Hi everyone, like the title says, I am new here. It's a great community--I have been reading the forums for a while but haven't posted until now. It seems that there is a very knowledgeable group of people here. As such, I was wondering if you guys (and gals of course) could rate, tear apart, give advice on, berate (or anything else you would like to share) my tracks. Thanks a lot guys, I really do appreciate it!

***edit*** - These should be visible for the people who can't view the soundcloud page directly. Thanks!

http://soundcloud.com/army-of-ninjas/crush

http://soundcloud.com/army-of-ninjas/virus

http://soundcloud.com/army-of-ninjas/burn

http://soundcloud.com/army-of-ninjas/driven

http://soundcloud.com/army-of-ninjas/k-atana

 

First of all, cool name

I can't access your soundcloud page, soundcloud doesn't load at all for me right now, so I could only listen to the track Xsze pasted here.
I dig it too, really like the retro synth sounds and that laid back but steady rolling feeling.
This could've been on the soundtrack for 'Drive' or sth similar.

 

Thanks for the positive feedback guys. Hmm. Maybe I can post a download link somewhere as soundcloud seems to be quite finicky for some people.

 

I love the vocal pad on Burn. Its literally the exact kinda pad sound I often go to!

When the dubstep elements come in, gotta say I dont like the sound, sorry. Its like you ran the lot through the most extreme compressor you could find. Or the Sausage Fattener?

The elements that arent saturated dont gel with the track for this reason (even though on their own merit they sound good).

 

Respect bro!

 

The wobbles were squashed with ozone 5's multiband comp. This mix was actually more of an experiment (I'm not really a dubstep producer, as you can tell lol) and I nearly didn't post it to soundcloud because I thought its quality to be a little lacking--but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. VERY useful advice, thanks man.

@lekb - Thanks!

 

Welcome to the forums.
I liked the track Xsze reposted a lot, great stuff. :dancing:

Could have been in Drive like thisis theend said.

 

Not exactly my cup of tea, but those are rather cool. Indeed, some of them do sound like they would be a good match for motion picture. I like the spaciousness and movement going on. I'm not sure they need to be that loud though... I can listen to it fairly pleasantly at about 70% of volume. The synth in that "Burn" track sounds like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nNCXdrHzqk

If I heard it somewhere randomly, i'd think it's a remix of that. I could swear it was sampled. Don't get me wrong. It's interesting. Those are not quite common melodies. It was a refreshing change for my ears. Talking about movies... "Smokin' Aces" was the first that jumped out at me.

My favourite one was "Passage" (I actually really fookin' dig it), followed by "Trapped" and "Experimental". (They're quite similar but closer to my liking)

And, finally, my advice would be to work on your bass a bit more. Overall, it's quite enjoyable.

(What synth do you use for pads/arps?)

 

Wow, thanks. Didn't really expect so much praise.

I grew up playing a LOT of videogames, so I'm sure that the music has slowly seeped into my subconscious. Here's a remix I did a while back of the music from about 4 of the stages in Megaman X.

MegaMan X MegaMiX

Yes, I agree that I need to work more on my bass. I find it difficult to get a bass that really thumps hard without its levels being completely out of control (causing lower volume in mastering, hogging half the frequency range of the mix, etc).

I generally use a LOT of Sylenth1 for pads and arps (particularly these). But for Passage, Trapped, and Experimental I ended up using Omnisphere for most of the pads and arps. Omnisphere's been getting a lot of love in my studio lately.

 

Great, thanks. (That remix is really tight)

 

Thanks, that one was made mostly in reason 5 rewired into cubase 5 for mixing with ozone 5 on the master bus.

 

Hey when it's good it's good and I have a good ear for these kinds of things.

Yeah Omnisphere's getting a lot of love here as well, stellar synth/sample library.

 

Personally, I have found that with Trilian and some of the expansions out there the synth end of Omnisphere's library becomes far more fleshed out and versatile. I have been using a lot of it lately.

I've also been looking for something to help me lessen my use of Sylenth1 (it has become something of a crutch lately) but haven't quite found another synth with as much cut and a "analog" layout like sylenth. Its cpu performance is also stellar. I like massive but hate the gui and cpu usage. Spire looks intriguing but I am not sure how it is on cpu. I like to work in the box in realtime so low cpu plugins are always a huge plus for my workflow. Of course sound quality comes 1st but a good gui and optimized code are what make me truly feel like I am working on hardware. I have a Roland sh32 and to me sylenth1 replicates its feel and can produce a similar soundset--which is one of the major reasons I love sylenth. It just feels "analog" to me (ps i know the sh32 is an analog modeler). I love the Arturia stuff but am looking for a more contemporary sound (eg that epic "virus" tone). Thanks in advance. Loving the community here so far. Everyone has been super awesome and helpful.

 

So spire isn't too bad on cpu? It doesn't need to be the most lightweight vsti ever, but massive/diva are fairly excessive. It certainly looks VERY much like the type of gui I like and the sound demos that I have heard sound really good to my ears.

 

I am able to run most projects with Waves NLS, Ozone 5, some fairly gnarly reverb algo's, and about 5 or 6 vsti's with a mere 128 sample buffer with no hiccups. So I'll bet that I can handle spire as long as it isn't particularly known for being an enormous resource hog. I'm currently running on a 3.2ghz amd quad core with 8gb of 1600mhz ram with a solid state hybrid drive (os and daw/vst installs) and a 7200rpm 32mb cache hdd as a secondary (to record audio info to, no bottlenecking on my system). My audio interface (tascam us1800) is running on its own dedicated pci usb port (so as to avoid any potential conflicts/interference). PC has been optimized for audio on a software/services level. And I can generally run some pretty decent sized projects with around 15ms roundtrip latency or less. Very usable latency.

Yes, I am kind of excited to give it a go while you can still get in "on the ground floor" of Spire. I am sure that future updates and developments will bring it into its own.

 

Oh, and I can't for the life of me figure out how to embed the soundcloud widget. Care to enlighten me? Thanks.

 

Awesome! Wish I could thank you twice. I'm going to give Spire a go on my next track and see what happens. Sometimes a new instrument makes me take a different approach than I normally would.

 

maaaaan Catalyst gonna eat you alive!

 

Luckily Xsze helped him out because I feel like a broken record sometimes.

 

I was gonna sleep with my headphones on and then I clicked play on the first track..lol I am still awake (ripped ur track Crush btw)