The Musician's Gig Room Chat V1 - Songwriting and Sound Design for all! - Creationism Corner

[QUOTE=Mysterious Mr.E;47337490]You aint taking the shit I worked hard on because you dont know how to do it yourself. If anybody has a REAL critique for my track please let me know.[/QUOTE] Righto then. [QUOTE=Zoran;47335809]Hey, guys. Is this the appropriate thread to ask about how to get into music making? I've been fooling around with FL Studio for the last year or so and have many years of music theory under my belt, but I'm having trouble making anything that doesn't sound like a bunch of presets splashed together. I'd like to sample things, but I don't know when to do so tastefully. I'd very much like to make a song like this style-wise: [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i21VUDt_I7U[/media] But I haven't the slightest idea of how to get started doing so.[/QUOTE] It's all about arrangement & sample choice (if you're gonna sample) and sometimes preset choices too. I'd probably just YouTube 'Creating your first song in Fl Studio' and work your way from there. Do you have an example of stuff you have worked on before?

[QUOTE=Wablur;47338202]Righto then. It's all about arrangement & sample choice (if you're gonna sample) and sometimes preset choices too. I'd probably just YouTube 'Creating your first song in Fl Studio' and work your way from there. Do you have an example of stuff you have worked on before?[/QUOTE] I do, but I'm not sure how the rules would justify me posting it without giving feedback first, plus it's not particularly good. On top of that, I'm not exactly sure if I'm in much of a position to give feedback. :v:

I'm 100% certain you can provide some feedback, you've got ears that work right? Give a song a few listens and try and find stuff you enjoy, things that you think could be changed and you're on your way to becoming a contributing and important part of this thread. I believe in you Zoran!

[QUOTE=dedo678;47324399]Man, your stuff flows so good, its like butter in my ears. I like the ambiance and old fashioned samples on that one. Here's a short little thing I finished today. [media]http://soundcloud.com/dedo678/fading-away[/media][/QUOTE] I like the drums! Some volume automation in the fast kick parts would sound good though, they can be a bit robotic overwise. Synth work is cool, I like! Been messing about with some latin jazz because why not: [media]http://soundcloud.com/awesomesaucee/latino-jam[/media]

[QUOTE=chaz13;47340684]I like the drums! Some volume automation in the fast kick parts would sound good though, they can be a bit robotic overwise. Synth work is cool, I like! Been messing about with some latin jazz because why not: [media]http://soundcloud.com/awesomesaucee/latino-jam[/media][/QUOTE] Funky. Put it in a song! Any instruments, or is it all samples? My band released our first song today! [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL4lLfPOvr0[/media] What do yall think?

[QUOTE=chaz13;47275400]You're king of the bass drums! They all sound amazing, but I specifically love this one. So nice! The only track I'm not a huge fan of is where are we going, I wasn't a big fan of the synth work and the mix feels a little muddy. Been writing a short piano/string piece to take a break from the neurofunk track, nothing particularly special but I might continue it: [media]http://soundcloud.com/awesomesaucee/pianoey[/media][/QUOTE] this is really nice, i'd love to see where you go with this, if you plan to continue it maybe some woodwind would be a good addition [QUOTE=4yourmalice;47275745]That's great what you've got so far there, man! It definitely sounds like it's going to expand into something much more "grand" when it hit the end there. Keep it up! After finally getting Hotline Miami, and falling in love with it last week, I was inspired to make this piece. [URL="https://soundcloud.com/travis-cumming-3/blaze-line-la"]Soundcloud[/URL][/QUOTE] doesn't really feel "80's" to me but i might just be a moron it's good either way though, feels like it'd be right at home in an indie game like VVVVVV or something [QUOTE=Adeptus;47281786]I left this song playing on my pc, and my roommate comes and asks me whether I was playing Hotline Miami. Dude, very nice work. I think you got the style just perfect. Loved the percussion, mostly the cymbal work. Great job! [media]http://soundcloud.com/federicofelau/wip[/media] a little rework on a piece a friend made. Not finished. I think that on my last tracks I can really see which style I am going for as a musician.[/QUOTE] this is really good, i like the build up i don't know if you'd still call it a "drop" for this genre but it's really good get more of an 80's feel from this one than the last one [QUOTE=lawlavex;47292283]i love this! seems like an awesome way to break away from the heavy neurofunk sound design stuff and work on your more melodic side (something i should do more haha). the only thing that seemed a bit off was the chord change at 0.18, it just seemed a bit awkward to me. nice work overall though, really relaxing piece. i finally got a chance to work with some rap vocals and made a nice bassy remix of a friend's track called "ashtray". it was really hard trying to improve upon the original because it's an amazing experimental track, super inspiring stuff! still pretty happy with the way it turned out though :) [media]http://soundcloud.com/vscrl/think-twice-ashtray-feat-emp-visceral-remix[/media][/QUOTE] this is some hard shit, very well done only wish i could understand the words and now for my overly long crap [media]http://soundcloud.com/sharkalarm/ohne-dich[/media]

[QUOTE=inebriaticxp;47343357] this is some hard shit, very well done only wish i could understand the words[/QUOTE] lol i had the original vocal stems and still couldn't understand a word. thanks though! [QUOTE=inebriaticxp;47343357] and now for my overly long crap [media]http://soundcloud.com/sharkalarm/ohne-dich[/media][/QUOTE] this has a really nice beat, i like it! it is a bit long, but i like that you kept it going by adding various elements in to spice it up a bit. the melodic work kept me interested throughout the whole track as well, great work. sounds like it would fit really well in a video game just playing in the background or somethin.

Ok I really need feedback on bmo chop because someone wants to use it in a video and I told him that I need to run the mix by some people incase of any fuckups. Are there ANYTHINGS wrong with bmo chop? (I posted feedback on the last page)

[QUOTE=KmartSqrl;47334657][img]http://i.imgur.com/I9qDA12.png[/img] Just finished the first version of a music production community website I've been working on. It's modeled after news.ycombinator.com/producthunt.com/reddit a bit in the sense that it's focused around link sharing (text posts are okay too though!) but I've got some really cool plans for it once a bit of a community is established. [url]http://soundwav.es/[/url] In the interest of curating the community a bit it's invite only for now, but if you drop an invite request on the signup page and mention FP in the notes box I'll very likely shoot you an invite today :)[/QUOTE] Everyone who requested an invite so far should have one in their email now :) Let me know if that ends up in your spam box or anything (I'm also curious if it's showing up under the social tab in gmail or not) Thanks guys! :)

There's a few of you in here who really ought to start promoting yourselves harder. Start hitting up your favorite artists on twitter and after you've sent them a few messages and they recognize you, start sending tunes. Seriously. Do it. It's such a fucking awesome feeling hearing your favorite artists playing your stuff

[QUOTE=KmartSqrl;47351255]There's a few of you in here who really ought to start promoting yourselves harder. Start hitting up your favorite artists on twitter and after you've sent them a few messages and they recognize you, start sending tunes. Seriously. Do it. It's such a fucking awesome feeling hearing your favorite artists playing your stuff[/QUOTE] no, the real way is to go on the soundcloud profiles of obscure artists and say "ay bruh check out my mixtape"

[QUOTE=inebriaticxp;47343357] and now for my overly long crap [media]http://soundcloud.com/sharkalarm/ohne-dich[/media][/QUOTE] That's super chill as hell. Sounds like some soft-core rap or spoken word singing would fit really well on top of it. Here's something I made today, a bit different from my usual stuff. [media]http://soundcloud.com/dedo678/magic-pipe[/media]

I hope you're all okay with me posting music without feedback in the same post; i've posted quite some feedback previously. One thing that I recently decided to adhere to is not to make my music too complicated. Perhaps I've been influenced by minimalism but there's places in music where you can be very effective with only a few notes (Inception's Time comes to mind). So I've decided to cut down on the addition of too many doublings/extra harmonic material. Anyway, I've got this new orchestral thing I'm working on (No I haven't finished that first one from two months ago... lol...) [media]http://soundcloud.com/brookie2664/20-wip[/media] Yeah I know it gets cut halfway through the second melody... but I'm going on a trip soon and I wasn't really supposed to spend a few hours today composing so that's my excuse for leaving it bare, though when I get back i might not even work on this :v: Who knows. Hopefully I'll be able to finish this as my first full-length finished orchestral piece.

[QUOTE=brooklynlord;47352696]I hope you're all okay with me posting music without feedback in the same post; i've posted quite some feedback previously. One thing that I recently decided to adhere to is not to make my music too complicated. Perhaps I've been influenced by minimalism but there's places in music where you can be very effective with only a few notes (Inception's Time comes to mind). So I've decided to cut down on the addition of too many doublings/extra harmonic material. Anyway, I've got this new orchestral thing I'm working on (No I haven't finished that first one from two months ago... lol...) [media]http://soundcloud.com/brookie2664/20-wip[/media] Yeah I know it gets cut halfway through the second melody... but I'm going on a trip soon and I wasn't really supposed to spend a few hours today composing so that's my excuse for leaving it bare, though when I get back i might not even work on this :v: Who knows. Hopefully I'll be able to finish this as my first full-length finished orchestral piece.[/QUOTE] its really fast, but I like your transistions

My band for 3 years is officially done now, it was just me on guitar, my friend on drums and my other friend on vocals sometimes. I'm going to save up for some new gear and start making stuff by myself, because I really need music as an outlet in my life. I'm going to get a new guitar and amp, a new bass, and a keyboard/synth and start working on new stuff while I save up for them. I'd like some advice though, my problems are: I can't play drums/don't have drums, I can't sing, and I've never written lyrics before.

[QUOTE=brooklynlord;47352696]I hope you're all okay with me posting music without feedback in the same post; i've posted quite some feedback previously. One thing that I recently decided to adhere to is not to make my music too complicated. Perhaps I've been influenced by minimalism but there's places in music where you can be very effective with only a few notes (Inception's Time comes to mind). So I've decided to cut down on the addition of too many doublings/extra harmonic material. Anyway, I've got this new orchestral thing I'm working on (No I haven't finished that first one from two months ago... lol...) [media]http://soundcloud.com/brookie2664/20-wip[/media] Yeah I know it gets cut halfway through the second melody... but I'm going on a trip soon and I wasn't really supposed to spend a few hours today composing so that's my excuse for leaving it bare, though when I get back i might not even work on this :v: Who knows. Hopefully I'll be able to finish this as my first full-length finished orchestral piece.[/QUOTE] I don't have a huge amount to suggest other than adding some reverb as it feels very dry at the moment. The composition is very nice. A dash of chorus and a harmonic exciter on the strings may help too. I took another break from neurofunk, I felt like being the 100000th person to remix lights by Ellie Goulding. I haven't taken it very seriously, was mostly playing about to see how high I can push the RMS whilst keeping the mix together (about -3db for anyone wondering!) It was done quite quickly so it could be improved, but hey: [media]http://soundcloud.com/awesomesaucee/on-the-ellie-goulding-bandwagon[/media]

New metalheadz podcast from rinse.fm has two of my tunes in it! :D (Hope this doesn't seem too braggy, I'm just excited haha) [media]http://soundcloud.com/metalheadz/rinsefm-18th-march-2015-feat-fracture-chimpo[/media] One at the 1:11 mark that's on my soundcloud and one at the 1:24 mark that isn't anywhere else yet :)

do any of you guys have any tips for publicity? i just got a really heartwarming message on soundcloud from someone saying that they love all my music and that more people should hear it, but i've never really made much effort in terms of "advertising"; i upload a song to dropblox, send it to my facebook and steam friends and if enough people say "thats dope" i put it on soundcloud

Start building a list of DJs/producers who are in to the styles you're writing. Talk to those people on twitter/facebook (in general, even if they don't respond to anything they will start to recognize you eventually and then they're more opened to listening to tunes once you send them, in my experience) and send them tunes. Taking a genuine interest in them as a person and not just as a receptacle for your music goes a long way too. Find the people who run labels that sign stuff like yours and do the same thing with them. Find music blogs that share the type of stuff that you write, and try to find direct emails for the people writing articles instead of the generic submission form if you can. Stay active about sharing things on facebook/twitter/etc every few days as well. Do [B]not[/B] let yourself get discouraged when you send things out and hear nothing back. These guys all get sent TONS of music and don't necessarily have time to respond to everything. Just stay consistent and keep grinding and you will see results eventually. Self promo can be quite a bit of work but it feels so good when it starts to pay off.

where do i begin to look? i've emailed people in the past, my music has been on a few internet radio stations and it's on a couple of mixtapes too, but it's difficult to get properly started because i'm just not sure where to begin, especially as far as labels go

[QUOTE=TCB;47357211]where do i begin to look? i've emailed people in the past, my music has been on a few internet radio stations and it's on a couple of mixtapes too, but it's difficult to get properly started because i'm just not sure where to begin, especially as far as labels go[/QUOTE] Looking for artists: I'm sure you know a few artists who write similar things to you, find mixes that have their tunes in them and check the tracklists to find other similar artists. Checking the likes and people followed by artists you dig on soundcloud can be really fruitful as well. Looking for blogs: This one kind of just comes down to googling and digging really. A lot of blogs will have a little snippet about the author of a given post that can help you find their direct email sometimes. Looking for labels: Find out who similar artists have been releasing stuff through, check out the rest of their catalogue and look for a demo email if you still think your stuff is a solid fit. You can usually find out who runs a given label through wikipedia/general googling. [editline]19th March 2015[/editline] Oh also, using things like unlock.fm to begin building an email list is a really really good idea. Email lists are going to be much more valuable than soundcloud followers or facebook likes if you can leverage the list well.

[QUOTE=chaz13;47354134]I don't have a huge amount to suggest other than adding some reverb as it feels very dry at the moment. The composition is very nice. A dash of chorus and a harmonic exciter on the strings may help too.[/QUOTE] Apart from the reverb, I have no clue of what you're saying :v: I used Sibelius's built-in samples (sibelius is a notation program), which might be why i don't know what you're talking about (since it's not a digital audio workstation)

[QUOTE=KmartSqrl;47351255]There's a few of you in here who really ought to start promoting yourselves harder. Start hitting up your favorite artists on twitter and after you've sent them a few messages and they recognize you, start sending tunes. Seriously. Do it. It's such a fucking awesome feeling hearing your favorite artists playing your stuff[/QUOTE] I wish I could do this, the stuff I make versus the artists I love don't blend together at all. Like, I don't think Ke$ha could dig any of my stonerpsychadelic stuff or Iggy Pop could dig any of my 8bit stuff. Like, I wish I could stick to one genre like most of you guys, but I can't, I just can't. I get bored of doing more than a few tracks of the same genre before I go on and do something completely different. A friend of mine suggested I'd pick the artist name Patchwork because the shit I do is just rarely the same :v: [editline]20th March 2015[/editline] Speaking of which, Facepunch Collaborative y/n? I want ot make one

[QUOTE=Skeeter;47357759]I wish I could do this, the stuff I make versus the artists I love don't blend together at all. Like, I don't think Ke$ha could dig any of my stonerpsychadelic stuff or Iggy Pop could dig any of my 8bit stuff. Like, I wish I could stick to one genre like most of you guys, but I can't, I just can't. I get bored of doing more than a few tracks of the same genre before I go on and do something completely different. A friend of mine suggested I'd pick the artist name Patchwork because the shit I do is just rarely the same :v: [editline]20th March 2015[/editline] Speaking of which, Facepunch Collaborative y/n? I want ot make one[/QUOTE] I produce a decent range of stuff as well and I just make sure I send the right tunes to the right people :)

how do you even find blogs or labels for specific genres? i'd send my stuff around to some people if i could but its pretty hard to find the right people for it.

[QUOTE=kitteh-nator;47362518]how do you even find blogs or labels for specific genres? i'd send my stuff around to some people if i could but its pretty hard to find the right people for it.[/QUOTE] Labels are pretty easy. Just find similar artists and look them up on [url]http://www.discogs.com/[/url] and see who they're releasing stuff through (and if the release isn't on discogs, you can usually look on juno or beatport or w/e and find the label there) Blogs can be a bit trickier, but what I do is start with the larger blogs that cover multiple genres, and look for the authors that post the kinds of music you write (most of the big blogs will have multiple writers). For blogs the shotgun approach works really well unless you're trying to do an exclusive freebie thing with a specific blog. Sometimes searching for things like "artist x interview" is a good way to find blogs if you're not sure where to start.

[QUOTE=dedo678;47352329]Here's something I made today, a bit different from my usual stuff. [media]http://soundcloud.com/dedo678/magic-pipe[/media][/QUOTE] I enjoyed the beat, would recommend a less cliche synth sound. Good job though. I made this just now. [media]http://soundcloud.com/pink-elephantiasis/heroesandvillains[/media]

[QUOTE=Caboose866;47364398]I enjoyed the beat, would recommend a less cliche synth sound. Good job though. I made this just now. [media]http://soundcloud.com/pink-elephantiasis/heroesandvillains[/media][/QUOTE] Very cool, is that only vocals? If so that's impressive, I have tried something similar before but could never seem to get it right. Anyways hello everyone! I'm new here to facepunch and I'm also the brother of Rich209. I'm a student at Clemson University studying audio. My brother recommended me to check out this thread so here are two songs I have done in my free time. [media]http://soundcloud.com/spencer-nicholas-baggett/legend-of-the-waste[/media] [media]http://soundcloud.com/spencer-nicholas-baggett/firestorm[/media]

That's my bro!

It really sucks how nobody will go to the last page to critique something. I Just wound up giving the dude the original mix of this song. [media]http://soundcloud.com/corn-mouth/bmo-chop-v05-1[/media]