ambinate

this is so damn good. the production is outrageous

thanks so much, man! i'm glad you enjoyed the tunes. drukqs is such a rad album, i definitely take a lot of inspiration from it! thanks for downloading, flexstyle! i hope you didn't hate it a lot

thanks a lot, man! really appreciate it. i've actually been a big fan of trifonic for a few years and emergence is one of my favorite albums so i'm totally flattered to hear that my stuff reminds you of them, haha. i rip them off (their sound design especially) pretty shamelessly, so i'm glad it's working in some way! hope the ep doesn't disappoint, ectogemia! appreciate the support, man!

seriously though this is rad. i could vibe out to this all day. big fan of your soundscapes and drumwork. edit: i respectfully disagree with mr xavier on the need for a shredding lead but i could listen to selected ambient works vol 2 for a straight week so maybe that's just me

ambinate.bandcamp.com here's my second release - a free ep called "cycles." it's mostly ambient dubstep with some drum and bass thrown in at the end. i'd love to hear any and all feedback! thanks a lot for listening.

dubstep gets a shitty reputation these days because a certain brand of it has blown up and gotten overexposed and all that, but it's actually been around for a while and is a really varied genre. it isn't even really defined by a halftime drum pattern or a wobbling bass (although those have gotten really popular lately). a lot of dubstep uses 2-step drum rhythms, since that's how it got started: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rMeyJzh0dQ (i'm using some older rusko as an example here 'cause these days he's become known for making halfstep with wobbling midrange, but there is a ton of dubstep that doesn't fall into the halfstep category) classic example would be burial, though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlEkvbRmfrA i think, in actuality, dubstep is one of the most exciting new-ish (last 10 years or so) forms of electronic music out there, because there's so much room for variety in it. the guidelines are really loose which allows for a lot of creativity. been really feeling this release, which came out pretty recently, for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3mJYBGvFEE but i think it's really unfortunate that it's gotten pigeonholed over the past year or two and is now associated with a pretty specific sound for most people. it's a super vibrant genre with a great history that gets overlooked, but i guess that was bound to happen at some point (as the same thing tends to happen with any genre that gets really popular - drum and bass, house, hip hop, etc etc etc). i definitely understand people's frustration with the sound that's at the top of the charts these days (it's not really my cup of tea), but i honestly think there's enough variety and creativity in the genre that everybody can find something to like in it.

green tortex .88mm were my shit for a long time. i don't even remember why i switched to jazz iii but now i'm too used to the tinier size and i can't play with regular sized picks anymore. but those green picks will always have a special place my heart.

ernie ball 10-46 for e standard tuning and 11-48 for d standard. i usually go with dunlop jazz iii picks or dunlop stubby picks (which are 3mm).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad_eKQh4ru8 dude was ahead of his time

this is where the nostalgia bias comes in, i think (and i don't mean that as an insult - it's just a preference thing). other than the fact that we grew up listening to this stuff and remember it really well, why is memorability the key factor in judging video game music of any era? higher on the priority list than memorability, i think, is effectiveness as accompaniment to the actual game. a memorable score that's not doing a good job of supporting the gameplay or story is a lot worse than an unmemorable score that supports the gameplay/story really well.

this is a really cool idea for a paper and i think it's great that you're researching something you're passionate about. that said, i don't mean to be a total jackass, but i am going to strongly disagree with your thesis. i understand where it's coming from, but i think it shows a bias for a very particular type of music without regard to actual quality. gaming music has evolved in a number of dramatic ways because gaming itself has evolved in a number of dramatic ways. the fact that a lot of modern game music "lacks a strong melody" does not immediately mean that the music is bad or of a lesser quality than the melodic music of older games. it's a different style of scoring for a different style of gameplay. catchy melodies do not make music inherently good (especially if they're misused), and a score doesn't have to be memorable in order for it to be an excellent score.

we can only hope

moombahton. not joking. within 6 months to a year it'll be huge if it keeps up at the rate it's going now. not top 10 material at the moment but i think it's just a matter of time. other than that, electro house and progressive house styles have been stable and popular for a while and don't seem to be going anywhere, so those are good bets. like prototyperaptor mentioned, breaks-based stuff isn't popular on that level anymore aside from a handful of artists that cross over (pendulum, for example). i don't think downtempo has ever really been big on this scale aside from a few artists. you mentioned dubstep isn't on your radar which may be for the best, because i'm not so sure that the type of dubstep that's popular right now has much staying power beyond the next year or two. the mainstream strain of it is sort of mimicking what happened in the dnb scene like 10 years ago, and they're kinda still trying to recover from that bubble bursting. to be honest, though, you run a risk trying to gain new fans in these genres just because they're so flooded right now. there is a shitload of competition, so it may not be as easy to win over people as you might be hoping.

i'm no expert at this stuff, but i really like making ambient-influenced music and lately i've been working on soundscape stuff, so off the top of my head, here are a few things i've found helpful: - reverb and delay are super important, like you said, but getting creative with these effects can make for some really cool results. make a signal chain that has a delay going into a reverb going into another delay with different settings, all going out to your main reverb send, or anything like that, and you'll get some cool results. same thing goes for using wet/dry ratios you would typically never bother with (like almost no dry signal). sometimes it sounds awful, but when it works, the right signal chain can make even something as simple as a few random drum hits add loads to a song's atmosphere. - timestretching can get you some really nice results. paulstretch has gotten really popular lately (maybe to the point of being overused and too recognizable when it's used unaltered, so you might want to play it conservative with it), and it's free, which is awesome, but you can also get great sounds just by doing less drastic timestretching in your daw. try it on literally anything. i've made pad sounds out of my synthlines just by timestretching them, chopping them up, and adding some effects. - reversed audio. this is one of my favorites at the moment, and it's gotten to the point where i bounce my midi stuff almost immediately after it's written so i can reverse it and start screwing around with it. sort of like paulstretch, if you use unaltered, reversed audio too much, it'll probably become obvious or even grating, but if you start cutting it up, rearranging it, glitching it, timestretching it, and whatever else, you can make some excellent sounds for all sorts of situations. i make a lot of pad sounds this way, and it can be a lot of fun to work with because different sounds react very differently when reversed, so it's always worth a shot. - in general, just try out different effects (phaser, flanger, pitchshifter, whatever else) on anything and see what happens. i've developed a real liking for reversed drum sounds sent through long effects chains and then arranged sort of haphazardly throughout the piece, for example. because soundscapes can be constructed through sound manipulation that isn't necessarily pitched or musical, you have a ton of leeway to just try things out and see what sounds are created in the process. - this is probably be obvious to you, but i guess it's worth mentioning anyway, just in case - with all these reverbs, delays, and other effects going on, it's important to make sure you're eq'ing stuff properly. however, it can also be fun to eq things for soundscape purposes - i've done what meteo mentioned before, for example, and played sfx samples in low octaves to get weird sounds, and then eq'd out everything below 200 and gotten some weird, cool results. i guess the basic idea here is to just be open to all sorts of bizarre audio experimentation you may not have been interested in or able to use before. absynth is a killer synth (one that i've only barely scratched the surface of, unfortunately), and there are lots of other awesome synths out there, as well, but you might be surprised by how many incredibly usable sounds you can create just by manipulating basic synths and sounds with effects and audio editing. edit: low-end stuff, i think, just depends on your taste and what kind of music you want to make. drone music often has an emphasis on bass, but the type of music you posted (which to me sort of sounds like a cross between idm and ambient) doesn't seem to focus on it anymore heavily than most other kinds of edm, although i only sampled a few tracks, so i could be wrong. it doesn't seem like you're interested in making straight up, soundscape-style ambient, at least as far as i can tell (please correct me if i'm wrong), so i think you'll find that most of your mixing habits, like keeping the low-end relatively clean, will work here.