treibklang - kuiper cliff

[treibklang]

Wonder, if the style of my music finds gracious listeners in this realm. It's the latest track of mine and the first on KVR.

treibklang - kuiper cliff
7.57 min (192kbit mp3 ~11MB)

The track is composed with the outer border of the solar system in mind. The Kuiper Belt being a field of small stellar bodies about 55 AUs from the sun, and also being the home of Pluto. A sudden dramatic falloff wrt. the number of objects, which may demark the edge of the belt or a big gap within, is known as the Kuiper Cliff.

Thanks for any comment and critics
Stefan

[ckatrun411]

This is just absolutely fantastic. I am madly in love with your music. It is so emotional, and brilliant.

You should definitely be writing music for film, or games. You can also have a great career in Chill ouT, ambient. For chill out, you are almost there. Not quite....

Need a little**** seriously, just a LITTLE, more definition in your beat, specifically the sub frequencies. You need a little more definition in your bass... All I would use, for bass, if I was you, and making chill out, would be double octave sine waves.............


Get that?

dual oscillator synth... midi programmed between c2 and c3.... oscillator 1 = -12 sine wave, oscillator two = sine wave ..... Chorus/delay

boom, very simple......


You just need to commercialize your sound, ever so slightly, and you are going to have to get yourself written up for a complete album in some magazine.........

Instantly, you will have some sort of chill out, success.....


You very lucky man!!!



Go buy, 20, or 30 chill out albums............ listen for something to guide you a little bit.


cheers



( edited post )

Used to say, program bass midi between c2 and c2..... supposed to say, use dual osc sines, one -12, and program bass c2 and c3.... make sure top sine is a bit lower in volume......

[core]

Nice track Stefan, very chill. Thanks for sharing

[Laguna Rising]

that's really interesting. Not my cup of tea tbh, but I always appreciate fine music, and I agree this one sounds really good and there are plenty of superb melodies.
Well done

Cheers

[treibklang]

Thanks to all of you for the kind words

To be honest, I am not completely satisfied with the mixing of the single sounds, but this is really difficult to accomplish (at least to me). So, any hints on how and what to improve are welcome (like the drums being to far away).

Stefan

[ckatrun411]

That is exactly what I was saying. Your drums lacked a little definition. It is not a bad thing. It just takes practice. I will try to help you a little. How did you mix the drums?



A) Did you make a sub mix? What parts are submixed?

B) How much reverb did you use? Any at all?

C) Where did you get these drum samples? Home-made? A battery kit or something?

D) What vst are you using for drums and perc?

E) What compressors are you using? How much compression if any did you put on the drums?

F) Any delay on drum parts anywhere?

G) Did you eq the drums at all? Did you eq before you put them into a sampler? After you made a sub mix?




Please answer the questions above, and we are going to try and help you get a stronger drum sound.



Cheers

[treibklang]

A) Did you make a sub mix? What parts are submixed?

What is a sub mix?

B) How much reverb did you use? Any at all?

There is a slight Chorus and a tiny Rotary effect on some of the percussions. Only the Chrous on the drums.

C) Where did you get these drum samples? Home-made? A battery kit or something?
D) What vst are you using for drums and perc?

No samples. No VST.
The drums' source is a Korg N264 Music Workstation.

E) What compressors are you using? How much compression if any did you put on the drums?

None.

F) Any delay on drum parts anywhere?

Nope.

G) Did you eq the drums at all? Did you eq before you put them into a sampler? After you made a sub mix?

The audio output from the Workstation is routed via a small Behringer Mixer into the AudioSystem. The mixer has a small EQ setting, putting a bit more bass on the audio.

Thanks,
Stefan

[ckatrun411]

Hi Stefan,

Lets go through some of things below, but before we do that, I'd just like to say, "when it comes to drums, I'm a big believer in simplicity rules the street. It is absolutely amazing, just how big, your drums can get with the proper compression, reverb, pan, and eq settings."

What is a sub mix?

A sub mix is when separate audio tracks, are routed to a single audio track. This allows groups of instruments, that fit together, to be mixed together.

There is no one correct way to go about sub mixing drums. While I've been producing, longer and longer, the way I sub mix my drums has changed quite a bit. When I was a new producer, I used to throw all drum parts onto one audio track, compress all together, reverb all together. Panning, and eq, would be set up, on separate tracks, before the sub mix.

I no longer sub mix this way. Nowadays, I like to make two sub mixes for my drums. In one sub mix, I will have my kick, my clap, and any percussion, and in another sub mix I will have my cymbals. This is because I found out I don't like to compress my cymbals, or my hi htz. While I will still run my kicks and claps through compression.

Anyways, there is no right or wrong way to do drums submixing. Feel free to try standard routing, all drums on one track, or you can take a page out of my play-book, and submix that way.

BUT....

I do suggest, you try and submix. This way, you can really work on balancing all your drum parts, getting them really big, and with just one or two fader movements, you will be blending drums with your entire track in no time.

There is all NYC style compression, which requires a sub mix, I don't often do my drums this way, and it is a lot of typing, but it may be something you would like to google, "nyc drum compression."

There is a slight Chorus and a tiny Rotary effect on some of the percussions. Only the Chrous on the drums.

Interesting. Once again, there is no right or wrong way, to produce a track, but for me personally. I'm not a fan of chorus on kick drums, and claps....

If you'd like to effect on some of your percussion, like bongos, or congas, that is one thing. But when we are dealing with Kicks, and ClaPs.. For a big sound, IMHO, simplicity is in the house.

I will also come right out and say, "I put reverb all over my drums, on ever drum part, kiks, htz, clps, snrs, perc, etc.....

BUT...

That does not mean I drown in reverb. ANd I will not use the same reverb for all drum parts. BuT.. That is a highly personal mixing choice.

What I have found, is that mixing in a digital computer studio, is totally different from a real world analog studio. The digital enviorement allows, far more flexibility in almost everything, outside of distortion. When it comes to distortion, gimme tubes!! But when it comes to everything else, digital is just amazing.


Because... If you are producing home, with samples, or a Korg, or anything but a drum room, and a live drummer, you most likely wont have any leakage. Leakage, is what you find in a drum room, when all mics are picking up all drum parts. Mixing drums with leakage, you probably want to reverb em together. Mixing clean samples, I'm not so sure if that is the case.

I'll usually put a drop of verb on cymbals, a fair amount of vb on claps, and boom on the kick. I'm also really trying hard to find the right vb for the job.

Verb really opens drums up, but you can't drown em in verb. You really need to find the balance of big drums, but not soaking wet. I'm also a big fan of send vb on drmz....

No samples. No VST.
The drums' source is a Korg N264 Music Workstation.

Well, here you have NO excuse. You should be having amazing drum sounds to work with.

Its all about what kind of fx you are doing, what panning you are doing, your lack of proper use of compression and verb that is throwing you off.

None.

Should try and compress that percussion, the kick and snare... set attack and release to match your tempo, I'm using very light ratios... 2:1, sometimes 1.5:1

standard is 3:1

( numbers are guidelines, not exact suggestions, use ears )

Nope.

you definitely don't need delay on drums. Its not a must. I throw some on my clap sometimes.. send ofcourse... could make for a little rhythmic variation, can add a bit more space

The audio output from the Workstation is routed via a small Behringer Mixer into the AudioSystem. The mixer has a small EQ setting, putting a bit more bass on the audio.

So, from your korg, the audio is routed through a mixer, via one track to the daw? This is a little confusing here, sounds almost like a sub mix is made on the korg, or the berhringer somewhere, and you have thrown eq on the whole thing.

This just sounds terrible to me... imho.....


There is no need to boost the bass of all drum audio. You will create nothing but low frequencies mud. I'm a big fan of eq, for each drum part separately, before they hit the sub mix.


Actually, I am making all my drums for myself on Rapture vst, and what I find is that... I will make a drum, eq it, throw it into the sampler, eq again if needed in the mix.

I'm sure there are plenty of people, just throwing an eq on an entire drum audio... Maybe in an analog world, that is nice, but for digital..... That just reduces your bit rate, doesn't separate frequencies, and can only be a mud maker......

Thanks,
Stefan

My pleasure mate. I thought it was a nice peace of music you wrote. Keep at it. Google some drum eq charts if you want, remember those numbers are just guidelines.....


Practice is the only true key. The knowledge is out there, lots of people have it, it is how much time you spend putting it to use.


Cheers

Jon

[treibklang]

Thanks, Jon, for all the hints. Think, I will try out a bit on what you suggested.
To unfold some confusion (hopefully, and if I understood the submix correctly): The Korg is played in a Song-Mode, that is, it allows for 16 different instruments to be played at the same time. One of them is a drum set (actually two for using an additional set for percussions). While this is quite comfortable, the drawback seems to be that when all the instruments are played via midi control, the audio output will result in one sub mix (as you said) and, consequently, result in one audio track in my DAW. Which makes it impossible to operate on them the way you suggested.
So the next obvious step will be to record each voice to a single audio track, maybe actually seperate some instruments for drum sets, too (which I usually do have seperate midi tracks for already), and do some postprocessing on those tracks in the DAW. Sounds reasonable, needs a lot of extra work, but maybe the best way to do it. Actually sounds like the mastering part of doing a track, as for composing playing all sounds should suffice.

Thanks again. Much appreciated.
Stefan

[Kmeister]

Good music man.Reminds me a little of Tangerines Dreams 'Lily on the Beach' CD.