Music Producers / Studio Thread

[haploid]

The acapella sounds pretty off in a few areas, no offense.

[destructodisk]

care to elaborate?

some parts i just fucked with to make even more incomprehensible, and realize the timing isn't perfect in all sections but I honestly didn't have intentions to make it so in the first place.

edit - nor do i believe gucci had the intention of having all his words line up metronomically either..

[Servo2000]

I've got a friend who plays drums (way more than I) and I was thinking about picking him up some cheap-o vintage electric stuff for fun and ran across these -

I have no idea how electronic drums like this work - I was looking at an older drum brain and it looks like each 'sample' has an input / output that's just the usual stereo jack so im guessing there's some sort of contact sent through the stereo to the brain that triggers the sample output which runs to the amp? Will newer drum brains work with these older drum heads?

[ROYALEFATALE]

new track up on soundcloud.com/royalefatale, opinions on the mix are welcome

[haploid]

For a very poppy track, it's good. But, the snare and drums are very "dry", which doesn't really blend with the piano very well. I suggest bussing all of the drums tracks into one channel and then creating a room reverb effect (1-6 second reverb decay, 100% wet) to go behind and add a little air to the track. Overall, it's a very nice pop track and mix.

[ROYALEFATALE]

i went back and widened/verbed the hats because they were too up-front, so i should keep the current sounds and add that reverb channel behind the current drums? if so i'll give it a go, thanks brah!

[alexryb]

been writing some shitty songs in garageband and audacity. nothing special, but the link is in my sig.

[haploid]

Yes, add the reverb behind. That way, it acts as if you had each individual drum piece mic'ed and a room mic. Adds a whole new feeling of depth to the track. You'd be surprised at how much good a few room reverb channels can do to a track.

[haploid]

And a2b489, you're off to a good start. I can remember making stuff that sounded exactly like this when I was first getting into producing. Keep working at it!

[ROYALEFATALE]

outputted this dry/wet example quick, is this what you mean by adding air?

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/28/1840564//Verb.mp3

[haploid]

Sort of... That might be a bit overkill. Basically, what you want to do is solo the bus track and tweak the settings so it sounds as though you had a mic in the room and you were just listening. Do this carefully though, and keep enough "muddy" frequencies in there for it to sound natural. You certainly don't want your bass sounds reverbing, as it will muddy up your mix a lot, but low-mid is OK. Personally, I like for a drum track to feel "intimate", and therefore I put a short decay time around 1 second or smaller and set the "size" to a small-medium setting. This makes it feel like it was recorded in a small drum room, rather than a stadium like in the sample you showed me. Once you have all of this sounding the way you want, drop the volume of this channel down enough so that it mixes with the "dry" drum hits enough to sound sharp and punchy yet still natural. You could then bus these combined busses into one and compress for an even more "processed" feel, and with some careful EQing have a warm and full sounding drum track that matches the mood of the piano.

Now, of course, this is just a suggestion. Some tracks sound better with "dry" drums, while others tend to sound better if the drums are over-processed. Its simply a matter of letting the mood of the track come out.

[ROYALEFATALE]

so i aired out those drums a bit more, definitely gives them more life with that extra breath, the snares are just 606 hits from ADM so they're naturally dry, it definitely helped though, ps. i updated the file on soundcloud let me know if you can hear any difference.

[haploid]

Oh that's a lot better man, it has a much more poppy feel and the snare really cuts through the mix.

On a side note, check out my latest track that I'm working on. Sort of a club track, which I normally don't go for but I really like the way this is coming out.

HERE

[ROYALEFATALE]

DAMN^ first thing i noticed was the kick, sounds so nice, perfect heavy punch, no clicking or high frequency noise, the parts where the beat drops is sick, very nice work!

[noviss900]

Here's some stuff I've made in the past few months. If you're into Chromeo'ish electro-funk 80's funk/dance/pop vibe you might like it. The tracks are really meant to have vocals on them but I haven't recorded any yet. It's 31mb, 6 tracks. They're all only roughly mixed but should sound decent enough.

I played all guitars, synths, etc., etc.

http://www.deadlysounds.com/ryanjams.zip

[destructodisk]

fuck a database error, here are the two tracks i posted yesterday:

http://www.throwthisaway.org/1-15-10.wav

http://www.throwthisaway.org/1-27-10.wav

[alexryb]

hey, guys. here's a track i did a couple weeks ago. i will not say it's good, but i had fun making it. there are some things i would have done different, but i think i'd rather just move on after having found my mistakes

on the myspace (link below)

[ROYALEFATALE]

is it supposed to be offbeat?

[Double D]

i went back and widened/verbed the hats because they were too up-front, so i should keep the current sounds and add that reverb channel behind the current drums? if so i'll give it a go, thanks brah!

As a general rule you should always keep your reverbs on buses, set the mix to 100% and use the bus level to add reverb behind your original sounds. This allows you to a) share reverbs between tracks and not rape your CPU (Space Designer is terrible for this) gives you a better sense of how deep (forward/backward) tracks are placed in the mix than if you had individual plugins with individual mix settings on each tracks and c) allows you to add further EQ/processing to your reverb sound without affecting the original track.

[destructodisk]

super quick beat for ya'll 2 check (in managable mp3 size now, sry bout the .wavs before!)

feedback appreciated like whoa, I'm disappointed how dead this thread is

http://www.throwthisaway.org/2-26-10.mp3

[alexryb]

^ looking forward to hear that once i'm out of the computer lab and have some headphones on me.

i changed my "project" name, and a new song can be heard on myspace (link below). feedback is appreciated!

i'm going to learn how to use a turntable, i think

[ROYALEFATALE]

super quick beat for ya'll 2 check (in managable mp3 size now, sry bout the .wavs before!)

feedback appreciated like whoa, I'm disappointed how dead this thread is

http://www.throwthisaway.org/2-26-10.mp3

the beat sounds dope, that panning sound is very clicky/poppy/dirty though, first thing i noticed, unless you were going for that low-fi sound, nice work either way!

[jake/]

http://soundcloud.com/you/tracks

track i was working on a few weeks ago, may elaborate on it a bit when school lets up. Feedback apreciated

btw haploid did you end up buying new monitors? Im still trying to decide whether I should just go with krks or not.

[kaws&effect]

Anyone in the market for an MPC500?

Bought it new and only used it a few times...just don't have the time.

Id be looking for about $400 shipped, pretty much new...lemme know.

[haploid]

What do you guys think I should get: iZotope Alloy Mixing Suite or save up for a UAD-2 Solo/Laptop? I've been using Live's stock processors and EQs and I'm not very satisfied.

[ROYALEFATALE]

i have a bunch of iZotope stuff including Alloy, Ozone, Rx, they're all pretty top notch for software

[haploid]

I bought a bunch of shit off of Sweetwater today... Damn, that's some good customer service. Received an email from someone who will be my sales associate stating that I can ask any question about a piece of gear or shipping or anything. It wasn't an automated email, either.

Dunno, just a little piece of information that I thought was pretty good.

[LiberationFrequency]

Sooooo... I made my first bit of music today.

Used Ableton and my new m-audio axiom 25.

It may suck, because i've listened to it so many times today it could just be familiar to me.

I took some old Julie London samples and warped/cut them up a considerable amount.

It's chilled out, I feel the bass in one section is quite heavy but that was in the sample so it was hard to get out.

Anyway, it has grown on me. Just wanted to see what you guys thought.

http://www.mediafire.com/?gztzyyyk2xd

[haploid]

For just beginning, I'd say fantastic job. Many beginners are unaware of the concept of clipping and therefore everything sounds horrendously distorted, but you've captured the laid-back groove really well and the mix is pretty good. I'd suggest maybe adding a bit of swing or "groove" to it though, it sounds a little stiff.

[destructodisk]

Keep it up LIberationFrequency, don't give up.

However, I'll say try not to rely too heavily on sampled loops for your foundation in digital music making. Create your own melodies and soundscapes, it's much more rewarding and fun.