Yoozer

Hm, I'm getting the same errors about registration from Kontakt 2.0 as Skrypnyk, and the homebrewn Kompakt player (ug-ly! Jesus, I'm glad NI polished it up) isn't giving me any love and probably can't find where it should look for the monolithic samples. Oh well.

It looks like Mirror 3 was a bit fucked and gave me CRC errors, so I'm trying Mirror 2 and it appears to work fine. Protip: wget for Windows.

Except for a wave editor to cut/slice/edit samples with, that's enough. Wait, you didn't know FL Studio has the option to load plugins? Shitloads of plugins? Any VST plugin you've ever heard of? Lots of 'm free or cheap? FL Studio has a mixer. It's not the program, it's you learning how to mix that does the trick. "Tightness" is achieved by virtue of compression. FL Studio has a compressor. Try it as an effect over some of your plugins. It is however not a solution for all the things your mix lacks. No, because that completely ruins the idea of a forum. The idea is that if you post a question here, and we answer it, it means that the answer's got a place to stay. It also means that if someone has an (almost) identical question, they can see which answers you got, by using the search function. So, ask what you want to ask here, and that way, everyone can enjoy the bits of wisdom they get .

I just got this, as an upgrade of FM7: Also this thing: Also earlier, this: Which contains a software emulation of... this:

Whatever you play on your Fantom only comes out of your Fantom as sound - NOT out of your computer's soundcard. Your soundcard can only record it, but the Fantom isn't telling your computer how it sounds via USB, only what it plays. Remember, MIDI is not Audio.

1) You need something to record the Fantom's audio with (e.g. soundcard, but preferably one geared towards music production). One with digital I/O would be nice; noiseless recording. 2) You need something to record the Fantom's MIDI with (e.g. USB MIDI interface, but it looks ike the Fantom already has that covered). 3) You need to assign the Fantom's knobs to those of your softsynths in FL Studio. Alternatively, you can get an extra controller with just knobs because the Fantom already gives you the keyboard part of the equation. 4) Install the Fantom's editor if you haven't done so yet.

http://www.rgcaudio.com/sfz.htm That not an option?

I say you'll have to demo 'm anyway . To me, the feel of a keyboard is pretty important, and there's a difference between semi-weighted and weighted + hammer action - so it's not just knobs and sliders that make the difference .

Why? What you're asking for is an incredibly awkward combination. The Ozone is a keyboard with a built-in audio interface. That's something entirely different than a keyboard with a mixer. Other keyboards which have this are the Behringer UMX (which doesn't have preamps) and the Alesis Photon. There's also the Novation X-Station - but the sliders you see are controllers for either software synths or the built-in synth. The Fantom suggestion is really odd, because a Fantom is a workstation in the first place. It can act as a MIDI controller but it's got a load of built-in sounds. The audio inputs on the thing are there because it's got a sampler, but they aren't supposed to pipe audio to your computer via USB. USB is there for file transfer, the MIDI interface and using the editor. Re: mixers: well, no, not always. Roland's very into digital mixers, but they've left some of their customers in the cold when a new format was chosen. I'd rather have Yamaha.

O RLY? http://www.zzounds.com/item--MDOKEYSTAT88

To let a slider on a controller move the one on the screen - well, that's called "assigning knobs" or "MIDI Learn" or "controller mapping". Fortunately, instead of a 170-page thread all you have to do is look for a tutorial that treats this process . Here's what the manual says about it: http://www.flstudio.com/help/html/automation_internal.htm I also noticed that a more fitting title for this thread would be "Trouble with Technology"

Get the Pro. Adding as much knobs to an ES (which is semi-weighted - no hammer action!) as the Pro has will cost you just as much as the Pro will: see http://www.zzounds.com/item--EVOUC33E So, the deciding factor is then the feel of the keyboard. Also, by saving up for the Pro you can directly play with the knobs - really worth it .

"X-Fi sounds ZOMG AWESOME and injects LSD into your ears" tells me nothing. "24 bits, 96khz, 3ms latency and 0,05% THD" tells me something I can do with. I've got an E-mu 1212m - no need for another soundcard. Plus, an X-Fi doesn't have what I need, and it's got a lot of stuff I don't need . I need ADAT, S/PDIF, full-sized line I/O and I get a Firewire connection and 1 MIDI I/O thrown in for free (the MIDI would be a nice extra if it weren't for the fact that I've got 3 MIDI interfaces already). With an X-Fi Elite Pro, I get a big box connected by a bulky parallel cable (If USB 2.0 and Firewire can do it, that bulky thing is not required). I get 4 really tiny outputs on the card and a few on front of the box. The bulky cable is weird, because again, Firewire and USB 2.0 can do the job, and an E-mu 1820 even uses its own protocol over a LAN cable. With an X-Fi Fatal1ty, you get the connections in a front-panel of sorts. But, an E-mu 1212m is $30 cheaper. Why the E-mu comparisons? Well, Creative owns E-mu but lets them make their own soundcards geared towards music production instead of gaming or watching movies . Worst part? All the Crystalizer stuff that's supposed to make things better is unavailable in Audio Creation mode (which you are supposed to be using when making music). Well, for listening and gaming, pull out all the stops. Spice it up with all kinds of nifty effects. Make the bass cause chalk dust to come down from the ceiling. Pump it up. Go wild. For -making- music, dear lord, no. The most ironic part about audiophiles is that if they are of that age, several khz of frequency range is already gone due to aging . Not only EQing - compression and exciting, too (high-frequency distortion to make things sound more fresh). The worst part? It's a single option; on or off. You could ask them to hook it up to a synthesizer or module; but yeah, the feel is the most important. Then again, it's kind of hard to gauge without hearing any sound. Just let the salesperson hook it up to a Motif.

Just a very small request: can you not quote everything and just include the part that you want to reply to? It means that if you make your track on a Shitty McMegaBass stereo set, listening to it on another system will sound weird. E.g., aforementioned MegaBass will let your song sound like it's got quite some bass thump, while in reality, it doesn't have it. On another system, it'll sound thin - but that's because the MegaBass isn't there to "compensate" for it. Every system "colors" the sound; what you want is something that colors the sound as little as possible. Since there are a lot of people here who might listen to your music on something that doesn't have the MegaBass included, you shouldn't mix and master in such a way assuming that they have . THE PLOT THICKENS

If his budget's between 100 and 150, I think most people'd like to stick in the middle, too . There's this: http://www.zzounds.com/item--MDOOXYGEN49 Slightly cheaper, and with nice transport buttons (so you don't have to hit PLAY with the mouse), too. Don't know if the keyboard feels nice.

Any soundcard that needs a diagram like this thing below to show how awesome it is is most definitely crappy or has its marketing team on IV shrooms. Besides, it shows CD and MP3 audio - guess people don't play MIDIs anymore or equate their presence on a Geocities webpage with "crap" anyway, so they don't care for the sound . But seriously - no, I don't see any SoundCanvas thingies getting built in there. No benefits for existing users and it adds to the price without having any advantages. You're right in thinking that, but! 88-key controllers usually have piano-style keys - e.g solid ones, with weight, and sometimes something called "hammer action", and sometimes something called "graded hammer action". The weight means you'll need more strength to put the key down to the bottom (this differs per model). The hammer action means that when you do this, it "feels" more like playing a real piano because the hammer on a grand or upright gives a slight kickback to the key - when it hits the string. "Graded" means that higher keys are lighter and lower keys are heavier. All depends on the budget you're willing to spend on a controller, and if you personally even like the action on a piano. Some are heavy, some are light-weight; all a matter of preference. Velocity sensitivity is almost universal in keyboards, except maybe those with the mini-keys. When you press down the key it sends a MIDI NoteOn signal. When you release the key it sends a MIDI NoteOff signal. The "bar" you see in the piano roll is the time between those two signals. That's also why you sometimes see a PANIC button; if the NoteOff is never sent the synth just keeps playing, and PANIC forces a NoteOff to everything. Just make sure your first mix is not an mp3 of a recorded MIDI file with just a reverb effect thrown over it. Other than that, have a ball .

No, that's the GM standard, and it's 128 (depends if you start counting at 000 though). No again; the very first synthesizers with MIDI were definitely a bunch of years before the General MIDI standard came. The DX7 and Jupiter 6 both have MIDI - but they don't have those 128 sounds.

MIDI = Musical Instrument Digital Interface MIDI File = set of instructions General MIDI = standard set of 128 sounds. MIDI signals = you play a note on a controller, the controller tells the computer "boss, he just hit E#3", the computer tells the software synthesizer "go on, play an E#3". The software synthesizer tells the soundcard "I'm in ur buffer sending u bitz", and the soundcard poops out a voltage. This goes in your amplifier, through the speaker, and then reaches your ears. The part from "boss, he just hit E#3" is entirely thanks to the MIDI protocol. The fact that it goes to your soundcard's GM synthesizer (yes, it's actually a little synthesizer in there) or a software synthesizer with an incredible piano sound that'd make Shostakovich splurt his pants - well, the software doesn't care about that. MIDI's don't "sound". If you want to blame anything, blame your cheap soundcard and its implementation of the General MIDI (GM) standard. THAT is what makes "MIDI sounds like crap". Basically, the GM standard defines that there are 128 instruments. It's a list of presets. Preset 001 is always a piano. Preset 50 are strings, and Preset 128 should be some sound effect - don't know which and can't be assed to look it up. The GM standard says "well, the idea is that you get a rough outline of how something sounds, so you don't have to make a godawful expensive synthesizer, just make sure it sounds adequate, and follow the right numbers - e.g. so that a piano should resemble a piano etc., and you're good with us". The people who made your soundcard thought "hm, so they said 'resemble' - let's see how far we can stretch this and save money on precious processors and memory!" A MIDI file may contain notes - like a sheet of musical score. When you play the MIDI file, Windows instructs your soundcard to play the notes that are on the sheet and chooses a piano. MIDI does not care how something sounds. It only says "play a middle C" or something, and then your soundcard has to listen. MIDI is to Audio as a sheet with score is to tape. Tape tells you how it sounds when it was recorded, but not how you play it. MIDI tells you what you should play but does not care what you play it back on. If you let a 5-year old play the Moonlight Sonata on a completely out of tune piano, do you also blame Beethoven?

That's.. not much . But hey, it should still be enough, and if it's not, refrain from buying games for a while - you can always play Mario later, but being stuck with a crappy controller lasts longer. Aight, here's my regular and obligatory recommendation for an E-mu Xboard 49. Nice bonus: it comes with a crapload of software. It's got semi-weighted keys of a better quality than most controllers, and you get rotary knobs (you don't know how much fun they are until you try 'm, trust me). I've got one myself, and I'm rather picky about what I play on; I've owned (and still own) various synthesizers, and the E-mu is definitely one of the better ones (the Alesis Ion for one sucks, the Nord Lead 2 isn't much better, the Yamaha AN1x is really nice but sends aftertouch like it's going out of style, the Roland XP-30 is nice but doesn't feel as nice as the E-mu in some cases. That eKeys thing - well yeah, seconding OverCoat in this, it sucks. No bender, no modwheel, no knobs, and the worst kind of keyboard known to man.

This is saying "My car drives 80mph." What brand? What model? What year? In other words, which sequencer, which plugins? Otherwise, it does not convey any information whatsoever. Mud is because you're throwing a compressor over instruments that are doing stuff outside of their designated frequency range. That's because you're solving at the wrong place. EQ starts during the mix, not after you've rendered your track. You need to give us a link, otherwise nobody is going to do the effort to listen at all . Read this. http://www.futureproducers.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29861 That should only be the case if the plugin can't handle something else than 16/44. Let's not forget the obvious fact that people have done some very nice mixes with 16/44 since the birth of the compact disc - e.g. give or take 20 years or so. The current race for higher/more/better is because it's possible and because there's enough memory and processing speed. The mix won't automagically become better because sequencers process audio internally at 32 bits or more regardless of what your soundcard can handle. Exactly. However, this can be undone with a crappy soundcard .

I have trouble seeing how that's possible - how do you "write" it otherwise? Anyway, read: http://www.chordmaps.com - if you can find out what chords you use, you can figure out where you start. Then there's not only the key, but the mode, too. http://www.looknohands.com/chordhouse/piano/ See the stuff from Ionian to Locrian. Do you play your notes in that scale (or a transposed version of it?

The music instrument manufacturers have had a very big and important goal, and it's hard to understand the whole story behind electronic music if you don't know that goal. That goal was realism. Specifically, how to make a really good acoustic piano without having to lug one with you on stage. Because a synthesizer could do more than that, essentially what they aimed for was a complete set of instruments in a box. Presets, patch sheets, whatnot - all of those are testament to that. You won't find "Techno Lead 1" on a vintage synthesizer, but "Trumpet", "Flute" or "Accordeon", definitely. That you could make other sounds with it was a bonus, but not an important one. During their quest they've experimented with different methods of synthesis - first analog subtractive, then in 1983, FM came and blew every analog subtractive synth away, because it was different and, in some aspects, much better to imitate instruments; plus you'd get 16 voices of polyphony - quite amazing, because before that 8 was the maximum and that package could already break a roadie's spine. FM's heydays however were much shorter lived than the analog generation, because Roland and Korg struck back with the D-50 and the M1; and those beat the Yamaha DX7 (which used FM) again in realism. In the meantime, nobody wanted the analog gear anymore; it wasn't realistic. Hence, early techno producers could pick up TR808/TR909/TB303s for practically free - and that's what they did. But that's not all; the TB303 which was essentially an electronic bass player for drummers (and its much less popular counterpart, the TR606 which was an electronic drummer for bass players) was used in a completely different way. Instead of setting it to a certain fixed sound, knobs were tweaked. Instead of meticulously programming a song, you'd leave the batteries out and end up with a completely random and alien-sounding melody. Instead of playing it back at the speed of a slow rock song, they'd crank it up to 130bpm. Because Roland's gear could "talk" between eachother, it meant that the drums and bass could accurately sync up; mechanical electronic music with machine-set tempos was the result. This sequence of events was sort of repeated with software. Something cheap is given to people who would usually not make music, would have no formal education, and because they would approach the instrument in a completely different way than the makers or their contemporaries of another genre intended, you'd get unique results. That's after they manage to sell a bunch of records. Before that, bedrooms with cheap gear instead of the expensive new stuff. Even then, having an instrument or downloading a plugin does not make you a musician; using it does. Techno has gelled as a genre on itself because the conventions were laid down by people; It's usually good to know these conventions before you can break them or transcend them. What is a drum machine otherwise than something that plays back synthetic percussion with an inhuman precision? You don't need hardware for that, unless you are a purist and want to constrain yourself in exactly the same way as the pioneers did. If you worry about using hardware or software, you're worrying about the wrong thing. Use what you can work with and, most of the times, can afford. There's very little that's impossible in music; it's almost always a matter of time and effort. That's the whole idea. You can't unravel a song on CD or MP3. You can find acapella versions of the vocals (it's a legally grey area and we won't help you), or instrumental versions (or imitations thereof) on either the CD single itself or karaoke compilations. Not of all songs, and almost never in techno, because if an artist would want you to remix his work, he'd give you the most important samples he knows you can't imitate (certain effects, speech, vocals, whatever) and will leave the rest up to you.

Can you specify exactly what kind of techno? That term is ambiguous at best - it usually means something different from the US to Europe . http://di.fm/edmguide/edmguide.html Anyway, what helps is to get yourself a track where you like the structure. Then you start playing it with one hand near the pause button. Take a sheet of graph paper and put it in front of you, widest side towards you. Alternatively, you can do this in Excel if you wanted to. For Excel: in the top row, write down the names of what you hear - bassdrum, bassline, hihat, snare, sampled loop, vocals, whatever - depends on the song you've picked. Every row below that is one pattern; 16 steps in Rebirth/FL Studio/ReDrum or (usually) 4 times the bassdrum. If the song starts with only a bassdrum (most extended mixes do), mark that block with a color or an x or whatever. Things should be looking like this, then. Make as many "elements" columns as you like. Once you're done analyzing, you have a song structure. Try to apply that to your track and see if it works. If it doesn't, try another track - maybe it's more like yours. Try to understand why a DJ switches on and off parts, or uses snare rolls, cymbals, etc. Try to think like a DJ - you have to entertain a crowd here. Analyze a few songs like that, and for the real challenge - get a track you haven't heard and try to predict the build-up for yourself. Once you can do that you'll make your own tracks with a little more confidence and thought, and you'll get out of the looping problem.

George Yohng's W1 Limiter. Load it up in Audacity and put it over the track. Pumpin'! http://www.yohng.com/w1limit.html

This is why people sacrifice a single USB port to connect a 4-port hub or something. Dongles don't draw power - so a hub is perfectly alright. A dongle -is- something useful. Just count on it that without an iLok or Syncrosoft stick you won't be able to check out demos of most commercial plugins (Arturia Prophet V anyone?).