Freesound Forums

Hi, I'm relatively new to this site and just by the way the registration, I was already astonished and really wanted to see what was going on. I recently discovered English; A form of expressing what one is trying to perceive to others. It got me to a point where I thought, " man I love writing but what about those people that don't read or worse, can't? I can't reach out to them." =/ So I was listening to a collective group of artist and decided " yo these dudes are inking out their hearts, who cares if it doesn't get you famous. You'll be (among the few the proud the marines? lol) a part of the exile of Hip hop. Your not a G but are from a 3rd to 2nd world country, blue collar, why not soul-out your heart on the mic?' So my adventure began and I could write some nice stuff that may sound funky but for me and the way I am with the way I flow, it sounds smooth. But when I wrote I needed a sample/beat to use. I tried to find an exceptional free program to no avail, so a free program would be fine. The problem is I can't find any that don't require a trial to pay. I would honestly pay for the product, its just that I'm a full time student and still haven't obtained my financial aid money. I you can see I love to write, I love to paint a picture in my readers/audiences mind. I'm in my second semester,19, so I'm still learning. In Conclusion Could anyone assist me also, now that I think of it, in sort of like a starter kit of hardware I could play around with that could really unify my craft? I don't really care about prices I just want to know about the equipment so that when I do a quire money I can assemble a lil'studio in my room. Thank you

Time:investment well spent;
Material: don't know where it went.

PS: I'm more of a math guy and I since I converted to Englishism my thought process has been going berserk, so sometimes my minds produces more info than my fingers can strike; please forgive my run-ons, fragments or any grammatical error :roll: lol

Heh... ready?

(You're going to love me for this one day.)

:lol:

Try the Fruity Loops Studio sequencer and a pair of Audio Technica monitoring headphones
-- and/or the Tascam monitoring satellite system. You need the headphones. Plain stereo speakers are tweaked for EQ and compression, like FM radio... and you will jack up your work by trying to use them to monitor.

Fruity Loops has a wave editor in it (which you will need) and can use until you get the feel of the process and can move onto a more advanced editor, like Adobe or Cool Edit (if you can find one).

You need to learn about compression... both simple soft compression, which is good for mixdowns ....and multiband, which is a bit more complex but necessary in the process. Compression is a sort of rapidfire cyclical EQing that settles your mix into a somewhat universal comfort zone for playback.

If you can't grasp it at first, try the presets until you do.

Use a couple of reference CDs of a band that you love to check your work. Not too many... all music is different and you can really mess yourself up by trying to compare your own stuff to every song you ever liked. Forget about those gadgets that automatically adjust your EQing to a certain song. They are downright worthless.

Fruity loops also comes with hi/lo pass filters which you will need to saddle each instrument with in the mix. Hi pass your kick drums from 50-80 Hz .... your snare at 125 ... your cymbals at about 200, give or take. Toms move with bass at about 100 Hz. (Some prefer 80 Hz for bass ...depends on what you are doing.)

FL also comes with parametric EQ. Learn to use the notch EQ. There are trick frequencies all over the spectrum but worry, mostly about the bass at 125 and 250. Notch them out as it suits your song.

Remember that people are going to use the bass/loudness button or EQ presets on their playback device. Standard bass boost is at about 80 Hz so, if you slap a boost at the end of your main mix, you can hear how it will sound when the button is pressed.

Center your samples (remove DC offset) on your finals, whether they be individual waves or a complete mixdown or master. (You'll do it more than once.)

Fruity has a gadget called the Soundgoodizer. This is what gives you that glossy FM sound heard on nearly all current commercial releases. There are other types, like the BBE Sonic Maximizer & Izotope. I prefer Izotope because it has so many settings that you can actually use it in layers throughout the mix/master process.

Render everything from Fruity at 44kHz/32bit. That's as high as you can go with Fruity but I'll tell you what... if you do it right.... you can make a recording with Fruity Loops that is not only marketable, but competitive.

http://myspace.com/m3zh3p

If you need any help... just email me from that page.
Cheers.

Oh, yeah...

Try the Zoom or something similar for a mic.
You can take it anywhere and drop the files directly onto your hard drive.

And... I suggest getting your master cut together before you put the vocal on it.

One other thing... there is a device called a Peak Limiter.
Not the regular limiter/compressor you'll use as you reach the final stages of beefing up your mixdown.

The Peak Limiter attenuates the peaks of your mixdown to a range of your choosing and, instead of having a zig-zaggy waveform peaking up in the 0dB range, it will be more of a rectangular block and much lower... so that, when you normalize the wav, it will totally max out and be loud and punchy as all heck.

There's a shareware version of one out there...

Careful with it though... don't do anything too fast.
You will accomplish more by taking your time through each step.

And remember that a good mixdown is the first step. The more time you spend with it, the less you will spend with compression and EQing as you move onto the mastering stage.

Good luck.