# Need your opinion to clarify my Composing Procedure



## Luciano Rizzi (Feb 1, 2020)

Hello to everybody,
I generally compose 2 types of Music (always starting from scratch and without audio files):
1) Piano : I use a decent VST and put on 2 tracks (RH and LH) and on the Mixer Stereo Out I put only a small Reverber
Then everything is done playing with Notes Velocities/Expression/ Sustain /Volume an Tempo changes
in the Piano Roll . And that's all : when I finish I export the Audio Mixdown (.wav) 48,000 Hz and 16 or 24 bit
2) Orchestral Music : same as above , but for every instrument I Insert EQ, Compression , Limiter (in addition to Panning
for each instrument).The Reverber in this case is done with different amounts for each Section 
(according to their position in the Orchestra). Finished > and Mixdown
I've done as above for years without knowing what is Mixing and Mastering (I'm old and many of my pieces were written 
using only pencil and music paper on the Piano)
Then I started to look around for tutorials on mixing and mastering and today I'm totally confused : 10 tutorials say 10 different things
and I don't know what is what I've done until now (is it only mixing ? or is it only mastering ? or is both of them ?)
Why should I export the Audio and re-import to apply EQ-compression-Limiter which I have already used before ?
What is wrong ? Can you explain me which is the correct chain for MIX and which for MASTER ?
Thanks


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## NekujaK (Feb 1, 2020)

This is potentially a very large topic with many different aspects, so I'm not able to give you a comprehensive answer in this small space. However, here are some things to consider:

- Are you happy with the sound of your tracks? If your tracks sound good, then it doesn't really matter how you got there - just keep doing what you're doing. As you've discovered by watching videos, there are many different approaches to the process.

- Understand how the different audio processing tools affect your sound. Don't just put a compressor on a track because that's what someone said to do. Understand WHY you would put a compressor on a track, and why you wouldn't.

- At their core, composing, mixing, and mastering are three separate functions that serve three different purposes. Composing (and arranging) is essentially the creative process of putting notes, parts, and instruments together. Mixing is technically done after composing is finished - the purpose is to refine and optimize the sound. And finally, mastering is a final finishing process that establishes a consistent level and tonal balance so your music will sound its best on all delivery platforms. These are obviously very simplified descriptions.

But again, the most important factor is how your tracks sound. If you (and others) are happy with your tracks, just keep doing what you're doing. If you think the sound could be improved, then take a closer look at how and why you are applying different effects, and find tutorials that seem applicable to your situation.

A good source of basic no-nonsense mixing tutorials is the Waves website. Yes, the videos will be centered on Waves plugins, but that doesn't matter - the concepts can apply to any plugin. They have a large library of tutorial videos presented by professional engineers that are very straightforward without a lot of hype. There are some great tutorials there on the basics of mixing and mastering.

Good luck!


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## JohnG (Feb 1, 2020)

good advice from @NekujaK , especially that there is no "correct" way to do any of this. Some people "mix as they go" using midi, some print everything to audio and then mix the old-fashioned way. But that old-fashioned way didn't arise because it's inherently better, just because that's the way it was with only acoustic sources available on a recording date.

You might learn some new tricks from the Waves videos (similar ones for UAD abound). But feel free to ignore them.


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## Luciano Rizzi (Feb 2, 2020)

NekujaK said:


> This is potentially a very large topic with many different aspects, so I'm not able to give you a comprehensive answer in this small space. However, here are some things to consider:
> 
> - Are you happy with the sound of your tracks? If your tracks sound good, then it doesn't really matter how you got there - just keep doing what you're doing. As you've discovered by watching videos, there are many different approaches to the process.
> 
> ...





NekujaK said:


> This is potentially a very large topic with many different aspects, so I'm not able to give you a comprehensive answer in this small space. However, here are some things to consider:
> 
> - Are you happy with the sound of your tracks? If your tracks sound good, then it doesn't really matter how you got there - just keep doing what you're doing. As you've discovered by watching videos, there are many different approaches to the process.
> 
> ...


Thanks to you and JohnG for your answers.
- You ask me if I'm happy with the sound of my tracks but I don't know what to say : I try to do my best and understand that the most important is to use good VST instruments (which is not easy
unless to spend too much money). On the other hand I compose only for my personal satisfaction
and not for business. So sometimes I put my music on a CD as a gift for Relatives and Friends : this is my market !
- That said ,the most important for me is the Composition but I'm also looking for a simple logical Procedure to let my music sound decently
What is confusing me is mainly that in quite all the tutorials all the Mixing and Mastering plugins
seem to be applied on a re-imported Audio Track , while If I have to put something to improve sound , I put it immediately , even whyle composing , because I prefer to hear it at the best ,and this
help me to continue the Composition . And I always did the Mixdown only as a final step (although
sometime I re-import to change something if I find defects)

- Let me make an example :
The attached is the Mixdown of my last Piano piece which is done without nothing , except a
small Reverb in the Stereo out. (I have converte from WAV to MP3 to reduce size)
And ask you : Could it be enough or may I re-import and do something else ?


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## Jerry Growl (Feb 13, 2020)

Hi Luciano,

I don't think there's anything you could have done in the mix here. The piano sounds like it came straight out of windows midi player or something. Not even the most expensive piece of mixing equipment can do something useful here.

I think your piano waltz deserves a better VST. There's really great piano's these days below $100,- . I'm not going to force my personal opinions about pianos, so please check around for yourself.

This link might be helpful: https://cymatics.fm/blogs/production/25-best-piano-vst-plugins
but there are many other sources on this forum too

Best,
Jerry


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## Violeiro (Feb 13, 2020)

Great Waltz, it remembers me Chopin, and i love Chopin.
I also think you should try other vsts. the Waltz deserves it. its sort of personal, but theres something on this one that sounded bit of synth to me.

People talk very good of Vsl synchron and garritan cfx, i never tried those two.

I use ivory 2 German concert and bosendorfer 290 mostly. Im not totally satisfied, i like the sound but they are not so playable as i would like. I tested the famous Galaxy vintage d once and i had the impression that It has equally good sound and is a bit more playable.


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## D Halgren (Feb 13, 2020)

https://www.pianobook.co.uk/


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## dzilizzi (Feb 13, 2020)

I've always looked at it as mixing makes your piece sound good individually. Whereas mastering makes it sound good in relation to all the other pieces on the album. You don't want your listener to have to change the volume or adjust the eq between pieces because they are so different. Also, mastering usually makes sure the pieces will sound reasonably good on all sorts of different devices and speakers.


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## Stringtree (Feb 13, 2020)

Yes, Pianobook.co.uk

You need to have the full version of Kontakt for these free instruments. 

But imagine playing an inspiring piano that you don’t have to mess with to sound good — one that inspires you because it evokes an old and somewhat broken instrument. Who compresses a piano for a waltz? Oww. 

Kontakt goes on sale from time to time.

Or the Embertone Concert D. 

Your waltz is sweet. It follows the rules, and you’re having fun with this kind of music. It needs a piano with some character.

From what you wrote in your post, you give the VSTi some MIDI. It’s a lot of fun to play these instruments, if you can. They sometimes inspire great results through the way you interact with the sound while you’re playing. 

Best of luck,

Greg


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## dzilizzi (Feb 13, 2020)

A few are in SFZ or EXS (?) format. Plogue has a free SFZ player. I know Logic plays the other one.


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## Luciano Rizzi (Feb 14, 2020)

Thanks to everybody for your comments.
Unfortunately the sound you hear is not the same I get from my DAW Mixdown , but the size of the wav
was around 100 MB and I have converted to MP3 with Audacity to reduce uploading size. 
Honestly the VST I used for this is a free VST (mdaPiano) which - in my opinion- is not so bad. I have some others , but I have not yet tried with them (sometimes I carry out many Mixdowns with different
VST with the result that I have Gigabytes of Audios and still it's difficult to say which sounds better ..... and it is not the first time that I find expensive VST which sounds worse than some free...)
In any case I will look for a better Piano 
Thanks,
Luciano


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## Luciano Rizzi (Feb 14, 2020)

Violeiro said:


> Great Waltz, it remembers me Chopin, and i love Chopin.
> I also think you should try other vsts. the Waltz deserves it. its sort of personal, but theres something on this one that sounded bit of synth to me.
> 
> People talk very good of Vsl synchron and garritan cfx, i never tried those two.
> ...


Dear Violeiro,
Yes , it is clearly in Chopin's style. I like it , but at over 70 years this is still my limit: I've studied so much Harmony-Composition and the Greats Composers that today it is still a kind of exercise for me
to compose in a style . I love to do it but I've not yet found MY OWN STYLE and I'm afraid I could do it only in the next life....
Regards
Luciano


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## Violeiro (Feb 14, 2020)

Well, i wouldnt complain If i were capable of composing in Chopin style, really, its perhaps my preferred style of music.

I see music much through Melody, like the melody is saying something, when the melody says, you are saying, doesnt matter the style.


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## Luciano Rizzi (Feb 14, 2020)

Hi , Violeiro
It seems we are on the same wavelength: I'm sure I'm saying something . The problem is that I compose for my personal satisfaction so I have never shared my music and -of course- nobody hear what I say !. I started to spread something only recently because I think it's better than nothing if
my music will reach the mind and the heart of somebody else. 
I started doing piano music again after many years (I was fascinated by the sounds of the Orchestra)
and gardening by day and compose only by night (perhaps for that my music is a bit sad)
....and to change style I let you listen the attached (in preview) . This is not sad and it shall be the
finale of 1st Movement of a Symphony I'm working now ..... (but there are only strings because
I've still to orchestrate). Which style do you find here ?...


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## Violeiro (Feb 15, 2020)

Well, pianos are sad cause are made of ivory and Chopin...
This beautiful piece remembers me something as Vivaldi or Mozart, but with a new sort of warm speed. It would be great to hear It by real players. I guess much of orchestrating digitally is about getting confidence to record It with real instruments in a further moment. Your Waltz seems quite ready to be recorded on a Studio session.
I dont know how to garden, although there are cocopalms and mango trees all around. I live in a sort of exotic city extremely warm and full of nature, but i work at the day under regulated temperature in front of a computer in one of the many city's bureaus: and at the night when i ask for the moon to compose, who knows if its still on the sky in Italia?


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## brenneisen (Feb 15, 2020)

Luciano Rizzi said:


> - Let me make an example :
> The attached is the Mixdown of my last Piano piece which is done without nothing , except a
> small Reverb in the Stereo out. (I have converte from WAV to MP3 to reduce size)
> And ask you : Could it be enough or may I re-import and do something else ?



this is mono

why?


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## brenneisen (Feb 15, 2020)

Luciano Rizzi said:


> 1) Piano : I use a decent VST and put on 2 tracks (RH and LH) and on the Mixer Stereo Out I put only a small Reverber



why are you doing that? 

If you're using Stereo Balance, it's useless 

and if you're using Stereo Pan then I have an answer:



brenneisen said:


> this is mono
> 
> why?


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## Luciano Rizzi (Feb 16, 2020)

brenneisen said:


> why are you doing that?
> 
> If you're using Stereo Balance, it's useless
> 
> and if you're using Stereo Pan then I have an answer:


Hi Brenneisen
You are right ! I didn't check setting when converting from wav to mp3 in Audacity
So the original was stereo (as I always do) but the resulting mp3 is Mono . Sorry

Regarding your question "why are you doing that? " if you mean why I separate RH and LH it is because they come for the scoring and I can handle them adjusting volume /velocity etc separately
Regarding Stereo Balance/Stereo Panner I don't use them because if I'm not wrong they are for Audio tracks and I don't process them. I always use Instrument or Midi Tracks with some Insert VST 
and finish exporting the Audio Mixdown . May be it is wrong (this is what I was asking regarding my
procedure) and I normally don't re-import audio to correct it as I prefer to work on the starting
instruments/midi tracks


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## Luciano Rizzi (Feb 16, 2020)

Violeiro said:


> Well, pianos are sad cause are made of ivory and Chopin...
> This beautiful piece remembers me something as Vivaldi or Mozart, but with a new sort of warm speed. It would be great to hear It by real players. I guess much of orchestrating digitally is about getting confidence to record It with real instruments in a further moment. Your Waltz seems quite ready to be recorded on a Studio session.
> I dont know how to garden, although there are cocopalms and mango trees all around. I live in a sort of exotic city extremely warm and full of nature, but i work at the day under regulated temperature in front of a computer in one of the many city's bureaus: and at the night when i ask for the moon to compose, who knows if its still on the sky in Italia?


Where do you live ? I'm in the northern flat country of Italy in an old rectory near the church
(the one you see on my logo at the left) . I always worked in offices but always
spent my free time in gardening , making music and working at this very old house.
Unfortunately it is quite impossible to have your score played by real orchestra players
(that only vst instruments /libraries can help to ....simulate) unless it is for piano or church organ
(I had big satisfaction to hear my music played at the church organ of my village and the choir
performing my mass or motets )However the disadvantage of DAW/libraries/mixing etc... is that
I'm loosing a lot of time to search for the good instrument or to fight with eq setting instead to 
write notes...
When I started this "Symphony in D minor" I was thinking to Beethoven , but this shall be more
evident hearing the whole piece.Incidentally I find the problem that I start this movement in F# (6#)
and I end in D minor , but after many changes probably I will leave harmony as it is .
Regards


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## Luciano Rizzi (Feb 16, 2020)

Stringtree said:


> Yes, Pianobook.co.uk
> 
> You need to have the full version of Kontakt for these free instruments.
> 
> ...


Dear Stringtree
I have full Kontakt and- following suggestions - I visited Pianobook.co (very interesting and free !)
I spent half day to download several Piano VST for Kontakt and tried them. 
Probably the best I found is "Air Piano" (in fact it is quite 2 GB) . Result ?
> The result is that if I load them on the Standalone Kontakt , they sound very good
but if I open my DAW (Cubase) and load my Project done with another Piano , and replace
it with the new ones , they sound even worse than mdaPiano 
and the reason (for what I see) is that it is not enough to replace the instrument but every 
instrument shall be used FROM THE BEGINNING , because the setting I have done for one
are not good for the others (sustain-Reverber- velocities-volume etc , everything must be
re-setted . For example , using "Air Piano" when it finds the Pedal release (sustain=0)
it skips the notes ! 
>Therefore the challenge is to define few VST which play well and use them from the beginning....


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## Violeiro (Feb 16, 2020)

I figure Beethoven thinking more on his dramatic romantic piano, Ive listened few of his strings works. However, I do remember to have listened to some Beethoven strings that sounded more conservative (Baroque), perhaps with more of this warm speed that Ive heard in yours.

I live right at the center of south america

I have some ascendence from italy under the surname Paganini - never knew if its a common name or If i have herited some still not used violin skills


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## Luciano Rizzi (Feb 17, 2020)

Violeiro said:


> I figure Beethoven thinking more on his dramatic romantic piano, Ive listened few of his strings works. However, I do remember to have listened to some Beethoven strings that sounded more conservative (Baroque), perhaps with more of this warm speed that Ive heard in yours.
> 
> I live right at the center of south america
> 
> I have some ascendence from italy under the surname Paganini - never knew if its a common name or If i have herited some still not used violin skills


Hi
There are 1,400 families of "Paganini" in Italy , most of them located in the North-west side where the Violinist lived. Thus there is a possibility that you are his descendant
I assume you are from Brazil .However the important is to have mangos and coconuts may be without
working hard in the garden...
Bye


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## Violeiro (Feb 18, 2020)

Its not so easy to grab them, except for giraffes, unfortunately, those are native from africa, while mangotrees and cocopalms are asian plants, so, nature didnt contribute for it to happen. 
They end behaving most for sight.

An orchestra probably, but not a strings quartet - convincing three, you already got the majority. Be joyful and smile, bring a crown of flowers and soon they might be doing it - seems a joke but its a serious suggestion.

Waiting for hearing more 😉

So, 1400 and only one is the composer's true family?! I guess it will be up for the critics to decide If I am his heritor or not 😁


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## Luciano Rizzi (Feb 18, 2020)

Difficult to say , but I assume that along the genealogic tree of Paganini some families may have composers or musicians (tought not famous ) . I know that Paganini family had a big estate
(Villa Paganini) at Gaione (a village near Parma , not far from here) where the great -granddaughter of
Niccolo' Paganini died on 2016 at the age of 105 !!Other descendants were Andreina (1901-1998) and Giuseppina (1902-1987) , both musicians. Also consider that all the women in the tree that went married
have changed their surname , so may be that there are more descendent families with musicians

I have just purchased the Sonuscore Orchestra Complete and I'm trying to see if I can use it to do
quite everything without loosing time to navigate all the libraries to find the correct instruments for a piece. Another handicap I have is that I like a lot to invent themes but after playing with them and
after developing up to 80-100 measures I leave as they are because it would take too much time
to do a mixdown etc , so I skip and pass to something new frequently completely different
The result is that my PC is full of folders "work in progress"1,2,..25 and just one FINISHED
And you , what kind of music are doing ?


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## visiblenoise (Feb 18, 2020)

I'm pretty sure of what I'm about to say, but I'm no pro...

Exporting the whole song to audio and then reimporting for a mastering session is really just to get you to change your mindset properly, so you're not tempted to constantly go back and tweak things in the composition or mix. Mastering should just be for getting the proper loudness levels and subtle large-scale tweaking with compression, saturation, etc. (things that are more often done while mixing, hence "subtle").

For someone who is producing their own song from start to finish, I don't think there's any point in exporting and reimporting for a mastering session unless you struggle with letting go of the composition and/or mixing phase, or if maybe your computer struggles with having to play back your midi, effects processing, etc. in real-time.

One case in which it is necessary even for a solo producer though, is if you're assembling an album and need to get all the tracks sounding like they belong together.


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## Luciano Rizzi (Feb 19, 2020)

visiblenoise said:


> I'm pretty sure of what I'm about to say, but I'm no pro...
> 
> Exporting the whole song to audio and then reimporting for a mastering session is really just to get you to change your mindset properly, so you're not tempted to constantly go back and tweak things in the composition or mix. Mastering should just be for getting the proper loudness levels and subtle large-scale tweaking with compression, saturation, etc. (things that are more often done while mixing, hence "subtle").
> 
> ...


Thanks Visiblenoise,
Things start to make (theorically) clear as I always considered the "Mastering" phase as the art of balancing all the 20 or 25 pieces I have to put on a CD.
The problem is that I don't know how to practically face this "phase" . Must I reload all the 25 audio pieces one by one and "compare" with a reference track ? or what ?. I see that using CD burning
software there is a "normalisation" option : isn't this enough ? 
If not which is the less trubling procedure ?


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## visiblenoise (Feb 19, 2020)

Luciano Rizzi said:


> Thanks Visiblenoise,
> Things start to make (theorically) clear as I always considered the "Mastering" phase as the art of balancing all the 20 or 25 pieces I have to put on a CD.
> The problem is that I don't know how to practically face this "phase" . Must I reload all the 25 audio pieces one by one and "compare" with a reference track ? or what ?. I see that using CD burning
> software there is a "normalisation" option : isn't this enough ?
> If not which is the less trubling procedure ?


There isn't anything you ever "must" do, but yea, a reference track would be helpful there. But perhaps more importantly, you're putting all your tracks together so you can compare how they sound easily, and have different effects chains for each to fix problems. Maybe one track features completely different instruments, and you want to bring the frequency signature of it a little more in line with the others with some EQ, for example. Then if you do this, maybe the average loudness level is affected, so then you might want to fix that, etc.

Normalization does raise levels, but in a naive way by just scaling the volume for the entire file such that the highest peak is near 0db. General mixing and mastering for loudness involves compression which changes only the height of the peaks. There's no standard automatic process for this because loudness is so dependent on the material - if you don't want to get so involved in the loudness part, you could check out something like Izotope Ozone (or Elements), which can analyze part of a song and give suggested mastering settings. I got Ozone Elements 8 for free during a promotion last year and played around with it - decent results for not having to do anything.


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## Luciano Rizzi (Feb 19, 2020)

visiblenoise said:


> There isn't anything you ever "must" do, but yea, a reference track would be helpful there. But perhaps more importantly, you're putting all your tracks together so you can compare how they sound easily, and have different effects chains for each to fix problems. Maybe one track features completely different instruments, and you want to bring the frequency signature of it a little more in line with the others with some EQ, for example. Then if you do this, maybe the average loudness level is affected, so then you might want to fix that, etc.
> 
> Normalization does raise levels, but in a naive way by just scaling the volume for the entire file such that the highest peak is near 0db. General mixing and mastering for loudness involves compression which changes only the height of the peaks. There's no standard automatic process for this because loudness is so dependent on the material - if you don't want to get so involved in the loudness part, you could check out something like Izotope Ozone (or Elements), which can analyze part of a song and give suggested mastering settings. I got Ozone Elements 8 for free during a promotion last year and played around with it - decent results for not having to do anything.


Dear Visiblenoise
I see that there is a Izotope Ozone Imager for free : will this do what you say ?


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## dzilizzi (Feb 19, 2020)

Luciano Rizzi said:


> Dear Visiblenoise
> I see that there is a Izotope Ozone Imager for free : will this do what you say ?


No, Ozone full version will do what he is saying but the free imager only does stereo field fix. Which should help with your mono to stereo sound, but it won't help with EQ, compression, etc... Usually mastering is a mix of EQ and compression/limiting, though depending on what you've recorded, things like a bit of reverb/delay to make them sound like they were recorded in the same space might be needed. That's usually done during mixing though.


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## visiblenoise (Feb 19, 2020)

Hey look! https://www.pluginboutique.com/deal...m=email&eid=AY9117285641823130197413796352620

$9 isn't bad...


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## Luciano Rizzi (Mar 13, 2020)

Dear Visiblenoise
After a while I found a Program "AAMS" (Auto Audio Mastering System) I've tried it before to purchase
and seems it can do a good job (at leas at my ears after some tests) mainly for people like me who have
no time (or no will) to go mad in mastering (I don't commercialize my music , thus I prefer to spend
most of my time to create music and scoring).


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