Eurythmic
majordomo plasticomo
A recent post of mine in the mp3 criticism forum brought up some questions that I thought would be better suited for this forum...
As I've gone, the music I've been writing (a sort of synth-pop, I guess) has become more and more edgy. And I've become much more interested in electric drum sounds.
It's important to mention that I get all of my sounds with soundfonts, and my SB64Gold only has 4MB of ram. I could buy the upgrade of course, but I can't justify the cost considering it's about as much as a better full soundcard.
Although I can use tricks to get more than 4MBs of soundfonts into one song, I of course can't use any individual soundfont that's bigger than 4MB.
So. The problem I keep running into is that I just can NOT get my drums to sound really hard. When I'm trying to do a good, say, dance or industrial song, something that really needs a strong pulse, I can't get the drums to bite. It makes the whole thing sound flat. (For what it's worth, I have short mp3 clips linked from my post in the mp3 forum as examples of what I'm talking about)
So what I've been trying to figure out is whether this is a mixing fault on my part, or if it's because I'm using soundfonts. What's the difference between a drum machine and a soundfont made from 16/44.1 samples of that same drum machine? I've been thinking that a drum machine should be my next equipment purchase, but I'm afraid that I'll just be running into the same problems after I shell out my money. I'm not necessarily trying to get "real" sounding drums, here - if I wanted that, I'd find a drummer. It's the really edgy, purely electronic sounds that I'm trying to get.
While I'm on the subject, does anyone know what was used on the most recent albums by Poe, Depeche Mode, and N'Sync? That's exactly the kind of thing I'd like to do, ideally. But I'd settle for something like classic Duran Duran and A-Ha, too.
As I've gone, the music I've been writing (a sort of synth-pop, I guess) has become more and more edgy. And I've become much more interested in electric drum sounds.
It's important to mention that I get all of my sounds with soundfonts, and my SB64Gold only has 4MB of ram. I could buy the upgrade of course, but I can't justify the cost considering it's about as much as a better full soundcard.
Although I can use tricks to get more than 4MBs of soundfonts into one song, I of course can't use any individual soundfont that's bigger than 4MB. So. The problem I keep running into is that I just can NOT get my drums to sound really hard. When I'm trying to do a good, say, dance or industrial song, something that really needs a strong pulse, I can't get the drums to bite. It makes the whole thing sound flat. (For what it's worth, I have short mp3 clips linked from my post in the mp3 forum as examples of what I'm talking about)
So what I've been trying to figure out is whether this is a mixing fault on my part, or if it's because I'm using soundfonts. What's the difference between a drum machine and a soundfont made from 16/44.1 samples of that same drum machine? I've been thinking that a drum machine should be my next equipment purchase, but I'm afraid that I'll just be running into the same problems after I shell out my money. I'm not necessarily trying to get "real" sounding drums, here - if I wanted that, I'd find a drummer. It's the really edgy, purely electronic sounds that I'm trying to get.
While I'm on the subject, does anyone know what was used on the most recent albums by Poe, Depeche Mode, and N'Sync? That's exactly the kind of thing I'd like to do, ideally. But I'd settle for something like classic Duran Duran and A-Ha, too.
