Do you think your audience will prefer to receiveperfection? orimperfection?
A perfectly cut lawn can be relaxing for one,
then sterile and uncomfortable for another.
A wild lawn can be exciting for one,
then disgusting for another.
An average lawn can be comforting for some,
then boring to others.
All of these lawns are bothright and wrong, depending on who is experiencing them.
What I find interesting is that songs generally need vulnerability to connect. They need to have a breach, a brokenpart, an unexpected leak.
As a producer, if you seal these all up with beautiful make up, perfect mixing, and masterful editing. What have you done to the connection of the song?
On the other hand, if you embrace the imperfections of both the song and the artist, you might find a stronger connection start to come your way.
The key to the sound of the instruments I'm using here was layering, I often stacked as many as 8 different articulations together. The violins include both solo and 14 Violins sampled articulations of: sustained, legato, portamento and tremolo. Normally it would be questionable to stack such a variety of articulations, but I feel it works in this setting because of the dreamy waveyness of the song itself.. Much of the workflow speed came from this method. Having these layers with polyphonic legato turned on (Thanks to VI Pro) allowed me to play one take for a polyphonic violin section and it would sound fairly natural and interesting straight away.
I used 2 x VSS3 reverbs (using TC Powercore) for the space. I had set as a short reverb and the other set as a dreamy long reverb for those instruments i really wanted to add dreamyness and wash to. Because I wanted more of a surreal and glossy sound, I chose to use synthetic reverb instead of convolution.
As for mixing I chose to use Waves SSL plugins for the EQ and Compression, and the occasional Waves API plugin for EQ and Compression. I also used a mix of Waves and TC Powercore plugins for mastering. I mastered this track fairly loud for an orchestral track, to be more listenable outside of a game setting (I think this is different to what many pros do, but it felt right).
You may notice the choirs feeling like they fade in unnaturally, it was a choice between that slow attack or a fairly unnatural and musically inappropriate (for this song) sounding sampled choir attack.. It is important to remember that the musicality of a sound (i.e. it has a clear purpose, even if that purpose is to be purposeless) can sell a feeling to the listener, which is often more important than the realism of the sound itself.
I hope this gives some of you a few ideas and context for some of the work you're doing. If you have any more questions, tips or opinions for me, please leave me a comment below!
White Noise Audio is a small company that makes very unique PC audio plugins.
A personal favourite which left an impression on me is Zero Vector. A synth I used years ago for strange and boutique use. If you aren't so much into making those strange noises, this synth might pursuade you otherwise.
Sometimes you might make a decision that is very questionable, seemingly wrong to everyone else. That decision obviously sets you apart from everyone else.
Lately I've been experiementing with different beat machines, the one that I've come back to and wins by a long shot is Battery. There is one big reason for me -
Flow: There is a clear flow in battery's interface.
- The top half is all about drum pads - easily color coded, and each pad lights up when hit for an instant understanding of what is going on.
- The Bottom half is tabbed, and flows from left to right - and makes sense.
- Starts with the sample graphic: I always want to see this first, to help identify a sample visually in my mind, and how I can shape it. Envelope shaping is overlaid on the sample graphic itself - giving you a clear understanding of what these otherwise cryptic knobs are doing to the shape of the original sample. There is also a big bonus here: the Vintage sampler mode with different sampler emulations for a more natural sound.
- The next 4 tabs allow for down and dirty stuff: like voice management, humanizing, and velocity sample layering, wave editing and looping.
- Then we have the very easy modulation and effects pages: it's easy to modulate a nice bit of LP filter with velocity, or have use a random square wave LFO to modulate slightly random pitches and avoid the machine gun effect.
- Finally there is also the sample browser - it could be larger, but it is very convenient to drag samples you like into straight into a drum pad.
This is my personal experience, and I have heard many others. Please feel free to enlighten us if you have any other faves!
So I've spent some quality time fucking around with 64-bit and 32-bit settings in OSX and in Logic.
3 Points:
- We are in an awkward transition phase
We either have too little memory (32-bit) or too little compatibility (64-bit)
- 32-bit AU Bridge
Apple's solution for running old 32-bit plugins in 64-bit logic works, but isn't rock solid (stability / compatability)
- Many plugins are still 32-bit only
Big names such as: Waves bundles, Synthogy Ivory, Soundtoys and many others, have to run using this almost stable 32-bit AU Bridge.
Considering stability is such a high priority for most professionals, I feel that logic is not quite ready for 64-bit.
Let us hope that this awkward period comes to an end soon!
A perfectly cut lawn can be relaxing for one, 
