Come give some input on my new trance song!

[MIDIman]

I uploaded a new work-in-progress...let me know what you think of it!

"Future Now" @ mp3.com/midiman

 

[d1abolic]

Soon as i get those damn Audigy drivers!

 

[MIDIman]

lol - that sucks!

 

[Ne0]

Pretty Cool, what equipment and programs do you use to make this music? I have ProTools, but haven't even opened up the program yet.

 

[MIDIman]

More than likely, that's Pro Tools Free for Win98se. Pro Tools is generally known as the standard for pro audio but can be too much for the starting home PC musician.

Most of my new music is done entirely within Reason on a simple ol PC, but I do have a pro audio soundcard (Echo Mia), a mixer (Behringer), and some nice monitors (Event 20/20's). There's lots of great software out there, - Reason, Cubase, Fruity Loops, Cakewalk - but Reason truly is a miracle for any aspiring electronic musician. With it and Cubase linked up, some mastering plugins and an audio editor - anything is possible!

Enjoy, and please click the play all to audition a bunch of my tracks! They're all great, but the first few are by far the most popular.

 

[MIDIman]

ttt

 

[zeon]

i have monitor envy! those the 20/20bas?

and just speaking personally from my preferences/style, if i were you i'd pick up a decent controller (m-audio makes some good ones, and the new oxygens seem nice) as from listening to your tracks i think they could benefit from a bit of a melodic element ( i've always liked pianoish type lines in trance)

I'm curious what effects you used to make your main synth line, the fading in and out, stuttered one. It kinda sounds like wierd combination of like vocoding,gating and pingpong delay or something and is very cool sounding.

having heard some of your other stuff i have to say i like this one the best, your departure from the videogame type material is a nice change. Keep up the good work man.

 

[Ameesh]

i liked the lain one better

 

[MIDIman]

the stuttered pad synth line is quite simple really. since the pad was from the sampler in reason, i couldn't play with it as much as i like to, so i just patched a matrix's curve output to the "level" input on the sampler. this way, you can have all your normal held pads, but can stutter and syncopate the beat by using a curve in the matrix. i've actually done this with quite a few songs, but to make it really interesting in this one, i created about eight 32beat matrix patches, each one random on the beat, or off the beat, and recorded myself going through them throughout the song. seemed to work out quite nicely.

if you have cubase, the vst plugins from fx : Pansion can pretty much do the exact same thing.

wonderful comments tho zeon - thanks! i actually have a few tracks with piano melodic lines in them from a long time ago...might come back to that. agreed that melodic complexity is lacking, but honestly, i felt that my previous stuff was too complex in melody and harmony (coming straight out of collegiate music theory, that was no surprise), and decided to pull back a little. perhaps i need to reanalyze myself. note that these tracks are being created with popularity in mind, and quite frankly, simple is what most of the public enjoys. its sad but true.

oh yeah, and the event's are actually the original 20/20's. i dont particularly like the interal amps of the bas', and have a nice amp powering these. the curves of the two models are almost indentical. definitely probably THE best buy i've made in helping the quality of my music...



keep listening and bump me with comments! which track do YOU like the best?!




edit - lol - fxpansion has a colon ":" in it, so it ends up looking like this in the post = fxansion

 

[Viperoni]

not bad stuff

 

[MIDIman]

ttt

 

[Kadarin]

<< the stuttered pad synth line is quite simple really. since the pad was from the sampler in reason, i couldn't play with it as much as i like to, so i just patched a matrix's curve output to the "level" input on the sampler. this way, you can have all your normal held pads, but can stutter and syncopate the beat by using a curve in the matrix. i've actually done this with quite a few songs, but to make it really interesting in this one, i created about eight 32beat matrix patches, each one random on the beat, or off the beat, and recorded myself going through them throughout the song. seemed to work out quite nicely. >>



Is it me, or does this sound like someone's talking in a totally foreign language? I've got no frame of reference with which to parse all of that.

 

[d1abolic]

The bass seems a bit too deep for a trance track.

 

[MIDIman]

lol - very true, its is a foriegn language. well, zeon spoke as if he knew audio to some extent, so i spoke back in the same way. i could upload some visual references if you like...


d1abolic - i totally agree that its a bit bassy. if anyone has a normal 'computer' audio speaker setup, with those nasty subs, i bet this song sounds absolutely horrible - it does in my car where i have the bass a little loouder than normal. i personally am not a fan of lots of bass, and if you listen to the top three songs on my page, you'll notice that they are ten times more bassy than any other track on there. i have been delving with this exact topic (the lower end of trance music) for the past month, and i'm learning how it can be quite difficult to get that perfect bass and bassdrum material without lots of external hardware. the nice thing is that my event 20/20's are incredibly bass accurate.

i think the lain remix has the best bass and bassdrum mix. i really like its lower end better than any other track.



any experienced dance musicians here? what do you think?

 

[Viperoni]

I dunno if your program has this feature, but keep the bass above 40hz at all time, I believe a lot of trance has it in the 50-60hz range.
Not only trance, but a lot of other music too

 

[MIDIman]

rockin - thanks viperoni...and generally, the bass drum is above the bass, right?

i think i'm going to start sending all of my reason channels to cubase and mixdown there. might just make things easier since it has better mixing features...

 

[MIDIman]

ttt

 

[MIDIman]

bump

 

[StageLeft]

snot bad

 

[Ns1]

<< any experienced dance musicians here? what do you think? >>



not feelin it, song doesn't actually flow, doesn't, for lack of a better phrase, "take me on a journey"

bassline is way too hard for song like that

who cares, you gotta start making the good stuff like acid trance

now that's music

 

[MIDIman]

thanks neuro - do you compose as well? i'd love to hear some of your stuff.

agreed that the bass is too strong...it'll be pulled back. what genre do you think this song should be labelled as?

 

[SmirnoffIsTasty]

boring

 

[MIDIman]

<< boring >>



boring - that's it? that's not very productive. what about the song uninterests you? both negative and positive feedback are welcome.

 

[MIDIman]

bump

 

[MIDIman]

up