I’ve been planning on doing some heavy metal with Caustic since Zicman published his wonderful song ‘Drym’. I thought it would be easy with my experience, I’ve been playing metal in a couple of bands over the years. Well I had a couple of ideas but none of them ended up as a full song until now.
This is my first complete metal song made in Caustic. I couldn’t find any good guitar sounds so I sampled my Squire Stratocaster using the neck position pickup. The guitar sounds good but the song didn’t end up as heavy as I intended so I gave it a light metal name :D
And here's the Caustic file
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107257319/ALUMINIUM.caustic
Have a nice week.
Stand by.... just DL'd the Caustic File.... let's see if we can turn this into Steel LOL
Here you go.... Is this kind of what you're looking for????
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/84811931/aluminium%20EIP.caustic
BTW, your guitar work is fantastic! and using BL for a guitar lead.... nice move
EIPSO thumbs up
I love hearing people doing unexpected stuff - I guess my perception is that Caustic 2 is primarily a techno/house/electronica app (that's what I use it for) so it's great when people just use it to write whatever they want and let rip.
https://soundcloud.com/james-muir
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pop into my SC page, I do a nice variety of genres and flavors with the app... the possibilities are endless....
But this Aluminum track really has a nice rock feel for how it was built... I liked playing with this one
Thanks Jason.
Nice move lowering the bass, that really added some thunder to it. But I think the drums sounds a little flat. Adding reverb to the drums and increase the level of the guitars was my last touch to the song. But maybe I’ll make another mix with deeper bass later. What’s really needs to be fixed is the frequencies in the chorus part, maybe another sound for the melody?
Yeah! It’s more fun not being locked to a specific sound or genre. I do what ever I want with Caustic or should I say Caustic does what ever it want with me. Sometimes I just let Caustic lead the way just to see where it will end, some of my tracks came up that way
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This may require complete reprogramming of your drums, but I'll send you my PocketKitNice if tyou want..... or I can find my raw samples and send them to you for your BeatBox Preset...
Ok, I substituted your BeatBox drum sounds with select sounds from my raw samples (yeah I know the Kick sounds a bit weak) from PocketKit Nice, before processing.... I couldn't find the processed samples at the moment, but here is what your song sounds like with my "pre-production" PocketKit Nice for BeatBox...
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/84811931/aluminium%20eip2.caustic
Listening to it further and comparing to my released PocketKitNice, is a real stretch, because PocketKitNice for PCMSynth sounds much punchier than what I put on your song.... but its just a taste... if you want to use PocketKitNice, you're looking at a complete rebuild of your drum track, BUT you will have multiple layers (7 for snare) and 2-4 for toms kicks and hats and crashes rides, plus you get crash-rides, 2 splashes and thier rides etc.... The NI Battery Kit I made contains 20+ layers for everything from a 12 piece Pearl Kit.... but that's another thread about a project I plan to expand for CausticCore soon...
Nice track. Seems that Caustic turn Rock these times
In another topic, I saw some members asking for rock guitar sounds. Maybe a new machine to add to the wishlist: a virtual guitar with amp sim
. But some good samples and a few trick should do the job.
I made a little mix for you, check it here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/63128865/aluminium%20SKA.caustic Hope you like it. I think you should change the melody sound, as you said.
How did you "sample" the guitar? I'm 35 years old and only recently have had any capability to experiment with different mics/ audio interfaces.... and they do make a difference despite my my younger pessimism with regards to "gearheads."
Not bad at all. I replaced the kick with the ‘LM2’ and gave it a little higher pitch, sound really good. The snare is awesome and the cymbals are nice to. I’ve been planning on making some kits for the PCMSynth just to get more cymbals for my drums but it’s kind of boring and time consuming work. I used to make all my drums with soundfonts (Viena) so I know the drill.
Just to make things clear, when you say layers you mean ‘velocity layers’ I suppose. I thought that didn’t work in Caustic yet, or do you place the samples side by side in the piano roll? That would cause a lot of scrolling in the sequencer to see the notes played. Well no pain no gain, maybe I should have a look at your pocketkit.
Nice mix though, I probably end up with something like that. But I still think the melody sound is the main problem. I raised it one octave in the chorus part to make it more interesting but then it went in to conflict with the arp-synth. I think I should back off the guitar levels to.
Jason's kits are in the PCM Synth and have different velocities mapped to different notes - so your 2nd supposition is the correct one. I understand why it's a great idea as it helps to stretch Caustic as far as possible but I'm a dullard that likes the drums in the drum machine rack
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Virtual guitar? Sounds interesting, how would it look and how is it supposed to be played? Would be nice to hear your thoughts about that.
I hear you altered some of my chords. Nice, it almost sounds like an organ at places.
Hmm, I’m not sure I understand what you want to know? Do you need instructions on how to make your own samples or are you just curious about how I did in this case? Well the last one is easy to answer, nothing fancy about it I just plugged it in to my computer and recorded it. No amp and no effects. The distortion and EQ is added in caustic. The only thing that is special with my guitar sound is that the 5’th octave and above contains manipulated samples. I cut away the attack to simulate hammer-on and pull-offs.
Wow, this is a complex process to do such a thing with this app.... Maybe you will get better results by playing strummed chords and 2-tones run thru an amp, and play the "phrases" in PCMSynth, but modelling a guitar for making your own chords and medalies are something completely different and requires proper guitar string theory, but quite doable with Caustic if you get creative enough....
I've created guitar "modelling" programs on synth workstations and other portable gear in years past, and they worked out like a charm before.
But that will be another thread.... and maybe something possible for me to consider making in the future, since there seems to be a growing use for rock-style music with this app. Definetely peaked my interest on it today...LOL
Like Scarabee's mix, good heavy drums on the BB.... I gotta find my processed PocketKitNice samples to drop in there, cuz the old ones are just raw ones. I'm almost tempted to lose the BB and redo the song with the real PocketKit.
You're right, but in most of my PocketKits, due to size, we're talking maybe 6 layers for snare, and 2 for everything else..... My old NI Battery Kit I created before, had 50+ for each and every drum head and metal I could get my hands on...... I hope to bring this method to Caustic sometime in the future, because I have some theories about it.... My Window II track kinda proves it for "live" drum action....
For the virtual guitar machine: it could be a pluck synth (like Slayer in FL), fast attack, no sustain, ajustable release for plain string or palm mute effect, with a movable pickup position to alter the sound. In addition, we can think of a distortion module (already made), and maybe a filter to simulate the cabinet, or better, an IR loader (impulse response) that reproduce the behaviour of some cabs (1x12, 2x12, 4x12). Most of simulation-based multi-effects use them, (Zoom, Guitar Rig, Fractal Axe FX). IRs are short wave files used for convolution, but I dont know if it's easy to add this to Caustic in terms of programming, maybe it's taking to much power. I remember a very light VST plug-in using this, made by MDA, very CPU-friendly and good sounding.
By the way, I have lots of free IRs ;-)
Don't tell Rej about Convolution Reverb Modelling! shhhhhhh!!!! I used to make my own "chambers" that way.... lol
A pluck synth is on my "todo for fun" list. I had a prototype built even before I started on Caustic inspired by this one( Flash required)
Convolution on an underpowered mobile processor with lots of other machines running is not on my fun list.
. If you can find the mda plugin name I could have a look to see if they found some magic way of doing convolution. But remember mobile CPUs are ~10 years older than their PC equivalents when it comes to hardcore CPU work like signal processing, so if it wasn't lightweight on PC in 2003, it isn't today on mobile.
I have a small two dimensional short delay line effect which seems pretty good so far at modelling basic cabinets. It's basically a really simple 2-tap reverb with size, tone and dampening options. It can really bring life to natural instruments.
Long story short; I had been debating whether or not it would be worth the effort to attempt to sample guitar, so I was wondering how you did it versus how I could do it, or any ways to do it that would be resourceful.
Hmm, I’ve been participating in similar debates ever since the mid 80’s when sampling machines with reasonable prizes did hit the market. As a guitar player I’ve been sceptic about it but it can be done, you just need to think about what’s most important in the song you are developing. If we stay with Caustic and the PcmSynth, we got 8 octaves to load samples in. If you only need one octave to play your song you can load up to 8 variations of the guitar sound. That way you could use different picking techniques, palm muting, bends, hammer-ons and pull-offs in the same preset. Blending these techniques in your song will surely make your guitar sound more natural. But most of the time you will need at least two octaves to play the song, then you will only have room for 4 variations so you need to be a little picky. Good planning is the key here and as I see it… you got nothing to loose, just test your ideas and see where it will lead. Meanwhile you could rip my preset from the caustic file I provided.
All mda plug-ins can be found here: http://mda.smartelectronix.com/ for free. They are now open source.
87 Kb, is it small enough?
. Seriously, I don't think this is real convolution, as you can't load any IRs. I think it is a sort of filtering and drive, but the result is very usable.
Will the 2-tap reverb be included in future version? Just curious...
Some other mda plug could give idea for Caustic FX...