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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?

  7. 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?

  8. When you think your mix is great, then go to bed, then listen in the morning :<

    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.

  9. 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."

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