The one trick that Big Music doesn't want you to know!

I was absolutely struggling when I went to do a final mix after writing everything in stereo. For me, it was a whack-a-mole game: Fixing one problem created ten more, bass was unmanageable, highs tended to blare or everything was a midrange soup and I constantly struggled with frequency cancellation.

Above all other problems, music was not portable. It would sound great with headphones, but became a blown out mess on external speakers.

Mono. Just write everything in mono. If the track sounds good in mono, even just the slightest bit of stereo separation makes it sound awesome!

As a perk, it forced me to learn more about compression and limiting and when it is applicable. If something is inaudible in mono, it's going to sound like absolute garbage in stereo. (It also forced me into EQ'ing nearly every component of a song at first. I am not nearly as aggressive with that now, but again, it opened up new doors that I didn't realize existed.)

Why, oh why, is this technique not pushed more to hobbyists and beginners? Is there a shortcoming that I am not aware of?

Obviously, this isn't a cure-all and I kinda framed this post as a magic trick. Its one hell of a teaching tool, if nothing else.

Made on the dirtywave m8 tracker.

There are a number of questions online dealing with this subject, but many answers are contradictory, or aren’t familiar with what a soundfont is, and few seem to acknowledge that—according to the US Copyright Office at least— you can’t copyright a recording of an individual note (See the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices Chapter 300, Section 313.4 (B)). That said, I was only able find one Reddit thread where someone brought up specific cases tied to the issue, and there was still some confusion within that thread.

I’m making original compositions, and I still want to properly credit the website I got a soundfont from, because I think that’s the right thing to do, though it’s not required. The site offers them for free and seems to have all its own rights in order. To my knowledge, all of the recordings were explicitly made for use in this manner, not ripped from other copyrighted material, but it would put my mind at ease to be sure someone couldn’t change their mind years later and have grounds to sue me for royalties because somewhere buried in the individual recordings of individual notes is, like, a piano where the c-sharp is especially pianoish.

I’d like to believe I’m in the clear, but am I misunderstanding anything here?

(Tried to ask this on Reddit’s music production sub and the post was removed without explanation. Never heard back from mods when I reached out. Very strange.)

Thank you for your time.

I am using ableton for years now, just as a creative outlet on the side. Linux is my daily driver on my laptop and I aim to replace windows on my desktop soon as well. But ableton keeps me from moving on, so I took a look at bitwig. I do not have any external plugins or vsts, which works great for me with the native stuff in ableton. But I'm afraid bitwig lacks the same broad selection of effects and instruments. What is your experience and recommendation regarding plugins? I also kind of like what bitwig does to the workflow.

How is your experience with the ableton push in bitwig?

Thanks a lot in advance!

I have been using FL Studio for years. It was easy to pirate when I was younger and broke, and it's still flexible enough for anything I want to do now without hassle. (The license these days is "meh" for clips and plugins. However, I am designing and beginning to record most of my own instruments now with a core set of plugins.)

I would like to experiment with an open source DAW, but not sure which routes to take there.

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?

Inspired by Koan Sound I wanted to record some double bass and get creative with it. Fortunately, I have a very old and kind of broken double bass at home. However, I have no idea how to play it properly and decided instead of trying to play it how it is supposed to be played, record a bunch of sounds & noises (I apologized to the double bass afterwards) and try to arrange them into something afterwards. This is the result. It's not perfect but I am fairly happy with it. :)

What I took away from this project: Starting with a few samples can really spark creativity for me. I would have never come up with this on a blank canvas. Listening to the double bass recordings I noticed variations in volume/articulation/... which gave me ideas where to place percussion and other accents. Then the track built itself from there.

Let me know what you think!

I searching for a native OTT alternative for Linux some one can recommend something ?

This is one of the tracks that I made for the video game project I'm working on. I'm still a beginner in music though. So I believe it might sound bad. I think volume balancing could use some polish.

Hey smart peeps, I'm a remote worker who attends a lot of virtual meetings. I also sometimes create training videos or host training sessions, and my current earbuds are some $15 amazon cheapos.

I sometimes get feedback that people can hear my typing or the squeak of my chair.

I have about $200 budget to spend on some nicer headphones. When I search, I look for 'noise canceling' or 'background sound suppression', but only see more cheap headphones or some over-the-head headsets.

Are higher quality earbuds possible? What's out there that's a good product y'all might recommend?

Released April 24 / 2024

Written and produced by Robb Rourke

#hiphop #beats

I've been using machine learning to separate the music from the soundtrack of the 2001 film Osmosis Jones. Using selective muting and many, many spectral edits, I've extracted around 20 songs so far.

There will be artifacts, but it's the best that can I can do with the sources and tech I have.

Hi friends,Happy New Year to you all! Here is my new song "Dune", which I composed and recorded live just using the Moog Sub 25 together with the Valhalla Su...

Dive into the eerie world of haunted recordings music with this mesmerizing piano melody by Robb Rourke. Let the haunting sounds transport you to another realm as you study or unwind. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more chilling tunes.

Hey there! I just found a very nice offer for the 4i4 audio interface. Do I understand correctly, that there are 3 differen audio outputs that I can rout to? So main1 and main2 and headphones? I would like to route my Ableton headphones out (what gets played when selecting instruments and stuff like that) to the actual headphones channel instead of the main out?

Thanks a lot in advance, happy producing!

A dark instrumental piece I wrote and performed.

Mix of orchestra, guitar and Piano.

Sorry if it looks like promote. Just a song I wanted to share

Hi, I create videos to educate others on living more with nature instead of from nature. Anyway, I currently pay for Epidemic Sound. I only use the songs from a single band for all of my videos. So, Epidemic Sound is getting a lot of money for a dozen songs from the same band.

I'd rather pay the artists for their work than Epidemic Sound. But I don't know where to start. I'd like to find something like the songs by Wanderer's Trove to use for my videos. I don't mind paying as much as I do with ES. I'd just rather it go to the artist than a corporation. Any advice on how to find such songs without going for a subscription?

Thank you!

PS: I really hope this is the right community for this question. I don't know much about music or music production at all.

There seems to be a lot of AI audio tools; anyone try them for audio isolation? My usecase is separating a song from a 5.1 movie mix, there's a great remix of Hot Blooded I wanna preserve

How many unfinished tracks do you have knocking around on a hard drive somewhere? I was just looking through a big folder of 150 that I organized into one folder like 5 years ago. I don't know what the true total is. Anyone else find this super overwhelming haha? I'm maybe just gonna dump it on the public like Mac Demarco lol

Thanks for checking it out!

I was recently listening to music while in a conference call with my headphones, and I noticed that they changed to a "hands-free mode" and the music that I was listening to degraded to something that sounded like elevator music. Is there a way to apply this to any song that I have a file for?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9494144

I'm looking for some help in recreating the main synth patch for "A Warm Place" by Nine Inch Nails (can be heard in the linked video) using a software synth.

I think one of the main components to the patch is some kind of organ voice but beyond that I'm a bit lost as to what I should try. I'm pretty new to creating synth patches, but I learn best by experimenting and trying to reproduce things I know I like. I'm not looking to recreate this sound perfectly, but if anyone here could offer some guidance on how to achieve a roughly similar sound, or even just a good place to start, I'd really appreciate it.

I'm mainly using ZynAddSubFX but don't mind trying out other software.