Ironic Twist - "Would It Kill You" (Pop / Latin)

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Nachei
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Ironic Twist - "Would It Kill You" (Pop / Latin)

Post by Nachei »

Happy year to all,

here is a new song of my pop synthy project, I hope you like it.

https://alonetone.com/palmiro/tracks/would-it-kill-you

Drums via Drumgizmo. Instruments were mainly done with Yoshimi as LV2 in Reaper, which is a bit of a mess because it spawns windows like crazy and has a tendency to crash. The situation has improved since as I've moved to ZynnFusion, which rules, but in exchange for the great interface, I guess, some of the instruments, under the same conditions, have latency, forcing you to use a temporary instrument, play, then choose what you want.

But it's aminorinconvenience considering the final quality you get.I have tried some synths but I always end up returning to the Zynn/Yoshimi zone, the instruments they offer out of the box are unpaired...

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Re: Ironic Twist - "Would It Kill You" (Pop / Latin)

Post by Basslint »

I think I get what you are aiming for. I think it's an interesting sound but with a different mastering, the track would work much better. In any case, thanks for showing us something different :D

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Re: Ironic Twist - "Would It Kill You" (Pop / Latin)

Post by folderol »

I wasn't keen on the first part, but liked the more laid-back remainder.

I'm surprised and disappointed you were have problems with Yoshimi as an LV2. Also, are you aware that in many cases, if you right click on an editing button it closes one window as it opens the next. Similarly a right click on the 'Close' button will re-open the one you came from.

Yoshimi LV2 generally performs better as a 'multi' across 16 parts than as a bunch of separate instances.

Finally, what version do you have? The current one is 2.2.2.1

The Yoshimi guy {apparently now an 'elderly'}
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Re: Ironic Twist - "Would It Kill You" (Pop / Latin)

Post by Impostor »

I agree with folderol and Basslint. Good track, but sounds rather "muddy".

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Re: Ironic Twist - "Would It Kill You" (Pop / Latin)

Post by Nachei »

Basslint wrote: Sat Jan 07, 2023 12:06 pm

I think it's an interesting sound but with a different mastering, the track would work much better.

Thank you for taking the time to check the tune. I guess the main problem must be that I wanted to add some saturation and, unable to add a plugin fit or that I could understand, I settled with a distortion one. I thought it was only a pinch but I guess I went too far... :roll:

Plus of course many other problems; "mastering" is like some kind of dark magic for me, as it is EQ, compression, etc... I've learned a bit along the years but most of the time I don't know up from down, most of the time everything sounds the same to me, production is like a punishment I have to suffer for all the fun I've had composing and performing... (But still it's OK if I post my stuff in here, right? It's made with Linux after all, and the site is called Linux MUSICIANS, not Linux producers or audio engineers...)

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Re: Ironic Twist - "Would It Kill You" (Pop / Latin)

Post by Nachei »

folderol wrote: Sat Jan 07, 2023 6:11 pm

I wasn't keen on the first part, but liked the more laid-back remainder.

Thank you for being such a good sport, and giving a chance to the rest of the song although the first part wasn't to your liking. A lot of people would have just gone "neeeext!..."

I'm sorry if my reports have caused such surprise and disappointment. I feel really grateful for Yoshimi, thank you for all your work. For a long time, I used it as my base camp for everything synth; as I mentioned, the sounds you find ootb are unbeatable, which is great for someone like me who doesn't want to tinker with sounds, just have a good selection I can pick from and start to play or compose, which is where the fun is for me.

But I haven't been able to create a workflow that makes sense in Reaper. Whenever you open a plugin instance, it spawns several windows at the same time (often, among them, an incongruous greeting screen "It seems you're using Yoshimi for the first time"...), so it's more screen real estate of what you had in the works covered, plus double or triple work to move those windows around and close them when you're finished. With one instrument, this is is highly inconvenient, but the moment you want to have two or more open at the same time, it becomes a cluttered mess quickly.

Add to that the fact that it is so mouse-centric; you can trick it into opening a list of instruments with key bindings, and even navigate around the instrument names with arrow keys, but, ah the frustration, you cannot choose one with enter or space; you have to CLICK on it. I see this as a big usability annoyance; the way I understand usability, the mouse should be a last resort kind of thing; when the piece of information to acquire is selecting a text (like an instrument name), the keyboard is always better, quicker and more transparent.

Zynnfusion is also too mouse-centric for my taste, but at least everything is under one single roof, that stays contained within Reaper's plugin window, and also, it has text search and tags that make easy to find an instrument that makes sense; I hope this mention to Zynn isn't fostering some kind of "turf wars" between forks I'm not aware of, nor I want to be. I offer with all candour my comments about my user experience.

Maybe what happens is that Yoshimi is more thought out as a "set and forget" kind of thing, instead of opening and closing it every time, which takes a lot of setup time. if I recall correctly that's how i used it in the past, as one single instance with Ardour and Carla. I guess that's what you refer to when you speak of "working as a multi"; sometimes, as I used it with Reaper, I thought to myself "wouldn't it be great if I could have open only one plugin, and it "morphed" to the correct synth parameters depending on which track I click on?".

It might very well be that all these problems have to do with Reaper (Linux native); its capability of using LV2 is relatively new and there are some plugins that act funny...

My Yoshimi version is 2.1.2.2. I'm willing to update it to the latest one "for the cause" if that would be helpful for development, although I think the results won't vary greatly, given that these problems I mention are mostly structural, of philosophy of working. I hope my comments are informative and helpful...

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Re: Ironic Twist - "Would It Kill You" (Pop / Latin)

Post by Nachei »

Thank you for taking the time to comment. Two points define a line, so it seems there's consensus that the track is muddy. Thank you for the valuable feedback...

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Re: Ironic Twist - "Would It Kill You" (Pop / Latin)

Post by folderol »

Nachei wrote: Mon Jan 23, 2023 3:49 pm
folderol wrote: Sat Jan 07, 2023 6:11 pm

I wasn't keen on the first part, but liked the more laid-back remainder.

Thank you for being such a good sport, and giving a chance to the rest of the song although the first part wasn't to your liking. A lot of people would have just gone "neeeext!..."

I'm sorry if my reports have caused such surprise and disappointment. I feel really grateful for Yoshimi, thank you for all your work. For a long time, I used it as my base camp for everything synth; as I mentioned, the sounds you find ootb are unbeatable, which is great for someone like me who doesn't want to tinker with sounds, just have a good selection I can pick from and start to play or compose, which is where the fun is for me.

Thanks for all the additional information. I get the impression that Reaper really doesn't understand LV2! It seems to be arbitrarily over-riding Yoshimi's settings. Yoshimi's LV2 pluigin is tested from time to time with Ardour, Muse, Qtractor and Carla. With all of these Yoshimi will run quite happily without opening any windows at all! When you do want windows open the only one that is compulsory is the main one (for that particular instance). However, if wanted, Yoshimi can reopen others at the size and position they were last used.
As a suggestion, can Reaper be fooled into thinking Yoshimi is an external Synth, so just send MIDI to Yoshimi 'externally'. Can it then also pick up Yoshimi's audio as if it was an external source. That might solve the problem for you.

P.S.
I never get involved with Zyn/Yoshi comparisons. I have used Yoshimi exclusively since 2009 and intend to continue :D

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Re: Ironic Twist - "Would It Kill You" (Pop / Latin)

Post by Impostor »

Nachei wrote: Mon Jan 23, 2023 2:37 pm

Plus of course many other problems; "mastering" is like some kind of dark magic for me, as it is EQ, compression, etc...

You're not alone :)

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