Dee OSAM Feb 08

Dee · Post by **Dee** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:18 pm

Hi everyone

Well, here is my song:

http://www.korgforums.com/mp3/dee_fallingleaves.mp3

All comments are most welcome.

Regards from
Dee

Pecca · Post by **Pecca** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:25 pm

All i can say - lovely !

jazlover · Post by **jazlover** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:19 pm

You go girl!
It is lovely indeed.

You shame my efforts. I try to make everything too hard. Your song is very simple (bass, drums, piano and strings) and is so well composed. With so little effort, your song builds you up and takes you somewhere. Your composition skills speak for themselves. It is too late to change what I am working on, but I must learn to write with less.

I look forward to 11 more.

georgeinar · Post by **georgeinar** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 11:22 pm

What a beautiful crisp sound here. I love this. I like the timing change after the 1 min mark. I think you encoded this at 128 kps, maybe 256 or higher would help the high end (as in the cymbals) to stand out more. Wow. You did it! It has a beautiful smooth sound which I know Stephen will love, for one. And a good melody carries it. I think I like the timing changes the best. It's unexpected and keeps it fresh. I'm so glad you accomplished this. I know you were having some difficulties, but they are not apparent here at all. Congrats. You get one happy check mark by your name.

JonSolo · Post by **JonSolo** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 11:55 pm

Very lovely! Nice strings, and an engaging lead piano track. The reduced arrangement is completely awesome...it takes me to a drive in the mountains by myself in the Fall enjoying the views!

From straight beats into triplets sans percussion...terrific! Very well written. The structure of the chords is equally as nice as the straight forward instrumentation.

The bass is unexpectedly cool. I say this because the piano lead and melody worked so well with it that I had to replay it because I had overlooked the bass until almost the end of the song. As far as taste goes, I wished you would have let it drone through the breakdown, but that is just my personal taste kicking in.

Some technical thoughts, and you know I am going to go there

- very nice drums and percussive change ups. I expected a little more reverb on the high hat and cymbals. I think it might have made them a little warmer. Or it could be an encoding issue, but I think reverb would have been a nice touch. And because the track is nicely spaced, even sparse as far as instruments go, I would have liked to hear the bass more beefy and pronounced. But again, that might just be my personal taste.

An awesome job indeed! And thanks for giving me fresh meat on the weekend!

Jon

ellll · Post by **ellll** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 12:32 am

Hi Dee,

This is very nice as is...It needs little if any attention.!!

At The biginning, I would run the intro for 8 bars rather than four...it would make a more "settled" transition to the melodic lines...a better preparation..

The piano lead was ex!!, but might have had a little, perhaps stronger dynamic contrast....Would lend additional interest to the "line"...The triplet sec. is GREAT!! I would have liked a change-up on the perc. when you returned to the four beat feel...it would have prevented a slight drop in support I felt there...(NOT the full Perc at that point.., just a better beat...maybe a stronger bass line would have done it...a drone through the breakdown, as Jon said, but after as well...)

The overall effect is VERY controlled,...unlike moi...who can't control anything anymore

..You have a settled and full production, without stickin' out all over like some people I know....It is just "finished"..and I will be listenin' a lot, as it is what I wanted to do....(I KNEW I should have discouraged you)...now how do I, and the others answer you???

The final effect is truly resting, YET.. with a certain stronger, romantic flavor for continued interest...That is QUITE an accomplishment whenever such a result occurs, and serves to keep the mind "on" the song..even as a "hook" does with a rock/pop type song... I will assume you felt it that way, as it simply does NOT feel "contrived" as we see with many popular things these days...but it is in fact more like an art song in form as well as feel...

The ending could be a tad stronger in a romantic sense, but it is fine as is..This one I won't forget!!

My Regards!!! John (ellll)

Dee · Post by **Dee** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 8:56 am

First a big big THANK YOU to everyone who listened and wrote something.

I don't want to be long-winded, but have a couple of questions about some of the things you all said.

George: Yes you're right about the 128 kbs, so I did the mp3 encoding again at 256 kbs, but it doesn't seem to make much difference to the sound of the percussion (to my ears anyway). I'll keep using the 256 setting - thanks for that tip! And for the HAPPY check mark

Now for you Jon: the technical (and other) comments are most welcome. In fact, I enjoyed the rather carnivorous comments like "bass line more BEEFY"......and "fresh MEAT"....

I totally agree about the bass line, but had a problem with the effects on the TC.

Here's my problem: (Note: my mind works like Winnie the Pooh's - the bear with the simple brain)
There are only 5 insert effects. So I used up IFX 1 (St ParametricEQ), IFX 2 & 3 (Piano Body/Damper) and IFX 4 (Stereo Limiter) all on the piano track. To add some reverb to the bass, I set IFX 5 to Reverb Hall (just chose the 1st one on the list), but it sounded disastrous. So what do I tweak in the IFX 5 settings?

Same question for adding effects to the drum kit. With only one IFX left, what should I do?

Hi ellll - thanks for the compliments! You're spot on with the intro being too short. My original version of this had 8 bars, so I've already gone and changed it to 8. I'll try to add some bass to the middle bit when I've sorted out the problem with effects.

I would like to spend a day or 2 tweaking things a bit, and will then post another version, if nobody minds.

Regards from
Dee

georgeinar · Post by **georgeinar** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 1:24 pm

Dee, I do the same thing on my Triton Studio. What I usually do is us those effects that I absolutely have to have (like maybe the piano) and then choose inserts that will work for the most instruments. Do you have just the 5 or do you have 2 more master effects like I do. Because that's where I'll put a reverb or overall compression. Also, maybe once you get the whole song to a computer which you must be doing since you're uploading you could load the song (is it a wav or mp3 by this time) you could load it into a software like soundforge, I know there's others, maybe some freebies even, that would allow you to put an overall reverb or compression or whatever it needs, but this would be on top of what you were limited to doing to the individual tracks. That's how I get a good overall cohesive sound is I process the cobined song as the last pass to master it all together.

JonSolo · Post by **JonSolo** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 1:34 pm

It is very rare that I will ever add reverb to a bass. Mostly because the reverb only affects the mids and highs. Yes you can get the lows to reverb as well, but it will always be mud.

So that last effect can be used as a reverb, and you can put the little on the piano. If you cannot single out the drum parts, it is ok to put reverb on the whole kit. (Note: This might be a useful trick to everyone. When I did my sequencing from my keyboards, I used to duplicate/copy the drums to four or five tracks, and then limit which tracks played back which notes. That way I could add reverb or other effects to just one of the drum part AND I had control over the mix of each individual drum part: snare, kick, HH, cymbals, etc.)

If you have one insert left, like George said, for compression, that is a perfect thing to add to your bass track.

Jon

Stephen · Post by **Stephen** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 5:56 pm

What a nice piece of music.
You should be very proud of this Dee, and George is absolutely right, I love this.
I'm gonna put the headphones on, and listen again.
Very nicely done.
Congratulations.

DrWho · Post by **DrWho** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 12:32 pm

Hi Dee,

Congrats on completing your Feb. tune!!

Wow - nice arrangement - simply effective! Every time I listen I pick up things missed on the previous listen. Loved the sprinkling of percussion in there - nice touch!

When the drums come back in (nice snare sound btw) - maybe a bass note or short 2 note slid to smooth out the transition of the drums suddenly re-entering - or a light symbol hit - or both. I agree w/Jon - the bass might work during the breakdown.

I agree w/ellll - maybe 8 on the front end, I also felt it ended a bit quick - maybe one more time around as it slows down.

On the technical side - the overall volume was a little low for the whole file. I was able to add over 4db gain - this isn't a big deal - it is just to let you know that you have a lot of head room.

Regarding the bass sound and reverb on the TS (probably the same on the TC). One thing to keep in mind when trying to add Efx to a voice is to browse the built-in sounds looking for a Prog. that has the Efx you are looking for 2C how they did it. The one problem with this is that they often use more than just one insert Efx and master Efx - which you probably won't be able to do if you are using the sequencer with more than one voice (you'll run out of efx). But you can get an idea on the actual values for the effect your after, and you can turn off the other efx 2c how it sounds while you adjust values. So for example - there is a Prog. called nasty Bass (A6 on the TS) that has a decent reverb effect on the Master effect. Check it out. Which bass sound did you use? There is probably one Prog. using it as a built in sound.

I also see that you are thinking about adding a PC to your studio. This will allow you to use more effects / voice and do the mixing on the PC.

Yes - the tip Jon described is very useful - I have used many times.

Do repost - absolutely !!!!

Please let us know if you have more effects questions :8

={> Art

ellll · Post by **ellll** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 1:12 am

Still lovin' this Dee..!!!

It gets better as you listen...Very smooth and relaxing...I think you get the award for "general" easy listenin category...!

See Ya later!!! John ellll

Dee · Post by **Dee** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:59 am

Thanks for listening Stephen and glad that you liked it. It's still a work in progress.

Hi Dr Who! Good to hear from you.

You guys are giving me some wonderful tips and I've been busy trying out some things. As I'm not connected to a computer it's not easy to upload my latest version, but I'll have another up by Thursday hopefully.

So....With that one IFX left over, I checked out nasty bass - I'm using "Acoustic bass" - and set IFX 5 to Stereo Compressor which immediately TOTALLY beefed up the bass line. So I fiddled with the numbers and brought output down to 25. It's much better, and I had to bring down the level of the bass track in the overall mix. Only thing is that the individual notes of the bass line seem to be shorter in duration. They aren't so smoothly connected as before. Why would this be? Do I need to go and lengthen them all ??? Or record it again????

Thanks Jon - I won't go putting reverb on bass lines again !

Now for the drum kit: I set it to Dkit for insert effects, and then set send to MFX 1 to 127. MFX 1 is set to Reverb. This seems the only way to get any fxs on the drum kit.

Any advice on the bass line and why the notes have gone all disconnected?

Again.... a huge big THANK YOU to all of you who are trying to help me out here, it means a lot to me.

Regards from
Dee
P.S. Hey ellll - glad you're still enjoying this one.......watch this space for the new version....

Dee · Post by **Dee** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:02 am

Gosh my previous post just got sent 3 times

. There was an error msg hence I did a submit 3X. Imagine my horror to see it here 3X.

Don't know how to delete the whole post, so am just blanking them out.

Dee · Post by **Dee** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:03 am