A little help in sculpting ambient sounds

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Sennheisersucks

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Hello all, I am very very new to this site. Long story short I have a rap project I'm doing on the side(you'd be amazed at how much fun you have when you're expectance level remains ZERO). I'm producing the beats and doing a little vocals. Now, the current track(115 bpm) I'm working on has two problems that stick out. I have one pad that is constructed of one scratch sample repeated throughout 3/4 of a measure. It ascends and descends the scale I'm using plus I have a real slow phaser on it so it creates this like pseudo-jason theme song(kill, kill, chop, chop) effect. What I want it to do is help create movement(drawing the listener in for 3 and then realeasing on 4) but I can't get it to stand out without taking over. I want it noticed, but not you know? I tried eqing it differently but then I didn't like the tone. I want it to sound thin but cover a lot, I guess a sort of mucus membrane if I had to draw a picture of it. Problem two: I have vocals that I have applied a flanger to. I have the flanger set so it's affecting just the last bits of word groupings. It's there throughout the whole, but only solidifies at the end. What I want to do is get that last little bit to distort just a little as the words are ending. Am I in for a long night of expirimenting or is there a simple way to do this? I'll cut and paste mindlessly into the night if need be. :D
 
crappy pc

I don't know what is the deal with this thing. It won't let me zip anything so no clip. This is why I refuse to connect my studio comp to the net. I have 9,000 viruses on here and internet is the only reason it exists. I tried downloading a new zip prog from a # of sites and my comp says no. Aside from that, I think I got it. I applied a small amount of delay and took the vloume down on the scratchpad. That spread it well. As for the vocals, I cut them all up and copied and processed each peice with some overdrive, faded each clean part out and into the overdive fading in. Doesn't sound that bad, but I think I may do it over again to get the fades right. I hate microsoft and no I don't care if they do have snipers. I care if their sniper's have daughters. :D
 
Sennheisersucks said:
I don't know what is the deal with this thing. It won't let me zip anything so no clip. This is why I refuse to connect my studio comp to the net. I have 9,000 viruses on here and internet is the only reason it exists. I tried downloading a new zip prog from a # of sites and my comp says no. Aside from that, I think I got it. I applied a small amount of delay and took the vloume down on the scratchpad. That spread it well. As for the vocals, I cut them all up and copied and processed each peice with some overdrive, faded each clean part out and into the overdive fading in. Doesn't sound that bad, but I think I may do it over again to get the fades right. I hate microsoft and no I don't care if they do have snipers. I care if their sniper's have daughters. :D
Can you convert to mp3? If so, there are a few sites that host mp3's and you can post it that way. It's hard to suggest anything if we can't hear what it's doing.
Let me know if you can convert to mp3 and I will post some links for you to check out.
 
Allrighty

I posted it on soundclick. It seems I allready had an account that I set up over a year ago but did nothing with so I have to wait 24 hrs for this clearance. Its under the band name All Were Angels and is the only file uploaded entitled, no vox. I ordered a studio mike from carvin and the guys decided to scratch the vox that they and I weren't proud of. They were done w/sm58. Anyone tried a carvin studio mike?
 
Sennheisersucks said:
I posted it on soundclick. It seems I allready had an account that I set up over a year ago but did nothing with so I have to wait 24 hrs for this clearance. Its under the band name All Were Angels and is the only file uploaded entitled, no vox. I ordered a studio mike from carvin and the guys decided to scratch the vox that they and I weren't proud of. They were done w/sm58. Anyone tried a carvin studio mike?
I haven't tried one, no.

As far as the mp3 goes, you will get better looks at it if you posted a link to it in this thread, or the mp3 clinic.

People don't want to have to search for something you want help on, so it's better that you copy and paste the link to your song.

It'll look something like this:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/3/eddiestoreymusic.htm

This is a link to my soundclick page. You can check it out if you want to.
You can cut and paste yours into a post by going to the band administration page. There you will see the link that looks like the one I posted here. Copy that and paste it into your post...

I'll come back in a day and see what's up.
 
I checked out your song. I liked what I heard. It was Grateful Dead strumming and I don't know what was making me think Floyd but sumthin was. I like the tone on the distorted guitar, too. Was that you singing?
 
Sennheisersucks said:
I checked out your song. I liked what I heard. It was Grateful Dead strumming and I don't know what was making me think Floyd but sumthin was. I like the tone on the distorted guitar, too. Was that you singing?
Yeah, that was me!
Thanks for the listen. I am going to return the favor!
 
Hmmmm. I'm getting a "file not found" error. I will check on it in a bit and see what is happening...
 
Ok, I got it to come up. It might just be me, but the flanger effect seems to be sitting just fine in the mix. I will listen again when I have a better monitoring chain, but on this pc, it seems fine.

One trick you can use to bring it out a bit more is to double the track the flanger is on, and bring it up under the original track, and shorten the decay. That might help it punch through without going over the top (the volume will be lower, so it will add body to it). Then just adjust the faders accordingly (because you will be doubling the db output of that track).

I liked what you were doing, it has enough change ups to keep the beat going without getting repetative and boring. Post the finished mix when you get the vocals retracked!
 
Cool and thanks

I did the doubling deal with the shorter decay and eqed the second one a bit higher. I have a plugin that lets you put the sound anywhere in the feild so I also placed the bassier version more towards the center and the higher version on the outsides it gives it a nice dispersion effect. I only have one final question. Was the mix bass-heavy? I'm a bass player first and foremost and I've really overdone it on previous songs which resulted in a time where I didn't give it enough and well I'm not sure of what's a good level. I will repost as soon as the vocals are put back down. I'm on a time restriction of getting tis and two other tracks done and mailed to detroit before the 18th of this month. It's for a contest that the Insane Clown Posse is holding. They take the winner on tour for a year and get them all professionally recorded and a cd on the shelves. Iim thinking at the very least it would be cool to hop up in a big studio and suck all the info I could out of the joint(they may end up missing a preamp). Oh yeah, I figured out how to make an sm57 sound just like a $5,000 Neumann. Break both of them.
 
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