jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

I love Jesus... like I love Scoratese, Machiavellie and Kant....

but straight up, jesus said he ahs enough youtube videos, man, he wants more song about YOUR feelings and less evangelism... no really, he called my cell a minute ago and was like, "Christ here! Now listen, Jim..."

haha😂 yea probably not

maybe not a concern for such a devout Christian, but for those of us who don't subscribe to sex-negative belief systems? bedroom Japanese can be very useful

your English is better than my Japanese but it might not get you laid in Tokyo next summer

I am impressd by yor English but didn't want to draw attention to it ib case you were sensitive about it.... I speak English, adequate business spanish and read latin fluently, but people like you knock my proverbial socks off with your language skills

I tried to learn Japanese as a young man, but spent most of my lesson time fucking the adorable Japanese girl who was supposed to be teaching me and to this day I only know enough Japanese to know what to say in the bedroom

no, I am no dope with computers but I am educated as a visua artist and historian with a music minor... nothing else

but I had a really killer education across the board hacing gone to 'special school' after my 1st IQ test in 1st grade

my memory is just short of photographic, which serves me well in all my endeavors... I am also twice your age so I have had time to learn and learn and learn and I rarely forget anything... generally a burden that keeps you up at night wishing you could travel back in time but otherwise a an assett

no stress, I hold a bachelor of fine arts in illustration, I can handle graphic design when I am bothered

wow, I am on emoticon overload

just NO, needs more work... you can do without headphones if you aren't overdubbing in the same room as a sound moving real air but you can't live without monitor speakers and anyone who says otherwise is just wrong and confused and ahs gotten lucky so far or thinks they have... there is no situation creating recorded music where you can do without decent speakers, period. I will shout this from the rooftops while being pumped fulla bullets by the post-rave DJ headphone mafia!

good choice of budget speakers though, rokits are alright and Yamaha kicks ass at studio speakers and has since I was a boy

seriously dude, I didn't come at you trying to secularize your music, do me the favor in return and leave me alone with the god stuff

okay, read and ask pertinent questions on what I told you about mixing techniques.... we can go from there... just be prompt I am really busy this weekend and won't be free to use my brin again on your behalf until Monday.... but today I am 100% free, playing with my son and waitin for my new sofa to be delivered (he destroyed the last one, kids, ugh)

did your head explode, bud?

a note on buss compression... I favor parallel compression across either the mix buss, groups of similar istruments bussed together as a group tos tereo OR better still across frequencies ranges in hgigh/mid/low configuration, parallel means ther is some dry signal as well as compressed signal hitting the speakers blnded together in phase... this can glue disparate sounds together, particularly drum machine and sampled percussive sounds but also parts doubled across intsruments with disparate timbres.... it also can add an indefineable zazz factor to a good arrangement when all the existing mix elements are already kickin'

it will add density if executed well

none of these bussing techniques are rules though, if I can do mkore with less I will and do.... its a make it sound good rule.... if it sounds great with just level and maybe a little gentle room sound on percussion> GREAT, the less proessing I do the better, every process potentially degrades the quality of the source material and induces phase shift across certain frequency bands that may or may not be musical and pleasing... good speakers and critical listening are king here... the ultimate goal is to have sounds that gel together in the right way with only a level balance, but the key there is a great arrangement that works well and perfectly (sympathetic to the music, pefrect is a variable and hypothetical proposition determined by each song) recorded or 'generated' timbres....

if you are 'getting me' please regurgitate what I just told you in the last 2 posts so I can see if you need more explanation... its easier to show you and elt you hear results by listening while I mix but india's far away for that and since you are broke you can't pay my $35/hr engineering fee or let alone the travel expense to come and teach you... I feel like a bad capitalist for not chargin you for all this so far.... then again I've always been a pinko at heart

Hail Jeebus!

another note on reverb, I usually set up 3 to 5 related reverb sends... in a basic mix I do 3, one thatis bright-ish and gated for percussive sounds, one that is long and VERY dark (EQed after the reverb to emphasize the lower mids that I generally cut from instruments for clarity) and send for early reflections only.... generally I also setup echo busses too fith tempo synced echoes that are either NOT in the output buss or ones that are very low but both can get lots of reverb... I also set the various busses of delay to be reverse stereo or ping pong and sue various tempo based delay times, I might also do this with a filtered multitap delay panning different timed echoes different ways in different narrow bands with varying feedback and resonance to created panning/rigin qualities that only feed the reverb and are low in the mix.. the type of reverb will be consistent on all the sends, even the early reflection send will use the same room type and similar high/low shelving and dampening... are you following any of this, dude?

there's also brian eno's 'shimmer verb' that involves pitch shift (generally an octave up or vlose to it within -20 cents) before the reverb and it can be done 100% or less depending on how shimmery you want the effect and if you have other non-pitch shifted reverb sends for sounds that won't like shimmer, lke drums.... then there's switly verb where ou use a sereo modulation in front of the reverb like flanging or phasing, even chorus can do a bit of magic to add motion to artificuial ambience, particularly on heavily verbed sustaining sounds like string-type synth pads or guitar solos with lots of sustain

with virtual music that GENERALLY has to do with a good arrangement favoring the front to back effect, use of top end above 8kh (boostingfront channels and cutting back channels using sheving EQ a well as straight-up resonant low pass filters when needed to really key things up a few notches in a complex mix, reverb and early reflections from reverb)... it starts with an arrangement favoring the effect, the more complex/busy the part is the more up front it will want to be, so reduce and refine to the core essence before ulling a part into the background with EQ nd ambience

be careful, without decent speakers its easy to overdo this and create a dull and muddy mix.. and working strictly on headphones. even high end studio cans? it should not remotely be attempted.... the space rom woofer, tweeter and ear is WHAT you are exploiting and while headphones will reproduce it to an extent for end listener, it has to be generated by moving air.... anyone on EB telling you otherwise is a club DJ and not a traditional musician or engineer and they are confused

control of how the room sound closes down (real or virtual reflections) is essential here and gating or expansion along with sidechain detection from critical rhythmic tracks will help you even more... riding the fader on the reerb send never hurts either.... just record a virtual knob move while adding thr amount of reverb each part of the song needs (if any, muting in some sections is a great option, dry is in your face when that' the sound you need for a few bars).... what you don't know is a lot and this is stuf one should not think much about, you jut do it and its sounds great... 5minutes work, all instinct, get the job done right quickly and effectively

being unhapy with what you are currently doing is step1, step 2 thru 23 is involves critical listening, learning, internalization and intentional forgetfulness

there are tons of us using other sites and email for chat, particularly while collaborating on music, you just aren't aware of it

get in touch with your inner Ferris Bueller and call out sick from work, man.... then go to work sick next time you're ill to make up for the deception

"cough, sorry boss, gotta stay home today because I have a highly contagious case of G.A.S. -- I don't want to give my coworkers pedalitis!"

for example, I've been working from home all week this week, but I am multitasking, playing ith my kid, doing equipboard and working on a record all at the same time.... I am really not beign less productive than I am at the office, but with no one watching me I can use the smart part of my brain for other tasks while the idiot part of my brain does my stupid day job work

praise and worship stuff usually has a lot of space for that

I think sam ash chains carry EQD, go to a sam ash near you and try some stuff

or maybe its GC who ahs EQD, but its available in retail outlets to try

those fiols guys use so many effects at once, god knows when the earthquake stuff's engaged or how its being used, LOL... they are real pedal freaks

but the ghost echo is cool too, a little more subtle, but again an ambience effect that's not worth the price of admission if you aren't going to use it a lotat settings that really jump out

or at elast that's my .02, YMMV... I am not a huge fan of effects.... good for others, not always for me

I feel as if I tried a dispatch master delay but I can't remember any impressions of it so maybe I am wrong and I never tried one

I hope I've been helpful in general. You will probably like all of these effects but the amount of stage time they get in your band may make them a bad economic decision if you are on a budget....

afterneath is cool, tried it in a store, but its an EFFECT... its not something that's worth investing in to use subtley. Its about synthy soundscapes from a guitar, not realistic ambiance or vintage spring or plate pizzang... it won't be appropriate in many styles of music, so invest the $200 knowng that it may be a once-in-a-blue pedal.

Was a milestone birthday, there was no budget. Brief was: needed to be cutaway, with pickup, but NO onboard EQ or volume... wanted the guitar to sound the same every time. The best part was, I got handed one guitar and pushed it back after a strum and said "you've already given me that one!" Wife and clerk laughed out loud and called me a freak for being able to tell with my eyes shut. (the thing had a neck like a body builder!!!) The Epi is the red one on my Gear Porn pic and cost $399 AUD.

stage guitars, recording guitars, writing guitars, etc... different guitars are good for different players for different purposes.... I love my beatup old epi for playing with friends and writing, even demoing... but its never made the cut on a professional recording, even versus supposedly inferior isntruments that just had more character and suited the mix better.... and as a stage guitar its not my 1st pik even with a good LR Baggs soundhole pickup and feedback blocker.... great guitar that gets better with age, but not an allarounder so the OP should consider what he wants to do with the new guitar and focus on getting the best guitar for doing that job the way he wants to hear it done... I like your blindfold test, it'll focus him on playability and sound quality, though in his price range he should consider resale and brand name recognition will play a role in the return eh can get on his investment in a financial crisis or if he tires of the instrument in a few years

I built a moderately un-portable porta studio to allow me to work on projects until I build the studio proper... It gives me a synth, drum machine, laptop and additional screen, speakers/ monitors and interface all self contained and wired in and it sits on a folding keyboard stand, with pedalboard supported underneath.

pictures???

also, if possible play a couple examples of every model to find the one that sounds the ebst to you... they may all play the same, but there's more variation in sound from acoustics than electrics as the wood plays a big role

if you are going used look for a 70s or 80s Takamine or Yamaha if you don't want a new seagull

because, really, in new guitars the seagulls are the best VALUE going

oooooh, purdy

I really recommend the waldorf pulse or blofeld! I've used the original pulse and microwave and have really been eyeballing the pulse2 and blofeld... but if you wanna go drum amchine you can't go wrong with arturia. They undercut the competition's pricing for sure and the stuff is well made and sounds killer. Interestingly I think the mini-brute has a real sequential circuits quality to tis sound, so I wonder if the drumbrute will sound like an old drum-trax or maybe a little like the tmpest...

the only thing I would be concerned with is timing. Smith worked with Linn on the Tempest and its internal sequencer and timing in response to MIDI is therefore incredible like the Linn Drum and early MPCs Linn worked on.... I can promise you the arturia will be a little more sloppy like a 909 or DMX

go for it, anything is worth trying.... just don't take anything in the class as gospel! the other thing I have not told you about the mixing end is that while its the least import ant stage it is on the whole almost as nebulous as writing music.... an act of pure creativity that employs a lot of science and a lot of ideas about commonly held aesthetics BUT there are always a dozen ways to go about getting similar results and then on any song there's no one correct mix.... 5 guys might make different mixes of the same song and all 5 will have some core aesthetic decisions in common but be completely different otherwise and all 5 might be good, suit the song, draw the ear and be generally fun to listen to

so learn from the isotope class, sure, just remember that the only wrong way to do it is to make a track that turns people off.... if its appealing to people then its good despite any guideline that people like me might give you.... just don't try to get the feedback you're looking for from frinds and family unless you are going to disregard their kind words and watch their eyes while the song is playing ;-) mom's and girlfriends always blow smoke up your ass.... well, my mom didn't, but my parents are blunt and opinionated in the ebst possible way. The make you cry when you're little way!

welcome... I'm a huge fan of the Archies... okay, not really.... but the guy who wrote "Sugar" for the Archies used to work for my rock band about 10 years ago.

but welcome, post often

ya can't on a user page, this ahs been discussed with the admins many times and its something they are getting to.... eventually...

frankie says relax

this has been brought up many times but never implemented apart from the 'chat with the admins' feature on the homepage

I am not free to listen to all of it, but I squozed in a sec to listen to track 1 and....

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6FSY9nhOhBk/VW4WqTRZoAI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/uvyY9WJZbhY/s1600/WayneZang.jpg

party on wayne

start on the internet, there are good free articles online via the popular trade rags so check SoundOnSound, Mix, Attack, ComputerMusic, FutureMusic etc... there used to be a lot of introductoryinfo on all aspects of music creation.... reading interviews with established names is a good way to get ideas on how to adjust your working methods for this consult the songwriting trades, Attack Magazine and subscribe to Tape Op (www.tapeop.com - its free and amazing)

the handbook of acoustics is a great reference but also a ponderous, technical and very broad read that can be hard to apply for beginners but is worth having around

as a computer science major you may be up to reading about how the electronic aspect works in addition to the Newtonian physics covered by the handbook of acoustics.... there are a lot of cheap handbooks on analog music electronics specifically geared towards musicians, synthesists, guitarists ets (plugins are mainly modelled on earlier analog circuits at least loosely).... having a working idea of how all this music is translated to voltage and how each component contacting the signal changes it evne when set neutrally (there's a digital angle to this too with digital slew rates, nyquist filtering, latency and the accompanying phase shift across discrete portions f bandwidth) can really help you lock down what the source of unwanted artifacts may be or to find creative and musical ways to exploit singal degradation as a mix tool

there's also a field called psychoacoustics that most of us apply creatively to our recordings and mixes that exploits the ear's non-linear functionality and the human brain's subconscious interpretation of auditory cues in various frequencies to determine distance, direction etc

anyway, lots to learn even just from a recording/mixing angle.... its a relatively young artistic medium, recorded music, but the rate of scientific progress alone gives it a daunting history to absorb so get reading when you have free time

starting from the beginning.... don't hit record until you sit on the song for a few days... you might want to block out a few MIDI sketches for bass and percussion, just a rough guide to experiment over since you probably haven't developed your 'inner ear' to the point where ideas come into your head and you just execute them on an instrument or by programming them as a sequence.... just sit witht eh song and get next to it..... try keeping the melody and bassline and then experiment with different chords around them, try knocking it into a minor key and change one or 2 notes in the melody by a semi-tone or whole tone, then try putting those reharmonized variations together in new and exciting ways.... then try changing the cadence of the melody notes and see what you get over the same backing track..... if you can't imagine it, try it and ehar it and decide for yourself but take the music you are excited about and try to make it even more exciting (broadly, I know this is mellow stuff, but excitement comes in many forms)... also, try it at a bunch of different tempos, usually the only way to figure out an ideal tempo is to try it, its not an inner ear thing.... the correct tempo to highlight all of your musical dieas will be glaringly obvious and sometimes a single BPM or elss can make a huge difference in feel depending on how you are approaching your 8th notes (the ands between 1, 2 , 3, and 4 in common time which can lead or lag to the point where a shuffle can feel like its in 3/4 or 6/8 waltz meter - on that topic, not all the instruments have to respect he 8th notes the same, soemtiems they should lock and sometimes a real groove is generated by maybe bass pushing n the ANDS while the drums lag a little on some hihat whacks which can be funk,,,, or in the case of Indian classical you hear this in the polyrhythms between a great sitar player and the guy playing table etc)..... think about diatonic harmonies to a top melody instead of chords.... try doubling with dissimilar isntruments and also creating coutner melodies in a higher or lower register that highlight different aspects of your melodic statements

get excited, but not overexcited.... feel it out, then stop and analyze it so you know why its exciting you and you know what the weaknesses of that intuitive musical decision may be.... this is a weird mix of art, science, craft and instinct that you need to hone into good balance a little more each song

y'know, I think I failed again at my goal to respond to the OP in a constructively clinical way. As I read back, my internet 'voice' is just way more subtley snide than I intend it to be when the truth is when I am being sarcastic or condescending I am anything but subtle.

So sorry to the OP if I am coming off like a dick, I don't intend to, I am just trying to answer your querries in a thorough way from my point of view based on a lot of music experience and lots of musicological knowledge (being something of an amature historian).

Now I have a smoke filled ass and muddy pads.

those gas station ladies are more to blame than I am!

well definitely stick with that.... nice functioning page with a decently appealing visual layout

promise you will collect gear when you get the money.. it's a great hobby! Keep playing and love every moment you do it!

gear accumulation and trading and stuff? fun

Yep, Please do that. Each and every corner of it so that not only I but others who are new to music creation in DAWs can learn from it :) I will improve the mix step by step. Give whatever possible ideas you can, coming to vocals...I think it's a later thing, but I may do some vocals too. It's about our friendship with Jesus Christ. The mood is very pleasant and ambient. And sorry for last night. I fell asleep it was 2'clk AM. So couldn't resist it.

well, ground up lets tart with composition.... there's a developed melodic theme that's simple and memorable but maybe not particularly effective as the opening phrase sounds A LOT like a specific children's song (daddy finger daddy finger where are you) so having that reference built into its DNA already skews the listener's emotional response away from your intent as a composer... next there is little to no variation in the melody, making it a rather intricate form of a repetitive motif called an ostinato. The thing about an ostinato is that its strongest when you repeat it continuously over constantly shifting harmonies with little-to-no variation and you did not do that. The Ostinato never varies and the chord changes just repet interminably. As a result the mood of the piece never changes and it gets old in a couple bars because the arrangement has all the hallmarks of steady state music (not a bad thing, but in this instance its not going to hold anyone's attention, especially not the audience you're aiming to communicate with). As an Indian you may wish to reference indian classical music for an idea of how this 'spiritual' repetitive drone thing is usually handled to draw a listener in and keep their attention with small additions and subtle changes in rhythmic, melodic and harmonic motifs that slowly build (techno and acid house tend to use this approach too, interestingly enough, but a lot of 20th century western 'minimalist' and '12tone' composers also went this route - check out phillip glass, john cage etc to ehar it done in western music with real aplomb). Your composition fails to progress in any discernable way nor is ti truly an ambient piece in the Brian Eno tradition, favoring that melodic hook over an otherworlds harmonic soundscape that I can just completely ignore. Its most certainly a SONG that hasn't been developed in the writing phase to exploit the melodic idea to the full.

nuts and bolts arrangement issues.... zero dynamic changes, a lot of arrangement elements being played in the same register too. The only real rhythmic info is from the percussion part which is singularly sparse and repetitive to the point that I forgot it was there after 15 seconds... again, not interesting, surprising and exciting nor is it and ambient soundscape that sits in the background subtley influencing my state of mind

so right there you probably want to do less or more with this and in so doing really define what kinda relationship (broadly) the listener is going to have with the music, that's for you to decide as its creator... I think over all your composition and arrangement suffer from an acute lack of decision making in how you set about expressing the feeling you want to convey... although I dn't know a lot bout religious music other than Bach so maybe I just blew a ton of smoke up your ass.

In my opinion you could spend a lot more time develoipng the music and it will start to sound better unmixed when its really interesting to listen to to begin with

mix lacks an interesting stereo image and has no sense of front to back space... because of the arrangement a lot of information is cluttered in the mids and has not been separated with subtractive EQ... the use of reverb, particularly on the percussion is not spectacular (think aout shaping the reverb with EQ and dynamics processing to better suit the song, use a similar patch or the same patch for all sounds on a send etc etc, get a book man) I would also be looking to have less mud accumulating from all those synth pads between 300hz-800hz and maybe recenter the true midrange energy from the 1khz-4khz area up to a less fatiguing and more open sounding 4k-8k zone... things out front need more top details (10K-20K) to simulate closeness while sounds that you want to sound distant maybe don't need more reverb but rather need some gentle eq shelving above 10k to simulate the loss of high frequency info to friction when a sound source is further from our ear....

there's a lot to this that I enver have to explain to anyone and I am getting burned out on the mix..... just, try to make it sound good! and when you're not sure how try a google search or get a book and consult that for ideas.... and when standard ideas won't do? try these:

http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/oblique/oblique.html

Yea, I have passion for music..but the problem now a days is that I'm not getting much time because of my college.

music and the fundamental laws of physics that govern it have not changed in the history of the universe as far as humanity is aware.... music can wait, stay in school! music only pays the rent for 1% of musicians and whle there's taent incolved in making a living with your music there's also a ton of other factors involved in breaking in, social factors like collective public aesthetics and if you are doing music from the heart you aren't paying attention to any of that (and the audience can generally tell when you are second guessing their taste and they don't always like that)... SCHOOL SCHOOL SCHOOL, so speaks a dad

sounds like a power supply issue.... probably in the base section

I have been this guy all day:

http://images.gocomics.com/images/gocomics/flare/too-much-coffee-man/coffeeclub.png

oh yeah, big T, I shot ya some reply emails today... lookin' forward to hearing you do your do

god no.... not at all! I love making t-shirts.... one at a time....its very hypnotic and stress relieving... like yoga for aging punk rockers.

nah, I was being genuine about your comment

awhile ago the philly music scene was really weak (even for Philly, and that's bad news)... lots of fashion, not a lot of talent (we got better) and I printed up a bunch of shirts that said 'got songs?' in the 'got milk?' font....

You have decided to play music. This is fantastic. It is a lifelong journey and will have more downs than ups. Every musician climbs. For their entire journey. Every success unlocks a new challenge and each level reveals more stairs going up. Not every song you write will be for the public to hear... but NO SONG is for the public. Write for yourself, play for yourself. The moment you stop putting yourself into your music is the moment that music dies in you. THAT is when you stop playing.... Not before.

Please don't reply to this... It is my opinion and my journey. I make music and I just want to share these thoughts with a fellow musician.

I like that bit! too bad its too long to print legibly on a t-shirt or I would get out my silk screen.

the OP mentioned making an LP to HOPEFULLY SELL IT.... its great to sell records and license stuff to film etc.... but that's not the reason to start a piece. Even the for-hire work I've done for TV required inspiration from the visuals I was scoring. If it didn't make me think of anything sonically I turned it down, maybe not the world's best career move but you can't draw blood from a stone. All my know how is only useful when there's a kernel of intellectual inspiration and a genuine emotional core to embellish. Which returns to what I keep saying in deifferent ways, CORE MATERIAL. The core of quality is real feelings you have to express when nothing but the purity of music will convey what you have to say. Yes, I said HAVE TO express. Many of us feel an urgency to do something anything.... but the beginning of a song is born of a need to express something specific that's beyond words before it drives you insane.... or something. I could be totally off my nut here too.