SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC036 August 2020 - Winners announced

[Double Tap]

Thanks for the feedback from everyone so far. Just on loudness, there's a good piece from in the middle of the Loudness War that explains the issue, for anyone who's not heard about it.

https://lithe.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/ ... dness-war/

[Mister Fox]

The original video is from 2006, but in 2016 (about a year prior to the AES142), there was a "re-upload" of the old video on "The Loudness War" with video some extended explanation.

phpBB [media]

Again - the -14LUFS ILk max recommendation this is not about forbidding compression. Summing bus compression ("the glue" effect) is essential for certain genres. The point here is to learn to find the right balance again, and retain the transients of your production. I did a lot of experiments over the years with "de-clipping" tracks through the help of various tools. Pretty much always, the version that had "more transients" was more exciting, punchy, and in case of hard hitting metal or even DnB, also way more aggressive (and grooving).

And with this month's Songwriting Competition - I wanted to hear some aggressiveness.




I will (hopefully) post a new dedicated thread about "Loudness" in September. I'm currently taking a deep dive into "Loudness for Movies, TV Shows and Documentaries", and I still await certain confirmation from befriended engineers on the SoundCloud topic. So please stay tuned.

[Jorgeelalto]

Hey Fox, always appreciate you talking about loudness, I always learn something new (didn't know/remember about the MP3 decoding thing). I readjusted the track to hit exactly -14 LUFS. I moved Ozone's input gain to -1 dBFS, and moved its limiter threshold from -2 to -0.3 dBFS. It sounds... alright, I guess. Maybe tomorrow I will make some A/B comparison of both. It's not a loudness value I would release with (I tend to go for -7 LUFS, integrating only the loudest parts).

[Mister Fox]

Speaking of tomorrow - a friendly reminder:
We're in the final 24 hours to finish and submit your production. For real this time!


Once the deadline has been reached, please no more edits (until the voting period has ended). Then we perform with the usual - final feedback and casting your personal favorites (votes). To all of you who have been sitting on the fence, now is your time to hop down and get involved!

[J.Ruegg]

Hey, Thank you so much for all the information...
I took a deep dive into loudness and the different platforms, and learned some things I didn't really thought would be important... If I ever decide to release some music, then I should probably take all of that into account to get a decent sound.

On the other side, I also found that the recommended LUFS value for beatport was from -6 LUFS to -9 LUFS, so, in that aspect I nailed it. Again, as I said, it probably has to do with the kind of music I'm aiming for, which has no dynamics whatsoever.

But it made me think of how to make different masters for different platforms... I guess I'll take a deeper look & experimentation into this, but when I get enough time .

Thanks again.

[Clueless]

MP3
https://mega.nz/file/fxFxzAwJ#u4C3r342Y ... 1PMnBpOuWM

The main theme was to try and make a track which felt like you are of the rails and bouncing around. DnB is pretty futuristic anyway, so I tried to make something with both thick and thin elements, using width and instrumentation. Not overly convinced I nailed all the elements, I just wanted it to move along as well as possible.
Mixed, rather than mastered

SWC036

Reaper

Instruments
Drumaxx
Synth1
Mass by Xoxos
VSTSpeek3

Effects
Airwindows effects Loads:)
Ozone 8 elements, exciter, Reacomp, Soneq, Qrange, Dc filter,
ReaEq, Mautopan, tapecassette, digital echodelayunit. Mono mizer le, contrast distortion MEGA, noise bud filter. DC1A2. Night shine, huge booty bass, 1175, Event horizon, Talfilter2, sevendelay, chowtapetapemodel, dragonflyplate & hall, block fish, VF1, hy filter3 free

Monitoring
Youlean lufs, Voxengo Span

Lufs 16.1
DR 13

[Mister Fox]

Beatport running off at -9LUFS (still), and just reading plenty of REDDIT comments actually defending that route (as in "my music is for DJs!"), is the wrong way to go IMO. If you ever(!) aim for a vinyl release of your productions, you have an upper limit (due to the limitations of groove cutting) - and funny enough, that is between -16LUFS ILk and -14LUFS ILk as well.

Again - you won't be disqualified (yet! see comment above), but you will definitely loose out on 1 bonus point.

Then again, you have read up on the topic and broadened your horizon in that area. So I take it as a win-win regarding the learning factor of the community. Please keep up the good work. And yes, I'd love to hear your entries in the future as well.




For everyone else reading along:
We're in the final 5 hours for SWC036. Please get your productions in order (ideally - if you've already submitted something, edit your old posts!). To those that are new to the community, please submit your tracks now.

I will collect all entries and update the thread later tonight.

[Olli H]

Mistake post. (I tried to edit original message, but instead I managed to quote myself)

[The Exponent]

Hi everyone!

So I haven't really used a lot of synths that I own at all, so thought of giving them a spin this time. Also Kontakt, that I purchased early this year and haven't used at all.

Here's my submission:


DAW: Reaper 6
Drums: Wave Alchemy free samples from Evolve sample pack. Some free shaker and tambourine loops. Drum breaks from Music Radar's free sample pack
Basses: Phase Plant
Leads: Sektor, Phase Plant
Arps: Sektor
Pads: Synthmaster One, Diversion
Keys: Sektor
Used Kontakt for the organic instruments from Analog Dreams, Hybrid Keys, Ethereal Earth and their Factory library

[Olli H]

”Gatekeeper”, Olli H
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aUkch0 ... sp=sharing

Wow, Olli, this is one of your best efforts as far as matching the music to the contest. It's really good as well. My only comment would be that the drums sound very fake in parts (though they are played very well). I'm pretty sure Battery has round robin, so that's probably not it. I can't put my finger on it, but it jumped out at me a few times.

Thanks, I just submitted a new version with new drums.