Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Thread'

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Heavy Viper
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by Heavy Viper »

A bunch of heat-crazy Aussies decided to cover each other's chip music and put it all on an album:

https://australianchiptunecollective.ba ... bash-vol-1

I managed to sneak in on track 2. :B

EDIT: Decided to give my entry a quick master myself and stuck it up on my SC:

https://soundcloud.com/heavyviper/bug-o ... driven-mix
Last edited by Heavy Viper on Thu Jan 18, 2018 9:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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charlie chong
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by charlie chong »

been sectioned in the mental hospital for 30 days but i got a laptop here and a joystick so at least can make some beatz and play mame. the police beat the shit out of me twice tho :x
uploaded about 15 things i done since i been in this place and got some more i havent uploaded yet
https://soundcloud.com/vapor-teh-apparition
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by FinalBaton »

charlie chong wrote:been sectioned in the mental hospital for 30 days but i got a laptop here and a joystick so at least can make some beatz and play mame. the police beat the shit out of me twice tho :x
uploaded about 15 things i done since i been in this place and got some more i havent uploaded yet
https://soundcloud.com/vapor-teh-apparition
Wtf happened man??
Hope you're doing better now and will get better
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charlie chong
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by charlie chong »

drug psychosis again mebbes but who knows they've diagnosed me with bipolar before so i don't really trust..still drug psychosis is a lot better than schizophrenia which i was pretty much sure it was. i am feeling better now but i think i was in hallucinations for a week long .. i went off my meds to lose weight and i went from 20 stones to 14.5 before i was taken away but yeah probably shouldn't have gone off my meds.
as soon as i snapped out my delusions just i cleaned up my room,backed all my old music up and cleaned my hard drives and just started making beats and it properly cleared my head and sorted me out. i got a cbd pen and that is all i would have ever needed.. all this time i been smoking crazy strong weed to self medicate but as soon as i tried the cbd pen i was like damn that is the feeling i self medicate for.. all this time doing dodgy illegal shit and all i needed was legal cbd from a hemp plant..i feel such a dummy. this could be the thing that hopefully will stabilize my life for good!it calms me down so much,no paranoia nothing i feel it is miraculous .im still sore from the beatdowns but when you've already got chronic pain its no biggie :lol:
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by emphatic »

charlie chong wrote:drug psychosis again mebbes but who knows they've diagnosed me with bipolar before so i don't really trust..still drug psychosis is a lot better than schizophrenia which i was pretty much sure it was. i am feeling better now but i think i was in hallucinations for a week long .. i went off my meds to lose weight and i went from 20 stones to 14.5 before i was taken away but yeah probably shouldn't have gone off my meds.
as soon as i snapped out my delusions just i cleaned up my room,backed all my old music up and cleaned my hard drives and just started making beats and it properly cleared my head and sorted me out. i got a cbd pen and that is all i would have ever needed.. all this time i been smoking crazy strong weed to self medicate but as soon as i tried the cbd pen i was like damn that is the feeling i self medicate for.. all this time doing dodgy illegal shit and all i needed was legal cbd from a hemp plant..i feel such a dummy. this could be the thing that hopefully will stabilize my life for good!it calms me down so much,no paranoia nothing i feel it is miraculous .im still sore from the beatdowns but when you've already got chronic pain its no biggie :lol:
Fingers crossed the pen is mightier than the shit.
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charlie chong
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by charlie chong »

emphatic wrote: Fingers crossed the pen is mightier than the shit.

thanks man me too. it's pretty hard to deal with some of the other patients tho i can relate to a lot of the shit they been through..
one guys is stuck in a paranoid delusion involving aleister crowley,jesus,evil magicians and all sorts of crazy illuminati esoteric shit.
i spoke to him for a bit one night and he seemed to be alright but now i think he wants to kill me cos he thinks i m an evil wizard or something :| he told me to stop drawing and go to my room yesterday and been following me round staring with his crazy eyes.. he is so lucky he didnt get punched up but i want to get out of here sooooooo ive got to be a good boy :x
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by nasty_wolverine »

charlie chong wrote: one guys is stuck in a paranoid delusion involving aleister crowley,jesus,evil magicians and all sorts of crazy illuminati esoteric shit.
sounds like a riot
charlie chong wrote: i spoke to him for a bit one night and he seemed to be alright but now i think he wants to kill me cos he thinks i m an evil wizard or something :| he told me to stop drawing and go to my room yesterday and been following me round staring with his crazy eyes.. he is so lucky he didnt get punched up but i want to get out of here sooooooo ive got to be a good boy :x
dude.....


on that note, some drug infused techno https://soundcloud.com/nasty_wolverine/ ... a-extended
was messing around with delay lama
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charlie chong
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by charlie chong »

https://soundcloud.com/vapor-teh-apparition
some new stuff up as usual and they've taken me off section 8) got 3 days release and they are talking about a discharge meeting when i get back.. im the first person i've known to beat a section and didnt even appeal. i basically run this place tho :lol: even illuminati jesus crowley isnt bothering me much. i feel really sorry for his poor mum :cry:
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by jonny5 »

charlie chong wrote:https://soundcloud.com/vapor-teh-apparition
some new stuff up as usual and they've taken me off section 8) got 3 days release and they are talking about a discharge meeting when i get back.. im the first person i've known to beat a section and didnt even appeal. i basically run this place tho :lol: even illuminati jesus crowley isnt bothering me much. i feel really sorry for his poor mum :cry:
Fuck, keep your head up Charlie man! I'm actually about to start CBD as well, see how it goes. Depending on how that helps, I may be off to the doctors too

Sending good vibes your way
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charlie chong
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by charlie chong »

i think you will definitely feel it's benefits.. anti inflammatory ,anti psychotic and helps with anxiety and sleep.it's basically like my favourite kushes i ever grew that yielded terrible.
then you can mix it with terpenes instead of e-juice which also have a lot of good medical effects

this is a good primer on the benefits of terpenes
https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-10 ... omatherapy
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jonny5
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by jonny5 »

What dosage are you using on the CBD? Like how many mg?
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charlie chong
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by charlie chong »

im just experimenting at the moment.. ive been using 1000 mg/500mg/600mg/300mg bottles and diluting with terpenes or nicotineless e juice.
generally fill 30-40% of the tank with cbd and the rest juice and add dilute depending on my needs at the time. a 500mg 10 ml bottle seems to last me about a week so very economical so far! and i was smoking between and ounce to 2 ounces a week before i got hospitalised.. i was a severe chronic pain user tho
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by charlie chong »

1 hr 15 min beat tape of beat snippets .. very wutang/mobb deep/mf doom inspired
https://soundcloud.com/vapor-teh-appari ... plet-miggz
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by jonny5 »

charlie chong wrote:im just experimenting at the moment.. ive been using 1000 mg/500mg/600mg/300mg bottles and diluting with terpenes or nicotineless e juice.
generally fill 30-40% of the tank with cbd and the rest juice and add dilute depending on my needs at the time. a 500mg 10 ml bottle seems to last me about a week so very economical so far! and i was smoking between and ounce to 2 ounces a week before i got hospitalised.. i was a severe chronic pain user tho
Cool, ya, I got some 800mg stuff and cut it with 3 mg nic juice, like 30%CBD/70%nic juice.

First day with it today, so far so good

Hope things get brighter for you man, keep your head up!
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charlie chong
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by charlie chong »

yeah man..think things could be ok from here on.im not going to tempt fate tho by saying it cant get any worse than last 2 years ..(broken ribs,tornmuscles,broken foot that wouldn't heal, obesity,severe diet and then being hospitalised) :lol:
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Post by charlie chong »

lots of new beats upp and a song with a talented south african rapper called michaelson
https://soundcloud.com/michaelmichaelso ... elson-icky

i also been discharged from hospital and am in the care of my mums till i get some housing sorted 8)
lets hope things get better from here cos that was tuff going even for me.dudes were spraying blood on the walls and smashing shit up from 4 glock in the morning on the day i left :shock:

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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by beatsgo »

....The last I posted here was May.

Not much going on except finishing up some demos for netlabels.

On the side I've been challenging myself to try different styles of music composition. It lead me to even pushing my sound design capabilities to the point I want to make Renoise my bitch.
Oh wait that came out wrong.
What I meant is I'm making strides to blur the lines between DAW and tracker music. Most importantly, keep the operator/audio sample simple but use only what's internally available on Renoise as much as possible.

I present my case in point:
idea20
idea26
PHRASED THY MORPHING

Expect some new music in the near future. I'll make some remake of some Jaleco song along the line....
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blackoak
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by blackoak »

So, what was I up to this last year, you ask? It wasn't all stress, depression, and calamity... on the positive side, I managed to re-spark my music activities in a big way. And today I finally got off my ass and uploaded my stuff to soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/highsmith

So far there's 3 eps up there, another to come soon. I'm not really sure what subgenre(s) of electronic music it falls into... to me, it's an amalgamation of my love for autechre, vgm, modern classical, and prog rock. A few choice cuts for the shmupsforum:

"quiet bower" a lil fm + machinedrum banger - https://soundcloud.com/highsmith/quiet-bower
"one too many" drunken rambling on the SE02 - https://soundcloud.com/highsmith/one-too-many
"toroian" aka a final fantasy iv daydream - https://soundcloud.com/highsmith/toroian

the tools: machinedrum, nord lead 2, nord lead 3, minilogue, reface dx, and roland se-02. oh, and a custom sequencer i wrote in max/msp that i'd be happy to talk more about sometime.

I scrolled back several pages and added y'all too. Lots of good stuff, looking forward to sharing&hearing more!
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by emphatic »

Completed a deep acid techno track featuring a scholar talking extensively about the effects of psychedelic mushrooms. I've allowed free downloads of it if you like it on Soundcloud, here's a Youtube link with further linking available in the description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqxS0Sebg3Q
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by EmperorIng »

Sometimes inspiration hits and changes my usual "nothing for months" output schedule. I have played a lot of survival horror (particularly the Dino Crisis games; now working on REmake), and felt compelled to try to write some horror music. Hopefully there will be enough tracks in the pipeline to make an "EP" or "album" release! Take a listen here:

01: Enter the World of Terror!
This one is a more actiony, opening theme, and more closely aligned with my feelings with the Dino Crisis music.

02: Where is Everybody?
This feels a bit more out of a RE game in my mind. I heard one grumble from random feedback regarding the choice of main instrument, but I'll let your ears discern.

My workflow these days - if you can call it that! - usually consists of recording a sketch on the piano with my phone's recorder, and trying to use that as a base to expand upon in the DAW. I imagine this is not too dissimilar to how others here do it. Just about all of my original tracks have started with me noodling on my piano and coming up with ideas.
blackoak wrote: "quiet bower" a lil fm + machinedrum banger - https://soundcloud.com/highsmith/quiet-bower
"one too many" drunken rambling on the SE02 - https://soundcloud.com/highsmith/one-too-many
"toroian" aka a final fantasy iv daydream - https://soundcloud.com/highsmith/toroian
It's good to see you around again, blackoak! I'm glad your absence has at least been marked by creative output - and quite prolifically from the looks of it!

I listened to your channel and gave one of your EPs a listen, on top of some other tracks. A lot of it is pretty out-there stuff. I'm impressed; there's certainly a lot of experimentation with different sounds and less emphasis on melodic structure. I think I enjoyed the tracks "later that night" and "with" the most. Definitely cool to listen to!
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charlie chong
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by charlie chong »

yeah black oak's stuff is great. doesn't sound that out there to me but i listen to a lot of stuff people would class as weird. :lol:
been noticing a new wavey vibe mixed in with the electronics with further exploration
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by qmish »

blackoak wrote: "one too many" drunken rambling on the SE02 - https://soundcloud.com/highsmith/one-too-many
that was cheerful :D
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by blackoak »

thanks guys, I'm glad you like them. It's about 7-8 months worth of recordings spread across four EPs, and I'm reasonably satisfied with it since it's my first (successful) foray into writing electronic music. I had always played guitar and written music, but I really wanted to try my hand at the "conductor" role and work with timbres outside of guitar/rock. I had been trying to crack the nut for roughly a year before that, but it wasn't until I got into hardware sequencers that things started to make sense. It's embarassing but I think I spent 3-4 months not even knowing what MIDI sync was, hahaha. There's just a ton to take in (sound design, structure, synthesis, sampling, technology, music theory itself), but that's also what makes it so deep and fulfilling.

I'd love to hear more about people's creative process here, as it's only in the last 1/2 year that I've come to really appreciate the significance of different workflows.
EmperorIng wrote:I listened to your channel and gave one of your EPs a listen, on top of some other tracks. A lot of it is pretty out-there stuff. I'm impressed; there's certainly a lot of experimentation with different sounds and less emphasis on melodic structure. I think I enjoyed the tracks "later that night" and "with" the most. Definitely cool to listen to!
"with" is actually one of my favorites too. I like writing pieces that are really short, but dense in content. A holdover from my prog rock days, adapted to miniature form. Laziness and "arrangement burnout" must play a part too, haha. Your comment about melodic structure is funny to hear, because I often feel like I structure things too much around melody! I start out wanting to do something kind of abstract, but once I start to hear melodies I like, that just takes control of everything.

charliechong is probably right about the new wave thing: my humble musical beginnings were in a goth rock cover band, the cure, legendary pink dots, japan, stuff like that... i can never say no to a melancholy synth line. lol
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blackoak
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by blackoak »

EmperorIng wrote:Sometimes inspiration hits and changes my usual "nothing for months" output schedule. I have played a lot of survival horror (particularly the Dino Crisis games; now working on REmake), and felt compelled to try to write some horror music.
These were cool, they definitely nail the PS1 "piano+string" aesthetic. I showed them to my younger brother, who played the hell out of all those survival horror games back in the day. He approved.

I've been steadily going through your backcatalog, lots of cool proggy chiptune stuff in there. Some of the arrangements are really impressive. I'm also amazed by the authenticity of your imagined Toaplan songs. I honestly don't know if I'd be able to tell the difference between them and the "real" things in a random mix... which is good hehe

I feel like I remember reading this thread several years back when you were just starting out writing music with a DAW. It's pretty damn impressive how far you've come...!
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by Akira »

charlie chong wrote:new batch of beats up
https://soundcloud.com/vapor-teh-apparition
Love this stuff man!
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charlie chong
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by charlie chong »

thanks akira! @black oak i'm working on a modplug tracker/sound forge beat making video that'll give you some insight into hows i do my beats but windows movie maker keeps doing the exact opposite of what i tell it to do :x .. it took me 37 minutes to make the newest beat from start to finish including listening to the finished thing.which is a long time for me and far too long to be interesting to watch so i'm gonna try cut it down to 10-12 minutes .the sample was tricky so i had to do some dj premier style microchopping .got there in the end though :wink:
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by FinalBaton »

I have an upcoming FM synth retro videogame tune coming up, but in the meantime here's the guitar and bass demo for it. I thought it sounded interesting enough on it's own to share. Pretty happy with the structure and all

It's gonna be, of course, a loop. Last bass-only part at the end is same as the opening part. It is gonna be arranged Genesis-y, and is made with a fantasy medieval beat 'em up in mind. Or maybe something like Gain Ground.

Warriors! March forward! (rock demo)
-FM Synth & Black Metal-
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by EmperorIng »

I did a FM synth/Sega Genesis cover of Michael Oldfield's Nuclear, aka the MGSV trailer song (and eventual meme).

Nuclear - Sega Genesis Cover

Proud of how this one turned out. The YM2612 couldn't quite approximate the "acoustic rock" of the original, or at least I couldn't, so I tried to take it in some slightly different directions with instrumentation, before going all in with guitar finale.
I enjoyed this sketch/demo. It has a pretty straightforward melody and structure. I look forward to listening to it in its finished state.
blackoak wrote: These were cool, they definitely nail the PS1 "piano+string" aesthetic. I showed them to my younger brother, who played the hell out of all those survival horror games back in the day. He approved.

I've been steadily going through your backcatalog, lots of cool proggy chiptune stuff in there. Some of the arrangements are really impressive. I'm also amazed by the authenticity of your imagined Toaplan songs. I honestly don't know if I'd be able to tell the difference between them and the "real" things in a random mix... which is good hehe

I feel like I remember reading this thread several years back when you were just starting out writing music with a DAW. It's pretty damn impressive how far you've come...!
Thanks for listening, and for sharing with your bro! The tracks themselves are pretty clear tributes - I tried to find the right "scary string" sound that was sufficiently period-appropriate :mrgreen: - and they double as learning experiences as well. Basically: learn to write in different moods than I'm used to, as well as expand that portfolio/repertoire.

As for my back-catalog, I'm likewise appreciative of you giving it the ol' once-over. I've always been a fan of prog and fusion, and the influences, aside from the "copy what I'm into at the moment" stuff have always infused my adult work (I'll leave my kid self composer out of this, ha). The TOAPLAN tracks have been some of my best work, in my opinion. They seem to really easily lift right from the piano sketches/ideas to the finished product.

Back when I joined, in 2012, I was considerably more green to production. While I had been tinkering since around 2007 with computer music, I had no idea what I was doing and I won't scare anyone by linking to long-forgotten music sites with my soundfont-abusing, speaker blowing horrors. It shames me to say that there are still many things I have no clue nor ever tried to learn with my DAWs - one of my greatest weaknesses is impatience and a tendency to go for "good enough" and I imagine that that is one of the things that separates me from the greats. :wink:

Much like you I had always written music (since 6 years old), and when I finally started to dabble in software I felt overwhelmed and tried to focus on the absolute bare necessities. For the long slow road up from there it was a process of finding out how to do one new thing every piece or two, usually by googling or forum-begging on other sites. As you mention, the learning process and hearing your work audibly become better is a huge motivating factor for me. 4 Years Ago me thought he sounded "professional", and what a laugh that is to 2018 me! What will 2022 Ing think?

As for workflow:

This is always an interesting question. Things vary because peoples' software or proclivities lead down different paths, but for me I rarely have an idea that I just spitball into a DAW. Skipping past the "noodle at the keyboard" phase, I open up a pre-made template in my software: basically it has pre-connected the synth instruments, soundbanks (e.g. Kontakt/Native Instruments stuff) to MIDI channels, linked those channels to the main mixer (where you put in effects etc.), and have other VST/synths loaded. Setting all this stuff up is time-consuming so a smarter more accomplished mixer from OCremix told me to have a template that in the future I can just plop various instruments in to get the ball rolling.

This might be particular to me, but I tend to pick out a lot of instruments before I even start writing or know fully where the music is going to go. I have a sketch/idea in my head, but everything is still fluid. I start listening and testing out instrument sounds in order to find things that either fit what's in my head or sound interesting. I find getting the drums and bass right is usually critical for me, since those are the instruments you'd hear the most of throughout the piece. I browse through pads and soundscapes to find nice backings (when needed) to add that extra color/atmosphere to the track. I usually don't start getting into the nitty-gritty before having at least 8-12 instruments picked out that I can start assembling a skeleton. I may not use some of them by the end of the writing process, or cut some out, but it helps me when I think of my self like a conductor or one-man-band who has a set amount of material with which to work. As I flesh out little pieces or phrases I start to select out appropriate sounds, pads, accompanying instruments, and so on as I get a better feel for the "flow" of the music. For example, in my piece Enigma of the Shark, it started out as only the piano motif you hear in the piece - the synths, pads, and aquatic atmosphere they give (which is one of the most crucial elements of the track imo) came through messing around and thinking "this would fit well!"

Before I get too far into the piece, I start adding my filter/audio effects to make sure that the sounds/instruments I've chosen still sound good, clear, and complementary when they have reverbs, delays, flangers, phasers, etc. going on. Effects make a big difference, and their application can make a previously perfect sound unusable. This results in a lot of knob fiddling, as it were.

From there it's a lot of process of experimentation - writing, consulting my sketches, adding here, subtracting there, using some effects or not. I listen to the same phrases, sometimes single passages constantly, over and over again, to check for any oddities or things that don't fit. It's no joke that I will have listened to a single piece for hours before I feel like it has passed the grade (how the listener feels is a different matter, ha). I admit to being a narcissist and sometimes listening to my own tunes a lot, but not long after a track is finished, I'll be pretty tired of the damn thing.
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Re: Your new music thread **formerly 'Music Production Threa

Post by FinalBaton »

I messed around with Deflemask yesterday and I thought it was extremely well laid out and simple to navigate and interact with everything!

And yet...

The task of creating patches is too daunting for me at the moment (I don't want to use patches from existing games - although I might cave in). Soo many variables with having to shape ADSR enveloppes for 4 operators for each sound. I can't get patches to sound even remotely close to some real life examples of Megadrive games' sounds.

I think what I will do, is get a FM synth keyboard(I have my eye on one great cheap-ish one near here that has YM2151) and record tracks live in a DAW (Reaper), like I would do with my rock projects. And forego the tracker and virtual instrument route.

I'm a hands on guy and having a real synth will help me understand FM synth. Just by checking videos on a particular 4 operators model helped me a ton learning about algoritms, how they affect the sound and how the operators themselves can be tweaked. That's a testament right there to how a hands on approach works so much better for me.
It will also have the benefit of providing me with great sounding patches right out of the box - and creating your own patches is easy when you have a good sounding patch to start with.

Of course with that way of working, you can't have your song run on a real Megadrive. But maybe I can recreate my songs later in Deflemask... The hardware+DAW way will allow me to get started sooner(I am already very proficient in Reaper).

One thing I've wondered : I've got the impression from a YT video that it was possible to create a Midi Item in Reaper, (or something similar where the notes you hit in a track make short blocks placed on a piano roll with space between them, instead of one monolitic block that takes the whole track) by using actual audio capture(sound from the synth) instead of MIDI signals. Is is possible? I'll go watch that vid again to try and make something out of it. That'd be handy cause that mean I can easily and quickly move notes around and snap them to grid. Not too dramatic if not possible though, I'll be fine with live play. will just take more concentration and bit more time for redoing takes

And in case I still wanna try Deflemask : is there one download containing a TON of Megadrive patches used in good sounding games? I don't feel like hunting a bunch of files, but if someone can recomment me a pack with tons of classic great sounding patches in it, that's be cool.
-FM Synth & Black Metal-
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