New tune

S

SynesthesiaC

Member
Joined
Oct 23, 2008
Just been pissing about with my new synths today, and god the NI Kore 2 controller is awesome.

Dont really know if its drum and bass. A mixture of Liquid, Dnb and Retro Hardcore really. I tend to just go where my synths take me and end up with a rather unique sound.

http://stashbox.org/518523/Synth madness.mp3 (old)

EDIT: http://stashbox.org/520733/Synth madnes.mp3 (new)

Any advice? I think the drums could still do with a bit of touching up.
 
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The melody/chords are nice although the sounds are very pre-set. But then I guess that's why you would buy Kore2. Anyway that's a different argument....
As for the drums, yeah they need a bit of work. The kick needs some attack and to cut through the mix. Try that layering in Battery. The snare also needs a bit of weight, I see what you mean in your other posts. Keep trying to add different layers. And the hihats.........they have a bit of that machine gun feel. Either vary the velocity of the midi hits, or look up voice groups in the manual. The humanise function in Battery is a last resort but not great.
Lastly, it's great to program the main bits of your beat from songle hits, but I haven't really found a way to create that dnb shuffle this way. Try to layer a break or two under the main hits. It will give you that 'real' dnb sound. (from one amateur to another)
 
^ Thanks a bunch. Gonna be scouring battery for some decent kicks the coming days. I'll look out for some decent 808's and layer them up. And I'll probably add some velocities to the hats in cubase 4 to give them some sort of syncopated rhythm, coz yeah, they do sound real artificial.

At least I'm finally moving away from just blagging whole drum loops off people and am starting to make me own :)

Some of the my old tunes were done with 100% blagged drum loops. Which sounded great, but I never liked the thought of the song not *really* being all my own work.

Like this old one I wrote: http://stashbox.org/281630/SynesthesiaC - DnB.mp3 And the only synth I used in that one was massive, with nearly all the drum loops exported in, but with a few hit hats added here and there to add some extra rhythm.
 
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The tune sounds a bit lacking in any soul but that may have been your aim?? the drums seems like their hitting too high in the frequency range (100hz kick 200hz snare is roughyl where they should be) plus a bit of layering for more umph and presence - the actual melody is pretty nice though good work there - but the overall tune needs to span the frequencies a bit better - a good tip is putting a frequencies analyser on your master to see where your gaps are - I'd say your low end would be particularly lacking. Anyways keep it up and keep learning - you've obviously got good musical knowledge - just get that coupled with good technical knowledge and your laughing!!
 
Okay so i've taken on some of the advice. I also have the problem at the moment of having redundant speakers now, so am doing this all through headphones. Which sucks. They're supposed to be really good headphones, but its still never the same as proper monitors. So the bass could be well distorted in places, you'll know before I do! The headphones will probably miss it.

http://stashbox.org/520733/Synth madnes.mp3

Think the drums are better now anyway, I boosted the EQ at the 200-300Hz range and it gave it a lot more punch. Added some random guitar too, to make it sound a bit less artificial. Probably overdid it a bit actually.
 
It sounds very 'set' as I kind of got stuck in the same chord progression the whole way though, making it sound pretty predictable in places. But thats my style maaaaaaan. I get stuck in chord progressions and cant get out. Thats the curse of writing your melody before the drums.
 
no offence but congratulations on nearly making my ears bleed! theres some really horrible crackling in this tune probably from one of the vst's u have, an the export you did, it really hurt which gave me very little time to judge wat i heard.

As far as i could tell the sounds were very basic especially the drums, work on using filter envelopes for your kick n snare, to give them punch an add some layers from the breaks exchange thread but pick n chose the layering you want i.e shuffle or high end etc
The synths need layering too mids an lows.
Tbh the arrangement (from wat i heard as i stopped it due to the crackling) was fine an the melody seemed quite interesting so just work on the individual elements......or move on an start a new tune an go back to this one after you pick up more things.
 
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