Lets talk modern home-based production!

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Hey dude,

I listened to your composition. Considering that you used one synth to do the whole thing, I say it is very, very nice. I also don't know what the context of the composition was, the only criticism I can provide is that it sounded a little too generic/mainstream, but that may have been what you were intending. Had kind of a BT feel, which I like his style.

Sound, great username! Perfect choice to go along with your hobby.
TXaspie, that avatar is bad as all hell!! No matter who created it, it's brilliant.

I've fidgeted around with FL Studio, made a few songs while attempting feebly to make techno. I like the resulting tunes, though.

I mostly use Audacity, simple and crappy but it does the trick I guess. I need to work on my tech setups, and I could use this thread for references. Lately the audio isn't coming in right.

Well, the synth constraint does go a long ways to limiting what I could do with it, creatively. Much of the more exotic sounding stuff results from manipulation of samples, or from more exotic FX, both of which were not available. The only thing I could do was MIDI patterns, and some synth automation for the contest.

But what do you mean by generic? (You have not offended me, btw, I'm just curious how you see it.)
Thanks! It definitely reflects my obsessions.... ><

Simple does not = crappy, so no worries mate.
What do you mean by tech setups?
Post up some tuneage sometime. And feel free to tell us a lil more about your own work.

In fact, to parody an earlier post in the thread with the addition of an intended pun...
"To borrow a word from the Brits," A sound username!



Tech setups meaning that I need to figure out a better way for input or get something better than my current methods. Someone on the 1st page mentioned issues with lack of x64bit drivers for his/her M-Audio. Same here, except the finally released them but there is no sound going through my own M-Audio interface. Also it is a nightmare trying to record guitars and bass with my laptop's built in mic, and no external plug and play mic will work neither.
And what I meant by "crappy" is that the sound quality of what I recorded (even running a cable directly from my guitar amp thru the M-Audio interface if it happens to work) isn't really that great. Really muddy and sounds cheap. But you can't really expect studio-quality sound from a free program, can you though?


Tuneage? I've got a few wacky things recorded while trying to get my s**t working. A wft type comedy/parody track, a couple covers I wasn't able to finish, and a few cool riffs/progressions/melodies down for later reference. Maybe later.

I will share a couple of the tracks I did in FL Studio. As I said before I know nothing about techno so this turned out nothing like that, but I like the melodies and I'll probably continue the project that way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E61hfVmtXw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6EhyZIG ... re=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBt2PyFQ ... re=channel (unfinished)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQIbzmPq ... re=channel
Oh, and as for that last track... no trademark infringement intended... just a goofy tune I made while trying out the software for the first time and trying to get the feel of it, the whole thing was basically just a bit of my cheesy style of humor, even if it gets into parody mode.

LOL fun stuff! Wish I could finish projects as easily as you seem to.

That was me who lacked the 64 bit M-Audio driver (I use a Firewire 410).

On the contrary - a cheap program may be able to record audio at about equally high fidelity to an expensive program... I suspect that the primary problem is this built-in mic you mentioned, and then your laptop's analog-to-digital converter. Not so much the program, I'm betting. But then again, you probably know your setup better than I.
So what's wrong with your interface right now?

Ok, so my long journey - came from playing guitar from fifth grade up through the end of highschool, falling in love with grimey/darker-style electronic back in my senior year of highschool (1997/98 ).

As far as my electronic productions - first was a Roland MC-505 Groovebox, sold that and got a Novation Nova (hoping for more - didn't get what I wanted out of it), sold that and got a Yamaha RM1x, got a lot better at making tunes with that, sold that and upgraded to a Yamaha RS7000 which is currently sitting in my closet collecting some dust.

For a long time, likely a combination of just having many things on my plate in life or having too much complexity interfere with my creative process - I've leaned quite heavy on Reason. I started playing with Reason in its 2.5 version a long time before 2005, almost all of my dnb tunes from 2005 to 2009 were almost wholly Reason 3.0 or the upgrade 4.0.

The sad part - I've had Protools since 2006 and, quite honestly, sat on it. I realized that I needed it for better EQing, better, filtering and effects, better compression, I also needed it to hook up the kinds of synthesizers to it that I wanted (I have Massive and Absynth 4 - love the sounds but yes, still have yet to use them much if any in a finished product). Over the past year or so I can say this; I've been able to resolve EQing problems by leaps and bounds. I was stuck with the problem of having tracks that would sound great on my computer speakers but would unravel in my car, sound different from both of those on another stereo - wildly different, way out of wack with professional quality. That problem seemed to resolve itself just by a few techniques (and of course listening to the pro's and realizing that they weren't even working the kind of magic that I seemed to think they were in this realm either). Thus I had too many fundamental problems in my production to address before I even thought about getting into anything beyond the intuitive plane with assembling my sounds and loops.

Also, proud to say that I'm getting to know my way around making my own sounds a bit more; still haven't gotten to the point of routing the Thor or perhaps Massive or Absynth to where people get dizzy looking at all the orange, yellow, and green lines or all the different cross-modulations listed in the lower panel but - to work that well I have to know what I'm getting out of it, still a work in progress.

My big goals for 2010 are as follows:

- Structure structure structure. I have great sounds, I have full confidence in my melodic tastes, will continue to take my melodies deeper and deeper. On the other hand though, my structure, my lack of breakdowns, my lack of one-time effects; almost pre-amateur. Its my most glaring weak point and I need to resolve it, otherwise the melodies and ideas I'm coming up with are almost going to waste. My best guess on a solution - having more sounds to work with will help but also I need to be sure, when I lets say start a song idea as an 8 bar loop, a 16 bar loop, and keep building sounds I like over them - I need to have at least 13 or 14 channels of that, if I have only 6 or 7 and think I'll be able to come up with great one time effects or noise builds that will make sense after the fact I know now that I'm quite sadly mistaken. I also have this challenge - I tend to focus so much on the melodic quality of what's being looped that I'm almost pleased too easily with my own minimalism, I need to think more dynamically from the start and not compromise with myself as I build the sound palate.

- Put Protools to use constantly, to the point of almost *never* using Reason outside of RTAS

- Incorporate Massive, Absynth and my latest and greatest that I also love the sounds of: the 22 Gigabyte VI ONE sample library (pain in the arse to install but beautiful and clean percussion, acoustic instruments, etc.)

- GET A SPECTRUM ANALYZER. A lot of production series videos are popping up all over Youtube - Lomax and Xample, Sabre, Alix Perex - ALL OF THEM use a spectrum analyzer. Not using it seems about as bright as trying to write modern programs in assembly code - I suppose I could if I want to but, I'd also be looking at hitting my peak skill level in my 50's (its already been horridly slow just because I'm a melodics person - not as much of an engineer or 'techy' sort).


I realize that I still have a lot of my own creative potential untapped here, and like for most people I'd imagine that process (getting to know yourself at that level and what you have within) is like excavating some ancient city - lots of silt and debris to remove, though through the process it becomes more clear, more crisp, more focused, almost as a given. The trick right now; deal with my technical short-comings, the rest will fall into place on its own.

And yeah, I suppose I'll blurt out some SSP:

recent:
5PRYME - Neural Chase
5PRYME - Atlantis Rising

older:
5PRYME - The White Rabbit
5PRYME - Dust (samples from the movie 'Pulse')
5PRYME - The Struggle

This is a topic I should probably attend to and learn, but finances and complexity of topic/technology put me off and have been keeping me at bay for decades.
Sound, you might get a laugh out of the setup for my first music experiments, since I'm on the older side. I think I was 12 when I was fooling with my aunt's "computer", the Timex Sinclair with tape drive circa 1982. (Yes, a cassette tape player that fed data into the computer.) Essentially I was programming little songs in Basic (the rudimentary computer language). The computer had a BEEP command with two parameters (BEEP(x,y) where x was pitch and y was duration). I got fancy using for/next loops, commanding the computer to BEEP at increasing pitch and short duration so it sounded like somebody playing scales. I recorded these goofy little songs in the open air with a boombox that had small mikes built into the speakers (great for adding hiss and picking up unwanted sounds from the house). I still have the demo tape with some of those songs on it but I think it's too far gone to preserve in another format.
I abandoned the Timex after that but then delved into making recordings on that boombox, chopping up radio broadcasts with the pause button in creative ways and adding percussive sounds by scraping forks and paper clips across the mikes. Eventually I got a dual cassette boombox and began making sound collages based around pause button techniques that I refined to a high degree, much like turntable scratching. I made hours and hours of this stuff, tapes I still love and listen to today, although I can't make any more because the boombox is busted and I can't find that 90's model anymore (Panasonic Platinum series) and every other boombox I've tried has the wrong kind of pause button action which leaves the unwanted 'snick' on the tape.
I call this stuff 'plasma' and play it for people. Four out of five listeners can't stand it, the fifth calls me a genius, which I think is a pretty good ratio.
I've played guitar since 1991, not great but proficient enough. Social and financial issues kept me from finding bandmates. I jammed with a few people but was slow to adjust to each new group dynamic, leading the others to believe I was not as good a musician as I actually am.
I would love to record my own music but again the money and tech issues daunt me. I'm certainly intelligent enough to learn the tech stuff under the right teacher but my Asperger's undermines me when it comes to motivating for complex multistage tasks (such as researching and obtaining a good starter kit). I have even been derailed by the complexity of simply burning those hours of plasma tapes to CD, using a mailorder 2-channel mixer to connect my boombox and PC. I managed to get two sides of a tape (60 min) turned into a WAV file, but I don't know if I did it right and I'm afraid to put it on CD at the wrong levels or whatever.

Niiiice... Thanks for responding Techstepgenr8tion - I was real keen to hear from someone like you who's been at it a long while.

A lot of people tend to jump straight away to getting expensive reference monitors because of that... But from my own experience, I tend to figure that without proper acoustics, it's all for naught, and you end up still having that same problem you described there. I've had excellent luck with using 90% headphones.... but the catch is they have to be really, really good headphones.
What did you start doing with your mixing that seemed to help?

I've been struggling with a similar dilemma. My biggest hurdle has definitely been structure. I make a loop fix it up till I'm really digging it, and it grooves, but then.... What do I do with it? I can't just let it loop forever... Not knowing how I want to structure my material, or know where I want to go with it, that's what stops me from finishing things 80% of the time. So it looks like we're similar, but perhaps slightly different in that regard!
I've been making slow, painstaking progress on the topic, though... Mostly by taking cues from songs I like. It feels a bit embarrassing to have to reference back to other songs for their structure, but if I didn't do that, who knows how long I'd be stuck with my loop, going nowhere. How have you been faring so far? Has anything in particular helped you on this topic?


Try s(m)exoscope, it's free and fairly well regarded. I started using it somewhat recently, and so far so good.
http://bram.smartelectronix.com/plugins.php?id=4

Personally, I'm more of the techy sort, moreso than the artistic sort.... I get slightly disheartened when I hear newbies making stuff that technically sounds amateur, but is utterly creative. I wish I could come up with off-the-wall stuff as easily as some seem to, or to intuitively know their creative direction with a project. On the other hand, I seem to pick up all the techy bits like screws to a magnet. I have no problem polishing up sounds and doing very technically involved sections and elements, and some crazy automation.
Heh, seems we're perhaps a bit opposite in that regard?

Hey, I'm curious, do you work more in audio or midi? Or does Reason pretty much require everything in midi?

Hah! dtoxic, that sounds awesome. I definitely got a kick out of that. Too bad that dang guitar sidetracked you away from continuing with computer music. hehe

Well, getting started is potentially complex... But on the other hand, it's also possible to get into it gradually. Particularly since you're a guitar player; Audio recording is one of the simpler aspects of a DAW. If you can just start out with recording a few audio tracks, that's a great starter.

And there's another HUGE boon to getting started - The modern internet; YouTube, Forums, blogs.... It's such a massive resource. If you're good at finding stuff on the net, (particularly message boards) then you'll be able to have any question answered soon after finding a problem. If it weren't for the net, I don't know where I'd be with music.

So, what do you think it'll take to get you to get started?

If I'm using the interface, nothing happens. Cables are connected, drivers are installed. Audio input settings are correct for the devices I'm using (M-Audio Mobile Pre) in both the Audacity menu and the soundcard menu at the tast tray. Yet in the past when I've finally managed to get the stuff to work, I was doing nothing different than I am now. Yet no signal is going through.

It's a shame, because right now is the perfect time to record. My upstairs neighbor has moved out and that apartment is vacant for the time being, so even if I could get at least an external mic to work my bass wouldn't be a problem. I'm really looking forward to using my Höfner.

I wanna redo that song "Fresh Start (Unfair Game) into a rock style, do something different with the piano melody and take the core of it and put it into a guitar riff. Mainly because I recently noticed just how much I like that bass line. It doesn't sound that much like it, but it's similar to the bass line in The Beatles' "Rain." Not that "Rain" is that big of deal and not that I'm trying to plagarize anything, but it's just that I really love melodic basslines. It could use just a few minor changes and it'll be great.

And I forgot to state earlier, but that song you uploaded for us, that "Alone," is brilliant!!

I did just that, maybe not quite 'jumped right in' but I bought a pair of Yamaha HS80M's and, much to my dismay, they actually caused more problems than helped.

What I've heard in the past and I've practiced it probably since 2005 (starting block); mono as many sounds as possible (that are there more for flavor than texture - this way the sounds that need stereo shine out more), also make sure your basslines are mono below 250Hz.

What I've learned more recently; high and lowpass cut your sounds. If you don't cut your pads into narrow strips, your other instruments, and zone them somewhat on their desired frequency range you'll have your track mudding down, especially with anything other than percussion or bass that's below 400-500Hz, while it doesn't need to be cut entirely you need to minimize it.

The other thing; be very wary of using EQ's too much, you'll get weird artifacts out of them, best to use high/low/bandpass/notch to edit and streamline your sounds and save the EQ for last resort.

As far as compression - I still don't use it much, don't think I've gotten the knack for having it make my drums sound better (lo luck there actually), that and limiting I try to avoid when possible unless I have a sound that has a lot of subphonics causing it to take up a lot more volume space, and even then I try groping with a filter to see if there's a frequency I need to cut, if it needs a compressor or limiter I'd choose a compressor on a low ratio (not much more than 2:1 or 3:1) and I don't think I've used a limiter to date; I hear they're something to avoid unless you like real boxy sounds.

That SUCKS!
So have you gone to M-Audio for help yet? Or checked message boards? If you're experiencing this problem, its highly likely someone else is, too... I'd have been dead in the water entirely, if I hadn't been emailing them.

And thanks for the kind words!

I hear a lot of experienced artists start composition with a rough idea of frequency placement, such that each has their own niche in the spectrum. That way, there's not much involved in the mix, since they intrinsically don't collide much. Seems an interesting paradigm, but I for one need to get better about my composition and structure before I can worry about that, hehe.
Mostly agreed - I've been lucky, in that I'm very good with synthesis and sound design, and end up altering the texture more from within the synth, instead of making drastic EQ cuts.
(I tend to use RGC z3ta+ for all my synthesis)

Limiters are no good for most things - I only ever see it get used on kick, bass, and the main output at final mixdown. Or for some kind of special effect, like what you mention. In Kick/bass, it I've never found it to audibly detriment the sound, so long as it's not pushed hard. But boy, the final stage limiting is still something I vacillate with quite a bit. I don't like squeezing it up to 'normal' loudness, for whatever reason, hehe.

I still feel like I'm learning, with compression.... The way some pros talk about it, like when they mention 'coloring,' I'm just left mystified. But at least for the sake of taming dynamics, it's straightforward.

Have you been synthesizing your own bass patches yet? The D&B bass reece seems to be a bit of an art, with all those different fx i hear sliding the frequencies around.

In every tune I will make my own bass patch, whether I make my own sounds or not is 50/50 - a few presets will just sound that good that they fit. When I do have my own self-made pads in a tune it'll be from a vantage point where I started the tune around that melody, the rest will be either preset or alternately preset that I liked the bass sound but changed certain settings, accentuated what I liked in it, etc.

Sickbass is still quite a challenge, some types are pretty easy to make, the types that usually blow my mind - a bit less so. Basic reece is easy enough, two saw, triangle, or sine waves 30 cents from center in opposite directions - brings you to about the right cycling speed. You can add more waveforms that that but you lose that tight cycling that made it so magical IMO to begin with (chorus or other effects like that are also a terrible thing to do to it).

Hehe, I found an excel file where someone put in a key and set of calculations that'd allow you to determine what detune cents you'd need to hit certain BPM's. I never ended up using it though...
Sickbass, never heard that used like a concrete term... Got an example?

An army. Its the general terminology for the distinctive dnb bass. It got the name mainly because the bassline itself twists and writhes like its dry-heaving.

A handful of different examples (all Youtube-able):
RAM Trilogy - No Reality
Grooverider - Where's Jack The Ripper?
Ed Rush, Optical & Fierce - Alien Girl
Optical - To Shape The Future VIP
Dillinja - Lightyears
Dj Krust - Soul In Motion
Bad Company - The Nine
Ganja Kru - Plague That Never Ends

Those are all from the 1997-98 era, its the same for 2009 as well:

Icicle - Spartan
Proxima - Layers
Lomax - Federation
Survival - The Beginning
Subwave - Think


You get the idea though - examples of this are *legion*, almost all dnb with the exception of the really atmospheric or strictly jazz has some form of it.