Malcos

The bass/kick conundrum. Yes it's very very muddy. With EDM and bass, you need to do a few things. Firstly you need to let the kick come through cleanly. Try to cut out everything below 80 khz for the kick, as you only want bass below that, and the low frequencies of the kick are mudding things out, you want the kick to pop. Next, try scooping out the bass in eq, dipping it between 80-100 hz so that the kick and bass are separated. Better still, keep this very gritty bass, and cut out everything below 100hz with this bass. Then add a second sine sub bass underneath and low pass it, so the sub part sounds cleaner. Even better, learn about sidechain compression, so you can dip the bass when the kick comes in. There's a style to making EDM sound modern and pro, once you have it, then you're good to go.

Moved around a month ago. I always like to incorporate my living room and studio into one space - saves money! Just attach a picture when you post.

The very end bit at around 2.04 is the best sounding. I think you're similar to me in that I like to sing in different styles, depending on the song. I think that in the parts where you're singing low, you're very much in your throat. If you can work more on the consistency of your timbre then that will help. Try to keep the chest engaged when you sing any note, you can feel your chest vibrate when you do this. Also try to work more on holding your notes consistently, cardiovascular fitness actually helps with this.

Mixing a track over 4 days, checking the mix on headphones and speakers and making small tweaks to the initial mix. Heavy compression of the bass and careful distortion to add high harmonics so that the sub bass could be heard on smaller speakers and headphones without making it too loud. Compression/parallel compression on the drums, Rozovian has already gone into detail above. Distortion on the high frequencies of drum loops to improve the perceived quality and then a de-esser to control the levels.

Still pleeeeenty of time! Put me down for Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2: Ancient Mystery please.

I'm probably too late to reply to this but it might help someone else. Use the largest ssd that you can afford as your main drive and also install your music programs and libraries on that drive. 500 gig would be best. Then have another regular drive and install games, steam etc to that drive. If using orchestral libraries then 16 gig of ram should help everything run smoothly.

Aha! Definitely look at Cubase then as Steinberg and Yamaha have a special relationship. I'm sure your hardware would be recognised as a controller!

Thanks for that, just checked out some Ark1 demos on youtube. It sounds amazing, its a shame that it doesn't have the softer sounds in there as well. It has a lot of useful extras as well, I may actually get both that and Albion one in time, I suppose it's a question of what to get first. Albion one has the extra synthy type sounds which work well, whereas Ark1 offers electric guitar and choirs (which I could always do myself to be fair). I'll think about it carefully. Orchestral Essentials doesn't sound as real as Ark1 that's for sure! I'm very excited at the prospect of getting my hands on these libraries, I've been squeezing what I can out of what I've got for a while now and I'm definitely ready for an upgrade!

That's unfortunate. I used Logic when I was 16 (and one of my friends also uses it). Back in those days before they discontinued it on Windows it was very much Logic vs Cubase. Have you tried using Cubase? There will be some adjustment of course, but it might feel the least alien to you, strictly interface wise. It's not an easy solution as Logic comes with so many instruments, whereas with Cubase you might find yourself short out of the box. Do you have any hardware? Reason is another possibility as it comes with a lot of instruments bundled in. The only disadvantage with Reason is that you will find yourself limited if you want to purchase hardware and high quality cinematic vsts later, as Reason doesn't support vsts itself. What DAWS have you looked at so far?

Great thread guys. I'm looking for a new orchestral soundset to upgrade my studio and was wondering what to get. I usually do hybrid stuff so I'm looking for that big hollywood epic sound. I'm currently using Halion Symphonic Orchestra which I've reached the limits of imo. I'm thinking of Albion or Orchestral Essentials.

This is my first album that I've released widely, it's on iTunes and Spotify so I've really put it out there. Any feedback would be very much appreciated.

Aaaaaand... the shortcut I cringe when I look at it now lol, but it might help a bit. There are 4 videos in this mini series. It's not how to play the keyboard by any means, but it'll give you something to mess around with and think about while you learn some real theory.

Ok cool, I'll definitely have updated my wips substantially by then.

I master my songs until they sound as loud as they can without affecting the dynamics or causing distortion (these days anyway). I've always worried that my songs aren't as loud as other people's songs, but no one has complained about it so far so my fears are largely unfounded. As WillRock said, there's a volume slider/knob/control.

Put me down for The Surrender Robot DHARUMANYO please!