Musician, composer, producer, Jeremiah Cymerman may have created the soundtrack to our current circumstance. Not that his project Systema Munditotius, vol. 1 was conceived and produced after the discovery of the CoronaVirus in 2019, but that it may have prophesied this pandemic... [ read more ]

With four records in as many years Christy Doran's Sound Fountain seems in 2020 to have eclipsed New Bag as the guitarist's going concern. However, just because New Bag hasn't recorded since Elsewhere (Double Moon, 2015) doesn't mean that the band, founded in 1997, won't still make a comeback... [ read more ]

Berlin-based Swiss drummer Samuel Rohrer's solo album Continual Decentering is a follow-up to his quartet work Dark Star Safari (2019) with Jan Bang, Eivind Aarset and Erik Honoré and to his previous solo album Range of Regularity (2017), both released on his own Arjunamusic label... [ read more ]

While the three tenor saxophone soloists with piano, bass, and drums was already a proven sextet formula, the Tiberian Mode is one of vast reproportioning and accelerated creativity. Led by big band divinity Frank Tiberi and two of his disciples, George Garzone, and Joe Lovano, the project unleashes power, vigor, and contrasting jazz sensibilities... [ read more ]

There is an underlying, unsettled tone in the music of Philadelphia bassist Sandy Eldred which can only be likened to earthquakes and their subsequent tremors. Just when you think you are on solid ground the whole landscape shifts, the whole perspective tacks left, bends right, veers down the wrong center lane and u-turns... [ read more ]

Rarely has an album title been so perfectly descriptive. In March, 2020 the Stick Men with special guest Gary Husband had just begun a Japan and China tour. But it was cancelled by the pandemic after one show at the Blue Note in Nagoya... [ read more ]

In recent years double bassist Yuri Goloubev has lent his rich sound to multiple projects, including the co-led Duonomics (Caligola, 2018) with Michele Di Toro. It was 2011's Titanic for a Bike (Caligola), however, that marked Goloubev's last recording as outright leader... [ read more ]

Truth, the debut album by New York-based trombonist / vocalist Seth Weaver, has its ups and downs, most of which involve the leader himself. The "ups" enter the picture thanks to Weaver's five far-better-than-average compositions, the "downs" whenever he chooses to sing, as he does on three of eight numbers... [ read more ]

Writers have been creating worlds for centuries. J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen King, H.P Lovecraft, they all shaped worlds and mythologies and civilisations out of words. Few musicians, however, have created new worlds out of their music. Kraftwerk's albums and aesthetics form a unique world of Pop Art, industrialism, rhythms and electricity... [ read more ]

Derrick Shezbie's sophomore release as leader--a mere 26 years after his highly acclaimed debut, Spodie's Back (Warner Bros., 1994)--finds the New Orleans trumpeter in much the same territory as a quarter-century ago: traditional jazz played with an assured combination of virtuosity and energy... [ read more ]

This international spiritual-jazz jam promises much and delivers most of it. On the one hand, Gary Bartz, who is among the movement's American elder statesmen. On the other, Maisha, six young Londoners... [ read more ]

A lot of recognisable names and musical micro climes run through the blood and wires of this aggressive three. Jimi Hendrix, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry, pure punk, death metal ... [ read more ]

The late Sam Jones is mainly remembered as an earnest craftsman whose perceptive bass lines undergirded the likes of Cannonball Adderley, Oscar Peterson, Cedar Walton, Barry Harris, Kenny Dorham, Bobby Timmons, Bill Evans and a host of other jazz masters... [ read more ]

What do you want from Wayne Krantz anyway? It's a particularly relevant question when new release time rolls around for the guitar icon(oclast). Not that Krantz himself seems to give the question much thought. He's more known for being preoccupied with things like inventing (and reinventing) himself, exploring and capturing ineffable group mojo, or pushing the envelope toward things he has yet to try or accomplish... [ read more ]

Mike Mainieri

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Ive been making music for couple of years now but still cant figure out why my mix doesnt sound professional. Im I doing something wrong? This is the link to my tracks http://www.ourmedia.org/node/300488 Someone please help me out.

The 100% guaranteed way to get your bedroom mixes to sound more professional (and by far the most expensive) is to spend time in a recording studio. Take the raw tracks to something you want to mix, import it into their ProTools setup (or whatever they use) and have a pro engineer (must be a talkative, friendly one, not a grumpy, cynical one) to mix it. ASK A BILLION questions, be a dork and write stuff down if you have to. The worst case scenario is that after 2/3 hours at least you'll know what questions to ask of Google or at the local tech book store. The best case is that your music impresses the engineer and he/she becomes a pseudo mentor for you. Engineering is by far my weakest area (along with playing in tune and in time) so everything that follows is said that caveat: I have found that going cheap on mastering tools (compression, limiters, eq) hurts bedroom mixes a lot. Money I've spent on the top utilities there (I use Waves) dwarfs all my other plugins put together by an order of magnitude. (Reason's mastering suite is pretty good so you may be covered there; although I've applied Waves L2 to mixes done after the 'final' Reason mixdown and there's no question there was a marked improvement in pro-sheen.) I have found tweakheadz site very useful, especially their mixing 101 page. Finally I have been told (and have experienced it myself) that posting often to ccM and asking for real, brutal reviews and feedback has helped a lot of people. I, for one, am very, very embarrassed by several of my uploads from 2 years ago here, while only very embarrassed by more recent ones; all strictly due to people hearing stuff I didn't.

that sounds good. ill look for a studio near my place. at the end you said that the comments from ccmixer is very useful but what shall i do if i want a brutal review of my own original mix? because on ccmixer i can only upload remixes or samples or separate tracks.

being a remix site and short on resources we can't handle original material. so, er, get remixing... ;)

my buddy des has a great blog he runs that can surely help almost anyone here with improving their production. http://www.hometracked.com/ also, his music is worth checking out, just so you can see that he knows what he's talking about. des is a great guy and a really excellent artist. http://www.deshead.com/

U need to have a good pair of monitors, headphones will not do at all! I agree with Fourstones, Waves is a very good suite. I use it within SoundForge and it really does help in cleaning up the frequencies. My mixes really improved when I had monitor speakers included in the set up. Experiment and let me know, I'll give u some quality feedback, no holds, sometimes the truth hurts! LOL! EZ m8 Morr

The best thing I can say is: learn about sound. Learn about frequencies, which ones sound like what and do what to the overall mix. Whether or not to use a low or high pass filter on something. Fiddle with EQs for hours. And more importantly, get criticism. It's the easiest way to learn what sound to look out for, and such. And most importantly of all: Practice. Mix till your ears bleed. (from the time spent listening to the same song, not due to the terrible mix :P) Mixing is one of my strong suits, but most of it is just being able to hear the song, and make the adjustments that I want, to be able to make the necessary changes and just know what needs to be done.

bravo!

That's a very good point- I started with a Mac LC, EZVision and an M1, with the only audio manipulation being Hypercard. I got good at customizing patches and finding seamless loop points manually just to get what I could out of what I had, with mastering being 1/4"-to-RCA from the headphone jack on the M1 to AUX IN on the cassette player, or the same thing with 1/8" adapter for the 'puter sound files. Then I'd record and bounce these cassette tracks to my 4-track, with final routing from 4-track's headphone-out back to the cassette. Ugly stuff, but that's what I had to work with...

This is a very good point. I think that it's easy to keep adding new gear, and thus miss the richness of existing gear and software. I like to work with more limited software sometimes, so that I can feel as if I am exploiting it to its fullness.

Ive been making music for couple of years now but still cant figure out why my mix doesnt sound professional. Im I doing something wrong? This is the link to my tracks http://www.ourmedia.org/node/300488 Someone please help me out. The first thing I noticed was the lack of higher frequencies in your mix... My mixes always end up being bass heavy (because I suck horribly) so I can see we both have the same problem... There's is (however) an over-abundance of frequency-fighting in your track... A lot of distorted things competing for my attention (at least in my ears). Dunno if any of this has been helpful, but we could all learn things...so hopefully you'll have advice for me in the future ;-) Good luck, and we me luck too! -Joel

This is a useful thread. Im just in the middle of mixing a new ccmixter-based song and its just not coming together for me. The tweakheadz and hometracked sites are great. A couple other useful sites: tips and techniques at gearslutz - http://www.gearslutz.com/board/tips-techniques/168409-tips-techniques.html ; Live tips - http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27120 ; general EQ reference - http://www.idmforums.com/showthread.php?t=11466 Im definitely going to get the mix Im working on up here, I need some blunt advice.

OK, I uploaded Hollywood Picture Book (feat Calendar Girl and Kaer Trouz) and entered a pluggy plug for comments over this weekend.

Borth Audio has released Typewriter, a free sound library add-on for the Native Instruments Kontakt sampler. As the name suggests, Typewriter features a set of audio samples of an actual typewriter. This includes the sounds of typing, individual keys being pressed (Spacebar, Shift, and Caps Lock), levers, and various paper noises(feed, eject, crumple, tear). Six-octave [...]

View post: Borth Audio Releases Free Typewriter Sounds For NI Kontakt

Plugin Boutique is running a no-brainer 96% OFF deal on the Music Maker’s Bundle by iZotope. The bundle includes eight popular iZotope plugins like Stutter Edit, Break Tweaker, Iris 2, Ozone Elements, and more. iZotope Music Maker’s Bundle contains all four Elements plugins from iZotope (Ozone Elements, Neutron Elements, Nectar Elements, and Rx Elements, along [...]

View post: Get 96% OFF iZotope Music Maker’s Bundle @ Plugin Boutique

Andreas T. Music has released Crystal Glass, a free melodic percussion sound library for Native Instruments Kontakt (also includes WAV samples). You can now play melodies using a virtual set of crystal glass. Add the sparkly chimes of crystal glasses to your music and use them as the lead instrument or for layering on top [...]

View post: Free Crystal Glass Sound Library By Andreas T. (Kontakt + WAV)

Developer Andreas Pohl has released AudioGridder, a macOS-only client-server system that lets you offload plugin processing to any other computers in your network. As you probably know, plugins and virtual instruments can be rather hungry for CPU resources. Even if you have a powerful computer, a single DAW session with multiple instances of virtual synthesizers, [...]

View post: Andreas Pohl Releases FREE AudioGridder Plugin For macOS

8Dio has released The New Cajon and Bongo, a freely downloadable percussion sound library for Native Instruments Kontakt. The New Cajon and Bongo sound library is based on over 7,500 individual Cajon drum and bongo sounds. The sounds were captured from four bongos, two Cajon drums, and two Cajon snares with multiple articulations and velocity [...]

View post: 8Dio Releases FREE Cajon And Bongo Library For NI Kontakt

Analog Obsession has released LALA, a freeware emulation of the LA-2A tube compressor in VST, VST3, and AU plugin formats for digital audio workstations on PC and Mac. LALA is Analog Obsession’s first emulation of the LA-2A Classic Leveling Amplifier. The plugin delivers all the core features of the original hardware unit, along with some [...]

View post: LALA Is A FREE LA-2A Limiting Amplifier VST By Analog Obsession

Spitfire Audio is offering the new BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover ($49 value) virtual instrument as a free download for everyone who fills out a questionnaire on the company’s website. The download link will be delivered fourteen days after completing the questionnaire. BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover is Spitfire Audio’s brand new, super-affordable orchestra virtual instrument in [...]

View post: Get Spitfire Audio’s BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover For FREE

SampleScience has released Toy Keyboard 2, a freeware sample-based instrument featuring the sounds of the Yamaha PSR-78 home keyboard. Toy Keyboard 2 is a free virtual instrument in VST, VST3, and AU plugin formats for compatible digital audio workstation software on PC and Mac. It features 73 individual presets, including one drum kit. The presets [...]

View post: SampleScience Releases FREE Toy Keyboard 2 VST/AU Plugin

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