Free VSTs

Quality? I’m still filtering through. Don’t know yet.

Link

Reason Refill: 5005 synths, 222 effects

Shouts out to youproduce.net user “droot” for creating this one. Lovely.

Download link below. And I will be adding a link to the actual site to the list on the right.

Finders-Keepers:

Download

Deckadance 1.14 Club Edition

I effs with this…

A finders-keepers video, meaning, “no” that’s not my vid.

I’m learning, though, maybe one day.

Enjoy, nonetheless.

The Red Giants”Chain Reaction” Cover Art

*stumbles in abandoned blog*

Okay, Im back as I promised with the workflow for the red giants cover. Not sure exactly what is the best way to post this but here I go anyways.

Project: The  Red Giants “Chain Reaction” CD Cover (Personal)

The album itself is a return off our 3 year hiatus from putting out music so Dave aka Brickbeats wanted to have a title that represented that… so Chain Reaction. We also decided  I guess of course my first thought was to put some kind of Chains on the cover. I had this idea of having a medallion made with the Red Giants Logo on it and buying a fake ass chain etc and taking photo of and so on. This may have made for a dope cover but time and mostly money didnt permit for me to explore this idea.

So with that first idea scratched I basically came up something basic with the logo and a metal plate photo i had taken with a gradient and a screen effect. Just to kinda get me going in some direction

I went back, decided this was boring and took the gradient off to show the texture more and played around with the colors a bit:

I sent this to Brickbeats and he suggested I take the plate off and use a black background. I took the plate off and to affoid using a plain black background I found a image that better suited what we were shooting for (which is a return/breaking back through/emerging type of idea). I dug up a photo i had taken of cracks in the concrete and applied a radial gradient to it which resulted in this which is the (almost) final image for the front cover of the project:

and there you have. Pretty basic use of the gradient & screen effect. Straight and to the point. I’ll be covering the rest of the artwork (Back Cover & Disc art) soon hopefully.

I wrote this pretty fast so please excuse me if it sounds retarded

-jermiside

Another Word-of-the-Day: Oscillator

First of all, my apologies on not being here as often as I should. I mixture of school and work, not to mention an instrumental EP I’m working on, have been keeping me away.

Ok, unlike the last “word of the day,” you may or may not know what an oscillator is. This term applies more for the synth-based producers.

Whether virtual or real, an oscillator simply produces oscillating (i.e. rising or falling) waves. These waves can be either fed through an amplifier to generate sound (usually via filters and other modulators, if you want to get anything worthwhile out of them) or used to modulate other parameters (such as a filter’s cutoff). Most modern synths have a variety of waveforms…

Sine- a sine is a curved, flowing wave known for its smooth sound. Sine waves contain only the fundamental frequency with no harmonics, however, and can be a little bland.

Sawtooth- sawtooth waves are great for lead sounds as they’re tonally rich and contain all possible harmonics (in linearly descending intensity down the length of the wave).

Triangle- as with the sawtooth, triangle waves have all the harmonics present, but with less energy in the high range and the strength falling off exponentially.

Square/rectangle- square waves have only the odd harmonics present (third, fifth, etc) and produce a hollow, metallic sound. Consequently, they’re great for odd synth patches and woodwind style sounds. They can also sound great layered over saw and triangle waves. A rectangle wave is a square wave with a “pulse width modulation” (PWM) applied, and sounds even more reedy.

Just Blaze vid for our Mac Users

Just Blaze sharing simple tips on how to rhythmically chop us samples in Logic. I’m, personally, not a Mac user (right now, atleast) so I figured I would share for those who are.

Tips

Tripped over another Computer Music magazine file titled “101 Tips.” Once again, for the sake of sharing info that I come across, and also for the sake of promoting sources of production tips and tools (and of course, for the sake of saving my ass), I gathered up 10 random tips out of their 101. I tried to get a mixture of beginner stuff and about medium level. I steered clear of anything too advanced, mostly due to my audience, and also because at that level, you probably have better access to that kind of information.

If some of this info I’m sharing helps you out a lot. Go ahead and spend the $10 or $15 (don’t remember) to buy a copy from Barnes and Noble, Borders, Books-a-Million, or whatever other major bookstore I’m forgetting. The magazine itself has a ton of great and helpful info, but, the DVD is loaded with even more. As well as programs and plugins for you to use. It is well worth the money.

Anyway- my 10 random tips taken from the file.

1. Hard panning seems to be a dying trend. Yes, we hear it used as an effect, but hardly as an essential part of the mix. Why are people so averse to shoving the guitar solo all the way to the left side of the stereo soundield? Drastic panning can give a mix some much-needed separation, so don’t be afraid to try it.

2. Don’t try to mix on the same day that you’ve been cutting tracks. Make sure you give yourself some time away from the material. When you’re mixing, take frequent breaks to avoid ear fatigue.

3. Never, ever, under any circumstances try to mix with headphones. You will not get an accurate mix. They might be OK for checking the odd detail, but don’t forget, they’re for tracking, not mixing. Headphones (even the “studio” ones) will not accurately reproduce bass frequencies, nor will they clue you in to phase cancellation.

4. C’mon, sing the song all the way through, will ya? Too much of today’s music is obviously constructed by cutting and pasting the same chorus over and over. Give your audience an entire performance.

5. You don’t need to buy a real pop filter- you can make your own by stretching tights over a hoop made from a coat hanger.

6. But of course, the best vocal recording will be one for which no pop filter was necessary. If the vocalist sings at a slight angle towards the mic instead of dead-on, plosives will be minimized.

7. We’ve all made bad purchases, slapping our hard-earned down on that shiny new thing that promises to elevate our recordings to a professional level on a breadline budget. Only when it was too late did we realize that we should have held out and saved for a better piece of gear. Our recordings suffered for our impatience.

8. Having said that, great music can be made on a shoestring budget. Don’t rush out to replace what you already have before you’ve got the most out of it. Even the shoddiest kit can add some character to your tracks.

9. Are your mixes consistently weak in the bottom end when played back on other systems, even though they sound OK on your setup? You may have throuble with bass exaggeration in the studio. Try commercial bass traps. Conversely, if you find your mixes to be bass-heavy on other systems, yoiu may need to look into getting a subwoofer.

10. When tracking vocals, make sure your singer avoids caffeine and acidic drinks, as such things can constrict vocal chords

Manual for Korg Polysix

Keeping up with manuals for ish can be difficult as it is; from the TV’s remote, to the damn 68-part IKEA desk that you assembled once but, without thinking, took apart. From my experiences, drum machines, synths, and workstations are no different; especially since a lot of equipment is bought used and/or via the internet.

So- it’s always nice to trip over manuals for gear, especially gear from 81′, and especially compiled into an ever so convenient .pdf file.

“I don’t have a Korg Polysix, and couldn’t possibly afford one, why are you loading this up?”

Ah, but we all know of the Korg Legacy VST (which I already talked a bit about in the software post), which can be found just as easily as a lot of other resources, and I’m not about to go into details as to how.

The VST offers a kind of realistic simulation with buttons/knobs that look like the ones on the Polysix that you can click and toy around with. Thing is, I’m sure there’s some people that don’t know that they’re fooling around with. And, not to mention, some of the stuff and be too small to really see (and the programmer doesn’t seem to reveal info when you hover over the buttons like some of the other portions do).

Either way, enjoy.

http://www.vintagesynth.com/manuals/p6user.pdf

Word of the Day: Microphone

So, I spent too freaking much on a copy of a certain digital music magazine once upon a time. I think I may have blogged about it in the past. Anyway, I was going through the DVD files that were included when I saw a PDF titled “A to Z.” I know I have a few friends who read who are completely new to this, so I’d like to share, however, it’s a very long file (obviously), so I’ve decided to try to do a word a day; at random.

So today’s word is MICROPHONE

(c) CM magazine DVD, A-to-Z PDF

It doesn’t matter how good your system, your voice, or your playing is. If you want to capture real world sounds, there’s one thing all that digital magic can’t make up for and that’s a bad recording…Here, we’ve outline two basic models: condenser and dynamic.

Dynamic: Dynamic mics use a plastic diaphragm attached to a coil of wire suspended in a magnetic field. Sound pressure causes the entire assembly to move, producing a very small electric current. Dynamic mics are very rugged making them ideal for live work, and relatively cheap. The drawback is that, because of the bulky diaphragm assembly, they aren’t as sensitive to high frequencies. They can still do a good job on vocals, though, and are the ideal choice for close miking drums and guitar amps. A classic dynamic mic is the Shure SM58.

Condenser: Also known as the capacitor mic, this type has two very thin metal plates (often gold), one of which is fixed. Sound makes the other plate vibrate and thanks to a polarizing charge, a very small current is produced. Because the vibrating assembly is very light, these mics are much more sensitive to higher frequencies, but they’re also more delicate. Large and small diaphragm versions are available, with the former great for warm sounding vocals and the latter great for capturing the highs…

Microphone pick up patterns:

Cardioid- Also known as unidirectional, this is the most common type. Here the mic picks up sound from directly in front (the name comes from the heart shape of the pickup pattern when plotted on a graph). Cardioid is ideal for less forgiving acoustic spaces. Hyper-cardioid mics are even more directional.

Omni-directional- These mics pick up sound from all around, and are great ambiance mics but not well-suited for any other type of work in untreated acoustic spaces.

Figure 8: These pick up sound equally from in front and behind. There are various applications for this (multiple backing singers sharing a mic, using a pair to stereo mic a piano, etc), but for most purposes cardioid is a better choice.

Ok- apparently I can’t post the pic full-size, so:

I wanted to start with “mic” because there’s always talk about what kind of mic is more suitable.

I found a blog of the supposed “best mics for hip-hop recordings”.

Work Flow

At the request of the people (Person) I am making a blogging. I just wrapped up the cover for my mixtape and while I would love to discuss the details of it here I think I’ll wait a minute on that. I kinda wanna go into more detail about it than my brain will allow at the moment.

BUT I am just now formulating ideas for the “Chain Reaction” (Red Giants) cover. So I’ll be documenting my progress on that from start to finish over here. As of now, all Brick and I really know is that we do not want our faces on the cover and I think that’s a good start in itself. Taking random pictures and slapping them on a cover is really just an easy out creatively. So anyway, hopefully I’ll be posting pics documenting every step of the workflow.