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Post by stormcrow on Mar 2, 2018 3:04:30 GMT -5
Thanks for the replies everyone, After reading what you all said it seems I just need to start smaller and work with what I know. While I would like to be writing 10 minute epics, perhaps I'm not at that level of skill yet haha, which Is fine by me. Maybe one day... And to "bavingr" specifically, I will be trying that method later tonight, I used a similar strategy when I first started making music and it worked well, I'm sure it would work great here too. And while I'm here, I just have one more question that has been bugging me for a while. What drumkits do you all use for DS? (assuming you even incorporate percussion) I can't really find any good "medieval" sounding drumkits, or at-least something a bit more in the "lo-fi" realm. So far I've just been using a generic acoustic drumkit which is good enough I suppose, but it doesn't really provide the right atmosphere I'm aiming for. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Only a free TR808 vst emulator, for me. Just tweak and process it via software and you'll get those DS typical "lo-fi" and synthethic drums, as well as subtle kick or tom sounds. You can find lots of free plugins emulating that machine. I use some percussive presets from the Quikquak Glass Viper, too. Do you mean you use to play a real drum kit? If so, I would go on this way and then do some editing if I were you.
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Post by BΓ₯vingr on Mar 2, 2018 5:25:14 GMT -5
Thanks for the replies everyone, After reading what you all said it seems I just need to start smaller and work with what I know. While I would like to be writing 10 minute epics, perhaps I'm not at that level of skill yet haha, which Is fine by me. Maybe one day... And to "bavingr" specifically, I will be trying that method later tonight, I used a similar strategy when I first started making music and it worked well, I'm sure it would work great here too. And while I'm here, I just have one more question that has been bugging me for a while. What drumkits do you all use for DS? (assuming you even incorporate percussion) I can't really find any good "medieval" sounding drumkits, or at-least something a bit more in the "lo-fi" realm. So far I've just been using a generic acoustic drumkit which is good enough I suppose, but it doesn't really provide the right atmosphere I'm aiming for. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Cool, let us know when you have a finished track! RE drums, I like what Ancient Boreal Forest does: ancientborealforest.bandcamp.com/ he uses an electronic drumkit sound but it is super simplistic and buried in the mix, so it's just "there" but not in your face like a backbeat (or blastbeats) OR try some timpani (tuned orchestral percussion): www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=Kettle_Drum&id=1860 free and tweakable - I had great fun with this velocity sensitive beast.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Mar 6, 2018 22:25:53 GMT -5
There's some powerful music production software on sale for dirt cheap right now. I haven't used any of these programs, but I'm thinking of going for the full amount mainly for Sound Forge Pro 11, since I've actually been looking to upgrade my audio editor. Might be worth consideration. Looks like the sale will be going on for a couple weeks. www.humblebundle.com/software/magix-sounds-of-music-software
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Post by stormcrow on Mar 7, 2018 3:25:34 GMT -5
I had positive experience with Magix products, but never tried anything from their music-related stuff.
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Post by stormcrow on Apr 5, 2018 2:39:58 GMT -5
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Post by thekeeper on Apr 5, 2018 9:30:44 GMT -5
So if Sonar is now called Cakewalk, what happened to the original Cakewalk? Wasn't that an old DAW, too? Never used it, but I remember reading the name everywhere when I first starting recording music. Either way, kool that it's free now. I'll have to check it out.
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Post by stormcrow on Apr 5, 2018 12:15:56 GMT -5
So if Sonar is now called Cakewalk, what happened to the original Cakewalk? Wasn't that an old DAW, too? Never used it, but I remember reading the name everywhere when I first starting recording music. Either way, kool that it's free now. I'll have to check it out. As long as I remember, Cakewalk had been the first MIDI DAW ever. the Cakewalk company has been property of Roland, then of Gibson (had a partnership with Tascam too). In february 2018, BandLab purchased it.
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Post by thekeeper on Apr 5, 2018 12:18:47 GMT -5
So if Sonar is now called Cakewalk, what happened to the original Cakewalk? Wasn't that an old DAW, too? Never used it, but I remember reading the name everywhere when I first starting recording music. Either way, kool that it's free now. I'll have to check it out. As long as I remember, Cakewalk had been the first MIDI DAW ever. the Cakewalk company has been property of Roland, then of Gibson (had a partnership with Tascam too). In february 2018, BandLab purchased it. Interesting. So had Gibson changed Cakewalk to 'Sonar' (never heard of Sonar before), and now BandLab has changed it back to Cakewalk?
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Post by stormcrow on Apr 5, 2018 12:46:24 GMT -5
I suppose Roland turned Cakewalk to Sonar. When I discovered the home-recording world (quite late!), Sonar 6 was just released under the Cakewalk brand. It was a really efficient software!
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Post by detoxscission on Apr 14, 2018 23:27:54 GMT -5
I took a pretty lengthy sabbatical from music up until very recently. Some of the dungeon synth, ambient & synthpop i've been listening to is starting to bleed into the industrial I normally make. I have no idea how it will end up turning out or if it will be anything I could outright call dungeon synth, but it's nice to drag some creativity out of myself.
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Ropp
Merchant
Posts: 73
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Post by Ropp on Jun 16, 2018 8:45:50 GMT -5
Hello all,
Something that I'be noticed about composing during my first stages of listening to DS and learning about DAWs and VSTs is that there's a significant and appreciable evolution in my own pieces. It's been around a year since I discovered DS, and about 6 months since I started composing my own. This means that the first song I composed at the end of the past year seems pretty basic and different from the last stuff I've been working on. Not only regarding the sounds and VSTs I have incorporated to my recurrent tools, but also regarding the kind of DS and atmospheres I like the most.
Now I'm trying to release a first demo, but I feel kind of reluctant to add those first songs without reworking them. I fear getting into an eternal loop of reviewing all my previous pieces again and again, never being satisfied with all of them at once. Has anyone felt that way before releasing a number of songs? Do you think it's important to keep a coherent style among the different songs of a release?
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Post by BΓ₯vingr on Jun 16, 2018 9:41:51 GMT -5
Yep, I had the exact same experience! In the end I released a 2 track single then an EP later. Probably better to do a couple of distinct EPs than a less coherent album...
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Post by crystallogic13 on Jun 16, 2018 15:42:55 GMT -5
Hello all, Something that I'be noticed about composing during my first stages of listening to DS and learning about DAWs and VSTs is that there's a significant and appreciable evolution in my own pieces. It's been around a year since I discovered DS, and about 6 months since I started composing my own. This means that the first song I composed at the end of the past year seems pretty basic and different from the last stuff I've been working on. Not only regarding the sounds and VSTs I have incorporated to my recurrent tools, but also regarding the kind of DS and atmospheres I like the most. Now I'm trying to release a first demo, but I feel kind of reluctant to add those first songs without reworking them. I fear getting into an eternal loop of reviewing all my previous pieces again and again, never being satisfied with all of them at once. Has anyone felt that way before releasing a number of songs? Do you think it's important to keep a coherent style among the different songs of a release? As a listener I'd advice you to release them if you felt they were complete at a certain point in past time AND you feel they are at a certain level to be out there for others and be worthy of their time.. That would be my 2 cents. Edit : Welcome of course!
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Post by thekeeper on Jun 18, 2018 10:31:24 GMT -5
Ropp, might depend on your composition style and how you go about recording. I think a good way to maintain cohesion in a release is to write first and record later once everything is written. This might be more difficult if using a DAW since a lot of writing can potentially be done within the DAW itself, so the recording process is really just exporting+mixing for a lot of people once each track is composed. Maybe write your music on a guitar if you can play or in a tab program or something. Once you go to actually record you'll probably start to rearrange things and change stuff up a bit, naturally, but you likely won't get two different releases at the end of it that you'll have to break it up into separate releases. As you continue to learn about DAW recording and VSTs you'll probably continue to second guess a lot of stuff you write as you learn. I would say to hold onto tracks until you're truly satisfied with them, maybe save some earlier demo versions for your own keepsake. Some artist's releases have a lot of variation within them, like Erang, while others are pretty similar throughout or even one long track. Just comes down to your own satisfaction level. I personally think a lot of DS releases these days are getting a bit one note and could be more dynamic in their track variation.
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Ropp
Merchant
Posts: 73
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Post by Ropp on Jun 19, 2018 1:05:02 GMT -5
Thanks for the advices and the welcome, it's really nice getting feedback on topics like these.
I'll probably release a demo with the more recent and convincing stuff. First songs were almost complete, but my idea back then was to revisit them. Thing is that, now, revisiting would mean to change most of the VSTs, change the structure, introduce new melodies, etc. Feels more like using the existing stuff as an inspiration to re-write the whole thing than a revisit.
Right now I have no hardware, and all my compositions are directly written with DAW. I've been also reading in this thread about how easy is to get lost surfing the net in a search for the perfect VST, and I think that's a problem I have already found. Maybe I should try to just get a bunch of really basic sounds to use when writting, and later move to a more specific selection of the correct VSTs once the main structure is defined. I hadn't think about how important might be to divide the process between writting and defining the sound.
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