Well its good that you like it, you are welcome. also did I say that it was fun to work on it
What else do you want? I'll record vocals and put them up here and you guys can do all kinds of stuff with it!
keep singing and also keep learning the ways of building backgrounds of your liking. and podcast them maybe I will pop here from time to time and ask
for raw sounds.
Like I said, I'm brand new to computer generated music. So I have tons to learn. I just got this keyboard last week. My first. I've wanted a
piano all my life but never had one till now. And I'm totally ignorant. I have a lot of work to do, but I have a lot time to do it, so that
works.
this is great, you have the will to learn and give time to this so you will suceed there is no other possible outcome, if you both give time and like
doing it, it will happen. I will give helpful recomendations which I believe will work.
About the keyboard, well you dont really need it. you will not pass beyond a specific level by only using it. it must be used as a side tool, an input
source, a controller for the software you use.
Software. in past I used Cakewalk, Cubase, Reason, Acid etc. but what I personally settled is the FL Studio and Soundforge I strongly recommend these
two to you. FL Studio is the best in terms of its openness and its user interface and for a lot of more reasons, it is not currently being used by
pro-studios, but they will catch-on. Other than that Cubase has its own uses. There is nothing you can not do with FL Studio. except Wave editing
where the Soundforge comes to scene. Soundforge it is, I know none other for wave manipulation. Get to know these two pieces of software.
FL Studio is the software you compose your samples and create the synths etc. and it is being used by lots of people, including those which dont know
jack about composing e-music, but there are lots of methods of using it which not many people know about, which by this reason it is being ridiculed
in the pro society, and these methods which you will not be able to get into until you really figure out the software. I definately recommend it.
Soundforge is the software you edit the soundwave files, ideally you need to prepare your samples, recorded sounds in soundforge, which include EQ,
checking for recording flaws, Tuneing, etc. Also always try to follow this method, when you record vocal open it in the Soundforge and cut it to words
(or sentences, basically sound groups) from the start of the sound to the end. for examplein your song "and no one else would do" is one group and
there is some silence before and after it which is inhabited by unneccessary background noise. by cutting each sound group and saving each as a
different sound file, you get rd of the unneccessary parts plus you seperate the vocal into groups which you can sequence and repeaat through ut the
compositin as you like.
in the soundforge you have complete control over waveform, including the ability of drawing the waveform of the sound by hand.
Samples. the most important part of the music is the quality and the beauty of the samples you use. There is a technology called SoundFonts, which is
created by Creative for its soundcards (SF2 format) but is widely accepted by all programs. it is basically a file which contains many samples
assigned to different keys (note keys)
for example let me explain a good piano sample; you will record all 88 keys seperately but for pulse pressure variety you need to record each of these
keys at least for 3 times or more, by lowering the pressure and if you apply X amount of pressure to a key at full capacity, for the same key you
should record X pressure, 0.8X pressure, 0.5X pressure, 0.3X pressure and 0.1X pressure seperately. That made 5 recordings for one key which will
result in 440 samples for the 88 keys. after you finish the recording phase you program these wave files as a keyboard attaching each pressure
recordings to the key but to the different velocity channels of that key and create a SF2 file. now when you use this SF2 file if you program the
veocity of one key as decreasing velocity, it does not decreases its volume but instead it shifts samples and gives you the matching pressure level
recording. This kind of a SF2 is also what I used in the song above. but not many sound fonts are recorded this way and not all are good quality. The
Akai and Giga format Sounsamples are also the same as above but they are designed for specific equipment, so you need to convert them to soundfonts to
ebe able to use them effectively without loosing their programming.
For recording you need a good mic, noiseless environment. and you after recording you need to cut the recording to seperate samples as I explained
above and check for recoding flaws and correct them EQ them and make them ready for to use in FL Studio. you can also create SF' files from them but
that is highly unneccessary for vocal however if you are recording instruments you could create a SF2 from them with different pulse pressure settings
which will be handy.
Effects. Effects are important, Dont just rely on the FL Studio effects it will not provide you with much, SoundForge supplies lots of effects to FL
from the DirectX channel, and any other DX audio effects plugin you install to your PC will be picked up by FL Studio and can be used directly within
FL. but my recommendation is do not apply effects before you cut the sample in soundforge, (not counting EQ or other corrections such as correcting
Detunes etc) cut as raw clean sound and later apply effects during composition. another good method of using effects is the using the hardware effect
processors of the Creative soundcards(starts with Live! and now continued with Audigy), in terms of effects like Reverb and echo, these hardware
effect processors will provide the best result. but you need to play the sample when the effects are open and record the in card sound realtime to
apply it to a file not really handy but will give the cleanest and most natural reverbs if you compare them to software effects.
keyboard, will be a controller for the FL, which you will be able to directly transfer your keypresses to the software and then assign different
samples to that data. for a controller you could use mouse, pc keyboard, tablet and even a joystick. using a controller is not really neccessary if
you can compose the music as you hear it in your head.
Hmm I cant think of anything else right now, Ill add later if I remember anything other than these or you have anything to ask.