This is what the Genos can do

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

https://soundcloud.com/silver-machine/matthew-son

It has taken me a long time to get this far.

All the best
John

[Amwilburn]

Wow, that sounds like an actually produced song, John. I'm assuming some of the more industrial sounds are your own custom sample robot patches? I think the Genos *needs* an anvil percussion sound, and the one from that fantasy pack is simply too space inefficient...

Sounds really pro!

Mark

[Lee Batchelor]

I think you have a bull's eye there John! Well done!!

[soryt]

Sounds weird?

[maartenb]

Well done, John! And excellent drums.

If you'll allow me to give a tip: The instruments sound pretty dry. I noticed this in the intro, in the little more quiet part at about 3/4 into the song, and with the brass sound. Adding reverb on the instruments would make it sound even better IMHO.

I'm looking forward to another song!


Maarten

[davey]

Very impressive John loved it!

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Wow, that sounds like an actually produced song, John. I'm assuming some of the more industrial sounds are your own custom sample robot patches? I think the Genos *needs* an anvil percussion sound, and the one from that fantasy pack is simply too space inefficient...

Sounds really pro!

Mark


Hi  Mark

Thanks for your great comment as i have been struggling for ages mixing and attempting to master using the actual song for  referencing.

Everything you hear has been done on the Genos on this song.
What i do is when it comes to mixing, i listen to the Brass and Orchestra and if i do not like how they sound i can use Izotope Neutron to Sculpt the sound, EQ with several options which you can choose from a drop down. From there just a little tweak here and there gets me where i want. I also do the drum sectio and make sur the bass is not overloading. I now use Room correction with Sonaworks and work between Monitor speakers and head phones.
When it comes to mixing with the Genos i always find artifacts in the sounds and EQ gets those little annoying sounds out in certain frequencies. Gulfoss in the Master Buss is a great tool  too , Tommy 73  put me on to that .
I am still a way from being a master at it as i always find something else i miss and i suppose it is the big learn curve.
Izotope plugins are great and now studying Wavelab..

[Lee Batchelor]

Yes, John. Perhaps a light dose of Stage reverb on those dry parts would be a good idea. Otherwise the mix and EQ sounds excellent on my Yamaha HS-8 monitors (no sub). I find the biggest error non-pro mixers make is "over-compression." The listener anticipates a high point in the song but it never happens because the mixing artist crushed it.

Some professional artists do the same thing. Celine Dion is the queen of that error. She mimics the Barbara Streisand sound very well until she reaches for the high notes. She literally screams them out, so the mixing artist has to crush the daylights out of the signal. Streisand "pyramids" her vocals - a skill Dion has either never mastered or simply refuses to do. Pyramiding is when a singer decreases volume as he or she increases pitch. But once again, I digress... !

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Well done, John! And excellent drums.

If you'll allow me to give a tip: The instruments sound pretty dry. I noticed this in the intro, in the little more quiet part at about 3/4 into the song, and with the brass sound. Adding reverb on the instruments would make it sound even better IMHO.

I'm looking forward to another song!


Maarten

Hi Maarten

Big thanks for your comments and it is great too get different opinions.
I referenced this song against the real version of Cat Stevens and yes i could have put a little more reverb on the intro.
I put a little on first verse and went to dry for the second part of the verse as similar to the song.
It is hard emulating songs without a singer and make them sound close to original
I do like dry parts as they stand out more, but i will have an experiment with what you are telling me.
Thanks for your opinion otherwise we never learn



All the best
john

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Yes, John. Perhaps a light dose of Stage reverb on those dry parts would be a good idea. Otherwise the mix and EQ sounds excellent on my Yamaha HS-8 monitors (no sub). I find the biggest error non-pro mixers make is "over-compression." The listener anticipates a high point in the song but it never happens because the mixing artist crushed it.

Some professional artists do the same thing. Celine Dion is the queen of that error. She mimics the Barbara Streisand sound very well until she reaches for the high notes. She literally screams them out, so the mixing artist has to crush the daylights out of the signal. Streisand "pyramids" her vocals - a skill Dion has either never mastered or simply refuses to do. Pyramiding is when a singer decreases volume as he or she increases pitch. But once again, I digress... !

Hi Lee
Nice to hear from you and thanks for your opinion.
I will look at this reverb situation as i am always frighten to over do it.
If you listen to Hot Chocolate sounds, they are dry and seem to stand out, it was only on later songs like " No Doubt About It " that reverb krept into their records. 50's and 60's music was full of reverb.
It is the same with compression ,i do not like to use too much, only a little combined with limiting on master bus to retain dynamics.
I use AB,Metric and this plugin compares the bass , low, mid's and highs, plus Luf levels , dynamics and song matching.
This gets you in the ballpark
Afterall i mixed this song aginst a 60's recording and it came out as that using referencing.
I do love for and against opinions as a the MANDOLRIANS say " This is The Way"!!!


All the Best
John

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Hi Dave

A Nice big Thank you M8


All the Best
John

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Sounds weird?

Thanks for your comments


All the Best
John

[Lee Batchelor]

Fully agreed on the reverb front, John. Overusing reverb just turns everything to mush. Yamaha needs to learn that in their basic setup of their arrangers right out of the box. Most of their kits have reverb applied to the kicks and toms!

It's sort of like piano players who stand on the sustain pedal. All the notes blend together to make it sound like a smooth composition, when in reality, they're producing mud 🤣.

[Jeff Hollande]

Hey John :

Congratulations ! 👍👍👍
Very well done.☝️👏
Best regards, JH

[robinez]

that is a great song ugawoga!

I know that you spent a lot of time improving your skills on the mixing and mastering side and here are some tips and tricks you maybe can look into.

neutron:
since you are using neutron, I would highly advise to also install audio lens if you are using a recent version of Neutron. With audiolens you can create a mix/mastering profile of your favorite song and use that as your AI mix assistant in neutron. So for instance if you have a specific song from hot chocolate that you like, just add it to audiolens and create a profile with it. In Neutron you can select this profile and you have a great starting point of reaching that sound. You will also learn a lot of the things it will suggest!

Considering your mix:
there is definitely something wrong in your low end, I'm not really sure what you did but it sounds like you have added some extra sounds to your Genos sound and those sounds are out of phase and cause masking problems in some of the low end EQ area. It's a strange effect that it has on your sound, because when the drums kicks in again, your mix sound wide open. So if I were you i would take a look at the low end again.

some of the sounds are standing out to much in your track (for instance the trumpets over the drums), it would be nicer if you fit them more in the mix by lowering the values.

I would also look more in to the use of Reverb. I know that that is a question of taste, but reverb is also used in the mixing stage for positioning sounds in the mix and it has the benefit of blending sounds more. Also compression / maximizing is something that would be helpful, it blends the mix much more in to each other.

On the izotope site there are a lot of tutorials which are really helpful when diving in to the mix / mastering world, they are really good reading material.

So i hope you have some guidelines to start with, I only say them because i know how serious you are with these things, so they are well meant.

And to conclude, my opinion is that it just starts with the recording of the song, then the fun parts start with the coloring of the sounds and mixing decisions and eventually the mastering phase for the platform you are going to release it on. (for instance youtube, spotify or soundcloud all three have different things to keep in mind, especially the lufs decisions you are going to make for those platforms).

But keep up the good work, your song is great and i can hear the love and dedication into your song!

[pjd]

https://soundcloud.com/silver-machine/matthew-son

It has taken me a long time to get this far.

All the best
John

Thanks, John! Sounds like prog is alive and well. Long live Alan Parsons! 

I see a lot of suggestions and the only thing I can offer is to not worry so much about LUFS when following up. Everything is good in that regard and not worrying so much about overall level will give you more time for the musical tweaks.

It takes a lot of courage to go public with one's work!

Thank you and keep on keepin' on -- pj

[keynote]

Sounded wonderful, John. Congratulations on reaching new heights on your musical quest! I think you said you use Cubase if I'm not mistaken. It's one of the best DAW's available on the market in my opinion. And of course the Genos is one of the best arranger keyboards of all time, in my humble opinion. 👍

Btw, this is a recording I made fairly recently that kind of encapsulates, in my opinion, the sonic prowess and capability of the Genos or at least a glimpse of it anyway. PS: This song is pretty loud in some places (Drums mostly), and it just might reveal any flaws of our member's speakers if they happen to listen to it. There is no audio clipping in the song itself, so you needn't worry about that. But if you hear any distortion/rattling or other strange noises from your speakers, it might be an indication you need new or better speakers. Cheap or in some cases blown speakers are a bummer, needless to say. The speakers I use for recording/playback are a pair of Mackie HR-824 MK/2 near field monitors and there was no distortion at all when playing back this song on them even at high volume levels. I just thought I would put it out there. Without further ado...

The Power of Genos

All the best, Mike   

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

that is a great song ugawoga!

I know that you spent a lot of time improving your skills on the mixing and mastering side and here are some tips and tricks you maybe can look into.

neutron:
since you are using neutron, I would highly advise to also install audio lens if you are using a recent version of Neutron. With audiolens you can create a mix/mastering profile of your favorite song and use that as your AI mix assistant in neutron. So for instance if you have a specific song from hot chocolate that you like, just add it to audiolens and create a profile with it. In Neutron you can select this profile and you have a great starting point of reaching that sound. You will also learn a lot of the things it will suggest!

Considering your mix:
there is definitely something wrong in your low end, I'm not really sure what you did but it sounds like you have added some extra sounds to your Genos sound and those sounds are out of phase and cause masking problems in some of the low end EQ area. It's a strange effect that it has on your sound, because when the drums kicks in again, your mix sound wide open. So if I were you i would take a look at the low end again.

some of the sounds are standing out to much in your track (for instance the trumpets over the drums), it would be nicer if you fit them more in the mix by lowering the values.

I would also look more in to the use of Reverb. I know that that is a question of taste, but reverb is also used in the mixing stage for positioning sounds in the mix and it has the benefit of blending sounds more. Also compression / maximizing is something that would be helpful, it blends the mix much more in to each other.

On the izotope site there are a lot of tutorials which are really helpful when diving in to the mix / mastering world, they are really good reading material.

So i hope you have some guidelines to start with, I only say them because i know how serious you are with these things, so they are well meant.

And to conclude, my opinion is that it just starts with the recording of the song, then the fun parts start with the coloring of the sounds and mixing decisions and eventually the mastering phase for the platform you are going to release it on. (for instance youtube, spotify or soundcloud all three have different things to keep in mind, especially the lufs decisions you are going to make for those platforms).

But keep up the good work, your song is great and i can hear the love and dedication into your song!

Hi Robinez

Thank you for your suggestions as i will take them on board. Critical advice is great for learning and at 72 years old i hope that i have got enough time left. I am doing covers to gain experience , but i just have to get down to vst more as it has more quality in sounds off the bat than Genos, But when hearin a song that i like ,i cannot resist!!
I made the brass stand out as that is the singer as well.
When i played the song i just used a Genos style and that was it and i did reference against the real song.
Talking about nuances in the real Cat stevens song you can hear a micophone drop on the floor or sat on a wooden box as they went through the start of the song.
If you have a good system hi-fi you can hear those little things in the background, but in the 60's we did not care for little things like mistakes. "oh the joy of a transister radio and a Dansette record player, the ones in a cardboard housing.
I toned the drums down as in the real song the singer and instruments take the floor and the song stands out .
This is how i perceive songs from the 60's. Dave Clark Five and groups like the Safaris "Wipe Out" used to highlight drums more.
I will as you say take on board your suggestions as i do like to explore lots of angles.
I had a go in Neutron de-masking , but i am still a novice with Ozone.
I hear you are also doing well with the PAX 5



All the Best
John                  "Will keep on learning and try to push the envelope".
jOHN

[tyrosman]

wow wow John great song i Remember that one Genos is fantastic

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Hi Tyros Man
Thankyou for your comment
I will keep trying to get there  wherever it is lol

All the Best
john