Geraint

Ah-hah! Found a bunch at http://mixoff.org/ I can test on. Still happy to be directed towards more, if anybody happens to know of any.

Hi everyone, I'm in search of "un-mixed tracks" - that is, tracks that have been written and recorded, and all the parts are there, but they haven't taken the final leap into being polished, well-balanced pieces of audio. What I'm actually trying to do is to write a software tool to do a hacky approximation to mixing/mastering. I've been using the prototype myself and it's been working OK (although my tracks are kinda half-mixed anyway, because I get them to "sound good" as I go along). To see whether the idea has any legs, I'd love to be able to try it out on some more "raw" stems from a completely different setup. So, does anyone have any un-mixed tracks/stems they might be prepared to let me play with, or know where would be a good place to find such things? In return, you will either get a fairly-OK-sounding mix or a horrible mangled mess, but definitely my thanks either way! Geraint

That's good to hear. If there are any other keys or tempos you want for any of the samples, just let me know.

I think I still might need to improve the interface - make it show file sizes, perhaps. I did knock it together in an evening! Perhaps also some more zip files, so people can get whole directories at once. What do you mean when you say you don't have synth capability? Do you mean, you don't have any decent synths? Or no synths that reasonably sound like real instruments?

Dear all, I've recently added a new area to my site, to hold all of the samples I created myself, so I thought I would post a link here. http://brokencity.co.uk/Samples It's not that large, but I hope that someone finds some of them at least interesting, if not useful. --Geraint

That looks pretty fun. The interface looks very intuitive, albeit at the expense of flexibility. It might be a very good way of teaching non-music-geeks what modular synthesis was - it struck me very much as a museum exhibit kind of thing. Once they were grand masters at that, you might be able to show them SynthEdit or even Reason and they would at least have a clue about signal paths and so on.

I think a problem with a lot of these radical new distribution ideas is that they rely on there being either a fanbase or that there definitely will be one. I remember a previous scheme where the artists made the music, and then a record label bought a copy for millions, with the understanding that they could make copies and sell them for thousands to record shops, with the understanding that the record shops could make loads of copies and sell them for a fiver. Neither of these schemes would be good for emerging artists. Now, when I first read the title of this post I thought it said "Random Distribution Model" instead. Now that's an idea - you select a song, and then some of the time it's free, and some of the time you have to pay. If you can combine the music industry with online gambling, you might win at everything, forever.

dc2daylight - Thankyou so much! I ended up buying some cheap MXLs, and I've bookmarked the MC012s for my next big spend. It was really reassuring to have the advice, as I'm terrible at decisions. I really appreciate it. --G

Understandable! I looked at the music board later and it appeared just underneath some quite dramatic news, so I wasn't really expecting much of a response. I guess "studio setting", because it wouldn't be a concert or anything like that. Nobody there but myself and the performers, so I was hoping to do some far-miking to get some sense of the acoustic space, that kind of thing. I've never been able to record outside my room (with my one-in-one-out soundcard) so it's all new to me. Recording live would be nice, but I was hoping to get to that later when I have more confidence/competence with recording in general. I'd be prepared to buy another couple of mikes when I get around to that, so it's not a concern for now. Is that a sensible thing to do, or should I be learning both skills concurrently?

Hey guys. I'm getting geared up to splash out on some more audio kit. I only have a term and a half left at university, so my plan was to practise recording as many chamber groups as possible whilst I'm still hanging around so many people with that much free time. At the moment, I have an SM58 and two AKG C1000S. I am buying a 4-channel soundcard (with phantom power), and stands and cables etc. I was looking at buying two more microphones, presumably condenser, but I don't know what kind I want. I want to experiment and learn with some different set-ups, so I'm looking for versatility. The general question I would like to ask is: "Suppose you could only have a small number (four or five) microphones in the world, and you wanted to have as much flexibility as possible, with a fairly limited budget (average less than £100 each), what would they be?". In particular: How many omnis/cardioids would you get? Is a matched pair or a stereo mike good value? Would you have five mikes about the same quality, or three £50 ones and two £175 ones? Looking back, I would definitely have appreciated this kind of "road map" when I was buying my first three mikes - even if I had ended up buying the same things, I would have known that I wasn't just collecting microphones like Top Trumps cards, but that there was a logical next thing to buy. Personally, I'm probably going to do more chamber stuff than rock bands right now, but for future reference I guess I want to know about all manner of recording. For my budget, I'm aiming for at most £150 for both new microphones together, so I don't expect any really decent mikes to be available for that price range! However, if anyone knows anything about the AKGs I already have, and any weaknesses they have that might affect my choice of mikes, that would be just swell. Thanks, Geraint P.S. - apologies for the edit hours after I originally posted! I don't articulate myself very well at midnight, so I thought I would have another go.

Actually, I was under the impression that "u umlaut" became "ue" quite often when transliterating, and the same with "o" and "a". You see it a lot in last-names that have come from another country, like "Chad Kroeger". "In other languages that do not have the letter as part of the regular alphabet or in limited character sets such as ASCII, U-umlaut is frequently replaced with the two-letter combination 'ue' " --Wikipedia The same thing has happened to "Universitaet" - in proper germanic script, it is written with an A-umlaut instead of "ae". So, I probably think that the survey is legit. Also, I would say 'standard copyright' does not allow re-mixing or anything like that. True, you can write your own licence and similar, but at that point I'm not sure it's "standard" anymore. I think it's a decent summary for those not copyright-aware. --G

You have no idea how many times I've been tempted write something that does the same thing. Viterbi's algorithm to choose the chords and the auto-backing from a cheap keyboard to form the accompaniment. It's not exactly a revolutionary idea, and the maths has some pretty strong limitations. I don't exactly feel threatened. On a related note, did anyone else ever have to harmonise chorales "in the style of Bach" in music lessons? That was fairly simple to automate, too.

Nightwolf: I think "Jazz/Rock/Metal/Blues" is perfectly helpful! I'd accept something like that. At least you wouldn't expect all-male close-harmony singing from that description, you'd be expecting it to involve guitars at least in part. I'm also not averse to saying "Some X, some Y, occasionally a bit of Z". I feel genre can be useful - otherwise it's a bit like going to the cinema without seeing any trailers or posters for that movie; you can still enjoy the film, but there's a strange 15 minutes at the start where you judge the explosions-to-relationships ratio. I agree about not wanting to be pidgeon-holed, and I can't imagine ever thinking "no, that wouldn't fit, it's outside my genre". However, the people who talk to me about my music are in no way connected to the professional music scene. It's not a question of which box a music retailer puts my music in. It's a question of whether a friend's friend actually checks out the music, or just smiles and nods and says "Well done you!". I think that if some-one forwarded me a link to ten songs, and he/she says they are "Blues", I wouldn't listen to all ten if the first few weren't that great. Good Blues is lovely, and I'll bookmark the ones I like, but I've never found it breathtaking enough that it's worth sifting through only "reasonably-good" songs to find stellar examples. However, if they said "Symphonic Rock", then I'd probably listen to all ten, because I know that even if the first nine were only mediocre, then the tenth might send shivers up my spine.

My thought on the first sound: The space-ship-ness is possibly created using a ring-modulator, but I can't guess at what the underlying sound is. Some imitation sounds: mid-pitch, higher, lower --G

It's a good challenge. Looking back, I think I've only ever written two truly happy pieces, and neither of them recent. The second one (lyrics and mp3) was written because my brother wanted "another one like Touch The Ground" and it held some strong resemblance to the first. However, while definitely a snippet instead of a full piece, here's a sketch I wrote this afternoon for the challenge: Happy Song.mp3 (needs lyrics, but I'm definitely not coming up with those on the spot!) --Geraint

Whenever people ask what my hobbies are, my answer is the same. "Composing. Also, creating little creatures by glue-gunning pipe-cleaners to everyday objects." Unsurprisingly, they tactfully ignore the second, and ask me "what kind of music" I write, and I respond "Erm. Sort of... pop?". On the one hand, I'd like to be able to say some kind of recognisable phrase so people could tell if they might like it. On the other hand, it irks me when people say "My influences are Cher and Ray Charles, and my music is an electro-punk Beethoven-Nickelback fusion", because that's just bewildering and unhelpful. What I really want them to say is "Minimalist techno, but I sample a lot of classical pieces". Simple, unpretentious and enlightening. So... could you help me please? I know exactly what and who I would like my music to sound like, but that's not helpful to other people! Some tracks to listen to: http://brokencity.co.uk/Completed/Music%20Box.mp3 http://brokencity.co.uk/Completed/This%20Is%20How.mp3 (has vocals) http://brokencity.co.uk/Completed/Love%20Theme.mp3 http://brokencity.co.uk/Completed/Streetlights.mp3 http://brokencity.co.uk/Completed/Life%20Of%20A%20Spiral.mp3 http://brokencity.co.uk/Exhibition/Coriolis.mp3 (has vocals) And some works-in-progress (everything done apart from vocals): http://brokencity.co.uk/Incomplete/Unknown.mp3 http://brokencity.co.uk/Incomplete/Sing.mp3 --Geraint