Black Rose Forever

[Tapper]

Hey guys! Potential future game music mixer here! I got Fruity Loops about a year ago but pretty much left the thing untouched because I found that I sucked at creating music digitally.

I finally got some recording equipment and I decided to give Fruity Loops another shot. I created this in about two hours. I call it Black Rose Forever. I basically just took a riff from Opeth's Black Rose Immortal and done my own little thing with it. The point of the song is just to be a quick experiment with mixing my own live recording with digitally generated music. I know its not great, but I think its a good start. I'm posting it here for some opinions and advice from the experienced musicians out there. Any tips before I start on a more serious project?

Download here: Black Rose Forever

[Splunkle]

I'm trying to remember how black rose immortal went... bugger. I'll have to dig out the album sometime. Anyways, I think the guitar work here is very nice - its a very nice recording. Can't hear any hiss or clipping, so good job there. If you are doing the effects for the guitars in fruity, they are quite well done indeed.

I'm guessing the drums are fruity - if so trust me when I say you can do a lot better and a lot more - it'll come with practice. This is very good for a first effort. Also, look at your hi-hat samples, as one of them seems to be cuting off prematurely. The only other synth seems to be the phased thing in the background, which I don't have any problems with.

All in all, a damn fine piece of music, at least from a production viewpoint. kinda repeditive in terms of arrangement, but thats okay, given what you started out trying to do. Nice work.

[Tapper]

Thank you! I agree when you say the drums are shitty. Most of the time spent on that mp3 was on the drums. I couldn't get them to sound the way I wanted! I suppose its just gonna take more practice.

Heres another piece I just started. Theres not much here just yet, but this is probably gonna be the basis of my first full length song. Again, most of the effort is on the drums, trying to get the damn thing to sound right. Any suggestions on getting realistic sounding drums?

Download: Untitled

[Splunkle]

Mmmmmmmm... distorted guitar... umm, right the drums.

Well, I would say there are two problems here. The first one is that you aren't thinking like a drummer. Thinking like a drummer will really help, especially when you are going for a realistic drum sound. Heres some examples:

- Those opening hi-hats wouldn't be hit in exactly the same fashion every time, with exact timing. You have done some velocity editing (I think) but make it just a wee bit more random. Timing editing is tricky, because you don't want your drummer to sound like he is drunk, but you do want him to be human. Just keep it small.

- This drummer is either one of the most calm dudes ever, or hes insane. He has a guitar blasting full volume next to him, and he has got his same old hi-hat pattern going on behind the snares and kicks. Surely he would be more excited, and be bashing the hell out of hi-hats? Give him some new patterns, and load up some more aggressive hi-hat samples to use here. Also, vary up the cymbal fills. Keep your drummer interested.

Now the second problem is the production. The drum samples are fine by themselves, but what needs to happen is for them to fit together with themselves and the guitar. Now there is a lot of boom in those toms and the kick drum. This makes integration with the guitar tricky, because the fading boom makes everything all muddy. So if you are adding the boom with reverb, I would make sure you aren't reverbing the lower frequencies to avoid the mud. The other big production thing is compression. You have the drums quite loud. A better idea would be to have them less loud, but to compress some of them a little - particullarly the kick and the snare. Not enough to kill the dynamics, but just enough to give certian elements a bit more punch. If you really want to make sure a drum cuts through the mix, add just the tiniest amount of ditortion.

I think thats just about all I can help you with now. Zircon did make a very cool tips 'n tricks about drums earlier on, which can be found here, along with all the other tips and tircks. Give that a read.