I'm a sound engineer, but /u/iridisss pretty much hit it on the head, so read their comment for the simple version. In techie terms, there's a lot more waveform differentiation within consonant sounds than there is in vowels, and that makes them both easier to distinguish by looking at a Fourier transform and easier to account for in code.

If you have a microphone or headset or something, you can try this yourself. Download Audacity, record yourself speaking, then in the track header, click the downward triangle and change "Waveform" to "Spectrogram." You should be able to look closely, zoom in, and see where you're saying vowels and where you're saying consonants. Don't worry about being able to identify specific sounds from their waveforms or spectrograms, even I can't do that.

As for where I learned it, from doing audio work for a while, a mix of programming and audio engineering courses at university, then before that from a private tutor guy my piano teacher was friends with. This has been a bit of a life's pursuit for me.

try audacity, it's a general purpose audio file editor that's completely free (both free as in speech and free as in beer), and can do a lot of stuff besides converting audio files from one format to another.

Reaper is an amazing, fully-featured tool that has an uncrippled demo. Like WinRar, you can keep using it after the 30-day demo has expired.

You'll want to give them your money, though. $60 for that software is criminally cheap. The dev team is reponsive and constantly patching and adding new features.

Reaper has a great piano roll MIDI editor, but if you're looking for real "composing" software (as opposed to a DAW, recording package like Reaper or Cakewalk), MuseScore is open-source and free.

>Olive is making rapid progress and users are already producing videos with it, but it's still currently in alpha meaning it is incomplete and not fully stable.

>Source: https://www.olivevideoeditor.org/

Databending with Audacity is pretty popular here. Turns out there's also a command-line equivalent of Audacity(called sox) that can be used to process a batch of images or lots of frames in a video, I explain the method here.

Here's what I recommend, to prepare yourself:

1. Download some radio chatter from LiveATC

2. Download Audacity

3. Open the file, (File|Open…[select file]|Open), apply the 'Truncate Silence' effect (Effect|Truncate Silence…|OK), and listen to all the communications back-to-back

Once you start getting comfortable, use the 'Change Speed' effect (Effect|Change Speed…|[enter a multiplier]|OK) to speed things up. Start off at 1.1, then 1.25, then 1.5. Be sure to listen to new parts of the file, or new files, with each speed increase. Once you get used to 1.5, real-live ATC communications will be much easier to follow, even when task saturated.

I'm sorry to hear about your father. I will try my best to help you get these recordings, if you need anymore help, please, reply to my comment, or PM me.

Go to Best Buy or RadioShack and buy an AUX cable. This cable will be able to plug into your phone's headphone port and have the same plug in the other end.

Now, you need a computer, or laptop with a microphone port that looks the same as the one on your phone. If the port isn't the same and the cord won't plug in, talk to an associate at the place you bought it from for an adapter, any electronics store employee should know what to get you.

Now, download Audacity

Now, press the record button in Audacity, then call your voicemail. Play the messages that you need and press the stop button when done. I would suggest copying the file a couple times, as well as uploading it to Google Drive/Dropbox just to be safe, because its so important.

Later on, you can split the audio file into multiple files that have each message separated, either by a tutorial online, help through Reddit, or a tech savvy friend you have. It's not that difficult more difficult than this was.

Reply or message me if you need any more help, I would love to help as well as other Redditors.

If there's something you need Pro Tools for, then as bodean55 said, the educational version is probably going to be your best bet.

If, on the other hand, you're looking for a phenomenal daw, check out Reaper. The free trial doesn't have any limitations (no features disabled, saving is allowed, etc) and for the price it's a steal.

http://reaper.fm

Indefinite, full-featured free trial, very reasonable purchase price. Not a huge range of included plugins but a clean, extensible workflow and the dynamic plugins are very very good quality. Side chaining and custom I/Os are simpler and more extensible than any other DAW, in my opinion.

I also add CM magazine/MusicRadar's free CM plugin suite. A bunch of good synths and plugins for the cost of a magazine.

> spleeter

It’s an open source project built by Deezer: https://github.com/deezer/spleeter

Pretty impressive stuff - it uses ML models so that’s why it can work on mono and oddly mixed recordings, since it’s actually “recognizing” the instruments and vocals. Looks like there’s an ableton plugin too.

Tracktion 6 is old but free and lightweight, but I believe it comes with some simple synth tools. You'll probably find a better VST host to be honest, but as a DAW it's old but stable and not crippled in any way.

https://www.tracktion.com/products/t6-daw

The loaded donda songs are proper stems, its just the songs that you upload via the website that are done with AI/spleeter which im guessing is just an implementation of spleeter https://github.com/deezer/spleeter

A free editor without a watermark I have been using (Mostly shitposting) for the past 1.5 years is olive. It has no watermark, the UI had a very good layout, video playback is smooth, and unlike premiere pro, it doesn’t feel crammed. Here’s the link to it: https://www.olivevideoeditor.org/

There is no open source DAW comparable to Ableton that accepts all VSTs. The best open source DAW is probably Ardour.

http://ardour.org/

I actually can't think of any other remotely decent DAW that's open source.

I like the idea! I think it'll be interesting to see how you play your mods especially since no ones knows them better than you and there might be things we don't know or tips we haven't heard of.

But I do have some feedback that I hope you don't take the wrong way

Video

1. If you can it'd be nice to have 720p at least and 1080p at best

2. Along with higher resolution playing the game in fullscreen or only recording the inner window so we don't have to see borders

3. Hide your recording window so it doesn't take up the bottom corner of the screen

Audio

1. Fix the background noise(I know you said you'd do it at the start of the video, but I'm just agreeing)

2. Maybe invest in a pop filter to cut down on harsh S sounds

3. Run your audio through something like Audacity and remove mouse clicks

Reaper. You can get a free trial that is the full program for 30 days (though I'm almost positive that you can just keep using it if you don't want to spend the 40 dollars on it). It's gonna be different for you (as it would switching to any other DAW), but it can essentially do everything that Pro Tools can. I'd at least give it a try.

Yes. Very easy test: get some software like http://reaper.fm and load in a file. Now make a copy of the file in a second track. Woah, hear that? It's way louder, possibly distorting, because you're increasing every value.

Now press the phase button. Now you hear nothing, even though each track is visibly outputting.

http://www.personalpowermeditation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Phase-Cancellation.jpg

To think of it another way: your speaker can only be positioned +1 or -1. (all the way in, or all the way out).

Say you had a track that oscillated between +1 and 0.

Now you flip that track and it oscillates between -1 and 0.

So when your speaker gets the sum of those two signals, it is 0. aka, it doesn't move.

spleeter can demix your audio files into "layers", like vocals/drums/bass/other, with variable quality (though usually good), then iZotopes RX can also do the demixing thing, some people prefer it but it's not free.

Couple things.

Audacity is an audio recorder/editor. That’s it. It does not produce sound on its own. It does not do anything with a MIDI controller. The only plugins it can use are audio effects plugins. Forget Audacity. It’s not what you want.

You need a DAW, and you need instrument plugins. DAWs receive MIDI events and pass them to instrument plugins. Most DAWs contain some native instruments as well, which are not plugins but are built into the DAW. There are free DAWs that you can try, such as Ardour ( http://ardour.org ). There are also a good number of free Instrument plugins. Google for them.

You will need to configure your DAW to use the Synthstation as a MIDI device. This differs from DAW to DAW.

The manual for the Synthstation is not clear regarding its audio outs, but it would seem they are used as a standard USB Audio device, whether on an iPad or a computer. In a DAW you would need to select this audio device to use the audio outs on the controller in order to use them.

That barely scratches the surface, but hopefully it will send you in the right direction.

Protip:

...\Steam\steamapps\common\dota 2 beta\game\dota\sounds\ui\stingers\match_ready_no_focus.wav

Open with Audacity: http://www.audacityteam.org/

Effect dropdown > Amplify > drag slider to negative as necessary.

Export/save.

Audacity.

You can create a 'chain' in audacity that lets you specify a series of steps (convert to mono, save as mp3, etc).

You can then run the entire directory of sounds through the chain all at once.

It is what I did and was really painless.

Well, your request is pretty vague, but I'll tell you what I can.

The program I use the most would have to be Renoise, which is what's called a tracker. This type of music software has been around for a while, on all sorts of platforms. Renoise is fairly simple to grasp, at least in my opinion, yet quite powerful and flexible. It is also rather inexpensive (less than 60€), especially when compared to other music-making programs. There's a free demo available, with the only feature lacking being exporting to WAV or other formats. You will however have to use what's called VST (or AU on mac) plugins. Many are free, and a simple google search will often lead you to the plugin for the sound you need.

Another option, albeit more expensive (between about 300$ and 700$, depending on the version), is Ableton Live. Ableton is used quite a bit by professionals, and it is very powerful. It uses the more traditional "piano roll" view instead of the tracker one, and uses concepts called clips, tracks, and scenes to organize your songs. It's probably harder to understand than renoise, but once again there are many tutorials out there. Unless you opt for the Suite version, which provides you with built-in instruments, you'll still need to find plugins.

There are many more out there, but those are the only two that I use frequently, and I wouldn't want to mislead you about other programs. So, it really all comes down to your budget and the exact type of software you are looking for, but any program will let you make any sort of music you want, with a bit a dedication.

Ardour and Audacity are the best linux offerings as far as editing/recording goes , JACK being the best sound system for recording. The best alternative for software like Reason is LMMS( I can't really comment at all) I have no experience with this, but I know Audacity is used by many musicians i know. Most of these also run on OSX as well.

Totally get you. What I really love doing (and the invention of Spleeter that lets me mute any instrument from a song has recently renewed this hobby) is simply playing along to my favourite songs, learning the parts and getting the guitar tones or drum sounds just right. It's so relaxing and fulfilling to just enjoy the musical talent/skills you've practiced for so long to get good at; it's a real mood booster.

Okay, here's my perspective strictly as an outside observer.

It's not that Linux will never be decent for audio -- it already is. Some DAWs have been available to Linux users for a while now, and Ardour in particular has an excellent reputation. Quite a few VSTs available as well, it's pretty versatile from what I understand.

Linux will likely never, or at least not for a while, become anything widely used in the actual industry, though. There are a few reasons for this, and they really don't have anything to do with Linux at all -- "I can save money? okay" -- but more to do with the industry. Pro Tools and Logic have been entrenched in studios for ages now, everyone has them, knows how to use them, and can collaborate between projects easily because of proprietary file formats. A few popular DAWs, namely Reason, Ableton, and FL Studio, see some use, but mostly remain in the hobbyist's hands right now (particularly FL Studio). Lots of people have used Reason to produce raw audio tracks (Outkast, JR Rotem, who has done a lot of work with people like Snoop and Dre, Liam Howlett from Prodigy, etc), but it doesn't have any real audio-editing features, just production devices, so it stays in the recording room. Ableton mostly stays in the DJ booth, and FL Studio is usually in the bedroom.

But among the biggest reasons they don't see more industry use is because of where Logic and Pro Tools are (also, the overwhelming conceit regarding Macs), which is a major impediment to Linux's expansion in major music production and audio editing.

/2cents

Have you tried LMMS?

https://lmms.io/

Has a few synth plugins baked right in, as well as support for soundfonts.

One of the synth plugins is ZynAddSubFX, which you can also get stand-alone and is probably in your repos:

http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net/

I know OP has already gotten his question answered, but in case any future people come across this thread looking for a way to get their killsound working, here's another thing you should check.

The hitsound/killsound needs to be:

• Format: .wav file
• Sample Rate: 44.1 kHz
• Bitrate: 16 bits

Many people get those last two wrong, and it causes the killsound to not play at all. You can check/change these values with a free program called Audacity.

Note: The only (apparently) compromised installer is the one hosted on FossHub, which is just a redistributor of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

Audacity's main download mirror is Sourceforge, which isn't compromised. The audacity project has also put out a warning on their main website, indicating that this is not a problem anymore: http://www.audacityteam.org/compromised-download-partner/

renoise is an interesting one. All the fun of trackers, but with more functionality! :D http://www.renoise.com/

But if you're looking for something different, definitely check out Rax'n'Trax. Free, and pretty easy to pick up on. http://www.raxntrax.com/download.htm

There's also Ardour, which is the more professional DAW I have found, pro tools level or even better, with MIDI capabilities, but you will need to rely on plugins to create beats and synths.

> Still, I'm surprised there isn't a decent freeware DAW out there.

Ardour does not count?

Looked pretty good last time I used it, but then I had hardware problems (trying to use the Line6 PodXT with a PowerPC Mac back in 2005). I've been watching it from a distance and it seems to have evolved a lot.

even if the idea was perfect, pretty much anyone can do that already if they own an mp3 player by using one of the many sites that run spleeter on the backend

and even then, stem splitting isn't close to being that great of quality yet, more so for hiphop because the AI behind spleeter is typically trained for music with less instruments and drum patterns

These are called byte beats and have been around for a while. You can pipe them on Windows with a program like SoX. (http://sox.sourceforge.net/)

Essentially what is happening is you have a loop counter t (a time step if you will) that is increased for each byte outputted. Different tones are outputted and piped to an external program by manipulating this t variable using math.

Over the years many patterns have been found and you can combine them to produce drum-like sounds, a melody, etc. All of it is done by manipulating a single byte.

It's quite cool.

I wrote a program to do this for you. You need Sox installed. Compile it with MLton.

fun |> (x, f) = f x infix |> val (input, (output, proc)) = case CommandLine.arguments () of [rate, inputName, outputName] => ( TextIO.openIn inputName , let val proc = Unix.execute ( "/usr/bin/sox" , [ "-b", "16" , "-c", "1" , "-e", "signed-integer" , "-r", rate , "-L" , "-t", "raw" , "-" , "-t", "wav" , outputName ] ) in ( Unix.binOutstreamOf proc , proc ) end ) | _ => ( TextIO.output ( TextIO.stdErr , "usage: " ^ CommandLine.name () ^ " <sample rate> <input.csv> <output.wav>\n" ); OS.Process.exit OS.Process.failure ) fun loop () = case TextIO.inputLine input of SOME line => ( line |> String.fields (fn c => c = #",") |> app (fn field => field |> Real.fromString |> valOf |> (fn x => x * Real.fromInt 0x7fff) |> Real.toInt IEEEReal.TO_NEAREST |> Word.fromInt |> (fn x => [ Word.andb (x, 0wxff) , Word.>> (Word.andb (x, 0wxff00), 0w8) ]) |> map (Word8.fromLarge o Word.toLarge) |> Vector.fromList |> (fn x => BinIO.output (output, x)) ); loop () ) | NONE => ( BinIO.closeOut output ; ignore (Unix.reap proc) ) val () = loop ()

It's true, beta testing for Renoise 3.1 has begun! It brings in the new features from Redux, as well as a few long-requested ones and some general improvements. See the release page for full details: http://www.renoise.com/products/renoise/release-notes/310

Well they don't need to provide the binary packages. All they need to do is to provide the source code and reliable instructions on how to compile it. They provide binary installers, only as a convenience for their users. Hell Ardour even charges money for providing the binary packages http://ardour.org/download.html. So well they do not take away your freedom at all.

I prefer Reaper. It's much more fully-functioned than something like Audacity, and its workflow is much more efficient, for me.

It's also "free" in the same way Winrar is. You'll never lose functionality if you don't buy it, you'll just get a nagging pop-up on launch reminding you of how long you've used it for.

It's good enough that I bought a commercial license for it, but that was after a couple years of using it for free without issue and starting to make real money using it.

I have a Shure SM57 and use it to record vocals as well as acoustic guitar. There is an old DigiDesign MBox 2 as the interface to the computer/DAW.

I use Reaper as my DAW and really like it. It's free to try out and very inexpensive if you decide to purchase. There are lots of tutorials on their website as well.

Elitists will frown upon this answer, but in my opinion, your best option is to get a small, inexpensive USB interface (I use the Steinberg CI-1, retails for ~$100) and a cheap recording program like Reaper.

If you just plug another 1/4" cable from your amps headphone slot into the interface, you can use whatever settings/tone you want, and you're free to use any backing tracks you'd like as a .wav or .mp3, or even just playing YouTube from your headphones.

Reaper does everything you need and much more. Full unrestricted demo version comes with a 4 second nag screen when you open it and if you do get some cash I think it's like $60 to purchase. The Reaper website

It would be easy enough to make I suppose. Grab a free audio editor like Audacity and then download the audio from YouTube that you want and grab 15 mins of it, cut it, save it, then you could just put it on repeat or if you want to loop it yourself you could watch something like this tutorial

For me, I use the 10 hour long youtube video and just make sure I'm on wifi.

We used to do this in the late 80's using sox and SunOS 4.

These days I guess you'd use one copy of VLC acting both as a local player and as a network streamer and have additional copies of either VLC or even standard (win|mac) media player listening to the network stream.

We might have different understandings of recording and editing is, so let me tell you of my definition:

>A program that can record, allows me to capture the input of a microphone by click a few buttons to begin the recording, and a single button to stop the recording.
>
>A program that can edit, allow me to remove the pauses in the beginning and end, clean up unwanted grunts, clicks, and peaks, and level the volume to a pleasant level.

If you are going to record anything that should be listened to by anyone one this planet, you would like the tool to be able to clean it up as well. How many of the tools you use it not in this discussion, but you get them.

Audacity can record your lines, and also edit them to some extend. You can get more funky features to do certain things faster in other programs, such as Reaper, Tracktion or Adobe Audition, but Audacity is a good place to start.

If it all sounds good, then do it. I don't know much about Audacity, but would imagine that it doesn't have great software instrument support. Are you on Mac or Linux? If so, Ardour is a much better free option. Reaper is also a great DAW, and relatively cheap.

>I'm also a bit weird in that I like doing what I'm not supposed to.

You definitely want to take a look at REAPER then. Ridiculously flexible routing and tinkering, but you don't have to dig to find it. You can also completely ignore it if you'd like. It has a very simple interface. Everything is a track -- audio, MIDI, folders, everything.

I've used ProTools, Cubase, Sonar, Tracktion, Ardour, Qtractor, n-Track and others. In my opinion REAPER is the best of all of them while adding its own improvements and cool features/workflows.

It has some rough edges, but I've successfully used it to plonk out simple but good-sounding tunes after Googling up and downloading some good soundfonts. LMMS follows the design of FL Studio (aka FruityLoops) pretty closely and it's open source.

https://lmms.io/

Audacity - a free and open source app for recording and editing sounds. It's useful for creating sound effects.

For ~$24, get the Hal Leonard Bass Method book. Spend dedicated practice time each session working through the book. At times, you may feel like 'Gee, ma, do I have to?', but the aim of a course is to provide structure and to sequence lessons so they build on each other.

Alternatives, if this seems too basic:

• Joel DiBartolo: Serious Electric Bass
• Chuck Sher: Bass Improvisor's Method

Both of these are great books, but they are more demanding than the Hal Leonard series.

One free learning tool. Use Audacity to slow down songs when you are learning them. You can do this without changing pitch and while the vocals will be a little weird sounding, it lets you play at a pace where you can follow a song rather than get frustrated.

For future reference, it's really simple to edit audio with Audacity.

http://www.audacityteam.org/

Feed the source file in, chop it down to what you want, put that file into Windows Movie Maker, add a picture and upload the result to YouTube.

Now you're a cool dude like Disco Dog.

Audacity is actually free guys. You can download it from SourceForge or Audacity. I would download it from SourceForge due to Fosshub being compromised.

nope, unfortunately not.

There's however midi mode in riff-repeater that plays only the charted notes, so at least some improvement in that area, although for playing the song I'd definitely prefer the option to duck/mute the original guitar.

There seems to be a big change in how Ubisoft now licenses the songs, talking about how millions of songs will be available (albeit with AI generated chord charts). Who knows, maybe they also have deals to use the multitracks for this purpose. In Chainbrain's stream avonnagel (someone from Rocksmith dev team) mentioned in chat that they'll have an announcement re the licensing later this year. I'm hoping that this will provide some held-back features not available in the beta, like remixing the stems..

I'm pretty sure Ubisoft has the multitracks/stems to feed into their AI (deezer also gets the multitracks from the labels, that allowed them to create and train spleeter https://github.com/deezer/spleeter - and that without them asking for it and they only offering the stereo tracks to their subscribers). So there definitely is an easy technical solution for that, the question only is whether licensing would allow it...

Now if any new release had dynamic range that would justify using 24bit files, that would be great.

Music is compressed to a lifeless pulp nowadays. Compression will bring up the noise floor, which means that less bits are needed to perfecty represent the input signal.

I'm talking about 14, maybe 12 bits. Everyone should try this: take a song that doesn't satisfy my old man taste (I'm 27), take SoX, and use it to decimate the bottom 2-6 bits of the track. SoX is smart enough to use dither where appropriate. Try to compare the resulting track to the original, hearing any difference will be very, very hard

sox music.flac -b 16 temp.flac vol 0.25 sox temp.flac -D 14bit.flac vol 4

This will leave 14 effective bits in the file. Repeat with vol 0.0625 and vol 16 to get a file with12 bits of dynamic range.

edit: added -D to disable dithering when shifting left

Renoise works just fine in Ubuntu 16.04 (although I heard it's not that good in 18.04). It's very cheap but pretty powerful. You can try it with almost fully functional demo version, and full version costs just 68 EUR.

Its actually incredibly flexible (more flexible than any other DAW I've worked with). The current price is $89.00 or 65 Euros. With it, you gain access to the Renoise backstage where you can download the client as many times as you wish to install on as many computers as you wish.

You also get support for one full version (Renoise is currently on version 3.0 and a license purchased today will have support until version 4.0). A full list of release history can be viewed here. That should give you a basic idea of how often Renoise releases patches and how long your license will last.

Just curious why can't a computer play this? I could translate his percussion's into midi data along with velocity and route each hit through battery producing the same beats. Or if I wanted to program this beat by hand I could do it with renoise which allows some pretty high resolution between notes for offsetting delay hits/ghost notes.

I think computers are just an extension of us and if you have soul you can make a computer beat shit out of the box that most strictly analog percussionists couldn't even imagine. With the advent of digital drumkits the mending of both old and new renders a new type of sound that can't in itself be replicated.

That being said the drummer is righteous however that baseline is even making my dog cringe.

Collapsible channel groups has finally become a reality (that is me in the video). Excellent, and it works really well. It took me 15 minutes to organise my 58+ track project* into groups and sub groups. I'll have to assign some keyboard short cuts to handle the collapse-all/expand-all things as those are a little inconveniently tucked away in a sub-dropdown menu.

* Link to a track I made recorded in Renoise 2.7, so before the new channel grouping. Gives a good example of how useful the grouping will be to me.

If you are recording and tracking instruments or live-playing virtual instruments you will want to invest the time into installing your interface's ASIO driver to reduce latency. If you do not have an interface then just stick with WASAPI, it's good enough to start with, just don't be surprised if there's a delay between playing a note and hearing it. If you get sick of the latency you can determine how much you want to invest into a proper interface later.

If videos are more your thing check out the official ones here: http://reaper.fm/videos.php

Setting up shop for preferences... aside from setting up audio and perhaps MIDI you don't need to touch the rest of the preferences. Just jump straight to the first song, recording or using MIDI videos.

REAPER will continue to function after 60 days so don't worry about running out of time to evaluate it. Choosing a DAW takes a lot of time because of figuring out workflows. Other DAWs with shorter trial periods are pressuring people into making snap decisions.

> and also the max rate on gen-1 scarlett's is 48khz

Wrong. The maximum sample rate on gen1 scarletts is 96khz, for gen2 it's 192khz. BTW, unless you have very specific needs, using 44.1kHz or 48kHz is absolutely fine - a higher sample rate just gets you bigger files and uses more processing power for virtually no audible benefit (unless you a are a bat...). Recording at 24bit makes sense though - you'll have more dynamic headroom to work with.

As for a beginner DAW, I'd recommend REAPER, since you can download fully featured trial version with only a nag screen after the trial period.

To elaborate on /u/Tarron's advice...

The most straightforward way to do this (IMO) is to get a DAW and some drum software. A DAW is a Digital Audio Workstation, and will let you arrange multiple drum patterns in sequence, save them as a wav or mp3 file, turn on/off a click track, and load virtual instruments, like drum kits.

The drum software itself is a plugin that will let your DAW utilize drum sounds.

If you're not looking to pirate anything (and you SHOULDN'T pirate anything), the most cost-effective solution is to download Reaper and MT Power Drumkit 2:

http://reaper.fm http://www.powerdrumkit.com/

Install Reaper, which is your DAW. Then install MT Power Drumkit. You'll have to go into the settings in Reaper and tell it where to find MT Power Drumkit. From there, you can program in drum patterns and arrange them in the order you want.

Oh, and MT Power Drumkit is free. Reaper isn't free, but the demo version is fully functional with no time-limits. You shouldn't have to spend one dime.

LMMS will most probably put you off music production all together. I made a few tunes in it for an open source game (I thought I'd have a blast at trying to make them with open source software, due to the purpose of the tracks). It's really an abysmal piece of software compared to the major ones, and I imagine it'd be especially bad when you're still at the stage where you're learning.

If you're on the cheap, I recommend you check out Reaper which you can evaluate for 30 days and only costs $60 to buy after that.

From what I understand Reason isn't recording software. For that you need something like Propellerhead's Record or (my favourite) Reaper

For everyone asking, here's a bit of a breakdown of the process.

I record into a presonus FP10 running into my home built PC via firewire, into REAPER.

Drums:

Audix d6 inside the kick, about 4 inches away from the batter head pointed straight at the beater, plastic beater. Kick is 20x22, muffled with a pillow against the reso head. The Batter head is a pre-muffled aquarian head (comes with a foam ring fastened to the head, I forget the model number at the moment.)

SM57s on the snare and toms, nothing too fancy here. Drum tuning is a big deal.

two AT2020s for overheads. I only used 2 cymbals in this recording, so they're at equal height above each cymbal, adjusted to fix phasing.

EQ and compression to taste, and moderate reverb added. I can go over some EQ/compression techniques later if anyone's interested.

Bass recorded direct in to the interface, light EQ. Pretty raw bass sound.

Guitars recorded via a line 6 POD XT, running a line out into my interface. Custom patch. 5 guitar tracks total, 2 doubled rhythm/lead parts, and a solo.

Vocals are recorded with an AT2020, heavily compressed (10:1, about 8-12db Gain reduction), light EQ to brighten them up a bit. Melodyne Pitch correction used at 60% strength.

If anyone has any other more specific questions, feel free to ask! I love to talk about recording! Thanks for all the great feedback! I know this isn't the most popular style here, but it's great you guys are diggin' it anyway!

LMMS is free (https://lmms.io/).

It works with most VST's, I believe KONTAKT should work as well. But you'll have to try for yourself.

The whole interface is very similar to FL Studio, by the way.

The Blue Snowball is a decent cheap microphone at $50 Blue Snowball

Audacity is a free audio editing software that has a lot of tutorials to make your audio top quality. Audacity Download

As for a computer, you can do it on any laptop it’s just the speed you want your edits and final products to compile is related to your processing power.

New in Audacity 2.2.0:

Four supplied user interface themes, and customizability of themes for advanced users (thanks to James Crook and the Dark Audacity project) Playback of MIDI files (fully automatic on Windows; requires cooperating software synthesizer programs on macOs or Linux; special thanks to Audacity co-founder Roger Dannenberg and new contributor “pokechu22”) Better organized menus Help link buttons in many dialogs lead to the relevant manual pages

Changed in Audacity 2.2.0:

198 bugs/annoyances in 2.1.3 fixed, most importantly: Improved recovery from full file system errors; in case of recording, Audacity 2.2.0 will preserve as much of the recorded data as possible Complete support for macOS 10.12 (Sierra) Fuller details on the changes since 2.1.3 can be found in the 2.2.0

Release Notes

Are you typing from a laptop? Download Audacity, hit record, hit play.

Are you on a phone? On iOS, open Voice Memos. On Android, grab one of the many free voice recorder apps.

Audacity is a free audio editor with a bunch of options and plugins to let you do all sorts of things. If you need multitrack editing, look at Reaper, which is a full featured audio workstation.

No need to buy software, audacity will get you started quite nicely.

Best advice seems to be to test things out. Recording with a phone has the benefit of making it easy to find noiseless environment. Microphones on these things are fairly good and designed to capture human voice. Just make sure the file format you choose in the recording app is highest quality possible. Also try your headset mic.

Transfer the recordings to your PC and play around with the software. It's pretty visual and intuitive enough. "multi-track sound editing" is something to look into, if you feel stuck. I'm sure there are tons of tutorials around.

If you decide the quality is not enough, the second round with better mic will go that much more smoother, as you will already have some idea about what you're doing.

Also: sweet whispers, even different ones in each ear or maybe delayed couple of seconds in other ear - pretty sweet. Binaural beats - probably not worth the effort, at least for a start.

The game's actual soundtrack can be found in raw format in something like \Dominions4\data\rawsound

The files that are larger than 100 kilobytes are all soundtrack stuff (others in the folder are sfx). They are mostly .al files but a few are encoded as .sw files. The files ending in .al are A-Law Little Endian 22050 Hz Mono data. The files ending in .sw are signed 16-bit PCM Little Endian 22050 Hz Mono data.

You can download Audacity and use it to import the raw data (File -> Import -> Raw Data) and export your choice of .mp3, .flac, or whatever (File -> Export) for your specific music player of choice.

Instead of uploading files to some random site with a queue (or paying to get past it), you can easily do this locally if you're comfortable with using the command line/terminal.

This site is based on Spleeter, but the current state of the art seems to be Demucs.

I discovered a voice practice hack. Find a way to echo what you say back to you with a really short delay. You can get instant feedback on your resonance, which is something I have trouble figuring out if I'm doing correctly. You also don't feel as alone when you're doing it, because it's like you're listening to someone else talk.

Install sox and run this:

rec --buffer 512 -c 1 -b 16 -e signed-integer -r 96000 -t raw - |play --buffer 512 -c 1 -b 16 -e signed-integer -r 96000 -t raw -

I'm running this on Linux and it works nicely.

If you have Matlab, you should use it instead of Octave, it's probably a lot faster.

To get the audio file into a format usable by Matlab, use SoX (http://sox.sourceforge.net/). The conversion is very simple: run sox recording.mp3 recording.mat. That's it, you get a struct in matlab that has a wavedata variable that has all the sample values you need. For example, to plot it, first load the file with y=load('recording.mat'); then run plot plot(y.wavedata), or if it's stereo, plot one channel with plot(y.wavedata(1,:))

Renoise is pretty close. I bought it for about $80 at version 2.0 around 2006, maybe 2007 and it just recently hit 3.0 last year with a bunch of 2.x versions between with major feature additions. Their policy is you don't have to pay the (I think it's $50 now?) upgrade fee for another point version upgrade from the version you bought it from. So say you buy it at the hypothetical 3.1, you get free upgrades till 4.1 which could be all the way up into 2024. It has everything anyone would want in an a DAW and it's super customizable, has VLC and AU plugin support, works cross platform on Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and Winbloze without DRM, has a great sampler and amazing effects, suitable for mixing, and more. The only thing people complain about having to get used to is the vertical note input due to its tracker-like nature, but I actually prefer it to the horizontal note input systems most DAW's have adopted. Check it out! http://www.renoise.com

Edit: I have VLC/AU plugins that have costed more than Renoise itself.

Hmm. Well. I have used Ableton Live for quite some time, but I recently switched to renoise (this week, so I'm still a newbie). The updates are packed with features see Renoise 2.8 release notes.

While a tracker seems primitive. It gives me a better overview of my tracks. I can see when notes are triggered on a horizontal line <for all tracks>, instead of digging into several blocks of midi-data and trying to remember where the fuck I'm doing what.

I also like the fact that I can open up old modules (.mod, .xm, .it, ...) and see how they are constructed.

Also tools, user developed tools: http://www.renoise.com/tools/browse

I'm sold, anyway.

Renoise is a good option for $75, and it's an absolute powerhouse if you don't mind learning/working with tried-and-true tracking. It has full ReWire support too, so if you decide to buy another DAW like Ableton in the future, you can work on a track in both at the same time.

know your tools. the eq and compressor are the most important tool you will use. get good source material. I wrote this tutorial for renoise, but you'll find the sample packs useful: http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?/topic/27006-breakcore-rinse-technique-xrns/

I would point them at Tracktion 6, that one's actually free, or Reaper which is essentially free until you decide to do the right thing and pay the very modest price.

I think he mentioned it, but anyway, software is the https://www.tracktion.com

This is one of the few DAWs that work well on Linux. Now they ported it to work on RPi architecture. And considering a claim of 30+ tracks on such low-end hardware seems like they did it properly (with required optimizations).

Based on your description, it really sounds to me like the microphone is broken. It was working fine and now it isn't. If nothing else changed in between those events, that's the most likely issue. But, we can test some more. I noted in another comment you're using Audacity to capture audio. Download Reaper (http://reaper.fm) and record a track from your Yeti into that, see if the problem follows the microphone or if the problem stays within Audacity. And if you have access to another computer, I'd move the Yeti to there and test again using another machine. If the problem follows the microphone no matter which software or computer you are using, then that will probably confirm a hardware issue with the mic itself.

<strong>Reaper</strong>. Demo is actually full versions, no limitations, lasts forever, has all the features of a DAW and then more. Basically you can use it for free. It's only 60$ to get a license.

The only thing missing are samples and instruments. See this post for all kinds of free stuff to fill that gape.

All DAW are equally hard to learn. It's a complex software, but they're all about as hard/easy to learn. Having video tutorial makes it easier to learn. Reaper have a lots of them, directly listed on the official website.

You'd normally use VST instead of soundfonts. Soundfonts itself is pretty outdated, and the alternative now are sfz. You'll see that many sfz are listed in the linked post. If you really want a soundfont, a good general one is "Timbre of Heaven".

You can get started right away with all of that without spending anything :)

We have to do this methodically. There are lots of things happening and we want to eliminate possibilities. I have a lot of ideas about what could be going wrong but I'm trying to not send you on wild goose chases. So let's see if input is the problem first.

Okay, your interface wears more than one hat so you need to look for it under both Audio > Device and Audio > MIDI Devices for the specific role it will be playing (it can play more than 1 role at a time).

It might be faster if you try to follow along the official set-up video here: http://reaper.fm/videos.php#Hh04XZqFsic

It would really help to see a screenshot of Prefs > Audio > Device but make sure your inputs are enabled and cover the range you are using (note first and last). Do the same for outputs.

If you close the preferences window, you should see in the upper-right corner of Reaper information about your interface. Namely, the sample rate, bit-depth, latency, and system. If that shows up without errors then you're on the right track.

Create a new track. Set the input to the analog input your guitar is plugged into. Make sure record monitoring is on. You should be able to see the meters move on the track panel and mixer panel when you play the guitar. If you aren't getting sound at this point, then we can narrow the problem down to output.

Yes, you want to create an automation envelope, most likely bound to the "wet/dry" control of your reverb. Refer to the Manual page 353 for automation envelope information. http://dlz.reaper.fm/userguide/ReaperUserGuide540c.pdf

And particularly page 370 for automating FX parameters.

If videos are more your style then look here: http://reaper.fm/videos.php You want the Automation section and the Parameter modulation sub-section.

The documentation of Reaper's Jesusonic scripting language is available here: http://reaper.fm/sdk/js/js.php

What the plugin actually does is very straightforward. If you can't understand it by reading the code then nothing I can say will make you understand it any better because the code is literally exactly what it does. It's a soft-clipper/saturator. It uses a soft clipping curve based on a sine function. That's it, and that's what the code says.

MT Power Drumkit 2 is a decent VST version if you want to program your own MIDI beats. You'll probably need a DAW to run it, but the demo version of Reaper is free to use and without limitation. It's a good entry into doing more comprehensive music production.

MT Power Drumkit 2: http://www.powerdrumkit.com/

Reaper: http://reaper.fm

I'd suggest Reaper instead of Renoise. Renoise is based on old school trackers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracker_(music_software)

Reaper is a modern style sequencer. The discounted license is only $60, and from what I understand, the trial never expires or cripples.

http://reaper.fm

Check out the free DAW LMMS. It comes with three synthesizers which emulate Gameboy, NES and Commodore64. Check this video as an example, to see it in action. If you need help in using the DAW, just come over to the nice community at r/lmms.

No online DAW, or any other webpage, can use VST plugins. VST plugins are programs that run locally on your computer, and a browser does not (and should not) have access to that.

There are certainly free DAWs that support VST plugins, but you need to download them. LMMS is completely free, and Reaper is not technically free, but it provides an unrestricted free trial.

LMMS may have what you are looking for. It is (by my understanding) an open source DAW and comes prepackaged with virtual instruments similar to what you describe. I don't know if it would be possible to use them, but since it is open source, I would assume all synths used in it are to. It might be worth the time to investigate using some of the VSTs featured in LMMS.

This is not a game suggestion but you can add a bit more creativity to the project if it has some sounds. sfxr is a simple tool and you can quickly get a sound effects for their project and Audacity for simple sound tuning.

This might be a little outside the scope of lessons you are to teach but creative use of sound effects can really add personality to their projects.

Not as streamlined, but you could download Audacity (open source audio recording/editing program), clip your own MP3 files, add fades in and out (if you want to get fancy), and export.

Has a tad bit of a learning curve but entirely free and you source your own files and get your favorite clip of the audio.

What do you mean by “reads as HiFi audio”? Do you mean some indicator turns on? Because that may not actually matter to anything.

Also, Audacity is available for Ubuntu/Mint; re:www.audacityteam.org/download/linux/.

I tried reversing it and changing the speed, by now 50% and 100% slower and faster in both reversed and basic lead me to nothing clear.

Clear things i could find for now:
Original audio:

• 00:04 to 00:06 microwave time input
  
• 00:06 to 00:56 50 seconds of microwave running with what seems like a glass plate rubbing/vibrating(very noticeable between 00:47 and 00:49) inside the microwave.
  
• 01:02 start of reversed "song" (interesting fact: The song sounds reversed even when playing it backward).
  

I'll try more stuff tonight on the rest of the file.
Reversed version

I used Audacity to temper with it.

Let's solve this!

Have you tried Ardour or the less-powerful Audacity? At the end of the day a music editor is just a tool, it's what you're actually DOING with it that counts.

You could try Audacity. It's a free audio editor. http://www.audacityteam.org/

Not sure if it has bulk open/export or macro features but you could probably use some type of macro program to do that if it doesn't have that option.

I'm not sure of any program/service that'll do it automatically, but if you download Audacity, I'm sure there is a simple tutorial out there that'll teach you how to get a decent enough effect.

As for legality, I'm almost certain it is. Just think about how many mods are just recolors of existing textures or just pitch altered sound effects. Same principal should apply to music. As long as the songs from the game and are going back into the game, it should be all good.

Absolutely get Audacity. It's a free recording and editing software that has pretty basic features, but is perfect for getting out a demo quick. Make sure to mic up your amp properly, and before recording with the track get a good tone down. Then add your track and record along with it. Good Luck!

The folks at Audacity have more information:

http://www.audacityteam.org/compromised-download-partner/

It's always best to download from the site of the developer. Here's the link for Audacity:

http://www.audacityteam.org/download/

Additionally, you may want a recording software of sorts. There are free programs, most notably Audacity.

Commercial options are endless. Just to name a few popular ones:

• Cockos Reaper
• Steinberg Cubase
• Ableton Live
• Bitwig Studio
• Avid ProTools
• Apple Logic
• Image Line FL Studio
• Propellerhead Reason

Assuming Windows & have default tf2 directory:

Also assuming you know what sounds you want to make into a hitsound/ killsound or already have valid hitsound/ killsound, and that you have a program such as audacity installed

1. Goto "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Team Fortress 2\tf\custom"

2. Inside this folder make a new folder and name it whatever you want (I'll us "HitKillSound" for this)

3. Within "HitKillSound", make a folder called "sound"

4. Within the "sound" folder, make yet another folder named "ui"

5. You should now be in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Team Fortress 2\tf\custom\HitKillSound\sound\ui\"

If you already have a valid .WAV hitsound/ killsound file skip to #5

1. Open audacity with the file you want to make into a hitsound/ killsound.

2. Edit the length, pitch, etc. of the file to your liking.

3. Goto File > Export Audio, & export as .WAV signed 16-bit file.

4. Rename the file you just made to hitsound/ killsound (whichever one it is).

5. Put your new hitsound/ killsound into your "ui" folder

6. Launch TF2, and make sure you have default hitsound/ killsound selected

That's really weird. Normally, people ask for your permission so they can narrate the story for you.

As far as good narrators, if you go on YouTube and type in "Creepypasta", you'll find some of the top narrators reading scary stories. You'll find a lot of people like to add music in the background, do a bit of voice acting with the characters in the story, or some people just like to read it straight through without any fussing around. It's up to you and how you wanna do it.

You'll need a decent microphone, a spot where you can get minimal background noise and where the sound waves won't reverberate back into the microphone, and a program with which to record with. The cheap and easy option is Audacity since it's free and relatively easy to use. Plus, there are tons of YouTube video tutorials showing you how to use the programs hands on. It does have its limitations but for just messing around and making some narrations, it does the job.