Nessus (created using Hive)

Hi peeps 
 
Sorry to rush this, but I'll be back in the morning in order to catch up on the latest toons here and also post some more info on my current works.
 
Briefly, it is a piece that was created on Sonar X2 using fifteen instances of u-he's latest VA VSTi Hive.
 
I decided in the end to use 3rd party EQ rather than Hive's own EQ (I'll explain more tomorrow).
 
I have also used (for now) a limiter on the master bus in order to maximise the levels, although there is still some dynamics left (I need to refer to Danny's post in my techniques topic on the subject).
 
Here's the link:-
 
https://soundcloud.com/synkrotron/nessus
 
see you all tomorrow 
 
cheers
 
andy

Bass sounded fine over here, Rim... Andy, great groove and wankout with Hive.  I bought it way back when the survey bucks were sitting there...Haven't had the time to play with it much as so much else has been going on but you've inspired me to dig it out and give it another whirl.
 

I've just got up... Very first thing I did was come visit my song and see how things were cooking 
 

Rimshot
Did you mix on speakers or phones?

Hi Jimmy, thanks for listening 
 
Yeah, I always mix on phones I'm afraid... Limitations of a "home studio."
 
I will definitely check out what you are saying. I wanted to use just the effects within Hive and it does have a basic EQ. But I noticed there was a lot of bass hanging around, even on some of the pad presets. I ended up adding an instance of Pro-Q on each track, just so that I could "see" the spectrum. Seeing the spectrum is important for me as I mix on headphones.
 
I also put Pro-Q on the master bus too, but in all the instances of Pro-Q, tracks and bus, I only dialled out the low end with a -24dB/octave low cut at around 50 Hz. And I also used some high cut, although I don't think that was as important.
 
So I thought I caught most of what would perhaps make it muddy. As I said, I'll definitely look at that again and see what I can do. I didn't use any other boosts or cuts so I need to spend more time on that for sure.
 
Thanks for pointing that out 
 

Vastman
Andy, great groove and wankout with Hive

LOL! Thanks Dana  I'm so glad you listened to my happy toon...
 
I don't know where that groove came from to be honest... Must be built into my internal system... 
 
Yeah, Certainly get Hive out. I've only just scratched the surface of what is potentially a beast, given all the routing and modulation options. And I've not even bothered looking at the 45 page manual for it yet.
 
 
Right doods... I've got a busy time ahead of me now... I've got to listen and comment to as many of the latest tracks this morning. Got some catching up to do.
 
And then I am going to attempt a thorough write-up of Nessus, as much for my own benefit and to explain the processes used and decisions taken. It'll be a lengthy read and I'll be sticking in lots of screenshots.
 
Off for some breakfast now
 
cheers
 
andy

Creating Nessus pt 1
 
Okay, I'm going to try and give a detailed breakdown of my latest track, as much for my own benefit, as well as giving peeps an insight into my music.
 
It was seven days ago when I saw a post about Hive, the latest release from u-he. It's a VA soft synth and I gave it a quick go and thought, "I'm having that."
 
There are plenty of "one synth" demo's out there, but felt I wanted to give it a go.
 
I normally get bogged down in an eight/sixteen bar idea that goes nowhere. Somehow I managed to break that with this composition. This time I started mapping out a bit of a "structure," by playing with a few different chords. It only took me about three days to map out the whole tune, pretty much. Might sound like a long time but I can take ages with his process.
 
For the chords I used two different pad sounds from Hive's presets, one panned 60% right and the other 60% left.
I wanted an evolving sequence running through the whole track, so I used X2's Step Sequencer for that, producing, in total, 23 different sequences based around the different chords, each just one bar long. I "stored" each sequence in its own Take Lane which was then muted. I do this so that I can make notes on each sequence and copy them around as needed.
 

 
So now I've got my chords and main sequence running through the track.
 
I wanted a percussion section next. Hive isn't multi-timbral, so I had to use an instance of Hive for each item. I went with just four; kick, snare, open and closed hi-hat. I then stuck those tracks in a folder. I mapped out a very simple quarter note pattern on the kick and a simple complement on the snare. The hi-hat is simple too, just a 1/16 pattern. I used velocity at this time to give the percussion some sort of feel.
 
Then I added a bass line, following the tonic of chords, with no complexity whatsoever, varying the length of notes played, nothing else.
 
I then created two more pad tracks, this time panning 80% L/R. The notes played are mainly an arpeggio of the main chords sequence, each track slightly different.
 
Now, although I didn't really need them, I created two more sequence type tracks. These are panned hard L/R this time and are fast attack short release presets played in the upper register. These vary and interweave throughout the main body of the piece.
 
Then came the lead parts. I knew I wanted two, but to start with I placed one instance of Hive, selected a typical synth lead preset and played a load of takes over the top of my backing. I knew these would need some heavy post processing. I've been playing keys for a long time, but I'm still rubbish. And limited in my style too, hence the pentatonic scale used.
 
It was this process that probably took the longest as I had to painstakingly go over each bar and tweak notes back into time. I don't use quantize on lead tracks as I feel that this is the only part of my music that should not sound mechanical and computerised. I drag each note to within a 1/128th off the beat, give or take, which is hopefully enough to make the lead track sound like it has been played by a human. That can play keyboards...
 
Once I finally got the lead part sussed, I loaded another instance of Hive and selected a different lead preset. The MIDI from the first lead track was copied to this. I then had to decide how these two lead part would interact, kind of talking to each other. I split at points I thought felt good and muted one track. This was done throughout the lead tracks and I ended up tweaking/adding notes as I went along. In a couple of places the two lead tracks play in tandem.
 
Next up was to revisit the main sequence. I said that I wanted it to "evolve" and to that end I used automation envelopes. Twelve in all. One on each of three oscillator and sub osc volume controls, four in total. One on the cutoff and resonance of the two filter ADSR mods, another four. And the final four where for the delay and sustain levels of the ADSR mods. I could have used automation on the track volume but I wanted to see how using the Hive oscillator volume controls sounded. Here is a screenshot of the envelope lanes:-
 

 
This was another lengthy process. I think Sonar could use some improvement when it comes to creating and editing envelopes (assuming there is no change between X2 and Platinum).
 
Finally, I decided that I wanted to add a sort of "effect" type track. So I added a final instance of Hive and tried a number of presets before I arrived at something I thought was suitable. It is used in the intro and outro sections only.
 
So, here's my final track view layout:-
 

 
Notice how I hide the "instrument" tracks, leaving just the MIDI tracks. I never look at levels in track view and leave that for console view, which is better suited in my opinion. Also, as well as placing markers to show each section I also use a dummy MIDI track that I place clips on with different colours so that it's easier to see, as well as easier to select sections of the song to loop or edit.
 
Okay... I will cover the mixing and mastering stages in another post.

Nice job on this fun tune.  It looks like you did a lot of work to put all those screenshots up.  In spite of using headphones to mix, it sounds well balanced on my first listen.  Keep em coming.

Lynn
Nice job on this fun tune.  It looks like you did a lot of work to put all those screenshots up.  In spite of using headphones to mix, it sounds well balanced on my first listen.  Keep em coming.

Thanks for listening Lynn... Yeah, I took some time over those posts. I guess I should save them to my 'puter for when our songs disappear onto page 4 hehe...
 
I'm glad you think the mix is okay... Having read Tim's Jimmy's (oops... I'm getting names nmixed up... sorry) comments though, and messed again with the EQ, my "re-mastered" will hopefully be much improved 
 

daryl1968
very cool synkotron and nice playing.

Thanks Daryl. Don't ever ask me to pull that off in a live situation though  I'd get boo'd off stage LOL!
 
Thanks for listening.
 
 
Oh, everyone, because I'm not selling my music, I always stick a 320kbps version on SoundCloud for download. I'm not sure if that helps or not, but I've noticed that most peeps go for streaming (I suppose I do myself...)

Starise
I heard and commented on SC as well....great job on this one!!!!

Yeah, Tim, I spotted that, thanks 
 
cheers, and thanks for listening 

Hey synkotron,
I gotta say there a lot of interesting things going on from a musical perspective. I like how you play with the different lead 'voices,' it's like those two synths are having a little dialog. Did you perform those parts? If so, did you use a MIDI keyboard? I've always wanted to record a guitar lead and extract the MIDI using Melodyne, that will be a project for down the line. There's a lot of really good movement throughout the track, the only thing I would have suggested would have been to strip down the arrangement somewhere in the middle to give a little contrast. Once the drums come in, that texture and instrumentation stays relatively constant throughout most of the track. Don't get me wrong, I really like what was going on, it's a really cool jam.
 
I think the mix could benefit from a little added brightness. I think you could probably be more generous with high-pass filtering certain tracks. One thing that might work well is if you bus those pad elements and use the M/S feature in the Pro-Q and roll off a significant amount of the lows in the Side channel, that usually does wonders in terms of opening up the mix. You could also use a high shelf to brighten up the Side channel on the master bus, but since you have so many elements that are stereo, I'm not sure what the effect might in this particular track. Let me know what you think.

Nice piece, bass sounds OK here on the Adams. thanks for sharing 

Wookiee
Nice piece, bass sounds OK here on the Adams. thanks for sharing 

 
Hiya Wookiee 
 
Thanks for stopping by for a listen 
 
It's funny how some peeps find the bass okay and others are mentioning it. Now that it has been mentioned I can hear that, but I'm not able to test on different systems at home. I suppose I could stick it on an SD card and go for a run in the car......
 
cheers
 
andy

Amine Belkhouche
I do have some questions regarding your approach to sequencing. Do you jam around on the MIDI keyboard until you find something you like and then record? How much editing do you do after recording? Also how do you use quantization if at all? Let me know and thanks in advance.

Hi again Amine,
 
I use a number of techniques when it comes to creating a MIDI tune. It really depends on what is being "sequenced."
 
Those lead lines, for instance, are recorded in real time, but are hardly ever used "as recorded" unless I somehow manage to nail something really well. So I will then go into the PRV editor and start tweaking. I may opt for a straight quantize, but if I want to retain a "human" feel then I will turn off snap and manually drag notes around. I may even add notes here and there to embellish if I feel it improves the lead. So plenty of "cheating" going on there... I could never take my "act" live I'm afraid...
 
If I want a more mechanical sounding sequence, but I'm not sure what notes to use yet, I'll play around on the keyboard while looping a section (if there is a backing track already). Once I have say a one or two bar sequence going that I like, I'll turn off loop and go for it. The recorded MIDI is then quantized. I may then add/move/remove notes to my liking.
 
Sometimes I take an existing MIDI clip and modify it slightly, just to provide a bit of variation.
 
I also jump straight into the PRV editor and, with loop on, add notes manually, moving in time or changing pitch as the loop is playing. But I find that since Cakewalk introduced the Step Sequencer view, I use that more now, and is more akin to how sequences were produced back in the old days.
 
For pad and chord parts, I mainly use the PRV and manually place notes. I'm more of a "one finger" lead player and not that great at playing chords, so it's quicker not to bother trying to play in real time. And because, generally speaking, there are not as many notes utilised on my pad tracks. So, yeah... It's straight to PRV. However, having said all that, I still use my MIDI keyboard to try out chords first, and I suppose I could record just one bar at a time...
 
When it comes to percussion I never use wave loops and I always program my own MIDI loops. I have since settled on just two plug-ins now for percussion; Battery and Drumaxx. Battery suits me when I need more traditional kit sounds, although I may still use BFD eco every now and then, sometimes along with Battery. Drumaxx is used for the mainly synthetic sounds. Step Sequencer is my favourite tool for creating drum patterns, although I may use my keyboard from time to time because I find that I generate a different feel or style that way (and then quantize, of course haha).
 
I've not mentioned velocity, which is as important as the notes in my opinion. So while all the above is going on I am constantly checking velocities. One thing I am extremely concious of is having a finished product that sounds so computerised that even I don't like it. I create MIDI music, and of course, that will always come across in my music, but I try to make it less obvious, and making sure that notes are played at different velocities throughout a sequence, or passage, is key.
 
I think that just about covers it.
 
Thanks for asking Amine... That gave me a chance to waffle on a bit there, which is one of my favourite pastimes LOL 
 
cheers
 
andy

I enjoyed it on my new Tascam phones....good on Sonys too. I guess the low end could be tighter for some...but it still fits the bill well in my opinion and calibrated (not so very...lol) ears... ;-) really dig that synth...(but I can't stroke keys near as well...semi decent on the gtr/bass pickn..)..n dabble w those synth plugs a little now n then til frustrated...
thx for the process info....enjoy the insight.

Okay peeps,
 
I've taken on board some of the comments in this topic, as best I can anyway.
 
I've tried to reduce the bottom end a little, and enhance the high end. But I'm not sure of the result. I listened to it in the car and it sounds okay, I guess... Still some bass in there.
 
This time I want to try a different link:-
 
http://indiemusicpeople.com/play2.aspx?songID=94392&source=Artist%20Page%20Single
 
I've uploaded it to my IndieMusicPeople site because they appear to allow streaming at 320kbps.
 
Only if someone gets a chance, could they check out this latest mix.
 
cheers
 
andy

Hi Steve,
 
Thanks for stopping by and putting up with both versions 
 
I'm up to version five now! Been doing loads of listening and watching my SPAN display, tweaking here and there as I go. I've learned so much in the last week or so with regards to EQ, so I'm hoping that my "final" version will be even better, although there is still the possibility that I've made a hash of it.
 
One thing I have been doing is cutting frequencies from elements that don't really do anything.
 
For instance, some of the higher frequency elements have quite a lot of "low end," so I have applied quite a drastic cut, getting rid of that low end altogether and thereby making room for low end stuff that should be there.
 
And although the plan was to use Hive's own effect section, I have since decided to turn off as many of Hive's effects as I can. Especially reverb, EQ and compression. I have then created a new bus and placed Breverb 2 on it, and created sends on each element, routed to that bus. That way, all the reverb is the same across all elements.
 
So, I've been plenty busy, learning and trying to apply what I have learned. I'm kind of numb to my own tune having listened to it so much LOL!
 
cheers
 
andy