>/prod/ general - I don't have the OP edition
post what you're working on, post WIPs, post resources, ask for advice, give advice, etc. no soundcloud links - this thread isn't for self promotion, it's for self improvement. clyp.it is preferred, you know the deal.
clyp.it
here's a loop I made just now, trying to figure out how to flesh it out into a full track.
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I made this song today with a CS-80 emulator and my CZ-101. It's very raw and in progress, yeah I know I need to do like, more than one vocal take and I need to play the keys better.. also the lyrics in the second part will probably be changed also I'll probably add more jammy shit to the end
clyp.it
plz let me know if you have any feedback that might help me finish the song!
You have a good voice, user. Also I feel like you should definitely vary the chord progression a bit, the structure of the song as is doesn't do much to hold my attention.
Any1 recording guitars/bass/drums?
Friend recently copped a TEAC eight track and you better believe I'm keen for some analog recording senpai
Hey, what's a really good soft synth for creating pad sounds with rich textures for ambient pads?
Hey, i'm a little new to these threads but I was wondering if I could get some insight into mixing tracks through something like Ableton.
I always 'smash' everything and just have no idea how to mix things as I go. Limiters on the master, bass never comes out crisp, etc. I have a bunch of tracks I want to release, but i'm worried it's passed the point of no return to clean up.
Does anyone have some basic tips (eg. should I start recording at a low volume and bring everything up in mastering stage?)
Here is a track of mine for reference:
massive
fuck massive
Is it possible to download free VSTs for macs because it seems impossible.
I really like u-he's diva, though I've started using samples to make a lot of my pads whether it's through timestretching, reprocessing sounds from libraries, or granular synthesis. If you're new to the game serum isn't bad either, it has a very easy learning curve and I'd recommend it over something like massive for beginners.
It definitely sounds like you're going really heavy on the compression, especially with the bass. Always remember to chisel out your sounds with EQ. This will go a long way towards making your tracks sound less muddy, then you can compress stuff. Sweep frequencies for unpleasant stuff, cut it out, and use filters to cut out what each sound "isn't good at." You'd be surprised how much unnecessary sound your patches are making, carve that out and you'll have more room for other stuff. It'll also help with listener fatigue, which your bass hits were seriously giving me. Always remember that you're dealing with a bandwidth issue when you're mixing, whether it's loudness, frequency content, or stereo imaging, it's about arranging elements so they don't occupy the same space and they all have room to do their job. Start there and your tracks will be a lot cleaner sounding. Also with that track in particular I feel like it desperately needs some high frequency content, it's suffocating as is. I throw field recordings with a high pass filter in a lot of my tracks to alleviate that and give a sense of presence; our brain associates high frequencies with airyness or space.
what do you mean? pirate shit? it's the same as on windows. there aren't as many freeware VSTs on mac if that's what you're asking.
Audio Damage have some nice ones for free such as the RoughRider (sweet stereo compressor). Otherwise, pick up a copy of Computer Music, i just got one and it includes like 100 VST (soft synths, effects etc) as well as some samples.
Where do you reccomend I pirate VSTs?
Thanks I'll look into it. So far I've only been using my own analog samples and it's getting a little tedious.
When you're mixing, if something sounds unclear or you want to bring it up, try taking down the volume of other / competing channels instead, that way you don't get the constant red zone level indicator.
IMO the limiter should only be included in the mastering process, or maybe if you have some super weird transients (happens to me with chopped drums sometimes).
Second person you responded to here - thanks for all that, I absolutely agree with what you said about the track too. I feel claustrophobic listening back to it but was totally stuck on what to change, remove or add.
I'll keep in mind about EQing which I am probably being a bit lazy with - would you also recommend turning the master volume down a few db's before starting a new track (as mine is obviously too loud in every aspect)? Or is that not really an important step compared to simply EQing everything well with each other?
NI Absynth is gewd for pads
why?
>I really like u-he's diva, though[...]
Gonna check that one out thanks
I'm not new actually.
I'm just trying to find some new synths to use to get some fresh workflow going.
And I don't have a synth that I find very suitable for pads, so I use similar techniques like you mostly, like resampling, paulstretch is great too.
I should really do more granular things, I don't think fl comes with a granular synth, I know ableton does but I only use FL anymore. What would you recommend for granular synthesis?
Thanks for that - I never thought to do this, it makes a lot of sense. Should I basically avoid a limiter except for those sudden loud peaks / transients I want to bring down?
Yes, in general you want as much dynamics as possible, with some exceptions (making a club track you want to compress it a bit so it's easier to mix with other compressed songs for example)
This setup is really weird 2bh. Like it's conflicting between hardware and pc computer pro.
anyone know any good free music creating programs? i wanna make a music box-y track for a lil pet project
if you go on novation music's youtube they have a video series called "finish something", if you can look past the product placement its mainly about how to turn a loop into an entire track easily
Is ableton live and push 2 worth the 1400$ for it? I wanna get into making electronic music and that seems like the place to start but I wanna know if you guys produce with more affordable hardware/software?
I use proaudiotorrents and what.cd to get most of my VSTs, those are both private trackers though. You can get a membership to proaudiotorrents if you donate, I believe. Thepiratebay is also ok even if it's probably a honeypot lmao. If it's something brand new sometimes audioz will get it first but you need usenet or a lot of patience to dl from there. My preferred scene group is R2R, literally never had an issue with any of their releases.
No worries man, the track is actually really cool, just needs a bit of work. As for your question it really depends, honestly when I'm composing I throw a limiter on the master too and basically ignore it until everything's done, then I delete it and start mixing. I set general levels as I go along and if things start sounding too muddy beforehand I know I'm probably piling too many bits in one frequency range and I get a little more selective with what I'm doing. As far as my mixing workflow goes, usually my starting point is I treat my sounds individually to get a clean signal out of each of them, this clears up a lot of headroom right off the bat, then I start thinking about what bits and pieces I want to emphasize, subdue, or blend together. I'll also solo tracks that are in similar ranges and carve out homes for them so they don't fight. Also, you should look into parallel compression. Long as you don't overdo it it can really help you make a track more vibrant. Also the other user gave good advice, another ridiculously simple but effective thing I've learned is to keep your volume low when mixing.
Even then, my recommendation still stands. Serum is one of my go-tos when I know exactly what I want and I want it fast. It doesn't sound the best but the interface is stupid simple. Unfortunately most of the granular synthesizers I use are max for live devices but omnisphere has a granular synthesis function built in; it's prolly the best softsynth on the market imo but it's like 50gb.
Don't drop 1400 up front on a hobby you don't know if you'll stick with. If you have a computer you already have everything you need. NEVER buy gear till you know you need it, unless you're a pro or enthusiast with disposable income. Pirate Ableton or FL Studio, a softsynth, and some free drum kits, load up some Youtube tutorials, and you're ready to begin.
FL Studio has a very easy initial learning curve, but many people hit a plateau with it quickly because the GUI can get convoluted when you're trying to pull off more advanced stuff. Ableton is known for having a harder learning curve, but I find it much easier to get more complex things done in it. Both are great at the end of the day.
As for a starter softsynth, like I said earlier I'd recommend Serum or Sylenth1, both of them have very friendly interfaces and there's a huge amount of resources for learning both, as well as endless presets to download. They might not be as powerful or sound as good as other synths out there, but their ease of use and the sheer amount of learning resources available for them makes them perfect for someone just starting out. I'd also recommend learning your DAWs built in effects before downloading other effect VSTs.
If you absolutely NEED a controller, buy a cheap MIDI keyboard to start off with, or an Akai APC Mini if you're using Ableton. I own Push and while it's great for starting tracks or getting ideas out fast, I'd never consider it essential to my setup. I use an Akai LPK25 more than any other piece of gear I own. It cost me maybe 50 bucks on sale and that's compared to the hundreds I've dumped into gear and software.
not at all, walk into almost any professional studio and you'll see hardware interfaced to a computer as the "brain." best of both worlds. the flexibility of digital with the sound and tactility of analogue.
Second person again - this has been really helpful, so thank you for taking the time.
Few things there that I hadn't heard of before, like soloing out the similar ranges. It was honestly giving me a headache wondering how to approach mixing this stuff, but I think that is perfect what you and the other user pointed out. Will give it a shot.
where can I find a good drum samples for making trap music? can't find any torrents. maybe im just a dumdum
just google the lex luger drum kit, it's the one literally everyone uses and it's easy as fuck to find
How do I actually get the confidence and charisma to approach bands and artists, and ask to record them / produce their stuff?
I have no idea where to start, and have terrible anxiety issues which obviously doesn't help. Plus 90% of the music in my city is totally banal and just further demotivates me for wanting a career in this.
Can't listen to anything here so just bumping
clyp.it
did some stuff
Just finished this
soundcloud.com
I'm not great at mixing but pretty happy with how this came out overall
Ariana
Will return feedback on this
Not OP but thanks for this, checking it out
wondering if anybody has any input on a dr40 vs an h4n?
clyp.it
can someone with some monitors let me know how the mix/master sounds?
any clipping or clashing?
i'm working with earbuds
Can someone tell me what this is? I mean, how to replicate it? (I want the 'human sounding' thing)
that "uhhh" cut?
that's just a sample
i'm not sure what else you could mean by "human sounding"
Just a sample? Is it not some kind of formant filter or something like that?
I want my drum snare to have that 'uh' added to it
it really sounds like just a sample to me
i could be wrong
Did anyone fall for the Virus TI meme? Is it worth investing in or is it just a meme?
There's nothing really to clash and no clipping. Sounds all right.
Just sounds like an "uh" taken from the end of a vocal take for probably a different song. No formant filter, just pitched down.
Thinking the same thing. Its overpriced for what it is and I don't think it's as special as it was a few years ago but still holds up. Their price holds well over time
Hey guys, I'm thinking about sending this to my crush. I worked really hard on it.Do you think you could give some constructive feedback?
please stop doing whatever it is you think you are doing
the vocals and the key to the piano works really really well, and the waviness sounds great
magical
working on instrumental loops, feedback would be appreciated
>ambient
clyp.it
Imo they are outdated. Plugins are so great that idk why people buy hardware va.
hater
>magical
thanks senpai
np bb, im sure lauren will love it xoxoxo
This is lit. The vocals really go off, senpai. Lauren will be ur bae in no time.
>I worked really hard on it
yeah, it must have been really hard to blather into your laptop microphone and layer it 5 times
Can anyone recommend VST's for chamber pop/baroque pop? I don't particularly want a super refined orchestral sound. I'm looking for an Illinois by Sufjan, Have you in My wilderness by Julia Holter, ITAOTS, Andrew Bird-type-of-sound. Thoughts?
>Thoughts?
That they used actual instruments you fucking pansy
I only play guitar and piano. I can't afford, nor have the time to learn to play 10 more instruments
Im one of those pricks that prefer twisting knobs rather than clicking a mouse, I keep all the production on hardware up until the final mixdown
Missing out on some of the cool shit from Massive and Serum though
Look into sample libraries and learn how to process your sounds to make them sound a little more natural. Omnisphere and Kontakt are a good start.
Thank you. I'll have to find tutorials to learn how to process them.Stock libraries by Kontakt? Or any specific ones besides Omnisphere?
Guys, how do I automate a drum beat to be in-sync with a sample? A bit of a beginner here.
I'm slowing down a track, and I want to get my drum rhythm to go with it, as vague as that sounds.
I'm on Ableton.
Is there some way to have a "general purpose" MIDI knob, so that when I select ANY parameter, I can adjust the value by turning that knob?
Haven't been in /prod/ for quite a while, have you guys seen the lunga copy on sale on discogs?
It's 100 bucks tho, any richfags willing to take one for the team?
lol fucking limiter on the master what a fuking nub
Another curious user here.Someone answer this, plz
Here there a better laptop for prod than a quadcore macbook atm?
I really like the battery autonomy and the processor but I only have 512gig of memory so large library doesn't fit and I have to make some choice...
rate & feedback pls
i kinda make hiphop inspired, percussion heavy, electronic music if i had to describe my style
10/10, would impregnate and pay allimony to
warp the sample so the transients fall with the grid
google "one knob max" if using ableton, it exists
also, ableton automaps shit to cc 1-8 in channel 1, so by selecting a device you can automatically control the 8 more usable parameters
Anything like that for Reaper?
I didn't write this piece but I recorded it :3
>Reaper
0 clue, the good thing about ableton is that it comes with max, if reaper has an equivallent then google "(max equivallent) one knob"
>warp the sample
Okay.
>so the transients fall with the grid
Sorry, I'm lost. I know what you're talking about, but not quite...can you explain?
can you provide any insight on this ?
Basically the same thing. The DR-40 is slightly cheaper. In terms of hardware capability they're basically identical. the H4N has more internal mixing options (all kinds of effects and shit you can put on stuff) while the Tascam has just simple levels, panning, reverb, delay, etc. I've used both at different times and watched some comparison videos and decided on the Tascam. I basically use it just as a tape machine to record the audio (I now use external mics and preamps) but it's still very handy to have as point-and-record option.
So yeah, just grab whichever one you can get the best deal on.
This is really cool.
The vocal needs to cut through a little more overall but especially at the drop at 1:00.
I would recommend sticking something like an elysia alpha master on bontempism on the vocal, then when the drop kicks in have a lower octave double of the acapella doubling the vocal (something like soundtoys little alter boy does this well).
Also The big synth that comes up, stick a wavesfactory track spacer on it and sidechain that to your lead vocal and dial that up a bit until the synth leaves a little space for the vocal to cut through.
Good work man.
bump
clyp.it
should i be concerned that the kick sounds like it's clipping on my shitty laptop speakers (it's not clipping in my ear buds)
Honestly I don't have many recommendations for organic sounding sample libraries, most of the ones I have are recordings of old synth hardware. For what you wanna do you're definitely gonna need to find some external libraries. IIRC my copy of Kontakt didn't even come with stock sounds. Omnisphere, especially the trillian expansion, has a lot of good sounds built in and it's really easy to modify and create new sounds or load your own samples. I also recommend looking up sample packs sourced from public domain film. There are lots of free ones with the types of sounds you're probably looking for, vintage movie score sounding shit that'll mesh well with the aesthetic you're going for.
You need to warp the track. There are lots of guides online and it's pretty easy. Usually as simple as adding a marker on the downbeat, clicking make 1.1 or w/e and selecting warp from here. If you know the EXACT bpm you could also set that and line it to the grid manually, then set the sample to repitch and lower the tempo. If you warp the other way I recommend flattening after warping with complex, that way when you set things to repitch you won't get awkward pitch bends when it morphs the track. To explain what warping does imagine your BPM as a grid that all elements of the track work within. Right now, your transients aren't lining up with this grid; transients are essentially where a sound "hits." Warping morphs audio to align those hits to your grid, syncing things up and keeping stuff in time.
Only real benefit of producing on OSX is unified audio drivers, slightly reduced latency, and occasionally improved stability provided you're using plugins that update frequently to keep up with Apple's updates. I've basically stopped using my Mac to produce because Apple's updates always end up breaking plugins, Yosemite broke a ton of my favorite plugins because its rendering code was updated so I decided not to bother and to go back to Windows.
look at the wave drawing, it has like "spikes" (the taller parts), warp that spikes in place with the grid, in most cases thats enough
is it clashing with the sub?
this example is kind of shit cause it has a lot of spikes, and you would actually need to warp them all, but i guess you get the point, the tall part on the grid or as near as possible
*tall partS
>you would actually need to warp them all
Not true, actually. If you do things properly things will usually line up on their own, give or take some discrepancies if it's an older non-electronic track with slight tempo variation. When I'm warping a track I usually only have to place makers every few phrases. If you can avoid it, you don't want to use too many warp markers anyways. Not only is it more work, this can make things sound unnatural and can sometimes make it harder to keep timestretching artefacts in check.
great to know, i thought it was way dumber
How do I make my lead track (second guitar track that comes in) really have a large sound when it drops in? I want it to really ring with a large presence that doesn't cover the rhythm track.
Boom bappy type hip-hop beat I've been messing with. Sample based, pretty simple in general, probably gonna add more to it later, just an early concept really
feedback would be cool, just getting into production more seriously lately
It's fine. Even if it was clipping ever so slightly, nobody really cares in the commercial world. Most of today's music peaks wayyy over 0dB
i have i heard this before but i didn't really believe it
every pop song i've ever analyzed hits -.3
could you give me an example of one that goes over?
and how do they do that without everything getting distorted?
i'm really curious desu
thanks!! this is really helpful!
dunno what to call it or what sort of genre to call it so i called it hmm thing
guess you could call it techno
been producing for a few months now, whatcha think I can improve? whats good what bad?
Hope your speakers can handle sub bass
The song itself isn't bad, but the drums just sound a little too stock for my liking. Also the lead that starts around 30 sec doesn't really match the bass too well, but the other leads that come in make it sound alright I guess.
Main thing I would say to work on is EQing
oh and making your drums not so quantized
it's building up too slow in my opinion
I like the part that's playing at the very end (around 6 minutes) but it was rather boring in the beginning
I feel like this part that I like should be in the middle and not the end of the track and be played most of the time of the track as main melody/riff/whatev
also add some more high end percussion
The trouble is with inter-sample peaks happening at the D/A conversion stage - this is what drives levels over 0db - look at this RHCP waveform
>inter-sample peaks happening at the D/A conversion stage
Image related is what happens at the reconstruction stage to create levels exceeding 0db