In Your Face BASS - What's your strategy?

[musikman1]

16 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

With a single notes performance, try dragging an audio clip and dropping it onto an empty MIDI track. No special dance required.

This did not work for me! At least not completely.... I just tried drag copying an audio clip that is a short single acoustic guitar line.  I dropped the copy into the midi track, and I got midi notes that played the same rhythm as the played a/c guitar line, but all the notes converted at the same pitch all the way across.  I'm thinking maybe there's a setting in this dropdown menu that I'm supposed to use instead of "default"?  I do have Melodyne Assistant, so maybe I can do poly too, once I get this working properly.

Must be some setting that's not right, cuz the acoustic guitar line is a pretty clean one. I didn't need to open Melodyne, right?  I didn't open MD, just drag copied the audio to a midi track.

EDIT:  Ok, I just tried using the "Melodic" setting and I got the note pitches right, that worked, kool!    It's not perfect though, so I guess there's no tweaking the conversion settings.

EDIT 2: I just found this thread that has a good simple video on the process, although the "Select Algorithm" dialog didn't come up, so it may have not been added to the CWbB version at the time of that video. 

 

 

Edited May 28, 2022 by musikman1

[Starship Krupa]

On 5/26/2022 at 9:11 AM, Tim Smith said:

In the natural world compression does not exist. We hear distant sounds and we hear close sound. If Pedro is singing a bit too loud in the choir we can ask him to lower his voice to balance with the rest. Living in an analog world sounds don't often splat with sudden bursts of energy in context to the rest of the surrounding noise. A firecracker or gunshot might be an exception. If we were mixing a gunshot we would probably be compressing it with a very fast attack. Recorded gunshots don't sound anything like real gunshots and what comparison do we have in the real world to 'mud' in a mix?

While I absolutely respect your opinions and (greater) experience, my perceptions in these matters differs. It's part of my understanding of the magic that a compressor can work at quick release settings is to make us perceive sounds as "loud" when they're not actually higher in level than the surrounding information. One of my "lightbulb" moments that took compression from a utility to a creative effect.

Compression does exist in the natural world. Our hearing perception reacts to loud, sharp sounds (and continuous loud stimulus) by closing down somewhat. A compressor can do the psychoacoustic trick of mimicking that closing down. Our brain thinks "oh, there's a sharp sound that sharply attenuated a moment later, it must be LOUD." Think of how sensitive your ears sound if you walk around with industrial earplugs in for 15 minutes or so. Take them out, and for a short period of time it's like you can hear ants walking around, but this quickly attenuates as soon as you're exposed to the sounds of the human environment. Our hearing perception adjusts all the time.

As for what real world situations are similar to collisions and masking in a mix, one of the symptoms I have when I have been working my ears too hard is that I have a hard time hearing conversation in crowded restaurants. This is due to the other human speech occurring around me at the same frequencies as the ones required to hear what my dining companions are saying. Sounds overpower and obscure other sounds all the time in daily life. Listening to music or trying to converse in the car while the windows are rolled down? Someone talking while you're trying to hear what's coming out of your television?

Right now, I'm watching Free Practice at the Monaco Grand Prix and noticing how the trackside commentators raise their voices when cars come around. They raise in not only volume, but pitch, and timbre. Isn't that a natural way of adjusting pitch to avoid collisions (no pun intended here) with the sound of the engines?

This is just my understanding and thinking, please let me know if you think I have it wrong (or my understanding of what you said wrong). Trying to describe these things verbally is always a challenge. ? I'm here to learn (and to help others, if possible).

[Tim Smith]

On 5/27/2022 at 8:33 PM, Starship Krupa said:

While I absolutely respect your opinions and (greater) experience, my perceptions in these matters differs. It's part of my understanding of the magic that a compressor can work at quick release settings is to make us perceive sounds as "loud" when they're not actually higher in level than the surrounding information. One of my "lightbulb" moments that took compression from a utility to a creative effect.

Compression does exist in the natural world. Our hearing perception reacts to loud, sharp sounds (and continuous loud stimulus) by closing down somewhat. A compressor can do the psychoacoustic trick of mimicking that closing down. Our brain thinks "oh, there's a sharp sound that sharply attenuated a moment later, it must be LOUD." Think of how sensitive your ears sound if you walk around with industrial earplugs in for 15 minutes or so. Take them out, and for a short period of time it's like you can hear ants walking around, but this quickly attenuates as soon as you're exposed to the sounds of the human environment. Our hearing perception adjusts all the time.

As for what real world situations are similar to collisions and masking in a mix, one of the symptoms I have when I have been working my ears too hard is that I have a hard time hearing conversation in crowded restaurants. This is due to the other human speech occurring around me at the same frequencies as the ones required to hear what my dining companions are saying. Sounds overpower and obscure other sounds all the time in daily life. Listening to music or trying to converse in the car while the windows are rolled down? Someone talking while you're trying to hear what's coming out of your television?

Right now, I'm watching Free Practice at the Monaco Grand Prix and noticing how the trackside commentators raise their voices when cars come around. They raise in not only volume, but pitch, and timbre. Isn't that a natural way of adjusting pitch to avoid collisions (no pun intended here) with the sound of the engines?

This is just my understanding and thinking, please let me know if you think I have it wrong (or my understanding of what you said wrong). Trying to describe these things verbally is always a challenge. ? I'm here to learn (and to help others, if possible).

I would agree our ears have an internal "compressor like"  function. They try to protect themselves from suddenly overly loud situations or from ongoing louder situations. Too loud and I guess that's what we have hands to cover our ears and legs for

The way the brain selects sounds by order of importance is associated with the process the brain uses to hone on on those sounds. It's an interesting science to study. If a very loud sound happens suddenly our ears can't protect from this to the degree a compressor can respond. I'll never forget kneeling beside a riding mower while servicing it. I had just turned it off. My left ear was right next to the muffler when the engine backfired. I have tinnitus from it to this day. The only way to protect from that would be to have had  the foresight to know it was going to backfire and move away from it. A look ahead compressor might be able to catch and harness it in a mix.

If I hear a loud waterfall, people talking, and a woman screaming in the distance, my brain is going to hone on on the woman screaming even if I can barely hear her. Using both of my ears I am going to try and locate the direction of the scream. If the sound was louder from the right I'm going to move my head in that direction to further discern direction.

In the real world I think more about ear fatigue and the Fletcher Munson effect as ways our ears 'shut down' or adjust. Tinny annoying sounds at high levels tend to wear us down. I say "us" but I don't have a pair of your ears so possibly you like more or less than I do. As a general rule we tend to like some of that in a mix. This is another area we have more control over in a mix than we do in the real world so we can hype these frequencies. We get to accentuate the things we like, while in the real world we don't.

TBH I don't use compression in bass nearly as often as I use it on other kinds of tracks or maybe on the master. For me, bass in relation to other tracks is probably easier to over do than reverb

If I have a good bass sound properly EQ'd hopefully I won't need compression. I won't even side chain to the bass drum if I don't think I need it. If I want to knock the peak down to make room for other instruments I will do that. Sometimes the peak works with the material and other times it needs some attention. Back in the days of AM everything was compressed in the carrier wave and it's really an odd way to hear music compared to hearing it live. FM stereo changed all of that but we still had limits. Today most are using bluetooth ear buds and that is yet another approach. The trick being to make a small speaker in each ear sound like open space in the real world, unless you're making a genre that doesn't require it.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Tim Smith

[Starship Krupa]

7 hours ago, Tim Smith said:

Today most are using bluetooth ear buds

That raises some questions I've had but have never researched. One of them is what effect the CODEC's used for Bluetooth audio have on sound transmitted over the link. What frequency bandwidth is it capable of? What dynamic level? Does it mess with the transients like MP3?

I've kind of been scared to find out.

[Tim Smith]

16 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

That raises some questions I've had but have never researched. One of them is what effect the CODEC's used for Bluetooth audio have on sound transmitted over the link. What frequency bandwidth is it capable of? What dynamic level? Does it mess with the transients like MP3?

I've kind of been scared to find out.

I have several pairs of bluetooth ear buds I occasionally use. As would probably be expected, the cheaper ones don't sound as good as the better ones do. While I wouldn't use mine for critical listening, they do a pretty decent job of covering the bases.

I haven't researched it either. One thing I notice in using any headphones, reverb sounds different in my mixes on headphones compared to my studio monitors. This was using headphone calibration. No air gap between ears and sound drivers to speak of makes a huge difference. Probably is a width thing too. The brain aurally locates using monitors. Using headphones we have to fake the brain into thinking there is space.

I have begun to use a lot more mono or the existing stereo pan baked into the track with less panning, as panning even slightly kills a lot of emphasis in my mixes on cheaper systems and smart phones. Sound great on a nice pair or monitors or stereo system. Greatly diminished on those other systems. Even a nice bose system like the one I have in my car is crap for balance. If I pan at all it isn't much. maybe 20% .