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NEOGAF's Official Music Production Thread: calling all producers

S

Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew

Banned
Vally said:
I'll post my latest track, even if it's quite simple but I like how it turned out
https://soundcloud.com/risis-1/world-of-magic

Made in Reason like everything else I make. Lately I've been lacking the motivation to finish my tracks, so apart from the stuff for the GAF Tape 2 I'm taking a break from making tunes for a while



I've been listening to your stuff and 'Resonate' is my favorite, I like the dark vibe on it
Click to expand...

Icyflamez96 said:
Dang I was thinking these would be more recent. I'm not really into the genre but I enjoyed Resonate.
Click to expand...

Oh man, thank you! I'll make more recent stuff when I get back.

Vally, I'll definitely listen to your stuff when I get my headphones! :D

Thanks again for listening!

Edit: My brother makes some funky stuff as well: https://m.soundcloud.com/sunshine-rainbows-1/incomplete-demo

I'm still surprised we haven't recorded music together... :/
 
R

RP912

Banned
Hey everybody. I was referred to this thread so I'm going to introduce myself.

I been off and on as far as making music. The first DAW that I used was FL Studio 9 which was hit and miss for me. The type of music I make is just experimental from hip hop instrumentals to Electronic.

https://soundcloud.com/rp912/different-taste
here's a sample of some of the stuff I do. I'm still learning lol so I'll understand the criticism.

I just recently bought a Mashine Mikro to go deeper into music production. I just want to know some websites where I can actually get some free kits and instruments to start me off.
 
I

Icyflamez96

Member
Vally said:
I'll post my latest track, even if it's quite simple but I like how it turned out
https://soundcloud.com/risis-1/world-of-magic

Made in Reason like everything else I make. Lately I've been lacking the motivation to finish my tracks, so apart from the stuff for the GAF Tape 2 I'm taking a break from making tunes for a while
Click to expand...


I like the idea of it. Like, I liked what you were doing with the vocals and the feel of the song all together, but just listening to this on my JBLs, that high pitched synth was just too harsh for me at times. It started messin with my ears a bit.

RP912 said:
Hey everybody. I was referred to this thread so I'm going to introduce myself.

I been off and on as far as making music. The first DAW that I used was FL Studio 9 which was hit and miss for me. The type of music I make is just experimental from hip hop instrumentals to Electronic.

https://soundcloud.com/rp912/different-taste
here's a sample of some of the stuff I do. I'm still learning lol so I'll understand the criticism.

I just recently bought a Mashine Mikro to go deeper into music production. I just want to know some websites where I can actually get some free kits and instruments to start me off.
Click to expand...

Quite different for sure. Well I liked how the way the kicks would come in and then just change the whole tone of the song, and I think the percussion/drums were well implemented, but the dissonance didn't really appeal to me for the most part.

BlueBadger said:
Wow, thank you!! :')

I'm at www.soundcloud.com/stephenscaccia o_o!
Click to expand...

This stuff sounds pretty legit tbh. This isn't the type of music I'd listen to on a normal basis (well I guess a lot isn't since i'm kind of picky) but I would not bat an eye if I heard this on the radio.

shagg_187 said:
Oh man, thank you! I'll make more recent stuff when I get back.

Vally, I'll definitely listen to your stuff when I get my headphones! :D

Thanks again for listening!

Edit: My brother makes some funky stuff as well: https://m.soundcloud.com/sunshine-rainbows-1/incomplete-demo

I'm still surprised we haven't recorded music together... :/
Click to expand...

This is pretty chill. I like the melodies going on. I could easily see this being in a retro style game.
 
V

Vally

Member
Icyflamez96 said:
I like the idea of it. Like, I liked what you were doing with the vocals and the feel of the song all together, but just listening to this on my JBLs, that high pitched synth was just too harsh for me at times. It started messin with my ears a bit.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I kinda suck at mixing/mastering so yeah, I can see how that synth might be a bit harsh. I appreciate the input :)
 
R

RP912

Banned
Icyflamez96 said:
Quite different for sure. Well I liked how the way the kicks would come in and then just change the whole tone of the song, and I think the percussion/drums were well implemented, but the dissonance didn't really appeal to me for the most part.
Click to expand...


Thanks....I didn't know what I was trying to do with this beat but in my mind I wanted to mess around with some of the mixing and etc. Can't really do much on Caustic lol....but I did enjoy working on the drums for the most part ;).
 
smoothj

smoothj

Member
I'm looking to get into some small time music making just for fun. I know just a little bit on how to use FL studio and Ableton. I prefer Ableton but I hear FL studio is better for beginners. What do you suggest?

Also, I am looking for a beginners midi keyboard. I've seen some from akai and m-audio. I'm looking for a 25 key with drumpads around the $100 range.

I was looking at this akai mkII


or this launch key mini


or this akai apc 25 for ableton
Click to expand...

Thanks!
 
B

BlueBadger

Banned
Icyflamez96 said:
This stuff sounds pretty legit tbh. This isn't the type of music I'd listen to on a normal basis (well I guess a lot isn't since i'm kind of picky) but I would not bat an eye if I heard this on the radio.
Click to expand...

Wow.. Really? :) Thank you so much! And thank you for taking the time to listen to it! I really appreciate it!! :)

The EP has a few ballads on it as well, but I haven't put them on Soundcloud since I don't know if ballads have much of a place on Soundcloud? (I'm new to it! LOL!)

Once again, thank you so much!
 
I

Icyflamez96

Member
Yeah you have a good voice. "I want it all" is the best from those IMO. It sounds like something I'd hear on the raido, but that doesn't mean I think the mix quality is the best it could be though. I almost didn't want to say that because I can't quite pinpoint what it is, or if it's just me trying to be overly nitpicky, but I dunno. Something about that felt off.

I just put anything on Soundcloud tbh but it depends on how professional you want it to look.

Wait.... what is a ballad exactly?
 
B

BlueBadger

Banned
Icyflamez96 said:
Yeah you have a good voice. "I want it all" is the best from those IMO. It sounds like something I'd hear on the raido, but that doesn't mean I think the mix quality is the best it could be though. I almost didn't want to say that because I can't quite pinpoint what it is, or if it's just me trying to be overly nitpicky, but I dunno. Something about that felt off.

I just put anything on Soundcloud tbh but it depends on how professional you want it to look.

Wait.... what is a ballad exactly?
Click to expand...

A ballad is commonly defined as "a slow sentimental of romantic song". LOL!!

Thank you for all of your feedback :)
 
S

Sadsic

Member
Ray Wonder said:
It's dope. It seems like you have that style down pat. I can't really say anything constructive about it. Except, stay creative.

19:18 on Cells is awesome

Actually the whole thing is sick
Click to expand...

I actually meant on my own unreleased album. I wanted to get some feedback on what I've been working on over the past few years
 
F

Falk

that puzzling face
smoothj said:
I'm looking to get into some small time music making just for fun. I know just a little bit on how to use FL studio and Ableton. I prefer Ableton but I hear FL studio is better for beginners. What do you suggest?
Click to expand...

I'd say use whatever you feel comfortable with. Keep experimenting and don't be afraid to take new shit out for a test drive, be it DAWs, instruments, hardware, whatever.

FL Studio started out as pretty much a dick-around/hobbyist program in the Fruity Loops days, but has evolved to where it can stand on its own two feet. Its biggest drawback was that it got bundled with so much shit (of which the vast majority was of absolutely questionable quality) that most people didn't branch out to find quality instruments/synths/FX and just relied on the shitty bundled sounds. Right now, a lot of people use it for everything from EDM to chiptune to this guy so it's got a lot of juice.

Ableton dives more into the live aspect, and has very powerful stretching/pitching/etc. tools, which is awesome if you're into sampling, remixing and the like. It makes a lot of things that takes time in other DAWs pretty fast/painless.

I'm going to be that guy and also recommend SONAR if you're looking for something else affordable - the latest version, which is just over a week old, can be paid for in installments as low as $10/mo. till you pay for 12 months, at which point you legally own your copy forever (as opposed to 'rentals' like Adobe Creative Cloud etc where if you stop paying you're SOL)

SONAR is pretty much also fully featured, Skylight (the UI) is a joy to use, and the stuff it comes bundled with has pretty long legs. If you're so inclined to ever upgrade in future, the Platinum version (formerly Producer) has bells and whistles like integrated Melodyne.

I use it for Square Enix stuff, and if I'm not mistaken Sean Murray (Black Ops, World at War, etc) and Tommy Tallarico's production house (Video Games Live, a shit ton of retro soundtracks) are also long-time Cakewalk users, so it's got a pretty strong, albeit niche, proven track record for delivering on the high end of the spectrum.
 
I

Icyflamez96

Member
I used Sylenth for that. It's like 7 different, 16 voiced supersaws layered together (plus a bass and all EQ'd accordingly) with a bunch of plugins linked to them.

I'll try Massive out although I prefer Sylenth over it (just cause i'm used to it) I do generally find Massive to sound better.

I kinda doubt it'd be simple for me to figure out this sound though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhZlO4IpEP8#t=117

^ That's what i'm trying to get

Edit: That song was the reference point I used for the sound I was trying to get, but I haven't listened to it ever since I actually started trying to make the sound funnily enough. So this is my first time actually listening to that song again to compare that sound to mine.... I got closer than I thought, heh
still not perfect tho
 
T

thezerofire

Banned
Icyflamez96 said:
I used Sylenth for that. It's like 7 different, 16 voiced supersaws layered together (plus a bass and all EQ'd accordingly) with a bunch of plugins linked to them.

I'll try Massive out although I prefer Sylenth over it (just cause i'm used to it) I do generally find Massive to sound better.

I kinda doubt it'd be simple for me to figure out this sound though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhZlO4IpEP8#t=117

^ That's what i'm trying to get

Edit: That song was the reference point I used for the sound I was trying to get, but I haven't listened to it ever since I actually started trying to make the sound funnily enough. So this is my first time actually listening to that song again to compare that sound to mine.... I got closer than I thought, heh
still not perfect tho
Click to expand...
That's at least three layers, one super saw, one reasonably clean bass, and some white noise over the top if I'm hearing it right. oh and a bunch of reverb that's maybeee sidechained to the original signal

In Massive to make a supersaw, you just have the one oscillator on saw wave, go to the Voicing tab, push voices up to like 7, turn on the option for the first slider and put it just a little bit right of far left, then turn on the third slider and put it at 100. I'm sorry for not being more specific, but I don't have it in front of me and don't remember the specific names :p

I'll get you a screenshot when I get home though. And not sure on the specific bass sound, I'm not that good with those yet
 
I

Icyflamez96

Member
Nah I know how to make Saws on Massive. I guess I know the basics of it but i'm just more used to Sylenth. I probably should work with it more though.


I remember watching an interview with Audien on how he got that sound and he was talking about like layers and layers so I just went all out.

Same with Ilan Bluestone. He said he'd have like 12 layers to a saw or something like that lol. His sounds are dumb big.
 
T

thezerofire

Banned
Icyflamez96 said:
Nah I know how to make Saws on Massive. I guess I know the basics of it but i'm just more used to Sylenth. I probably should work with it more though.


I remember watching an interview with Audien on how he got that sound and he was talking about like layers and layers so I just went all out.

Same with Ilan Bluestone. He said he'd have like 12 layers to a saw or something like that lol. His sounds are dumb big.
Click to expand...
yeah I've seen tutorials by guys where they take a bunch of random sounds you'd think wouldn't work well together and get them to blend seamlessly, I can't wrap my head around it
 
I

Icyflamez96

Member
That's cray. I'm just going to start trying to layer different things together now to see what I get lol.

Oh and i'm pretty sure the bass he used there also consists of saws.

I think I could get closer to that sound with Massive. I always did think it sounded more "grand" than Sylenth in general. Though that could just be because the of convenient dimension expander (which I now have a plugin for anyway but i'm not sure if it's quite the same as I haven't touched Massive in a while)
 
M

MadraptorMan

Member
Just got a new iMac and have been playing around in GarageBand. Here's a really shoddy recording I tried to mix from my band practice in a tiny ass practice studio here in Japan:

Tsuyu

We only had one mic, but I tried to separate all the instruments and the vocals into different tracks...I know this recording is bad but I'm still impressed by the software. I've never really done this before, but I can see how easy it would be to work this out if everyone had their own mics.

Really looking forward to some proper recording.
 
I

Icyflamez96

Member
thezerofire said:
That's at least three layers, one super saw, one reasonably clean bass, and some white noise over the top if I'm hearing it right. oh and a bunch of reverb that's maybeee sidechained to the original signal
Click to expand...

I think you may be right on that... Not to say all supersaws have to be done the same, but at leas in that track, it's probably just about 3, generally "higher" supersaws with the bass and white noise on top. I had a saw synth to cover like all the frequencies above bass lol. Doesn't seem like that's what he does with that song at least. Still working on it.
 
T

thezerofire

Banned
Icyflamez96 said:
I think you may be right on that... Not to say all supersaws have to be done the same, but at leas in that track, it's probably just about 3, generally "higher" supersaws with the bass and white noise on top. I had a saw synth to cover like all the frequencies above bass lol. Doesn't seem like that's what he does with that song at least. Still working on it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, you can definitely hear that the bass part is a separate sound, but it blends really well. I'm not actually sure about the white noise as a part of that sound specifically, but there is a lot of white noise going on in the track in general
 
R

RP912

Banned
Just got my Maschine Mikro and so far so good. I'm still trying to get the hang of drumming on the pads and getting into the groove. Any tips?
 
A

Accoun

Member
Anyone got Farbrausch V2 working with Renoise? Instrument MIDI Control device seemed to work with changing the presets, but only the last one used - regardless on which track I change it, all use the same sound, so the standard "kick, snare, kick, snare" gives me 4 kicks (or snares). The "92" panning command didn't work for program change.

Managed to get it working with Reaper, but I prefer trackers. :-/
 
N

neos

Member
Quick question for Ableton user: i have this midi channel with some vocal sampleas loaded up, i would like to route the output to an audio channel and have a way to control the pitch of that channel.
On a similar way, i'd like to have an audio channel wich picks up my voice from a microphone and lowers its pitch in real time. Any way to do this?
 
J

J10

Banned
neos said:
Quick question for Ableton user: i have this midi channel with some vocal sampleas loaded up, i would like to route the output to an audio channel and have a way to control the pitch of that channel.
On a similar way, i'd like to have an audio channel wich picks up my voice from a microphone and lowers its pitch in real time. Any way to do this?
Click to expand...

Routing audio from one channel to another is fairly easy.

A pitch correction plugin would do it. Ableton doesn't have any built-in though. Google turns up some free ones.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
I've been pondering on creating a YouTube channel for production content. Some of the stuff I would like to do are tutorials for stuff like synth programming and how to achieve a specific sound/style/genre, spotlighting various interesting VSTs, perhaps talking about the history of certain things, and maybe even some kind of "let's produce/compose". Any other ideas for interesting content?
 
J

J10

Banned
Focus on concepts, techniques, and philosophies that transcend the use of any specific software or equipment. Nothing worse than a tutorial that revolves around a specific plugin without adequately exploring what the plugin does, how it does it, or why it's important. Those come off less like tutorials and more like advertisements.
 
L

lazygecko

Member
Falk said:
Are you big into the hardware side, or is this going to be 100% on-screen/in-the-box?
Click to expand...

I'm all software. I think there's enough good video creators for hardware out there, and I could never hope to compete with someone as inspirational and enthusiastic like musictrackjp

RP912 said:
Do you really need monitor speakers to listen to your tracks? I use headphones to monitor my stuff.
Click to expand...

I would say that a nice set of headphones are going to be preferable to monitors and room acoustics that aren't flat out stellar. Way less bottlenecks to worry about.

It's doctrine though to just take the opportunity to listen to your stuff in a variety of setups.
 
R

RP912

Banned
J10 said:
You gotta learn to use what you got in any case. If headphones are all you've got, learn them.
Click to expand...

lazygecko said:
I

I would say that a nice set of headphones are going to be preferable to monitors and room acoustics that aren't flat out stellar. Way less bottlenecks to worry about.

It's doctrine though to just take the opportunity to listen to your stuff in a variety of setups.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips yall. I'm trying to get serious with music production. Right now it's just my Mikro and a set of headphones. When my funds get a little bit better I want to get an additional keyboard and a better sound setup for editing.
 
F

Falk

that puzzling face
RP912 said:
Do you really need monitor speakers to listen to your tracks? I use headphones to monitor my stuff.
Click to expand...

You use whatever you're comfortable with. Many seasoned veterans will say you absolutely need monitors. That's complete bollocks. Stereo image, bass response, etc are very different on speakers vs headphones. No one is denying that. What's also objectively true is that you can get used to either method. Especially if you grew up with a pair of headphones stuck to your head for everything from music to gaming.

(That being said it's still easy to go overboard with bass on any pair of headphones just because you don't have the same chest impact from speakers. Always check the bass on final passes, along with listening on as many systems as possible)
 
R

RP912

Banned
Falk said:
You use whatever you're comfortable with. Many seasoned veterans will say you absolutely need monitors. That's complete bollocks. Stereo image, bass response, etc are very different on speakers vs headphones. No one is denying that. What's also objectively true is that you can get used to either method. Especially if you grew up with a pair of headphones stuck to your head for everything from music to gaming.

(That being said it's still easy to go overboard with bass on any pair of headphones just because you don't have the same chest impact from speakers. Always check the bass on final passes, along with listening on as many systems as possible)
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. I always preferred headphones since it's a unique type of intimacy towards it. I don't get the same feeling with speakers and I thought it was a must to get monitors to find anything wrong with the beat, but I never really have a problem with monitoring through my headphones.

The type of music I really want to make is late commune music. Reminiscent of the 90s with laid back beats while sitting on a train. I do experimental stuff, but I find my best work involving slower relaxing type of beats.
 
S

Smokey

Member
Want to try and mess with making beats in my spare time. Are there any good books/sites that explain the fundamentals and teach any theory etc?

I downloaded FL Studio 11 demo because it's what I've always heard as good beginner software, but it was quite confusing. I did watch a bunch of tutorials on Youtube last night and messed around with it and got kind of hyped. Would definitely look into getting the full version, but it everything seems daunting. Think if I was able to grasp fundamentals or a foundation, I'd feel more comfortable.

Is there better software out there for beginners or is FL Studio pretty much the go to for rookies?
 
R

RustyO

Member
I need a new pc for dev/music work, and was thinking of building a new desktop, last one is ~10 years ond running XP... I tried Mac/Logic for a few years and hated it.

I'm thinking a Intel i7-4790K / some mobo / 16gb Ram... are there any good places to research recommended CPU's mobos etc specifically for music production? (Already posted in the I Need a New PC thread here), or just stick with GearSlutz / KVR?
 
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