My first song with Renoise, and third track using a tracker.
It went much less trainwrecky than expected!
All the synths & drums are FM8 instances, using a collection of thousands of decades-old DX7 presets (still learning FM synthesis, so the presets I started with are not heavily modified).
Written with Renoise 2.7.0b4, mix & effects with Logic Pro 9.
I’m particularly happy with the interminable dissonant solos starting at 3:15 - I thought this sort of stuff would be Renoise’s weak point, seems to be the other way around.
Looking forward to integrating Renoise into my Logic Pro-centric workflow.
To embed from Bandcamp, look at this topic. For future reference, I just made it a bookmark to access it with ease.
About the track: this is pretty interesting for your first Renoise song! Although I can’t really listen to it for over two minute without getting a bit bored, the chiptune-y, 8-bit sounds (I’m not genre savvy, so correct me if i’m wrong) are pro. The sound design in general is top notch, but the harmonics and feel could of been changed up a lot more to make it more interesting - or just given more space/panning to give the listener’s ear a bit of rest throughout the 5 minutes run time. Given the layout of Renoise its very easy to forget that the listener has an entirely different perspective than the creator of the song - try not to get carried away.
The dissonant solos at 3:14 are very, very cool. You really could of changed it into an entirely different song at that part, but had to return to those somewhat church-bellish harmonics in the background and the vocals, which were a-ok but nothing to scream home about.
Overall: fantastic first song in terms of sound, I mean FANTASTIC, but it gets somewhat boring and musically “eh” later on.
Thanks for the link, the first time I read it I only noticed about bandcamp:// which is for full albums, didn’t want to use that since it’s a compilation album by various artists.
But embed works if I use the URL I am redirected to when choosing “share -> wordpress.org” and following the URL provided in their own embed code. Not sure this hackish technique will last long though, with its having “tmpdata/cache” in the url.
I really like the sound of FM synthesis, the worse the better—I love, in particular, the sound of the Sega Genesis, it uses a Yamaha chip like the DX7/FM8 sounds I use, but is much harder to write music for—but it’s no excuse to make it grating, most people won’t share this affection for early 90’s videogamey sounds. I’ll try to think about your opinion next time I use the FM8 or Renoise.
I agree that I should have axed 2:12~3:14 off the whole thing, guess I just wanted to try out the pattern matrix
Most chiptune/8-bit stuff sounds loads better when synthesized like a a bad JPEG file, thats certainly true. But the rules of not killing your ears and volume control also apply, so do your best to avoid Renoise’s inherent bitcrush function and do… whatever you were doing here, I have no idea how the hardware or non-Renoise software works at all - probably due to my, uh, young age or something.
For additional catchy/pleasing/stupidly mainstraim 8-bit material that does kinda what I was explaining in my other post try this and this off of the well-recieved first Homestuck album. Good inspirational stuff that have influenced some of my (BAD) 8-bit material and made it a bit better overall in terms of melody and chord progression.
Thanks. Actually, it’s all software, the FM8 is a VST emulating the DX7 synth, the hardware was all digital so it does not change much to go the software route. Only my lack of mixing experience and bad speakers (which I’ll replace with good monitors very soon) are to blame about that, especially since I had to try to mix it loud so it could sit well in a compilation full of genres ending with “-core”.
