The Musicians & Music Producers Thread

It seems like there's a good number of us here, so why not have our own thread? I'll kick it off with this:

http://nitesstudios.com/crocketts-theme-nites-remix/

This one was recorded with a cheap M-Audio Producer mic. As of right now I don't have anything public on the new mic.
http://nitesstudios.com/bokey-the-mayor-you-dont-understand-me/

More stuff coming soon.

In the other thread BBA mentioned clipping. I keep that to a minimum and I use limiters where appropriate. I never use compressors in any of my work. In my opinion compressors just ruin the quality of a song to artificially inflate the volume level or 'fix' the low quality of the original beat track. I think that if you begin with a high-quality track you should never need to use compressors to 'fix' the track.

What do you guys think?

dotnetbeast said:

Good thing is I can post every week.
Why?

http://weeklybeatsessions.com/

Every week I (try to) submit a beat to that site. Everyone does a beat based off one sample. I will update with mine soon.

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I'll check that out, thanks! I tend to get at least two or three beat tracks done every week but they're usually spoken for by the time I'm done with them. A few more weeks and I should be free.

dotnetbeast said:

With your tracks, what do you use to master them? The sound is nice. I use Adobe Audition for the final touchup.

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Thanks man. I'm using Reaper for mixing and mastering now. It's fast, easy to use, and powerful. I also use it to mix my Maschine tracks, the Crockett's Theme remix was mixed in Reaper. It's a fully-featured DAW with VST support and tons of addons, so if I ever wanted to VST into it and use it as my main production app I could do that. For now Maschine makes me happy.

I was using Magix Premium 2013 before we got the new mic. You Don't Understand Me was recorded and mixed in Magix, but there are so many flaws, limitations, and general workflow annoyances in Magix that it was time for me to move up.

As for mastering, I try to set each track up properly from the start, so I have very few filters and very little mastering going on when final mix-down happens. Usually, applying a simple SPL1 filter at 0.0db to the Master track is enough. Some guys set each track to -6.0db and apply lots of filters and compressors to bring it back up, but I skip all of that and go straight to profit

dotnetbeast said:

Also I wouldn't necessarily call the M-Audio Producer mic cheap, with the right setup.

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I just mean cheap as in cheap. It's a $75 self-contained setup, whereas a traditional mic setup is a $600 investment even if you go with a $200 entry-level mic like the Blue Spark. You've got the interface, stand, filter, XLR cable, etc., to think about. With the M-Audio mic it's all included in the internal USB device.

With that said, the quality isn't as bad as you'd think for a $75 mic setup. Still, my ST69 blows it out of the water.

[GU]elmur_fud;2585280 said:

My dad sung for several presidents while in the military, my siblings can play instruments or have great voices, my mother is an excellent pianist. My whole family is musically talented in fact... except me. I can't play anything. I can read music and had voice lessons when I was younger sure, but my singing voice, though pitch perfect, is bland and boring. I have a good ear for music and love it but that is as far as it goes.

I even tried my hand at writing music (via a midi composer). Here is sheet music for that. http://i.imgur.com/U1oj6s3.png <- might not even be humanly playable for all I know.

That said I will not post here much as I have nothing to add really... but I wanted to state that I like what I am hearing. Good stuff. ...and I will probably lurk this thread allot.

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:tup:

I can't read sheet music, otherwise I'd take a shot at it. DNB might be able to.

zynthetic said:

...but limiting is compression, just with a high ratio. The effect of compression you describe is actually brickwall limiting. You might want to read up on the types of compression given their usefulness across the board may be of interest. I use compression on all live instruments, sidechain on all bass, multiband on all bus mixes, and without any of that I can say the production quality of my work would suffer greatly.

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I'll read up on it, thanks :tup:

Do you usually use sidechain compression for ducking or to get pumping bass?

I like it, especially the section that starts around 3:20. I also like the trancey rhythm section that starts around 1:35, it sounds like it's sidechained to a kicker?

What are you using to produce TWD?

I totally forgot to list my guitars. I have four acoustics (Ibanez Artwood Grand Concert in Natural, Epiphone DR-100 in Black, and two Esteban American Legacy acoustelectrics in Black and Red) and an old Ibanez electric that I can't remember the model and is probably not made anymore. I rarely play these days so they will likely not be seeing any studio work.