Come on Eddie you're really messing up the flow of this thread.

Are you men straight?

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quote:

Originally posted by Beatflux You might be trying to engineer your way out of a compositional problem.

+1

The pad's sound is still kind of boring, but what it's playing would be good if the piano melody was a bit more.. focused, I guess would be the word? I only gave it two listens but I can't remember the rhythm it played at all, it seemed kind of random, as did the notes being played. Put more thought into the melody. Try to build dissonance with non-chord tones and resolve it with a chord tone during a stronger point in the melody, or at a chord change. Simpler and more focused songwriting is almost always a better choice in trance than random arpeggios in place of an actual melody, since 99 times out of 100 the melodies that get stuck in my head are of the first variety.

And by "simple" I don't mean I-IV-V for everything, I just mean the fewer notes you can get away with using, the better, in most cases.

Last edited by Kysora on Apr-14-2011 at 03:13

its a good idea to side-chain pads with lets say a kick. also since most pads are pretty heavy on the headroom, almost 99 percent of the time, appropriate eq is required to make it sit right in the mix. ultimately, pad might sound good on its own, but in the mix it will sound like shit, therefore, like i said before, experiment with compression and surgical equalization.

quote:

Originally posted by Kysora +1 The pad's sound is still kind of boring, but what it's playing would be good if the piano melody was a bit more.. focused, I guess would be the word? I only gave it two listens but I can't remember the rhythm it played at all, it seemed kind of random, as did the notes being played. Put more thought into the melody. Try to build dissonance with non-chord tones and resolve it with a chord tone during a stronger point in the melody, or at a chord change. Simpler and more focused songwriting is almost always a better choice in trance than random arpeggios in place of an actual melody, since 99 times out of 100 the melodies that get stuck in my head are of the first variety. And by "simple" I don't mean I-IV-V for everything, I just mean the fewer notes you can get away with using, the better, in most cases.

The piano actually isnt the lead melody of the track... I do have an apreggio but muted it for the sake of it being overpowering to the pad at the time. Didn't think people would be able to hear the pad itself if the arp was playing.

The Piano is more or less just something I added to bring a little more interest to the lead melody during the build up. I probably should have just left it unmuted :\

EDIT: Ill upload a clip with the lead melody in a min.

Okay let's talk about pads!

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quote:

Dr.DRE "It's not the equipment....it's the muthaf@#%r running it"

quote:

Originally posted by Pagan-za Fighting online is like winning the special Olympics. Even if you win, you're still retarded.

the pad should really compliment the sound you already have layed out, so spend some time designing the sound, eqing, compressing , etc. I find its helpful to have it sit further back in the mix, at a lower volume. Since it is one long sustained note it is probably muddying up the frequencies of the other sounds, EQ is key.