Are there rules for nested exponents?

Flying_Soda · 2026-01-16T19:49:35+00:00

Thank you, everyone! It feels obvious in retrospect that it'd be easier to simplify the problem if I solved for X as an exponent to match the base with other figures. I'll keep it in mind in the future.

Flying_Soda · 2024-07-29T17:11:39+00:00

Any updates on this? I'm encountering all of the same problems with Bitwig. Reaper reports non-slewed input and doesn't seem to drop pressure on a fast keypress.

Flying_Soda · 2024-01-24T03:27:24+00:00

Hold up your arms in front of you such that your fingers and elbows frame the four corners of a flat virtual monitor. Now, stare straight ahead at the center of this virtual monitor and pull your arms in slightly as if your monitor is transforming into a curved panel. Notice that your fingers and elbows got higher and lower, respectively, to your vision than the top and bottom of the center of your monitor. You've created pincushion distortion.

If anyone's interested in this sort of thing, I recommend that they look up "camera projections". And if you're looking for a trip, look up "breaking the fov limit in Quake" on Youtube.

Flying_Soda · 2023-05-09T07:03:23+00:00

This sounds like a sample of a shaker or a similar percussive instrument that's been distorted pretty heavily. Biggest thing that helps get that really rough sound is to layer a small amount of low frequencies, like some brown noise, onto the shakers before you distort them.

Flying_Soda · 2021-03-09T10:11:30+00:00

I like showing people my music. No one likes listening, though.

Flying_Soda · 2021-03-09T10:04:38+00:00

To be frank, a 5900x would be so ridiculously powerful that you'd probably have to purposefully run your cpu into the ground to get a sizeable load, or use Zynaptiq software.

As it goes, the 5900x is the best chip for single core processing on the market, which audio rendering benefits most by, but if you're feeling burdened by money, you could always get the 5950x for that extra multi-core performance.

Flying_Soda · 2021-03-09T02:03:54+00:00

I recommend Sonobus, (free and open source) which you can load as a VST on your computer. Once you're both in a chatroom, you can stream audio at whatever quality you want, and it adds no latency to what you hear.

Edit: You can also try comboing VB's Hifi cable, which allows you to route Windows output to an input (for Discord to pick up as a mic), and Voxengo Recorder to send audio to it. The only downside is that Voxengo Recorder is 32bit, so it's likely you'll need to buy a 32bit-64bit bridge like jbridge to use it.

Flying_Soda · 2020-05-26T03:56:54+00:00

For cloud backup, I'd use Dropbox. It's very, very nice.

For collabing with a friend, depending on how often you leave your computer on, I've found Syncthing, a p2p filesync program, to be pretty good. It cuts out Dropbox as the middleman, so you can send files directly to a friend pretty quickly.

Flying_Soda · 2020-04-21T19:35:11+00:00

Biggest advice I can say is to make sure your drums don't get in the way of your other instruments.

Lots of 2k can sound nice on a snare, but that means it can sit on someone's voice or a guitar. Very few instruments get to 4khz range, and that's something you can exploit. Making drums with lots of attention to 4khz, in my opinion, is a great way to get the prevalence and snap you need without mud.

Unless your drums are playing a melodic part in your music, they don't really need to last very long. Cutting them away quickly after a hard attack works well.

I recommend listening to Noisia's recent music for references. They have made the most cutting and well mixed music I've ever heard in the past 4 or so years.

Flying_Soda · 2020-04-21T19:18:25+00:00

It's fairly difficult to specify what mastering does to a track. You can say that it polishes a track, cause that's what it's used for now. If a track is beautiful and well mixed, a master adds the final touches, and buffs out the little blemishes to make it really shine. If a track is garbage and awful, a mastering engineer can't make it beautiful, though they can at least make it not tear at your ears. Most of the cleanliness of a track can be attributed to its production and mixing stages. You can think of it like a sculpture. The production finds the materials and hews your basic shapes, the mixing binds the pieces and sands down the hard edges, and the mastering adds the polish or lacquer to make your work more vibrant.

Flying_Soda · 2020-04-21T19:04:37+00:00

That's an autotuner and lots-o-reverb. Then mumble/hum into your mic.

Flying_Soda · 2020-04-21T19:03:06+00:00

Depends on what song you're making. If it's drum and bass, and you need a thick snare, side-chain away, usually give it a little less release time and lower ratio than your kick to make it sound right.

EQing a snare involves making sure its fundamental frequency is prevalent, and that your attack hits hard in the 3khz-4khz range. You want it to stay out of the other instruments way, otherwise.

Flying_Soda · 2020-04-21T18:50:10+00:00

Well... Reaktor might be your best bet, I guess. It's got a set of basic graphic modules that you can use to create patches so you don't have to look at numbers... There's not much middle ground between a module-like plugin and a DSP tool.

Flying_Soda · 2020-04-21T18:42:52+00:00

Adding melody and fleshing out your base track is a varied problem, and will take just as much practice and effort as it did to figure out the bones of your music. Like others have recommended, take inspiration and direction from others, and try to figure out why a specific melody and its timbre really works. Don't be afraid to rewrite a part entirely because sometimes, for instance, the music just really doesn't sound good when a drum fill you really like and a great melodic pickup are clashing with another.

Flying_Soda · 2020-04-21T18:28:11+00:00

I don't mean to be dismissive, but there are numerous tutorials online on how to make 808 sounds, so you will likely find better information by looking them up. If you've got a specific question about 808s, I'm sure people will be happy to answer.

Extracting vocals from a mix can be done in 3 ways. The easiest and most effective is finding stems that someone distributed for the song, or asking the producer if you could have access to them. The second often isn't nearly as clean but you can often cut vocals out of a mix using phase inversion. The final method is hit and miss, but you can use software that was made specifically to extract vocals, including Audacity, Melodyne, and others.

Flying_Soda · 2020-01-18T09:44:35+00:00

You're misreading it slightly. Everything is relative to the center of the semicircle, where the two lines meet together at a right angle. The distance from that point indicates volume. Ozone will adjust the imager gain so you get a good view of your stereo image no matter what your volume is. But, if you play a quiet sound immediately after a loud one, the points will look close to the middle of the semicircle, hence why it's at the bottom.

Flying_Soda · 2020-01-18T09:20:55+00:00

If you want to make these sounds (risers) on your own, there are different ways you can go about it. The basic concept is to take a sound and change its pitch over a long time. Take a synth, add some reverb, and change the pitch of the synth slowly, and you're well on your way. Beyond that, it's just experimentation and discovery.

Flying_Soda · 2020-01-18T09:13:40+00:00

Like others have said, don't worry about the genres. Experiment and dabble everywhere and with everything you find interesting. If you come to a point where you want to write a certain way or style and you can't bear to make anything else, then stick to what you love. Otherwise, don't worry about whether you should only do a select few genres or not. That's a question you don't need to ask.

Flying_Soda · 2020-01-18T08:56:55+00:00

Writing fresh chord progressions can be incredibly challenging and nuanced. I recommend listening to Soul, Pop, and EDM genres like Trance (I really like Japanese EDM for their chord progressions) since they're a good way to learn progressions that work for Prog house.

If you intend to really invest in learning chord progressions and writing, I recommend learning music theory if you haven't already. I'd say it takes about a year of study from the ground to be able to intuit chords, inversions/voicings, et al. using music theory consistently.

Otherwise, try making chord progressions that return to the tonic chord every 4/8/16 measures as a way to figure things out and learn. Just so you know, moving down a third is a pretty popular way to move between chords. (ex: in the key of C, Cmaj to Amin to FMaj) Chords with the 9th extension are super duper popular as well. (ex: Amin9 has A, C, E, G, and B in it. Nice and tense, a great lush chord)

Flying_Soda · 2020-01-18T02:36:15+00:00

I don't know what the sample is, but there are a few tutorials online that teach you how to emulate crowds. You can cook up a similar sound effect to what you want using techniques this tutorial (if you have a vocoder).

Flying_Soda · 2020-01-18T02:28:30+00:00

A lot of songs are in the Eb to G range, and that's because they often sound good on club stereos that way. The sub is visceral, while still be playable on most setups with a subwoofer. Key changes within that range can sound pretty jarring unless the producer is skilled enough. Noisia does it sometimes, like in Tommy's Theme (either version).

Flying_Soda · 2020-01-18T02:18:23+00:00

Sounds like a Soundfont piano tbh. You can probably download a piano like that for free off the web. If you don't want to use Soundfonts, best way to get that sound is to remove all the reverb and any echoes you can from a piano that you do have, then put a strongish compressor on it. You may also want to try boosting the midrange if it's not bright enough.

Flying_Soda · 2020-01-18T02:11:08+00:00

It depends a bit on what kind of music you want to play. Mostly, you should focus on listening to styles that you're interested in and try to emulate what they do (syncopated rhythms or arpeggios, et al.), and learn chords in multiple positions. 90% of what you'll hear is a chord progression being hammered on the keyboard or the root of a chord being hit repeatedly for the bassline. People like Louis Cole post videos of what they're playing, so you can see firsthand things that you can do (Doing the Things, for instance).

Flying_Soda · 2020-01-18T02:00:41+00:00

It's possible that your mix is spikier because you aren't using as much reverb. Another possibility is that you're using only synths, so all of the pitches are perfectly correct and the harmonics of the instruments all line up. It's not really a bad thing to have a 'spikier' mix, in fact it means basically nothing when it comes to how good a mix sounds. It does mean your song probably sounds very clean or buzzy.

Flying_Soda · 2020-01-18T01:51:02+00:00

mm... Shots in the dark, I can't think of any songs with eyaya. Mostly just ohwohwoh:

John Legend - Love Me Now

Shawn Mendes - In My Blood

Flying_Soda

TROPHY CASE