[part 1 of 2 because it was 14831 characters. lol. I'll reply to this with part 2 of 2] You like my rambling on, on a smart phone. haha.
So the new week started on a Friday? :-D
I finished a new tune the other day. I'm not just gonna plug the link. I'm gonna talk about the process. Project's been dragging on half a year now. Wanted to do stuff with sirens and alarms. Started it beginning of Sept. Took a month to get samples and clean them up. I like the challenge of taking old samples I got in the late 90's and see if I can clean them up with today's tools.
Then make pitch shifted instruments with that, which were in the same key as piano. Used a bit of those experimental instruments later in the track for melody notes. So you've got sirens and alarms playing melody notes. Some of that can sound bad but had 28 melody instruments, 2 octaves higher and lower than the root note. So I'd have to go thru them all and choose what isn't too off-key. Also move notes up or down octaves to get in the best range closer to the root note.
There's 6 parts in it. "Borrowed" the melodies from public domain classical. Not easy because most of that, they think it's "artsy" to go on bad sounding tangents. That's why people don't like classical. Also scrub stuff that's too sissy. Gotta keep it rolling. That took about a month to weed out bad sections then make things flow back together after.
Next, had to add drums. I had a few thousand midi loops but not enough. If you get into 3/4 stuff, wasn't enough. So I'm there, ok, ya need damn midi drum loops, I'll get ya some. How about 400k. That took another month to deal with. It was all in tons of subfolders. I forget the number but something like 11k folders. You're gonna click those one at a time to see what's in there? I don't think so.
I like all my stuff in 1 folder then you just deal with file names, replacing whatever sequence of folders they were in. I use this Bulk rename utility program to deal with damn file names. Like, come on here, you're dealing with 400k files. Have you ever dealt with that much of anything? The most I had to deal with before that was like 30k when I got various movie studio SFX libraries. Just opening that damn folder is a nightmare because you have to wait for the progress bar to assess what's up. At least in the multitrack program, it'd take a few minutes but after that even if I'd change folders in the file browser window, it wouldn't have to do that all over again. Phew.
But I got it going. And then did a search for 3/4, copied those into another folder. I want just rolls. Search for "fill" and put copies of those in it's own folder. Same thing with anything that had the word metal. Once those were in the metal folder, search for fills. Now I had metal rolls. Also crash swells.
I'm not gonna scroll thru 400k when I need just rolls. When you move the scroll bar it's like, whoops just zoomed past 10k, I think. How you gonna deal with this, well, move wherever, grab something, see what's up. Do that 100 times to get drums for one of the 6 sections. Then another round for extra rolls.
Only 2GB though for all that. However, lots of this crap was for specific drum programs and when I import them in the multitrack, some notes aren't always for GM midi drums. haha. So you might have stuff up on some high or low note but you don't know what instrument it's supposed to be. Whatever.. it's something. Lots of the time it would work. Once in a while though, things would only have to be moved up +3. But would all be at the proper drum kit notes. What's up with that.
Now I had an ultra crapload of midi drum loops. Lots of it is unquantized too, so sounds like real drumming. The important thing is the kit. You don't wanna use your bad typical midi drum kit that's a 2mb soundfont, sounds like tin. I found a good kit that sounded realistic. Now it sounds like real drums with it being unquantized.
Spent a month weeding out the bad classical tangents. Add drums to it. Yeah. Lots of this stuff the notes aren't to metronome. So gotta deal with that. Then it's like, drum loops start on a kick. Well, these classical notes, the snare's supposed to go there, and it's first, so it can't be the kick. haha. Now the whole sequence seems off if you start with a snare. But whatever, the snare must go there. lol. So I got drums going to this, then need extra rolls, so a second kit lots of the time. Another going thru trying 100 files till you find something that fits. Real pain in the ass, all this. And that's just for once section. Because I merge things, stuff can change so one of the 6 parts, might have a few changes, meaning oh a couple hundred drum loop file tests each. And then, might need rolls there and some more there can't use the same thing, so more tests of importing loops that usually don't work. Just the drums were a good month.
So I had these 6 cornball dittys with drums. Now, let's replace the sissy harpsichord with distortion guitar and bass. I have this soundfont where it makes notes sound a lot like distortion guitar. But I take the recorded wav and run it thru more distortion later, and slow flange, and reverb. Then it sounds less synthetic. It's still not real guitar but better than this other soundfont I had. This one, the end notes waver around like a real guitar with a bit of vibrato on longer held notes. So it's pretty close to rock guitar. Doesn't sound too fake. Now I had like normal mini-tracks. Some of these fast classical notes, when you change it to distortion guitar, it's pretty close metal. hahaha. Classical can rock but you don't notice because it's sissy harpsichord and no thumping drums. And then sometimes I'm dealing with whole orchestras. So a couple dozen tracks. I coulda changed things to other instruments but I'm there, let's rock. So even if it was a couple dozen orchestra channels I'm there, all of them are either going to be lead guitar, or rhythm guitar if they're doing chords, and then if it's low simple notes, those 'll be bass. hahaha. Many times though, they merge things in one track. Left hand, right hand. Now you gotta separate thing and go, ok which one would be the left hand. Or take complicated stuff and try to get bass from it. Want variations so it's not just the same notes as what's going on with the guitar. All of this there, can be a bit of a pain in the ass. hahaha. Trying to make classical "rock". Some of these channels they're merging a crapload of notes, which are probably multiple instruments, into one track and you have to figure out how to separate a crapload. I didn't go to music school for this stuff and know how to read sheet music. So which one's the left hand when they're merged all together and looks like 5 hands playing this crap. So you deal with all that and sounds like a normal song after with normal instruments.
[continued in part 2 of 2] lol