quote:

Originally posted by skot_e Have you ever sent your stuff to a mastering engineer? I'm not talking someone who says they do mastering, I mean someone who has be doing it for 20 years (eg). i know that definately makes a difference to the final product. Hilltop Hoods (ozzie hip hop group) stuff sounded 'home made' till the mastering guys put their touch on it, went platinum with loads of airplay and awards in this country. Different genre I know, but you could say they are pro sound now.

I have never heard of them until now, i just checked out their website... its shwweet. I have actually never tried sending it to real professional mastering engineers before. I think this would definetly help. It doesnt matter what style music it is , could be hiphop or rock or trance. That pro sound is still the same.

quote:

Originally posted by RickyM How long have you been producing for? It really is just practice I think, there's no magical plugin or anything. Although a good mastering really will help.

About 3 years now. I know that is not that long, however I really want to get into the hardware processing part now.

Can you seriously post a sample?

Analog gear does reduce the coldness/digitality, but it doesn't make it professional. That is down to sound engineering, mixing and mastering. If you could post a sample, we could help you to get that sound.

This thread is an abomination along the lines of the magic preset that makes the shit tune great. It doesn't work like that.

Perhaps you should consider using your £1400 Virus TI? More specifically, not dismissing it for being a shit preset factory (which it is) and start programming your own sounds (which it is good at).

It really beggers belief that anyone could have the gear that you have and yet have so few ideas about how to use it. If you are relying on presets, stop it and start programming. You will suck at first but you get better and you will eventually get good at it and have control over every aspect of the sound that comes from it.

If you think that 10s of thousands of bucks worth of analogue gear and outboard will suddenly make your average tunes sound great, you need to wake up and stop fooling yourself that gear makes great music.

You use your gear to make music and plenty of people, like Whitetown have proven you can make great music on free software and a 30 dollar microphone (no.1 album in the UK charts no less).

You need to stop fooling yourself that theres some magical process or preset that will suddenly make you a 'pro' and start taking the iniative and do the learning yourself.

Do not get it into your head that you can just send an average mix off to a mastering studio and then boom! like magic, a pro tune gets sent back to you. Again, it doesn't work like that and mastering never made a mediocre tune particularly good.

Finally, you need to stop obsessing over your tracks in comparison to Armins because quite frankly you will never be as good as Armin at being Armin. Armin is the best at being Armin. Krispy Kreme is the best at being Krispy Kreme.

You can sort of mimic his tunes for learning purposes but unless you have the exact gear that he has and the knowledge of how to use it that he has, and the people that he knows who can touch it up for you - you will never sound the same.

Hate to be so negative but fuck...I'm amazed people still post topics like this in this forum.

You still have never met my request to post a sample of your work up
For all your intelligent posts we are still yet to hear anything!

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My work is in a permanent state of being unfinished which is something I work on in my own time and ask for no help regarding. Funnily enough I don't make excuses for the things I suck at - namely getting anything finished.

I fail to see how that is relevant to this thread, the millions of others like them or people in general that try to find magical solutions for why they suck.

Just stop kidding yourselves and get practicing.

You guys didn't get the new pro sound plugin with Ableton 6?

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Latest Mix

Must have missed that. Fucking H2O not including the plugins in my warezed copy.

I have to agree with Derivative on the point that learning to create sounds on your hardware it the only way to go. Very rarely will you find a preset that sounds exactly like you want it, but many times you can find a preset thats a good "jumping-off" point for a sound you are wanting to make. How many time have you found a preset thats really close, but just needs a few tweaks here and there to fit in your mix? That Virus TI is an extremely powerful synth, and if you learn to program it, it can meet a large number of your needs. I have a Virus B, and I use it for bass, pads, leads, almost everything. The only thing that sucks about the B is the 24 voices, I often run out of voices and have to bounce, but that TI has 80 voices! You can almost hammer out an entire track framework without bouncing! Thats a powerful thing.

Learning to make your own sounds, I believe, is vital to having a good sounding finished product. Not only do you get the satisfaction of knowing that its "your" sound, but it's a lot easier as you add parts to your track to tweak the sound to fit just right. I have found many times that a bass sound I have made will sound great when just the bass and drums are playing, but once I start adding my leads/pads/etc., I often have to tweak it to get it to "sit" right in the mix, and having made the sound on my own, its a lot easier to do that. I know what it is made of and why it sounds like it does.

So much of this is just simply practice, paitence and reading. My god, you can find SO much information out there. There have been very few questions that I havent found the answer online. Bookmark every tutorial you find on the web or print it out and make a folder. I have a folder filled with print outs from tutorials I have found.

Also, do not dismiss buying a book or two from amazon on whatever subject you are confused about. Power Tools for Synthesizer Programming is a great book to learn how to program your own sounds and the Dance Music Manual are great books that will give you tons of baseline information that will answer your questions. Read and apply the techniques you learn, and all of it will fall into place at some point. Eventually, if you are committed enough, things will just start to "click". You'll just get it. Then you'll be the one doing the teaching.

OK, I have to get back to work now.

Get Izotope Ozone 3 :Izotope Website

Read their dithering and mastering guides: Guides Page

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quote:

Originally posted by RickyM You still have never met my request to post a sample of your work up For all your intelligent posts we are still yet to hear anything!

Will get a sample posted up later tonight when i get back from work