Mornats

[quote name='Sibob' timestamp='1478180047' post='3167322'] If it's an originals band, why would you bother with a cover? It's simply going to put your song up against something that people know, and so the perception is they prefer the song they know to your song. Pointless. I struggle with this in an originals band I play for, they have plenty of great songs, but still insist on putting in one or two cover in as 'crowd pleasers', what a waste of a song in a set that could be used to turn people onto your music instead. If you're a covers band looking for work, fine, I get it. If you're an originals band, I simply don't understand it. Si [/quote] We do the cover as it's our own take on the song and is very different to how it's performed originally. We like playing it and it's not really an attempt to be a crown pleaser. It's a song we like, done in our style and suits our set. I also don't think the Red Hot Chilli Peppers doing a cover of Higher Ground did their original music any harm at all. We're not quite in their league to be fair but I think adding one in there can fit I do share some of your feeling towards covers though. I was told once that if you wanted to get gigs you had to start with covers and throw in a few of your own songs which I thought was a load of b*******s to be honest. I don't want to be in a pure covers band (nowt wrong with those that do of course) but I do think that a cover done in your own style, especially if it's quite different to the original style of the song is great.

I'm in Pinball's band and raised the question with him. A few things I was thinking of was whether we'd need (or should politely ask anyway) for permission of the original artist first. I'm pretty sure YouTube would put ads on so that the original artist would get revenue from it which is totally fine with us. Whether that's because we broke the rules and is the consequence of uploading a cover, or whether it's just what happens and it's totally acceptable to upload a cover is something I'm interested in. Basically, we'd like to do it right. I'm sure a fellow basschatter would have been in this situation themselves and could give a simple straight up answer. I'll go check on YouTube but I fear I'll end up wading through pages and pages of legalese that doesn't provide a straight answer. Edit: first quick look gave this info: "What happens to your account when you get a copyright strike? We all make mistakes. When you get a copyright strike, it acts as a warning, but your account won't be penalised. However, if your live stream or archived live stream is removed for copyright, your access to live streaming will be restricted for 90 days. If you receive three copyright strikes: Your account will be terminated. All the videos uploaded to your account will be removed. You won't be able to create new accounts." I'll hunt some more to see if uploading a cover version would gain us a strike...

Interesting pic! Looking forward to this one.

[quote name='Indy' timestamp='1477994494' post='3165742'] I'm not a very good musician [/quote] I'm sure all of us would agree that this is not true! Lovely piece and well played.

When I chose the pic for this month's challenge I was expecting, and hoping for some tracks that would remind my of Harley Poe. I really wanted to hear some fun macabrism going on and I wasn't disappointed. Dad starts us off with a percussive melody that could easily have been played on the mummy's ribcage. There's something about the fiddle that had the image of a devil messing around behind me (thanks for that, how will I sleep?!) Christofloffer jumps right in and gets that Harley Poe theme spot on. A dusty jazz club full of skeletons? Oh yeah, I could see that. Leonard's track made me laugh as I couldn't help but picture the mummy singing it. Loved it! xgsjx came in next with a great beat and groove that perfectly matched the Incafunka name and fit really well with the pic. Indy's Bones (live) was just beautiful and had me thinking of John Lennon. Fingers also nailed the uplifting/fun macabre feel. This is what I had in mind when I posted the photo - well done for (coffin) nailing it. There were a few "proper" songs in this month, especially Lurks' entry. That was a cracker. Continuing with the proper song theme, I loved MoonbaseAlpha's take on the pic with Slow Burning Joke - nicely interpreted! Another great month!

I think you'd have to order Nectar Elements first, get the serial registered with Izotope then buy Neutron. You have to email your Nectar serial to the place you buy it from. If you buy it direct from Izotope though then you'll see the upgrade option when you log in. Either way, you'll have to get Nectar first. I'm not sure how long you have to wait between buying one then the other. I'd have though that with Izotope, it would show right away as soon as you register Nectar. If you buy from Time+Space or somewhere else they'll need to do a manual check with Izotope so you'd have a bit of time to get it registered.

Moonrats

Got mine done: https://soundcloud.com/mornats/nazca-death-chant Nazca Death Chant A fun hallowe'en trip to Central and South America. Drums and percussion -------------------- Heavyocity Damage Industrial Kit NI Rise and Hit Synths and pads --------------- NI Massive - presets by Mikael Adle/Leap Into The Void (Behold Sub and Drone of Severe Death) Instruments ----------- Sound Dust Pendleonium 3 (custom preset and Spokes preset) Soundiron Aztec Death Whistle NI West AFrica - Fula Flute Choirs and voices ----------------- Zero-G Etherea Effects ------- NI Guitar Rig 5 Pro Izotope Neutrino Put together in Reaper.

An editing fail on my part! I've taken the repeated bit out - cheers! I've got a pair of Audio Technica ATH-M50x headphones which are great so I'll most likely mix on those. I can combine those with Sonarworks to get a completely flat response too. Having done some analysis on my room now I think this is the best option if I can't put in the right acoustic treatment. I think I've just saved myself several hundred quid then

I've been doing a bit more work on this. I'm trying to find out where the sound problems are exactly and I've been playing some test tones through my speakers: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAsMlDptjx8&index=4&list=PLzFvCAfIq7a2SIBfDhpCytfJ4RHVb_KLY[/media] I've positioned my speaker the best I can to even out the changes in volume from the tones (I've been using the 25-150 hz and 60 - 6000 hz ones mainly). Up to around 40-50 hz - nothing. But my monitors low end starts at 56 hz so that's expected. 50 - 80 hz - very low bass. 90 - 100 hz - big spike in bass. 115 hz - small dip in bass. 140 hz - big dip in bass. 200 - 300 hz moderate dip in bass. Lasts longer than other shorter dips already mentioned. Small variations from then on. I did a test with just a 95 hz test tone as this is the biggest problem from what I can hear. It's amazing just how different the volume sounds when I move around the room. Standing in the middle and turning 90 degrees to my monitors caused the tone to almost disappear entirely! I placed some Thomann speaker isolation foam things under my monitors which helped a bit with the 95 hz issue but I think this added to the 200-300 hz issue. I'm almost tempted to get some new speakers. Yamaha HS7 or some front mounted ones like the KRK Rokit 7 or the Presonus Eris E5. The latter two are front-ported but that's not going to solve the problem with my room and the Presonus, despite it's good reputation has a similar frequency range to my M-Audio BX5a Deluxes. With the 6.5" speakers from the Yamaha and KRKs I should be able to hear bass better but again it's not solving the problem of the room! I've hunted round for bass traps that could fir and work in my living room but I'd be blocking doors into the room and I'd have to move my computer desk out - which would then rule out the room for audio work completely! I also have the problem of renting and not being able to attach anything like bass traps to the walls anyway because my landlord would not be pleased. My best option then is to try Sonarworks, perhaps with a nice pair of Yamaha HS7 monitors. My bank balance won't be happy about that as I'd be looking at around £650! Add in the fact that my time spent monitoring on speakers is fairly limited due to living in a flat in a Victorian terrace with paper thin walls means decent speaker monitoring is probably out of the picture completely. So, I think I'll mix on headphones only use my monitors for things like stereo imaging and reverb. Which leads me to the cheapest option (other than doing nothing) and going with the Sonarworks headphone product. I placed some Thomann speaker isolation foam things under my monitors which helped a bit with the 95 hz issue but I think this added to the 200-300 hz issue. Edit: I forgot to mention that I couldn't hear anything over 15 khz on that test video! Old age...

Got mine done bar the listen-to-it-a-million-times-on-every-speaker stage. As a sneak preview, I got this on sale today and swapped an instrument around to fit it in https://soundiron.com/products/aztec-death-whistle

I've hit the latency issue with a 27 track song with around 12GB of instruments and effects on it. I put Izotope's Neutron on around 16 of the tracks and hit over 110% CPU usage on a 4ghz i7! To listen back to the track when mixing I just increase the buffer to 512 samples on my Focusrite Forte and it plays fine. If I need to record a new piece into it then I have to render down several tracks, lower the buffer to 32 or 64 samples and it'll record fine with little latency. You'll probably always have a latency issue if you're playing multiple tracks whilst recording another especially if you have CPU hungry reverbs on there. So best bet is to render down all tracks but the one you're recording, set the buffer to as low as you can before topping out your CPU and you should be good. You can always un-render the tracks when you're done recording in case you need to tweak them. Which DAW are you using? I can point out the exact option you need to select in Reaper if you use that.

Soundiron's Apocalypse Percussion is on sale - all three versions of it: https://soundiron.com/collections/on-sale I *cough* just got Apocalypse Elements...

I'm sure Skol did that and it worked for him. Hopefully he pops on soon and can confirm

Glad you're happy with it! Check out this post on VI Control from jcrosby http://vi-control.net/community/threads/izotope-neutron.56352/page-5#post-4000311 He gives a good overview but the key thing is that the track analyser suggests a starting point (as do the presets) and you tweak from there. I think I've tweaked most things when I've used it but it's set me off on the right track. And that's exactly what this type of plugin should do. The masking feature helped me fit a violin and female choir around each other really well by using the inverse link. When I tried the same with that violin and a male choir the inverse link took out the bulk of the choir sound when I lowered the eq on the choir or it took out the nice sounding timbre of the violin if I went the other way. So on that one I left it. So yeah, it's a guide and a starting point but a good one at that. I've had a little more success on the master bus but that could be due to my mangling of the master bus using T-racks initially There's a lot of master bus presets that slam the bass and treble too much but one of them is quite subtle (basic mix maybe?) and a good starting point for tweaking. That VI Control post is worth reading by the way, especially the last few pages as people weigh in with their experience of it. Most people are very happy with it.

The KRKs are what you typically see in a lot of home studios and they're generally highly regarded. Welcome to the home recording club by the way. There's a few of us in here who can help spread some knowledge your way so ask away with any questions. I've found this website a good place for some good practical advice: http://therecordingrevolution.com/ Also, make sure you grab the free payers from Native Instruments as they come with a bunch of useful instruments: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/free/ and some really good free instruments over at VSTBuzz: http://vstbuzz.com/freebies/ - Shortnoise is surprisingly good for cinematic stuff.

I've just spent around 40 mins playing a few reference tracks through my monitors and moving around my room, listening to the bass. If I stand in any of the corners I hear more bass so there's definitely a build up here. If I stand in the dead centre the bass dips off noticeably. Interestingly, the bass sound in the corners of the room sound about the "right" amount of bass for the tracks. I tried moving my speakers and seating position around to get what I think is enough bass and I found that if I put my speakers right up against the wall then I get just enough extra bass for them to sound accurate. So in lieu of trying to fit bass traps into a space that can't fit them I'll go with this and make more use of reference tracks.

Haha sorry! It's quite good on the master bus as well you know... I'll do some more comparisons tomorrow.

Well, I bounced down Maschine, Action Strings and Miroslav in Reaper and got a chunk of CPU back. So, I did a comparison for you. Here's a 1 min piece of That Place where all the orchestral and choir stuff is going on. I've got Neutron on all the percussion (Maschine and Damage), the orchestra (Miroslav, Action Strings, Solo Strings and one or two more) and the choirs (Storm Choir, Olympus Elements and some Evolve stuff). All I did was use the track assist on each of the tracks and left it at that. The percussion loses some volume and therefore a bit of impact but I could fix that manually. Here's the before: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2gfe6vlbvpcu086/that%20place%20selection.wav?dl=0 Here's the after: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ldof7jrhqvkviv/that%20place%20neutron%20selection.wav?dl=0 I've also been on that thread on VI Control. Most people seem pretty happy with it so far. I am certainly. Whatcha think of the out-of-the-box track assist based on these clips?

I just tried on my last composition challenge piece That Place. So, this has 27 tracks, of which I put Neutron on 17 of them. Normal playback before I used Neutron had my CPU peaking at 70% usage (a 4ghz i7 4790k) with RAM usage around 11GB. After I put Neutron on, CPU peaked at 107% and RAM was pushing 14GB (out of 16GB). Playback really wasn't working! To be fair, 17 instances of it is a bit much and there's a fair bit going on in that track anyway. 16 or so tracks of Neutron is taking around 20 - 25% CPU usage. I'm kinda pushing my rig a bit with this track in the first place. In reality, I don't think it was designed to be thrown on this many tracks and if you're doing arrangements like this you're probably using a slave PC or two anyway.

Here's something interesting to consider. The only Izotope product that I own that qualified me for the £74 crossgrade was Nectar Elements. This is currently on sale over at PluginBoutique for £26.95 - http://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/54-Vocal-Processing/752-Nectar-Elements. So you can get this, then Neutron for just over a hundred quid. Nice! I've just gone through an old track of mine, stripped off the EQ and compression on every track, slapped Neutron on them all and hit the track assist on each one. Overall, there's a lot more clarity and definition in the sounds. That's without tweaking anything (or even knowing what I'm doing yet!). With some further input into it I'd say you could get some very good results from this. I plan to do an A/B test of it sometime soon.

https://www.izotope.com/en/products/mix/neutron.html#&panel2-1 Just ordered this with a nice crossgrade discount - £74 from Time+Space. The peeps over at VI Conrol seem to like it http://vi-control.net/community/threads/izotope-neutron.56352/. I'll let you know how I get on over the weekend! I'm liking how it can analyse your tracks and suggest frequencies that are competing between say, strings and synths. You can then edit the EQ for both tracks in the same interface.

[quote name='ras52' timestamp='1475684625' post='3147961'] Absolutely! On a Mac there's a handy keyboard shortcut (typing this on a PC so can't visualise it!) to switch off the display, which I try to do when I want to stop "listening with my eyes"! [/quote] My monitor has a hardware version of that I've just installed the demo of TouchDAW on my LG G Pad. Bit fiddly to set up as I had to install rtp drivers and a third-party Mackie driver (Klinke) but once set up it's superb. I get my fader controls, but I can edit any of the effects parameters too. I'd like to be able to expand the screen so that I've only got faders as I'd like more than 8 on screen at once. The scrolling through the tracks could be smooth so you can visually how far you've gone. Custom or third party skins/interfaces would be nice too. Overall though, the proof of concept works. IT's only £3.99 compared to Lemur's £18.99! Lemur may have that added functionality though. It does have a lot of templates available though. So, for £3.84, I'm going to grab TouchDaw. That's less than a pint. There's a chance I may splash out on a larger tablet for this if it suits my workflow.