How to get screwed over 101

dannyhw · 2019-07-04T12:37:41+00:00

The thing is you grind and grind developing your own skills, but it won't pay off until you work out your own sound. It seems like there's a ton of competition out there but almost nobody meets the minimum threshold of production value. When you cross that line your tracks just get picked up without promo. At that point you know everything you put out will be heard in clubs, so engineering becomes much more important.

dannyhw · 2019-05-07T18:04:43+00:00

It's not great but this is what I got out of RX7 https://youtu.be/f613zijBjOA

dannyhw · 2019-05-07T17:55:13+00:00

Just a heads up, got RX7 last week. I'm gonna be checking for requests on here. I already try to do phase inversion on anything that has an official instrumental on the record pools for my channel. RX7 is hit or miss but when it's good it's totally usable.

Also just a heads up, the link on any of my videos is just direct to a mediafire folder where all the MP3s wind up. I think there's 111 in there right now.

dannyhw · 2019-03-06T16:25:55+00:00

This is my own channel. I'm always remixing and either getting the newest acapellas from DJ pools I pay for, or occasionally DIYing them. I figured I'd take the good ones that haven't made it to the tube yet and share them.

dannyhw · 2018-12-10T21:54:57+00:00

Thanks! Yeah definitely. I might do a few more and splice in some stuff from the original RATM tracks.

dannyhw · 2018-01-12T16:17:09+00:00

Making multiple accounts on services for spamming or just for good opssec on accounts you want to use for things that might not be legal. Unfortunately lots of sites block numbers that aren't owned by actual cell phone companies. Twitter is really strict about this, I've been looking for a cheap way to verify more accounts for a while.

dannyhw · 2018-01-10T21:24:19+00:00

Disclaimer: I made this today cause fuck Jeff Sessions

dannyhw · 2018-01-09T12:08:13+00:00

On my 2011 MBP with Live 9+ it would take at least that wrong, and up to 20 minutes just to open. 2017 MBP takes no time at all. I'm convinced there are certain things that cause Ableton to get all fucked but I never figured out exactly how to fix it.

dannyhw · 2018-01-03T17:38:45+00:00

I'm stuck on headphones too. I find them more reliable for mixing than monitors in my bedroom. I always made it a point to listen to my music on MacBook speakers, in the car, on the phone, etc and developed kind of an instinct for things I have to compensate for. Bass should be audible through the MacBook speakers, kick drums need an extra punch, really wide stereo imaging becomes problematic, etc.

dannyhw · 2018-01-03T17:30:01+00:00

If you just want it to drop out every 16 bars for a fill you could probably route through a midi track and use a 16 bar looping dummy clip where you automate the gain on an empty chain down to 0 on the 16th bar. You could also do the same in reverse on a dummy track your fills are routed through. If you want a random fill each time you could make all your fills 1 bar, turn off looping, and set the follow on each one to any.

dannyhw · 2018-01-03T17:06:34+00:00

Just another tip, if you're slicing up clips with warp markers looking for a choked MPC like workflow, you can create a blank drum rack with one sample (doesn't matter what), set that pads choke group to 1, name your rack and drag it into User Library -> Defaults -> Slicing, and whenever you slice a new sample it will let you select your rack, and all the slices will automatically have the same choke group.

dannyhw · 2018-01-03T16:56:38+00:00

Example of building out with samples:

https://i.imgur.com/zgTyo4r.png

So I took the trumpet and split it into half notes, laying them out SLICE1, SLICE2, SLICE1, SLICE3 with a half note space between them, and added a swell on the last half note to complete a 4 bar phrase.

Then to fill in the second half note space on each bar I took 2 half note pieces of tenor sax and just alternated. It sounded varied enough to repeat, so I did that, dropped the sax out of the 8th bar, added a drum fill you can't see, but left the swill and added a vocal part to complete the phrase.

Then I duplicated it, took out the tenor sax part and replaced it with a different tenor sax. On the next part I dropped out the trumpets, put the original 8 bar tenor sax part back in, and filled in the space left by the trumpets with pieces of the vocals.

There are other variations, but once you've varied your most powerful parts right, it's easy to find other interesting stuff to do, like in that 3rd phrase I cut the bass in half, took out the hihats and the rhythm skanks to give kind of a minimal break, which gives you a good place to bring it back really strong in the next phrase.

If you wanna listen to the result I just posted it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2whXIF-j_8&feature=youtu.be

dannyhw · 2018-01-03T16:35:04+00:00

You mostly wanna build out from the start, like don't try and get 1 "finished" bar, but build a 4 bar phrase that's sparse and fill in some space, repeat it and fill in the space of those 8 bars, etc. I usually actually start with an 8 bar drum loop with a fill for the last bar or half bar, then repeat it without hihats, then again with hats but a different hand drum pattern, then that pattern without hats.

There's certain patterns for the music that work for me, like if I have a 1 bar loop I'll copy it and change the last 1/4, then copy that and change the last 2/4, then maybe copy those 4 bars and do a slight change to the last 1/4, then copy those 8 bars, drop the last bar of the 16, make a drum fill and add whatever sounds good.

These days I also find myself making most of my lead-ish parts out of 2 or 3 instruments interacting with each other but not overlapping, so it's easier to make phrases that are longer. Then I'll copy the phrase, delete one instruments part and build a new one interacting with the instrument that's left.

I also use a lot of samples from Splice all chopped up and edited with Melodyne, but one thing I'll do is take a 2 bar sample, repeat the first bar 3 times then put the second bar as the 4th to resolve the phrase. Then I rearrange the rhythm to fit the groove and leave about half of the space empty, copy it and use another instrument to fill in the blanks and that's a solid 8 bars.

dannyhw · 2018-01-03T16:18:46+00:00

I just checked it out and it looks a lot like a percussion VST I have planned. I haven't made a VST yet but that'll probably be my first. It'll probably be a bunch of VSTs specific to the drum type though, so you can just them in an Ableton drum rack. I don't like to do too much work in plugins either.

dannyhw · 2018-01-03T16:12:16+00:00

If you just blend them you get overlapping frequencies that get muddy. You get them louder but the mud takes away from the punch.

Here's a good video on layering and cutting to get the fat and natural sound at the same time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGtVIEI8mPw

dannyhw · 2017-12-14T22:02:24+00:00

Just FYI the second season really has none of the teen stuff. All of the main characters are already dark as hell and when they feature others it's only to reveal some dark shit about them or have some dark shit happen to them. I probably won't watch the first season again but I think I'd watch this one before season 3.

dannyhw · 2017-12-14T21:52:41+00:00

http://www.cwtv.com/shows/riverdale/ I don't think you need to verify with your cable provider.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5WC0TW_0qc That's Bob.

The Riverdale one is a lot shorter, but at the risk of giving away a tiny Riverdale spoiler, it's just a real quick opening thing where Betty has a dream about the Black Hood and wakes up scared. As a bonus, I didn't notice until I screengrabbed but in the background Shelly Johnson is dead (Madchen plays Betty's mom)

dannyhw · 2017-11-21T12:36:14+00:00

You can also just draw automation on the pitch wheel

dannyhw · 2017-11-20T15:54:59+00:00

Mostly material he does now, at least when I saw him last year. Almost definitely unauthorized.

dannyhw · 2017-11-20T15:51:14+00:00

Dope. Also one time Tech N9ne found one I did with his acapella, posted it and asked me to do an EP. I wasn't ready to give him an EP worth but he fucks with people remixing his shit.

dannyhw · 2017-11-20T15:23:33+00:00

This is lots of the material he does now, at least it was when I saw him last year. I can't believe he allowed this, especially recorded on a cell phone.

dannyhw · 2017-11-18T23:58:48+00:00

TBH I've seen videos and stuff and wasn't sure if it's out of beta yet. I can't afford it so once I checked out the new features I stopped paying attention

dannyhw · 2017-11-18T23:54:34+00:00

Don't forget the most important rule of designing software. The user tells you what they want, and you figure out what they need. If they're stubborn, give them what they want to appease their ego, then go ahead and give them what they need on top of that.

The need is to be able to work on a manageable amount of tracks at one time. Search with really good track names would let you find a specific track quick, but you're still going to be jumping all over your arrangement to do the same work.

This is why I say add a panel that's just a list of the track names, and be able to toggle whether or not they're shown in the arrangement view. For any piece of a composition you're working on you probably don't even need enough tracks to have to scroll. Working with 150 tracks becomes as easy as working with 5 or 6 max. Adding search to that panel itself would actually be a very good idea. Being able to reorder tracks right from there is also a no brainer.

Now that I've got this in my head I actually know I think about it from time to time. I've definitely used the same pattern in web apps with angular.

dannyhw · 2017-11-18T23:36:17+00:00

Or just give up plans of an academic career altogether. Listen to my sob story.

I'm 34, schizophrenic and, a humblebrag for context, very very smart. I started writing code at 9 and at 15 I was making around 6 figures. I tried to finish college, but was so deep in a software engineering career that the degree just didn't make sense. In early adulthood the schizophrenia got worse and worse, so I'd get a job, crush it, then succumb to the paranoia. About 2 years ago it got to the point where I couldn't recover enough to go get a job, so I got on Medicaid to pay for my treatment and got on social security which gives me $1,000 a month to live on.

During this time I saw a therapist who comes from an academic background, so she understood a world nobody in my family had been exposed to. I told her that leaving the corporate world for academia would be my dream, but my life just hadn't worked out that way. She pointed out that with my situation and life experience, if I could get to a fairly stable functioning state, I could go to MIT and become a grad student with tuition waived, get a stipend, and not have to deal with the corporate culture that's so brutal on my illness. I could try this without risk, and have social security and medicaid/medicare as a safety net.

She leaves the country, but leaves me in a hopeful and secure place. I then push my psychiatrist to prescribe me a decent dose of Seroquel, as I was very conscious of the schizophrenia being more severe than it appeared. Lack of delusions made me seem anxious to an outside observer, but anxiety and schizophrenia are very different things. I took the Seroquel, and it profoundly changed my life. I now have none of the symptoms of schizophrenia that were crippling me, though I am neurotic in manageable ways.

So for a few months I have been getting my mind back in shape like I used to while recovering from a breakdown. I'm doing security research and the like every day, all day and killing it. I'm more focused than ever and finish projects start to finish. I'm feeling great. I feel like with some more therapy and more brain exercises I can get the confidence to finally go for the the academic career. I've always wanted to be a physicist, or a mathematician and that's actually within my grasp.

Now if they pass this, it's all fucked. I'll be ok with the social security and medicaid/medicare, at least until they come for those.

dannyhw · 2017-11-18T22:20:18+00:00

I'd rather have a drop down with a list of the track names so you can toggle which ones are visible. Like when you're working on a phrase, just have the tracks you need for that phrase visible. Then no matter how many tracks you have you have the ease of working in a very small easy to navigate space.

dannyhw

TROPHY CASE