We are the music makers - producers?

The second is variation on this which often denotes creeping terror but on an epic battlefield scale. It's also has a giant zombie war-horn vibe kind of type of vibe, but this one modulates atonally downwards.

That one I've noticed a lot, esp in horror; I think it's brass, detuning down across a semitone. It's a super useful sound, though very overused, I agree. I'm actually scoring for a horror short atm and I've re-created it using a distorted bass guitar drowning in reverb and delay, which feels right for this project (the director is also a metalhead) and does the same job but has its own little sound to it.

It's so effective I think because it starts your brain thinking 'oh this is the start of a melodic soundtrack' and as it detunes your brain goes 'oh no this is a sound effect and things are going wrong'. I think as long as it's not paired with one of those dolly zoom / vertigo effect things it can work really well.

The one I find myself unable to get past is a single hit of a war drum drowning in Blade Runner-esque reverb, while the shot fades to black. You know, the one in every single trailer you see. Utterly played out imo.

Our local sainos has Reese’s Puffs (best cereal- come at me). But this is great:

1 Attachment

BRAAAM! Thanks man! Glad I’m not alone.

Anyone here have a quick-and-dirty explanation of how to make a basic Rhodes/e-piano voice on a subtractive synth? Finding a few online, but they're all wildly different and are either deep dives into realistic modeling synthesis or just don't really translate.

Possibly too basic, but:

Square/pulse wave (potential to play around with pulse width to suit)
Filter cut-off in around 25-50%
Small amount of filter envelope (25% or so), 0 attack & sustain, slow decay/release
Similar envelope for amplitude (not sure if your synth has multiple envelopes or not, can use the same for both amplitude & filter cut-off, just with a small amount for the filter cut-off)
Optionally pop a sub-oscillator in there also. Although if you're limited to 2 oscillators, a thin pulse, 1 or 2 octaves higher than the main one is great for mimicking the tines of an e-piano

What synth are you using? There's a free JX-8P emulation called PG-8X which can make use of the JX-8P patches and plenty of free patch banks out there with some piano patches of varying quality.

And I guess it goes without saying that FM is probably what you'd ideally want for this sort of patch, but I'm guessing you're aware hence why you've specified subtractive!

Cheers. This is very helpful!

I'm using an MS20 for this w/ multisampling using an MPC 1000. I'd made some pretty satisfactory pads and organ sounds, but I've been stuck on making an E Piano voice recently.

London Modular is closing down :(
https://londonmodular.co.uk/

Ah, gutted. That's a loss. Great guys.

I’m GASing on the OTO Boum to fit into my ultra compact 1010 Music Blackbox/Bluebox and Make Noise O Coast setup. Anyone using one?

Bit high for a "vintage" reverb innit?

It’s not their reverb (that’s the BAM), it’s an analogue compressor and saturation/distortion device. I think they’re quite highly regarded especially for live use. I’ve never tried one (I bought an Analog Heat and an FMR RNC ages ago… not that I play live).

Looking for confirmation on something - a hardware audio mixer isn't necessary if you've got an audio interface with enough inputs for your gear and you're using a DAW, right?

Correct.

Cheers. Trying to figure out my smallest possible setup and my honking 16ch mixer is taking up a lot of space.

All the outboard gear is not strictly necessary either, depending on your definition of necessary.

I think some people use a mixer as part of the creative process.

Doubt I'm ever going back to 100% DAW, but I'm bringing one back in after 6-7yrs for more polished recordings.

If my mixer had more outs/aux I'd be inclined to incorporate it, but it does not.

I have 2 setups now, one entirely in the box, the other analog with a digital mixer and midi control.

Projects tend to happen on one or the other and I'm favouring DAW at the moment.

Helps that my laptop chokes up pretty fast ;_;

Yeah, I'm just feeling my way into the Mac Studio. Had some good results with an Ableton Live project using all Ableton plugs. Not tried to get all my usual plug-ins running yet. Early experiences with the Arturia stuff have not been great.

On a tangential note, picked up an M1 Air last week there. It's a wonderful thing. I'm sure I'll hit some snags with incompatible plugins at some point, but my DAW of choice (FL Studio) seems to be working fine with both old and new plugins alike. Performance is a big step up too. Haven't done a proper side-by-side comparison with my desktop, but am pretty confident the Air will come out on top (granted, it's a mid-range 'gaming' PC that's around 5 years old or so). Though I'm not exactly working with dozens of Diva instances in parallel or something along those lines.

Early experiences with the Arturia stuff have not been great.

Any specific issues? I've got Analog Lab & V-Collection and they seem to be working fine so far (touch wood)

I'm finding they won't run at 96k. I used to be running them at 96k on a 5.1 Mac Pro. I'm getting CPU spikes and audio dropouts.

I do run a lot of software at the same time though.

It comes down to the single core speed as Ableton and Logic will only use 1 core per channel. I need to do more testing to see how it shakes out.

I'm finding they won't run at 96k. I used to be running them at 96k on a 5.1 Mac Pro. I'm getting CPU spikes and audio dropouts.

Ah yes I think I remember you saying that previously. I just stick with the default of 44.1, I've yet to get in deep enough to start tweaking (or noticing) changes in sample rate or bit depth. Is there a noticeable difference from your end? Or is it a matter of making things play nicely with hardware you work with?

No one needs more than 44.1

It's is partly making it work nicely. I run everything at 96k, the mixer is 96k natively, the digital monitors run at 96k, it's all externally clocked at 96k. It's a pain to have one piece of software needing to switch to another rate.

I decided on 96k a long time ago and I do think it makes a difference with some synth patches but I'm not about to pick it as a hill to die on.

Need and necessity again. I can't disagree, you can produce anything for commercial or other reasons at 44.1. I have my preference and mostly that seems to be all anyone has. There is the Dan Lavry white paper but it's quite dated now.

https://www.lavryengineering.com/pdfs/lavry-white-paper-the_optimal_sample_rate_for_quality_audio.pdf

I'm not that interested in DSD and higher bit rates but I've heard some great examples including SACD.