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I finally managed to make a SC page for my general music stuffs so I might as well share it here, maybe someone will find it interesting: https://soundcloud.com/kissojenvaltakunta/sets

Happy listening! Comments and criticism are always appreciated. :)
Last edited by gloomypuppet on Sat Apr 30, 2016 12:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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valse pathetique: very elegant, a joy to listen, which libraries did you use?
Kadonnut Tassu: very cool harmonies and a mighty entrance of the guitar, excellent!
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Thanks so much for your kind feedback! Glad you liked it.

Waltz: I basically sketched the whole thing with 8Dio Adagietto ensemble marcato patch and added Cinematic Strings individual sections to glue things up a bit. The brass is mostly Hollywood Brass Gold with some Symphobia thrown in. Percussion is Spitfire and winds are Berlin Woodwinds. The harp on Kadonnut Tassu is by Spitfire as well and the piano is Emotional Piano.

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gloomypuppet wrote:Thanks so much for your kind feedback! Glad you liked it.

Waltz: I basically sketched the whole thing with 8Dio Adagietto ensemble marcato patch and added Cinematic Strings individual sections to glue things up a bit. The brass is mostly Hollywood Brass Gold with some Symphobia thrown in. Percussion is Spitfire and winds are Berlin Woodwinds. The harp on Kadonnut Tassu is by Spitfire as well and the piano is Emotional Piano.
aha! very well blended all, sounds organic & big. Normally I'm more a fan of smaller acoustics...but this one convinces! :tu:
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I've only played the first two tracks, but I enjoyed them both and the contrast in styles between them was both welcome and unexpected. The cat pic led me to expect something chilled and "homely". When Eden Destroyer began playing, I was quite unprepared for it. I loved the dark atmosphere generated by the guitars which reminded me of early Opeth.
Valse Pathetique sounded great, and certainly wouldn't be out of place in a movie soundtrack.

Good work :)

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The two cats are my lovely friends and partners in crime at my studio. :3
I generally try to match the pictures to the sounds but it defaults to those so there you have it. Thanks for your feedback and thanks listening! I will have to do some more work with the many orchestral libraries I have, I'm aiming for something longer eventually, we'll see.

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I just played a couple more tracks from your SoundCloud - Väkivaltakone II and Dorian Mysterio. You have successfully managed to produce some quality pieces of music in varying genres. Impressive stuff.

Good work :)

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Thank you for taking the time to listen! I only wish SC would let me organize the tracks by will rather than just displaying them by the order they were added. Guess I'll need to get the pro plan as well, it's a bit expensive these days though. :)

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A very merry summer to everyone! Lots of new tracks added, many of which may be of interest to mostly finnish speaking peoples. I also decided to start offering producing services and music for media at reasonable fees so drop a line if you're interested. As always, thank you if you decide to take the time to listen. :)

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Cool project! We just finished mastering a similar one and if only I had one thing to say (but please just so I can find a constructive thing to add ;)) is to notch a bit of of the highs (3-6k, but depends on the song) to make things meatier and take out a bit of glassy harshness.

That's it, I don't want to steal the thunder, the project is very cohese and they are lots of tracks, which we all know it's not easy to put up with keeping the focus. Kudos and \m/ from Berlin!
Markus
Studio manager by day..sound engineer by night!

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Thank you so much for listening and most of all for the constructive criticism! The subtleties of mixing and mastering are becoming more apparent to me by the day, my current stuff is already sounding a bit better. Hailz from Finland. ;)

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gloomypuppet wrote:Thank you so much for listening and most of all for the constructive criticism! The subtleties of mixing and mastering are becoming more apparent to me by the day, my current stuff is already sounding a bit better. Hailz from Finland. ;)
Super cool! I think somewhere in-tbetween "Der Sieg" and "Eden Destroyer" in that genre had your best guitar/drums relationship in terms of punch and imaging. I also like the fact that you didn't go super loud, lately the Death Metal masters we've published I've seen the guys head over -6 or -4 land sometimes. Even with all the good analog mojo the studio has, I still think it's insanely loud and not necessary..we advise against it but then it's a label+client+artist thing..mostly labels pushing for that "competitive standard". Bah?!
Markus
Studio manager by day..sound engineer by night!

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...and that is the great thing about being an independent artist/producer etc. I use SC as my main medium for the stuff I make and have no absolute need to match any loudness standard. Mostly I use limiter to even things out at the end of my chain, trying to hit -1,5 - -2. -3 is pushing it a bit already for me but depends on the context and how regularly I'm hitting it. Some bus compressing before that and some saturation. Lately I've learned to treat the higher end of the spectrum a bit better, some high cut etc. The balancing out is the real ZEN of mixing I have found out, really subtle stuff. :) Of course bass is also challenging but as I like bass, I try not to cut it unless there's a good reason for that.

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Good thinking. We've lately resorted to get different masters for different purposes, so usually we get 3/4 out:

- one for digital media (mostly working in all digital stores, Bandcamp and whatnot), that gets a good push in final RMS and is pretty loud
- one for CD, which is the best sounding of the bunch but slightly less loud than the pushed masters. This is also because nowadays fans buy a digital product (e.g. on Bandcamp) and get immediate access to the digital files, but then also get the physical CD. It is good and fun for them to know that the two versions are slightly different, it makes more sense to own both the digital and the CD and they don't necessary substitute for one another
- one for Soundcloud, which is often where new artists want to be seen, still. This is specifically done to make sure that Soundcloud doesn't utterly crash the sound (as you noticed its algorythm is far from lossless) but is still as loud (and often times louder) than the friends in the competition. It's still a "wow" factor for some fans when they are surfing Soundcloud for new music and the song that kicks in has more punch, more detail, more soundfield, more "more" ;) without falling apart
- one for vinyl, which is usually the quiter one but also the one done specifically for this medium, requiring different mindsets and approach

To do this it takes quite a bunch of analog gear and know-how (without whom you are lost, no matter how good the studio is) but the result is still to my ears impossible to get completely in-the-box. But it's definitely getting closer, I am a fan of freebies myself and in my little home studio I like to challenge the odds of the studio I work in, but usually fail (again..because I am learning, still ;))
Markus
Studio manager by day..sound engineer by night!

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Thanks for the nice insider info!

Yeah, it requires much more effort working for many mediums like you do. And the same with working for others bands. When they are competent musicians, it's always easier and this is why I highly respect competence.

Not sure if I'd have the mental resources to make this my daily work. And I'm well aware that SC compression is pretty crappy but it works well enough. I'm thinking of making all my stuff downloadable eventually for quality reasons and also for accessibility, since I prefer good quality MP3s as my regular listening format. Can't be bothered about FLAC etc. :) I'm pretty happy with the sounds I'm getting ITB and I know there is a lot of room for improvement, that's why I don't worry about digital/analog at all but I get where you are coming from. Talking about ITB though, I think Slate stuff is pretty excellent.

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