PavlovsCat

This is a song I wrote back when I was 23 and a working musician (a drummer, but piano was my first instrument, organ my second, then drums) and planned to perform with an original band I put together in the 90s that never found a lead singer and disbanded before recording or playing out. So, I have a bunch of songs that no one ever heard but a handful of musicians out of Chicago a long time ago. I stopped performing as a musician around 2000 due to tendonitis but decided I could deal with some pain and got a new DAW PC and have been recording in the past year, so between not playing for two decades and tendonitis, I'm no longer much of a musician and I only did background vocals as a working musician, so the caveats aside, this is middle-age me covering young me. I know next to nothing about mixing and mastering and rely on my ears -- which aren't great (I have a significant hearing loss) -- so I would especially welcome insights on mixing. Yeah, those are a lot of caveats, but while I had a lot of confidence when in my skills as a musician, I was never a good singer and now I can't play very well, so sharing this publicly is not the easiest thing to do. So, I'm never going to be able to sing very well. I'm mainly looking for some advice on how to mix better. This song actually has a bridge, but I was playing it from memory and completely forgot how the bridge goes (there's a demo somewhere in my basement that would be a major undertaking to find) so I'm hoping I either can recall the bridge at some point or I'll just write a new one rather than spending 30 hours searching for the original demo. Everything was played using sample libraries via midi controllers. I played all the instrumental parts and sang the vocals. The "mmm mmm mmm mmm" female vocal is from Ehtera's Soul sample library. The guitars are mostly Orange Tree Samples' libraries. While I've worked with Orange Tree Samples going back to their early days and have become good friends with Greg, I only started using the acoustic slide guitar library with this song -- that's what triggered my memory of this song. OMG, I am in love with that library. Anyhow, I welcome your constructive criticism to make this song better (and of course, I realize the first method would be to find a better singer! Hahaha. Unfortunately, that wasn't an option).

I'm saying that history -- and Troels' 8Dio history -- leads me to anticipate future sales promotions of some sort. Why? Eventually sales will slow and they'll want to motivate consumers to make a purchase in a short time frame for a variety of reasons, including paying the bills. Promotions are one of the ways a retailer can drive revenue on their schedule. I write that as a strategist who has, a long time ago, was called on by Troels. I think the trendy anti sales strategy he's now employing is never going to be a serious long term strategy for almost any retail business. For the group of consumers who complain when they see a sale after they make a purchase, I would suggest therapy. Dead serious, it's ridiculous and neurotic. Yes, everyone has bought something that later went on sale for less. It's not a big deal for an adult and doing a business strategy around those consumers is worse than silly because they're eventually going to do promotions which will irritate those customers. Guaranteed. Let's check back in a year.

I would get this if it went on sale. But Troel's says SoundPaint libraries will never go on sale. Anyone want to bet how long that will be the case?

I'm not sure SampleTekk has anything left that I don't already own. @Per Larsson, please make more libraries!

That is truly superb. I love the song and the top notch playing. I would be very interested in learning more about your and your band's musical backgrounds, @Hidden Symmetry. Kudos on a great job.

Thanks. I'm really looking to get better at mixing -- I'm fairly incompetent at mixing at the moment. So the thick parts, are those the end of the verses/choruses? I'm trying to figure out how to spot this stuff and fix it. Funny, everyone here is a lot kinder about my playing than I am! It's appreciated. Although I'm hesitant to turn my vocals up. I suppose they're not as loud as they could be because I wanted to draw less attention to them.

Do you mean off notes with my voice or an instrument? I'm guessing you mean my voice. I'm not much of a singer and didn't spend time with Melodyne on it (which I own). Can you tell me the minutes and seconds that you found particularly worth fixing? Thanks furor for the feedback.

FTR, I am a entrepreneur and longtime business/strategy/marketing/digital marketing/branding professional, not an IT professional --so, no doubt, if you're an IT pro, you're going to understand these things far beyond me (I used to lead digital marketing at major brands, including responsibility for corporate and ecommerce websites -so I have experience with this stuff, but not at the level you would if you're an IT pro). My point is just that it is commonplace and has been for a long time. As far as your earlier question on my reply to Starship Krupa, I edited my post down to my basic point so that others don't read something unintended into it. I was making an observation that people often lack self-awareness to realize the contradiction when calling themselves positive, "glass half full" and categorizing others. I wasn't making a reference to Starship Krupa when I later wrote about people liking a post, but meant that people can lack self-awareness and see themselves very differently than they actually are. But I realized that the way I wrote it was pretty clumsy and easily misinterpreted and edited my earlier post down. FTR, I've only ever seen friendly posts from @Starship Krupa and I was responding on a philosophical level, which is, of course, maybe kinda ridiculous in the deals forum!

@Starship Krupa I absolutely wasn't telling you what to do, it was quite the opposite. You quoted and critiqued my words and admonished me to think more like you. I was merely responding with the reasoning behind my philosophy -- which all sounds way too heavy for the deals forum. There was nothing unkind in my response -- explicitly stated or intended. I was just explaining my perspective -- why I think as I do and then I went back to watching Spongebob with my daughter (true story). Now, if you truly are a glass half full person, read my posts that way. FTR, in college, beyond music, of course, I LOVED philosophy, ideology and religion courses and loved discussing those topics (although almost none of my friends felt the same way!). So I am inclined to enjoy discussing those topics -- or at least I did until it became nearly impossible for most people to have civil conversations on those topics. Anyhow, peace. I wrote what I meant, but none of it was meant in any unkind manner.

And that's more than 1,000 separate attacks -- from different IPs. Granted, many could be from the same hacker using different VPNs. But I've led major sites that get 10 million plus unique visitors per month and I've advised both major global brands and small devs and everyone gets a ton of hack attempts these days. If I look at Google's reporting, the majority of small developers -- whose sales are posted here -- have been hacked in the last two years and their databases have been compromised. Most people simply aren't aware of the situation and for small developers -- the majority of them don't even send out alerts when they've been hacked. Did 8Dio and will they? Ethically, they should be communicating with all of their customers. Without question. I'm a good 8Dio customer. But I have yet to see any communications from them about their recent hack and they really should be communicating honestly with their customers about that.

@Starship Krupa I think of myself as a glass half full person too -- although I must also admit that the glass is half empty from the perspective of someone who wants a full glass. I acknowledge the good and bad that exists and the struggle that some have. Being the grandson of a Jewish WWII veteran and son of a police officer keeps me from seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.

According to the VI Control thread they are back up again. But Bitdefender says there's still malicious scripts on their pages. Someone posted their support person telling a customer not to worry about his data. Um, a word to the wise. If a hacker can bring down their entire site, you should be concerned about your data. It would be foolish not to be. When they get this worked out, change passwords and NEVER EVER store your credit card info at a small developer's site. At least that's my opinion. When I look at how many small sample and plugin developers have been hacked in the last five years and databases compromised, it's not a small number. It's why I only use PayPal when buying from small devs.

I played drums professionally many years ago but was stopped due to a repetitive stress injury that resulted in lifelong tendonitis that causes pain after just a few minutes of playing. Consequently, it was only during the pandemic that I was spending more time at home and thought to myself, I'll never play at the level I once did, I can't even realistically practice. But I can still have fun playing -- even if I can only play for a few minutes at a time and have to limit myself to simple to play songs. So, last year I got a new DAW PC and started recording. While I wrote at least a few hundred songs over the years, I thought I'd start my musical rehab/practice with some beloved re-arrangements of Beatles, Zeppelin and other songs some of my friends might enjoy. Unfortunately, I was never a singer and I never learned much about mixing or mastering and am only starting to learn very basic things. I've been using Izotope and other AI -based mixing and mastering tools hoping they can do what I don't know how to do. This was recorded via midi controller using sample libraries -- relying heavily on Orange Tree Samples libraries for guitar and bass, the grand piano is Embertone''s Walker Lite -- which I loved for this song. The drums are ezDrummer library played in Superior Drummer. The Tron sounds are from MTron Pro. There's more, but those are the ones I leaned mostly heavily on. I would welcome mixing and mastering advice and if anyone out there is looking to collaborate, feel free to PM me. I can obviously use a singer -- and if anyone with a good voice wants to replace my lousy voice on this, please let me know. That said, I did have a blast playing this. It was my first time playing it -- and as I can only play a limited time without pain, the piano part was my first take, as are most of the tracks, so yeah, it's sloppy, but unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to be capable of playing at the level I once did, so even though it's not a great performance, I'm fairly happy with it. I mostly want to learn more about how to mix.

Everybody gets targeted like mad these days. I have a small dot com that has received some notoriety in the marketing, advertising and PR world and I don't think we've had a month in the last several years where there wasn't at least 1,000 hack attempts. Fortunately, most of them are pretty weak -- and we're pretty hardcore about security measures. But yeah, if you ever want confirmation that the world isn't filled with an overwhelming percentage of kind, well-meaning people, you can look at hack attempts or just look at social media. This is why I've taught my kids to look for, appreciate, give out freely and celebrate kindness.

Out of all the plugins I own, the one I use on nearly every project is KONTAKT. Indispensable. It was a game changer for samplers. Absolutely a must buy for any DAW user that uses sample libraries.

One of Izotope's Elements libraries that they gave away for free or super cheap for a limited time led to me becoming a paying customer. A free Softube freebie plugin led to me being a customer of theirs. A Production Voices free piano library led to me being a paying customer. Xperimenta's freebie libraries led to me being a customer of theirs. Fluffy Audio's freebie libraries led to my being a paying customer. A Waverunner freebie library led to me being a paid customer of theirs. I'm sure there are dozens of other examples I can't recall at the moment. Giving sample and plugin users a free taste of their offerings can be a great way a sample/plugin developer can bring new customers aboard.

It's worth mentioning that it's two weeks since I put in a ticket and the developer said he'd help me but never got back to me. I was able to get some of the libraries working -- I did purchase Orakle, which works. I think their libraries are nice, but their plugin, as others have posted about, has many problems -- even a YouTuber livestreaming his "review" of their library with the developer calling in, had problems that couldn't be resolved when demonstrating the plugin. I think, if the developer commits to improving the plugin, the libraries are very worthwhile. But that doesn't mean much if the plugin is plagued with problems that keep it from working properly. Consequently, my advice to others is download the freebies and if they work for you, great. But test out the free plugin and libraries thoroughly before making a purchase.

Who am I kidding??? I'm going to end up buying this. I just know it. I was just looking for someone to persuade me. I watched Simeon's video a long time ago and was watching a little of it again. Thank goodness this library is inexpensive!

I have Sospiro Strings and definitely find Ben's libraries are a bargain. As a rock musician, I'm not totally sure I would have a use for Oscillation Strings, but it's such a bargain, I keep looking for reasons. I'm thinking after I play with it a while I might be inspired. I have always been in love with the sound of the cello. Ben seems like a really humble, down to earth, and very talented musician and sample developer. I did watch and enjoy your interview with him @Simeon Amburgey. I think String Flow is the library I may pick up next. To Simeon's point in his video, I actually want dry strings. Most of the music I record is the realm of rock, alternative rock or folk rock (more in the Damien Rice / Irish folk vein than the old school American folk). So, considering that, if anyone else is doing rock and uses these and wants to share how useful Oscillation Strings is for them, I'm all ears. I just love the sounds of the cello and strings so much, I'm very tempted. For anyone who has yet to buy any of Ben Osterhouse's libraries, I highly recommend them. I think they are great bargains. He's exactly the kind of small developer I love seeing succeed. Really great quality stuff, he's an out of the box thinker and his prices are really low for what you're getting.

@Fleer I've had a couple of friends -- who really know their stuff -- who bought this years ago and said it was a complete, unredeemable mess of articulations with extremely poor scripting. If you do searches in this forum and VI Control, I have never seen a single comment from anyone who purchased this who argued in defense of it. I don't want to bash any developer, but there's enough information on this one that his libraries are extremely poor that I feel I would do a disservice to the community to not share this -- plus, I've seen your posts for so many years, I feel I couldn't not share what I know. Do the searches and you'll see what I'm referring to. Also, the library is constantly on sale somewhere for this same price.

It seems like Vybz is often on sale via the dev and ADSR for $9.99 USD. Has anyone used it that can compare it to the beloved XLN Audio RC-20 or Wave's Retro Fi. I am a sucker for lofi sounds.

I understand that the copy on their site isn't clear. But for those wondering why there is a question of whether these were sampled from an actual vinyl album, consider that numerous libraries that Vintage Drum Samples, AnyDayLong and Past To Future have for sale specifically state that they were sampled from commercial vinyl albums, a practice which is clearly copyright infringement. For example, I took this from one of Vintage Drum Samples' pages for another drum library: "All breaks are hand cut from rare vinyl records & perfectly looped..." https://vintagedrumsamples.gumroad.com/l/CWgQY "Very rare and never heard before drum breaks/loops from Far East Vinyl records..." https://vintagedrumsamples.gumroad.com/l/gnmss Some of the copy on certain Past to Future libraries and loops is similarly problematic, while other copy is similarly unclear -- it's obvious the same person wrote all of it. Consequently, I've always refrained from buying the questionable materials. But this present library and the unclear copy --which first states that its actually Stubblefield's drums then later states that they're imitating --- which could mean that they've sampled his drum kit and the midi pattern imitates his style -- does warrant clarification. The developer, by his own words, does sample and sell samples of commercially released vinyl record albums, and those recordings are certainly protected by copyrights, so considering that, I think it is a very important question to ask the developer. I also wonder why he has a habit of changing his name and his commercial accounts every so often -- which, is not ideal if you buy his libraries and later want support. He was previously selling libraries -- including some of the current libraries and the same demos he's now using with his latest name-- under a different name, AnyDayLong -- a name he used to post under on this forum. He also had several shill accounts on this forum that he used to make additional posts for his libraries as if he were a customer (the only posts the accounts ever made were to praise and promote his libraries; those accounts stopped posting after he stopped operating under AnyDayLong). Of course, that doesn't exactly cause me to have great trust his integrity. But I have libraries from his AnyDayLong days and they're decent, pretty much identical to Past to Future libraries.

Yes, I did see that, but the other copy makes things unclear, plus if you look at his various libraries, some do state that they have been recorded some from commercial vinyl albums. Consequently, realizing they are not native English speakers/writers and the various grammatical errors on their current and past sites, it does beg the question. Some of the sample libraries at Past to Future states that they recorded the samples from vinyl record albums -- from vintage records. Realizing the grammatical errors. I considered that "imitated" could mean the midi and the recording, like some of their other recordings their copy states was sampled from commercial albums, might have been taken from Stubblefield's actual playing. That's why I believe it's worth asking the developer. After all, we know they engage in sampling commercial albums on other libraries-- which has always kept me from purchasing those libraries.

Actually, while this wasn't your point. I clicked and looked more carefully on the developer's landing page and it appears that this sample may indeed have been sampled off of a James Brown album (their page reads, "The amazing drum sound of the legendary Clyde Stubblefield! ). If so, that's a clear violation of copyright. I would be concerned about this and avoid buying until there was clarification. If someone buys this and was indeed sampled off of a James Brown album and you used it in your song that was commercially released, you would easily have a slam dunk lawsuit against you. @facets can you please clarify if you sampled these drum sounds from a commercially released album without permission or if you recorded drums on your own for this library? EDIT: It also states that they managed to imitate his sound as Michael A.D. points out below, which I had realized when I wrote this post, however, the copy is unclear, and considering that the developer acknowledges that some of his sample libraries are recorded from commercial vinyl record albums, I find it very important to ask for his clarification on this matter, as the developer does engage in sampling from commercial record albums, which is a violation of international copyright laws.

Well, you originally argued that this was loops, which is an entirely different point.. But I think your second argument is also off. I'm a former pro drummer and I absolutely want very detailed samples, layers and round robins for most performances -- I love Superior Drummer libraries, they're absolutely well suited for me 90% of the time. However, if we're going for an effect like this library does -- that funky drummer vibe -- this library easily has the level of detail, layers and round robins to do the job. Take a serious look at the specifications and I can't imagine this library wouldn't be able to handle your needs if you're using it for that funky drummer vibe. If you disagree, provide something with the level of detail you need. Again, I'm comparing it with the other libraries this developer has released, the ones through Past to Future and the various choices on the market. I own funk kits from Toontrack, XLN and several other developers. If I was doing the drum part on a funky song where I had a bunch of ghost notes and dynamics, this wouldn't be my first choice, but there's no library out there for even twice their price that can deliver that.