Creation & Studio

This is wildly incorrect, right? Unless this is some new revelation, it seems like mastering your music is completely necessary. It’s basically the glue to hold it all together. Any more insight on this or is this take as wrong as I think it is?

The Roland Jupiter-8 has been around for over 40 years, yet it still seems to be one of the most recognizable synthesizers ever made.

Its sound has appeared on countless records across pop, synthwave, electronic, and film music. Even today, many software plugins and modern hardware synths try to capture its character.

But I sometimes wonder how much of its reputation comes from nostalgia versus its actual sound and workflow.

If the Jupiter-8 were released for the first time today without its legendary status do you think it would still be considered one of the greatest analog synthesizers ever made?

I'd love to hear your thoughts, especially from people who have actually played one.

Or your top three things? I'm brand new to the field, and I'm sure a lot of heads here have forgotten more than I'll ever know, but I'd like to know what general direction to go because it's a vast subject.

The singer in our band wants to get a radio mic. She'd like to keep her current mic, does anyone have any experience with plug in radio systems line the Boss WL-30XLR, or any other recommendations?

Hey everyone,
I’m looking for some advice or maybe even someone to collaborate with.
I can write complete lyrics on my own. Lyrics, concepts, storytelling, verses, choruses, bridges, all of that comes pretty naturally to me. The problem is that when it comes to the actual music side of things, I’m completely lost.
I don’t know how to create melodies, rhythms, chord progressions, or instrumentals. I can hear the emotion I want in my head, but I have no idea how to turn that into actual music. Most of the time I end up with pages of lyrics and no clue what they should sound like.
Has anyone else started from a lyrics-only background and learned the music side later? If so, where would you recommend I begin? Are there any beginner-friendly tools, courses, or methods that helped you understand melody and songwriting from a musical perspective?
I’d also love to hear how lyricists usually find producers, composers, or musicians to work with.
Any advice would be appreciated.

Hello everyone, I really enjoy NIN industrial and gritty sounds lately and wanted to get myself a good synthesizer/digital/MIDI piano whatever it is. What’s the best suggestion to start from scratch ?

Recently the Minilab 37 caught my attention because Minilab3 is not capable for 2 hands play. Thanks you the help!

My one question that I have (I’m not sure if there’s an answer or if it just comes with experience) is this: Outside of the bass note, how do you decide which note goes with which instrument and in which register?

For example, let’s say you end a piece with a B major chord like Stravinsky’s Firebird. Obviously it’s not going to be inverted, so our bass note is a B. But outside of that, there’s so many instruments. I mean what’s the difference in giving second and fourth horn and octave F# and an octave D# in the grand scheme of things.

Do composers consider how the notes would ring with the other horns? Does that really make a difference with that many other instruments playing?

Hi all,

I have never gotten formal musical training. I learned guitar (and music) through metal/rock covers and reverse-engineering than I pivoted to DAW/MIDI technologies and gotten a further grip on the technicalities of music (dynamics, harmonics, phase, loudness maximization, etc).

While most music I write is in the minor scale (or in Aeolian mode? I'm not sure I'm properly using terminology here), my rock/metal background has equipped me with some magic tricks to cut corner within a scale without the music breaking and sounding off-key.

The most classical (classical as in "oh that's a classic" not as in "classical music" haha) trick I employ may be injecting the triton (Root+6st) in a blues-y way (usually gliding downward or upward to land on the 4th or 5th of the minor scale). This trick is used all over music I listened to from rock/metal to 2000s R&B/pop.

An even more daring trick is injecting the major 3rd (Root+4st) or I guess playing directly or indirectly the major chord of the key instead of the minor. The internet search led me to just one particular instance of this referred to as the **Mario Cadence**. In a nutshell, it comes to playing the following chords given a tonic X: (X-4)maj -> (X-2)maj -> Xmaj. It ressembles a famous chord progression from the minor scale 6maj 7maj 1 found all over western music. Yet it lands on an unexpected major chord rather than minor.

However, it is not the only way I gravitate towards playing that tonic chord as major instead of minor. I found myself also replacing the tonic minor chord with its major version in my favorite family of chord progression involving 1, 4th, and 6th (0, 0+5, 0+8) in various orders. It's also found all over western music, and it works so well but that's another can of worm I'll be ready to dig into one day.

Here's an example from a breakdown of a recent piece of music I'm working on.

The harmony, carried by the bass and chords, is more of a power-chord progression from A 1st to F 6th to D 4th. In my pads and chords, I throw the major 3rd (tonic+4st) into it and it doesn't break, one can even say it gives a dreaminess to the whole thing. If you have a more informed description of what you hear, please let me know.

I also noticed that major 3rd (+4st) doesn't break when the minor 7th (+10st) is still ringing. Which cannot be necessarily said for other minor-only notes (like the 3rd (+3st) or the 6th (+8st)).

I'm open to any leads I can follow in order to understand these maneuvers. I sort of learned by ear and observation. Over the years, I luckily stumbled upon some music that cannot be explained or understood through a minimal understanding of keys and scales.

Any help would be really appreciated:
The film was shot in the basement bar of a post-war NYC building. It's narrow and long. In this scene, two people are talking, with background bar noise and music coming from the speakers. How do I get the music to sound like it's being played in this kind of space in ADOBE?

I managed to get the effect in DaVinci but cannot replicate it in Adobe to save my life. Please help.

THIS is what the bar looks like.

I’m a classically trained pianist and am fairly new to synth stuff. Is there anything the behringer model D can do that the fourm can’t, functionality-wise? Or is it just the nostalgia/workflow of the minimoog that it offers?