Mix Challenge

Posted: **Thu Sep 24, 2020 12:24 CEST**

Hello everyone,

The groove seemed most important to me. I really digged the feel on Alleycat Jazz by Moose Dawa. My groove was created by having the hihat about 40ms later than the kick.

The piano and double bass (and vocal) are slowed down and cut up slices from a recording I made for the Tamara Baas Quartet - Softly As In A Morning Sunrise, which can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n5eCSD-vsI.
Musicians on this recording:
Piano: Raúl Santana
Drums: Tijn Koenen
Double bass: Raphaël Royer
Vocal: Tamara Baas

This slowing down, and thereby also pitching down, gave the instruments a haunting quality that seemed to fit this months theme very well.

The kick, snare, fingersnaps and hihat are from the Ableton library.
The guitars I played myself and serve more as ear candy as opposed to a melody or riff.

Here is the track: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oU0HC2 ... sp=sharing

Making this track was an interesting challenge, because most (pop) music is constantly asking for attention and that is exactly what you don’t want for such a composition. So it’s a fine line between chill and boring

Posted: **Thu Sep 24, 2020 17:48 CEST**

Well, my first time participating here!

I have been monitoring this contest for a while, but this is the first time that the theme allows me to prepare something.

So here is my entry:

I know that posting this late I've missed my chance to get valuable feedback from the group that would allow me to improve the track... oh well... I'm always cutting it close in these things.

Tags/Info:

Composed and performed by: GMoneh
Recorded and mixed in Bitwig Studio.
Mastered in Studio One.

Instruments and effects:
NI Battery 4, Solid Dynamics
Arturia Analog Lab
U-he Zebra
AAS Cromaphone
Rob Papen Blue 2
FabFilter Pro-Q, Pro-C, Pro-R
PSP Vintage Warmer
Valhalla Delay
Aether

Posted: **Thu Sep 24, 2020 18:02 CEST**

GMoneh wrote: ↑
Thu Sep 24, 2020 17:48 CEST
Well, my first time participating here!

Wellcome!
Please add the download-link.

Posted: **Thu Sep 24, 2020 18:34 CEST**

I've been out doing a number of other things but it's always nice to come back to make a soothing lo-fi track.
at least, that's what i call this piece. everyone has a slightly different take on the genre.

The main chimes sample was performed by young folks at my church, broadcast during a virtual service.
Beyond that, I used the kick and snare of the free SonicCouture brush drum kit, and I split out different bird calls from a free Cymatics sample using ReaCoMa.
E-piano is from Surge, and the Bass is from MSoundFactory.
Everything else is from my personal sample library, my voice, or my collection of odd acoustic instruments (egg shaker, soprano recorder, ukulele, melodica, clothes dryer)

A couple of highlights:
I produced it in Reaper 6.
CHOWTapeModel and airwindows ChromeOxide add a bit of flavor to the chimes, birds, and a few lead instruments.
I used One Small Clue's Grace for some of the sampling duty.
Yes, I did record my clothes dryer - 4 different layers, all processed by a volume shaping plugin to produce the swing rhythm.
I did some varispeed recording to provide more vocal octaves.
The overtone singing is quantized to low-limit JI using MAutoPitch and an upper octave was added through ReaPitch.
The pad sound is my recorder, run through one of The Threshold impulse responses to smear it out.
There's a lot of subtle and unnecessary processing in the tracks.
Yes, it's imperfect. That's intentional.

I'd be happy to provide more detail about any aspect of the track, but I don't want to fill the thread with more information if nobody wants to read it.
edit: the extra detail, for anyone interested in the details of my track and workflow -

► Show Spoiler

Posted: **Thu Sep 24, 2020 19:29 CEST**

Square wrote: ↑
Sun Sep 20, 2020 12:56 CEST
I had my true peak limiter capping at -.3, perhaps I should limit that further to make sure no peaks are getting through. May I ask what people generally use as their true peak limit? To be honest I read somewhere years ago to limit peaks at -.2 so since then I just put it to -.3 for a bit of a net and haven't thought about it since... it's quite possible I've been mistaken for a while.

I only have one plugin with true peak limit and that is ozone. I found Ozone Maximizer quite good. Regarding limit set it depend on what do you want to do with your track. As far I know -.3 dBTP was used for CD master. For online streaming you need to have bigger reserve to avoid problems when the track is converted to compressed version. Also there are rules for this competition with max -1 dBTP. Looks like people do not read all stuff posted by Mister Fox.

Leonard Bowman wrote: ↑
Thu Sep 24, 2020 18:34 CEST
I'd be happy to provide more detail about any aspect of the track, but I don't want to fill the thread with more information if nobody wants to read it.

I'm the one that really like more info about track related stuff. So posting anything interesting regarding your track is welcome. Some folks do not post much info so it looks like they do not want share some of their knowledge and tricks and used plugins.

Posted: **Thu Sep 24, 2020 21:13 CEST**

Leonard Bowman wrote: ↑
Thu Sep 24, 2020 18:34 CEST

I'd be happy to provide more detail about any aspect of the track, but I don't want to fill the thread with more information if nobody wants to read it.

You could always use the spoiler to collapse the amount of info in your post

Especially as you seem to have a very interesting way of working and I had never heard of ReaCoMa before, I should look at the internet more for audio sources/info , but I always get stuck on cat pix

Posted: **Thu Sep 24, 2020 22:30 CEST**

Good point! I'll update it later today with more detailed info in a spoiler block.

ReaCoMa is a set of scripts for Reaper based on FluCoMa

It's great for splitting audio into slices or layers based on various features in the track.

Posted: **Thu Sep 24, 2020 23:11 CEST**

FLAC: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14hQZ50 ... sp=sharing
MP3: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14N42dx ... sp=sharing

DAW: FL Studio 20.7
Author/composer/producer: VCA-089
Title: I'm Okay
Genre: Hip-Hop (Lo-fi)
Main BPM: 70
Main Key: Bb Major

Beats for those of you who like to dig inside your brain while you do evening walks, or those who like to run to get in shape after a weeks of lockdown, or those ho just want to escape an upcoming rain.

For drums I used samples of TR-808 by Samples From Mars. Usually, I would prefer samples from another drum machine because those 808s is so abused in modern recording industy, but I was quite happy with my beats after all. Ecccven those infamous "cicada" (32th notes) hi-hats sounds natural with slow tempo.

For the bass I used Samplesons "Fire" bass piano modeling. It has a very unusual and interesting sound, especially when the preamp is cranked up.

The guitars is a stock FL Studio Stratocaster library fed into TonelibGFX. The signal chain is: Clean jazz amp, Tape echo and a Stereo chorus. The tape echo sounds surprisingly good and makes perfect texture for lo-fi vibe.

The piano is SampleScience "Room Piano" with slight simmer reverb on it. I also used a "Drone Piano" for the reversed swells and "Toy Keyboard" for a strings pad from the same company.

SFX from a free soundpacks. Most of them are from "Sounds of Life" by Ocean Swift.

A stock FL Studio drumloop.

I used Wavesfactory "Cassette" plugin to process alomst every instrument (the piano is already sounds lo-fi)

Technical Details:

► Show Spoiler

Posted: **Thu Sep 24, 2020 23:56 CEST**

Hi,

Ok so this is my track submission, i got a bit of time to work on it here and there. It was nice to chill and write ^^

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hFcDne ... sp=sharing

all the best

Square

Posted: **Fri Sep 25, 2020 00:23 CEST**

TrojakEW wrote: ↑
Thu Sep 24, 2020 19:29 CEST

Square wrote: ↑
Sun Sep 20, 2020 12:56 CEST
I had my true peak limiter capping at -.3, perhaps I should limit that further to make sure no peaks are getting through. May I ask what people generally use as their true peak limit? To be honest I read somewhere years ago to limit peaks at -.2 so since then I just put it to -.3 for a bit of a net and haven't thought about it since... it's quite possible I've been mistaken for a while.
I only have one plugin with true peak limit and that is ozone. I found Ozone Maximizer quite good. Regarding limit set it depend on what do you want to do with your track. As far I know -.3 dBTP was used for CD master. For online streaming you need to have bigger reserve to avoid problems when the track is converted to compressed version. Also there are rules for this competition with max -1 dBTP. Looks like people do not read all stuff posted by Mister Fox.

Cool thanks for the feedback part, that makes sense and would explain some annoying artifacts I got from uploading to soundcloud, but as for the other part, it was a generalised question from a new member and I apparently overlooked that, so save the sarkiness for gearslutz eh?

Mix Challenge

SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC037 September 2020 - Winners announced

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC037 September 2020 - Submissions until 24-09-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC037 September 2020 - Submissions until 24-09-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC037 September 2020 - Submissions until 24-09-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC037 September 2020 - Submissions until 24-09-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC037 September 2020 - Submissions until 24-09-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC037 September 2020 - Submissions until 24-09-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC037 September 2020 - Submissions until 24-09-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC037 September 2020 - Submissions until 24-09-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC037 September 2020 - Submissions until 24-09-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST

Re: SONGWRITING COMPETITION - SWC037 September 2020 - Submissions until 24-09-2020 23:59 UTC+2/CEST