The Podium Music Lounge

[LiquidProj3ct]

Done with Podium Free in few hours. Since I'm selling all my gear, before send the Xiosynth 25 I did a quick jam, and a small publicity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52gBI6Ey0e4

All the best

Juan

[CymaticCycle]

Hey, great video Juan, I really enjoyed it alot. And I am particularly fond of the arps it the background. Very proggy and bring depth to the composition.

About the "message", you say is a subjective opinion, but it is exactly what I think as well (and the possibility of it being an objective truth is quite big). Especially the part concerning "the hyped tools".
As the saying goes "It's not the gear, it's the engineer".

[subjective arguments]
In pursuit of the next big hit and commercialism, all by means of over-priced and over-hyped synths/daws/plugs, we end up having tons upon tons of over-produced, soulless and mediocre tracks all around, deemed pro simply by virtue of the tools involved and money spent, pffff.
Sad that art has become a faculty of those who can afford it, and turned it into industry and business.
[end]

Btw, it is a good opportunity for me to thank you for your great tutorials. They helped me tremendously when I first started using Podium and drastically shortened the learning-curve. Thanks mate.

A strange synchronicity is that today I myself am working on a short teaser/medley of some of my goa/psy tracks, exactly for the same reasons, all done with Podium Free and Freeware plugins, as a futile attempt to show what is possible with these "non-pro" tools.

Sorry for the Xiosynth. May you have an Andromeda A6 one day


All the Best.

Peace and Best Vibes

ॐC☸Cॐ
_________________
"...For we are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars...Look again at that pale blue dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us."

[kim_otcj]

Here's me, trying to recapture my misspent youth as a punk.

Locked Away

This is my first recording with my registered copy of Podium (though I did plenty with Podium Free before that). Onto the gear list...

I sampled the drums myself with a Roland R-05 recorder and the hire kit at my local rehearsal studio. I sequenced them with Softdrum LTD.

The rhythm guitar is an Ibanez Jet King 3, tuned to open D and recorded through a Behringer V-Amp Pro. The lead guitar is a Maton Mastersound through a Vox Tonelab. I used an Epiphone Viola bass with flat-wound strings going through a Behringer Bass V-Amp Pro. All of that got into my computer through a Lexicon I-Onix interface.

I recorded the vocal with a Shure SM-57 dynamic microphone. I've tried other mics, but I've found the SM-57 is the best match to my voice.

For plug-ins I'm mostly using stuff from the Melda free plugin bundle, and the Antress Modern. Both are good, with lots of stuff in them.

On the drums I used Modern Console EQ to make it all bright and shiny. On the bass and vocals, I used Modern Vacuumer Compressor. I used Modern Exciter to bring out the guitars a bit and stop them from being muddy. I also make pretty extensive use of zpEQ throughout.

To master my final mix, I used Modern Analoguer to bring it all together, then MLimiter to bring the volume up to a decent listening level.

[LiquidProj3ct]

[kim_otcj]

Okay. I just put one of my songs on the Podium soundcloud page.

[danrbranch]

Over my first year of university I worked on this little thing in my halls room using Podium!

http://danbranch.bandcamp.com/album/wednesday

Vocals and (rare) guitar were recorded using a Behringer C-1 through a Xenyx 802 mixer from the same company. Digital piano was fed straight into the mixer (one day I'll own a real piano and I will be a truly happy little musician!) Synths included a Roland Gaia and a Microkorg, and a bit of effects work using a Microsampler. Soundcard is an M-Audio Audiophile 2496.

The VSTs I used most prolifically were Kjaerhus Audio's 'Classic' series, the Zynewave plugin trinity and a 'telephone' effect, the origins of which I cannot remember for the life of me.

Feedback would be appreciated! I still consider myself a newby to this sort of thing My personal favourite track from that year is Softly Spoken, some of the others are a bit... dorm-roomy, haha.

[Levendis]

I had no idea people did work in student dorms. I thought they just drank alcohol and did a lot of bed-hopping

You've written many strong songs for the album Wednesday. Overall I find it calm and contemplative. Perfect for an indoor rainy day. I love your inclusion of more synthesised lead sounds pairing with, your obvious favourite, the piano. Vocals are A1. Thanks for sharing it.

You've been keeping an extensive back catalogue to yourself too
Shame on you

I would so love for you to add it to our SoundCloud page. Think of it as one more spot to tout for potential sales.

[danrbranch]

It was either write music or write essays, I certainly know what I prefer

Thanks, I'm glad you like it! I've been using Podium Free for a little while now and decided to buy myself a license with my Christmas money, Frits certainly deserves it. There's even more stuff hidden away somewhere... that will never ever see the light of day. Ever.

I certainly shall do! And in fact have done! Sales aren't important, really, but it's always nice to have more people listen to your work.

[The Telenator]

Angel Gone Bad


http://soundcloud.com/telenator/angel-gone-bad


I already recorded about a dozen, just playing acoustic guitar and doing vocals, but I don't really consider them projects. They came out fine and I posted a couple on that Podium Poppets group on SoundCloud.

But it was time to start moving on to more interesting things. This new one's not perfect. I'm still in the process of experimenting with a handful of mastering plugins I installed this week. Also, the bassist was sent a copy of the acoustic guitar and a scratch vocal track and he returned it with his bass part mixed in and too deeply embedded on the guitar, so if you hear what sounds like a rhino softly snorting in places that's me trying to pull the bass guitar out without harming the guitar part. I had to employ his overtones to create the illusion of more bass, and the rhino is his strings clacking against the frets.

But enough excuses -- this is a tune written and sung by an old bandmate by the name of Joe Harper. I thought the tune had a lot of potential; I really like it, and I had some time right now to give it a few hours before I get too busy with a current batch of my own. Aside from noodling around and running a few tests, this is the very first time I ever recorded any of my lead guitar playing. I close-mic'd an old Fender tweed Champ with a borrowed an original 808-model Tube Screamer in front of it, and that turned out to be the easiest part of the whole project.

I hope you like it. Joe's a true up-and-coming kind of songwriter, and I'm hoping I'll have time to do maybe one more of his best new ones soon.

[The Telenator]

Since somebody asked elsewhere -- no, (obviously) no mastering work done to the tune above. I'm sort of stuck until I get a bass track returned to me that's separate from the rhythm guitar and the bassist is overseas right now. Some of the levels weren't even finished, but I needed to slap it together 'cause it was the dude's birthday and wanted him to hear it. I should have at least dithered it when I took it to 16 bits, because you can hear where some distortion crept in at a few places. Thanks to some members here, I've finally got a handful of decent mastering plugins and hope to figure them out this week.

[kim_otcj]

I do two online songwriting challenges every year. I do 50/90, where the idea is to write 50 songs in 90 days. I also do FAWM ( http://fawm.org/fawmers/kimotcj ), or February Album Writing Month, where the idea is to do 14 songs in the month of February.

This year I did my FAWM demos entirely in Podium 3.1. And the recordings turned out well enough that I've decided to post the whole thing on bandcamp:

http://kimotcj.bandcamp.com/album/monument

On the computer side, it's pretty much all just Podium and free plugins. The only commercial plugin I used was my Lexicon Pantheon II reverb. I used Antress Modern plugins quite a lot -- particularly Modern Black Dragon on the vocals and guitars, Modern Amplifier as a bass compressor, and Modern Console EQ for equalizing the drums.

For mastering, I used Ferric TDS and Melda Limiter (from the Melda free plugin bundle). I used a couple of H.G. Fortune's synths for ambient noise on some tracks. Arptron_2 gets onto one track where I wanted to do synth arppegios, and DVS Saxophone on another where I wanted to bring the funk. They're all great plugins for no money.

[The Telenator]

Dan -- It was extremely refreshing to listen to some piano-centered tunes since my world tends to be so guitar-saturated. But more than that, the quality tones on the piano was really pleasant and very well captured. Where I live we have an considerable dearth of keyboardists, even fewer really talented players.

[adimatis]

I spent three hours today doing this:

http://adimatis.bandcamp.com/track/domn-al-vesniciei

Podium Free, INDE Free (bass and piano), Korg Triton drums, two guitar tracks (Taylor BigBaby), Behringer B1 mic, E-mu 0404 Usb.

For tracks: zPEQ, CamelCrusher, epicVerb, Classic Comp, Flanger and Delay, Voxengo TempoDelay, DFP Spitfish and Blockfish, Nebula AcquaVox, Electri-Q.

For master track (pseudo-mastering): Melda Compressor (Free) and BuzMaxi3.

Experimenting........
_________________
The best things in life are (PODIUM) FREE !

[Cris17]

Adimatis are you Romanian?:D

[kingtubby]