GIVE feedback and RECEIVE feedback. Upload WIPs on clyp.it/
>ATTENTION! DON'T post Soundcloud, YouTube, or any other links where you are not anonymous (unless somebody asks you for it). That's considered self promotion and will result in bad feedback.
>RESOURCES:
Sound Design: >SeamlessR (in-depth music production and sound design tutorials, based on FL Studio) youtube.com/user/SeamlessR
>Syntorial (widely considered the best place to go to learn synthesis) syntorial.com/
>Mr. Bill (Ableton based, some of the best sound design tutorials on the planet. Aimed more towards IDM-type stuff. He also posts his music here) youtube.com/user/MrBillsTunes
I like the limitations of hardware workflow and the fact that it's cheaper than digital recorders (local pawn shop has a tascam 4-track for $40) but I don't want to be sacrificing too much sound quality
Blake Ross
Those are cassettes, not "tape"
Jack Bailey
what exactly do you think is inside cassettes
Hudson Hernandez
hundreds of tiny CDs
Charles Moore
cassettes are one cd unravelled, that's why there's hiss
Ethan Baker
cassette recorders are not good for multitracking by today's standards, the more your punch in/out the worse the quality. Unless you are seriously going for the "mildly unslistable 90s band demo" aesthetic.
Gavin Rivera
but the benefit is that they're lossless unless you accidentally eat some of the tape because you think it's spaghetti noodles
David Richardson
but they get worse everytime you play them, which is a very big minus
William Barnes
Anyone using Rebirth as of now? I can't find it anywhere ffs
Logan Nguyen
should i keep polishing this turd or throw this cover away? its free stock image and filters but that way i get to doing music faster
Brandon Sanders
Don't get a 4 track if you aren't willing to fight a noise floor or accept that whatever you record on one is going to be lo-fi. If that's the aesthetic you want, then go for it.
t. tascam portastudio owner
Daniel Martin
you're welcome
Easton Hughes
lol it looked for a while like hes peaking from underwater anyway damn daniel that looks pretty nice, using it
Is Reaktor 6 a good VST for some advance sound design? I wouldn't really be using it to make tracks within, rather using multiple instances for various sounds. The ability to make your own effects in it sound cool too. Using it in conjuction with the Kontrol midi keyboards seem fairly hands-on too.
Oliver Turner
that's an interesting concept for fx wish it could do some kind of sequencing with them tho
Alexander Powell
reaktor is an amazing environment, but you have to clarify a bit. are you doing to start creating devices in reaktor? do you intend to use pre-build ensembles? were you going to be working in reaktor blocks? all of these will send you in slightly different directions. you say you want to use multiple instances, but that could still go several ways. the short answer is "Yes, absolutely." some reaktor devices are absolutely bonkers of bending and generating sound. some a more straight forward synths. my major tip is to explore the factory library, and the user library, but be wary of stability issues in the latter.
stole someones piano tracc cuz dats what the cool kids seem to be doing nowadays. probably is more plagiarism than ruh-ruh-ruh-remix but w/e
Joshua Evans
Friday my dude
Adam Ortiz
you've got poor taste or are clinging to this for some reason i can't fathom- throw that shit out. it's terrible and not in a funny way. you can do better man.
lol
yes, of course it is. if you've got komplete too imo the sky's the limit. personally i resample the weirder shit i get out of reaktor to get more practical use out of a sound; some patches won't play the same thing twice of course.
>Using it in conjuction with the Kontrol midi keyboards seem fairly hands-on too.
yeah, no. you're patching with a mouse kid. if we're talking serious sound design we're not talking hands on.
Ryan Turner
>tfw my hdd with all my DAWs/vst and projects passed away last night this fucker wasn't even old, I think i'm gonna kill myself
Blake Lewis
2 or 3 copies minimum man
desu i would strongly consider suicide if that happened to me only slight exaggeration
Adrian Diaz
why not use online storage for the projects?
Benjamin Robinson
because i'm retarded I don't like online storage, I don't use it for anything
Aiden Sullivan
>tfw too poor to buy hard drives so I have to delete stuff or spend hours compressing and uploading the important stuff online. I just hope they don't ban me or don't shut down the service/company.
Kevin Fisher
>I just hope they don't ban me or don't shut down the service/company. You would have to be really unlucky if your drive died at the same time as the service provided shut down.
Bentley Jackson
i only clinged to it to save some time. hell janet jacksons covers are literally her name and picture of tits, i cant do much worse
Dylan Wright
cop a flash drive and stick your must have projects in there buddy
>i cant do much worse >than tits
you can and you did. that's the kind of shit that will literally stop them from listening to you at all because it looks so amateurish and mismatched is the point.
Brody Morgan
so what do you want if random photo with text isnt enough? im not sure if this is even legit advice or just some white people´s give me the best you can for free thing
Adam Davis
you should just learn and tweek it on piano a bit, and have it play more in the background
Lucas Wilson
whats his endgame
Ethan Rogers
Whoever makes the next general, please use the following OP:
It's the same except for two things: I changed the links to tinyurl links, and I added the /prod/ pastebin to it.
Jackson Nelson
A better photo? More effort and an actually pleasing image vro
Lazy op's piss me off :(
Jack Flores
>You would have to be really unlucky if your drive died at the same time as the service provided shut down I don't just have backups online. I have hundreds of GBs of stuff I uploaded over the years instead of deleting.
>cop a flash drive and stick your must have projects in there buddy I can't even afford that desu.
Jaxon Clark
why would they ban you ?
if you upload pirated shit nobody cares unless youre sharing the link with a lot of people
Samuel Morales
For using multiple accounts. The content isn't a problem since everything is encrypted and has cryptic filenames, so they'd have no idea what's in the archives.
Joseph Martinez
>hundreds of GBs >I can't even afford that desu.
bro i consider myself *bordering on* prolific compared to who's posting in prod and you should not be approaching even 100 gigs
narrow down your sample library, bounce your old old songs (rather than keeping the project file) and save up for a 64gb flash drive (or more if possible/necessary)
i'm thinking your problem is consolidating rather than money
Also somebody fucking talk to me or ask questions and shit. (advanced shit welcome) I'm staying with my religious friend and their slightly uptight roommate hiding my drinking while they're at a party. i'm just listening to zach hill buzzing bored and mElaNcholLly lol :(
Hunter Ross
>bro i consider myself *bordering on* prolific compared to who's posting in prod and you should not be approaching even 100 gigs My folder is 500GB. If you multitrack at 24/96 it goes fast.
Angel Carter
>multitrack true, that's why i stopped. it's easier just to keep the project file of stuff you think has usable ideas in it. ableton has a "Collect all and save" funtion which fail safes any missing samples and all that
on days where i get to produce all day i'll probably finish/start 3/5 songs. end of every week or two i'll evaluate what was shit, what was good, and if any were *really* good and i should follow through with.
shit get's deleted, good but not great (or i just like it for some reason) gets bounced and thrown in a folder, great i keep.
i have the space available now with an external hard drive to keep most of the projects, but if i didn't i would use the same system and only keep projects of sure things.
it's just a file management thing, i think you could get more efficient
Nolan Brown
The hundreds of GBs is referring to all the stuff I have online (which includes non-music stuff, as well as music resources of all kinds), not just my music projects and current library (which are of a manageable size).
>save up for a 64gb flash drive (or more if possible/necessary) I have no money at all and no way to get it (at least for now). I can't save up at all.
Robert Wood
>it's just a file management thing, i think you could get more efficient no, mostly these are overdubs of stuff, I could save space if I mixed down as I went, rather than saving the original recordings, but I don't want to do that
also I found another folder, so it's actually 640 GB total
Ian Evans
>ask questions and shit Do you apply effects like compression and reverb during the initial production or do you wait until the mixing stage? Feels like I'm wasting a lot of time fucking around with effects that I should be spending working on better chord progressions, sounds, etc
Ayden Green
if you want to do straightforward songwriting in the totally conventional sense, write first on simple sounds and mix later
but consider also that plenty of worthwhile stuff is comes out of fucking around with effects and sound design; you'll miss this if you stick to the "songwriting" approach exclusively
Cooper Turner
>Also somebody fucking talk to me or ask questions and shit. (advanced shit welcome) Which producer/s do you think have a "secret weapon" (technique, software, or anything that's not a ghost producer) that give them an advantage over other producers?
Caleb Hall
Worry about workflow and finishing songs first. Then learn how to properly mix and master.
Josiah Garcia
>but consider also that plenty of worthwhile stuff is comes out of fucking around with effects and sound design; you'll miss this if you stick to the "songwriting" approach exclusively Not him but I agree, although this can be mitigated by separating the sound design sessions from the songwriting ones, so when you use the "songwriting" approach you can then incorporate the sound design you've previously made into your composed "score".
Jackson Powell
Ah right so more acoustic/rock recordings? imo what i said still applies- you should be comping each take and consolidating still. that sounds like more of a problem though
if the effect is part of the song and atmosphere than it should be applied soon, or even at the beginning of starting the song. if you're playing by hand, for example, a 100% reverb droney song is going to effect how you play, or an overcompressed flyinglotus/confield-autechre thing on the drum bus is something you're going to mix the song around, not the other way around. if you're first starting, definitely focus on the actual song first though
>stuff is comes out of fucking around with effects and sound design; you'll miss this if you stick to the "songwriting" approach exclusively
that's a huge topic and a dividing line between "traditional" and electronic music.
there is certainly overlap, but uh...i don't feel like thinking about it. read this:
Just to be clear, you're talking about two different guys here. I'm the poor guy who uploads stuff and I only posted these: The multitrack guy ( ) is someone else.
Michael Bell
ah alright, gotcha guy
i stand by what i've said so far though
Grayson Sanchez
You're right, but in my case what I'm uploading isn't song projects, so it doesn't really apply to me. Thanks for the help though.
Tyler Ortiz
Alright thanks I guess it depends on the approach, drawing a hard line between songwriting and mixing seems like the most straightforward thing to do but I totally see the point of sound design
why wouldn't I learn to do something that I enjoy doing?
Carson Gonzalez
I never said not to learn how to do it. I'm just saying master the basics first is usually a good idea. I think it's easier to make the song and add in most of the effects after I'm done but that's just me. Not that you can't do it while making the song, it just seems easier that way to me.
Here's something kinda groovy I made. Mostly looking for mixing issues, but feel free to critique the composition or sound design.
Camden Kelly
What do you think about this? It's been 10 or 11 days since I started making music so it's as bad as you expect and it's pretty long too but I'll appreciate any pointers clyp.it/u1pyuxhh
It's a song based on Mussorgsky's promenade 1, here's what I had a week ago if anyone's curious clyp.it/3bzlzevx
Chase Flores
nice drums
Sebastian Reed
Are you listening on speakers? I'm listening on headphone and the snare feels like it's panned too hard to the left. Same with that one lead-ish synth... when that thing comes in, the left speaker is overwhelming and feels way louder than the right.
Matthew Long
the piano, or at least what it was intending to do should have been an octave down
the song is honestly just boring, it feels like a synth solo over this same progression for too long
make the piano more interesting rather than playing on every bar, balance your leads to the rest of the song (turn them down)
Ryan Watson
yep on pretty bad speakers, can't comment anything on the panning might as well be listening in mono
Elijah Stewart
the composition is good
but the entire track feels really dry and basic, like its a bunch of presets. all the melodic elements work well, but the sound design is completely lacking and hearing that snare over and over again is super boring.
it would really benefit with a lot of automation to build tension/momentum and just adding more impact type sounds/ one shot sounds in a creative way would add more ""ear candy""
not trying to rip it apart btw sorry if im a harsh critique
Connor Watson
Thanks >make the piano more interesting rather than playing on every bar Will absolutely try to do that.
Angel Adams
i feel like if you listened to a toro y moi as reference and sort of paid attention to the way he builds his tracks, you could learn a few techniques
Dominic Moore
>a bunch of presets Dead on pretty much, definitely gonna check out some of the sound design links in the OP when I get a chance
>hearing that snare over and over again is super boring By that do you mean the timbre should change over time or to change up the drum pattern more?
Are you talking about the piano that playing from beginning? It sounds weird when I move it down an octave but maybe I'll have to play with the chord voicing. As far a making it less boring, I was thinking of added a vocal part, but do you think it'll still be boring without changing the chord progression?
Blake Scott
(381) i was talking more about arranging for space- those chords are overlapping with the lead
maybe not everywhere, but if you want a full/big area you need something in tha octave down
you could make it less boring with a vocal or whatever sure, it's just not a great song honestly. you'll do better eventually
Blake Powell
How do you cope with errant resonances while creating a track. Do you have a compressor on the master, or do you automate the eq / volume of individual notes? Or do you put a compressor on each track? Errant frequencies are my flow killer
Jaxson Hill
I'd either program them to be less resonant or have a big notch on those kind of patches-typically between 1-4k
if it's on an individual track you shouldn't even be thinking about the master- if at all possible, the general rule of thumb is that you should be solving these problems at their root- that most often correlates with the programmed sound or recording itself.
compression for dynamics is really a last resort when you can't go back (other than when it is mean as an effect or tone controller)
Brody Foster
Thanks, yeah I'm always doing surgery on stuff I shouldn't have run with at the start. Hard to go back and change a sounds once it's settled in apart from x.
Vocals are difficult for me and I often eq and do so much to them that I think the quality is reduced, as in the notes become speckled / aren't as clear.
Tyler Adams
Yo this is something i was just talking with a friend who's just starting actually
the real skill is discerning between ideas of what will actually work and not
this extends mostly to sample selection, (and sound design), arrangement, and all those little decisions that extend from knowing music theory. eventually you just learn to hear what's going to work you know? if you've got something shit running you don't try to force it- you develop a selective ear.
Benjamin Stewart
I like long reverbs and they can cause frequency problems. I've been mostly not panning so much or not caring about it so I'm going to try it more.
I like synth presets and because I select a sound then create with it, I never know whether odd resonances will be bothersome, and then I won't know what synth effect is causing a 5k peak or something, makes me want to die
Benjamin Ramirez
be careful with the panning man, that's typically covering up issues rather than solving them
Ian Harris
bumping
Isaiah Torres
In ableton is there a rule how much is too much? As if you pan +40 L or R is too much? What do you guys generally do? Pan to about 10-20?
Luis White
There is no rule, but you should always have a kind of counter balance on the other side occupying a similar spectrum when panning heavier. Think about the stereo field more as centered vs wide than left vs right and everything will be much less distracting and more natural
Andrew Ortiz
see mono compatibility
Jaxson Perry
Any nord modular users here? Does anyone know how I should use the partial generator module of this? I'm trying to make an fm patch where I can select the fm ratio of an osc with a knob, so I figured I should use the partial gen, but I don't know whether the input should be a note signal from the kbd input, or a control knob, or what, and what the relation is between the generated signal and fm ratios...
Mason Miller
figured it out, for future reference: put the partial generator knob at its maximum value (+-64), route a constant ctrl to the partialgen input, and put the partialgen output to the pitch input of a master osc (with the mod amt all the way up).
Joshua Adams
so i asked you fags for some suggestions over how to improve a cover.
what you did instead, is just include all the shit i hate like minimalism faggotry and tiny as fuck text. so why the fuck i´d listen to someone who just makes what I do infinetly worse? i dont care if you @ me you´re full of shit and i dont need your approval
Anthony Green
So now a change of + or - 1 on the control knob is the same as pressing the "partials" switch on the oscs.
First time asking for your opinions regarding mixing/mastering. Could use some comments because i only know 50% of what i'm doing: clyp.it/on1afncr
Oliver Thomas
>this track
Alexander Gray
Not sure how the nord works, but in modular stuff like that should use control voltage, so I’d expect it would be the knob control in nord. How does that thing sound? Any clyps you can post of what you are working on?
Chase Morris
Sick vibe user, but I think you gotta bring up that tempo up 10bpm or so.
The arpeggio that comes in has a cool effect on it, but might be too nasally sounding for the mix imo. Maybe try to make that element sit in a higher range in the mix, or add another part that allows it to meld better.
Good stuff tho
Levi Ward
Just finished rebuilding my music /prod/ computer after the hard drive of a decade in it died. holy fuck is reinstalling every plugin/sample/program the worst thing ever or what, took like a solid week to get to newer project compatibility, probably never have the old stuff up and working again.
Anybody have any tips to speed this up for the next failure? thinking disk images, but I have >4tb of project data so it's not particularly quick to do
Elijah Bennett
Yeah I'd just save the entire computer to a new drive backup
Dominic Clark
Switch to Mac and a single click with do all of this for you. :^)
But seriously, as long as your pc components don’t change/require different drivers, disk images are the way to go for that on windows. You’ll just need to implement some sort of system that can make them in the background on a regular basis, but you’ll need hella storage for redundancy of 4tb
Brayden Johnson
>Anybody have any tips to speed this up for the next failure? Yeah be harsh and streamline your shit. Unless you are working professionally then there is no need to have 4tb of project files, if you are working professionally and it’s essential that you keep all that then back it up on 3 different drives. Seriously though what are you doing with all that data? Either mix your projects down and release them and delete the rest or fucking well delete a majority of them
I would consider it for sure, but several of my plugs are win only. I had a major system change this time too (mobo+cpu+ram) so not sure disk images would have saved me anyway.
I am working professionally - already have multiple backups of everything, including offsite. Those files include older client session stems + projects that having compatibility with is important. desu it's more than 4tb, but I've cut down over the years to the stuff that I need more speedy access to
going forward though I'm going to cut down on 3rd party plugins. ain't nobody got time to reinstall those
Noah Gonzalez
Thanks alot bro. Good advice with the higher EQ range. IMO with lo-fi it's hard to fill midranger to highrange while everything is figthing in low range.
Thanks bro OC samples using SM57. Girls love to do this shit.
This is the hook to a song. How do I make it a little less muddy?
Lincoln Robinson
to fix most frequency problems troubleshoot in this order: -sample/instrument selection -orchestration -EQ
so your drums here are bass heavy. unless you change those samples, you should rewrite your rhodes/pad part. either simplify it to a few notes to reduce the clutter or change the instrument.
then, if you still want to keep that rhodes as is, you'll have to sculpt it with EQ. but it will always feel muddy without the part rewrite
also your vocals are down in the mix. brighten them up and bring em forward
Charles Moore
You should have two different partitions/drives. A smaller one for your OS and programs (with perhaps the files you're currently working on), and a bigger one for your data. This way you can have a normal backup for your big drive (and have some software add the new stuff only), and have disk images for your smaller drive (which only needs to backed up when you make changes to the system or install new programs).
Owen Young
>being this much of a bitch about 4TB of data in the current year Anyone with a job can afford the ~$200 for a 4TB drive and not have to dwlete his old stuff that he might want to reopen in the future. Better have it and not need it than needing it and not having it.
