Peter Gabriel Remix

Its been a really long time since ive been on the blog, took forever to remember my password... We did that really long Gravity Remix project but most of us were to stupid to know its a terrible idea to stream our project peices from Stublic... Sorry Mr. Rabuse.
Anyways, my remix. I didnt particularly like either song choice for this time around, but I decided the Peter Gabriel song had most interesting stems. I started off this project by rejecting the vocals and then playing each stem in reverse (used the option in Edison). I Loved the way certain parts of that sounded. I used these parts at various parts of my remix, most notably the intro. I put a TON of effects on this remix. More than I have ever used by far. My new favorite tool is the Multiband Compressor. It is exactly what ive wanted all year, you can do practically anything with it. And I pretty much used it on every little peice of this project. I used plenty of delay, panning, and pitch automations, and practically every other tool/effect I could think of at some point of this remix. I really cant name all the effects I used, but im trying to name the interesting ones. I used phaser on the bass which easily turned out nicely. I used a delay effect on the synths which wasnt totally neccesary, but I liked how it came out.
I had two big problems on this project. I had a ton of static from pumping too much through all the different channels in the mixer with the mess of all the effects. But this wasnt actually a problem at all, when I exported all the noise was gone. I remembered when first opening FL Studio in class and listening to the song by Zircon I was amazed to hear alot of static in a professionals work, but when I exported that (to get a free MP3 of a really nice song) I remember the noise was gone, so why shouldnt it do the same for my project? My other problem was that, even though I had so many effects and such to make the stems sound much fuller, I had a sound that really was missing something pretty important. I listened to the original a few times and decided I had no choice to add the vocals. I only put them in sparingly, where it was really needed. The effect on the vocals is also courtesy of the Multiband Compressor, I used the radio preset, but I had to open up the filter a little to make it a bit clearer and less harsh. The female vocals also have the M-B.C. on them, but that was only a slight effect I came up with. I put that on the vocals to make them more full and interesting, along with delay. I also added a second bass line at parts to try to fill in the silence. The riff I came up with is fine in my opinion, and the placement is pretty good, but I only had ten minutes to come up with the sound in Sytrus (maybe should have tried BooBass) so im not entirely happy with it, but its the very basic idea of what I wanted. I felt I needed it because at points the supplied bass stem wasnt really contributing much low end. I think my bass line goes well with the background synth (the one that also ends the song), and if I had a few more minutes I could get it to go perfectly, but oh well, my class time is done.
Ive posted my remix along with a music video of the original song (since most people did the other song choice). This is an old song so I figure the stems I used were recreated or cleaned up or something, because they were alot sharper (brighter?) and duller sounding (if that makes any sense).

"Friday Nights" Remix Winner (Madeon)

This is pretty crazy. Reminds me of FireFlies (Owl City). At 1:50 he slows down the vocals rapidly and then drags them back, I Love it. I never could have thought about that. He made the pretty random vocals work together great. I personally listened more to the music than the vocals, ive heard enough of them. The video below plays the winning remix for those of you that havent heard it yet. Definately worth a listen.

"Friday Nights" Remix

For this project we had to "remix" a song. But there really wasnt much to start with so I wouldnt necessarily call it "remixing". Anyways, I basically put the instrumental part together around the supplied vocals. Dont give me alot of credit, most of the synths are just editted versions of presets. And most of the effects I used (vocoder, chorus, distortion, etc.) are basically left on the default settings. Almost the entire song is consisting of the same 3 notes. These notes are just used in different ways with different instuments to make up the riffs. This song doesnt have much to it really. I got some sounds I liked so I just stuck to them. There was a setting of Fruity Kick supplied with the vocals which I kept, I used a synth preset called Depthcore, an instument (string) clip called MIXO_C2(L) which I randomly put through the chopper and it sounded fine as a not to centerpeice to the song. Also I tried out a synth prest called Designer Drug on basically all the riffs I already had, and I kept a few, just to add some varitation. I did something in Sytrus, I cant really remember what, but I got that saw wave sort of sound played every beat beat for many parts of the song (Its pretty simple and kinda misplaced, but the song is completely empty without it). Mr. Rabuse gave me some pointers and I did some re-remixing and got this. He had alot of helpful advice on the setup of the song, stuff you tend to forget about while working on it. There really isnt much else to say about it. Enjoy.

NIN Remix

For this project we were supposed to remix some Kanye West song, but I did not because... I dont like Kanye West. I remixed My Violent Heart by Nine Inch Nails instead. This project was a difficult mess. Remixing a song that I know very well proved difficult because I always wanted to place each part with the other parts it went with in the original song. Remixing a song in general was difficult. I had stuff cut and pasted all over the place, the final piece consuming 23 lines of the playlist.
There isnt a whole lot to say about the remix really. Just alot of cut, paste, and added effects. There was one long bass note in the original song that I had to recreate in sytrus because I somehow broke it and saved it... So I made a new one, its not great, but I like it. It has the same effect as the original. When I played it along with the drums (especially towards the end of the remix) the bass overpowered a bit, slowing down the drums temporarily and when the bass note ends the drums suddenly speed up to catch up with themselves, at least thats how i would describe it. I noticed afterwards that it does this slightly in the original song, but mine has more of the effect since the bass has more power. I added a ton of effects to everything. Theres either distortion, delay, or the vocoder on basically everything. As with almost all my projects, the vocoder gives you this crumbling noise in the background when its not in use. Luckily its not very apparent this time. The drum parts at times seem to be a little... not on beat? But i dont know of any way you could fix that, its just been to cut up to change much.
Overall I think it sounds cool, but gets boring at points, and doesnt keep the same feel throughout the song. Thats hard to avoid though since the original song is also like this. It switches from very quiet to very loud a few times throughout. But I hope you like it anyways. Finally, I would like to thank Trent Reznor and anyone else who helped write the song for the sick parts used here and the brilliant idea of letting me download the multilayer tracks from your website. Ill probably upload my remix to there eventually.

My New Ringtone...

I do not currently have a cell phone, I smashed it into a million pieces, enough said. I do not like cell phones, and when I used to have one, It was always on silent. If I missed a call and it was important... LEAVE A MESSAGE!!! Anyways I had to make one for music tech. It was easy. Mostly because its intended to be very short and just there. I used Sytrus and a kick drum. I used the electric guitar preset on sytrus and put some effect on it, I cant remember what. The kick drum goes off on every four steps. It has Fruity bass boost, delay bank, and fast dist. on it. The guitar (sytrus synth) riff was just a chord I found with the chop tool (I know nothing about chords, they scare me). I chopped that up manually and kind of did something sort of like arpeggiating??? (im not good with musical terms) Anyways thats it really. Reminds me of Psyclon Nine quite a bit. Ive posted it below since I dont have a cell phone...

Theyre doing alot of renovating at the school...

I want a new work station in music tech. Who do I need to talk to about this?

Project 7 [more synth]

So far Ive put together a drum loop. This is much slower than I usually have. I definitely like it, but I might have to change it since I havent even considered making the synth parts yet. The drums so far consist of a snare drum, a slight cymbal hit, a hat, and a kick drum with the high end sound cut off a bit to make it more apparent. I was having trouble distinguishing the kick drum from the snare. The drums kind of progress slowly, changing slightly every 16 beats. Again, I like it but it was probably a bad idea to make a drum loop without any real direction or idea for the song.
I have two synths in the making. One I just left with the default sound for now and sent it through the riff machine. Its a long progression thats generally some very high notes and very low notes. The other synth is a simple square wave. I set the panning to move from the right ear, sustain at center, and then continue down to the left. The pitch also is set to quickly rise, lower, rise, sustain, then lower. It sounds pretty cool, but it definately restricts possibilities. I have copied the lower notes from the other riff and this synth will play those. The lower notes on the default sound were so apparent and boring that I knew they must be accompanied. Ive changed the default synth to a triangle wave and played with the shape slider to get basically the same sound just sharper and more apparent at the higher pitch. I also put a delay effect on it and played with those sliders but all I can remember is it is on the ping-pong setting. So far it sounds pretty cool, very industrial which I Love, but I havent a clue as to how to continue. Sounds fine on repeat, but that wont get a very good grade, will it? Im editing the A Pattern by taking the initial progression teh riff machine ised and chopping that a different way to get something new. Its working nicely so far but it isnt finished and i dont know how the two patterns will fit together.
Today i finished the vocoder project so I didnt get much done on this one. Odd coincidence, Mr. Rabuse decided to show us this thing to do with harmonics and multiple tones being played at once that we could use to get a much nicer sound with our synths. The funny thing is that I was just playing around with that very thing the other night on the demo version at my house. Except I was attempting to make the most obnoxious noise I could make, not the warmest or richest sound. He told us to make a downward slope in the OSC in one of the operators (this made a trumpet like sound), so I made an upward slope on the other end of the OSC and got a noise that reminds me of a computer issuing alerts or something. So I have this playing a high pitched quick riff, I have no idea if Ill actually use it but it might be a cool intro or outro. Or maybe I could just turn the noise all the way up and make static (pathetic cheap way out but fun).
Ive basically been stuff all period. Ive been looking for where to go with this project. Ive tried two things, not sure which im going ot stick with. Ive used slayer and the grand piano preset in sytrus. I did nothing yet to the grad piano but im sure I will if I stick with it. With the slayer I moved the pickup all the way to the neck, put on the tube amp and dry cabinet settings with no effects. I used the dampening knob to make it more of a palm muted sound. I figure im either doing a fast piano melody or a deep guitar background sort of thing. No idea which yet. I ran both through the riff machine a million times to try to get ideas. Im thinking about having an AAB(C?)pattern for the song. Ive got mostly silence for the C part, and the B part is undecided yet (guitar or piano).
Right off the bat today I made a simple piano part. This part continues right where the original piano part left of, but it only plays the second time through. Its a very simple part, but its sounds very nice where it is. This is going to be that "C" part on the second run through of the pattern. Ive taken the same piano part and edited it slightly and have it running as the first part "C", but through the guitar (slayer as mentioned earlier). I put an automtaion for the slayers volume on just to fade in and out (it over lays the surrounding parts a bit). Ive added two sustained notes at the very end (from slayer) to play with the drums. The feedback kicks in a little and then the song cuts. I added the fruity chorus effect to the slayer (in all occurrences). I like the sound, its like a mix between a synthesizer and guitar, and I like that (yes, I know a synthesizer is supposed to sound like other instruments, for the most part). Im just doing minor changes now, done with this for the most part. Ive played with the volume on everything alot so everything can be heard better throughout the entire song.
Today I just did more minor changes. I got nicer headphones, so it doesnt sound as nice (just different). Im done with it though. Hopefully its not as bad as I hear it being right now.