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I've been wanting to make chip music for a while. I started off with a cover just to be able to focus more on learning the software and playing with sounds. I wanted a mix of 8 bit with physical instruments. Let me know what you think of the mix, it's also my first time really mixing anything.

Any tips on mixing the 8 bit sounds? Should I be EQing or compressing them at all?


School Friends by Now Now
https://soundcloud.com/paper-robots/sch … -3/s-xkETe

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Naptown

here's my thoughts, feel free to apply what is most useful to you. I think the overall balance is pretty good. if you EQ, I would suggest paying attention to 2 places: one is the waveform that is at the same pitch as the vocals, and the other is the waveform that is at the same pitch as the guitars, and make small notches to reduce the part of the spectrum where those frequencies are the same. since pure waveforms contain a lot of harmonics, doing so won't interfere much with the sound and should make a little more room for the guitars and vocals. I would aim away from compression (on individual parts) since that will take some of the dynamic range out, and aim more towards using more dynamic variation, e.g. try adding an envelope to the waveforms so some parts are soft and others are loud, or try altering the velocity/volume of the notes, so that if you have a repeated pattern of one note, you're actually not playing it at the same volume. you can also use volume variation to make a fake "echo" effect often done in famitracker/LSDJ. along the same lines, you might consider varying the pulse width/duty cycle, so again if you're playing the same pitch, it's getting a bit of variation. let me know if you have any questions. overall it souns good! hope this helps

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São Paulo, Brazil

This reminds me Daniel Johnston and Half Japanese. I like this.

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urbster1 wrote:

here's my thoughts, feel free to apply what is most useful to you. I think the overall balance is pretty good. if you EQ, I would suggest paying attention to 2 places: one is the waveform that is at the same pitch as the vocals, and the other is the waveform that is at the same pitch as the guitars, and make small notches to reduce the part of the spectrum where those frequencies are the same. since pure waveforms contain a lot of harmonics, doing so won't interfere much with the sound and should make a little more room for the guitars and vocals. I would aim away from compression (on individual parts) since that will take some of the dynamic range out, and aim more towards using more dynamic variation, e.g. try adding an envelope to the waveforms so some parts are soft and others are loud, or try altering the velocity/volume of the notes, so that if you have a repeated pattern of one note, you're actually not playing it at the same volume. you can also use volume variation to make a fake "echo" effect often done in famitracker/LSDJ. along the same lines, you might consider varying the pulse width/duty cycle, so again if you're playing the same pitch, it's getting a bit of variation. let me know if you have any questions. overall it souns good! hope this helps

Yeah! Thanks! That is one thing I need to do more is vary my velocities at least. I have been trying to learn more about subtractive EQ like you mention. Right now I'm just never sure what's good, one thing sounds good in my monitors and then it sounds like shit in my car. It's just a lot of trial and error. smile

Right now I have 3 pulse tracks, 1 bass, 1 sub bass, 1 guitar track, and then drums.

I am doing some of those echo effects! They just don't come through that much with everything going on. I love them though.