One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby ChocolateChicken » 30 Dec 2013 05:53

Our ears have built-in compression and we hear all sound in RMS fashion, which is why RMS is important in mixing. Also, our ears are not designed to have sound inserted directly into them with headphones and earphones and they don't work as well under these conditions, so you should do most of your mixing with a 2.1 stereo speaker system and use headphones mostly for referencing and bass inspection.
Last edited by ChocolateChicken on 14 Jan 2014 03:17, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby Genkar » 13 Jan 2014 17:56

Sub bass is a delicate tool to make certain portions of your song huge, it's not something that should be thrown around in a track, because then the overall effect is lost.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby Coloriot » 01 Feb 2014 20:36

Mess with the knobs and see what kind of sound it makes.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby Mr. Bigglesworth » 03 Feb 2014 06:22

Don't be afraid of woodblocks and cowbells. They actually have use outside of joke value.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby Injustrial » 03 Feb 2014 08:27

- The best question you can ever ask yourself is "Oooh, what does this button do?"
- Trust your ears. If it sounds good to you, it probably sounds good
- Bass is awesome, and so hard to do right. Make more basslines
- The people you listen to are good at what they do because they've been doing it for years. Don't compare yourself to them now, compare yourself to them when you have an equal amount of experience
- Content over quality! A catchy melody is still catchy, even if it's a bit muddy. A polished turd is still a turd
- Be unique. If you've got something noone else has, you get away with making a few mistakes. If you sound just like everybody else, you'll be compared to them, and will ultimately lose
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby Mr. Bigglesworth » 04 Feb 2014 00:35

Drum loops aren't the absolute worst thing in the word, believe it or not. In fact, making your own drum loops can yield some great resources for later use.

Melody and bass loops however are frowned upon with good reason.

Also don't be afraid to try distorting drums outside of "hard" genres. I find that duping just the impact of a snare then EQ'ing and distorting that dupe can actually add some decent thwack to your snare. Just...mix it carefully or you'll just have a pile of shit.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby XXDarkShadow79XX » 08 Feb 2014 18:50

The production quality of a track should not be measured by its waveform.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby Mr. Bigglesworth » 10 Feb 2014 05:12

Unless it's a complete rectangle. Then be scared, be very scared.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby Navron » 10 Feb 2014 10:59

Subbass Tips:

- Pay attention to the key of your song. With subbass, you generally only have a 1 octave range of notes that have a nice low end that works on most speakers and headphones. Depending on the key of your song, you may find yourself extremely limited with notes that are either too high or too low.

- Don't add distortion, or otherwise introduce more harmonics to your subbass. Likewise, you should only have 1 subbass line playing at a time. Having multiple frequencies in the subbass range will fight for dominance and actually make your subbass weaker. If you want to spice up your subbass's sound, add a square or saw wave in very small amounts that are at least twice the frequency of your subbass (ex. 50Hz Pure Sine subbass w/ 100 or 200Hz High-Passed Square).

- Make sure your subbass track is in mono and doesn't have any stereo widening, dimension expander, or any other stereo effects. When looked at with a good mastering program, there shouldn't be any subbass in your side channels.

- Always remember: Subbass is lazy. It can only modulate so fast before it lags behind, and it doesn't like to run all over the place in quick succession. Keep it simple.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby eery » 10 Feb 2014 11:35

Mono chorus effects are cool on sub basses.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby Pulse Wave » 13 Apr 2014 15:18

Injustrial wrote:- Be unique. If you've got something noone else has, you get away with making a few mistakes. If you sound just like everybody else, you'll be compared to them, and will ultimately lose

This so very much.

Don't copy other artists because you want to be just like them. Not because tutorials about how to be like them in 3 easy steps are readily available either.

If you absolutely have to do as they did for whatever reason, then reference the artists, quote them, pay homage to them or parody them. And: This is even better if you base your work on someone a) who hasn't been copied by other brony musicians to kingdom come and back again already (*cough* Skrillex *cough*) and, better yet, b) whom hardly anyone would expect to be quoted musically by a brony. For example, who'd expect anypony to start working on a polka medley much like Weird Al (Flaofei, in this case) or parody a 40+-year-old rock song (I'm looking at you, Przewalski's Ponies)?

However: The above can be applied to covers of already existing pony music as well, in fact, especially to these. This means: Pick a song everypony knows – and do something with it that nopony ever saw coming. Think "Join The Herd" as bluegrass or ska punk.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby Mr. Bigglesworth » 15 Apr 2014 07:51

Mixing is just as much about balancing frequencies as it is levels (ooooo oh sometimes....). There's a technique they've been teaching us at my university called Complementary EQing. Which means to EQ sounds to fit together better. Say you've got a piano on the high spectrum but has frequencies in the mid and a pad that's mostly mid but has frequencies in the high bands. You don't have to do any severe cuts but if you make some general cuts of a few dB you can clean up your sounds much more efficiently. In the example I gave you'd scoop the mids on the piano and the highs in the pad. Then you can still hear both but they aren't competing for frequencies they don't need. In electronic music this is a really important skill to have, because layering is a big part of producing a lot of electronic genres.

Oh and 4:1 is a very good ratio for compression and you should totally use it as a starting point. As a rundown for beginners the ratio is basically to do with the gain reduction of a compressor. So it will cut 4dB above the threshold but allow 1dB to slip. 4:1. Anything with a ratio above 10:1 is a limitter.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby S.P.P » 19 Apr 2014 06:28

Navron wrote:- Don't add distortion, or otherwise introduce more harmonics to your subbass.

Disagree. Very light overdrive can work wonders pushing your sub. Be wary though, it's not good in every situation, and it has to be used very lightly in any case.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby Stuntddude » 20 Apr 2014 18:30

- Keep dynamic range in your songs. If you've maxed out your available volume and still want to make another part of the song even louder, don't over-master that part of the song. Just lower the volume on the song as a whole and make the new loudest part top out where the old loudest part did.
- Sidechaining and soft compression are the greatest inventions of mankind. Use them tastefully but often.
- Keep something there to visualize the frequency on the master channel while you're making a song, and be careful with putting two instruments occupying the same frequency range. Sometimes it works, but usually it doesn't, and if your song is sounding muddy, that's probably why. You'll usually want to have sound roughly spread out across the frequency spectrum.
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Re: One [or more, as necessary] Sentence Music-Tip Dump

Postby DJ TATCM » 22 Jul 2014 15:55

If you have a rhythm guitar part in a song, I've found that a great way to make it sound better, warmer, and closer to the listener is to record two tracks with the same rhythm but different chord inversions, and pan them to near opposite sides.

Much nicer than your shoddy stereo enhancer plugin at least


Doubletracking with different chord inversions.
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