Castle Paradox

[Artimus Bena]

Welcome to the Bena revolution.

http://bena.castleparadox.com/TheString/Triumph/Triumph.mp3

Many many thanks to Setu for unleashing all my deepest desires. The previous sentence sounds many kinds of wrong, but you're gonna have to deal with that.

I already have forming plans for yet another 30 minute work. Expect it, and some epic tale, in a year. Hah. Every time I do one of these, it usually takes 2 or 4 months longer than the last. Only problem is now it'll be in mp3 format. I will probably end up uploading it in pieces, with the option of having it all mailed to you in completion.

See you on the other side.
_________________
SACRE BLEU!

|||Compositions!
|||Eldardeen Soundtrack!
|||Red Mercury!

[Setu_Firestorm]

Sounding good, Bena. I take it you were using the Edirol Orchestral on this. It sounds great.

Don't be afraid to play with the Velocity and Expression toggles in the Nuendo Key Editor. Expression is a more versatile setting of velocity. Where Velocity can only affect individual notes, Expression can alter the entire dynamics of that one MIDI track. When you double-click a MIDI track to enter the Key Editor, check out the pullup window on the bottom left corner where it says "Velocity" and see what you can play with down there (Quagmire: That, too, is also sexual. ) It will make the composing process more interesting for you.

Have fun, and I hope to hear more music from you.
_________________


Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/georgerpowell
Newgrounds: http://setu-firestorm.newgrounds.com

[Artimus Bena]

Well, here's a pirate theme,

http://bena.castleparadox.com/TheString/Triumph/Pirates.mp3


Still beginning stages sorta. Still getting a feel for the program, so it takes forever just compose openings like this haha.

I'm having issues though. The quality of sound in the program is fantastic. However, as soon as it is recorded, the quality... goes to shit. And I can't export straight out of the program; every time I try, it says "an error occured". That's as specific as it gets.
_________________
SACRE BLEU!

|||Compositions!
|||Eldardeen Soundtrack!
|||Red Mercury!

[Artimus Bena]

Hmm... I also have a little problem with edirol. Why won't the volumes I specify stay there? They tend to go to full volume after a few seconds while playing.
_________________
SACRE BLEU!

|||Compositions!
|||Eldardeen Soundtrack!
|||Red Mercury!

[Setu_Firestorm]

Firstly, don't worry. I had to go through 20 hours of training to even have a glimpse of what Nuendo's capable of and to know its basics.

Secondly, are you using an outside program to make your MIDI and then importing it to Nuendo? I know if you do that, it takes the volume settings from the other program and applies them. The only way to undo that set automation is to go into each individual MIDI track, select all the notes, cut them (not copy), delete the gray MIDI track bar, form a new one, and paste the notes back in place. That should undo it if that was the case.

Thirdly, when you try to export, are you doing File > Export > Audio Mixdown, then choosing (.wav) as the format? Not to try and make you sound dumb, but that's the process to render it to a finished audio file.
Never EVER use Nuendo to render MP3s; its MP3 quality sucks ass. You'd be better off rendering it as a 16-bit WAV and converting it with another program.

If you're using Nuendo to record your MIDi (and even if you're using an outside program), there are two steps to mixing down your final product.
Instead of just mixing down all your MIDI to one complete audio track, solo your first track (by selecting the "S" icon), mix that down by itself (but make sure you've got the "Import to Pool" and "As Audio Track" checked -- they say something like that at least), then you can safely delete that track and move on to the next one and repeat that process until you have that many individual Audio tracks. From there, you can open the "Devices" drop menu at the top and choose any one of the 4 mixers to open. Here, you can set your levels as well as EQs, effects. You can also normalize each track to -6.00db to bring their volume to where it should be.

Also, don't forget that in the mixer you can open the "Stereo Out" channel and use Dynasone to compress/master it so it will be louder and richer and use Peak master to keep it from peaking. The way you do that is: Where you see "Stereo Out" click on the little "e" button. It will open a new window with your EQ grid on the right. I have an EQ guide chart here to give you ideas on how to EQ the channels to get the sound you're aiming for (I can go into that later with you if you want). Once you're in the window after pressing the "e", there will be empty slots to the left of the EQ grid. These are your effects plugin slots. Just click any one of them and it will let you open an audio plugin (In this case you will want to choose Dynasone and set the compression accordingly. I set all my Stereo Out Compression to 2). Any plugin you apply here is going to affect that whole channel. There is still the option of either selecting then right-clicking an audio track to apply audio plugins or entering the sample editor (by double-clicking an audio track) and selecting a range of audio to right click and apply plugins to.
_________________


Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/georgerpowell
Newgrounds: http://setu-firestorm.newgrounds.com

[Artimus Bena]

Yep, I've tried every single format known to man, and some known to monkeys, in with every bitrate and setting, it does not want to export audio at all.

I'll play around with the other stuff you mentioned tomorrow; it's 6am here, and I'm feeling it : P

Oh and yeah, I'm importing midi from elsewhere. It's just easier for me to start in notation....

Good to know that it takes cues from the original file; I can simply mess with the dynamics before importing it.
_________________
SACRE BLEU!

|||Compositions!
|||Eldardeen Soundtrack!
|||Red Mercury!

[Setu_Firestorm]

I do still wonder: if you can't export your piece, how did you get the two pieces that you submitted?

Also, I have a theory. When you open Nuendo, it has the transport panel at the bottom of the screen (with all the numbers in it). If you click on the clock icon it brings up a menu. In this menu, choose "Bars and Beats". This will cause the Transport as well as the project window to display numbered measures instead of timelength. Then, where you see what looks like a ruler where those numbered measures are, you can click up there (when the mouse cursor turns into a pencil) and drag Beginning and End markers to highlight the portions of the piece that you want to export. I think THAT might be the problem; you probably didn't set the Start/End markers above the measure numbers. If it's not that, then I don't know what it could be.
_________________


Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/georgerpowell
Newgrounds: http://setu-firestorm.newgrounds.com

[Artimus Bena]

Programs such as goldwave or audacity can record audio coming from the "wave" port.

And nope; I set the start and end markers. If I hadn't it wouldn't have even let me get to the formats and such.

I kinda sorta cracked this program, so .... SHHHH.


Anyway as far as the recording quality goes, I downloaded a program that records directly with a specified bitrate, and I still never got any better quality out of it. So it may be my soundcard? Or its drivers?
_________________
SACRE BLEU!

|||Compositions!
|||Eldardeen Soundtrack!
|||Red Mercury!

[LongeBane]

O lord, I tried nuendo for a bit and I just got fed up and quit. It has a pretty steep learning curve. Not to mention I recall it crashed a lot.