more_on wrote: ↑Mon Jul 27, 2020 6:19 pm
Hey all,
Just a personal audio project I wanted to share to hear some tips from you guys on how I could maybe utilize LMMS to a higher potential. I don't have an interface device to hook up a midi capable instrument to my pc (I've honestly never had much luck doing that), but maybe after hearing some critique, that will be the next step for me.
This project is solely for my listening pleasure and to further my music creation hobby (music school + I teach piano so it's good to have a little "real"/modern composition experience for students interested). I have 0 plans to ever share my music beyond this post here, so I appreciate your feedback!
Note: I have been working with LMMS for roughly a year, and I have 0 experience with digital composition. My knowledge of the various effects and filters is extremely limited; I learned everything through trial and error as that's what keeps me most mentally engaged. I am positive there will be plenty of ways to increase the overall audio quality and am excited to hear more professional/experienced opinions!
Also, I have it on soundcloud for the ease of sharing, but if there's a preferred way of sharing audio files, please inform me.
-Thanks!
https://soundcloud.com/user-571159176
PS The guys who made LMMS seem freaking incredible, the capabilities of this software appear ridiculous for being freeware!
Hi more_on,
First of all Im very far to be a professionnal in music composition. I had a look on your tracks and it sounds very good to me. The overall looks clean, and I don't have any particular negative review to give you. Moreover Im not really into atmospheric sounds then I'll have a few difficulties to give you proper advices. However I can at least tell you about the main effects Im using:
reverb: if you want to create the impression of space and increase the impression of sound volume, you can use reverb effects. You can check a short good explaination here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAG545JjoB4
Equalizer effect: The EQ is very important to keep a clean sound. As you probably know it each instrument emit a sound in different frequencies. Hi-hat spectrum is higher in high frequencies whereas bass spectrum is higher in low frequencies. Generally you'll have at least two instruments that sounds on the same frequencies, the EQ will help you to adjust each instruments frequencies throw away not desired sounds or frequencies overlap between two synths. I encourage you to use the equalizer effect. There're a plenty of tutorials on youtube in lmms or other softwares. Keep in mind that everyone struggles with EQ to improve the mixing and/or mastering there's no miracle recipe. Lmms also has a long list of filters it but I really recommend you to use the equaliser effect.
Side chain: Side chain is also very important to keep a cleaner sound. For instance if you have a kick and a loud synth the frequency mix will shoke the kick sound. In other words the kick will lose impact. Basically the side chain will tells the loud synth to "shut up" when the kick hit in order to keep a clean kick and the effect is very cool. Im just recently using it and it really improves my mixes. Here's a very simple but very good tutorial from another lmms user:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il0OH4I0-LE
Compression: the compression is generally used to make a track as louds as possible. Basically the idea is to decrease the gap between loud and quiet sounds. Reducing this gap will allo you to increase your tracks volume without any saturation. Your sounds will look more professionnal. Here's a tutorial from another lmms user:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5SOpP92eXo
He's also talking about the limiter effect then here you have two effect.
There's also two other effects like echo effect or delay that you can use. The delay shifts yiour signal in time and creates an echo effect. I use sometimes the delay but still not at ease with it.
This is the main effects that I use the most. Also here's a tutorial that will give you hints about how to compress, reverb, and EQ a large list of instruments:
https://heroic.academy/how-to-mix-music ... ts-synths/
I recommend you to read parts 2 to 5 and I still use it as a reference when I begin a track before making my own adjustments. Of course don't take all these values as miracles values, you'll have to make your own adjustments according to your preferences.
One more advice when you make a track: try to use a reference track to help you. The objective isn't to copy the track but to use it as an index scale about your overall mix. For instance if you are making "Skrillex like" track, take a track of Skrillex and check if your kicks have the same impact as the Skrillex reference track. If yes keep them, if no try to enhance their impact with the effects presented above.
Also if you want to introduce good transitions or introduce more variations you can use automation tracks. Here's an easy tutorial to understand how it works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-vRYgPTSYY
Last but not least you can find on the internet infinite of free or paying samples or VST. Some free samples have a very good quality coz effects are already applied on them. Also I don't know if you use VST but you should coz you can produce new sounds or using presets synths for free. Here's a list of very good free VST: Kairatune, Helm, Tunefish4, ToneZ (this one is made by a lmms user)... If you really don't know how to use a VST you can just use presets synths incuded in the VST, all of them contain various sounds already. Then try to learn how to use them by touching all the buttons while following tutorials. Also ZynAddSubFX already included on lmms allow to produce. Unfa a lmms user has many videos about ZynAddSubFX in his Youtube channel.
About how to post your tracks Soundcloud is good despite the fact you cannot have more than 3h of uploads and you cannot replace a track without paying a subscription. Generally people here also use Youtube it's very cool especially if you make an animation to accompany your tracks however Youtube due to folks unable to make a video with a constant sound volume Youtube compresses too much the sounds then it will look very low volume level compared to your initial track. Also sometimes I see new projects here in other websites but right now I can't remember the name.
Hope this will help you.
Cheers,
RD
