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Yoozer

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Everything posted by Yoozer

  1. I would've given something precious to have that piano sound 30 years ago. For ensembles, consider layering real strings with synth strings. It's an art to achieve that, however - not everything will work. As for the rest - do consider you're setting very high standards for yourself. For fun, check out http://www.synthmania.com/sr-jv80-02.htm - then you'll hear how much better you have it nowadays. That doesn't mean you shouldn't upgrade - putting the bar higher for yourself is a good thing - but it's easy to get lost in buying things. Buying things won't make you a better musician or composer. Even with more expensive libraries, adding (and considering!) the kind of realism @Garpocalypse mentions is necessary.
  2. If you have two instruments and both give 'm separate reverbs, it's just going to sound unnatural. "Sound quality" is a weird way to describe it; it's more of a "this is something you can't ever hear naturally". Mixing is about the suspension of disbelief, and unless you're live-recording an orchestra with a pair of microphones separated at a distance equal to your ears in a seat somewhere in the venue (which is -still- an approximation because your ears work different from microphones), you're always trying to "stylize" things to paint a scene, send a message, or perform illusionism. It's like a render of a scene; your eyes don't focus on two distant things at the same time and adapt continuously to the light around us (and fill out a hilarious amount of details outside of your focal point that aren't really witnessed - just painted in there by your brain). With inserts, you're actively decreasing the volume of the dry signal while increasing the volume of the dry signal. It's a crossfader. With sends, you keep the dry signal at equal volume while adding more wet signal - and as Jorito says, you should have the wet to 100%. It's two separate faders. It's about the ratio of the mix plus multipliers. With inserts set to 20% wet, it means the dry signal is multiplied in volume by 100% - 20% = 80% (0.8) while the wet signal is at 20%. With a single wet/dry knob, you can't have a scenario where dry is 90% and wet is 40% or something - the sum always has to be 100%. With sends, the dry signal is left at 100%, the wet signal at 20% - the sum of this (120%) is the "new" 100%, and if you'd scale everything back proportionally (100/120 = 0.83), it's comparable to the insert's dry/wet as 83%/17% in terms of ratio, but both are louder.
  3. When do you use inserts: for distortion, EQ, compression, chorus, flanger, phaser. When do you use sends: for reverb, delay. When are there exceptions: any time you want 'm. You can use compression as a send effect to get something called parallel compression. These are rules of thumb, and rules can and should be broken if you learn something from them. Chorus (or plain old oscillator detuning) can make the sound wider, but at the same time it can get weaker, because it's cancelling itself out in terms of phase. Reverb lets a focused sound compete with a smeared copy of itself; naturally, when the copy gets stronger, the sound is less focused. You camouflage the transients. In the end, all you're doing is controlling the ratio of dry and wet. Send effects aren't "better" in this regard. It's just that you start with 100% dry and sum a wet signal on top of that. Let's say you have 100% dry and 20% send; the total is 120%. 100% is 100/120*100 = 83% of that, so the signal is 100 - 83 = 17% wet. This is effectively not different from using an insert effect and setting the wet/dry to 17% wet. The difference comes in once you start adding other tracks, because then you get something you can't do with insert effects. The other difference is that 20% on an insert is not the same as 20% on an aux send, so you'll indeed hear more of the dry signal. "You have too much reverb" is an oft-heard complaint. Reverb is like MSG for the sound; it makes everything better. However, you usually don't notice that you're using too much of it. You can use a reverb as an insert effect. The downside is that if you have two tracks and you use two distinct reverbs, it sounds pretty unrealistic; you can't have one instrument sounding like it was recorded in a small tiled room and another in a concert hall. That ruins the illusion. If you use exactly the same reverbs, they may still mismatch, because the result of two dry instruments playing in the same room is not identical to summing two instruments each playing in their own room. What aux does, effectively, is that it creates a submix. Let's say you have a dry mix of guitar, bass and drums. Drums are set to 100% volume. Guitar is set to 60%, bass to 80%. That is the mix that you hear. With auxes, you can make the mix completely different; on an aux you create a duplicate of the mix that may be set to guitar 100%, bass 40%, drums 20%. That is the duplicate mix that you send to an effect (any kind of effect). The effect will "hear" that mix completely different from how you're hearing it. The end result is sent back to the mixer as if it were a single stereo track, and summed with the original. If you're using a reverb effect, the guitar's wet/dry mix may be a lot stronger than that of the drums, but since everything is still in the same "room", it'll do more to suggest positioning (i.e. how close to the microphone was the instrument). Panning is in that sense not different from any effect. Experiment! Keep things simple initially; just a few tracks. Try all combinations. You'll learn a lot.
  4. Nope, you need a (hardware) V-Synth for this. See (and listen) http://www.synthmania.com/v-synth_ver.2.htm and http://www.synthmania.com/v-synth.htm (see patch "Retro Singer")
  5. https://8dio.com/instrument/8dio-studio-vocal-series-jenifer-kontakt-vstauaxx/ https://8dio.com/instrument/studio-sopranos-vst-au-aax-kontakt-instruments/ https://8dio.com/instrument/studio-vocals-laurie-vst-au-aax-kontakt-instrument/ Roland had a JV/XP Vocal expansion board - http://www.synthmania.com/sr-jv80-13.htm Of course Omni is good stuff, but the libraries above are much more specialized
  6. So I happen to have an XP30, which is a JV1080 in keyboard form. The JV2080 is virtually identical, except that it has more expansion room, a bigger display, and 3 insert effects instead of just 1. The sound is called "Temple of JV" (PR-E 078). I've opened the on-board editor to find out what makes it tick. Note that this is the first time I'm seeing this - my previous analysis did not have the machine switched on. INT A-254 Org Vox C (that's the sound you're after) INT A-013 MKS-20 PR B (the cheap piano) INT A-151 Mini Bs 2 (the pulsating tonal sound) INT A-219 Soft Pad A (the constant note) I also noted now where I was wrong; I was right about pretty much everything except for Org Vox C. It's not just noise; it's actually a tonal sound! The noisy part is part of the multisample - and there also lies the problem. You can't further split up a multisample anymore. Here's the wave file with that single sound for yours to analyze. First I play the unfiltered notes, then I enable the filter and let the envelope modulate it (it's a simple ADSR - 0 7 0 0 long decay shape). Resonance is turned up a bit - it gives an edge to the noise. Then I enable the downwards saw wave LFO. So, then the question turns into - "how would you synthesize that sound"? I wouldn't - I'd run it through a resynthesizer like Morphine or Serum. It's going to be pretty damn tricky to synthesize it from scratch if you want the identical sound because it's not just noise, but pre-filtered (bpf?) noise. An alternative would be to sample it. Sing a single note close to the microphone and add enough "breath noise". Then, cut out a small bit and loop that seamlessly; after all, that's also how they did it with the famous Fairlight vox sound. Alternatively, EQ the hell out of it to remove the tonal part, then reintroduce the tonal part with another short loop sample at the correct pitch. You have to keep in mind that these machines have limited memory, and that everything is allowed when you're not dealing with real instruments. Very short loops that only take a few kilobytes gain character by being pitched up/down all over the keyboard. The layering takes care of the rest, and by using synchronized LFOs you can let it play entire melodies. See also : Just keep in mind that there is zero difference between: using an LFO with the correct waveshape using an envelope with an arpeggiator drawing all automation by hand Well - not zero. The first and second are harder to set up, but you can play melodies without jumping through hoops and copy-pasting several lanes of automation.
  7. The JV2080 is a synthesizer that has 4 sample-based "oscillators" - each has their own multimode filter, LFOs and envelopes. This helps because it means that you can deconstruct such a sound in 4 layers or fewer. So, layer by layer: the ttch ttch is noise - an open hihat sample would work - that's been cut and it gets played at progressively lower pitches at a tempo of 16th notes. Another layer is a pulsating triangle or sinewave. A square wave LFO is routed to the volume and the modulation amount is 100%. That one is tempo-synced but it's playing 8th notes (on the 2nd and 4th). Below that is a more constant note without pulsation, probably a low-pass filtered string quartet or something. One layer is a high-passed sample of a piano. Not hi-fi gigabytes of library, but a cheap piano; if you have Korg's M1 in plugin form, that'd help.
  8. lol wut What kind of "discovery" are you hoping for exactly? "Pay me $3K if you want this beat?" Then make another account. Several producers have more aliases than sharks have teeth, how is this different?
  9. Why not SoundCloud? Easy to preview, and you can just make the original .wav files downloadable - even use a Creative Commons license. Sure, it's not loop-specific, but you can put enough meta-information in there - tag it as "127 bpm" if you wanted to - to make it easily findable/browsable.
  10. There's a reason they call it the musical landscape; there's a hot, boiling and roiling underground below a petrified, worn surface. Sometimes it produces an outburst, which scares the crap out of everyone, but soon that cools down and becomes part of the landscape as well. FYI, nothing in pop that's electronic right now is new - virtually all the tricks you hear were already done in the late 90s and early 00s, but it was mainstream in Europe, not the US. This does not mean either is progressive or lagging, just that trends may not surface at the same time.
  11. A question that's harder to answer is - how many of these people who got a copy do something with it - more importantly, -achieve- something with it? With music it would be - how many just hoard it and put it in a collection, and never listen to it? Even with a multi-gigabyte library, you have to be actually skilled to do something with it. A pirated copy does not necessarily translate to a sale. The people who get this kind of stuff - do they actually need it, or do they just hoard it? And the people who do use it (because if they really needed it they'd buy it) - what do they use it for? When I see posts about Waves sending in law enforcement into a professional studio that's using a cracked package of Mercury - that's something to get legitimately pissed off about. The studio owners/operators have the resources. They have real use for it, because it can turn them a profit. Most importantly; they should know better because they know what happens to their music is done in exactly the same way. As for the partner expecting to be a father; the genie's been out of the bottle since well, decades. There's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists - with that knowledge in mind, would you even wager such a bet in the first place? Yes - you can make it, but you also know what forces you're fighting against. In a just and fair world this wouldn't happen, and it's pretty clear that this world isn't. I don't know. The people I've seen bragging about having Sylenth1 and Massive and the entire refx Nexus library with all the expansions -and- 3 DAWs (FL Studio, Ableton Live, Cubase, with all the bells & whistles) don't get into the freeware because it's too hard. It takes more effort to get Synth1 in Reaper and make some commercial-ish sounds than it is to load up Nexus in FL or even Cubase (hilariously overpowered and feature-bloated as it is to them) and click NEXT three or four times. They literally do not want to put effort into making music at all. As a bonus however, they'll also amount to nothing in life, except for a small core of people who eventually pushes through - and then usually goes legal because they understand that anyone could just as easily pirate their music - and it's all fun and games if you're still living with your parents but not so good if you want to turn it into some kind of career. The pirates getting this kind of stuff and uploading it - any freeware is like, repulsive to them. There's no challenge to it, and if it's free, surely it must not be worth anything. The worst thing is that this screws legitimate customers another time - if the library developer disappears, say bye-bye to your support.
  12. Who says that's the only video? It looks more like it's one of a series, and Ableton quickly pulled it. Kind of silly to base any decisions on a minimum of preliminary information.
  13. The numbers are not the problem, learning to fluently play scales and transposing without a hitch are. That's what you should get hung up about - they're comparable to a fluid, legible handwriting or 60 WPM touch-typing plus correct command of grammar and spelling for authors.
  14. If you think your album will sell/not sell because of drum machines you have bigger issues than just the drum machine. So: Worry about other things. Worst a drum machine could do is that whatever samples it has are just not right for the kind of music you make. I wouldn't try to sell a Linn or an 808 as realistic when the rest is just plain garage rock or something and you're supposed to have a real kit around. The Linn would be desirable for chillwave or w/e Com Truise is called, and the 808 would do great for electro, both cases where a real kit would fail completely. Won't work. (unless you pull this off and it sounds good, then congrats, you've created a new genre of sorts) Care about the end result, not about the process. The only people caring about the process are not fans of your music anyway or not listening to it in the same way as the general audience. There is no cheating in music; there is only lying.
  15. Have a smartphone? There's an app for that - http://prochords.dk/w/ (and countless others). Repeat after me: chord generators are good. In the best case, they encourage you to find your own combinations. In the worst case, you're still going to be more original than , and you'll learn whether something fits or it doesn't. When it's you or the machine trying to make up 4 chords that were already used dozens of times, they're still going to be 4 chords that were already used dozens of times.Alternatively, http://chordmaps.com/ You are. The whole thing about chord progressions is just so you don't hold C-E-G all the time and think that's sufficient.
  16. There is no such thing as cheating in music; only lying. Every time you re-record a take, you're already cheating; you wouldn't be able to do such a thing if you played live. So, if you have the opportunity to cheat; do so. However, you'd be lying if you sped up your guitar playing and used a taped recording and mimic the motions of playing really fast.
  17. This is how you fake it, no EQ needed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_reflex Also, the toggles on the back of the monitor can be useful; your speakers may be flat as a board, but your room may not be. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_modes Though, if you cannot fix the room (you're renting or living with your parents and neither party likes the idea of having several basstraps in the corners) an accurate EQ is probably a better idea than some toggles.
  18. An alternate and much easier way to do it is to record the wobble at several speeds as audio instead of a MIDI track, and copy and paste these where needed. This also makex complextro or whatever they call that stuff with the melodies quickly muting/unmuting really easy. Seriously, you'd be amazed how lazy producers can be. If you have to dig a hole, use a shovel; not a teaspoon. The teaspoon will not result in a better hole.
  19. It's just another slider, just one that happens to be available on a lot of keyboards and synthesizers, and it can control lots of things instead of just one thing. It's commonly used to add vibrato, so if you ever wanted those 80s brass sounds with a little tremolo - that's done with a modwheel. ding ding ding winner.
  20. Massive alone is already very capable and you've got enough in terms of DAWs to get going - so the problem is merely reduced to synthesis, choosing sounds, and arrangement. Still a lot of work, but it's not going to fail because of lack of equipment.
  21. This helps immensely for lots of Eurobeat signature sounds (pianos, etc.) - http://www.korg.com/Legacym1 and it's very very cheap. Some parts of http://www.loopmasters.com/product/details/1186/Studio-Essentials-Psytrance may help you in terms of percussion (weird as it may sound). Also, it helps if you already state what you already have in terms of equipment (even if you have nothing) because then we can direct you to various guides that explain what you need to get started regardless of genre. The "how" part is hard to explain in a single post. - around 140 BPM (but more is not a mortal sin) - simple and somewhat saccharine chord progressions and melodies - lots of caffeine The best way to learn is to analyze in depth what is happening and what you are hearing. Take a sheet of 5 x 5 mm graph paper and put it in front of you, landscape orientation. Every time you can count to 4 with the kick drum? (boom boom boom boom) That's one block on the graph. At the top left, you write "kick drum". If the track starts with a kick drum that is repeated 8 times, you color two blocks in the kick drum row. You will color the blocks when you hear it, you will leave 'm empty when you don't. Listen to the entire song (if it fits on the paper) and you will have an overview of where you hear a kick drum. Now take the next instrument. It doesn't matter if you don't know the exact names - "piano" sound be obvious but something like "high-pitched synth lead" works just fine and again, color the blocks when it sounds, and leave 'm empty when you don't hear it. Listen to a track repeatedly and at the left, write the separate elements from top to bottom; from left to right, color the blocks when these elements appear in the track. If you've analyzed a few songs like that you recognize the structure, and you start to recognize certain tricks and clichés - "ok, so when the kick drum stops, a snare starts to roll and increase in volume while the melody plays (and nothing else). Then you get a brief silence, and a big SPLASH sound of a cymbal and then EVERYTHING starts to play at the same time!" When you recognize this, you can apply elements like that yourself; the rest is a matter of getting to know chords and picking the right sounds. That last part is not so hard; the only committee that will determine whether the sounds are "right" are the listeners. Read http://blog.kimlajoie.com/rap-it-in-a-grid/ - it'll explain why it's not bad to use certain clichés, just make sure your song doesn't consist of anything but clichés.
  22. Something like You've got everything you need except for percussion, really. Rozovian's got it right with the way kicks work. Use EXS or Battery to layer several samples, use the EQ per sample to make the parts not interfere with eachother, and don't be afraid to resample and re-compress/limit the sample again to pump up the volume. Don't worry too much - the rest of the song has to work with the percussion as well. A great kick will not save a crappy song, so focus on what you can do first, and outsource the rest for as long as needed.
  23. Everything has pretty much already been said about it in various other forums, ad infinitum, for the past decade. There is no horse anymore. There is not even a blank patch, just a hole in the ground. The solution is to realize that: - nobody gives a shit if you make crappy music with either - any time wasted on the debate is time better spent on actually making music Vinyl is not the only analog in town; there's also tape. Not cassettes, actual tape. What's a shame is that most of the debaters completely ignore the haptic part. You could probably put a FLAC on vinyl and read it with a laser needle. Pure digital sound, no problem there. What matters is the act of moving the record out of its giant colorful cardboard container, and the fact that you're doing nothing else for those 2 minutes except for preparing to listen to music (compare the 2 seconds it takes to cue an mp3). That's a great deal of charm folks don't want to give up, and there's no credible (e.g. I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter) alternative for it yet.
  24. No sadness, no joy. Hm. If I'm being honest, there's nothing I don't like. Granted, I haven't had the experience yet to deal with a band with an ego or an untalented singer insisting that their recording that sounds like a burlap sack of rats on fire can be autotuned to something palatable, so perhaps that would sway my opinion. I think most of the stuff is not about not liking it - it's frustration at me being not good enough. I wish I was more proficient with chord progressions, though wishing is useless; practice and studying theory would be useful. I'm also not very good at resisting the siren's call of forums Nope. There is lots of boring and tedious stuff thanks to software (and it's equally boring or even moreso in hardware). Sampling. In theory a great idea, in practice there's lots of tedious crap you have to deal with. DAWs. All interfaces are 2 decades old and there's still so much to innovate but it doesn't happen. MIDI. The only way to deal with older equipment and nobody can do this right. Playing keyboard. Well, saying I suck is perhaps false modesty, but I feel I don't deserve the compliment.
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