SGX - two WIPS

[sgx]

Two WIPS I started recently. Both are about 2-3 hours of work so far, so just concepts. Very different

www.sgxmusic.com/newmelody.mp3

This is nice and orchestral, sort of trip-hoppy I guess. Second half the strings are kinda me just noodling around - very rough. Reminds me of Eric Serra stuff a bit in the dissonant strings.

www.sgxmusic.com/beast.mp3

This should get the kids in the club grindin' on eachother. Deliberate badassery. The sounds in the intro is some crazy shit I did in Live - this actually isn't an instrument - there is no vsti or live instrument producing this. This is actually just Live's vinyl distortion effect making some noise, gated by beatrepeats, sent to four different audio channels each with a delay effect (making the four notes), through different resonators to give each note pitch. Then sent to traditional delay and verb sends with phasers and junk on em. The rest of the song I sequenced together in realtime in one go after I made the loops (cuz you can do that in Live ). Structure is mega rough. Oh yeah and I know that one synth gets all clicky sometimes...gotta fix it.

Just thought I'd give a taste. Let me know what you think or if you have any neato ideas where these should go. Its likely that you won't see at least one of these again until they come out on an album.

Oh yeah, and I've only got two comments on my Coactive remix thread that's near the bottom of this page now....just wanted to mention that......check it out

[WesPip]

But..I just BOUGHT a "new" SGX album like 2 months ago.

I'M STILL PAYING OFF MY TV YOUR BASTARD. ;.;

[-RK-]

This is seriously some very intelligent work, but in sound design and composition. Both peices have some of the most creative audio processing I've heard.

Just great shit overall man. AND their WIPs. I cant imagine how insane the final versions will be.

[sgx]

But..I just BOUGHT a "new" SGX album like 2 months ago.

I'M STILL PAYING OFF MY TV YOUR BASTARD. ;.;

Haha. Next album should be out this summer. It is going to be the more chill/ambient/nice stuff like the newmelody.mp3 above, Peripatetic, and A Meal for A Whale. BEAST and stuff like that (beats n' synths) will be on a second album that I would love to release 6 months later, but I may not be able to do it that quickly. I'm sort of working on both at the same time but a little staggered. I'm planning on releasing about 50% of each album for free as downloads - I haven't decided about these two yet, so that's why you might not see them again for a while.

This is seriously some very intelligent work, but in sound design and composition. Both peices have some of the most creative audio processing I've heard.

Just great shit overall man. AND their WIPs. I cant imagine how insane the final versions will be.

Thank you sir. I appreciate it.

[avaris]

First off dis some hott shite!

1st song:

Try adding in some french horn playing in the lower registers to accompany the strings. That could add some added texture and mood to the sonic goodness here.

2nd song:

Hats or one of the sounds is a lil piercing IMO.

I've watched some videos on live and having been using the demo, and that program is just friggin nasty.

[hseiken]

I listened to BEAST. Nice, but it seems to lose steam and then keeps going. Definately need some (maybe) eerie pads or even some strange ambient sounds here and there and major variations in the drums. The main synth is pretty sick, like it just got back from a Bad Company UK track.

[Rellik]

SGX, both of these are great - the basic bones of beast are fantastic and definitely extremely danceable, despite the relaxed pace. I don't think the the synths later on with the sweeping cutoff are as cool, but maybe if the rhythm of the sweeping were more precise they would leave a better impression. The rhythm and bass are ingenious - you sure know how to use (and apparently enjoy) those fast-repeat snares and hats; all of the variations are great.

newmelody I like even better. When the strings are exposed (as in the intro) they sound a little iffy (although a bit more reverb might fix that), but the texture they create when they're playing chords along with the choir is amazing. The way it's mixed with the powerful bass riffs and the apparently idiosyncratic fast-retrigger drums is incredibly slick and transparent - just what I'd expect from SGX.

I'd love to hear an explanation of how you get such a massive low-end without any fighting between the bass and the kick, and without any obvious ugly compressor pumping, as well as how you manage to get the strings/choir across so clearly without disturbing the phat beatz - but I think that's probably the kind of thing that I have to keep bashing my head against until I get it . One question, if you would be willing to answer: did you use any EQ or compression or multiband compression or limiting on the master channel or post-render on these WiPs, and if so, how much?

[sgx]

Oooh. This old thread.

Finished the one that was called 'beast'. Holding onto it for now as probably an album exclusive, but I'll put it up streaming on soundclick for a bit if you guys want to hear.

Have No Tyrant

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=102671&songID=5147559

It kinda got all epic, which I wasn't planning, but its cool I think it is my best produced track so far from a technical standpoint.

About my low end - actually I don't know if I'm that great keeping the kick and bass from fighting. I do try to EQ them so that there is a notch cut out of the bass for the kick to live in. Try not to have them overlap so much.

I was looking into sidechain compression so that the bass would duck a bit when a kick was present, but I got lazy looking for new plugins I might have to buy and I just manually automated dips in the bass amplitude where kicks were.

In newmelody, honestly there may not even be any EQ's used in that yet. It was really early. No thought has gone into mixing yet, so everything you hear is pretty straight up. I guess my samples are good? (EWQLSO Silver and Dimension Pro for natural sounds)

I think I put both of them through a basic T-Racks patch before rendering which has compressor, multiband limiter, and a soft clipper.

[Villainelle]

I was looking into sidechain compression so that the bass would duck a bit when a kick was present, but I got lazy looking for new plugins I might have to buy and I just manually automated dips in the bass amplitude where kicks were.

Lol, you're crazy. This one is free and has native sidechain routing regardless of whether your host supports it:

http://www.kvraudio.com/get/2054.html

[Rellik]

Thanks for the info, SGX - I'll have to look into why, exactly, a soft clipper is desirable (sounds like it might be basically transistor saturation emulator - anyway, I'll look it up). Good advice about the kick/bass EQ - and actually, through experimentation, I've been able to achieve the solid bass effect I admired so much in these two using a similar concept (basically layering a sine wave at the fundamental with the bass, and then high-passing the rest of the bass, so that the bass range harmonically consists of only the sub, leaving room for some low oomph in the kick - this is more effective than trying to just notch out a bit of the bass's low end, in my opinion).

Also, I've never really given much attention to sidechaining either, but from what I've heard about it, it's probably only a subtle advantage (depending on the way you write your basslines and your kick rhythm). Mixing a compressed signal and a dry signal, however: that seems to be all the rage these days! If only I had a compressor that had a control for mixing in the dry signal - I'm too lazy to check how much latency my compressors are reporting .

[sgx]

OH yeah, I do that a lot with bass synths. A lot of bass synths I make are pretty "buzzy" and don't have a lot of clean low end. Better than EQing up the low end in the synth is to cut it out, then mirror the synth with something 'clean' like a sin or triangle that takes care of the subs!

Side chaining isn't always needed - just if your kicks happen while your bass is playing a lot and they are semi similar in important bass frequencies.