what are your music production pet peeves and how do you workaround/ignore/avoid them?
At 5/9/17 07:12 PM, MactaMendax wrote: what are your music production pet peeves and how do you workaround/ignore/avoid them?
o.o They're so numerous, I can't even begin to list them...I always compare my stuff to the highest grade possible, which means I usually think I suck balls. As long as I think I'm sucking balls, I continue to try and improve myself. The moment I look back on a piece and say "Yep, that's a good one" someone chimes in with a critique I would've otherwise missed...so it's a default at this point...that I suck balls.
Stereo separation I think is probably my biggest...there's not enough of it by default, so many amateur producers fail to incorporate it in effective ways. There are rules to stereo separation, which I've come to infer over many years of experience with DAWs and various audio equipment and sundries.
* Left is primary - the most important shit should be over there (leads...mostly)
* Double a track up, then split the two between left and right...this is a great way to add depth to a piece
* Also, yes, spin that little dial called "stereo separation" up a few notches (30% is a good rule of thumb - too much of this stuff, and things get weird...). Thats a good way to add space to an otherwise claustrophobic mix.
* Increase stereo separation on your verbs, if you can...all of them, always. What purpose does a mono verb serve? Verb is for space, separation is for space...the two are like peas and carrots. Put them together.
* Dont use stereo separation on foundational sounds - like the bass, or the kick drum....unless you want it to sound like you recorded a band in a room, then maybe its ok. Otherwise, if you want clean, clear, overpowering bass...you want it mono. Believe me.
At 5/9/17 07:12 PM, MactaMendax wrote: what are your music production pet peeves and how do you workaround/ignore/avoid them?
Every DAW had to mess up its interface somehow. I use Logic Pro X and I DO NOT KNOW how to navigate it in ANY manner.
one positive about being an annoying child who didnt know what they were doing and who got internet access way too early is that you can explicitly know what NOT to do
Dude I hate mono-velocity pianos
HATE THEM
GET THEM OUT OF MY FACE
The workaround is really simple: crap ton of reverb + nice rubato + humanization of levels and lengths = amazing piano sound
hey man, you uh you got something on your face right there, lemme just... ok, there we go, MUCH better, you are looking GOOD AS NEW
At 5/10/17 09:46 PM, 1f1n1ty wrote: Dude I hate mono-velocity pianos
The workaround is to play that shit with a midi-controller, and stop trying to sequence complex ideas.
At 5/10/17 10:33 AM, Lich wrote: Getting the distortion input settings on my Kick Drums juuuust right and get it to sit in the mix properly. Takes an age usually. No shortcuts, just grit the ol' teeth and get it done.
I think you'll find compressors are your friend here. Distortion gets out of hand easily, but if you temper it with a compressor, it's much easier to control. Especially if that compressor is self-limiting and multi-banded. For a kick, push that bass up hard, but let the mid-range overpower it just slightly...you need that percussive thump - it's not all bass.
At 5/10/17 10:15 AM, MistyWaterflower wrote: I don't like my stuff sounding so digital. Everything has to sound analog, workaround is buy analog stuff but you're still running it through a computer.
You should make use of post-effects. A piece is a complete work, you can't compartmentalize it into individual compositions by track - you have to see the whole thing altogether as one work. This is a difficult concept to grasp...but you need to take 30 steps back from your piece to understand the way a layman will when they first hear it. Which means, during production, you need to continually step back and view your piece from afar as a whole to understand how each track fits into the overall puzzle.
* Every track needs it's place in the EQ spectrum. (that's goal number one, not too difficult to achieve)
* Those tracks should meld harmoniously into a single voice (that's a bit more difficult to achieve, it takes tweaking and a view of the piece as a whole...step back...move backward....keep fucking going, you're not far enough yet....see the piece as a whole work in and of itself. Where do each of your layers fit in? What does each of them contribute? Are they expressing your feeling, or are they leading the listener elsewhere? Do they mesh together, or do they conflict with one another?
You're using generalities to muddle over the details...and it's a practice, it's not something that can be compartmentalized and analyzed as a scientific truth...music is art. Feel it. Feel your way through it...does it feel right to you? If not, then you're not fucking finished.
At 5/10/17 09:46 PM, 1f1n1ty wrote: Dude I hate mono-velocity pianos
HATE THEM
GET THEM OUT OF MY FACE
The workaround is really simple: crap ton of reverb + nice rubato + humanization of levels and lengths = amazing piano sound
Pretty much.
Every time I hear FL Keys, I die.
No I mean I literally die. KEEP THOSE TRACKS AWAY FROM ME
Come join music competitions on Chips Compo and hang on our Discord!
Good artists copy. Great artists get banned from the Audio Portal.
At 5/10/17 10:59 PM, EoD696 wrote:At 5/10/17 09:46 PM, 1f1n1ty wrote: Dude I hate mono-velocity pianosThe workaround is to play that shit with a midi-controller, and stop trying to sequence complex ideas.
That works too, except when I want it quantized to a beat. Then it just never works to play it live because all the notes are sprawled everywhere without a consistent beat and it's so bad to fix it
hey man, you uh you got something on your face right there, lemme just... ok, there we go, MUCH better, you are looking GOOD AS NEW
about FL Keys, i think every EDM track on NG use it.
At 5/11/17 07:38 AM, 1f1n1ty wrote:At 5/10/17 10:59 PM, EoD696 wrote:That works too, except when I want it quantized to a beat. Then it just never works to play it live because all the notes are sprawled everywhere without a consistent beat and it's so bad to fix itAt 5/10/17 09:46 PM, 1f1n1ty wrote: Dude I hate mono-velocity pianosThe workaround is to play that shit with a midi-controller, and stop trying to sequence complex ideas.
I'm sorry dude, that was dickish of me. I was drunk...and I'm not a professional audio producer, I've been doing it for a few years...but, everyone should take my advice with a grain of salt. I'm in no position to act like an authority on the matter of production...sorry...again, i was drunk.
...that said, if my phrases aren't terribly complicated (like an improv) I can usually quantize a performance pretty easily...but trying to quantize improv just turns into a disgusting mess, so I feel that.
At 5/11/17 02:51 PM, EoD696 wrote: I'm sorry dude, that was dickish of me.
Sorry? Sorry for what XD I don't remember you doing anything
hey man, you uh you got something on your face right there, lemme just... ok, there we go, MUCH better, you are looking GOOD AS NEW
At 5/11/17 09:01 PM, MistyWaterflower wrote: Actually you can, it's called polyrhythm.
You know what - that's a new one on me. I guess it's one of those things I felt my way through instead of trying to give it a name.
But I'm pretty sure you completely missed my point...cuz it doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I was talking about....which really had more to do with mixing and sound...and production, cuz I thought we were talking about production...not composition. "Individual compositions by track" is in reference to the tracks of the mixing board - what I'm trying to say is you can't see them all independently of one another, as their own little mix. I mean you have to have an overall approach to production to temper that digitalness in your sound.
I used to have the same problem, because I was looking at each track of the mixing board as it's own mix, it's own little thing. When I started thinking more about how each track related to the one's next to it, my sound improved.
I don't make music for the layman, I make what I hear in my head. I don't care if anyone likes it.
That's neat. I'm sorry, I thought you wanted you're music to be appreciated by others. My bad.
* Every track needs it's place in the EQ spectrum. (that's goal number one, not too difficult to achieve)No it doesn't.
I'd give you a homework assignment to prove that to yourself, but I bet you won't do it.
This is all music theory and you should study it before lecturing people.
This is why I'm saying anything at all right now...half of what you said is your opinion. The other half is irrelevant fact slinging to try and make yourself look smart, but is in no way related to what I was trying to tell you. I studied music theory for a little while...but music is art. Everyone that was telling me how shit is supposed to work was looking at it as a science. That bothered me too much to continue for any length of time with it, so I'm mostly self-taught.
I apologize, it was unnecessarily harsh and rude - I was inebriated. I didn't mean to piss you off, that's actually how I talk to my buddies when we're at the bar.
At 5/11/17 09:46 PM, EoD696 wrote: I apologize, it was unnecessarily harsh and rude - I was inebriated. I didn't mean to piss you off, that's actually how I talk to my buddies when we're at the bar.
it's not really your fault, i gets drunk and say stupid things from time to time.
but i think you raise important discussions here, whether you were drunk or not.
everybody have their own preferable approaches and methods to production. it's important that we share and exchange them healthily.
so thank you for that.
I hate it when I spend many hours trying too hard on a mix, then come back to it a day later and redo it from scratch, getting better results in half the time with half the plugins.
At 5/11/17 09:58 PM, MactaMendax wrote: but i think you raise important discussions here, whether you were drunk or not.
everybody have their own preferable approaches and methods to production. it's important that we share and exchange them healthily.
so thank you for that.
You're welcome :) I'm happy to share.
At 5/11/17 10:12 PM, MistyWaterflower wrote: No, it's more a therapeutic thing for me, I just make what's in my head.
I think it is for me too...but I want people to like it. I feel like there's little point if everyone who hears it find's listening to it to be a chore, rather than a captivating experience.
See you can make music that's just using lows, mids, or highs. You don't have to use every color of the rainbow.
You can, you can make music that's nothing but noise too, as Makakaov recently revealed to me. I guess this is one point that ties into our disagreement on music's purpose. If you want people to like it, it should probably include some of all three of those ranges.
When you have a lot going on in a song you have to mix it independently or you're drowning out what you did trying to smash it all together. It's why drums in prog rock and metal have no reverb and every track is alot of compression. There's too much going on to hear if you blend.
That's why you have to be light on production effects and have tight tracks, or you can't hear what you did.
This is true...but blend seems to be a really loose term. Let me see if I can define what I'm talking about more specifically.
When I say each track needs it's place in the EQ, it's not about filling in all the frequencies that the EQ can express - it's about making sure each track doesn't interfere with one another. So the bass, if there is one, shouldn't bleed heavily into the mid-range if you're chords are trying to live there. If all you've got is bass, whatever, let it go where it wants. But when there's a great variety of layers trying to coalesce, ensuring each layer doesn't bleed into the next is important. Just like what you're saying - light and tight - you don't get tight without making sure each track has it's place in the EQ (in other words, what you're saying is what I was trying to say with different words).
"Melding the tracks harmoniously into a single voice"...that's a really bad phrasing. What I mean there is that you don't want a track to sound like it came from a different song or a different recording (if you want people to like your music). So...if you've got two acoustic guitars intertwining melodies, probably the best way to approach it is send them both to the same mixer track with the same effects, and split them between the left and right channels - not 100%, but let one of them be dominant right and one be dominant left. This way, it sounds like two guitarists on different sides of the same room. If you put different verb effects down for each of them, a different compressor on one, or whatever - you start changing things from one to the next - it'll sound off, and the listener won't be keen as to why necessarily, but they'll notice there's something odd about the way that other guitar sounds. Now...you can also achieve this with a send-track - you do the guitars each to their own tracks (maybe doing the dominant left/right thing I was talking about on those tracks), then you send those tracks to a third send track, where you can add subtle stuff to make them sound more contiguous - like a verb...probly nothing else.
I dunno...this stuff starts getting really complicated when you get into the particulars of it...it really boils down to feeling at the end of the day, in my opinion. Feel it through, what sounds right to your ear is what you should do.
EDISON IS A PAIN IN THE FUCKING ARSE.
When you have tempo edited in the events window and you attempt to line up a sample, it NEVER follows the timing it shows on the playlist. Don't fucking ask me why, it ALWAYS does that. I have had many an experience of that when doing Mio/Homura.
The only way to even get around it is to constantly nudge those fucking samples a 100th of a second each time until you get the right timing, because any more and it'll start too early, or too late!
This is not a pet peeve; I am actually sick and tired of people who think Edison in FL Studio is the shit when actually, it fucking isn't.
At 5/13/17 05:34 AM, Troisnyx wrote: EDISON IS A PAIN IN THE FUCKING ARSE.
This is not a pet peeve; I am actually sick and tired of people who think Edison in FL Studio is the shit when actually, it fucking isn't.
I'm glad I'm not the only reluctant Edison user. There's something about the FL plugins that you hated them so much but you need them.
At 5/13/17 10:44 PM, Keitomine wrote:
My biggest pet peeve, are people who upload tracks in the wrong genre. If I check your song because you tagged it as a trance one, it better be trance. Period.
NG genre list is very limited, you gotta understand that.
At 5/14/17 06:48 PM, Keitomine wrote:
Yeah, my point still stands.
Free yourself. Don't let genre be your prison.
At 5/15/17 08:55 AM, Keitomine wrote:At 5/14/17 09:43 PM, MactaMendax wrote:If I'm listening to a song tagged as trance, it better be trance. Genres exist for a reason. If you don't know what to call your music, "experiminal" does exist.At 5/14/17 06:48 PM, Keitomine wrote:Free yourself. Don't let genre be your prison.
Yeah, my point still stands.
As does the Other - Miscellaneous category, but the introduction of Cinematic and Chipstep basically freed up the the Miscellaneous category by quite a bit. Still.
THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU WONDER WHY YOUR SUPERSAW SOUNDS LIKE A PLUCK AND THEN YOU FORGET THAT THE RETRIG BUTTON WAS STILL ON!
At 5/15/17 12:36 PM, Lich wrote: When my interface XLR ports get too much dust in them and my input channels goes crazy.
At least it's fine now after the ol' canned air and microfiber cloth.
God I hated audio jack or port getting dusty and you don't have the stuff to clean them. I use Q-tip to clean the ports.
At 5/9/17 07:12 PM, MactaMendax wrote: what are your music production pet peeves and how do you workaround/ignore/avoid them?
when i want to make something sound reverb-y but itll screw up the mix
solution: automate it or lessen it depending on the situation
when my kick gets buried because im too lazy to design sounds around it
solution: i have no idea how to fix this while preserving the bass synths but i could just remake them
