MUSIC thread

[marty]

Dumpstaphunk Performs "Meanwhile" at Gathering of the Vibes 2011
[youtube]IpuYmPBzhqM[/youtube]

 

[Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh]

only canada (and scotland) celebrate victoria day instead


[youtube]Nqfg-A-L7GY[/youtube]

 

[amberwolf]

Or you can celebrate the Broken Pieces of Yesterday
https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14431307

then join in a Convocation of Lies
https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/convocation-of-lies-feat-lauscho-remix

and begin The Discernment of Candor
https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/the-discernment-of-candor

 

[The Toecutter]

This video was really fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3i7tcZ-szI

It's part of a series. Carpenter Brut does his own thing, but there's a lot of overlap with Black Metal and Dark Synth.

I especially liked the zombie cheerleader with a disco spike ball on a chain. I have a similar weapon, just not as sparkly.

 

[amberwolf]

If you would Just Give Me a Voice, I could be heard everywhere.

https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/just-give-me-a-voice

 

[The Toecutter]

You've definitely got a talent for this, even if your overall style isn't my preference. That sounded like it was made by a professional. What tools/software are you using to generate these sounds? I'd like to learn how.

This is more my preference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6c_UEqVDHM

Or this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9cqKafnUrk

Of your own tracks I've heard, this was pretty cool:

https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14431307

It has a bit of a Perturbator vibe to it, just not as dark.

 

[amberwolf]

You've definitely got a talent for this, even if your overall style isn't my preference.

Thanks. I've found that my style(s) aren't most people's preference, but it's what I have fun doing, it's the stuff that's in my head.

That sounded like it was made by a professional.

Thanks--I'm definitely not professional, but I've very slowly gotten better over the decades; the hardest part is mixing, which I've gotten decent at, and then "mastering", which I still haven't mastered. (which is why my stuff always seems like half the volume of real music, even though it shows on meters and waveforms the same volume that real music does).

Actually...the hardest part is chopping out pieces of a song to make the rest of it work. :/

What tools/software are you using to generate these sounds? I'd like to learn how.

My DAW (digital audio workstation) software is an ancient version of Cakewalk's SONAR, v8.3. A much newer version of it is available for free as "Cakewalk by Bandlab", but it broke really old stuff I have that has to work for various projects I still work on, so I can't have it on the computer I do my music stuff on.

Most of the synths and effects I use are free VSTs, or things that came with SONAR over the years (used it since v1). A few are things I beta tested and got as reward for that. A couple I bought, like MIDIGuitar/MIDIBass that convert the audio stream from a guitar into notes, pitchbends, etc., very useful for creating more realistic guitar parts when there are things I simply can't play realtime (but can edit together from the pieces I *can* play separately). Or for stacking synths and stuff along with the guitar, or using as timing trigger tracks for percussion, etc.

If you can't play anything and can't deal with the tediousness of hand-creating MIDI data, there are a bajillion sound libraries out there, many with free "light" versions, that can be used to edit songs together from.


I have a thread here:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=72867
with more detail on some things here and there. I don't really use much external equipment anymore. All the sounds (except for an actual bass guitar and an acoustic and an electric guitar, none of which I can actually "play") are computer-generated or sampled via microphone and modified as needed for the sound I want, mostly using realtime effects within SONAR itself (sometimes hand editing the sounds in external editors like Audacity, etc). Some newer synths and effects don't work in SONAR, so I use another software "rack" to host them, VST Host by Hermann Seib (also free from his site); it has it's quirks but it's easier to "wire" audio out to it and back into SONAR than learning a whole new DAW program just for that stuff (since the new programs can't use a lot of the old stuff I still need to use, and some of the DAWs have just plain retarded UIs).

Anyway, you can get everything you need software-wise to do stuff like this for free, though you can get "better" stuff for quite a lot of money if you have it to spend. It does take a lot of CPU and RAM to do synths and effects, and everything works better with a good low-latency ASIO-driver audio interface, but these are often available cheaply used on ebay or guitar center, etc (just get a big brand name one so you have a better chance of good ASIO driver support--cheap stuff doesn't even make drivers, they depend on windows default drivers which suck). Good ASIO (or low-latency versions of WDM) drivers take less CPU, shorten delay from the time sound starts being generated to the time it gets to the speaker jack, which makes a huge difference trying to do any kind of realtime playing or editing--more than a millisecond is difficult to deal with.

You can post in this thread or that studio thread with questions about stuff, processes, etc., either now or when you start trying this out yourself, etc.

This is more my preference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6c_UEqVDHM
Or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9cqKafnUrk

Neither one would really be what I'd listen to; I couldn't go very far in, but the starts were interesting.

I wanted to skip forward to try different parts but YT retardedly no longer allows that via the player control bar or any other method. For some time now it only plays things from the beginning to end and no key shortcuts work either, so I stopped using it for anything, including watching or listening to anything, or posting new stuff there. (they've done this before, then put it back to the way it was after a few months, so I'm hopeful they'll do that again someday).

Years ago I used to do long involved intros to things but people seem to get bored and stop paying attention so I started just jumping right into things right off the bat instead. More people pay attention for longer, of the very very small sample size I can get (very few listen to my stuff, perhaps 3 or 4 for any new song posting, virtually none ever post/talk about it afterward, since it's not really good enough for that).

Of your own tracks I've heard, this was pretty cool:
https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14431307
It has a bit of a Perturbator vibe to it, just not as dark.

Thanks--there is a greatly extended version of it I've been poking at for a while now, which will probably end up at least twice as long, mostly between the "chase music" and the ending. Everytime I think I have found the right transition from one to the other, I find the transition itself is a whole new section. :lol:

 

[amberwolf]

What tools/software are you using to generate these sounds? I'd like to learn how.

In case you were specifically wondering about this song (Just Give Me a Voice)

I started with just the bass guitar (an Ibanez basic 6-string electric bass guitar), which like all my externally-generated audio is recorded in dry, using realtime effects in the track bins (and the bus bins those feed into) to create the specific sound I'm after, so I can alter it if necessary to better fit a mix, or even to completely change the character of the sound, etc., played to a drumtrack generated by SONAR's included Session Drummer 2 or 3 drumkit, played with Sonic Reality's brit kit.

The guitar is actually split between two tracks, which I cut and fade between for various parts; one is stereo and the other mono, but both fed with mono recorded guitar audio. Stereo version effects are, in order:
--Shred1.06 (free vst) Lainee Custom FrankenAmp with some tweaks to make the delay fit the song tempo (600ms left 450ms right) and lowering the feedback, etc.
--VX64 Vocal Strip (incl with some version of SONAR at some point), on Telephone preset, controlled via envelope to cut in and out and change amount of effects, for various sections of the song.
--Sonitus FX multiband EQ (incl wiht SONAR), with only a couple bands active as shelving low and high, to do a more extreme version of the telephone effect, also automated over parts of the song, primarily the fadeout at the end.
--CakewalkFX Reverb (incl with SONAR), automated to help with the fadeout.
Mono version effects are the same except no reverb (track not present at end)

The bass guitar track started as a copy of the last section of the guitar track, copied over and over, but later I created one from scratch using hand-drawn MIDI note control of the included Cakewalk Session Instruments Bass Guitar with the Blown Speaker preset for sound, not using any patterns though. Same Shred effect/preset as teh main guitar, then the FX EQ, differetn bands and different automation timing/etc. One short section of the bassline is actually the guitar track of that same section copied and pitchshifted a couple octaves down, then pitchshifted up or down a few notes to complement the guitar notes at that time instead of matching them.

The piano part is Cakewalk TruePiano (incl with SONAR, but avialable as a VST from 4Front as well), with the Bright Amber module, and reverb off. FX chain is VX-64 Vocal Strip with hip hop vocals preset, then Channel Tools (free VST) set to widen the track, then Cakewalk SonitusFX Delay (incl with SONAR) set to 1:3/4 with "host sync" to match song tempo (of 99BPM), then SonitusFX Reverb as a slightly modified "short and sweet" preset, then the Sonitus FX EQ with a few active bands, automated as needed thru the song. The actual piano part was played in by hand, modified thru the built-in arpeggiator using settings that create a "round", whcih modifies itself as I played the part. This I tehn commited to a "hard" midi track without the arp and then edited the clips to what you hear. Some bits of this I then matched some of the bassline's MIDI notes to at the end of various bars.


The string part is Cakewalk Session Instruments Strings (incl with SONAR) whcih emulates a string section using a distict bass, cello, and violin section, in this case using the FastAttack program for sounds (but not using any of the patterns). There's two independent copies of this synth in the song, with the same effects chains, driven by separate sets of MIDI tracks. One of them just plays some copies of the piano's MIDI notes, and one of them is some extra stuff I played in as MIDI and a few bits I drew in by hand. FX chain is VX64 with Backing Vox Silky Smash preset with some of the Compander and EQ parameters tweaked to fit the rest of the sounds, the same Sonitus FX Delay as the Piano, and the same Sonitus FX Reverb as well. Some of the notes of the played-in strings are copied to the bassline to have the bassline match and fatten the strings, and some of the guitar notes were figured out using a tuner (because I don't know what notes I'm playing, I just go by sound), and copied as MIDI to the strings to fatten the guitar in certain spots.

The drum track is the Cakewalk Session Drummer 3 using the Sonic Reality Brit Rock Kit sound preset, and started out as a set of patterns (loops) of MIDI notes including with Cakewalk, by Groove Monkee, in the Soft Rock section, the "072" series. I actually just imported a bunch of the series and then began placing them not exactly randomly, but not with much care for which type of loop it was for which part of the song it would be for, but when I was done they somehow nearly just fit and worked as they were (sometimes this just happens to me, where things work out the way I want them without a bunch of faffing around). I ended up doing a fair bit of trimming to remove extraneous notes and then moving various bits of the loops around, trimming stuff off, adding some bits, to fit it all better to the actual music, most of this done late in the editing process. This synth has independent outputs for each drum if you want them, but in this case I routed most of the stuff to a dry track, but the kick and snare go to an FX chain with PX-64 Percussion strip (incl with SONAR) with The Heat preset, and the cymbals and crashes to a chain with that same Sonitus FX Reverb as the strings and piano.

The piano and strings are routed to a bus that has another VX-64 using the Tracking Doubler preset, which then routes to the Master bus.

The two guitar tracks are routed to a bus that has the VX-64 using the Female Cleanup and Presence preset, then the Sonitus FX EQ with the bands set to notch around where the kick and snare are frequency-wise, as well as where some of the sparklier piano sound is. This then goes to the master bus.

The bass track is routed to a bus that has the VX-64 Warm and Fuzzy preset, then it goes to the Rhythm Comp bus.

The drums go to a bus that has the LP64 Multiband compressor (incl with SONAR), set to the Mastering (lighter) preset, then to the Rhythm Comp Bus.

That RC bus has just the Sonitus FX Mulitiband Compressor (incl with SONAR), with the Smooth preset, and the output limiter at 0dB, then out to the Master Bus.

The Master bus uses the Vintage Master Hard preset of that Sonitus FX Multiband Compressor, also with output limiter at 0dB, then out ot the speakers.

Most of the "mastering" and bussing stuff I've learned from various websites found via google that discuss this sort of thing, and then just experimenting with my mixes using those ideas and the tools I have already (many of the sites talk about using multi-hundred-dollar or even multi-thousand-dollar mastering plugins which I will never have, so I adapt their techniques as best I can to the stuff I do have).


(Side note: I actually recorded the original track guitar track using the bass guitar a few years ago (2019?) and didn't have anywhere to go with it then, so it sat just like that until a couple months or so ago when I was listening to old unused stuff and got an inspiration. I use the bass guitar to play a lot of the lead guitar parts because my regular electric guitar is not very good and the bass has a much better sound for almost anything I need to play with a real guitar--the First Act frankenlectric guitar is alright for using with MIDIGuitar program to create MIDi tracks that then control various synths, though).

(i crossposted this to the studio thread for future reference as well)

 

[Skorohod]

This video was really fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3i7tcZ-szI

There is a very obscene russian profanity on the right side of a stage background at the 03:11 timecode :lol: Not the first time i've encounter such traces of "soft power" of russian culture on american soil, one of the most noticeable would be same writing on the phone booth in a "Police academy".

Thanks. I've found that my style(s) aren't most people's preference, but it's what I have fun doing, it's the stuff that's in my head.

The same! "Not my style", but nothing but respect for the efforts. "I'm Something of a Scientist Myself", so i can totally relate to your labours of music making. So please keep on!

My DAW (digital audio workstation) software is an ancient version of Cakewalk's SONAR, v8.3.

Oh, the memories. I've started with Cakewalk back in 90's, then Sonar... Now it's the Reaper.

 

[amberwolf]

The same! "Not my style", but nothing but respect for the efforts. "I'm Something of a Scientist Myself", so i can totally relate to your labours of music making. So please keep on!

I dont' have much choice about it; when the music is in my head I have to let it out or else my brain would explode.

I just wish I could find more people that would listen to it and provide feedback I can use to improve things, which might increase my audience.

Almost all of the very very few plays my stuff ever gets show as "partial" plays, or even "skips", which means only a very tiny part of them were listened to before the listener stopped. Which means they didn't like it. :/

When I used to play at scifi conventions and the like, and some "coffehouses", I could attract a fair audience...but they weren't a *repeat* audience, just whoever was there at the time; people didn't come just to listen to me, generally (there were a few). And the things I create now are far beyond my ability to play live, other than just playing back the project from the computer, same as playing an audio file, and there's not much point in going somewhere just to do that. But I do know that those that listen to my stuff do sometimes like it. I just don't know how to get more people to listen...I'm not a marketer and am terrible at it.

Oh, the memories. I've started with Cakewalk back in 90's, then Sonar... Now it's the Reaper.

What do you create with it? Any links?


I've been referred to Reaper before. I still have to keep SONAR for all my existing projects and many of the sounds, effects, etc that I use that cannot be used with anything else, but perhaps I can use Reaper (or something) as a parallel-running sequencer that runs more tracks and can use effects and instruments too new for SONAR to work with. I went ahead and downloaded the evaluation version and documentation; don't know when I'll get to installing and learning it, though; too many things on my plate (always).

 

[amberwolf]

More heavy chiseling away at Just Give Me a Voice

Give it a listen:

https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/just-give-me-a-voice

or

https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14446369

 

[amberwolf]

New track Under the Frozen Sky
(There is a Hunger Like No Other)

https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/under-the-frozen-sky-there-is-a-hunger-like-no-other

 

[amberwolf]

Listen to The Tomorrow Option

https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/the-tomorrow-option

or

https://www.soundclick.com/music/songInfo.cfm?songID=14271583

 

[Skorohod]

What do you create with it? Any links?

There is mostly simple live sound mixing, so nothing that interesting regarding multi-layered synthesizers and effects. But once or a twice i've had an experience with a synts too. One was very interesting, i've generated a short motif with a AI music generator and rearrange it to my taste. It was a simple background music for my short archive video, here is the link: https://dzen.ru/video/watch/60575644f538db689d0eae03