Suspended-3rd-Chord 2008-03-19 06:51:42

Now you know how you came across? Well, the way I took it was you were completely bashing what I wrote for no legitimate cause. You're last paragraph was completely flaming and you were speaking to me in a condescending tone. You can't come in and honestly say "no offense" yet end your post by telling me to shut up. That's a very weak way of pandering. I was offended by it at the time, but not so much anymore considering I came to realize I don't agree with some of what you said, people thanking me for taking the time and effort to writing an in depth blog, with my intention of trying to help out people- meaning what I wrote wasn't completely worthless, and finally seeing that you have no more credibility than I do, and I don't have any more credibility than you do either. Regardless, I respect what most people say, and when someone tells me that they would become a *worse* musician from reading what I just posted, I find it bothersome.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and I'm glad to hear that you are generous enough to spread what you learn with people. I try to do the same. Are you saying what I wrote in this blog is not sharing my knowledge of what I've learned with other people? I mean there's no generic formula that will universally put everyone in a daze and automatically be considered good music. You can judge on aspects like technicality, originality, popularity, diversity, flow, etc. but no matter what there will never be a quantitative way to measure music. From saying, "put some light compression on your lead synth, there's some minor clipping" to "put more reverb on your piano to make it sound more realistic " to "I find that chord progression you use in that sequence awkward," all has levels of subjectivity. Maybe the light clipping can spark some memories of old, "shitty" recordings on a talkboy (remember Home Alone?) or an antique recording from windows recorder (if that's what they still cal it) of an 11 year old playing guitar on maximum loudness and distortion, making noise about a song involving a silly topic like tacos. That can have value. Maybe someone wants their instruments to sound cheap, or classic and not have reverb (like old jazz, the ancient amplifiers had no reverb, except natural reverb, but you get my point). That right there has lots of purpose, and of course value.

Now I don't think you're really getting at me for the mixing, mastering tips that I provided. But moreso the points in # 4. I'm kind of regretting for including that in there without explaining the context and background a bit more, and possibly elaborating more music theory wise- but I didn't want to get out of bounds regarding the level of content that I was explaining here. You say in your final cluster "everything in music is fair game" and go on to say lots of music like jazz and classical ends on abrupt chords, well no shit. Way to completely disregard me saying "There is tons of theories and contexts that will go out of the bounds of this blog". Obviously, the "space chord" and more intricate jazz and classical pieces ARE NOT BEGINNER MATERIAL. When I first started guitar, and was showing some of my compositions which ended on weird, unresolving chords to my teacher, and generally had no sense of tonality, he gave me some suggestions on how to make it smoother, and explaining to me the importance of certain tones, intervals, notes sound pleasant to finish on. I don't abide by these rules like they're set in stone, but I sure as hell thank him for telling me how to establish this stuff and write with more direction. When I review other's music and tell them to end on more resolving chords, usually the context is a simple techno or dance track, a quaint classical tune, a poppy rock track. I take in account their style and what type of tonality and feeling they gave me throughout, and offer my opinion. I'm talking about people stopping in the middle of an arpeggio, or a chord progression like they haven't put anything thought into finishing their work, and end abruptly. This is what I'm mainly getting at, HALF ASSED ENDINGS. It doesn't necessarily have to do with just an unsuitable chord in the end either; I talk about multiple different matters in paragraph 4. But, I'm not an authority and what I say is not solid fact or the way something 'ought to be. For someone who claims to give people lessons and be around music production for more than a decade, you should know (which you did indicate yourself but in a different wording) there is no right way to go about making music.

I don't think anyone would disagree with you that music is also a discipline and that you need to practice your craft in order to continually improve. Like every activity in the world, there will be beginner stages for everything. Your analogy about fishing makes perfect sense; but I fail to see any clinching relevance with that metaphor regarding my tutorial. Teaching a man to fish is what you should need to look for in order to be a successful fisher, but along the way you're going to need to be shown how to catch guppies or whatever small fish that are easier to catch (I know nothing about fishing) before you try to reel in a huge ass bass. In comparison, you can't just jump right into a complex sonata before being able to compose a simple child's tune. Regarding this blog post, my intentions are not to start from the basics and teach you everything, but provide useful info along the way. Hopefully people that are serious are learning elsewhere, whether teaching themselves through an online resource or going to the library and reading a book like you recommended, or taking lessons with a professional. When I review, when other's review, they're not going to give a large tutorial to everyone on how to create music, but give some advice and criticism along the way. I have no idea how that would make you a worse musician. I've never had anyone say in a response (400 reviews, 281 response, which is actually greater since people have the ability to delete tracks, thus deleteing reviews) "hey fuck you, that information your provided is completely useless, false, and from reading that my music IQ just dropped a whopping 30 points". Oh no. I'm not arrogant to assume that will or has never be/been the case; but the majority of responses tell me the reviews that I leave are helpful. Some disagree with what I say and that's completely fine. But by taking what I say into consideration the next time around, they may use my advice and personally think to themselves "hey what he/she left to me may work quite well in this piece, I think". I'm just spreading my knowledge, my OPINION (which you originally said I should shut up for unless I know it's truth-again there's no absolute "right way" to really create things in music. If there was, we would come to a standstill where no experimentation was allowed, and from an extreme perspective if no one experimented, we would be still at our roots, banging rocks together) and they're taking what I said into consideration, and that's all I can hope for. Again, no one's going to argue with you that the music is more than beginner tips, but there's not a damn thing wrong with providing a little assistance along the way. Just to be redundant, music is subjective and there is no real way of measuring how good or bad a piece of music is, but what I do believe as being true is the more knowledge you have will you give you the power to more easily, more successfully write music, and will give you the ability to expand and more accurately express your emotions through sound. I can definitely see how I could be "piling on to the mainstream garbage" by trying to enforce, generic rules by telling people how to write music more smoothly, but I sincerely hope you wouldn't take it that way. All I'm doing is drawing a light to new worlds for people who may not know already. I learn something new everyday, whether it be from solo experimentation, or OUT OF SPACE check my comment below

Suspended-3rd-Chord 2008-03-19 11:38:04

Yes, thank you for the support. I wouldn't force anyone or say its 100% necessary to learn music theory. But when used correctly it can help and will expand your knowledge. What's more important is having something to say from the heart like you said. You can have all the gramatical tools, a wide vocabulary, a wonderful understanding of the language of english, but when it comes to writing, it's all pointless when you don't have anything to say. They will help you polish and more effectively get your work across, but without soul you have nothing. Not sure exactly sure how ideas can be taught to everyone, all I know is that I know people who have been performing music for 6-7 years, take and pass theory classes, yet when it comes to compositional excercises they're completley lost. I've asked people to improvise or jam with me and some of them just play scales up and down, and just can't develop their own melodies, despite them being around music for years. And that literary metaphor is from Steve Dunster btw- just giving credit where its due.

Also to add on to what I said above, there's a saying "you have to no the rules before you break them". While I don't entirely agree with this, guidelines do help when you're just a beginner and you're lost.

Lastly, even some of the mixing advice you may want to through out in a few years...like where I said put a soft limiter on your master to eliminate clipping. Why? because you're sacrificing some small details for the sake of some unwanted distortion. when you get more experience you will want to stray away from limiters and start more effectively using compressors in certain parts.

Suspended-3rd-Chord 2008-03-21 04:11:01

Well a Cmin13sus4b5/Gb chord (C thirteenth suspended fourth half diminished chord, that may not be the correct order to spell it out) is just a Cmin13sus4b5/Gb chord, and I don't see why it would make a difference what the key is. I started with Cmin13b5 C E%u266D G%u266D B%u266D D%u266D F A%u266D ( R b3 b5 b7 b9 11 b13) which you can build from a half diminished/locrian scale (so the key would be Db if you really needed it) , suspended the fourth (replace Eb with F) and then put it in third inversion, therefore Gb Bb Db F Ab C F. That wouldn't be a GbM9addb12 because that chord would only have five notes, but then again two of the notes are doubled in octaves so maybe that notation would work. Just to nitpick, the diminished 12th is technically a dbb making a GbM9addb12 be Gb Bb Db F Ab Dbb, but of course enharmonically that is C. But like you said, there's multiple names for chords when they get that big. In fact anything that can be inverted will have more than one way of naming it. That was actually pretty fun to explain, i might start reading up on more music theory again. It's been a while and my analyzing skills are rusty, so that's why I'm not fully confident if wasn't correct, but that's how I got to it atleast.

really, dont worry about your scores; as most submissions will automatically receive ghost 0 votes no matter how developed a track is. That's a problem that continues to frustate everyone here. If you put effort into your work and people like it, and you just stay active here, you'll get more people to come back and vote fairly, and your tracks will slowly surface. The words in the reviews are more important. Of course, if it hits the front page it will just get 0ed again, due to the overly competitive nature of this site. Well, everything's all cool now I hope. Apology accepted and I'm sorry if I snapped back at you. thanks for the goodluck, I wish the same to you!

Suspended-3rd-Chord 2008-03-23 14:34:52

no u.

Suspended-3rd-Chord 2008-03-23 21:56:43

why thank you :) I still should probably brush up some parts...meh

Suspended-3rd-Chord 2008-03-24 17:31:03

GROSS

Suspended-3rd-Chord 2008-03-30 18:37:05

BITCHSLAPPED!!!!1

Suspended-3rd-Chord 2008-03-30 19:14:53

you're welcome man, thank you even more for reading :)

Ooops, I should have probably explained how to install soundfonts.

1. For soundfonts that come as "sfark" or "sfpack" format, you will need to download the soundfont compressor program. In this case, you need to download sfark, which is actually right above the squidfont download link. You were able to decompress it with winzip? Didn't know that was possible XD

2. Copy and Paste the soundfont into your soundfont directory in FL studio. My location is Program Files -> Image Line -> FL Studio -> Data -> Patches -> Soundfonts. now i'm just saying that off the top of my head but it should look something like that...let me know if you can't find the folder.

3. While in FL studio, go to add channel -> Soundfont Player. And then from there you can use the folder icon on the plugin to open up your soundfont list, and load up whatever soundfont you desire...it should default to the folder that I told you to paste the soundfont in.

That should work :) let me know if you get stuck or have any problems. Hope this helps!

Suspended-3rd-Chord 2008-03-31 20:53:56

Glad it worked :)

Loading your new samples into FL should be an easy task to nail as well. All you need to do is to load them into a folder that will appear on the browser in FL. I find the most place to do this is by pasting the folder of samples into Program Files -> Fl Studio -> Data -> Patches -> Packs. it doesn't really matter were you paste them though. Then you just load up the broswer (the fourth icon with "SB" in the top right) in FL studio and they should be there, and just open the folder and drag them onto the step sequencer, or load them up into a sampler, or FPC if you want to organize your samples into one channel (I can tell you how to do this if you want). This should work! have fun and good luck :)

Suspended-3rd-Chord 2008-04-01 21:26:24

NP, have fun :)

Suspended-3rd-Chord 2008-04-09 16:00:11

hmm, dont know what to say, they work fine from here. anyways, i emailed them to you.