{"id":25951,"date":"2015-02-19T06:13:26","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T11:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=25951"},"modified":"2019-03-14T16:27:20","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T20:27:20","slug":"project-button-masher-so-cool-jc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=25951","title":{"rendered":"Project Button Masher: So Cool JC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m taking it easy this week. We&#8217;re not trying to copy any particular style. Not trying to emulate certain instruments. Not trying to figure out what gives a soundtrack its particular sound. I&#8217;m just making music and posting the result. This is my attempt to take everything I&#8217;ve learned and see if the quality of my work improved.<\/p>\n<p>If there&#8217;s anything that inspired this track it&#8217;s this em&#8230; skit(?) from Machinima: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Vxi7JRJrod4\">Deus Ex: The Recut<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AUfZZbrXVAw\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AUfZZbrXVAw'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>There is something really delightful about re-cutting and subverting the Deus Ex dialog. The conversation<span class='snote' title='1'>For the impatient: It&#8217;s at the three minute mark.<\/span> in this week&#8217;s song was really fun to put together.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/191442970&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This one is a lot more complex than my usual project. I also took the time to make everything myself, including mapping out the drums. (I usually use pre-fab drum loops.) Most of the instruments were built by hand. Note that I&#8217;m not saying it&#8217;s <strong>better<\/strong> or anything, but it is a pretty big step up in complexity and effort. Here&#8217;s the track map:<\/p>\n<p><table   class=\"\" cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='center'><tr><td><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/track_map_so_cool.jpg' class='insetimage'   alt='track_map_so_cool.jpg' title='track_map_so_cool.jpg'\/><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>A funny story about the audio clips in this song:<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->In Deus Ex, you get to visit the Lucky Money dance club in Hong Kong. When you go in, there are a couple of women waiting by the front door. One of them flirts with you, and it&#8217;s transparently obvious that she&#8217;s not interested in you at all, she just wants someone to pay her cover charge, buy her some drinks, and then go away. Her fawning praise of JC is so thick it borders on mockery. &#8220;You&#8217;re <strong>so cool<\/strong> JC, I&#8217;m <strong>so<\/strong> glad I met you.&#8221; And the game lets you do it. It doesn&#8217;t comment on it. It doesn&#8217;t turn out later that she&#8217;s a villain that you have to fight, kill, or interrogate. It&#8217;s just a perfectly normal situation where they allow the player to behave like a complete rube. <\/p>\n<p>It also plays against standard videogame tropes and expectations. The whole &#8220;questing&#8221; mentality of games has taught us that when you meet people who are asking for things, it&#8217;s an unambiguous good to give them whatever bullshit they want. I remember forking over my money to these girls and clicking on them again and again thinking, &#8220;Is there something else I need to do for them? At some point here one of them should give up a key, or a bit of intel, or a hint, or&#8230; something. Right?&#8221; But no. They&#8217;re exactly what they seem: A couple of girls looking to bat their eyelashes at a guy and get free stuff. It&#8217;s a dumb little moment and it always makes me smile when I have my badass nanotech secret agent go into the club and act like a putz.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What I learned:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Important lesson this week. I figured out what I&#8217;ve been doing wrong with regards to mixing. It turns out I&#8217;ve been carefully balancing out the audio levels and then at the last minute ruining them. So that&#8217;s hilarious.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"?p=24037\" title=\"MAGIX Music Maker\">The program I use<\/a> has a volume slider at the bottom of the interface, like so:<\/p>\n<p><table   class=\"\" cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='center'><tr><td><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/magix_volume.jpg' class='insetimage'   alt='magix_volume.jpg' title='magix_volume.jpg'\/><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been using that volume as just a regular volume slider, like you&#8217;d use the volume on an MP3 player. If I was using my headphones I&#8217;d turn it down, and then when my ears got sore I&#8217;d switch back to speakers and turn the volume up again. The problem is that this volume slider doesn&#8217;t just control playback. It controls the volume of the final mix. I&#8217;m not saying that&#8217;s <em>wrong<\/em> or anything. It just wasn&#8217;t what I was expecting.<\/p>\n<p>So after working for hours I&#8217;d take the headphones off and reflexively turn the volume up before I hit export. This would blow out all the volume levels and mash everything together. Here is a song in progress:<\/p>\n<p><table   class=\"\" cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='center'><tr><td><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/audio_mix1.jpg' class='insetimage'   alt='audio_mix1.jpg' title='audio_mix1.jpg'\/><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s more or less the way it ought to look. You&#8217;ve got quiet instruments and loud instruments and lots of variation in the overall piece. (Note that I only see this waveform if I open the project in Audacity. Which I&#8217;ve never had any reason to do until now.) But when I crank up the volume, it looks like this:<\/p>\n<p><table   class=\"\" cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='center'><tr><td><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/audio_mix2.jpg' class='insetimage'   alt='audio_mix2.jpg' title='audio_mix2.jpg'\/><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;d crank up the volume, export it, then upload it to Soundcloud. When it sounded kind of off, I figured it was because I was using speakers instead of headphones. My speakers are old and not in good shape<span class='snote' title='2'>The right one is partly blown, thanks to one too many games of &#8220;Windows Volume Control Roulette&#8221;.<\/span>. I was accidentally participating in the loudness war:<\/p>\n<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3Gmex_4hreQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>This probably explains why my stuff sometimes sounds less interesting after uploading it to Soundcloud. I always attributed that to artist&#8217;s self-critique, where you stand back to get a good look at your work and suddenly decide it sucks. But no, it was actually me sabotaging the mix at the last moment. <\/p>\n<p>This is not to suggest that my mixing skills are brilliant or anything. I am not an audiophile. I&#8217;m actually an audioslob. I don&#8217;t often care about sound quality and things like white noise don&#8217;t usually bother me. I can enjoy listening to an old cassette tape on tinny speakers without going crazy. But I try to take care with audio mixing and editing because I know some people really, really care<span class='snote' title='3'>You should hear the Diecast before I edit it. Popping, clicking, and white noise galore. I know the end product isn&#8217;t anything special with regards to quality, but the raw audio is a lot worse.<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>So hopefully I&#8217;ll stop making that mistake in the future and I&#8217;ll have fewer over-boosted tracks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m taking it easy this week. We&#8217;re not trying to copy any particular style. Not trying to emulate certain instruments. Not trying to figure out what gives a soundtrack its particular sound. I&#8217;m just making music and posting the result. This is my attempt to take everything I&#8217;ve learned and see if the quality of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[468],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-25951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-deus-ex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46262,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25951\/revisions\/46262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}