Lets talk modern home-based production!

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Can't beleive I didn't see this thread before now!

Nice synth patches . I really like the bass with the sweepy filters.

Synth programming is a hobby of mine too, what synths do use? I have a lord lead 2x, a roland sh-32 (really fun and great sounding VA, yet not vary widely known (which is good because they can be picked up for ~ $250)).

So far all my recording and sequencing has been done in Adobe Audition, but I'm looking into getting a DAW (probably Ableton, because it's so fun).

Thanks!

For the competition piece, I made patches including drums with an utter POS monophonic soft-synth called Rogue.
http://www.noslogan.com/VST/Rogue/Rogue.html
However, I have to grudgingly respect it's built-in distortion, as it's what allowed the 'guitar solo' section(as I call it) near the end of the track. It wasn't easy, but it yielded some solid Automation Pr0n to appreciate!
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b153/ ... onpr0n.jpg

For dance music, it seems Ableton's the go-to DAW... You'll find the most peers within dance styles on Live.
Personally, I hate it, hehe. But I'm very particular about having full modular flexibility, etc. In the end, they're all about the same, quality/capacity-wise. Just slightly different flavor. None shine brightly above the others, unless it was just released. Even then, not so much.
I hear Auditions not bad though... You don't like it?

I generally use RGC z3ta+ for all synthesis - I believe that if you know your synth well enough, and your synth has the right oscillators, filters, envelopes, etc, there's no need for various synths. I don't use hardware synths; I like being able to keep it all 'in the box,' as I often get funky with my signal routing & processing.

That said, sometime soon I'm due to inherit a Roland Juno106 from my old man.... I'm pretty eager to experiment with that, and definitively settle for myself if the "analog is better" meme holds any water. So far, I don't think it does. Psychosomatic + preset-reliance + unfavorable signal processing, IMO. But soon I'll have a chance to prove myself wrong.

So what kind of music are you into? What has your experience with music production been like so far? I look forward to hearing your stuff!

Yep, that's what I thought, but I wanted to make sure. Just never heard it referred to as such. That's the sort I was meaning to talk about before. I'd read up on some techniques people use.... Like rendering out a long supersaw note, loading it into a sampler like Kontakt, and then processing it from there with different busses for low, mid, and high frequencies, independent processing for each. Pretty damn involved, from that description. I gave it a go a long while back, before I got good with synthesis, but haven't tried it since. If you got any specific thoughts on it, I'd love to hear em. Or if you know a good resource on the topic?

Seems like you're pretty down with the old school D&B. I think I'm with you on that... I actually really miss proper jungle, with those annoying Jamaican MC's that I love so much.
When I got into the rave scene around 2000, all that stuff was just dying out. If any of that gets made anymore, I sure aint seeing it... Jesus, seems everythings dubstep now, at least in Seattle. Everything else has utterly disappeared, unless its dubstep or electro-house(now morphing into fidgit-house??). /facepalm

Hey dude,

What I meant was something like this, if there were an "Electronica" radio station, I could see this being played on it. If I was in the mood to listen to something cutting edge/blow-ur-mind/just plain hard, that track would not be it. Not anything negative, just a classification.

Just found the thread! Good stuff!

What I find interesting is that there are several knowledgeable computer musicians here at all stages of the game. I started life more as a classically trained pianist/clarinetist with a strong interest in composition, which over time extended to making music with computers, which is what my master's degree concentration was in--electronic music, not necessarily strictly "computer" music.

So my home studio has evolved. I started out with Gigastudio 2.5 and basically whatever else I could get my hands on for free, and a few keyboards from Ebay. I used PowerTracks Pro for my sequencer, but mostly worked out of Finale (music notation). Back then the idea was to write out the score, and Giga helped realize (at least sound-wise) my compositions. MUCH better than GM alone, because I could sample whatever sound I wanted and trigger that by writing it in the score.

About a year and a half later that approach simply wasn't cutting it. Laptops bought off Ebay were already damaged bad enough, so my abuse didn't help things. That's when I switched to Macs, which were all I used in the studio and in the MIDI lab back in college (out of necessity--I really didn't WANT to). I picked up MasterTracks for my sequencer, still used Finale, of course, and honestly gave GarageBand a fair chance. It didn't take long for me to become dissatisfied, so I went to Logic Pro (7). It wasn't long after that the upgrades came out (Logic , and for, I guess, two years, I kept up ok. I'm on Logic 9, use Mainstage 2 live, and have come to the realization that software really doesn't do it for me anymore (isn't that ironic?).

Here's where I am now: Using Logic/Mainstage with an Apogee Duet interface--EXTREME high end sound without putting thousands $s into a Rosetta system. I still use a Roland Alpha Juno 1 for analog sounds. I have a collection of Yamaha DX/TX synths: DX7IIFD, TX7 (1st generation FM synth), and some others that I don't really use. I just recently bought an Akai S2000 sampler with 32 MB memory, which is GREAT for old samplers (32 MB is considered fully loaded on that model). As of this post, I have an old (1997) Power Mac on the way to use for Akai programming. I'm also hoping to have a Synclavier within a month (just gotta get shipping and shipping costs worked out). I expect the Synclavier will become my composition station, but I'll also be sampling it to the Akai so I'll have a "virtual" Synclav to take to gigs.

Right now my focus is more on sound design rather than composing or recording. I've got plans to actually record an album, and I want to be the programmer for all synths (hardware and software) on it. COMPLETE creative control! So far it's a lot of fun, but it's a lot of work.

Also read some posts regarding Alchemy, so if you have that I'm jealous! I use Cameleon 5000 sometimes, but I actually enjoy using Absynth more! It's the perfect additive/subtractive/wavetable synth for anyone just getting their feet wet in sound design. I also use most of the synths in Reason, so if you're used to subtractive synthesis, Reason is a great way to go. The Thor softsynth has numerous novel ways of generating sound, and it has become the one softsynth I spend most of my time with.

Here's where I display my ignorance and take myself rather quickly off the 'old pros' list

I've watched a lot of the Masterclass instructional videos on Youtube - Lomax said something about the stability you get when you bump something from software synth to audio (ie. wav sample). What I'm trying to figure out, aside from working space and RAM usage on the computer, are there any other major benefits?

Right now I'm in sore shape - I think I may have said it before; my hard drive crashed, I installed Windows 7 - bad decision. Yes, I have the new version of Pro Tools, I have Reason 4 which works just fine. The downside - my three other synth/sampler utilities - Massive, Absynth 4, VI ONE (haven't tried the last but was SOL on Massive and Absynth 4, could almost guarantee the third) - none of these will install on my computer correctly, so being that it'd be only Reason 4.0 and Pro Tools until Native Instruments pulls their thumb out of ______ and comes up with a patch for these programs, I'm at a loss on why to bother with ProTools, yes, I know its what the pros are supposed to use, though admittedly I have a bit of a phobia when it comes to committing things to wav, IMO its like putting myself in a straight-jacket, can't tweak things as I go and decide the formula as the track comes together, have to do and redo a lot of things as I go in a rather annoying fashion.

So to finally get to the question, I started a new track in Reason 4 tonight, was kinda Alix Perez'ing it in the sense of adding loads of percussion, and as I did this I started getting a side-chaining type of effect with a rim-shot I added, as in everytime the rim-shot hit, the rest of the drums, synths, etc. fizzled out. I would have in the past, perhaps in ignorance, put that down to 'destructive interference' but I can't make that effect go away without pitching the sound altogether. I understand fully that what makes the pros just that - pros - is still being able to bring things together and have these kinds of challenges figured out with enough experience so as it doesn't take the wind out of their creative processes.

So my likely very stupid question: does bumping my sounds to audio and putting it on separate channels help in terms of better dealing with things like destructive interference? I've always had the sense that when looking at the sound plane there's an up and down (frequency), a left and right (panning) and a backward and forward (ie. volume) and that no two sounds can hold the same space without essentially attacking each other, I thought this but at the same time admittedly I don't know what effect having different audio tracks has or, if it has any effect at all.

Any thoughts?

...lol seriously!
And rather than thinking of myself as an old pro, I'll count myself a cocky punk... now humbled.

@AngelRho - You definitely talk a mean talk! So link up some of your work!!
I'd love to hear some. And tell us more about what else you're dealing with right now, I'm super curious bout what your work is all about. What kind of gigs are you going to?

...AND, you seem like a pretty big proponent of the analog sound, from your gear list.
Now, that's something I've never really bought into. Convince me that these hardware synths are worthwhile!
What do you like about it? Can you potentially illustrate what it is you're hearing? Cuz I don't think I've properly been shown 'that analog sound.' Most the time, it seems like the people arguing for it are imagining the supposed better quality. Most the time, the guys I hear giving the pro-analog argument don't seem like experienced electronic musicians, guys who seemingly don't know nor care about the technical details involved, and who just don't know how to properly program their soft-synths, who stick with preset tweaking.
But that's just my experience. You strike me as someone who might prove me otherwise easily.


Can't say I know the whole answer there. But something I've run into: On my last project, where I used a very sketchy softsynth, the settings f*****g CHANGED on me between saves. I DIDN'T DO THAT. So now when I hit play on my project, the main lead sounds lame and stupid compared to the line I bounced out after final mixdown. Don't know exactly what's been changed, nor do I know why or how that happened.... But it's not the first time I've seen it happen, either.

Another potential reason @ this link -
http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/show ... f4f814b73b
Deadmau5 explains one of his techniques for widening bass and dealing with phasing via emulating unison manually with multiple bounces + a little tweaking.

Hey, can you toss me the link to that Lomax interview???
Back when I first started dabbling with music software some 8 years ago, I tinkered with a tracker called Buzz, and went on it's IRC channel a bit, where Lomax hung around. Helped answer some newbie questions for me. My jaw dropped when I saw that he was signed and still going... Really cool...

That's EXACTLY how I feel!
...That said, I gotta admit that once you switch out of midi and into .wav, it potentially opens up a new dimension of sound alteration... I'm trying to remember & force myself to do it more.

Huh? You talking about frequency masking? Or does it sound like it's clipping? Or I guess it could be cancellation, but that wouldn't make sense if it's killing just about everything else...?
...Speaking of pitching, have you tried altering the pitch of the sample? If it even sounds okay....

To a limited extend, this could partly depend on the DAW... Cubase, for instance, is touted as having full bit-accuracy/transparency. I don't know how it compares with, say, Reason... Hell, I don't know if it matters at all, much of these concepts are just concepts, since much of the changes in the signal I simply can't perceive without pretending. Like the difference between 24 bit & 16 bit, for instance. I can't reliably hear the difference. And I doubt I'd be able to hear differences in bit accuracy either.

Assuming accuracy, or at least assuming it's not an audible issue, I doubt that having different channels would make a lick of difference if they're routed & processed the same. Same time & amplitude value, in theory...
However, there's also the possibility of a VST rendering the signal differently from bounce to bounce, as alluded to earlier. Phasing might behave one bounce, and then not so much the next bounce.

If two channels were somehow taken slightly out of phase with each other, that'd mess it up... but I don't know how that'd happen except by manually pulling the second recording channel out of time.

Or, something I've experienced: multiple similar oscillators coming out of a single synth might not be phasing quite right for some mysterious reason, so I've doubled up the instrument to get different phasing results. Not sure how to explain that away.

All that said, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by destructive interference... You mean shred-style signal distortion? Masking? Cancellation? Comb filtering(which is something I don't particularly understand yet)?

But one thought regarding your mental image of sound positioning... I's not a bad model, except that it seems to leave the possibility of having the same frequency at the same panning at different volumes. Obviously that wouldn't work out.
But that's a silly nitpick, really.

That's part of why I'm not a fan of trying to sync hardware - MIDI is *terrible* for odd/unexplainable glitches and such.



I'll definitely take a look. DNBA has some good stuff, Raiden (Offkey) has some very good advice in a thread as well but the forum's been shut down and under construction for over a year now


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgN8SxpXkGQ

A couple favorites of mine out of him are Mercia and Federation, that low end sliding squarewave reese like he does on Warrior (w. Kasra) has to be one of my favorite sounds lately when it comes to this sort of thing.

Also, look up Alix Perez's Masterclass, you'd likely get a kick out of the bucket of tricks he has in his room that he mics, records, pretty much makes his own percussion samples.


Yeah, it would help if we knew what the rules were - ie. what doors it opens as well as what less obvious doors it may close.

Even though I'm not an absolute sickbass junky (at least anymore) I still, if I'm going to use it, want to get the real twisted and glidy stuff - kinda like in Grooverider - Where's Jack the Ripper where its got life to it. The hardest thing about sickbass is keeping it breathing, it takes a hell of a lot of work to getting it to sound that raw (naturally without crap distortion) and once its there it seems like fiddling the filters does nothing good to it, it has to be some type of oscillator manipulation via LFO followed by a controlled phaser or something like that but even there I don't know how much luck there is to be had, it really is like trying to learn a martial art!


I don't know what technical terminology fits it. I know that most of the pros avoid distortion (except for when guys like Calyx and Teebee output their basslines through a lot of offboard distortion and bring it back in), distortion almost always seems to distort more than just the instrument that its on, especially if there's any other instrument with it - which is why I try to keep it low or subtle.

On the other hand what I was dealing with last night, the whole track would dip out, synth, drums, bass, etc. and the sound that was making it dip out - the rim shot, almost dropped itself out as well. It was one of those high lingering/resonant shots and I would have thought, being on that end, that it would have just nessled itself quietly behind or among other sounds - nope, I might as well have just put the whole tune through a compressor, hooked that drum set up to the side chain, and set the sensitivity up high enough to burn out and mute everytime I hit a button.

Understanding things like that and how audio behaves differently would help. I won't deny the possibility that RAM could have had something to do with it, though usually Reason will stop the tune and tell me if memory is a problem - in that respect that possibility is highly unlikely.


I guess that's the beauty of it - to have the technical skills to make use of that difference would be great, sounds like the better the mapping though the better the luck you'll tend to have with the sounds sitting right.


Yeah, I would figure that if its all coming out of the same speakers it would lend the same problems - in general - unless a problem arises out of sheer hardware/software conflict.


I guess that's the upside of wav, you can keep the takes where random variables are in your favor and work with those.



Or MIDI. Another reason I'd avoid it like body builders avoid soy protein.


Yeah, its the same thing you say a bit later - different sounds in the same frequency, or even different sounds within the same synth. It seems like detuning a little is beneficial in most cases and, if you need it to be tight your better off just taking one oscillator and doing what you can to phatten it up with other tools/techniques.


Lol, all of the above, though I think most often when used in a technical sense its cancellation people are talking about.


Well, yes and no. Anytime you play a chord you have multiple levels of the same sound passing eachother at the same frequency level just at different intensities, if its two triangle waves at E1 at different volumes though yes, it might sound kind of crap. When you watch the Lomax & Xample video though you'll see that they do what a lot of producers do which is double their snares and things like that - technically you'd think that this would destroy the snare and all kinds of other things just from too much loaded in the same zone of frequency - you can though load these with different starting points (one's the main, the other just gives character with no punch) or you can simply turn two sounds down to where they really act as 50 percent on one, 50 percent on the other or whatever ratio you have in mind.

I'll answer that as best I can!

First of all, I'll do my best to link up some things, but for the moment I'm just trying to focus on the sound design aspect of music composition. I'm giving serious thought to doing some live mixing online for the closet "Euro-trash" in me, basically making my own kind of dance and chillout music and streaming that online. However, I also have the opportunity to write and arrange for church choir/praise band, so doing anything like that, and I mean REALLY do it is just going to have to be put on hold for a while. I've had so many requests from people who have heard me play solo to record an album that I've made up my mind to put one together. I think the easiest thing to do would be to do a Christmas album featuring clarinet/piano/EWI, two or three singers, and a mariachi band! I want to feature some originals as well as the time-tested secular and sacred Christmas songs. But what matters to me most right now is having all the right kinds of sounds, and I'm terribly perfectionist when it comes to that.

Yes, I'm a big proponent of the analog "sound." If you're wondering what to listen for and have trouble understanding what others are talking about, it's hard to explain. It's what most people refer to as the "fat" sound. It's a big sound. Listen to, say, a Moog Voyager, a Sequential Circuits Prophet V, Korg MS20, or similar synths and you'll get the idea. When you hear digital sources, you're listening to either sound generated by some mathematical formula (like FM in the DX7, physical modeling) or a digital representation of some source (sampling, wavetable). In the first case, mathematically-derived sounds tend to have that characteristically cold, metallic quality because upper harmonics or sideband frequencies are inherently limited by sample rate and bit depth. While samplers aren't typically quite that "cold" sounding, you can sometimes run into trouble with aliasing and other limitations that affect the sound, sometimes so much that the sound doesn't sound like it's source at all.

Yes, a lot of people do just go for the presets, but I think that's a waste of money. There's nothing wrong, in my opinion, of tweaking presets. For example if you're looking for that perfect pad sound for a mix, but the only thing that comes close is a bass patch you like, all you really have to do is change some Amp EG and maybe filter settings to get what you want. Presets with digital or softsynths run the risk of overuse, but taking the time to dig into them will help you figure out what makes them sound the way they do and allow you to be creative in a bigger way.

The other problem with digital synths is that the results are always predictable, so they tend to have this kind of clinical sound. In an analog synth, oscillators are not quite so stable and can vary with temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors. That results in some drift in tuning. It can be annoying, but it also gets you a kind of random phasing effect--again, getting that really BIG sound that analog synths are famous for.

If you're thinking about my gear list, nearly everything I have or am in the processing of getting are all digital synths. The one exception is my Roland Alpha Juno, which has analog oscillators that are digitally controlled, which is just a fancy way of saying that each cycle of the oscillator is triggered by a digital clock. The sound is still analog, but it's much more stable than a fully analog synth.

I'm not interested so much in the latest/greatest gear as I am having a variety of sound! And people who are critical of digital synths obviously overlook the fact that detuning them, along with some modulation tricks, can get some amazing analog-like results.

Right now I'm spending more time with the Akai S2000. My Power Mac just came in today and I'm running the MESA programmer. I'm only interested in two basic sounds right now: Plain waveforms, and the same waveforms detuned. When I get all the waves loaded that I want, I'll start working on some pads, leads, ensembles, etc. until I have a fairly full-featured synth comparable to the Korg Triton, etc. Now that I've settled into my sound-hacker groove, I'm getting some great results already. My sampler doesn't have the fancy FX board, so I plan on doing all I can with the samples alone before running it through Mainstage FX. I really can't wait to get this thing on the road.

Basically all I'm doing with that project is creating waveforms with Absynth, making very tiny recordings of those, set loops, dump 'em to the Akai where I do all the mapping and set envelopes and filters, etc. Since I'm working with a tiny set of samples, it's easy to create a large number of unique sounds. I treat it like an analog synth with an unlimited number of oscillator waveforms and just use the filters to hone the sounds into the timbre I want.

People who really on presets when it comes to subtractve synthesis are really taking a lot for granted. Those old analog synths are a great for anything ranging from monophonic leads to lush pads to brilliant ensembles and any sound effects you might need. I can't stress enough on how important it is to learn to use them because of how typically simple it is to manipulate sound. Not only that, but those kinds of sounds fill out a mix so well. While I swear by my DX7, I can't live without some kind of subtractive synth somewhere in my setup!

The thing I don't do, though, is sing the praises of subtractive synthesis only because it's trendy to do so! I think you're right about users who don't know their softsynths and hardsynths well enough to competently program them. The downside is that people who don't know what they're doing can too easily overuse analog sounds. There's a fine line between a "fat" sound and a "muddy" sound. Digital sound can be metallic and harsh, but it's also often clean and clear. As long as all your sounds are working well in the overall sound spectrum, digital vs. analog is really irrelevant. I like analog sound, but also like a lot of variety.

If you want to really dig into some of the more advanced programming with Thor (in Reason) you can check out my blog: http://angelrho.blogspot.com. My goal here is to mimic the architecture of the DX7 FM synth and recreate those sounds in Thor. The beauty of this project is that the failures and shortcomings are often more interesting than the successes! I'm thinking about taking the results of this project a step further and create some ReFills that I might make commercially available, along with my work in sampling--but one thing at a time! As I get some good sounds going, I'll try to record some demos to showcase what I've been doing. I'll also make some patches available online SOMEWHERE, likely the ones I used when writing the blog.







angelrho.blogspot.com