Hi all,

just throwing it out there. I have bunchload of WIPs that might use a bit of vocal line in kinda near future. Thus if anybody is or know about a cool singer with a nice voice and at least a half-decent mic, I'm all ears. I'm interested in mellow voices that sound good while not screaming.

I'm not making any money by this hobby (actually shoveling quite a chunk of it into the production, as we all are), so can't offer much money yet. But I don't think music should be about money anyway.

I've done one proper vocal collab so far. So here's a proof I wouldn't destroy yours/theirs vocals too much. https://soundcloud.com/farleycz/see-the-world-feat-seacolor

Edit: ...just realized I'm breakign the rules already. Lemme fix that:
Artist Name: FarleyCZ
Years Experience: 8 Years
DAW(s): Ableton (preferred), Bitwig, Reaper
Genre: Liquid DNB, Chillstep
Third-Party Plugins Used: Way too many.
Preferred Contact Method: PM, Soundcloud, I watch everything.
Previous Work: www.soundcloud.com/farleycz

Cheers,
Martin.

Hi all.
...this one is in making for waaay to long. I'm not sure about those mlodies, sound design ... pretty much doubting the whole thing. (quite usual state for me, unfortunatelly)
Made some changes since I've posted thisone in Slack channel, but still not sure.

https://soundcloud.com/farleycz/altitude-wip-9g/s-16c2K

Isn't it just ... too much?

Hi all,

this came up in Slack channel, but I think it might deserve a separate forum thread.

As we know, you can build really complex melodies out of huge variety of intervals not paying attention if they're are actually "nice" or not. As far as you like it, it's awesome. You can build chord progressions out of exotic chords with strange structures just to escape classic triads. You can build syncopated rythms so the whole thing feels jazzy and stuff...

But what if you are on the other side of the spectrum? What if you like the audience to connect with your song a lot. That means making pretty chords and melodies most of the time. Familiar chords, pleasant intervals, "nod your head" rythms. I've been happy with that most of the time, but lately it feels like there's a line somewhere. Line where "pretty" becomes "cheesy", too predictable, too simple.

How do you find that line? Do you try to avoid it? If so, how?

Here's a thought:

If you listen to tracs from 80-90's, they tend to be a bit muddy. Tracks from early 00's start to be less muddy. Today's tracks are in lot of cases really high-end heavy with clear, present, but no so much owepowering bass. I wonder why is this. Only thing I was able to come up with was that mix/master engineers might have always took the "average speaker" as a target. In walkman day, that probably was sh**ty plastic Sony headphones, in 00's I don't know ... Porta Pro's? And today dunno, Apple headphones?

...this hought brought me even further. You see, eventhough that scientific "mix on flattest speakers possible" approach is nice and neat, it doesn't work like that, does it? Flat speakers are hard to enjoy music on (so I heard, lol) and in reality you can't even manufacture a completely flat speaker. Also on majority of monitors, you find little shelf eq at the back, so you can fit it to your needs.

Also, though not while mixing music unfortunately, I've worked with few pairs of Genelecs, Klein & Hummels, Neumans and Yamaha's. ...and though nicely close, they still sound different from each other. That makes me think that somewhere while designing those speakers must be some kind of crucial listening test. Isn't it possible, that there is a little fluctuation going on? That speakers from one decade will have a bit more highend, speakers from another will have a bit more bass? That would explain why music from different time periods sound differently frequency-balance-wise.

*Cheesy topic alert!*
Similar to "top tips" topic, but that's about current advice. I'm more interested in your own reflection. If you could make a phone call to your few years younger self, what would you tel him/her? What advices would you give? Let's reflect a bit, so new guys can learn from our own flaws.

Mine would be:

Find likeminded people.
...as soon as you can. I mean truly likeminded. They are hard to find. You can have hundred friends. ...supportive ones even. But usually they don't see inside your damn brain when it comes to music. You need people that do. And when you find them, keep them close as much as you can. Chances are they'll bacome your frineds anyway.

Go local.
Learn that damn decks and get yourself out there. Not your damn SC account, yourself. Otherwise a point comes when you get affraid to do it.

Take chances.
Failure is a good thing. It will happen a lot. You really do need to learn from it, but don't be scared of it. Chances you won't fail are actually really thin, but you'll never find if you run away from it.

Forget your past.
Focus on who you want to become. On a lot of levels, including your music taste. It all shows in your music, trust me.

Don't listen to every advice.
Getting obsessed by a detail is much easier when you have tons of contradicting advice hanging over it. Throw it away and filter only stuff you feel applies to your kind of music.

Share.
When you are happy about something, get it out. When you can't crack something, get it out too. It's easier not to, but it leads to "nobody would care" doubt ... which is a killer.

I'm still battling with few of these, but it might have been easier if I realized them much sooner.
Yours?

Ok, so this happened:


(I'm longtime tyDi fan, so this is pretty surreal.)

It's not perfect, I might have played with pads a bit more, also the beat is probably a bit too loud... But it happened anyway. It's nice to be happy about something for a change. :)
Hope you like it. :)

I've seen several posts about "what's good and what's bad" while EQing lately. Now I don't consider myself an expert, but I think there's a few historical and practical contexts people don't notice at first.

See, though music today is louder, I think great mixes were done throughout the years for a few decades now. I'm still amazed by clarity of mixdown when any old Michael Jackson track pops out in my headphones.

Funny part is that this:
http://medias.audiofanzine.com/images/normal/ssl-eq-502-197150.jpg
...is an EQ of old SSL console. If you like any music pre 2000 there's big chance this was the EQ they used on each track. 4 fixed type bands. Almost no Q control.

You might say: "Naah, they had outboard chains for processing important tracks like vocals or lead guitars." Yeah. They did. So they can slap a reverb on it and EQ it by something like a world famous Pultec EQ. ...that looked like this: http://www.crossenstreams.com/pultec/front.gif ...again notice the controls.

Then you might say: "Ok, those are old. They were magical. New expansive mixing consoles in big studios are as much magical and have much more controls." Well no. Studios use mostly software solutions already with occasional vintage HW chains. If they don't, they use a modern console. I'm lucky enough to work with few of these (Studer, Lawo, Yamaha) as a TV technician and there's usually standard 4 band parametric EQ on them. Nothing fancier.

Really the possibilities all of us have in damn simple EQ8 in Ableton are miles away from what those massive tracks of past were mixed with. Yes, those vintage consoles and HW EQs had saturations, cross-talk and other "imperfections", but those just added flavor, they didn't help with the actual mixing too much. ...and if you need them, go ahead, there's plenty of emulations.

My point is that in all of those "how to EQ properly" trheads is a lot of over-thinking that can cause bad habbits. And that seems to me wrong.
What do you guys think?