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Since we brought our new puppy home it's been pretty insane (in a good way ) around the house. That and trying to write some new stuff has kept me off the boards here more than I like. I enjoy listening to everyone's pieces and putting in my 2 or 3 cents.I thought I'd post links to a few of the new pieces that have been coming out. They're mostly 1 minute cuts trying to set a mood. Hopefully they are successful in that regard.http://www.johnmazzei.com/song/0http:// ... 5Hopefully I'll be back in the swing soon, depends on how the housetraining goes! Enjoy, Mazz

Quote:Since we brought our new puppy home it's been pretty insane (in a good way ) around the house. That and trying to write some new stuff has kept me off the boards here more than I like. I enjoy listening to everyone's pieces and putting in my 2 or 3 cents.I thought I'd post links to a few of the new pieces that have been coming out. They're mostly 1 minute cuts trying to set a mood. Hopefully they are successful in that regard.http://www.johnmazzei.com/song/0http:// ... 5Hopefully I'll be back in the swing soon, depends on how the housetraining goes! Enjoy, Mazzwierd - can't get them to come up at the mo. will try again tomorrow. Have fun with the puppy

Hi Vikki,Looks like my website is messed up. I've e-mailed Broadjam about it. Hopefully they can fix it soon!I'll update when it's repaired. Thanks for checking in!Mazz

Looks like the site is back up now. Let me know if you still can't get it to work.Thanks,Mazz

Hey John,Stuff sounds pretty good... I don't have much to offer on the writing side... I enjoyed the 4th one a lot... good sounds and arrangement. On the production side: Something's funky with the panning of the drum kit in the second one that sounds like Bruce Hornsby. The snare verb falls off to the right in a weird way, and the hi-hat might be a little too far left. Try and think of an acoustic kit as one instrument as opposed to 8 different ones in panning and the space you put them in. Overall, I think you should mess with using less reverb. Try and get stuff to work dry, and then add it in until it fattens things up, but don't let the reverb be a part of the sound of the instrument. In the second track, I hear this most on the piano and strings. I think this will take care of a lot of the clarity issues I hear, meaning, there's a lot going on, but it's hard to pick out what each thing is doing. And for the orchestra one, be very selective when finding a reverb... if it's too dense the low mids get all muddled, but if it's too crispy anything plucky or cymbals sound less real. A lot of stock "hall" patches have too much low-mids going on, so I often eq the reverb to take that out. Last thing, I felt like the timing of the guitar sample in the first one was a little too loose. I know you're trying to keep it from feeling too quantized, but I think it could be a little tighter to make it a little more believeable. Cool changes on that track. Regardless, nice work... my critiques are pretty minor in the scheme of some nice writing.

Hi Brian,Thanks for the feedback. Some of the things you're hearing I'm not hearing as clearly as you are, probably due to my room. I'll take a closer listen in phones from here on out just to check things like verb, panning, etc.As far as the orchestra goes, I use EWQLSO with no reverb added, except for the piano and guitar (which aren't from the same library). The reverbs are built in to the samples and I mostly use the middle mic positions. I may need to start using the close mics as well as they will help with the clarity and attack as they don't have as much "room" in the releases.Yeah, I tried to keep the guitar looser in feel. It's a fine line for me between MIDI sounding and live sounding. Always learning to hear it as another would hear it, man that's my biggest challenge!!!BTW: that's the classical guitar from EW Gypsy. It's pretty expressive with the velocity response, IMO.Thanks for listening!John

Oh wow... that's amazing that the string samples have that much on them... yeah, try the closer mics and see how that works. One thing about the guitar... the articulation might be part of what's bugging me about it. Are there any slide or hammer-on samples? I'm not sure a guitar player would pluck every note like your part does now... some of those notes that are close together might be slid into or hammered on. But yeah, it's a nice sounding sample.

Hi Mazz, excellent work. I especially like the first track. Thoughtful and somewhat intense, but not overpowering. Thats what it said to me anyway

Brian,I'm going to have to try to play that guitar sound more legato and see what happens. Apparently the PLAY engine can interpret whether or not the playing is legato and incorporate different samples accordingly. Not sure if that's incorporated in this particular instrument or not. The keyswitches on this particular instrument give what sounds like a fingernail pluck (the one I used), a lighter pluck, probably more with the finger, one with harmonics and one with noises (fret noise mostly). I also used the reverb setting that loaded with the instrument. I do have control over the amount of reverb on it, I chose to keep it pretty wet.On the Hornsby sounding cut, the steel string guitar (also from Gypsy) has keyswitches that give slides, whole and half step. I incorporated those in that piece on the B section.Take it easy,Mazz

Mazz,Enjoyed listening to your new work. How do you like Gypsy so far and are there any hiccups with the Play engine?I've done a fair amount of sequencing of nylon guitar and really like the nylon guitar that came with Kontact 1. One trick I've used alot to give that sound some "weight" is to double the sound with a synth patch. ( I've used the Wavestation alot for this, it adds some subtle motion as well) If mixed back enough it is transparent and does not distract from the guitar sound. I've also used this idea on some new age stuff to double the Kora from RA.Inputing the guitar type parts with a guitar synth works pretty well. You do have to claen up the midi data. I have sequenced a ukelele part for a tune using the ukelele in RA.Not quite instant Don Ho!