Christopher Burke

Dear Anyone. Yes, I've watched loads a lot of YouTube videos on gainstaging but I think they've got something I haven't and I'm beginning to think that something's called a 'brain....'! There might well be other incredibly dumbass questions but can I start with compression? Everywhere says GAIN'S volume going into the compressor, Volume is amount of sound coming out. I was doing OK with that till I saw a button on my compressor called 'Output Gain'! If sound coming out's Volume, sound going IN's GAIN, how the heck can you have OUTPUT Gain? Is that just another word for Volume? And if you want your track to sound as 'full' as yer average Karaoke track - because you're writing it for someone to sing over - do you just have more GAIN going in? Last dumbass question. As you can use a compressor to make anything any sound level you want, assuming there's enough GAIN going INTO it (am I right on that, that's only something I've read) how do you know how MUCH GAIN to put into it, in other words how loud a signal to put into it? And I've got a BUNCH of VST synths that all start off at different volume levels - if you select a preset on each of them, without touching the controls, they'd all be very different sound levels. Do you use the COMPRESSOR to even out the volume levels, or do you get all the volume levels the same going into the compressors? If the second, how do you automate the volume because when it comes OUT of the compressor, you can't automate it can you? You have to automate it going IN, as far as I can tell. I use Quick Score Elite Level 2 DAW. And I'll apologise again for the dumbass questions - yes I've watched YouTube vids., and read stuff, I just can't get my tracks' waves as FAT as those I download. I mean I download a YouTube track - or record a bit of one with Audacity - and it can look like a blue brick. Mine all look like wiggles in cotton. Yet my tracks are often as LOUD as the YouTube ones, just not as FULL-sounding. I know their sounds cost far more than mine do but I'm pretty sure that's not all that's going on, there's lack of techie knowledge on my side too. And the plug-in I always have most trouble with is GAIN/Gainstaging! Yours respectfully Chris. Yours respectfully Chris.

Hi, all! I'm a New Ager. Right now I'm listening to 'Seascapes' by Frank Mills, preceded by Paul Collier 'This may be Goodbye', a load of Michel Pepe tracks and tracks by Alain Morisod, the mainstay of 'Sweet People', the band Abba ripped one of their biggest hits off. Really, you say? 'Ave a listen to this - and remember Sweet People WROTE this track FIRST!! Yours respectfully, Chris. Watch the video here

Dear John. Bit fear-and-twembling, really, never posted one of my New Age tracks anywhere before! Something you or someone must know is - where do these YouTube composers get their pad (as in backing) sounds from? There's all these guys writing MASSIVE tracks using gorgeous pad sounds - Yakuro, Yellow Brick Cinema, Karunesh, many others - and I've absolutely no idea where they get their sounds from. I don't want to rip their style off, it's just like if you hear someone playing a lovely guitar, you'd want to know where they bought it (if you're a guitarist) so you could get yourself one, no? People keep saying things, I keep buying them and the sounds are always alien nightmares, not nice pads! Do you know of a nice source of YouTube quality 32-bit pads that don't sound like something only a vampire would listen to? If so, please say! Anyway, here's one I did day before yesterday, been a bit lazy today! Love to know what you think. Yours respectfully - feel free to criticise the mix, I need to learn - Chris. Song for an Angel.mp3

Dear Everyone. I'm a little fat disabled guy (Cerebral Palsy, Hydrocephalus, Asperger's) who loves trying to write New Age music. I use a wonderful - for me - package called Quick Score Elite Level 2 which is just notation, one stave per instrument. If anyone here knows Dorico, it's like a much better designed version of that (in many ways, I've given up on Dorico cos it's too unnecessarily complicated. ALL these 64-bit nightmares are too unnecessarily complicated. Why not have one direct way of doing stuff and put ALL the ghastly complications as menu choices for if you need them?) Anyway, I'm after sounds, or the building blocks for sounds like HERE.... Even if it's just sounds I could put together to make these kinda sounds, I'd love 'em. Hopefully 32-bit stylee - sorry I've not gone 64-bit, I've spent, like, a year fighting these monsters - Dorico, Cubase, Reaper - and I just am not 'getting' them. Can't play anything cos of disability, put in all the notes with a mouse, HATE piano roll, love simplicity and notation. I've got Serum, UVI Workstation (but their sounds cost a fortune!) Sampletank, the HG Fortune synths. I understand voices, tuning, detuning, LFOs, ADSR, high/low pass gates but I try following YouTube instruction vids, they get gor-gee-ous sounds, I get seal farts, no idea why. There's gotta be VSTs out there with sounds good enough to make YouTubeworthy tracks on cos this lot have been going since 32-bit days and their sound's not changed much. As have Yakuro, Stive Morgan, Mike Rowland, Aeoliah, Mike Oldfield and their sound's not changed much either. Please, anyone know of a nice library of sounds for Sampletank or anything else multitimbral I could use? (Multitimbral saves memory and works better with QSE but I'd take anything right now!) Yours hopefully Chris. P.S. I'm happy to pay a reasonable amount for nice sounds, I know UVI sounds are great but they're hundreds of pounds to buy so I'm kinda dithering over them! Not the lead sounds - got those - just the lovely background sounds. ANY info. on making/getting them will be jumped on.....!!

Dear Anyone. I'm a disabled wannabe New Age composer who loves people like Karunesh, Yellow Brick Cinema, Aeoliah, Leo Rojas, Edward Simoni, anyone like that. They're all basically the same - tune instrument, drumbeats and bee-YOOO-tiful pads in the middle. Which is my problem. I can't do/find/source the pad sounds. My DAW's 32-bit. It's a disability-DAW, I love and totally understand every nuance of it - it's not its fault I can't do the sounds. If I had a multitimbral (I can dream!) source of sounds, so I could mix the sounds together in the VST (like the Korg M1 Emulator which I flog to death because I actually understand that one - shock - horror!) and then have one stave playing the combined output, that would be ideal. I know you can use JBRIDGE to run 64-bit in a 32-bit environment (yup - that ways around!) but I've not worked out how yet - could do with help with that too if poss. Basically that's why I'm here. I need help finding pads/backing synthy sounds like the above, who are all over YouTube like a disease if you want to listen. Hoping someone chooses to help out! Yours respectfully Chris.

Dear HoboSage. That's a good start. What I'll do is give this post a leetle time to (hopefully) get a few more replies - or if you want to say more feel free - and when I've got a bunch of ideas to work with, courtesy of all you kind people - and that is NOT sarcasm! - I'll do a remix using all of 'em, chuck the remix up here and then the process can start again! Really it's techniques I'm after learning right now - how to make 4 sounds sit well with eachother even if they're 4 crappy sounds, if their odiousness is clear and audible and not muddy then I'll know how to do Phase One and be able to go onto Phase 2 - Getting Better Sounds and Using Them Without having to EQ them to Shreds to get them to sit properly in a Mix!! Feel free, you and everyone, to chuck as many tomato-shaped ideas at this as you want/can think of and I'll use 'em all! Yours respectfully Chris.

Dear Anyone. For starters, I've read the 10 rules and utterly agree with all of them, that's how come I'm posting this here. Please critique away and I'll do a new mix, from scratch, incorporating everyone's criticisms and hopefully it'll sound better! (It can't sound worse.) For seconds - I know these are not the best available sounds, but right now I'm hoping that won't matter too much. I've got better synths but I don't know where tweaking the sounds within the synths and using EQ/whatever on them in the mix starts and finishes (when should I be tweaking them in the VST and when should I be using more EQ/whatever!?! - that's rhetorical for now.) What I'd love to hear is all 4 freebie sounds sounding the best/clearest they can, yet with the pad in back, pan-pipe on top, ripply thingy just behind panpipe and choir not 'taking over' so much when it comes in. If I turn down the choir, the pad immediately eats it (ditto with adding reverb to it - it's just a soundfont with SF2 player release on it right now). If I keep the background ripplers (you'll hear them) less muffled, they immediately eat everything. If I keep them clearer but turned down, they jump out at you in bits and disappear in bits for no apparent reason - I'm not changing any levels but they do do that. (They don't now because I've EQ'd the bejeezus outta them but I don't want to do that unless I really have to!) Ditto with the sound that occasionally ripples into life panned right - if I keep the clarity bits in there, it eats the world. (I've got other VSTs but they've got probs., like they don't obey CC changes for some unknown reason and I've gotta do everything virtually cos I'm disabled, don't let it bother you.) So basically it's remix time from scratch. Basically, say whatever you like and I'll do it all and if it comes out better I'll thank you profusely, if it don't then I'll be back asking what I've done wrong again. I've honestly heard sounds as bad as mine in easy-listening music on YouTube, but they all sound a lot clearer yet in the right places in the mix. I'd be ecstatic to be able to achieve that for starters. So go ahead, have a ball, say whatever you like, it's an object we're trying to improve, not 'Muy Bay-bee, Don't Hurt it's Wickle Feelings!!' I've been trying to get the hang of mixing for years, I've got several albums ready to hit the Internet when I can do it (can't afford to pay anyone else) so vent away. When you can't vent any more, I'll know I've got it right. And hopefully be able to use what I've learned on the next track. Yours respectfully Chris. Please_help_me_sound_better_MP3.mp3

Dear AloProductionz. Thank you very much, as well as everyone else, I'll try them all! My E-mail's ulrichburke@hotmail.com. Looking forwards to trying Ivory Steinway! To TapperMike. I'm using Windows XP because it's the only OS my music software likes (QSE Level 2). I've tried running the installer for CV Tascam in 98 emulation and 200 Emulation, and instaling in safe mode - no joy. It doesn't believe I have SP2 for some reason. Now assuming ONE of the other files I've listed is the actual sounds - how do I get them into the thing to play them as clicking on the 'Click Here to Load' boxes don't work? Conversely that question may be redundant after I've tried out the other pianos here. Thanks for your help - still trying to get my head around all this stuff! Incidentaly - and at the risk of everyone going 'AARGH!! WHY didn't he say this BEFORE!?!' and chucking stuff at me - I've got Sampletank Free (which is pretty much the full version these days) but no instruments for it much (apart from Miroslav Strings which I've been battling to control for years, that's why I stick with Edirol, at least those SOUND like strings straight from the box) and something called Kontakt which again I don't know much about but is supposed to have good sounds for it if you understand it.... I'll try out both the pianos mentioned and layer 'em up in the lower notes, see if that helps. I used to be the proud owner of a Bechstein Grand once, that's kinda spoiled me for synth piano sounds I guess (OK, it's not a Bosundorfer and it needed retuning virtualy every time you played it and I retuned it with a car socket set - and I can see you all cringing at that thought now....) Thanks for your help. I'll try your piano with great expectation, Aloproductionz. Chris.

Dear Anyone. I downloaded the legit. version of Tascam CV Piano onto my XP SP3 computer and tried to install it. The installer told me I needed SP2 and exited, which was odd because SP3 INCLUDES SP2, no? I mean I downloaded SP2 and tried to install that so I could instal the piano but SP2 wouldn't instal because I had SP3. So I tried in Safe Mode, no joy. Then I opened the zipfile and examined the contents, found the .DLL which I assume is the VST, put it in my VST folder and it came up looking pretty - but with no sounds. I've got 16 little boxes saying 'Click to load....' but when I click on any of them nothing happens. Now the files that downloaded for this are as follows:- Continuous Velocity Piano - Full Modeled.gvi. Continuous Velocity Piano - Full Modeled.gx99. GADL.INI Configuration Settings. CVPiano-GVI-Modeled-Setup.exe (that's the installation program that doesn't believe I have SP2) There's a folder labeled Plugin that contains:- Copy of nfx.dll, Copy of CVPiano-GVI-Modeled.dll, Copy of CVPiano-GVI-Modeled.dpm, Copy of CVPiano-GVI-Modeled.dpm.rsr, Copy of CVPIANO-GVI-Modeled.exe GVI Hosting Shell, Copy of CVPiano-Modeled.gvk. There's another folder called LCC that contains Synchrosoft Licence Control Setup (no idea what that is.) I downloaded the whole thing from VST4Free.com so I'm ASSUMING it's legit. I've checked the TASCAM site and they're no longer supporting it. If it's NOT, I'll just delete it. What I need to know is which of all the above listed files contains the actual piano sounds and how the heck do I get them into the piano shell! (Remember, clicking on al the little LOAD boxes on the shell don't exactly do a lot.) Conversely, if nobody knows the answer, can anyone tell me of a decent piano that MUST be CC Controllable (CC7 for volume, MUST have velocity control etc., balance would be nice, MIDI Learnable's fine.) and hopefully have nice rich low notes (I keep getting kiddypianos that sound like musical boxes!) I know you can spend hundreds on a piano that's got thousands of samples and takes up about 20 gig of hard drive - that's a bit overkill for me right now. I'd be happy with something that sounded vaguely Richard Clayderman/Frank Mills that I could put strings behind! (But a rich lower notes end would be nice....) Yours hopefully - sorry the first post's a long one Chris.