A question for the Pro's about the modern POP sound

[newrigel]

Lady Gaga has nothing on the Missing Persons Dale Bozzio IMO. The pop sound is easy... just over produce to the point where none of the raw components are exposed and your there...

[Matcher]

Just saw an interview by Redone where he says that everything on Lady Gaga's album came form the factory sounds of Logic VI's, which btw are pretty good, but you can get the same or better results with the VI's mentioned above.

Best regards.

delcosmos.

Wow, that's pretty impressive. I wouldn't have thought the bundled drum sounds can live up to the task, but it seems you got to give credit for using them very professionally.

Very inspiring.

[Shooshie]

...DP "built in" VI's are limited IMHO and sound small and "Cheap", yes you can get decent results with Motu's VI, but if you want "that" sound, you will need something else.

Just saw an interview by Redone where he says that everything on Lady Gaga's album came form the factory sounds of Logic VI's, which btw are pretty good, but you can get the same or better results with the VI's mentioned above.

This is difficult to say, because I really don't like having to rise up and defend MOTU's little VI's all the time, but I really don't think you're right about them being "small and Cheap." The limits are basically one's imagination. If one's imagination stops with the first few presets, then it may sound small and cheap. But you can get so much out of these VI's plus DP's plugins that it's ridiculous that so few people actually try. For goodness sakes; they're just sound waves. You can make them get up and dance. What the bigger 3rd party synths add is basically everything in one window. You can get more out of a single instance of them, and you get more effects built-in. But DP has tons of effects that you can add to these little synths and make them sound 10 times their size.

Oh, there are more differences than that, I guess, but "small and cheap" are just not accurate descriptions of these little powerhouses. Every time I use them I find something else that blows me away. Not fat enough? Slap on a limiter. Need more low end? Add some EQ. No arpeggiator? Think again: there's one in DP's MIDI plugins. And on and on it goes.

I'm sure people are tired of hearing me say these things, but I just think DP's VIs get a bum rap. They're very capable synths!

I wish I had some good music to post, but I don't. The only things I currently have in an mp3 format right now are some improvs in which I was just "playing around." But I'm willing to risk the humiliation of posting throwaways for the purpose of just demonstrating a few sounds. (why do I know I'm going to regret this? )

"Mojave Sunrise" multi-track free improv
Free Improv with Modulo Again, playing with the controls.
Polysynth Presets (in Bach Prelude #9) I just used a Bach Prelude that I'd recorded for organ and started changing presets. Watch your monitor volume as the presets change.
Bach Prelude #9 - for anyone who just wants to hear the prelude and not have the presets changing, here it is on one preset in Polysynth.

Again, I apologize for not having anything that would go on a Lady Gaga album, but "playing around" is how I learn these things, and that just happens to be what I've got handy for now.

I'm sure the guy who does LG's synths could make something pretty interesting out of DP's synths, too, though I have Logic's synths and am well aware that they do more right off the shelf.

[kwiz]

thank u very much for your input guys

have anyone tried the BPM? it looks nice on the promo video

BFD is very nice, I like it a lot

I have and use BPM and the sounds in it are great.
With that said I also use NI's Maschine, Stylus RMX, Reason, Roland MV8000, NI Battery, and BFD. Point being that all of them have their own "thing" and sound, in some cases, their own "feel" as far as groove goes. I personally know a hit making hip hop/pop producer that uses an Akai S950 for drums and nothing else. Theirs no magic box or VI. Just use what works, sounds, and feels good to you.

[Armageddon]

This is difficult to say, because I really don't like having to rise up and defend MOTU's little VI's all the time, but I really don't think you're right about them being "small and Cheap." The limits are basically one's imagination. If one's imagination stops with the first few presets, then it may sound small and cheap. But you can get so much out of these VI's plus DP's plugins that it's ridiculous that so few people actually try. For goodness sakes; they're just sound waves. You can make them get up and dance. What the bigger 3rd party synths add is basically everything in one window. You can get more out of a single instance of them, and you get more effects built-in. But DP has tons of effects that you can add to these little synths and make them sound 10 times their size.

Oh, there are more differences than that, I guess, but "small and cheap" are just not accurate descriptions of these little powerhouses. Every time I use them I find something else that blows me away. Not fat enough? Slap on a limiter. Need more low end? Add some EQ. No arpeggiator? Think again: there's one in DP's MIDI plugins. And on and on it goes.

I'm sure people are tired of hearing me say these things, but I just think DP's VIs get a bum rap. They're very capable synths!

There shouldn't be any reason to defend them. Despite my personal feelings about DP's VIs, it's all a matter of a) taste and b) what you can achieve with the tools you select to use. In the OP's case, there's either a DP flaming in progress or he really is obtuse in believing that, simply by virtue of owning Logic, he can recapture the same exact sound a highly-paid producer in a studio full of expensive gear was paid to cull from scratch in the first place. Either one is just ... wrong.

I can sit here and type up a multi-page argument about why DP's VIs don't work for me, but I blew a considerable amount of money buying VIs and sample sets that granted me exactly what I needed for sounds inside of DP instead. It sounds to me like you'd be a lot happier using Logic. Or by doing all your MIDI tracks and loops in Logic, bouncing them to audio and then, importing that audio into DP to record your live tracks with. Lots of people do it that way, too. And good luck to you!

[grouse]

"Mojave Sunrise" multi-track free improv
Free Improv with Modulo Again, playing with the controls.
Polysynth Presets (in Bach Prelude #9) I just used a Bach Prelude that I'd recorded for organ and started changing presets. Watch your monitor volume as the presets change.
Bach Prelude #9 - for anyone who just wants to hear the prelude and not have the presets changing, here it is on one preset in Polysynth.

Thanks Shooshie. I, for one, enjoyed listening to those!

[kassonica]

"Mojave Sunrise" multi-track free improv
Free Improv with Modulo Again, playing with the controls.
Polysynth Presets (in Bach Prelude #9) I just used a Bach Prelude that I'd recorded for organ and started changing presets. Watch your monitor volume as the presets change.
Bach Prelude #9 - for anyone who just wants to hear the prelude and not have the presets changing, here it is on one preset in Polysynth.

Thanks Shooshie. I, for one, enjoyed listening to those!

+1

I really like Mojave sunrise..... You are one all round talented guy.

[Shooshie]

...Their's no magic box or VI. Just use what works, sounds, and feels good to you.

Ahh, thanks for saying in one line what I was trying to say in several paragraphs! The whole dialog about this is like recommending people buy Word Perfect because JK Rowling used it to write Harry Potter, or someone else saying "no, it's gotta be yellow legal pads, because Truman Capote wrote his novels in them." (not saying Rowling used Word Perfect, though Capote did use a yellow legal pad) I mean hey, Frank Zappa first appeared on Ed Sullivan playing a bicycle, and did a straight-faced interview with Ed on the musical possibilities of a bike. The reality is as Antoine de Saint-Exupery (author of The Little Prince) said: "it's not the breast we love, but its swell." In other words, the inherent qualities of a synth's design (within reason, of course) have little to do with what a composer gets out of them.

Ok. I'll shut up now. Listen to Kwiz!

Shoosh

[FMiguelez]

...or he really is obtuse in believing that, simply by virtue of owning Logic, he can recapture the same exact sound a highly-paid producer in a studio full of expensive gear was paid to cull from scratch in the first place.

But I thought Logic would make me sound magically great instantly!

I didn't know I actually HAD to do some work!?

[scooter]

Hey FMiguelez,

Whose your girlfriend? I would like to meet her!!

scooter

[philbrown]

SOS magazine has really in depth articles about this very thing where they go through every plug-in, virtually every detail on how some of these mixes are put together. Almost every month they have some kind of article like that. I'm always amazed and how involved and excruciatingly detailed some of these pop mixes are when you see the screen shots and read the articles.

[delcosmos]

Hello, first of all, I'm not a Motu Basher, I mean, I just won a grammy on a project I produced and mixed on DP.
S
aid that, please don't get me wrong Shooshie, DP's built in VI are good, but for this kind of production, you can get better results with other brands, I'm sure you can get there with DP's virtual instruments, but it's faster with one of the plug ins I mentioned. Believe me, I deal with this every day.

Best regards.

Armando Avila (delcosmos).

[FMiguelez]

Hey FMiguelez,

Whose your girlfriend? I would like to meet her!!

scooter

She's cute, ain't she?
When I tell her about your compliment, she will blush in green

If you ever come down here, she'll be happy to meet you (but only if you keep that hairdo)

[Shooshie]

Hello, first of all, I'm not a Motu Basher, I mean, I just won a grammy on a project I produced and mixed on DP.
S
aid that, please don't get me wrong Shooshie, DP's built in VI are good, but for this kind of production, you can get better results with other brands, I'm sure you can get there with DP's virtual instruments, but it's faster with one of the plug ins I mentioned. Believe me, I deal with this every day.

Best regards.

Armando Avila (delcosmos).

First of all, congratulations on your Grammy! Someday we're going to have to count the Grammies in this group! Getting more all the time. It's great to be rewarded for your talent and hard work.

Now, as for the VI's:
It's complicated, Armando, and all of us who work with music deal with it every day. There's no question that some VI's are better than others, and that goes for synths as well as samplers. The problem begins when you start to say that this one or that one sounds bad. It's the performer who makes them sound, so the performer is partly responsible if they sound either good OR bad.
.
You can say that a particular library or synth sounds great, and it can be very true, but when you say the opposite, you have to take into consideration the performer. A performer/engineer with a certain sound in mind and the ability to program it can get a whole lot out of a VI. When you say that DP's VI's are bad, you contribute to the illusion that you can't make good or even great music on them, which is not true.

Then there is the pure quality of the instrument. I've seen some really stupid-bad synths (which could no doubt be used to great effect), and DP's synths are nothing like those. They're actually very good, but of course they are no match even for MOTU's larger MX4. Even saying THAT, I hear myself thinking, "I'll bet that anything I can do on MX4 I can also do in DP using the bundled synths and effects."

It's not that I don't understand where you're coming from -- you prefer certain instruments that give you what you want the way you're accustomed to working. That's the way we all are. And I think there's no question that you know a lot about your gear and preferences. But in saying what you did about DP's synths, you're writing off some useful instruments without really knowing what someone else might do with them. It's a shame to discourage anyone from trying.

Shooshie

[FMiguelez]

The problem begins when you start to say that this one or that one sounds bad.

This reminds me of that post where they showcased the amazing things a guy did with just PEN sounds... Do you remember it, Shoosh? You joked about using Mont Blanc pens

For those who didn't see it, it consisted of a piece of sound/music someone did using EXCLUSIVELY sounds recorded from a simple every-day pen!

I remember it made me feel funny when I complain I don't find or I don't have "the right sound".

The point is, a talented/creative person will make GREAT things even with card-box sounds!