Nuclear Winter

Since I’m not sure I’m happy with certain effects and volumes (and there’s a singing issue that would be nice to have resolved), I’m giving you guys something to give POSITIVE criticisms about. Don’t just tell me what’s wrong, give me an idea of what you think would fix it. That being said, thanks a ton for listening.

It’s in Renoise 1 form, using only sampled instruments, so everyone should be able to play it. You may notice that I have some samples of singing which match the titles of certain patterns near the end. If you notice that, you will probably also notice that I suck at singing (curse you, limited range!). It would be pretty great to have someone else sing them, but the problem is, I don’t know whether it would be better with singing in that part or not. When you’re on your own, it’s okay to flipflop back and forth, but not when there’s a partner involved in the work. So if you want the full set of lyrics that I wrote, go ahead and ask, I’m just sayin’ it may not come to anything.

this is quite nice.
i say your vocals are fine.
with the distortions, it gives the song a darker vibe.
the only thing i would say needs to be fixed is on pattern 37, when the vocals come in “i see it”, its very loud and maybe should be brought down a bit.
other then that, i say good job.
nice to hear something a bit diff from renoise :)

:S get better hosting. I don’t download from anywhere that requires me to insert a cookie to access files. One click download ftw.

Very interesting.

The tune works for me because the voice is fucked up but my advice to you would be to not distort your voice so much. There’s no shame in singing. You need to find a balance between masking the voice with super dirty (and interesting) distortion with something else.

Also, if you have Renoise 2.0 maybe humanize some of those melodies with the Advanced Edit pane and the new NoteDelay column?

Anyway, the tune works now as it is (for me). So take any advice with a grain of salt. You might ruin the crazy vibe you have going on now by watering it down. But, I still think you should strive for some balance. Dunno if it’s achievable though.

Good luck.

Thanks, guys! It’s always nice to hear nice things about one’s work.

About the voice, which everybody seems to like, I’m pretty happy with the parts you hear when just playing the song. It’s some other samples that took out that bother me, they’re still in the instrument list (13 and 14, and 14 has 3 samples). I took them out because I thought they sounded pretty bad. It’s pretty embarrassing to play a song at your friends’ house, and your voice is wavering unbearably.

zer0hour: My thoughts exactly. I didn’t want to put in a compressor though (I have an irrational prejudice against them), so I’ve now done a custom volume envelope for the master track. It works pretty well! Glad you like the distortion, it was hard to find some good settings.

alexstrain: Sorry, I know they suck. On the other hand, moving my files to a new host yet again would be really tedious (1 host ran out of space, 2 went out of business, and my current one requires a cookie, which may be making it Mac incompatible). I’ll see if I can get the link that gives you the file directly. (EDIT: done, the link now points directly to the file, hopefully that will work)

Conner BW: Yeah, I had quite the time trying to get a good balance in the sliders, and it still seems a little over-distorted at parts. I saw an “Amp” mode in one of the tutorials (Renoise 1, I don’t have Beta 2 yet). I think one track is more distorted than the other, so I can try shifting the vocals over to the less distorted track.

Again, thanks to everyone for telling me my singing doesn’t completely suck, and giving me good advice!

yea, it does not suck! :) totaly normal if you think its weird to listen to yourself. it takes a while to get to the point where you just go for it regardless of what other would think. now that is just what you think. ;)

the song is good mate. just two things I can say, the basedrum is too much faded for my like and I get little too much hard shaped overdrived sound in general. hard to make a smooth but biting crispy distortion thou’. good stuff!