The TelenatorWell, Daniel, I needed a refreshing break just now and your tune delivered. What Now Homeschool?
Dance really isn’t my bag, but that’s not to say I would necessarily refuse working on some of the production of this genre. It can be fun music, and I thought this one was quite enjoyable — it sort of carried me back a few years, which may be some of my own dinosaur showing. I really thought you had all the parts in the right place, too. It also ended pretty well, which can be a hard thing once a good groove gets going. I particularly liked the way you consistently had that synth interwoven throughout.
If I may, I’d like to make two vital suggestions to allow this and following tunes even better expression, since you probably intend more along this direction.
First of all, do yourself a huge favour and never render your MP3s in 192kps if ever possible. This song will sound so much better in 320. Did you know that your work loses up to 90% of the digital music information in 192? Yes, and the ‘psycho-acoustic algorithm’ built into the MP3 format does not do justice in making up for it. In my opinion 320 loses enough already, but for MP3 that’s about the best we have consistently through the music market right now. I fully realise that there are still some websites where you may need to post songs that can handle nothing better than 192, but you can render for them (or often, they simply ‘do it to you’) on a case-by-case basis. Otherwise, do stick with 320, because I can tell some of the ‘air’ got knocked out of the tune. The ultra highs suffered and, for all I know, some of that nice bass you have in there might sound even fuller and richer. (I can’t even do a proper analysis for someone when hearing only 192.)
The other bit concerns the vocoding or ‘robotising.’ Even though some will carry on about how dated and overdone this effect is in music, I think it still has its place, and in your case it fits perfectly here. I happen to know that most listeners still like the ‘candy’ of this effect if not overdone in this and other genres, either. I bring it up now in the event you would like your lyrics to be better understood when robotised, as there were a few lines I had trouble understanding.
Back in days of mostly analogue yore, we tried it on everything, even the neighbor’s hound. One trick you might want to experiment with, in the event you truly do want the lyrics fully understood (there may be cause to be obscure at times), is to try some careful over-pronunciation of the sections likely to be difficult.
It reminds me of the very classic musical, My Fair Lady, where what’s-her-name, Elisa? is made to repeat “the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain” in dramatic and excruciating over-pronunciation to correct her deep cockney accent and poor diction. So, perhaps try this — it is often a great fix. Vocoding when done properly (as in yours) has that tendency to smear some normally clear speech.
Hope that helps! Good luck with the rest of your dealings in this genre. Very well done, but now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go practice my dance moves.
Cheers!
Tele
The TelenatorDetails for this one are posted at bottom on this forum link:
http://www.zynewave.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2915
This example was my first recording using the new Scuffham Amps S-Gear 2 guitar plugin and was also a test mix to check levels and make sure the guitar was ‘sitting’ right in the mix. I made a last-minute decision to use S-Gear instead of my usual Digitechs for these. This is one from a latest (almost finished) batch of six instrumentals.
http://soundcloud.com/telenator/old-machine-meets-new-machine
Old Machine Meets New Machine
Cheers!
The TelenatorIn case you’ve already had at it, for future reference — as CymaticCycle said, the drive wiper is a great tool on CCleaner, but it will only wipe empty space, not empty folders and lefover bits. (CCleaner also cleans best of freeware and comes with the most ‘gentle’ of registry tools.)
Best uninstall program (that’s free) is IOBit’s ‘Uninstaller’, as it has a setting ‘Advanced’ that uninstalls your programme using each programme’s uninstall if it comes with one, if not it uses its own, just like Windows; however, after that it takes you to ‘Powerful Scan’, which will clear out all reg. entries and most leftover rubbish from said programme. For the few that still have a leftover empty file in Programme Files or elsewhere, you can go in manually and delete.
To be double sure, set folder tools in Explorer ‘Tools>View’ on “show hidden files’, then do a search by inserting, in the case of Podium, the name Zynewave, then re-search under the name Podium. (I always search company name, product name.) Then delete or shred anything that turns up, reset to ‘hide folders’ and you’re clean.
Podium is not an offender — a rather minimal install, but many — even respectable — programmes crap all over a registry by writing all sorts of sometimes seemingly unrelated-sounding rubbish. You can run into it years later sometimes. On all programmes, always check Roaming or Local and/or ProgrammeData, unless you already know exactly which normally hidden folders they populate.
I’ve always hated this dodgy ‘game’ Windows allows and programmers play with users — fast and loose with dumping rubbish all around.
The TelenatorIt was probably some well-meaning user from long ago who would like to see the page do well anyway. Good you fixed the name proper, because you can only change it that once, then you must stick with it forever or else kill that page and then open an entirely new page under another name.Facebook is, believe it or not, cash-starved right now. What’s worse, some big advertisers have pulled out and others are questioning latest stats on advertising results. Studies are showing bang for the buck on Fb is nowhere near as much as all used to think. This has all been on the news several times lately.
This other thing, the poll, was a hard call. The new ‘Timeline’ setup on Facebook makes it rather hard to read and respond well to posts. Many, including me, find the Timeline nearly impossible to navigate. I have been allowed to keep my old page format, but they will not let you on your official “Page’ under any circumstances. For the size and heavy traffic of Reaper’s forum, just for example, the traffic at their company ‘Page’ on Fb is only a trickle.
Personally, and I can really only speak for myself, I try to keep my Facebook non-music-business-related. Everybody knows each is a musician, but we have that one place left that I know I can just be myself and post stupid jokes, unusual Net pictures, dumb bumper stickers and silly things. That’s 90% of all we do there, in the short time we have to ‘visit’ or ‘chat’ on any day — and it may all happen at 3 in the morning for performing musicians. I hope this sheds some light. I’m a rather different person on forums and professional websites.
The TelenatorGlad to be able to help. I particularly like pitching in some info to those who are just getting their footing. Next thing I know, in a few short weeks they have all sorts of things started up.
I heard the overdubs on the tune you posted, but I thought the guitar parts were mixed together rather well. I had to laugh, too, because at a couple places I said to myself, He can’t be playing all that on one guitar!
Cheers!
Tele
The TelenatorWhat levendis said: personal preference for one workflow over another. But just as important or even moreso, add to this the fact that features vary quite a bit between DAWs, although recently most of the leading ones are all coming ‘up to speed’ with feature improvements that support fully professional use. In this business, you sit still, you die, and users will drop you like a hot potato.
If you plan to stick with recording for the long haul, the best thing I could suggest is that you try as many DAWs (and the wealth of different free plugins) as you can get your hands on. Most have some sort of free trial offer, and even if the demo is limited in one way or the other it will still give you a great idea of how the full-blown versions operate.
Also, for many of us, being stuck with one DAW only just doesn’t cut it. This is basically my case, and I learned this the hard way. I have some brand loyalty, but stuff needs to work the way I need it to or it ends up in the trash or closet pretty quick. The word ‘limited’ is a dirty one to me and not in my vocabulary. I still try to favour Podium but I’ve evolved to using it more as an external editor for my REAPER, and I am beginning to rely on Podium more for final mixing and mastering. Why? REAPER has many more features, such as almost unlimited routing and other things I discovered that I require. I also have Ableton Live 8 Lite that is great for major looping and as a stress reliever. I also use Audacity, a free audio editor that is superb and quick for capturing live audio streaming.
In the end, I decided I wanted to be familiar and cross-trained on practically all, so I can walk into anyone’s studio or setup and be able to carry on with business as usual. Many full-time engineers have this capability, and it always helps. This week in my spare time I’m fooling around with another good free audio editor called Acoustica 5.0 Basic. With NEW showing up almost daily, one can never know too much. Someone just mentioned a DAW called “Chaotic” — never heard of it — in another thread. The name alone makes me want to have a look, since I fight chaos in my musical world almost every day!
Finally, I never worry too much about system requirements, unless the software is demanding like twice what my laptop can handle. Some companies overstate PC requirements a little anyway. At worst, the software may load or run a touch slow or perhaps glitch occasionally. Still you get a good idea of what the item you are trying out is all about.
The TelenatorHey, listened to your tune — very nice. That amp is interesting to hear, because it has a special mix of electric guitar amp sounds subtly intertwined with a great acoustic sound, different that acoustic guitar amps I’ve heard or played before.
BTW, I should have mentioned — I talked about outlets and such above more than I normally might because you mentioned hum and some noise issues. Just wanted to rule a couple of possibilities out of the running.
The TelenatorWhy is it I hear more problems, issues and complaints about Kontakt than any other DAW-related piece of software throughout all the sites and forums on the Net? Could it have anything to do with the fact that is is this huge 10 billion gigabyte bloat of libraries and touchy player? I know more former NI customers now than current owner/users. And the rest still using NI junk? Half are using cracked versions. I heard it is partly due to the licensing and registration hassles with their stuff.
The TelenatorDAWs will process and record up to 64-bit float these days. Check out the Prefs page and the Podium guide. Tonnes of headroom and extremely low noise floor, along with all the fidelity you could ever want. A lot of plugins process at 64 internally nowadays as well.
Your coming in on an amp’s line out (nice you have some level control there) is not the worst scenario. At least you have a little umph in the signal. We had a guy here recently who decided to give some guitar playing a go in Podium, and we soon figured out he was plugging the guitar into the PC’s Line In on the back of his tower with no amplification to the signal at all. He wrote in stating that the guitar sounded anemic and not quite loud enough. Passive pickups, of course, and no wonder!
Yeah, I wouldn’t mind hearing a clip from that amp model. Didn’t you say it was their acoustic guitar amp model?
Polarity. Ground Loops. Sometimes in a dwelling the outlets are wired by an idiot electrician, and it is not unusual to have one outlet where the ground isn’t wired up, or more subtle yet just as potentially dangerous, the dolt reversed the phase because he was letting his mind wander. One of those $3 yellow outlet testers can save your life. But on a less serious but almost as important note, you want to try to run amp, gadgets, PC and what have you from your signal chain out of the same properly wired outlet. Run your amp from a different outlet from across the room, and it may be out of phase with the one your DAW PC is using, resulting in huge noise and hum. Extremely annoying and impossible to record anything under that circumstance.
The TelenatorMost important thing first: Lexicon is owned by Harmon, same as my Digitechs. It is a name you can trust (besides Lexicon was the pioneer in reverbs and delay for years, name used to be spoken in a reverent tone). Of course, I can’t vouch for dropping any unit on a hard concrete floor, but the Alpha is a well-conceived bit of hardware — and two In and two Outs, too, for you and guitarist friend, etc. A 2-channel interface is a good way to get started.
I know nothing about that Laney. Don’t know what’s under the hood, but on most amps, running from the line out is not very good for a DAW interface. Unless it has level control, most are set firm at about -20dB. There may be some other buffer, converter or something on it, but I can see where some of the noise may be coming from. Any time you have an amp or anything running into a PC, try to have ALL on the same polarity circuit, same outlet box. You want to avoid ground loops and such.
Dither. That comes in at the end. Short story: When you go to 16 from higher, every other sample gets dropped and can bring noise into the equation. Dither IS a noise itself, best when way high in the spectrum that you feed into the audio. I record at the most common setting of 24-bit @44.1k, then mix down at the very end to 16-bit WAV and then convert to CDA format if making a CD or 320kbps MP3 for posting online or mailing my Mum a tune. Podium will let you use 32-bit float, like most DAWs now, which is my preferred, but 24 will do, too. Some insist on recording in 96k and so on, but that’s nuts unless it’s a live symphony with huge dynamics. Only 3 people on the planet and a half dozen dogs can tell the difference. Rock and Pop is less needy; some of the most famous rock producers even record in 16-bit — can actually give rock an edgier sound but I don’t do it. Just remember that a setting like 96 is 2 1/2 times as much work for your PC than 44.1.
Friend of mine uses a Laney stack driven up front by a Maxon TS-9 type OD and an average Gibson SG for his metal band. He gets a great sound but that’s far different than the amp you mentioned. Didn’t know they made anything but big stacks. I am impressed by the Laney quality and sound, much like an extra fine Marshall.
The TelenatorAh, okay, I was wondering. I’m not familiar with amps that have soundcards, but you could indeed call that an interface if it converts your guitar signal to digital or MIDI and then will run into a PC or MAC.
Daws of themselves do not come with noise gates commonly, although several now come with an on-board dither to eliminate noise from the final mixdown to export at 16 bits. But no matter, get RDR dither or mda dither — both free (RDR is better).
Very curious about your amp with soundcard. Mind stating which amp offers that now? A potentially great idea that I have not seen yet.
BTW, you can skip the mixer interface if you will only be recording one track at a time, but for more than that, as in a whole band live — yes, then you would want an interface that also can handle more than one input. Rule of thumb, the more channels needed, the higher the price. Look up interfaces at Musician’s Friend and other big on-line stores. Quite a variety popping up in the last few years. Prices go up to as much as you could imagine paying, depending on # of channels and studio pro quality, too!
The TelenatorIn my own case, I can respond by saying I know quite well what the two versions of the Windows tablet/pad PC will be — both the ARM-loaded RT version and the top-dollar Win8. The thing is, when I record I’ve got wires coming out up the ying yang sometimes. I’m not taking any controller keyboard on a mountain hike or to the sandy beach. Yikes. I could see the virtue of a DAW on a pad if I took lots of very long tram or lorry rides — but I rarely ever do.
Remember, the pad is said to have only 64 gigs of HDD space MAX. A couple of big projects and all the needed extra software, etc., nails that. Then I need another wire running to an external drive. Suddenly I’m as wired up or even more than my trusty laptop.
Further, there are bound to be some compatibility issues with some things somewhere, especially the first year. REAPER devs have said to hell with designing or modding their product to fit the MS pad or iPad, so maybe my other main DAW is out of the game. There are a handful of VST makers who just aren’t interested in adapting all their plugins, should mods or recompiling be needed. Hell, you still can’t get half of the VST plugs out there in 64 bit yet, so how do you expect them to kiss MS’s butt and hurry up and fix plugs for what may be a FAIL of a new pad deal?
Think how it’s going — if you make VSTs, you now have to have one for MAC, one for PC, one for Reason proprietary, a 64-bit version, one for RT, maybe one for Win8 pad, etc., etc. You have to cough up another every time somebody comes up with another ‘bright’ idea — a new OS or PC build. It’s getting ridiculous.
I just don’t see this working real well. The full Win8 pad (no RT Metro nonsense) is reported to cost stripped bare more than a goodie-loaded iPad. That’s a fantastic luxury, if you ask me. Also, I think the new look with the tiles and aweful colours is simply hideous. No more Aeroglass. Can’t use a touch screen when at hard work on a DAW with guitar or instrument sweating up my hands.
I want to ask again: What is the advantage of a pad, no matter how good, over an equally portable laptop? I just don’t get it. What am I missing here?
The TelenatorMixcraft, aye? Cool. I really think that eventually all or most will be set up for WASAPI. I’d like to see it.
The devs at REAPER jumped into this tablet thing recently to declare they weren’t at all interested in designing anything for pad PCs (received generally with many sighs of relief among users there, considering there is enough other issues left to improve on most DAWs already).
Dismissing RT and focusing only on Win8, can anyone explain to me the advantage of having this or any DAW and related necessary software on a pad? I mean, screw going to the sandy beaches with it, just what is it good for other than fooling with musical ideas on some long car ride? I believe this pad thing is more of a fad than anything else. I’ve seen the iPad used as a control surface, and even there it is second rate to other options.
The TelenatorYes, not long ago, I started out as completely audio-only, no MIDI, etc. That changed rapidly once I saw and heard all the other wonderful sounds some of these instruments can add. Want a string quartet filling in a bit in the background on some ballad.? You can have it.
You said ‘noise’ and ‘pickup’. You have some sort of interface to convert your guitar output to digital, and control levels going into Podium? You should have ZERO noise issues or hum in any of this. With any decent interface this will all be taken care of. After testing the too-expensive Fractal Axe FX and owning Avid’s Eleven Rack until just recently, my favorite guitar interface is Digitech’s RP500 (the RP1000 is tops, too). Just my personal choice. This way, I have not only a decent interface (-132 dB noise floor at worst), but you can also process some of your guitar sound externally, thereby freeing up your DAW and PC to spend its processing on all else. Simple, direct-in interfaces for guitars and mics start at about $50US, but read the reviews on each carefully first, since a few of the cheapest are rubbish.
Otherwise, for any noise and hum, there are a few noise gate plugins out there, and you’ll want a dithering plugin to cook down the final mix to 16 bits.
The TelenatorI don’t understand what all the info ‘fuss’ is all about. Almost everything about RT and Win8 is now out there to read up on. Microsoft itself has had a lot to do with getting the info out. A very little bit of this shows promise, some makes me want to laugh, and the rest makes me want to cry.
Laugh: you get to read how MS thinks 100 ms latency is somehow okay.
Cry: This whole RT issue is doomsday for DAWs. BTW, have any of you really tried WASAPI? Really? What software were you supposedly using it with?
Promise: Win8 (full version, none of the RT crap employed) is more efficient — lower processing rates, better all around for audio. It will be an improvement, and I’m not going to take an hour to state all the details but they are now available as there has been enough testing. Most of the improvement for audio comes from a major change in how the cores receive their tasks. MS has put all the same info out there as was available at their dev camp getogethers. You will need to buy the pricier, full Win8 version on a tablet if you want decent results, although you will still be massively limited by HDD space on any pad, unless you resort to external storage.
Okay, so . . . you spend a large pile of money to get the full Win8 premium tablet PC. You can take it to the beach and fiddle about with recording projects. You’ll still be massively limited. Are you going to bring a keyboard controller with you, too? An external drive for large projects? A control surface? No to all and more.
Funny how on the iPad adverts they never show all the stinking wires running in and out that are needed to do much of what they show off in these adverts. While I welcome any improvements that Win8 will certainly bring to digital recording, these improvements will not be huge (unless MS comes up with something much more to add between now and this fall — very unlikely). The advantages I’ve actually seen will make me consider moving to Win8 on a laptop within perhaps 2 or 3 years, but I’m really completely happy with Win7 to be honest. I still only use 32-bit DAWs and plugs yet have still never maxed out my RAM (partly because I don’t screw around with bloated software such as Kontakt and similar). Why fix something that just ain’t broke?