Rated Blue Mixes - Mesmerized

[GMaq]

Hi,

This is a song I wrote several years ago, recently after listening to the 2 great albums by zth (please check out https://soundcloud.com/zthmusic on Soundcloud) I got inspired to learn more about Synthesizers and this song seemed a good fit to remix and experiment. Other than messing around with Soundfonts and MIDI keyboards I am pretty illiterate when it comes to actually creating new sounds with synths. I found Loomer's Aspect to be quite easy to start with and it has a great bunch of presets to start tweaking on. This song was finished in ArdourVST 3.4 and Hydrogen was used for the drums. linuxDSP's PEQ-2A Pultec EQ was utilized with the 'low-end trick' to get the fat low end on the Hip Hop drums to manageable proportions.

Comments, Critiques and Questions Welcomed!

Soundcloud : https://soundcloud.com/glen-macarthur

[Jesse]

Very cool work here! There are so many layers of sounds and textures to discover. None of them are over-done. At its base, the song itself reminds me a bit of the Eagles (minus the fancy production and groove-based beat). I think the horns have a pretty classic sound as well. The synths, bass-line, and drums really pull it in a much more modern direction. I really like the guitar riff that you first hear at 1:26

[GMaq]

Hi,

Thanks for listening and for the encouraging comments, the guitar in that section is played with a slide and layered with electric piano and organ.

[Jesse]

Is the electric piano a sound-font? It is a convincing Wurlitzer. I'm also curious as to what you are using for the horns.

[GMaq]

Hi,

You have good ears! The original tracks from this song go back a long time... the Electric Piano is a Wurlitzer sound library PBF (Pinnacle Bank File). My first computer recording setup was on Windows 98 with a Turtle Beach Pinnacle ISA sound card, it was a huge beast of a thing that required 2 IRQ's to work but it was way ahead of it's time and could handle 24bit Audio and do Wavetable Sampling back in 1997! Turtle Beach had some optional Sound Banks you could download and the Wurli was one of them, for a tiny filesize it was amazing how good it sounded. On this song I'm driving it a bit with the Calf Saturator plugin which also makes it sound a bit more authentic, The horns are the 'Westgate Studios Trumpet' Soundfont with a modded crescendo patch, I was quite surprised how good they sounded since horn SF2's are usually pretty dismal.

When I get a bit of time I hope to host a 'Sounds' FTP as a resource for AV Linux and other Linux Audio users and put up some really good top-notch SF2's etc. It's great to have these huge Soundfont collections around the net to download but I find they are about 90% awful, 8% mediocre and 2% decent quality...

[zth]

Awesome version, and I'm absolutely honored to be mentoined in the OP . I hope you continue working with synths some when you feel like it, it adds a nice layer to your otherwise very acoustic and pure base. Keep it coming, looking forward to the next!

[GMaq]

Thanks zth, I appreciate it, I look forward to more zthmusic as well!

[Jesse]

The horns are the 'Westgate Studios Trumpet' Soundfont with a modded crescendo patch, I was quite surprised how good they sounded since horn SF2's are usually pretty dismal.

I did a double take on the horns. They sound real. I usually avoid horn patches like the plague.

When I get a bit of time I hope to host a 'Sounds' FTP as a resource for AV Linux and other Linux Audio users and put up some really good top-notch SF2's etc. It's great to have these huge Soundfont collections around the net to download but I find they are about 90% awful, 8% mediocre and 2% decent quality...

That certainly would be useful! A while back I was actually throwing around an idea in my head for creating a site which gives information about linux instruments/soundfonts, samples of its use (by itself and in mix), how to use, and a link to download/install. Maybe the site would some sort of community edited resource to make use of the combined wisdom of linux audio community. There certainly are some great sounds out there. A common complaint of using linux for audio, is the lack of instruments, which is in part because of how hard it is to find what you are looking for. Right now, if you search for instruments, you are going to get an overwhelming amount of information that simply is not relevant to linux audio.

[tnovelli]

Nice work Glen. I actually saw it on Soundcloud before this thread.. so that discovery mechanism seems to work pretty well. Listening to zth now - also awesome :)

A common complaint of using linux for audio, is the lack of instruments, which is in part because of how hard it is to find what you are looking for. Right now, if you search for instruments, you are going to get an overwhelming amount of information that simply is not relevant to linux audio.

Yeah, I imagine I'd be pretty frustrated without all my real instruments. If it weren't for these discussions I'd be hopelessly lost when it comes to samples - really appreciate it!

[Ricardus]

I always liked this track. A little bit of Rundgren in there, I think.

Nice additions. I have ideas.

[GMaq]

@Jesse

Yeah that's a good idea too! It's the prickly licensing issues and maintenance time that often kills these things. I personally don't get too ruffled about that stuff, I figure if I found it freely distributed on the net and it wasn't of commercial origin (or warez) then simply mirroring it for others to get ahold of isn't a terribly criminal activity but many people believe otherwise..

@tnovelli

Thanks for listening, I agree that it's hard to beat just using the real thing when possible, In the time it took me to sort through literally hundreds of Soundfonts to find that Westgate trumpet I could have taught myself to actually play the damned thing!

@Ricardus

Hey there! Nice to see you around here. Thanks for commenting... Ideas..!? Please share!