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JWM - Sakura (RELEASED!!!)
Hi mates! This is the trailer for my upcoming single "Sakura".
It will feature a radio edit and extended version! Here it is! Please consider purchasing it to support me. ❤️ Cheers.
Comments
Can’t wait!!
Sounds good
Great teaser.
Very happy and lively tune.
Rene
Nice build-up
Thanks so much mates!
The price will be $1 per track, or $1.50 for both tracks (the whole single). Two days away.
It's out! See original post for link!
++++++++++++++
A very pleasant surprise.
Congratulations!
The cherry blossoms are in full display!!!
Very joyful and alive!!!
I love this.
Rene
As always, thank you so much for your sweet and kind words mate.
Means a lot to me.
Great work @jwmmakerofmusic, makes me miss listening to Sasha and Digweed
MAN! I've been trying to remember their names for the longest time as I wanted to return into their catalogue on Spotify! (Well, I pray they have one, lol.) Those were the days mate.
Thank you for the compliment!
Good times, I remember blasting those mixes in my car!
Me too, or on my portable CD walkman when on the bus to and from highschool/uni. Sasha and Digweed, Sash!, Tiësto (back when Tiësto made Trance), BT, ATB, PvD, the Mortal Kombat movie soundtracks (Annihilation was a shite movie but had a great soundtrack lol), Röyksopp, as well as Aqua, Vengaboys, Eiffel 65, etc. Being a teen in America in the 90s was awkward when most everyone else listened to N*Sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, etc.
Not my kind of music, but your production is awesome! I like the Xtended version the most. Good buildups and a catchy melody line that people remember. Japanese theme is a nice find and cohesive in the track.
This should be played in a stadium with lots of people
Very enjoyable music. Can you give us some information about how you did it? Is it IOS only?
Wow, what a great track! Very nice production. All your hard work has paid off with a very professional sound. Hopefully it pays off with a little scratch, too!
Yes, precisely! Remember “The Orange Theme” - Ferry Corsten remix, his magnum opus? 🤩
That would be a dream! 😲 I'm glad you loved it, even if it's not your type of music. I swear, even though I enjoy EDM throughout the ages, including modern EDM, so much modern EDM tends to either be forgettable (unless it's something released by KSHMR, with "Bed" being one of his most memorable tunes as of late) or a rehash of an earlier, better tune.
The way I made this intriguing was by using other chords than just your standard ones. In the main 8-bar loop, I use a borrowed chord on the 7th bar to suddenly give the progression a Dorian feel and add a bit of mystique. Then in the 8-bar b-section, I modulate keys within the space of 2 bars by going "VI, III, VII, i-VII, VI, I7, iv, V7", which then resolves to "i".
I hope so too. Thank you so much for supporting me and paying above the base price. ❤️ And thank you for the kind words. Cheers mate. 🙂
Who can forget?! That piece is truly a master class in how to make a memorable tune! That said, I admittedly never heard of Ferry Corsten himself prior to his "Right of Way" album. I heard of System F of course but never really connected the dots that was the same dude. 🤣
@cuscolima I'll answer you in a separate post.
Thank you for the compliment mate. First of all, yes, this production is iOS only and was 100% completed in Nanostudio 2, with the only external apps used being AUv3s. (This track has no vocals, so Cubasis 3 didn't factor in this time.)
The shakuhachi you hear occasionally, the koto and chime used in the lead, and the shamisen all came from Beathawk AUv3. (It has the best world sounds.) The trance lead is Zeeon (as, while Obsidian is an amazing synth for so many things, its unison "supersaw" leads tend to be a little on the thin side, where Zeeon is meaty af). The other synth sounds, orchestra and all that, are Obsidian presets.
The drums come from Sounds of KSHMR Vol 4 and 3, and the Sounds of KSHMR packs are my go-to drum samples.
Regarding AUv3 effects, most of what I used are the effects from @bleassapp . For instance, I put the Saturator on the subbass to fatten it up and make it detectable on even the crappiest speakers/headphones. The midbass and lead also got the Saturator treatment. I used Bleass compressor to glue together the three sounds that make the lead (the aforementioned koto and chime, and the Obsidian FM pluck).
There are also techniques applied to the various elements that I ported over from Ambient experimentation. (A lot of people say "making Ambient isn't lucrative" or whatnot, but Ambient experimentation is a great way to discover new techniques that can be applied elsewhere. These are a few techniques I picked up from my "Summer of Ambient 2022".) For instance, on the lead I also put Other Desert Cities for a bit of reverse delay. This trick was done in "I Shall Guide Thee" on the Luth.
In fact, another trick I used in "I Shall Guide Thee" that I ported over to "Sakura" was the use of a shimmer reverb to add mystique. Bleass Shimmer was what I used in Sakura, although on "I Shall Guide Thee" I used Eventide shimmer. Anyways, in Sakura I put Bleass Shimmer on the pads (the strings and choirs that is).
Another trick I've learned ages ago, but not from Ambient, is what to use to trigger the sidechain compressor for the "pumping" sound. A lot of people think using a kickdrum is the best way to trigger a sidechain compressor. Not true. A closed highhat sample is the best way.
With all that said, when first starting an EDM track, always set the kickdrum to -10dB and subsequent tracks to -15dB. (Note: this isn't the final mixdown but often gets me pretty close to something decent-sounding in case I need to quickly bounce a demo.) I usually start with a kickdrum and a piano sound in order to lay out the chords and melody. "Sakura" started no differently. I do recall having to swap the kickdrum with another kickdrum in order to match the key of F# Minor "Sakura" ended up being.
Most times I don't keep the piano sound and simply mute it. In my upcoming November release "Mysterious Girl", which is a "60s Doo-Wop meets EDM" type track, I kept the piano sound, simply deleting the melody notes and keeping the harmony.
Anyways, whether or not I keep the piano sound, I start building up my track from there, usually with the main 8-bar loop.
When it comes time for the final mixdown, I pull all faders down except for the kickdrum and sidechain source (you can't hear the sidechain source, but lowering its volume, at least in NS2, lessens the effect of the sidechain). Next, I slap on a limiter and lower the threshold until the peak gain reduction is around -3dB. Then I slowly raise each fader, starting with the most important elements first, until I get a mix that sounds good when squashed to high heavens. And if when raising the volume of each fader I get two tracks battling it out for space in the mix, then I slap on an EQ on each of the offending tracks and slightly adjust each EQ until the tracks play nice.
Once I have a mix I'm satisfied with, I remove the limiter.
Then comes mastering. Now, if I make both the radio edit and extended version of a track in the same project file, I will simply master it in NS2. If there are multiple projects to go on one single/album, I bounce out the unmastered versions and polish them up in Cubasis. Either way, here's how I master...
First I make sure the loudest part of the track peaks at around -12dB. I then put MasterDeathEyeStereo and adjust the knobs as follows - attack to F, release to 5, master out all the way down, input all the way up, low cut to 20Hz, and threshold to -12dB. If the gain reduction meters read -3dB or almost -3dB, then that's perfect.
Next, I raise the signal of the loudest part of the song back to -12dB using MDES' master out. Then I put on BarkFilter Tripleband and lower that output to -6dB or so.
Finally, I put on No Limits and Youlean's loudness meter. In No Limits, I set the attack to around 30ms, the release to 200ms, the ceiling to -0.3dB, and the threshold until Youlean's loudness meter shows approx -8LUFS. Not suitable for Spotify at all, lol, but it's pretty much the modern standard for club play in case you want a DJ to spin it in a set.
(If I were to release "Sakura" through Distrokid, I would shoot for -14LUFS and let it be that. Then again, I don't have the money for Distrokid, so...)
And that's basically about it. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.
Thanks for the (very) detailed answer, you’re the Man !
Bandcamp suggested if I like JWM I might also like „Zeun Ya Yop“ and „Chief and McMurphy“.
(both listed below your track)
You may check them out, too and reconsider arrangement and what you call „mastering“.
Both records are similar in volume to Sakura, but free from harsh, „nervous“ high mids, a typical feature of loudness overprocessing.
(that doesn‘t mean overshoots, but each step of the process may add unwanted side effects)
Your result is clearly a full class below - a good home track, but way from pro sound.
Sorry to spoil the release party (I actually like Koto and Shamisen a lot), but this has been called „great sound“ so many times that it needs a bit of balance.
My point is not to diss your track, but to save you a lot of effort... all these tweaks applied for loudness sake flip back and (essentially) kill the sound.
The recipe is simple:
pick proper source and fx, mix and then control final loudness with a single process.
(if your ears tell you a different story, I apologize and consider myself deaf from now on...)
Ooof. You say you're not meaning to diss my track, and you do give plenty of good advice, so thank you for that. But really? You simply had to add insults like "a full class below" and "a home track" and "not a pro sound"? 🤣 Oh my god, here we go...
I checked out your SoundCloud, and while I love what you have on there, I must ask...have you listened to modern EDM by the likes of "KSHMR" and "Timmy Trumpet" and "Lucas & Steve" and "Don Diablo"? Have you spent years painstakingly refining your craft in producing EDM? (I have two decades of experience in that particular genre.)
Of course I must provide my own example of embarrassing inadequacy to provide context as to how I used to sound. If you really want to hear the "home track" sound from me that are several classes below what I produce now, here's this remix I did over 10 years ago for a remix contest.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/whudj8nnewc0o37/David Latour ft KSTWorldClass - Friday Night (JWM Radio Remix).mp3?dl=0
Sure, it isn't -8LUFS (as far as I know, can't be bothered to check), but my remix sounds absolutely rancid. No wonder I didn't place. 🤣
Modern EDM requires an overall track to be at a certain level of LUFS, which is -8LUFS, in order to be mixed with other modern EDM tracks for club play. It's meant to be exciting and give out the aforementioned nervous energy to make people want to dance and jump and shout. My mastering wasn't meant to be sent to Distrokid for the tracks to be played on streaming services (if it were, I'd set the limiter to -14LUFS instead).
Now with that said, getting back to your SoundCloud page. You're absolutely wizard at Ambient, and I'm a bit jealous of that! 😉 You have other bits and bobs on there that sound really nice and relaxing. Your mixes are very clear and don't sound brickwalled. I think you're trying to give advice to me from an Ambient producer's mindset, and in the case of Ambient, you'd be absolutely correct in letting me know not to overprocess the hell out of sounds. Ambient is meant to breathe.
That said...it seems the last thing you posted to SoundCloud was three years ago, so maybe it's time to help you get back to posting there. So therefore I challenge you to a friendly producer's duel good sir. I'm going to search for a piece of Classical music for us to do our own EDM remixes of, and we'll let our fellow comrades here choose which one they prefer in the context of EDM. All in good fun of course!
Cheers mate.
Like I said, if you have any questions, I'm here to answer them.
I‘m sorry if that „class below“ came over insulting, but that‘s simply what my ears told me in comparison to the 2 albums I mentioned above... picking a couple of tracks and flipping between them and Sakura.
I only compared the general sound impression, not the musical content and both seemed mixed loud enough to me.
Tbh it would be a serious challenge for myself getting close to those 2 records.
If I wanted to insult someone I‘d never give any „advice“ at all.
Though I‘d rather call it hint than advice (it‘s your creative work) and I only dared to comment on suspected side effects, not even loudness or track design.
You explained the mix process above and it made me think „that will cause havoc“, resulting in something you might not really intend, but get fooled during mixing sessions.
I‘ve been there myself multiple times when a mix played back several months later just triggered an OMG. Ear fatigue is always just one more listen away...
My Soundcloud content is mostly examples of certain gear, mics or fx and I have to confess to be a reverb junky. That may associate me with ambient, but it‘s not intended.
I appreciate that you liked the mixes and they all follow the paradigm mentioned above.
(pick sounds and fx, mix, add final loudness)
There is no eq (except reducing boom of the location in 1 or 2 guitar tracks) and no compressor in any of them (except the Pro Tools mix featuring Drawmer Dynamics).
Final loudness is by SAW Studio Levelizer (Maxima or Pro-L2 being the IOS equivalent).
But (as frequently mentioned) I also use that to get a healthy individual track level before mixing. Add some Valhalla Reverb and that‘s about it.
Ah, now I see your process. See, I think this is where the misunderstanding comes from. We come from two very different schools of thought production-wise. You're more of a "let it all breath regardless of genre" type of person where I'm more of a "make it tight in EDM, let it breathe in Ambient" type of person. Like for instance, I do use EQs on most tracks in a piece of EDM, but only to scoop out the low end to free space for the kickdrum and sub bass.
The only EQ I use on the master track is the included one in MagicDeathEyeStereo just to cut out the inaudible gunk below 20Hz that will trigger the compressor hard. I make sure to balance my tracks through the mixing process and adjusting levels.
That said, can you link me to the other two tracks so I may have a listen? I tried to look for them on Bandcamp on the "Sakura" album page and can't find them. I want to hear the examples to compare my track to with my own ears.
Oops, forgot Bandcamp does individual suggestions... here they are.
I don‘t remember which tracks I picked but sound should be consistent.
https://nkom-bivoue.bandcamp.com/album/zeun-ya-yop
https://invisiblesquirrel.bandcamp.com/album/chief-and-mcmurphy
Of course there are mixes that require pushing things, but as with sounds in general I prefer to present parts in their own characteristic way.
Before I eq a guitar, I switch the mic or use a different reverb. The latter may be considered my fake eq, as some ambience is required in most cases anyway.
But I‘m in no way against compressors. Just not for track level control, too much effort, too many side effects.
I may post some more rhythmic stuff, though. Recently got an MPC4k which is a serious challenge (as expected), but it already improved my rhythm awareness. In particular on bass I really suck.
I listened to both albums through and really loved what I heard. Unfortunately, these wouldn't be the types of tracks modern EDM DJs would spin. They really don't sound like modern EDM despite how nice and high quality the music and production is. Here are some recent examples of commercial EDM from within the past 10 years...
Lots of sidechain compression (and compression in general). Hard hitting kick drums and deep bass and bright highs. Brickwall limiting with that "nervous energy" that makes people want to get up and dance. I listen to this type of EDM on a daily basis and have several Spotify playlists featuring this type of music.
That said, that MPC4k looks like a beast of a workstation! 😃 I'd love a go with that, or with an OP-1F (Ambient creation and lo-fi), or some other hardware, but I have all that I need on my M1 iPad Pro to churn out whatever audio I wish.
Not my thing, but definitely done proper for a bedroom producer to achieve that kind of LUFS with that little amount of harshness.
Anything above -11 or -10LUFS has always been Artifact City for me, let alone -8, despite knowing the empirical knowledge of mixing, EQ, arrangement, ect.
Good job.
Thank you so much mate.
That means a lot to me, especially coming from good folks like yourself who aren't into the genre.
I will say this much mate, and I will sound a bit hypocritical here compared to my previous statements. Don't worry about hitting -8LUFS unless you want your track to be "club ready". -14LUFS is definitely the gold standard for streaming services and such as others have pointed out. ☺️
My empirical knowledge of mixing and mastering at such a high LUFS came from engaging in the "loudness wars" over the course of many years and learning how to reduce the harshness and achieve clarity. Honestly, I could master my tracks even louder if I so wished, but I'm no longer engaging in the loudness wars. -8LUFS is the standard for club play and is loud enough for that purpose.
If I do someday wish to release my tracks through Distrokid, I will definitely remaster them to -14LUFS prior to submitting, but while I love using Spotify, paying a service to get my tracks onto Spotify doesn't appeal to me as much as self-releasing through Bandcamp and making a little side change. (What was it...1000 plays gets me $1 or something like that?) Made 8 quid so far from "Sakura", with another mate planning to purchase once he gets his paycheck. 🙂
Well, that last paragraph went off topic really fast, lol.
@jwmmakerofmusic Thanks for the comprehensive journey
While some tracks indeed beat the sh*t out of things, the majority is designed quite clever to avoid harshness (by „noisy“ sounds (or super-saw-like) and few natural instruments).
Surprise: a Tannenberger video from 2021.
I agree with you that it‘s simply a different approach than the tracks I mentioned and people in party mood may not care for fine details anyway, so I stand corrected.
Yes, the MPC4k is a beast of complexity. It popped up in mint condition and fully expanded for a reasonable price in my area, but don‘t judge a book by it‘s cover...
At home the digital io turned out dead, pad sensors were worn out, the display cable was crap and fiddling with it killed the back light. Needed a full disassembly, but now it’s working great.
(I wouldn‘t suggest it to anyone without patience to learn or at least some hardware skills)
Connected (as most of my external gear) to Pro Tools 5 TDM via Adat ports, external devices (incl. iPad) can be routed to the MPC for sampling, additional fx (PT or external) can be applied to MPC tracks and up to 8 channels may be tracked on the fly for short clips.
Since PT TDM is executed on hardware DSP boards there‘s no buffer latency.
Of course mate.
It's one of my unique traits - me overexplaining things to death. 😅
I will admit that some modern commercial music productions sound awful. For instance, I absolutely love Ava Max's "Heaven and Hell" album to pieces for the fun music, but whoever mixed and mastered it is an utter muppet. 🤣 I can clearly hear a lot of artifacts and clipping and such when I stream it on Spotify, and I honestly don't think that's due to the lossy audio compression. As I was telling Blipsford, if I were to release "Sakura" and future releases to streaming services, I'd remaster the tracks to -14LUFS first. I'm very fluid like that in knowing what LUFS levels to master to for various purposes. ☺️
Right?! His "The DJ EP (Vol 1)" (from which "Starfire" comes) is very brill! I wish he'd release the next "DJ EP" soon.
Precisely mate! 😂 They're probably f*ed up on whatever poppers are being passed around at the club. They probably won't be saying "WOW, this mastering job is beautiful!" or "You can really tell that the guy knows how to layer sounds." Instead they'll be like "Whoa, bruh, this molly is da shit. YAS! IT'S PARTY TIME!" 🤣
Oof, dang! That definitely takes a lot of knowhow. I...wouldn't be able to do that. 🙂 Mad props to you mate.
That's really cool mate!
Well no buffer latency is one of the reasons I occasionally have gear lust for an OP-1F. What's strange is back when I was in uni, I used to work a lot with the hardware the uni had provided. This was in 2007 however, lol. I don't think I remember half of the hardware skills I learned when there, and the skills I do use are transferred virtually to the iPad.
Many of the production skills I learned came from Bruce Swedien's "In the Studio with Michael Jackson" book. (I wish I still had the damn thing as it was an amazing treasure trove of invaluable production tips.) He had very advanced superhuman knowledge about various mics and what sound qualities they'd bring to a mix. Hell, if a cheap beaten-up dynamic mic would produce the right sound for recording audio into an overall mix, he'd use it in lieu of an EQ.
One story I remember from the book is when he was recording "Wanna Be Startin Somethin", the mic he was (I believe) recording Michael Jackson's voice fell over in sync to the beat, and he kept that mistake in the final mix!
I used to have this bad habit of over-eqing the hell out of everything. 🤣 I'm not talking about simply low-cutting the lows of everything but the kick and bass nor subtly EQing background instruments around 3.5kHz by no more than -2dB with a narrower Q in order to make space for the vocals. I'm talking more peaks and valleys than the Alps in a single audio production. Much like Bruce Swedien chose his audio sources by choosing the right mic, I've learned to choose the right audio sources for a mix. Say for instance...if a piano from Korg Module just isn't doing it (it's either easily overshadowed by other instruments, or it's too bright, etc), I'll choose a piano from Beathawk or Obsidian (when in NS2) instead.
I've also learned how to layer sounds as well. For instance, if a Trance lead sounds too thin from one synth, instead of applying a whole slew of effects to try and fatten it up, I'll instead layer on a different synth that may be meatier but duller. The meatier synth takes care of the lower end of the lead, and the thinner synth helps brighten it up without the need for an exciter. A little soft-knee compression to glue them together, and voila! (Hence why I love using Bleass' Compressor as my all-rounder. It's universal, it has a lookahead function, and I can adjust the knee to my taste.)
Another thing I've learned over the years is that not all tracks need to be balanced with an EQ on the master. When I produced on a PC, I used to use Ozone's EQ matching to match spectrums. The source track sounded fine, but without tweaking, the target track sounded awful. The only EQing I do on the master buss is to low-cut 20Hz. MagicDeathEyeStereo has a mini EQ on it with a low-cut switch, so now I don't have to bother with any EQ plugins. That's all I really need.
Wow...did I go off on a tangent there. 🤣 It's late at night here, and I'm high on a bit of the sticky icky right now. When I'm high, I become very "philosophical". 😂