MeldaProduction

valsolim · Post by **valsolim** » Mon Mar 20, 2017 8:16 am

Hi, all,

I just wanted to express my respect to all the submitters of the March Challenge by MeldaProduction (https://www.meldaproduction.com/contest). Although I didn't manage to participate this time I think this month was particularly challenging and almost all the submissions are really interesting to listen to! It's just wonderful what sorts of music can be distilled from a totally "free jazz" recording...

Best regards
--
Miloslav

nosucherror · Post by **nosucherror** » Mon Mar 20, 2017 12:50 pm

Nice one Miloslav,
I submitted a mix and I've got to admit it took me about three days scratching my head as to how to approach it. In the end it was loads of fun and I got a lot more familiar with MRhythmizer!
Cheers,
Bill No Such Error

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Tue Mar 21, 2017 10:26 am

Hehe cool stuff in there indeed! But now I have to choose the best ones

mibby · Post by **mibby** » Mon Mar 27, 2017 1:13 pm

valsolim wrote:I just wanted to express my respect to all the submitters of the March Challenge by MeldaProduction (https://www.meldaproduction.com/contest). ... almost all the submissions are really interesting to listen to! It's just wonderful what sorts of music can be distilled from a totally "free jazz" recording...
Miloslav

+1! Some really great entries on this one. It would be nice to hear how the contestants (or at least winners) approached their mixes. My two favorites didn't even make it to the top 4 - Charles Ferraro and Wiltert Wilts. Congratulations everyone and thanks to Mr. Melda for having these contests.

LFO33 · Post by **LFO33** » Tue Mar 28, 2017 7:25 am

valsolim wrote:I just wanted to express my respect to all the submitters of the March Challenge by MeldaProduction (https://www.meldaproduction.com/contest). Although I didn't manage to participate this time I think this month was particularly challenging and almost all the submissions are really interesting to listen to! It's just wonderful what sorts of music can be distilled from a totally "free jazz" recording...

+1 Really great idea these contests. Way to go!

Step Saturn · Post by **Step Saturn** » Tue Mar 28, 2017 2:59 pm

Hey,

thanks to MeldaProduction or this contest. I really enjoyed working on my remix

It would be nice to hear how the contestants (or at least winners) approached their mixes.

Sure, I'll be happy to provide some info about my work here:

I discovered this contest a few days before the deadline. After downloading the source material my first thought was "wtf.."
Quite challenging to work with tracks that are outside of any rhythmic and harmonic convention..

I made the following sounds with the (expired) demo of MPowerSynth, listed by their first appearance:
1) 4:26 - off beat synth sound
2) 4:53 - acid style bass sound that evolves with distortion, filter, resonance
3) 5:33 - auto-panning 16th pattern "electric rattle" sound
4) 6:42 - lead sound with infinite delay
5) 7:23 - (fading in) off-beat trance pad sound

All other sounds are made from samples / audio bits of the given material, using a whole chain of Melda plugins in some cases.

So.. I wanted to refer to the chaotic nature of the source material so I started by just rearranging bits of sounds. First I thought I'll stick with the jazzy / ambient nature but after I made that pad from the guitar chord at 0:19, I felt like there is kind of a house track in there too

I used a short sample from the bass and made a kick from it (using MTransient and MBassador among other plugins). It starts to fade in at 2:55. The HH-like pattern that comes in at 4:10 is made from a short looping sample of a crash cymbal that goes through two parallel instances of MRhythmizer.
The bass sound is processed with MVibrato and MWaveshaper in the first part and when the house part starts, it goes through an MBassador.
I had a lead melody in the last part of the track but it really didn't work with the demo restrictions of MPowerSynth and I didn't have the time to bounce it on a friends computer. So I had to leave it.

Generally I used a lot of delay and reverb to create longer soundscapes from short samples of the given material. There's also quite some plugin parameter automation in there.
I used a lot of side chain compression, making sounds like several pads and the bass "pump" a bit with the kickdrum. The bass and the guitar pad get sidechain compression from 2:38 on, before the kick even starts to play.

Not sure this is what you were interested in... if you have any questions about my workflow and production techniques I used, please ask

All the best,

step..ø

steve2KVR · Post by **steve2KVR** » Tue Mar 28, 2017 3:12 pm

...man

...dat's some jukin'n jivin'

...what platform/daw/etc.../s~

Step Saturn · Post by **Step Saturn** » Tue Mar 28, 2017 3:23 pm

what platform/daw/etc

Oh, right.. Macbook Pro mid2011 with OS X 10.11.6. Running Logic Pro X, current version. Not very familiar with it yet, just bought after having been using the several year old Logic Pro until now.
I used my Novation Bass Station 2 as a master keyboard because.. well, it was standing on my desk and was already connected

Besides that and of course my computer keyboard and trackball, no additional hardware controllers were used.

Best,

step..ø

steve2KVR · Post by **steve2KVR** » Tue Mar 28, 2017 3:24 pm

...cool...thanx.../s~

mibby · Post by **mibby** » Tue Mar 28, 2017 4:28 pm

That's great, thanks for putting that down. Very well done and well deserved.

Step Saturn · Post by **Step Saturn** » Tue Mar 28, 2017 4:37 pm

Thank you

Wolf-Ray · Post by **Wolf-Ray** » Tue Apr 04, 2017 6:42 pm

mibby wrote:+1! Some really great entries on this one. It would be nice to hear how the contestants (or at least winners) approached their mixes. My two favorites didn't even make it to the top 4 - Charles Ferraro and Wiltert Wilts. Congratulations everyone and thanks to Mr. Melda for having these contests.

Hi mibby, this is Charles. Thank you for the praise! Here is the technical write-up I submitted with the entry:

Win or lose, this was an incredible learning experience. The stipulations were A.) use every track and B.) only use Melda plug-ins. My project complies with those requirements 100%.

First thing I did was use MAutoAlign on the guitar tracks and a few of the drum tracks. I didn't do it on the bass stems because I liked the phase cancellation. Then I combed through each track to chop out useable samples that didn't have too much bleed. For instance I was able to gather over a dozen kick drum hits but only about four tom hits. I'd used a highpass filter from MEquilizer to help clean up the overheads.

I then organized drum samples by velocity and instrument samples by pitch and velocity. All while keeping each chop sample accurate to it's related track too. So for instance you can see every bass note is sequenced with it's related snippet from the other bass mic track.

I then exported every individual drum hit into an organized folder and used MDrummerLarge's automatic sample library import function to create a drum kit. Then I sequenced that drum kit using the MIDI command method. Then I recorded that sequence into a MIDI track so I could make some minor tweaks like putting snare rolls in the bridge.

After that I decided the key of Fmaj would work best with the instrument samples I had chopped from the original guitar and bass stems. Knowing the key also let me tune the drums in MDrummerLarge.

Things got tricky since I couldn’t use a sampler for the instruments. Pitch shifting with MTransformer seemed tedious if I wanted to create melodies (Though I did pitch shift one sample with MTransformer up a half step for the very last bass note of the song). So instead I exported some single notes I had found in the guitar track and used those to create custom oscillator shapes in MPowerSynth. In order to have the custom oscillators playback like a sample I had to drop the pitch about seven octaves and shorten the length of MIDI notes to stop before the "sample" could loop.

After sequencing some guitar riffs (that ended up sounding more like horns) I had to send the project to Luke Bartos so he could render my stems since I was running an expired trial of MPowerSynth.

I added a tines electric piano sound with another instance of MPowerSynth with a simple preset called "Tines".

In order to use every track I made sure to throw in some hectic toms in the beginning as sort of a joke reference to the original Supersong. I created cymbal swells with the drum room mic being sent to MReverb.

Once the song was completely laid out I did some basic mixing. Nothing really crazy, just a few instances of MEquilizer and MWaveshaper; compression and side-chained bass etc. Used MPhase and MAutopan for some width on the tines and guitar too. You can tell I followed the Melda youtube tutorials for MDrummer as I set the same effects and routing for the kick and snare.

I exported this and put the .wav file into a new project for mastering. Let me know if you would like this project file too but it is really bare and straightforward. Pretty much just followed the same signal chain as the "Audio mastering tutorial using MMastering Bundle" on youtube. MMultiBandDynamics > MStereoProcessor (great plug-in!) > MSpectralDynamicsMini > MEquilizerLinearPhase > MLimiter. I mastered below -16 at roughly -20LUFS integrated because I didn’t like how the added compression effected the mix.

Exported the results as a high quality .mp3 file and there you have it!

Wolf-Ray · Post by **Wolf-Ray** » Tue Apr 04, 2017 6:59 pm

I was very disheartened given the sheer amount of work that went into that song. Every sound save the tines is literally made out the original stems. The MIDI sequencing to create strumming alone was insane and the lack of being allowed to use a sampler made the project incredibly tedious.

Personally I thought Rob Urquhart should've won but he also didn't place which was a surprise.

mibby · Post by **mibby** » Tue Apr 04, 2017 7:03 pm

Thanks for the write-up Charles. It's very helpful to read how others approached these challenges and how they use the Melda plugins. And nice job on the song. I really enjoyed it and keep wishing it was longer!

mibby · Post by **mibby** » Tue Apr 04, 2017 7:25 pm

Yeah, it took a fair bit of time. But I'm actually glad I didn't turn mine in, it was a half-baked turd compared to these other entries...

Maybe Vojech can have a contest where we can only use the FREE plugins? ...OR maybe just use a few plugins? Then everyone would be on a level playing field as far as which plugins they have available. I can't help but think all of the Melda power users who already own tons of his plugins (and know them well) are at a distinct advantage in these challenges... Not to complain, mind you, the prizes are super generous!

MeldaProduction

KVR Audio

Melda's Supersongs