Mornats

Got an update on mine... see the spoilery bit below. [spoiler] The gentle wind noises at the beginning worked amazingly well. Kinetic Metal really shone on that bit I thought. The track built up in a way I was pleased with then went into its lull, perhaps a bit too early and without the sound of wind being sucked out of the room. It still had a decent effect though. I never added the pianos in the end. Not sure if I should go back and try them or not. The mix is pretty busy at the moment so I'm hesitant to add more to it. I bounced a pair of Rise and Hits effect around the stereo field that sounds to me like a tornado whirling round my headphones. I was pretty pleased with this. I may have been able to find some better sounds from that software package but you have to load each one in separately to preview them which is a bit of a pain. I liked how I could change the length of the build up on those. A few use the default 8 bars but I stretched a couple out to 32 bars for greater tension. I didn't end up using Absynth either but I did get some gowly-breathing type effect from Skanner XT. Damage came through for me for both percussion and the junkyard smashes. I'm pretty sure one of those is a sample of a school bus being dropped from a crane. It sounds very destructive. I said I'd end it with some stabbing strings but never did. That's something I may actually go back and do. I almost abandoned the track at one point as the string parts just weren't working. Action Strings doesn't work for me as well as Session Strings did, and even Session Strings Pro is a different beast. I've yet to tame those two but that's the peril of working with so many new instruments. No room at all for movie clips so I've not gone for any of these. So at the moment I'm fairly happy with the arrangement. I cut it short a couple of times to avoid stretching out some parts for too long. It's now around 3 mins which is about right for this type of piece I think. I added some guitars in. I heard a cinematic track with some guitars in on Heroes Reborn the other night (if I'm honest, it was the most interesting part of the series so far but that's a topic for another day and place). I liked it, and thought some guitar twiddling may help with the strings sounding a bit meh. I like it so far. A simple D minor chord struck on every 4th bar drenched in delays and reverb worked well. I added in a couple of tracks of fiddling on the high cheesewire strings on my tele using the same guitar effects too. This worked well with the strings so they seem to fit in now. So now I'm in the process of mixing. I spent quite a while just getting it sounding right with the volume sliders before doing anything else. Then I started looking at adding some compression to the drum parts for some added punch and drama. Transient Master worked nice for this but I could have spent a week just trying out all of the different compressors I have now. I've eq'd some low end out of the percussion, cellos and French horns so there's more free energy around that part of the mix. So now I need to give it a few more listens with fresh ears, see if I need to compress or EQ anything else, and adjust volumes further if needed. I also need to get it onto my monitors as I've been doing this in my headphones so far. I'll apologise to my neighbours now for this After that I'll be trying some mix glue stuff. I chucked on my usual T-racks mastering preset. It's a decent starting point I've found. I use it on most of my tracks and tweak to suit. It lifts the whole mix which is quite nice but I think I need to try some slight delay or reverb too. That works well on a lot of tracks but maybe not on one as percussion-heavy as this. These cinematic style tracks are incredibly difficult to mix. So far this has been a bugger to work through. Too many new instruments didn't help and I lost my way on it more times than I have on any other track. I have a few ideas and a desire to do an EDM type track and just play around with beats and synths (Polyplex is sounding amazing so far so I want to take this out to play). I also fancy a nice upbeat tune with more real instruments. Go back to my EZDrummer, bass and guitar days. So I may go off and do those and perhaps revisit this month's entry in a week's time. One last thing... with 19 tracks of virtual instruments I had my overclocked 4.6ghz Devil's Canyon i7 working up to 60% cpu load on all 8 cores and a total use of over 6GB of RAM. That's the most I've seen so far. To put it in perspective, my old PC (overclocked Core 2 Duo E8500 with 8GB RAM) couldn't play one of my earlier tracks without going over 100% load and stuttering. My new rig with the i7 played it without breaking a sweat, never going above 11% usage. That's a lot of audio processing I'm chucking around now. Stay tuned for more over the next few weeks! [/spoiler]

[quote name='Dad3353' timestamp='1457273696' post='2996909'] I just can't, as yet, imagine how anyone will be able to fit a techno beat over this picture [/quote] Hmmmm, now there's an idea!

This is a first for me. I've actually sat down and planned out how I want to the track to work. Usually I just have an idea for something based on a riff, a melody or a rhythm I've heard somewhere and I let the track grow out of that. So partly because there was interest in reading the behind-the-scenes how-to of a track and partly because I've just upgraded to Komplete Ultimate and have such a choice of instruments I thought I'd plan mine out. So far it's working out. I feel happier about leaving the track halfway through overnight as I know I've got a plan for it. My write-up will consist of three parts. The planning part, the work-in-progress part and a final piece once it's finished. For those interested, in the spoiler section below is my plan for my track. Unimaginatively called Tornado. [spoiler]This track is going to be a cinematic track. No doubt about it. I've got whole bunch of cinematic instruments and the picture has a very cinematic, dramatic feel to it. The overall feel will be an evolving track starting with gentle wind noises, with some increase in intensity as the tornado approaches. It should drop into a lull to represent the eye of the storm then come back out again with a vengeance before fading off after a romping spell at the end. Kinetic Metal has a preset called Tornado Chimes that sounds ideal for the start. Session String Pro has some very nice articulations that I could use as twirling frantic high-end strings. These will be used in the build up to the storm coming I think. Some nice pensive underscore should come in with the strings to build up that drama and I'll build it up to a crescendo with something from Rise and Hit. Not sure which one yet as there are so many to choose from. You can stretch the timing out on these so a long build up is possible with a big reverby crash at the end. I've used the phrases from Vocalise on a few tracks recently so I'll give those a rest and use the vocal pad sounds to form an ethereal soundscape of sound. I'll see if I can bounce it round the stereo field using an LFO and stereo split from Guitar Rig Pro. I'm bound to have other effects that can do this but I know this one well and I could spend quite some time on the hunt for something. I may or may not put some Absynth-generated airy synth soundscapes in it. It all depends on how busy it's starting to feel. So once the intensity is roaring, maybe with the help of some Action Strings mixed with a small cello and horns ensemble from either Session Strings Pro, Miroslav Philharmonik or the Kontakt library, I'll be using some of the nice drum grooves from Action Hits for the main beat. This will be a nice test of how I can switch between the pre-designed scores in this. The track should build up to a point where I can put in another Rise and Hit that builds up to a noise sounds like it's sucked all of the air out of the room. I've heard one like this when playing around with it. This will be the eye of the tornado (although I'm sure tornadoes are too small to have an eye, that's a hurricane isn't it? Doesn't matter anyway ) What goes in here will be interesting. I have some really nice airy pianos now and a few tinkles on one of those may help with the calmness although a lot of almost-silence could build up the anticipation of coming back out into the tornado. I know I've heard some broken piano sounds that are a mix of broken wood and piano strings. Most probably this is from Damage as I'm sure they actually went out and wrecked a piano in a scrapyard and sampled the whole destruction. I'm thinking along the lines of the Wizard of OZ with barns and wooden houses being torn apart. So once I'm done with the silence in the eye, I need to bring a whole load of destruction in. The drums from Damage will do the job here. I'll see if I can keep that drum track going or if I need to bring in some more variety in the drums. It should probably come to an end now with a series of nice stabbing strings - similar to bit in Star Wars A New Hope when the Death Star gets destroyed. I've got enough dramatic percussion to take on the Death Star itself now so this shouldn't be a problem. Once the final peak has been hit I need to represent the tornado moving away to wreak its havoc elsewhere so I'll bring in whatever piano parts I put into the eye of the storm part and drift out with a melody that's riding on the air. I'll have a look round my movie sample clips to see if I can find anything appropriate in there but I don't recall anything suitable for this theme right now so it may be without dialogue. So that's the plan, let's see if I can pull it off![/spoiler]

Supercharger really is an excellent compressor. I use it a lot. I got this particular version free in one of their Christmas giveaways and have since bought Komplete 10 (which had it included - hence the giveaway) and have now upgraded to Komplete Ultimate 10 which has Supercharger GT - can't wait to give that one a go! And thanks to Basschat for the polo shirt prize too!

[quote name='lowdown' timestamp='1456487955' post='2989494'] There are some freebies on their site as well. [url="http://www.embertone.com/instruments/arcane.php"]http://www.embertone...ents/arcane.php[/url] Click on the free tab for a bunch of other stuff. [/quote] I used Arcane for the vocals on the end of this track: https://soundcloud.com/mornats/anyway - it sounds epic.

Well, the guys at Native Instruments have been absolutely fantastic. They've agreed to refund me for Damage and EM2 if I buy the upgrade to Komplete Ultimate. So I'm now in the process of downloading Action Strings, Action Strikes, Rise & Hit and a couple of smaller products. I'll need to get a bigger SSD to get it all installed (although I'll probably not install the bass guitar libraries for obvious reasons ) Can't believe how awesome they were to help me out like this. Bloody fantastic customer service.

Ah very cinematic-looking! I'm in!

Ah yes, it was you and now lowdown who just bought the S88 It's a bargain of a crossgrade for £145 if you're going to use the instruments in Komplete. The offer runs until March 31st so here's hoping that you get your bonus! Glad you like your S88. The keybed on my S61 is superb. You can't use your e-vouchers in a sale unfortunately. They're only valid for full products (won't even work on upgrades). I've emailed Native Instruments to see if they can do anything for me to either refund me for the software I already bought or let me transfer them. They're not showing up as transferable at the moment. I'd completely understand if they can't do anything though but it's worth asking to see what they come back with.

Congratulations! Great competition this month

Yeah, they're offering the upgrade from Komplete Select to Komplete 10 for £144.50 and I thought of you and your newly purchased S88. I'm a little miffed at the timing of this and the Heavyocity sale. I bought Evolve Mutations 2 for full price (minus the £22.50 voucher) before the Heavyocity sale and Damage for half price in that sale. For a fiver more than I paid for those two I could now buy the upgrade to Komplete Ultimate which contains both products plus a whole load more. Gah! So I'm trying to work out if I can sell the licences for them (doesn't seem so at the moment) and upgrade to Komplete Ultimate. Id' get Rise and Hit, Action Strikes, Action Strings and Kinetic Damage amongst others. The first three in that list were ones I've been looking at, particularly Rise and Hit. The rest of hte products in KU10 I'm not too fussed about really. I know I should have waited but you never know when a sale is going to hit. Not sure what to do! Also, this could mean that Komplete 11 is just around the corner. It's due and this sale is a pretty good indicator that it's coming after March. Edit: Link to the sale goodness: https://www.native-instruments.com/en/specials/spring-into-sound/

I've been noodling around a bit, getting a feel for the types of sounds that I've got access to now. Mostly cinematic and eerie horror type stuff (so NO happy pics whoever wins!!) but to be honest it's really wide-ranging. I'm gonna wait for March's pic so I can grab one idea and run with it. I remember my dad showing me those AeroDrums. If they work like they do in the prom video they'll be great!

Totally can't until the next one starts. So many different ideas just waiting to burst out! (I've been on quite a shopping spree with new sounds!)

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1456763022' post='2991983'] Joint third? I'll take that. [/quote] I'm happy with joint 7th!!

That's a great idea. I'll see if I can write up some notes and musings on how I approached my track.

Thanks for the write-up Douglas I totally agree about the movie vocal samples sounding harsh. I put them through Native Instruments' Driver and I've just been tweaking about with the track and they sound much more in place if I take that effect off. I've also tweaked it so that it doesn't sound like it all sits back in the soundstage (a lesson learnt about mixing on headphones only!) Once I upgrade my Soundcloud I think I'll replace it.

This just dropped into my inbox. Not had a chance to check them out yet. http://blog.landr.com/8-free-vst-plugins-will-inspire-strange-ways/

I love your write-ups

Cheers! I grabbed the Aphelion Cinematic toolkit (free version... I've spent enough!) and I like some of the risers and whooshes in there.

Well I got my shortlist down to nine! Have voted now but this was the toughest choice yet. Well done all!

Right, Let's dig in! Voting will come after an enjoyable evening of listening

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1456177738' post='2986394'] On the issue of sped up or not, the drummer, Gergo Borlai, says on the Youtube page ... [/quote] Cool I only thought it may be sped up based on the visuals in the video and not on the playing. I honestly wouldn't have thought it may have been if I'd only listened to it. And you know, it could have been the person uploading it (I didn't check if the artists or someone else had uploaded it) who had altered the video. But it wasn't sped up so that's that

I use a pair of Superlux 662F clsoed-back cans for monitoring and mixing. They have a sound very similar to my M-Audio BX5a monitors which is very handy and a lovely coincidence. I've also got a pair of Superlux 668B open back headphones for general music listening. They sound really nice and natural. I've heard a lot of good things about all of their range and as you say, for £25 they're worth a punt! I spent a few weeks auditioning some higher-end headphones - around the £150 price range - and couldn't find anything to drag me away from the Superlux ones. I know that 5iM0n on here recommends the Studiospares M1000 headphones. About £65 I think they are.

I'm of the opinion that you should use whichever system you're most comfortable with. If you know how to solve issues on either system then you're much more likely to be able to breeze through any problems. I'm a lot more familiar with PCs than Macs. I've used both for recording and any issues with the Mac were harder to solve for me as I was less familiar with the inner workings. I built my PC myself so know how to fix stuff. A mate of mine can fix pretty much anything on a Mac and is the opposite of me in terms of preference. Windows would befuddle him as much as OSX befuddles me. The OP's budget would likely rule out a Mac powerful enough to last a few years of DAW work (do correct me if I'm wrong though) although it's worth considering whether splashing a bit more cash would be of benefit so it's not inappropriate to suggest a Mac. However he did specify a Windows PC so I think we should put aside the Mac vs. PC debate and help him get a good system that he can work with So, to offer all possibilities to the OP, the cheapest Macbook on the Apple site costs a touch over a grand: http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/buy-mac/macbook/silver-256gb and has a CPU that's possibly a bit too underpowered for DAW work. It does have an SSD and 8GB ram which would help. I'm not sure if a 12" screen would hinder DAW work. Possibly, but only the OP can decide that. You can of course hook it up to an external monitor and dual screen. Actually, the cheapest Macbook Pro costs less! I thought they were the next model up! This is more like it as it has an i5 processor although a larger SSD for samples and VIs would be preferable. Being able to move quickly between instruments, sample libraries and the like near instantaneously from an SSD is a massive workflow benefit. Here's the cheapest Macbook Pro at a quid under a grand: http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MF839B/A&step=config# There's always second hand when it comes to laptops if you want to go down that route. I already gave some Window's suggestions above so I won't reiterate those here. In either case, budget for a good low-latency audio interface too if you don't already own one. Pop over to the recording section as there are a few threads about those with loads of suggestions.