Some advanced tips about mixing

Oh Lord in Heaven. It’s been what? Over a week? I am truly sorry for my lack of discipline and how I neglected this blog. I’m not gonna lie, it wasn’t because I was busy (I was busy, but not to the point where I couldn’t update this blog), or because I was sick. I was just lazy just didn’t feel like writing any posts, or I couldn’t think of any. So once again, I am sorry. I will try to update more this week. Last week was a little hectic. This week should be a bit calmer.

This is more like an advanced tip. Not advanced tips with an ‘s’. But it’s a very important tip, so listen carefully.

The overall goal in mixing, NOT COMPOSING, is to confuse the brain. If you confuse the brain in composing, then you have a bad song. But when confusing the brain in mixing, it will — for some reason — jazz up your tunes quite a bit. Why? Who knows, that’s just how the brain works. Have you ever listened to a song, and the song sounds awesome, but you can’t put your finger on what sounds so good? Or just listened to a song that “works?” Well, I’m gonna show you the sciences of how that happens, and how you can do it too.

I have come to a conclusion that the reason this phenomenon happens is mostly do to panning. If I haven’t said this before, I’ll say it now: panning makes or breaks your song. Panning is the equivalent of a bassline in musical composition. That is, it is the glue of your song. How can something stick if there is no glue? REMEMBER THAT!

So how does panning do it? How does it confuse our mind, and make everything work? The answer is the sound wave itself…

This is a sound sample. It can also be called a wav or wave, respectively. Before we look at the wave itself, let’s try and figure what type of basic sound wave it is, not what the sound is itself. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. On the top left-hand corner, we have the sampling rate; it’s at a standard 44100Hz (Hz = Hertz). And below the word Format, we have what we’re looking for. The icon that says “32″ indicates bitrate, which is the overall quality for wav files. The sqaure shaped icon with the two little squares (referring to speakers) tells us its stereo, meaning it is comprised of two sound channels. That’s what we want to know. You see, it’s very important that we know whether it’s stereo or not. If it isn’t stereo, we want it stereo, even if it’s just a little bit stereo. In many cases it should not be drastic, as that would sound weird, especially for the bass.

So now let’s look at the scope itself. The scope is the sound wave you see. What sound does this make? That’s one thing you might have been wondering. The sound is a kick drum. An ordinary bass drum sound. However, it has a special sort of “groove” that makes it sound good. But “what” is the question… First off, you’ll notice that there are actually two lines to the scope. A blue and red line; these indicate left and right speakers. Keep in mind the length of this sound is only .6 seconds, so it will just sound mono to the human ear.

Now this is where the key part of the groove comes in. Look how much divided space the blue and red lines are. No, it is not normally like that; in fact, let me show you what this sound looks like, when unmixed, and unprocessed.

Wow! Doesn’t that look different? You can’t even see the two lines; they appear as one! As you can tell by the square icon under Format, it is indeed stereo, but it looks like just one line, meaning mono! Not only that, but the impact doesn’t look nearly as large neither, for those you who can read scope.

OKAY STOP OFF TOPIC TIME

Okay, this will be a little off-topic. When mixing, one thing you simply MUST know, is how to read sound. Yes, “read” sound. You read the sound you see in those pictures, and to be honest, it’s like learning a whole new language. You just have to keep looking at wave samples and such, and you get good at it. Obviously, you won’t be able to play a whole song in your mind that you’ve never heard before and have only seen the scope, but you need to be able to figure out basic sounds. Kicks like I am showing you here are pretty easy; they go quickly up, and slowly down. Natural kick such as this tend to look more distorted, while digital kicks look almost exactly like sine waves.

OKAY BACK ON TOPIC

Anyways, back to the groove. Take a look at the below picture:

This is a zoomed in portion where the source of the kick is. In fact, this is the part where you hear the most bass. Now, notice the highlighted part. The highlighted part is the very core of this kick. And right at it, both waves are crossing each other in an almost perpendicular fashion, do you see? THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT. That right there confuses the living shit out of your brain. It hears one sound cross to one ear while the other crosses to your other ear. Your brain just goes nuts. This is the source of a good sound, cross panning right at the core of your sound sample. Even if you have to manually build it, (which I don’t recommend because it’s time consuming and doesn’t come out natural) it will still be worth it.

How can you make this yourself? Well, it varies from sound to sound. Try equalizing, adding reverb, using dub delay, things like that and take a look at the sound source. Samples like a bass drum kick shown here that are used all the time should have some sort of perpendicular crossing. Trial and error folks, trial and error.

Now, you may think this is a bunch of bullshit. Well, I can’t stop you from thinking that. So fine. Take it like that. But you will be missing out on some musical gold, I promise you that.

Video Game Music That Never made it to NG — Part 2

Finally. I am writing this. Sorry it took so long. But first off, I would like to say: WOW! Thanks for the view spike! 27 hits in one day! It may not sound like much, but my last two blogs I had were lucky to get 3 hits in a day! Thanks a lot people for reading! It really helps motivate me to write these. Anyways, here’s part deux, enjoy.

Teehee Valley Theme (Mario & Luigi: Super Star Saga) — I liked this one a lot. Didn’t take me long to make neither. The lead is a synth string combined with a flute, and it begins with some marcato strings too. The percussion is some conga samples I found searching the netz.

Ayla’s Theme (Chrono Trigger) — SNEEK PEAK GUISE!!! This one I shall upload this one to NG very soon. Why not now? I want to upload it when Chrono Trigger DS comes out as an homage to it. I am very pleased with the overall outcome…except for the compression. The trumpet is in the -3DB no-safe zone for starters, and I didn’t even throw in Limiter or Maximus. Maybe I shall change that before I upload it to NG.

Big Blue (F-Zero Melee Remix) — A remix I did…for a remix. I made this one a long time ago, and as you can tell, the age shows. It’s not horrible, worth a listen, but that’s about it. You might like it better than I do…A lot of people have. You can’t beat that guitar solo, but man, if only I knew what I know now… I could make it sound so much better. I could always go back and update it, but I rarely do that, because I have a firm belief that once you finish it, it’s done.

Zeal Palace Remix (Chrono Trigger) A little hip-hop, synthy remix of Zeal Palace. Another homage I’ll be uploading to NG soon for Chrono Trigger DS’s release! So here’s your sneak peak. The sitar is recorded midi. If only I could afford Sounds of India…

Some Kirby 64 Theme — Yeah, I don’t remember what it was! LOL! I made this is one a long time ago so that’s why! How do you like the synths though? Are they delicious? Hm? Hmm? HMMM? Mah wooden synth is delicious!

Metroid Techno (Brinstar Melee Remix) — You can understand why I don’t upload remixes OF remixes, right? Anyways, this one is just awesome! It works so well! I would kudos myself, but then I would look like an arrogant fool. My only complaint is that weak snare…but I think everything else makes up for it.

Alright! That’s it! I guess I should upload some of my OWN work now huh? Then the haters won’t get mad me… Well, look forward to that soon!

Analyzing: Wind Waker Ocean Theme

The first 8 measures at least. I’m pretty sure it’s 8 measures.

One thing I do for fun, as you know, is try to recreate music. Some themes like the Wind Waker Ocean Theme are pretty complicated, so for those, I just do one part. In this case, the intro. And I must say, this intro is genius. Kudos Koji Kondo, kudos.

First off, let’s break it down. If you have the game, fire up your GCN and set sail and start listening to the theme…lol.

Okay, so the main thing you’ll notice is that repetitious string theme. It repeats eight times, once per measure, before it goes into the brass part. I must say, these 4 notes — just 4 notes — are played so perfectly and fit so well with the game it’s absolutely incredible. If you want to play it yourself, the theme looks like this:

Holy fucking shit. A wave. A fucking wave. What in this game is not a damn wave?!

Can you believe that the theme is actually a wave? A fucking wave?? What in this game is not a damn wave! Everywhere you look — waves! Yes, the main intro theme indeed resembles an ocean wave…Wow. That is so awesome on so many scales. And it sounds so good. Damn that Kondo; damn that man!

When I heard it using headphones, I noticed it was panned about 25% to the right; however, it had a very “full sound” to it. After some further, deeper listening, I noticed there was a deep brass playing the same wave theme about 25% to the left. Pretty sure that’s a tuba, but it could be a very low brass ensemble.

Of course, the same thing repeated 8 times does get dull, even if it is awesome. Some strings were added as harmony to negate this and establish mood. And the mood was set pretty well. The chords gave it a very “It’s a bright and glorious day!” kind of thing, lol. These were panned pretty extreme to the left, like 50-60% probably. To put the icing on the cake harmony, a french horn plays on the extreme right. Very extreme. 70 to 80% territory no doubt. It plays a constant note, A probably, and kind of sets a feeling of…peace. It plays on the third wave melody thing, and then restarts every two wave melodies…if that makes any sense, lol.

Lastly, what better way to represent waves crashing against the boat then with percussion! Both involve hitting something, after all. The timpani plays a simple “dummm” every measure, and on every other measure a “du-dummm” which really gives a feeling of hard waves hitting the boat. It is also accompanied by a snare drum, which emulates the lighter waves hitting the boat…all while retaining awesome music!

Can you believe that not only did Koji Kondo create such an awesome tune, but one that fits so well with its setting?! I mean, wow. Pretty damn awesome.

I took the liberty of remaking this first part too. Not quite as good as the actual theme, but I did try.

How is video game music made? Let’s take a look

This post was inspired by a recent search engine entry (yes, I can view what you are searching for to get to my site).

Well, video game music starts with a beep, and then a boop, and the some more beeps, and then another boop.

No, unfortunately, making video game music is not that easy.

Anyways, I’ll start from the beginning. Back in the day, as in, the 1980′s, video game composers were very limited in what they could do with music. First of all, up until the 6th Generation of Consoles, video games music was, for the most part, midi based. What is midi? Well, try to think of a midi as real-time music. That is, midi does not contain raw sound wave data like .wav or .mp3 files do. Instead it contains information so that the computer or console can play the music. Think of it like a music box — The swindle on a music box does not play the music, it only contains the information so that the music box itself can play the tune.

The reason sound was midi-based was because it took up far less memory, which was a big issue back in 80′s and early 90s. Regular sound files would have taken up so much memory that there would not be any room for graphics! So you would have great music, but nothing to look at! Especially for RPGs. Nowadays, CDs contain tons of memory, so we don’t need to use midis. So basically, midi-based sound systems in games used a series of sound channels. These sound channels not only produced music, but sound FX as well (I wish I could tell you how the Sound FX part works, but I don’t know myself…lol). Have you ever played an old NES game and noticed that sometimes the music would become…”less” when a sound effect played? That’s because each sound channel could only play one sound at a time, so one of the music generators — that’s anything that makes sound — had to mute itself temporarily so the sound effect could play.

The 8-bit Era still used the traditional way of midis and sound channels as its predecessors had. Music in the 8-bit Era was pretty limited for the most part. The NES is most well-known console of this time, so let’s use it as the example. The NES contains only 4 channels of sound. As I said earlier, no two sounds can play over the same channel, so this meant you could only have four different instruments playing at once! Even worse, you couldn’t even decide what instruments they were…if you wanted to even call them instruments. So sound channels 1 and 2 were Square wave channels. A square wave, is literally, a sound wave that looks like a square when viewed under an O-scope. The square wave is what started the whole “retro sound” scene in the first place. These channels served as the harmony and melody. The third channel is a triangle wave. Triangle waves tend to make a very deep sound, so it served as the bass sound. The fourth channel offered percussion…in the form of white noise. White noise is the static you hear on your TV when it can’t pick up a signal. This sound was used to make very meager drums. (If you want to even call them that)

By the 16 Bit Era, video game music had evolved much. I will use the Super NES as an example, but of course, it doesn’t really matter whom I choose since it was very similar to the Genesis. The SNES now had 8 channels instead of four like the NES, and you could actually choose what instruments you wanted for each channel; for example, if you wanted a timpani roll in channel 7, you would get your Goddamn timpani roll. So now, not only could you play 8 different sounds at once, but you weren’t limited to pulse waveforms anymore. Woot. Early games were still developing midi banks to use for this, so the sounds were still very synth-like, such as in Super Mario World, but by the time games like Chrono Trigger had come out, sound was very realistic…for its time, heh. What is a midi bank you ask? A midi bank is basically where you store all your instruments you will be using (well, their virtual data at least). I’m not sure how much instrument data you could store on the cartridge, but it was a lot. Sound FX were also played on these channels as well. I’m not to sure how that works though… Anyways, in addition to all this, you could also add 1 FX filter over all the channels; so now, you could give your sound reverb, delay, and other cool effects. Definably a big help.

The N64 and PS1 were two very different systems in terms of music, so let’s start with the N64 first, shall we? The N64 still used cartridges, which meant that it was still very much limited in the music you could compose for it. However, it was far more accessible than the SNES. In fact, it was pretty much just as good as the PC midi system. Many games actually used PC midi’s as well. I remember Pokémon snap did… Later though, special banks were made to ensure the best quality for the N64. The N64 also had enough memory to support pre-recorded sound effects! This means that sound effects were stored as recorded, low quality, sound files; they weren’t midi based like before.

The PS1 used CDs. This was a huge advancement, because CD’s allowed far more memory. This meant that you could now store music as a compressed file format and not a midi anymore! From here, music was now made a completely different way — the computer. In fact, this style continues on to today in video game music (mostly). Programs like FL Studio (hint, hint) are now used to make awesome digital video game music. Many soundtracks were even orchestrated, such as Halo and Super Mario Galaxy! These days, taking up too much memory isn’t a big deal for sound anymore, now that discs have so much space.

If you’re interested in making video game music, you should start by getting FL Studio, as I guarantee it will get you the closest to video game sound you could get. You can download the demo free at their site. Anyways, you should look at the demo projects to learn more if you have no idea what you are doing. I’ll be posting tutorials and tips about using FL Studio later, so stick around.

–DmNt

PS: Sorry if this just discussed video game music history and not actually making it, but making it is really just like making any other music from a digital perspective.

Rant: In the Digital Age, No Talent Gets the High Horse

K0rg Synth

Last Friday, I was lurking around the NG Audio Portal and after listening to a few certain songs, of which I will not mention here, I decided I would write up this rant…even if getting my thoughts form my brain to the blog were a few days late, heh.

So I would first like to say that the Audio Portal is really just a miniaturized version of the entire music industry itself. I think this goes without needing any proof. Just look at it. It’s just a non-profit version of the industry where indie artists get to post their attempts at pleasing the masses. Unfortunately the masses are mostly comprised — not all, but mostly — of 13 year-old adolescents who enjoy hard rock, and any music that has heavy, pulsating, digitally constructed sine-waves.

There are quite a bit of things that tick me off when I go to the portal. The main thing…the only thing really, is just how some people spend five seconds on their “work”, find some high-quality synths or samples and then they’re finished and they upload it. All of the sudden they are getting “5/5! 10/10! ZOMG AWEOMEEEee!!!11″ on nearly every review. So now you’re thinking: “Isn’t that what YOU do, DmNt? You’re just a hypocrite for saying this.” I would like to tell you that was once me. But not any more. And because of that, I can tell you exactly how these people feel when they are doing this, and how they are doing this.

First of all, most people who buy music are ignorant. I won’t say stupid, because that generally refers to being a general idiot, whereas ignorant just refers to not being smart in a certain area. A typical consumer has no idea how an artist makes their music, and probably couldn’t figure out how to remake it themselves. They just buy what they enjoy. Thus, we get everybody’s favorite line: Ignorance is bliss. If they had known how some of these artists spend less than an hour working on their music, and that everything that made it good was just high-quality synths or samples taken from other songs, they wouldn’t be buying. And the artist isn’t going to say anything — he or she is making tons of cash off of the consumer’s lack of understanding. So naturally, this goes unnoticed. The consumers are happy, and the producers are happy. But not the lesser people like me, who do make music, and therefore have a firm knowledge in what is going on here.

The same can be said about other industries. Look at those rehashed Hollywood hits in the film industry, and the Halo games in the video game industry. If you don’t know it yet, you do now: I have a severe hatred of the Halo games. Severe.

On the Audio Portal, there is no money to be made. Everybody does it for no profit at all. So the question comes, why does this same thing happen on the portal? Simple — it’s arrogance. Humans are, of course, arrogant by nature. The win/lose ideology of arrogance is the subconscious way of getting to us to act superior, because in Natural Selection, the most superior live on and the weak die. So it’s only natural that it will happen all the time sometimes on the Portal and in the industry itself too.

Here’s how they make their “music:” You just downloaded the FL Studio demo. You have no idea how anything works of course, because you’ve never made music before. But you realized, that by taking already made compositions (ie, video game tunes), and adding your high-quality synths that you illegally downloaded over these midi-composed files, you have created what you think is a good “remastered” version of the song. Unfortunately, if mixed right, it IS good. But you don’t know how to mix, remember? So you upload it thinking hey “it can’t get THAT bad of a score, right?” and all of the sudden, you’re getting 4′s and 5′s out of 5. People love your 10 second work. Now, you aren’t going to tell everybody how you made it right? Of course not, because then you wouldn’t really have such a high score. In fact, people would hate it, right? Right.

And no, I didn’t “mysteriously forget” about what I had said about me earlier. “DmNt, you do this yourself, you’re a hypocrite for bashing these other people!” First off, I’m not bashing them. I don’t insult them, unless you count being called arrogant, but seeing as we are all arrogant, I don’t see that as an insult. Anyways. I WAS once that. I was the arrogant little music noob, ready to join the others and reap the benefits of no talent. But you see, as I was remastering video games midis, I learned that I enjoyed mixing a lot. And eventually, as I started making my own songs, I learned that I was actually getting to point of being arbitrarily defined as “good” at making music. (My source for that opinion is the general consensus of the Audio Portal, so I recommend you take me being ‘good’ with a grain of salt.) I soon began to listen to other songs and realize how they were able to make them, both professional artists and the indie artists of the portal. When this happened, I soon realized that there were tons of people out there who simply didn’t have much talent and were getting very high scores for using other peoples’ music, compositions, and covering their faulties with expensive synths.

Now, my goal is to avoid that. As you can see with my latest song, I will now focus on putting more effort into remastering these songs by also remixing them. And I have spent much more time making my own original songs, and not uploading as many remastered songs to the portal. I am no longer that arrogant little egotistical noob, but someone with a little more stature and talent. At least I think so. What do you think?

I know I said I would not link to any songs or show any examples, but I cannot help linking to This guy’s song. If you’ve never played Twilight Princess, then listen to it. Sounds awesome huh? But if I told you how he made it, you wouldn’t be so amazed. If you have played Twilight Princess, then there’s no need to listen to it. It’s virtually the same thing. Some “remastering” that was, huh? But look: I’m not gonna bash the guy. He probably doesn’t even realize he is doing exactly what is stated in this blog. And he’s probably a nice guy too. So it’s okay, I mean, it’s not like he’s going anywhere with that kind of music. And I’ll tell you why:

– Question: what makes this different from the original? Answer: the original song was better.

– That piano is horribly tuned. I know this is a sad song, but a murky piano is giving it no edge whatsoever. The piano is not fully equalized, it leans too far on the lowpass and lo-mid ranges. The lack of treble is going to give it a feeling of bass, and what it needs is rhythm. It’s a steady melody, and it should sound like it.

– Horrible compression. In digital music, the general rule of thumb is that if it’s over -3db, it’s in the “no safe zone” and you’ll start hearing sound artifacts. This is hard to describe, but the loudest possible an mp3 can get is 0 decibels. That’s mute. No sound at all. That’s because your speakers amplify it, not the mp3 itself. If you want to test this for yourself, put the song up way loud and listen. That piano just completely destroys your speakers on some of those parts, huh? Welcome to bad compression.

– But the strings and brass part make up for it right? Congratulations, you’ve discovered layered sampling. Layered sampling — I like to call it over-sampling — is when you take one melody and add more than 1 instrument for it. In this case, strings and a brass horn. Sounds awesome doesn’t it? Too bad it’s just some high quality Direct Wave samples. This is proven by how constant it sounds and its complete lack of human error and reverb (echoing off walls). He couldn’t even make them sound real. Adding a properly tuned flanger would’ve softened them up a little too.

Overall, what do you have there? Nothing. I’m sorry, but this is not even a remastered song. And if you are reading this author of that song, well, please consider what I have been saying and take it with serious consideration. I already told you I am at the same error, and I am trying to fix my errors, are you?

So there you go. You don’t need talent any more, just some expensive samples and synths. Now all of the sudden, people are paying millions for crap and true talent goes unnoticed. True talent, however, is out there, and I’ll show you:

That song is the brain child of the musical genius Ronald Jenkees. An incredible artist, is he not?

Alright, that’s it for me peeps! Flame away!