makin music thread - The Something Awful Forums

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Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

by default the only computer that has one disk has all nukable content and while it would not really be nice to put everything back nothing would be lost because everything i make gets put somewhere else

i guess what i’m saying is that c:\ should be treated as a drive you can jettison at any moment and not lose irreplaceable work

also let kontakt use streaming from ssd, it’s usually fast enough

# ¿ Sep 17, 2021 20:20

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# ¿ Mar 26, 2023 09:57

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Penisface posted:

i wonder what setup hans zimmer uses for the sound

he was one of the first to have a massive server rack with a whole bunch of computers, each running a gigasampler instance. this probably didn't change, except for the fact that if you're hz you can just sample your own orchestra instead of buying kontakt w/ spitfire like a pleb

before that, composers would buy a stack of 32 e-mu ultras or so, maxed out on ram and hdd, and load those up with one instrument at a time

# ¿ Sep 19, 2021 19:04

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

counterpoint: colin benders

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4hUrCPqD7s&t=2536s

(it takes 42 minutes and some for the music to start)

# ¿ Nov 15, 2021 20:57

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Jonny 290 posted:

And they were so heavily poo poo on by electronic music people. "They don't accurately capture the nuance of the actual TB-303!"

grognards still exist but fortunately they're dying out by the day, though some folks have gotten charmed by the whole "dawless" thing as if there wasn't a default way to make music before vsts

# ¿ Nov 18, 2021 00:40

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Kernel Sanders posted:

Eurorack is basically functional programming for sound

modular synths are analog computers but pure functional implies no sideeffects and given that you are wiring up a giant breadboard i have my doubts

# ¿ Nov 18, 2021 18:59

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Penisface posted:

this discussion has made me think about taking a look at those nord stage things which all the cool pros use to do stuff, so it's a good assumption that it feels and sounds close enough to the real thing

oh my god it costs like 3k€ gently caress that

roland fp30x or fp60x, just get the good 3-pedal box, the smaller ones will skitter all over the floor.

if you mostly care about piano then that will be good enough, nords are for when you also give a poo poo about rhodes and tonewheels and both of those are passable on the fp series

# ¿ Dec 12, 2021 13:54

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Penisface posted:

i have a roland a33 now. i do care about rhodes and all the other retro wurlies and organs, but that part is mostly covered by my roland xv5080 rack box.

yeah the fps basically take their sounds from the fantom range

quote:

i figured that if i ever update, it will be to a doepfer top of the line keybed, so i keep the touchy feely part separate from the sound generation

https://www.kawai-global.com/product/vpc1/

doepfer gets the keys from fatar, their main selling point is compact size

# ¿ Dec 13, 2021 22:30

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Woolwich Bagnet posted:

i am insane and love spending money so i have one of these https://www.kawai-global.com/product/ca79/

https://youtu.be/42e5HuHLrsQ if you wanna spend more

quote:

idk why anyone would get something like an upright piano when they make such good digital grands these days.

because next year's digital piano is always juuuust a bit better than previous year's and with an upright this doesn't happen

unless you get an una corda or one of those weird innovated pianos

# ¿ Dec 14, 2021 18:26

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

echinopsis posted:

midi ain’t too complicated is it?

i still don’t understand sysex but neither does anyone at ableton or bitwig apparently

dave smith is kind enough to put references in the back of the manual but how the hell am i supposed to read them or even send messages like that, c’mon

or should i fire up borland c 4.5 for dos and bitbash stuff across some serial port

i’d really appreciate an eli5 for this

# ¿ Jan 9, 2022 23:22

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

learning every scale in every key allows you to modulate more adventurously

absolutely worth it imo

# ¿ May 5, 2022 17:12

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

echinopsis posted:

yeah just went and had a look at other keyboards and realised 25 key is too small and then in that size I think this second hand one is good value

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MPK249--akai-professional-mpk249-keyboard-controller

Controllers tend to depreciate fairly quickly (even though they're hella important in the studio) or are those AUD instead of USD

They improved the pads and you get CV/gate out for your robot farts, too

# ¿ May 15, 2022 08:32

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Pollyanna posted:

> 200 euro 🙀
> that much dough

200 is pretty acceptable for a high quality plugin

diva, serum, etc all hover around that amount

# ¿ May 19, 2022 20:31

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Jonny 290 posted:

for sure. ive been mixing tracks for about 25 years now. it's a good way to learn how to match keys and vibes and learn the art of the push pull etc.

and im still learning. so my last uws set was the hardest thing ive ever done live. why? because i was playing tokyo citypop. and well i had internalized in my brain that it was probably drum machines right? W R O N G. soon as i started playing i realized they recorded all of this with live instumentation with no click tracks, and they would wander quite a bit BPM-wise. so i was having to really keep my hand on the platter and keep things synced, because band A playing the outro of song B was pushing the groove in a completely different tempo than band C playing the intro of song D, even though Traktor analyzed both at the same overall BPM. it was a big learning experience

native instruments literally recommends loading the track in ableton live and straightening it with complex pro enabled

of course other software has a flexible grid, or tempo cue points that don’t actually hog your actual cue points buttons, and ~~interesting~~ unfunny stuff happens if you set a new cue point halfway because then it gets out of phase but hey the 3.6 beta will get an izotope maximizer which means they’re really listening to user feedback right????

all of it sucks in its own way but i like traktor, i really do.

Jonny 290 posted:

its the hardware really. free mix software exists but you gotta get knobs.

i have a traktor S2 setup, their entry level model with a full two deck interface

this'll hit you for $339 but you get the software along with it, and they're really well built and the standard. i think almost every yosdj i know of has a traktor something

s2 haver here as well, it’s compact and nice. i have a nanokontrol as extra so i have faders for the effects and buttons that i can assign to switch stuff off and on.

remapping it is not as easy as it could be but very worthwhile. i never use rev/flux mode so i have those mapped to master tempo up down (and it sets the clock to master too). cue button of a deck switches the master tempo back to deck. add to prep list and increase browser size do semitone up down because i prep and program all my stuff in advance with comments and poo poo, like “hpf 6 verbkill 8”. first 4 cue points are for first half of the song, last four are for second half, so often it’s the same per track which is nice. the loop size knobs are for per track fine tempo adjustments while the pitch faders range at -12/+12%.

Jonny 290 posted:

for about 25 years now i have been into Computer Music, and it has this baked-in unsolvable flaw, which is that you need a few CPU cycles to make the sound and wiggle the waveform.

this goes for any digital method of synthesis btw, i think a d-50 had like 10ms of latency. for analog devices you can have this as well since the keyboard and knobs are scanned and if that is done by a 1 mhz z80 and lovely firmware (jx10) there is always a delay and in several cases, stepping

# ¿ Jun 11, 2022 20:18

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Pollyanna posted:

it’s not immediately clear to me how djing helps, though if i understand correctly it has to do with the larger scale arrangement and sectioning of tracks. i.e., when and how long to wait before playing patterns and melodies you’ve written up, what patterns to play and when, and when to turn them off.

djing is also about reading the room and knowing when to back off a bit and when to continue. powerblock mixing keeps the energy level (exhaustingly) high but can be pretty cool at times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt6xxMjbMg0

lots of dance music is about energy level which is an abstract combo of volumes, frequency range and impulses. a snare roll doing a crescendo is a simple example of that. djing teaches that this must be used effectively - people dancing must be able to anticipate it but not able to fully predict it. so, likewise, your song can use these tropes in a similar way.

you basically program your own neural net on lots of similar but not identical training data so you get a feel for where it should fit in your own track.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2022 20:38

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

makin’ music thread: loving looove to talk about makin’ music way more than actually making it

# ¿ Jun 11, 2022 20:40

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Pollyanna posted:

I am larrrrrrrrninnnnn

alright, I think I might revisit some of my older tracks with this in mind. if the intent is to facilitate mixing, then that implies that I should think of sections as having “wings” of a sort, and those wings overlapping (or not) helps define the transition between sections. and maybe that’s something I’ve been missing. or maybe I got that totally wrong lol

thank you!!!! Im gonna try making a track with all this in mind now

in that sense building a set is sort of like trying to solve a puzzle, so if your track is mixable, it’s fine. think of it like wood joinery; if you can connect two tracks with a half lap joint it’s better than a basic butt joint (just gis for pics)

some tracks work better than others when mixed together, and one of the coolest things is having a lot of overlap that sounds good so then it’s almost a mashup. “extended” mixes of tracks often do feature those extra measures so you can do exactly that.

anyway first get the structure right. analyze existing tracks. use a spreadsheet - rows are tracks, columns are measures. start with the kick drum and color in when you hear it like it was grid paper. repeat for every instrument in the track. the end result looks v much like what you see in a daw.

Pollyanna posted:

man don’t put me on blast like this……

i am by far the most guilty of this

# ¿ Jun 12, 2022 06:09

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Achmed Jones posted:

i don't see a benefit to transcribing into a spreadsheet over a daw, am i missing something? daw is easier and you do stuff with the result

daws work as well but spreadsheets are dumber technology and won’t tempt you into immediately trying to make it into a track.

analysis and arrangement can thus be kept separate. i am a big believer in not trying to do half a dozen things at once because at its core, making music is making decisions, and you already get lots of those at the same time

also originally it wasn’t even spreadsheets, it was graph paper but i’m :corsair:

# ¿ Jun 12, 2022 16:34

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

oh yeah this is probably pretty useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqJKzJPKoZE

# ¿ Jun 12, 2022 23:25

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Ruffian Price posted:

if you buy tracks from beatport they already have key metadata for dj software, actual key too, not some dumbass proprietary symbol

4lokos basilisk posted:

so i assume the software automagically scans your tracks and converts-maps the key from a regular c/d/e/f... scale to this weird A/B 1-12.. which now makes sense because there are 12 semitones in an octave and i guess the A and B are meant to signify major/minor

camelot wheel is the circle of fifths with the relative major/minors for people who consider music theory to be 1) difficult and academic, 2) crippling for their creativity or 3) the equivalent of broccoli because what the gently caress do you need it for just take two records that sound gud

in that sense it absolutely achieves its target and it’s p easy to read when you get the hang of it, and it’s not really proprietary, just completely useless in other scenarios than for that particular setup

kind of like guitar tabs are to synth nerds

anything that teaches people theory is good stuff, the worst prison is the one where you don’t even know the walls exist in the first place

Laserjet 4P fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jun 21, 2022

# ¿ Jun 21, 2022 21:05

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

akadajet posted:

downloaded abelton lite and nothing made any sense to me so I’m watching some videos about it

arrangement view is the traditional approach, session view works best when you want to improvise because everything is a loop

live makes poo poo a whole less complicated than cubase or fl in my experience

# ¿ Jun 21, 2022 21:07

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

4lokos basilisk posted:

edit: until that fucker hainbach finds out, buys all the available stock, makes a video of it on youtube and then MYSTERIOUSLY the prices go up

any synth youtuber was just a johnny-come-lately compared to jexus or synthmania driving prices up up up

alex ball or espen kraft are just as guilty btw if not more

wrt gear i feel like the dog that caught the car and now doesn’t know what to do with it. i have or had all of the stuff i ever wanted except for a jupiter 8 i guess

also having at least one really nice thing is good. 20 volcas don’t make a polybrute

Laserjet 4P fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Jun 22, 2022

# ¿ Jun 22, 2022 22:58

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

It was revealed to me in a dream that I should make a 4 track EP called “Amen’s Warehouse”

Also the Lyn Collins “Think” break is a good second to the Amen

# ¿ Jun 29, 2022 21:27

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

echinopsis posted:

to me house and techno are similar enough in effect

then i can only conclude that you've listened to superficial variants of both

it doesn't mean they can't blend or borrow elements from another but a good thing to keep in mind is that both were formed by where they originated - techno being machine music from the motor city, house from being the warehouse where disco got stripped down to its essentials

it's both four to the floor but really different

obligatory opinionated reference

genres are meaningless but getting down to the individual song (or even section level) of things is just so tedious. if you don't have a linnaeus, you'll have to invent one.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2022 10:45

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

4lokos basilisk posted:

shot

chaser

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZYLp5uX9Yw

Pollyanna for all that is good watch this and do not skip

Dude has more

Now imagine doing all of this on a sampler with 2 megs of RAM or so

Laserjet 4P fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Jul 21, 2022

# ¿ Jul 21, 2022 00:56

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

synthesizers synthesizers synthesizers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o_lxYImI7Y

dude is living the dream but i’d get hella overwhelmed

# ¿ Jul 24, 2022 11:27

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

killhamster posted:

oh this was far less difficult than i for some reason believed

put all your 2006 newgrounds flash animation skillz into tweening sines and saws

except vital

vital has modifiers and makes things more complex

4lokos basilisk posted:

yeah you need a full 123989tb nas to just fit the tiniest violin in that orchestra

but it will be the most lifelike tiniest violin in the world

https://audiomodeling.com/strings/solo-strings/swam-violin/

it’s always a trade-off between storage and computation

# ¿ Jul 28, 2022 16:58

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

Pollyanna posted:

I’m curious, what kinda vsts and hardware would I need to make this, minus the vocals

https://youtu.be/YUBRvH_X6JY

(note: this is not anime)

the instruments clearly aren’t just samples

not hearing anything that’s not samples of orchestral stuff, but i’ll relisten on better speakers soon. either way sample based orchestral stuff is honestly done best by software because it requires a fuckton of storage

cheapest hardware option is a jv1010 with orchestral expansion but that’s 1994 tech and 8 mb of samples or so

# ¿ Jul 28, 2022 19:41

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

killhamster posted:

have this too, never really explored it

vital and surge are both free and open source and kick the utter snot out of 9 out of 10 stock daw plugins and several paid ones as well. the difference is mostly in professional preset designers for the payware who do genre-specific stuff that can be sold.

i can't recommend them enough

# ¿ Jul 28, 2022 22:20

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

killhamster posted:

also i am 100% serious i would make cybergrunge but atm i do not have an electric guitar

you don't need it, you just need electric guitar samples

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABfabTO5Ivc

# ¿ Aug 6, 2022 02:04

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

nudgenudgetilt posted:

maybe this is too far off topic, but can anyone recommend a good usb-c dac?

dacs are not necessarily audio interfaces but audio interfaces happen to have dacs

in general you want a dac when you want perfect playback of existing material

https://www.rme-audio.de/adi-2-dac.html

rme is not cheap but they support their products for decades

gearspace audiophile discussions about converter quality - great, but the tiny details and differences are irrelevant compared to the stability and driver support

and by the time someone starts yapping about how the soundstage is more three-dimensional while living in a concrete hovel and being over 40 i tune out because they're full of poo poo and lost all of their +15k hearing anyway

e: it's not usb c but audio does not need that kind of speed, i'm running 56 i/o on usb 2. there is however something to say for not burdening stebe's aluminum slab with more dongles

Laserjet 4P fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Sep 22, 2022

# ¿ Sep 22, 2022 06:59

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

tone is in the fingers

and groove is in the heart

sing it, baby

# ¿ Jan 1, 2023 00:55

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

you can solve a lot of the pain with an envelope that has a hold stage and ideally adjustable curves, unless you want to synthesize acoustic snare drums, in which case lol good luck

# ¿ Jan 7, 2023 02:11

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

then you realize you can't run any current-day plugins and it's gonna suck because the last tdm and rtas stuff by now is 20 years old and whatever dongle you had can't call home anymore to check if the license is legit

so congrats on a big harddisk recorder i guess

but yeah in a "let's see if i can get this pdp-11 working" that'd be interesting to document

# ¿ Jan 8, 2023 11:07

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# ¿ Mar 26, 2023 09:57

Laserjet 4P: Mar 28, 2005; What does it mean?; Fun Shoe

https://google-research.github.io/seanet/musiclm/examples/

yeah

# ¿ Jan 28, 2023 19:52

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