I’ve been wondering if I should write a post about nothing. Fuck it, let’s do it.

You see all those reblogged GIFs on Tumblr – some funny though – and 99 problems in young people’s love life. I’ve got respect for your struggle, but my blog ain’t about that thing.

PS3 Upgrade

So I upgraded my fat PS3 with a new hard disk drive. With just a few months away from the launch of PS4 this might seem a bit stupid right?

Anyway, I got a WD Blue 500 GB for less than 60 bucks (including VAT). It runs at 5400 RPM and is enough for all my installs. Beforehand I read some articles claiming those SSD not being worth the price tag, and that speeds at 7200 RPM may cause some overheat issues. Also the PS3 has a SATA revision 1 at 1.5 GBit/s, so there’s no need of higher rates.

For the most part, I play FPS multiplayer, you know, so a fast HDD wouldn’t make much sense. But sometimes I dig into single player RPG, such as Fallout or The Elder Scrolls, and spend quite some time on opening every fucking chest on every fucking remote location.

And I mean, one third of the “game time” on Skyrim, is in reality spent staring at the loading screens, alternatively flipping through shit on your phone.

More Games

Recently I downloaded some retro games from the PSN Store: GTA 3, GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas. Of course I’ve played ‘em all back in the days on PS2 and PC. But 23 dollars for all of ‘em, well to me it’s a small price for a trip down memory lane. And while the technical aspect of the graphics is dated, the stories and gameplays are just great. In my book, the GTA series are the very best video games ever made.

I also got the new Call of Duty Uprising maps. Can’t tell you much about ‘em, haven’t yet played enough. Some reviews do say this particular map pack is more about the zombie part of COD. And I know a lot of you like zombies and stuff, but I never really got it. Maybe I’m too old.

And New Studio Gear

Some month ago I’ve invested in a subwoofer, the Yamaha HS 10W to complement my studio monitors HS 50M. While the monitor setup sounds (and looks) good and rich, I’m not sure it suits a corner of a small room in an apartment. Actually, it doesn’t. I don’t have space for this, but it’ll do for the time being.

And I got the new Reason 7 (after I participated in the beta testing). And for those not yet persuaded, check out this workshop.

Right, so there you have it, a post about nothing really.

Bass, the low end theory, everybody’s at it. Here’s a brief walkthrough on the subject.

Many types of bass are similar; Wobble, Reese and Neurofunk in essence, share many features. This tutorial could be used as fundamental ideas to any of these types.

Firstly, if possible, turn on Mono retrig and set the Polyphony and Release Polyphony to one (1) on the synth. You may add some Portamento or Glide if you wish.

Now set up some oscillators, separate ‘em a few octaves apart. Any old (virtual or real) analog oscillator with a Saw waveform will do. E.g. set up three Saws, spread them apart with Unison effect, add two voices and a little Resonance. There you go.

Have ‘em run trough a Low Pass filter, or use a Band Pass to get a different effect. Turn down the filter’s cutoff a bit. Connect a LFO to alter the cutoff. (Some producers change volume instead by routing the LFO to the Amplitude Gain or such.) Tempo sync the LFO and Key sync so it retriggers the start of the sinus waveform.

You could assign knobs on your keyboard/controller to influence the LFO Rate, or use a Step Sequencer to automate the wobble speed. (Eight note triplets are nice.)

On the Amplitude Envelope, set the Sustain level to full so the sound doesn’t lose volume over time. Adjust the Attack, Decay and Release as you see fit your sound.

Of course you can replace the Saws to other types of oscillators, like or Square or a Triangle pulsewave, or even a sample based Wavetable. (With a Wavetable, you can have a LFO controlling the sample position.)

In Neurofunk there’s usually a lot of movement and change in timbre along with the beat. You can achieve this by adding a couple of EQ notches and automate them with different LFOs at different (usually quite slow) speeds. Depending on your DAW, you might have to route the LFOs to the EQ via CV (Control Voltage). 

Sometime you wanna control the opening and closing of frequencies not by a LFO, but by an Envelope, for example on a Growl bass. Then connect a Modulation Envelope to the filter cutoff and try to have a longer Attack to open the frequencies, making it talk.

Experiment with different distortion effects to saturate your sound, like a Tube or a Waveshaper. Use Tape saturation to fatten and to warm up the sound, as well as to cut some harsh frequencies at the top. Also try some Flanger effects if you wanna.

As for every bass, put a Compressor on, to keep the transients and shit tight.

FM

A FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis could be really nice for your mid-range bass. FM makes distorted, complex sounds.

FM works in a way that an oscillator’s pitch (carrier) is controlled by another oscillator’s frequency (modulator). Modulators and carriers are called operators, and most FM synths include a number of fixed structures or algorithms.

An envelope can be used to determine how the FM is applied to the first oscillator.

FM doesn’t use filters per se, so a technique is to automate an EQ band (notch) for texture and modulation.

Sub

Put a High Pass filter on your main bass to filter out the lowest frequencies, and layer it with a standalone Sub-bass. (Remember that you can route the LFOs on your bass to work the same way on the Sub.)

Resample

A trick for sound design as well as for songwriting is to resample the bass.

Compose a funky bassline – and don’t be afraid of jumping between different octaves. Bounce the MIDI track to Audio, cut it up, and rearrange it. Put the sliced up samples on different Audio tracks with different filters and EQ.

Note: Soon after I started to put down notes for this text, I realized it could turn out long as hell, therefore I made the decision just to scratch the surface. Please feel free to ask me any questions on this, or to fill in the blanks.

So we had this PS3 LAN session this Saturday. We were six guys gathered at an office to play Call of Duty for 13 hours straight. Nerdy? Yessir, very much.

We played Black Ops II for the most part, but also some Modern Warfare 3. We fucked around in some private matches, such as Free-For-All with sniper rifles or semi-automatic handguns only. And then we went out on public lobbies and kicked ass on Domination.

We did try out some tactics with pretty good result – we won every single match.

The strategy was pretty basic: two guys capturing the A (or C) flag, while the other four run directly to the B flag. Then everyone tried to defend the seized flags, ignoring the third flag.

If the enemy team happened to capture our initial flag (A), and several of us were more at the other side of the map, then we shifted our focus from A to C flag.

We just held two flags, camping style, throughout the whole gaming.

Usually the most firefights were around B, so we put a little more effort there, playing more offensively.

And if the enemy team was really bad, then we pushed our front line further, to between B and C, and spawn trapped the shit outta ‘em.

I’m not sure this tactic would work against a good clan, but in a public lobby – with no real co-op or communication between the enemy players – this approach did prove to be successful. And my personal stats were okay, with an average 2.17 K/D over the last 20 matches.

And do recall that none of us are really good players, we just had a plan and stuck to it.

Tempo is the speed or pace of a given music piece. For bedroom producers, different tempos can really alter the mood of a track. And for a DJ, knowing the BPM makes beatmatching much easier.

In modern day music, a beats per minute (BPM) system denotes the tempo. And in our club-orientated context – based on a four to the floor time signature – conventionally a quarter note (crotchet) is specified as the beat. Here are some corresponding, relative BPM ranges:

• Trap: 65-85 (or sequenced at 130-170)
• Hip hop: 85-100, prominent 96
• House: 120–128, prominent 126
• Trance: 125-150, prominent 130
• Dubstep: 138-142, prominent 140
• Drum and bass: 150–180, prominent 160
• Speedcore: >180, prominent 250

These values should not be taken too seriously though.

When mixing music, you can use the underlying tempo; e.g. a dubstep track at 140 BPM mixes well with a trap track at 70 BPM, due to the same underlying tempo. Recall that the standard dubstep rhythm patterns anyway are syncopated at this half-time tempo – the snare usually hits every third beat in a bar.

Furthermore, regarding dubstep, a wobbling LFO rate synced at 1/32 notes, is double the speed at 140 BPM compared to a tempo marking of 70 BPM. In theory, this means that you could program at 70 BPM, but then your LFOs may not allow you to reach 1/64 wobbles.

When I compose music, I usually don’t shift tempo, but I do accentuate the underlying tempo on parts of the track.

P. S. If you’re into Italian tempo markings and other musical terms, go to college or read Wikipedia.

During last night’s Black Ops II session this mad bro was hating on me (translated from Norwegian): “OMG! Camper bitch!”.

Not a big deal really, it has happened before. But let’s ponder on this one: What is a camper? Am I a camper? And what seems to be the problem with camping?

Last time I checked Urban Dictionary, there where over 70 definitions on camper – too many to read. But the first post is spot on:

“A term given to those in an online multiplayer game (usually FPS) who will place themselves in a strategic position and wait for an extended period of time until a target enters his field of view. The position usually allows one to surprise the target and allows the ‘camper’ to eliminate him with ease. There are variants of this such as camping an item to repeatedly gain its benefits and defending a critical location. […] It isn’t illegal to position yourself in such a way that you have an advantage, that’s smart thinking and it’s part of the game.”

Another post suggests that to avoid being labeled camper, you need to run around like a headless chicken waiting to be shot by an experienced clan gamer, whom will then call you a noob instead.

Moreover, how could people use a sniper rifle, except for quickscoping, if they weren’t allowed to look for advantage points? So hell yeah, I camp when the situation demands it (and some might say, a little more than that).

I play to win and to enjoy myself, a healthy dose of camping fits my play style. This doesn’t mean that I’m sitting in a corner every single match, waiting on a noob. As my boy Wings of Redemption truthfully put it “I do camp when I need to camp”.

Here’s a reminder, I’m Pälsen and I write. The topics are split into different categories.

• The Music Production holds posts about producing with a bedroom/home studio approach. Here you’ll find tips, tricks, tutorials, songs, gear reviews et cetera. 
• Gaming contains input on video games (and related subjects), such as news, rants, reviews, tips, walkthroughs, secrets…
• And the last, All Posts, hides uncategorized shit.

Politics aside, I’m not very spiritual, I like the finer things. You won’t agree on everything – and that’s quite alright. Furthermore, English isn’t my native language so bear with me.

I started this blog in January 2013. Try to enjoy.

There’s a hyperinflation of side-chain compression in popular music. And sometimes it sounds – more or less – like loose cables or dropouts. Still, used properly, side-chain compression could be the factor to a floor-filler.

So about compression, it’s a big part of today’s music. It keeps the volume levels at bay and making sure shit sounds tight. And loud (without increasing its peak amplitude). At the same time the dynamic range is reduced, and dare I say, music do tend to sound less, well, dynamic, than classics from yesterday. Whatever.

In normal compression, the incoming audio signal is used as source for the threshold and ratio. Side-chaining (or keying) is a technique that uses a different audio signal to trigger/key the compressor. Whilst the incoming audio is still affected, it’s the side-chained audio signal that determines the compressor’s response; that is, how strongly it will reduce the gain on its output signal.

The premise is basically a kick drum that triggers the compressor of a bass, i.e. bass ducking. This allows the kick through – on the same low frequencies as the bass – without phase interference or a too muddy low-end. You can get a rhythmically pumping or pulsating effect if you duck out other instruments in the mix as well.

Remember that you can have other shit than the kick to trigger the compressor. Or, if you prefer, you can even program a specific pattern for this.

It’s kinda hard to generally guide to how to achieve a side-chain compression due to the many different DAWs out there. But briefly you should rig a compressor to your bass (or mix bus), and connect a different audio source to the side-chain input. Then set the compressor to a very low threshold (around -35 dB) and a high ratio (60:1), combined with a short attack (1 ms) and a longer release time (600 ms). But go ahead and experiment with these settings, adjust to taste. Also the length of the audio source, e.g. kick drum sample, will have some affect.

The Metal Gear series creator Hideo Kojima has announced Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

A mysterious game called The Phantom Pain was revealed during last year’s Spike Video Game Awards, and was said to be developed by an alleged Swedish game studio, Moby Dick Studio. (At the same time many did speculate that it was related to Metal Gear.) And as it turns out, this hoax was just part of the viral marketing à la Hideo Kojima.

Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes was publicly debuted at the 2012 Penny Arcade Expo. Hideo Kojima now confirms that Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes serves as a prologue to the main segment, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. And they seem to be separate games.

The Phantom Pain is currently in development for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Although the opening tutorial demoed at GDC was run on PC. (May also be released on next-gen.)

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was, and still is, one of PS3’s most beautiful games. So yes, expectations are high.

The Battlefield 4 gameplay video looks good but does anybody care about the campaign?

There aren’t many games nowadays with intriguing storytelling and so far Battlefield hasn’t been an exception.

Anyway, I’m looking forward for the new installment this fall. I’m hoping for something great, but expecting more of the same shit – although with tighter textures, more smoke and mirrors of course.

Then again, online multiplayer is really what matters here, right?

My homeboy Niklas took the picture at the DICE event in Stockholm yesterday.

Message [to Skype]:

So you got two or more devices with your Skype account. The syncing between them is straight up ridiculous. 

Sometimes you get a message sent to you weeks ago on one device. For example, if you chat on device A and the contact keep chatting while your logging out, and you later log in (could be weeks later) on device B and that contact also log in, then the old conversation pops up, like it was a new one. And you don’t have any history synced between device A and B. 

This shenanigans is very confusing and contra-communicative. 

*

Hello Palsen,

Thank you for contacting Skype Customer Service.

We understand that you are having synchronization issue with the Skype application. We would be more than glad to help you with your concern.

Regarding your concern, we don’t advise our customer to log in to multiple devices for it will affect the synchronization of the Skype account. Like what happened to your devices, there is a delay with it comes to receiving a message because of the synchronization.

[…]

Denmark A.

Skype Customer Service