Music Production

Very common it seems for songs to change keys into a higher one but I dont think I've really ever heard something doing a descending modulation or key change...

closest I can think of is Strawberry Fields by The Beatles but my understanding is that is Varispeed or something, not really sure what the heck is happening in that song other then its gradually flattening but not sure what that even is

Very inspiring stuff

I found this gem and wanted to share it with you. Reaper being available for Linux is a pretty great thing but generally I didn't find many audio plugins being made available for Linux, especially plugins that try to recreate vintage hardware.

Anyway, here's a project that has a lot of those being written directly for Reaper using its DSP language and I can confirm they work on Linux.

https://github.com/TukanStudios/TUKAN_STUDIOS_PLUGINS

The dev has a YT channel where he shares progress: https://www.youtube.com/@johnmatthews8435

Happy music making!

I have an app and it lets you skip certain words you custom add.

Like

• the/a

Sorta like how Russians always leave out articles to no ill effect. Moose eend sqwuirrel

I'm wondering if the attack of sounds can be generally modulated after the fact to an arbitrary audio file and similarly for a piano-pedal sustain type effect.

Can they be gradually and arbitrarily modulated?

• Does it lower the decibels of ambient above-surface noise, to what extent?

• Is it preferential to filtering out low or mid or high frequencies or do they all move through it as a medium about equally in terms of perceptibillity by the submerged end observer?

Recently I just got the Pulsar Audio 1178. Clean interface with really easy to understand controls and meters, can't believe how readable this is compared to most other plugins. Also has a fun "All ratio" setting and adjustable saturation settings, from clean to clipping and a few in between.

I am like the Toy Story meme of "I don't want to play with you anymore" with all of my other compressor plugins right now.

I don’t think there’s a way to do a proper poll so if you don’t see your DAW mentioned in a top level comment, make the comment to the post. If it’s already listed, maybe just upvote it? That way we can get a representation of what DAWs are more among subscribers here.

I’m curious just because it’s always neat to hear what people use and how, but also to see how possible tuts or techniques can be explained in a way more people will understand. Or provide a variety of examples for various DAWs.

EDIT: Actually, I don’t know the best way to list the ones I use without making a few comments to this post. I’ll just upvote them if I see them listed.

Another great look at the gear and process behind a classic track. I love to hear musicians set the record straight on what techniques they used to achieve iconic sounds.

Edit: the video starts out as a correction/follow-up on a previous video “Nuthin but a G thang” by Dr Dre | Minimoog G funk Lead, but expands beyond that

So not entirely music related, but my don't-use-reddit policy and this looking like the closest not entirely dead community has led me to post sooo...

I have an audio question about recording levels. I'm doing voice-over stuff for some really bad Youtube videos I'd like to make and it never sounds remotely good.

I get that the recording volume should be just the green side of clipping, but how do you take a track, and then add it to other tracks and balance the whole thing to not sound like ass?

It always seems that it's either too loud or too quiet and I'm baffled as to how to tweak the mix correctly so that things sound right.

Any projects or demos you'd like to share or talk about? Exploring any new sound design or composition techniques?

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/14281466

I've never seen computer keys used in place of piano keys before though I am sure being able to customize the feel of the switches is pretty nice. Are there production midi controllers that do the same?

Feedback welcome. Thanks for checking it out!

Thanks for listening!

Thanks for checking it out!

If you’ve listened to some 90s and early 00s ambient-oriented tracks and tried to recreate their sounds with just a synth, you’ll notice that downsampling and bitcrushing won’t get you the same kind of sound you hear in there. It will sound dull(er) and less… complete, lush, rich? That is because back in the day artists sampled their synths and the technical side of that process had some cool side effects.

You can sample in two different ways. You can sample whole chords, where your parallel harmonies and frequency stretching will combine into a weird but cool sound. Or, on the topic of this video, you can sample an individual note from a synth and have your frequency stretching happen with different magnitudes for every note of the chord. That will create an interesting and rich sound!

This Thought-Forms video will show you an exact how-to with some tips on how to develop that sampler sound once you get the basics. It’s quick, concise and really informative.

I hope you find this technique useful. AMN out!

There are a lot of great stereo imaging tools and spectrum analyzers. Most of them aren't free though. Having a good way to visually analyze loudness, frequency distribution and stereo image is incredibly important. Unfortunately, it is often the case that most default or free solutions are barely functional. They don't provide you with enough information to shape your mix or don't present it in a simple, clear and understandable format. (I'm looking at you, FL studio visualizers!)

SPAN is a spectrum analysis tool that will let you monitor your peak volume, RMS and LUFS. It shows you the frequencies that are passing through the plugin and you can customize the spectrum view by changing time, frequency and level ranges. If you want even more precision and control, you can adjust the fast fourier transform sample size, it gets that technical! You can also compare channels, left and right of the same channel or two different ones. Two channel comparison is the limit of the free version, SPAN Plus allows you to display as many channels as your DAW will allow. It also features a correlation meter that measures your phase alignment (1=fully aligned and -1=completely misaligned). It can also track your loudness stats thoughout the playtime to iron out any kinks. Handy, functional and no-nonsense tool.

MSED is a stereo analysis and encoding tool. It can help you manange your side and mid channels: your stereo image. It comes with a basic set of tools that allows you to pan, change levels, swap left-right channels and flip phase 180 degrees. The visualizers are pretty simple, you have your correlation meter from before, stereo pan meter and plasma-style vector scope. You might think you don't need it if you DAW provides stereo imaging functions of its own, but often times you're going to be playing guessing games in terms of how that audio will actually get processed: some DAWS merge your stereo tracks to mono, some don't. MSED takes care of that ambiguity and puts all of the necessary tools and monitoring in one spot.

These plugins are available in VST, VST3, AU and AAX for free! I really can't recommend them enough if you're starting out producing or are in need of simple tools that won't take a toll on your CPU with fancy advanced processing.

SPAN Product page: https://www.voxengo.com/product/span/

MSED Product page: https://www.voxengo.com/product/msed/

Making a great sounding pad is actually more tricky than getting some cool synth and drowning it in tons of reverb. I know I tried that the first time. And failed miserably. You don't have to!

Will is gonna walk us through different tricks and ideas to flesh out an ambient pad. Using a root tone, texture tones for highs and lows, some effects and simple automations will allow you to create a cool and easily customizeable(!) pad from scratch with any and all wavetables that you want in there!

Hope you find it useful, guys! AMN out!

Dubstep growls may sound like they’re simple, but getting a good growl sound is way more than just distorting some waves to all hell (though it may be a part of it). Using your envelopes and LFOs to shape the sound through filters, distortion and other effects will get quite a bit more complicated.

Noah will show us how to get a high quality, clean and powerful dubstep growl in the style of Virtual Riot, so you can put those skills and ideas to use in your own synth patches.

P.S: My posts will slow down from here on out as I have a bit more going on IRL than I did when I started. This one today is a quickie in between my schedule, but bigger posts will still keep coming and I hope you find it interesting nevertheless!

EQ is a really simple tool, but the way it works is anything but that. Different equalizers use different algorithms to process your audio, and most of them will affect your sound in unexpected ways.

The video will give you an overview on some technical reasons why phase weirdness happens with most EQs and also how an asymmetric EQ setup can give you unexpected Haas effects.

And man, does Sage Audio's video feature some sick beats!