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AMT

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Posts posted by AMT

  1. Alright, got some of my stuff up. Here's what I think so far:

    -Songs on albums should be given track numbers, so that the order can be explicitly defined.

    -Make it clear that you can have a separate band name and user name from the beginning. I didn't know, so my user name is what I would have put as my band name.

    -Make a sequential view for the album so that it isn't just a messy grid of CD icons.

    Nice start so far, I look forward to seeing how it progresses!

  2. Nope, as far as I know there's no way to get Firewire to work over USB. Even if you did, it would be a huge bottleneck and incredibly slow. Adding a PCI card is the easiest option, but outside of that, getting a different motherboard with Firewire is going to be your only other option.

  3. It's a bit outdated, but there's a tutorial I wrote on here about getting started with REAPER that might be helpful:

    http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=13478

    If you have any more questions, just ask.

    EDIT: To directly answer your question about the piano roll, add a new track to the project with Ctrl+T or "Insert > New Track", then click "Insert > Add new MIDI item". You can now move this clip around, stretch it, and double click it to edit actual notes.

    As for the effects / instruments, once you've added a new track, click the little "FX" icon on it. This will bring up the effect chain window. Instruments and effects are treated as the same thing in REAPER, and the included effects are surprisingly good (Particularly the EQ, compressor, reverb, and delay). You select the format of the plugin on the left side of the pane; VST are where you'll spend most of your time, but check out the "JS" tab for a ton of awesome effects that are included. Not all of them are the best but there are some solid ones in there. Get a synth like Triangle II or Synth1 and some percussion from Kore or Addictive Drums and you're set.

    The big difference between REAPER and FL is that the vertical layout of audio and MIDI clips is vital to the sound it makes. Everything you put down pipes its audio / MIDI through the track shown on the left. To turn MIDI into actual sound, you'll need to put an instrument plugin on that channel. If you move the MIDI clip off of that channel, it will no longer produce sound because it's now sending MIDI to a different channel. Look at it like a giant mixing board combined with horizontal Guitar Hero and you'll get the general idea.

  4. Thanks for the responses! Yeah, it's at least a $600 difference for the 15". I'm getting an SSD for $200 then selling the original HDD. I went with the 13" because I've always hated larger laptops and I intend to get a more powerful desktop down the line. Right now I'm still chugging along on a 2GHz Pentium Dual core and I can almost get the performance I need, but not quite. I basically just want to be able to run REAPER with one instance of AD, a max of 5 instances of Amplitube 2, and a halfway decent reverb all at a playable latency. The MBP should do that fine for now and if I need to expand later then it's small enough to still use as a day-to-day laptop in addition to a desktop. I'll stick with 4GB for now and maybe save the $200. If I need it I can always buy it later.

    (And yes, REAPER is a real DAW =P)

  5. I'm buying a Macbook Pro to run REAPER on and I'm considering upgrading from the stock 4GB to 8GB for $200 (buying from Newegg). I'm already replacing the HDD with a 128GB solid state drive (again from Newegg). Will I really see a difference with 8GB? The computer as it stands will be the 13" model with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR3 RAM, and a 128GB SSD. I'll be using it with a Presonus Firestudio Mobile, Addictive Drums, and Amplitube 2.

  6. AMT you're stems all have this weird high pitched squealy noise in them.

    Oh, in the beginning? Yeah, my DAW does that now and then and I don't know why. It doesn't mess with the rest of the track at all though, so I'll probably just leave the ones I uploaded. Anyone mixing my songs, feel free to crop that out of the very beginning.

  7. It occurred to me that the only mixing experience I have is with material that I've written and I'm willing to bet that holds true for many of us here. So, in order to get more practice, I thought it could be fun to post multitracks from songs we've done and have other people mix them. I don't mean ReMix them like we do on the site here, I just mean the technical process of mixing. Don't change the arrangement or anything like that, let's keep this as production only. You can use Tindeck to upload each track of a song, or zip 'em up and host it yourself. The song can be a ReMix or original composition. I'll upload some of my songs, post your own!. Happy mixing, let's see what we can come up with!

  8. I don't think anyone has really answered the original question here yet. When you ask if you should work on reverb, EQ, etc., the answer is all of the above. Don't really look at these as requirements or phases of working on a song. Instead, look at them as tools. Your goal is to get every element to sit together well in a mix (By mix, I mean the way the audio meshes together into a stereo audio track, not a ReMix by OCR definitions). You can do this by using the various tools at your disposal; compression, EQ, reverb, etc. There are really no set rules on when or when not to use any of these. The only thing that should matter is, "Does it sound good?" Just remember that something that sounds excellent on its own may sound terrible in a mix, and something that sounds awful on its own may be absolutely perfect in a mix. Experiment and find out!

    As far as what you should work on first, or in what order, that's really up to personal preference. Find a workflow that you like and stick with it. Personally, I'd recommend using placeholder instruments that are generally close to what you want and arranging / composing the whole song first, then go back and fine tune the sounds into exactly what you want. Then start the actual mixing process. Others can chime in here, there are millions of ways to approach this. This seems to be one way that's worked for me. I hope that helped!

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