Amberwolf Posted December 6 Share Posted December 6 (edited) A Peek Over The Wall https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/a-peek-over-the-wall-wip This is related to a (very good) anime called Haibane Renmei; imagine one of the Haibane sneaking up Guri's wall, and getting a look outside.... This one I started because I was having trouble hearing anything i needed to in the other WIP (see link below) so i forced myself to (so far) just use sounds out of the "beta" free packs from Cymatics.fm, and to do what I could to misuse them by layering any loops so they are from different "sets", if there were "stems" I used them from different sets too, with a few exceptions, to make me make decisions I probably would not otherwise have done. Wherever loops came from the same set, I misaligned them on purpose so they wouldn't be "as-designed", and chopped out bits as needed to make things fit what I heard in my head as I listenened to the results. Added fx to some (including Acmebargig's Shred to some of the guitar bits after rearranging the chopped up pieces of those). Except the bassline, which is created using some of the midi clips supplied with some of the stemmed clip sets, then edited / cleaned up to play a Z3TA2+ synth with an arp. I also "splattered the canvas" with various sounds first, dropping things into the tracks (using a template made from the other WIP over here I don't know if it will get longer; there are some sections I would like to expand on but don't yet know what I'd be doing with them, and i'm wiped out and can't concentrate ATM. EDIT: previous versions: https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14900124 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901375 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901398 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901402 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901406 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901818 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901819 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14905850 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14905853 https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14905852 Edited Monday at 03:48 AM by Amberwolf 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amberwolf Posted December 7 Author Share Posted December 7 New version 2, 120524 000001 000030h -- mix edits, arrangment tweaks, etc https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/a-peek-over-the-wall original version still over here https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14900124 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
equality Posted December 7 Share Posted December 7 Cool. Nice and at same time mysterious soundscape. Liked the theme. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amberwolf Posted December 9 Author Share Posted December 9 New version 5 120524 000001 000046l https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/a-peek-over-the-wall previous versions still up at the sounclick links in the first post. Main changes: removed bellchime intro measures to go straight into the piano, reduced bass a lot, reduced percussion some, effected some percussion clips (reverb to push back in stage). (details in one of hte replies belwo) I also added two string tracks, one Dimension with Full Tremolo strings, the other SI Strings Detache Strings, with hand drawn (snap off for "feel and movement") versions of some of the vocal melodies as backing accents in various places. Synth track volume automation was used for dynamics to "draw up" some notes after they start to go along with the vocal dynamics, or in some cases to contrast with them. On 12/7/2024 at 1:11 AM, equality said: Cool. Nice and at same time mysterious soundscape. Liked the theme. Thanks! It's meant to be mysterious so it's good that came across; the idea is that one of the Haibane (kind of a ghost but not exactly; they dont' know who they were) in Guri (kind of a purgatory but not exactly) climb to the top of the wall surrounding the area, and see whatever is outside that (which is never shown or described, though a few things are implied by things that happen in the show).... On 12/7/2024 at 9:18 AM, jkoseattle said: Yeah, well that's pretty cool. I've got nothing against all the beats in that kind of music, just personally not my taste, (and imo that disqualifies it from being called "ambient" :-)). Yeah, it's not really ambient (I started out trying to do that, but "couldn't help myself" after hearing some of the other clips available in the sets... 😊 After playing around with it I think I'm going to "branch" it into two "forks" (like software) and have this one and then one that's really ambient using the same main sounds and themes...but I haven't started that one yet. On 12/7/2024 at 9:18 AM, jkoseattle said: To be more specific I'm really not a fan of those sub-basement frequencies, the ones that cut through the sheet metal of cars at stop lights, so that overrides a lot else for me. Setting aside my personal distaste for that sound, I still think it's occupying too much of the sonic energy. Maybe try taking that low bass down a few notches, and also maybe have it play fewer notes. I think it might be stealing focus from everything else. I took the whole bass track down by about 9db, and the bus down by 6db and the mix into the percussion/bass subbus down another 3db. Does that help? I have severe tinnitus (which only gets worse over time) so it's hard for me to hear a bunch of things in the higher frequency bands, and it can cause me to make some poor mixing choices even outside those bands (since it's not just the specific frequencies I can't hear, it's the overall whining/buzzing in my head that distracts me 24/7 from all the rest of it too). FWIW, I don't really like that kind (well, amount) of bass either, that shakes the ground for blocks around. (the actual sound, I don't mind, it's the earthquake-level power they use in those sound systems that makes it a physical assault upon everyone around them for blocks. I don't have a system that can do that, and I doubt that any of my speakers or headphones can even reproduce those frequencies, so I don't really know which things cause them. I've got EQs on every track and the master bus taking multiple passes of -18db on everything below 20hz, as someone on the untitled WIP said that every song I'm making has huge amounts of those frequencies that are taking up energy in the track but are things you can't hear anyway, But it doesn't change the Voxengo SPAN results at all, no matter how many of those I stack or where...so I have no way of telling what is going on down there. If I can find a different free spectrum analyzer that does work at the low end, I can put it in Audacity (which now loads VSTs) and export the SONAR results as individual tracks, then look at them in Audacity to see which ones have the problem, then play with filters until I find a fix, then apply that fix within SONAR.... (long story, can't see any new vsts in SONAR, can't fix that without breaking existing ones, there's a discussion in another thread here somewhere about it already, no need to worry about that here). On 12/7/2024 at 9:18 AM, jkoseattle said: The pan flute melodic thing and other higher-up sounds seem like they are trying to create a kind of spiritual high altitude Himalayan atmosphere, but the percussion is working against that vibe, bringing it down into the club, so to speak. Does that even make sense? Anyway, thanks for sharing! Interestingly there is no flute or any other wind instrument (other than processed human voices in the clips from the Cymatics sets; I'm guessing one of those must be what you're hearing). It *is* supposed to be "high up" in that it's on top of a high "city wall" looking down on the unknown landscape / etc below. I reduced the percussion by about 6db overall, and some things more than that. Does it help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amberwolf Posted December 9 Author Share Posted December 9 Just for the sake of trying it, I rearranged some of the clips and tracks so I could just mute out all the bassline and most of the percussion, leaving just the slow stuff and accents, to make a "closer to ambient" version : https://www.soundclick.com/amberwolf/?more=14901552 To really become ambient it would need quite a bit of changes, and an underlying unifying bed-sound I haven't decided on. It would need to not only fit what's there, but also fit the idea behind the song. In that show, the opening is full of rushing air / wind as someone falls and falls and falls in their cocoon dream, so, probably that kind of thing, so there's a temporary bed of wind sound. I'm still working on the original "ambient beats" 😆 version but the above will probably be the basis of an extended full-on ambient version of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amberwolf Posted December 9 Author Share Posted December 9 New version 7 120524 000001 000057p https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/a-peek-over-the-wall Cleaned out unnecessary bassnotes that trigger the arp, and transposed the remaining ones in various places to match vocals or complement them. Added wind fx (same as that used in "ambient" version) at beginning and just barely in the background during the break. Other minor edits and timing tweaks, various mix tweaks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amberwolf Posted Sunday at 09:02 PM Author Share Posted Sunday at 09:02 PM I've been poking around at mixing tweaks, and ran into a wierd issue that took several days to figure out the cause of; the cause is listed at the end, in case anyone ever runs into this, but it's wierd, and doesn't make any sense to me. It's quite likely that whatever wierdness caused it isn't even present in current versions of Sonar, but I don't have those to verify, so this is just archival info partly so I can refer to it later if I ever run into the issue again. Removing some unused empty archived tracks (mostly MIDI) suddenly caused all synths to stop receiving any MIDI from their tracks. The MIDI tracks feeding them all had signals on their MIDI meters, so they were outputting data, but none of the synths were receiving any. The synths would work if I played them from their internal keyboards in their GUI, but not from any clips on any track, even re-routing tracks to other synths, or inserting new synths, or deleting all synths and making new synth tracks, etc. Same for the MIDI tracks--I even made new tracks to route to existing (and later new) synths, and drew in notes that should've worked, but didn't. Undoing all the way back to the original empty archived track deletions did fix it.... but nothing about those tracks could affect the others, even if they weren't archived they had no data on them, etc. Certainly shouldn't make all synths suddenly unable to receive midi data. Redoing the deletion, then changing the midi buffers in Global prefs from the 25ms I always use (without issues) to 250ms (because adding a zero was fast and easy) also fixed it, but anything less than 250ms would not work, even though the projects all work fine with a tenth of that (except for this one after the track deletion). So I deleted the empty archived tracks one at a time until I found the specific one that did it, and it had two disabled MFX in the bin--Track Doorman by TenCrazy, and Quantize by Cakewalk, in that order. Removing TD would cause all synths to not work, but removing Q didn't affect anything. Neither should affect anything, as neither one is in an active track, and this track is archived as well as empty. Adding a TD to the track doesn't fix the synths, *only* undoing the original TD deletion. Tried rerouting the track midi output to all possible ports, channels, but still deleting the TD or the track would nuke the synths MIDI again. Moving the TD to *any* MIDI track in the project, active, inactive, archived, empty, or with data, still allows the project to work as normal...and removing the empty archived track doesn't then cause any issues. No other TD (existing or added now) causes this problem when removed...just this one. 😕 So I just left the disabled TD in one of the tracks, and the project works fine...but I have no idea how removing a disabled MFX (that was in an empty archived track!) could break all MIDI in a project. Back to the irregularly unscheduled updates of the track, now that I can work on it again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amberwolf Posted Monday at 03:21 AM Author Share Posted Monday at 03:21 AM (edited) New version 10 120524 000001 000085y https://amberwolf.bandcamp.com/track/a-peek-over-the-wall Assorted minor edits and mix changes, replaced some shakers with dog pants from JellyBeanThePerfectlyNormalSchmoo, added some crow sounds. I couldn't get JellyBean to pant in time with the notes so used Audiosnap and dragged the markers around as needed to fit. Timing not perfect yet but had to move on for the moment; couldn't listen to the looping of the short section anymore tonite. 😢 Edited Monday at 03:57 AM by Amberwolf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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