synkrotron

Could be either guitar or mono synth I guess.

I would have a go myself but I am a tad busy with my own stuff at the moment.

Have you not tried plonking notes manually on the piano roll?

8 minutes ago, T on Y said:

Whats the best way to go here chaps ?

No harm in asking around here, @T on Y

I think you would need to specify exactly what you want in terms of scale, BPM, instrument and some recording specs (bit rate/frequency). Even better would be to provide a backing track so that someone can play over it.

I'm curious, though, why doesn't Bandlab work for you?

Hiya Lynn

2 hours ago, Lynn said:

I just use the default settings

It's been so long since I used the default setting that I can't remember why I changed to the settings I have now. I think it was something to do with needing to see more detail across the spectrum.

I'm kinda hoping that someone who knows what they are doing will pop in and say, "your block size is wrong, it should be XXXX."

Here's hoping haha!

cheers

andy

14 minutes ago, craigb said:

And just what fun would that be?  This is the Coffee House!  😜

Ah, so you wasn't moaning

8 hours ago, craigb said:

Why do we have to use Reason for editing on a Cakewalk forum???

You can leave that text box blank, Craig...

Windows 10 works fine for me.

As Jim has mentioned, I have turned off as much as I can, like Cortana and stuff and my two laptops and single desktop are running fine.

Ransomware Protection was a bit of a pain at first and it took me ages to suss out how to add the Libre Office to the list of "apps." Basically, any program that wants to write to the C:\Users folder needs to be added to that list.

I'm still using REAPER out of the box... Works fine for what I need...

24 minutes ago, iScream said:

How does this compare to XenoVerb?

I believe it is possible to demo Blackhole.

Do you already have XenoVerb? 

Price wise Blackhole is cheaper right now.

9 minutes ago, pwalpwal said:

does it need ilok? not seeing tech spec on those sites

Yes, the software version, if you know what I mean... Not a USB dongle.

Becan and Black Pudd... Mmmm...

I have gone into hiding... Still got interwebs though...

5 hours ago, craigb said:

Happy Becan Day!

Shirley every day is Becan Day?

not that I can remember the last time I had me some Becan

Found it:-

http://www.cambridge-mt.com/

Well worth checking out, even just for mixing practise

Edit:

Should have given this link really:-

http://www.cambridge-mt.com/ms-mtk.htm

Just now, Michael Martinez said:

And you used to do audio mixing before

And, to be honest, most of what I learned back then was from all the helpful guys on the old Songs forum, I am sure some of them will remember those times haha!

A great help, around that time, was a website that had complete sets of stems for finished tracks. Name escapes me. But you downloaded the stems, threw them into SONAR and then set to creating a mix. It was a great learning experience from me, along with the aforementioned help.

4 minutes ago, Michael Martinez said:

The drum track is a single audio track

Ah, that's a shame, though not a total disaster. But you're right, EQ may not be able to totally fix it.

One other thing to consider when EQ'ing stuff, is to generally cut instead of boost. There's a good reason for that, apparently, but can't for the life of me think why... I suppose I learn stuff, apply it, and then forget all the background stuff. My bad

11 minutes ago, Fleer said:

that software slider will have to suffice.

Yeah, it'll do for now haha!

4 minutes ago, Michael Martinez said:

I'll will read it and respond later this afternoon.

Absolutely no rush, Michael, and we should wait for more comments from peeps that mix this stuff day to day. I think it safe to say that, given what I create myself, my guidance would not have that much respect here.

cheers

andy

Here's a capture of SPAN well into the song:-

Personally, I get rid of anything below 40Hz and anything above 14kHz (because hearing test I had some years ago showed that I can't hear anything above that frequency anyway).

But, overall, I think this shows that the mix is at least in the right ball park, notwithstanding the comments above.

1 minute ago, Michael Martinez said:

Are the vocals mixed correctly?

To me, the vocals sounded okay.

3 minutes ago, Chuck E Baby said:

Great job. Bass sounds great. Drums are a little bit low in the mix. A great drum sound and a great drum level will make a huge impact.

What are you using for a drum VST ?

Thanks for picking up on this, Chuck. I felt a bit uncomfortable posting what I did. Perhaps you could put me right on any points that might be misleading Michael.

cheers

andy

Hi Michael,

Having listened to Grey Skies and Blue Waters, my first impression is, the kick drum hardly has any definition.

I have listened on both headphones and my Tannoy Reveal nearfield monitors.

And I downloaded the file so that I could open it in Sound Forge and have SPAN running.

I notice at the start, when there is no kick or bass present, that there is stuff happening at the low end, when I, personally, do not think there should be.

It's not much at all, really, but it is there and could be helping to mask the kick.

What I do is use EQ on pretty much every audio track in a project and I use a high pass to cut out low end frequencies on elements that do not benefit the mix. It is surprising how much low end energy things like vocals and piano, well, anything really. Best cut it out, if it doesn't bring anything to the party, if you know what I mean.

Worth experimenting with EQ on one track at a time, and then sweep the high pass up to the mids, while listening to the track playing. You may find that you can cut quite a bit of that low end without any real detriment to the track.

Also the bass guitar is quite loud compared to the kick, so this is an obvious thing to tackle. Although I have never tried it myself you could experiment with using some kind of side chain, from the kick, to help reign in the bass guitar at the point that the kick sounds. Hopefully someone else could help further with that.

But it might be just a case of lowering the level of the bass guitar, and perhaps raising the kick a touch.

I have to say, take what I say with a pinch of salt as it has been so long since I have mixed a "proper" piece of music. And in the meantime, someone with the right experience will be along to help.

cheers

andy

21 minutes ago, Michael Martinez said:

Would you mind making a critique of my mix here:

Okay, can't promise anything useful because I am mainly a sound designer who concentrates on ambient and soundscape stuff. Back in a min...

16 hours ago, Fleer said:

You’ll never look back. 

Indeed!

I use Adaptiverb on most of my stuff...

I did pull the trigger, just now as it happens, on Blackhole.

I have Pro-R, which will always be my go-to reverb, but I really like the simplicity of Blackhole, especially from an automation point of view... Can get some good creative weirdness going on.

Would love to have the hardware version one day...

5 minutes ago, Michael Martinez said:

Well, the length of attacks and stuff becomes clear looking at the waveforms

Yes, indeed, and although some of us have mentioned SPAN, it will not show you that sort of thing as it is a spectrum analyser. What it really helps me with is keeping an "eye" on my low end, which headphones and even my nearfields are not that good at, and I can't afford to splash out on a decent set of nearfields at the moment.

One thing I like to do is upload my current "work in progress" piece to SoundCloud, which I can then "cast" to me Android TV and therefore listen on my Pioneer sound system. That really does help give me a good idea of any problem areas, low end, mid resonances, that kind of thing.

Hi Peeps,

Over the last couple of years I've been experimenting with various SPAN settings and I am interested to here how everyone else here sets up their favourite Spectrum analyser

I use SPAN on my Master bus, to check over all mix, and I like to see a stereo representation, so my GUI looks like this:-

White for left, Red for right.

And these are my settings:-

Anyone care to comment, or share their SPAN settings?