whitejs
You sarcastic, ill-humored would-be musicians/technicians need to check yourselves.  If the world were full of your types, it would be a true and severe mess.

And what a lovely mess it would be.
 
Oh, and you forgot to set your keyboard to sarcasm before typing your reply. A few people on here misunderstood.

rontarrant

CakeAlexS
Listen to David Hasslehoff's records for several hours, then play back your track directly afterwards.
You will notice a significant improvement. This technique is known as "ear training".

Sounds more like the ear-training equivalent of debriefing.

No, debriefing is what happens AFTER you are ridiculously famous and get assaulted by a hoard of groupies backstage.... ;)

This thread is depressing for me. Unless if I missed something, the OP seemed to be a genuine question, yet many of the responses not only come across as "unprofessional" but "immature."
 
Sadly, I am in a situation where people ask for genuine advice (regardless of their experience level), so I give them genuine answers as best as possible. Many of these are new DAW users (with no DAW chosen yet) who need genuine advice, not ridicule.
 
I find myself biting my tongue when I feel the urge to recommend X3 to a new user because now I worry very much for where will they turn for genuine help. I find the prospect of turning a user into this forum to get responses like this thread incredibly embarrassing. Unfortunately those doing it do not feel the same level of embarrassment that I do.

REALLY??!!?? You really thought it was a serious OP?

@mettelus, 
 
I would never ever blow off what appeared to be a legitimate post - not in a million years - - quite the opposite, I have gone so far as to work with folks from half way around the planet, at crazy times in the middle of the night over the phone, to try to get their issues resolved.
 
Please go back and read that original post again - I thought it was quite a humorous post, and that is why I responded as I did, and I am quite sure the others thought the same as I did.
 
In his post, as just one example, he wants to make certain sections sound better, while deliberately leaving others sounding "bad".  And in another, rather than record a 4-MEASURE piano solo over again, he would like to use a "Make piano solo better" button.
 
Please do go back and read the post again.
 
Bob Bone
 

I recommend :
do the same things over and over again and expect different results.
This will probably make you a prof. mixing and mastering engineer.
 
 
 

jkoseattle
I've been working on a project for a while now, it it's just not coming out the way I'd hoped. So I started poring through the online help to figure out what I need to do to improve it. Can anyone offer any tips on how to make this piece sound better?

And yes, I already looked in the help for a "Make Music Sound Better" button. I also thought there might be a slider where you can set how good you want your music to sound. Strangely, no luck.

1. when you ask to have this piece sound better !

A: do you mean how it is composed / played ?
B: or are you talking about the mix / Insrument's and sound quality itself ?

jkoseattle
For example, the bridge for this song doesn't have the same balance of optimism and disillusionment as the verse, perhaps it has a slightly more resigned feeling. Also, at the piano solo in the break it sounds like I'm phoning it in a little, or perhaps am embarrassed by the preponderance of 9th chords. And sure, I could go in and re-record a whole new piano solo, but it's 4 bars long, and so it would just be easier to click on an option somewhere called "Make piano solo better", or again, a "Piano solo quality" slider would be great.

Seems to me that you talk about the composing of the piece here right ?
I guess there will be no sliders or other that can just fix it like that, in sonar
there is a step sequencer in sonar, that u can use on most of
VSTi (virtual instrument ) to help out making beat or melody lines :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQpRpiWocCY 

jkoseattle
I would also like to be able to select a portion of music, say a clip or a region across several tracks, and then apply the "Make it sound better" option to only the selected events, for those times I want some of the piece to remain bad.
 
I'm wondering why these options are apparently buried so deeply into Sonar. Isn't making good music the whole point of the application? You'd think the tools for making it sound better would be front and center.

Also, where is the "Make more commercial" option?

I'm using Sonar X3 on Windows 7. The piece is in D major. I have 6 Gb RAM.

It is hard to give any advice, unless we can understand what you use and
if you work with midi only / audio only or both midi and audio.

If you can export the music piece, so we could have a listen to it
that would probably help us understand a bit better your problem too.

Export audio : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRbRr-0wwjQ 

Making music requires some knowledge of the music software we use, also how to play a
midi instrument and set up VSTi's etc, or and how to play a instrument if recording audio.

Then there's the mixing stage, with insert's / sends of EQ / compressor / reverbs / delays
and so on to ,enhance the overall sound.

Jan

Sonar has all the tools you need.
The 'sound better button' is disguised as the 'mute button'.
 
See if that helps.
 

timidi
Sonar has all the tools you need.
The 'sound better button' is disguised as the 'mute button'.
 
See if that helps.
 

And all this time I thought it was the Concrete Limiter.

I don't know how well you are into DAW's like Sonar, but if you think its hard to understand, like me i have just the
basic's i knowledge in Sonar, must be at least 100 things i still don't know yet , and need to learn.

You could probably start out with something like this : http://www.magix.com/us/music-maker/detail/innovations/ 

This is not to offend you in any way by all means, but just to try help out in a way
It can maybe be vice to learn a cheap music program before going into those heavy
DAW's like Sonar etc...

whooop's , did i mention Sonar, uhhh ...nwm 

Jan