• To have a place I can design, redesign, and redesign all over again at whatever pace I want. This isn’t some massive site like Facebook where a minor change causes outrage, I can change whatever I want here. I am my own master.
• To stay competent in proper English. Social networking sites and instant messaging are slowly killing our language skills, so I have this blog where I can write in full, thought-out sentences and paragraphs. It keeps my mind working and my typing skills intact as well.
• To have a place where I can share my opinions, thoughts, and knowledge. Let’s say I want to complain about badly programmed drums, or poorly designed websites. I can’t really do that on Facebook or Twitter, because most people these days say tl;dr to anything longer than a couple sentences. Plus with the semi-helpful articles I have, maybe somebody will find some use out of them at some point.
• For my own record-keeping. This blog is like a journal of my life throughout these past couple of years. Sure, I don’t get too personal, but it’s still really nice to be able to go back to 2008 and see what I fanboy I was, or how much I hated certain things at the time.
• Having my own chunk of the web makes me feel ever so slightly special. Shut up, I know this is a stupid reason, but it makes me happy.

Trouble is, even after you spend so much time programming a drum track, it still screams “fake.” I’ve recently had to program drums for one of my band’s songs because our drummer wasn’t able to track them that day, and I learned a couple of new things about working with computer drums.

Make The Drumming Realistic

This is where most beginners mess up. Don’t program blast beats or kicks at 64^th beats, few real drummers can do that, and it generally just sounds fake as hell. Don’t make the entire song one drum beat either, that gets really boring and sounds amateurish. If you have no idea what drum parts/fills to use, look up Guitar Pro tabs (you can open them with Tux Guitar which is free) of your favorite songs. Chances are, they’ll have drum parts tabbed out as well, so you can see what kind of beats professional drummers use. Throw in a couple creative drum fills here and there to liven things up, much like what a human drummer would do. If you have a drummer friend, study his/her style while drumming and try to replicate that in your programming.

Drum Sounds

The second hallmark of bad drum programming is a terrible overall sound. Boxy, flat snares. Way-too-clicky bass kicks. Dead-sounding cymbals. Sound familiar? Fortunately, this is a pretty easy problem to fix.

All you need is a drum replacement plugin for your DAW (ex: Logic, Pro Tools, Cubase) and some good-sounding samples. There are free drum replacement plugins out there, you just have to find them. Being a semi-professional audio producer, I opted to buy what is widely considered the industry standard in drum replacement: Drumagog. A basic license costs $90, and it can turn the worst-sounding drum tracks, whether programmed or real, into sweet-sounding beauties.

Drum samples can be found pretty much everywhere on the internet, you just gotta find the really good ones. I’ve found Steven Slate drum samples to be rather good sounding in my mixes, so I’d recommend checking them out. They’re not free, but they’re totally worth it (of course there are ways of obtaining it for free).

However, even with amazing samples and perfect drum replacement, there is still some more work that needs to be done. First, resist the urge to turn up the kicks super loud, that’ll only highlight how steady (and robotic) the drums are. Unless you specifically want that sound, of course. Turn the cymbals down, and apply some basic compression on them to make them fit into the mix better and sound less grating. EQ and compress the snare until it sounds punchy but not too hollow, and make sure to apply a good amount of reverb onto it. While it may sound weird to have so much reverb on just the snare, it sounds pretty darn good in a mix.

With these two main tips and a little bit of effort, you can make drum tracks that sound fairly convincing and realistic. Remember, how good your drums sound is directly related to how much effort you put into programming and tweaking them. Don’t expect to get a pro-quality drum track in five minutes, unless you’re directly ripping off another band. Which I wouldn’t recommend doing unless you’re doing a cover.

Getting the permit itself wasn’t terribly time-consuming, I was in and out in less than two hours. I didn’t go super early either, I went at like 1pm or so. I guess I just always happen to be somewhere at the right time, when everything’s running smoothly. So far, no complaints about the DMV. The written test was easy beyond belief. I barely read the rules before taking it, and I got 18 out of 20 questions right. Perhaps it’s because I’ve always watched my dad and my friends drive (I’m almost always shotgun). Making sure my picture didn’t suck was the hardest part, haha.

After I got my permit, I started driving literally the next day with my dad, who’s teaching me how to drive. I first drove around in a former airport, lots of room to get a feel for the van. The van I’m learning on is a Toyota Sienna, from around 2003. It’s not terribly big or wide, and it helps to learn on a van, as I’ll be driving a commercial-size van for touring with my band.

I started driving on the streets the next day, and while I was initially slightly terrified, I’ve been getting a lot more confident behind the wheel. I drove on several highways like two weeks after I got my permit, also slightly scary but I got somewhat comfortable with it. I’m driving to the Bronx tomorrow again, should be fun.

Parallel parking’s also getting a lot easier, as well as backing into parking spots and driveways. I do hope that I don’t get too cocky, because I really don’t want to be a bad teenage driver. I’d rather follow the speed limits and come home alive each night.

Not Double-tracking Guitars

Come on, this one should be obvious; we live in the age of stereo. It’s simple enough, record two guitar tracks, pan one to the left, pan one to the right. Sounds easy right? Well some of these guys actually get it wrong. I’m not sure whether it’s out of ignorance or just pure laziness.

Way Too Trebly/Loud Cymbals

When it comes to mixing and mastering, EQ is your best friend. Hear those nasty sharp high frequencies coming from the cymbals? Cut them a bit. Same goes for their volume. Unless you’re an amateur, each drum mic outputs to a separate track. You can make the cymbals a bit quieter than the rest, so that they’re not the main focus of the mix. Having the cymbals in the background and not overwhelming the mix is part of what makes a mix sound professional.

Not Replacing The Kicks/Using A Bad Kick Sample

Unless you’re trying to go for an old-school lo-fi vibe, a modern metal mix should have audible, consistent kicks (that’s what the double bass drum sounds are called in the industry). Use a plugin like Drumagog to get a nice clean kick sound that will cut through the mix properly. Kicks usually go with the guitar parts and help keep the tempo of the song, so they should be heard well in the mix, they shouldn’t be muddy or lacking in treble. On the other side of the “doing it wrong” spectrum are extremely clicky kick samples that sound like a playing card stuck in a bicycle spoke. Avoid those, because they’re more annoying than anything. You want something that’s not excessively fake sounding or clicky, so take your time in picking a kick sample.

Dry Vocals

Vocals with no effects usually sound bad. I’m not talking about autotune, I’m talking about basics such as reverb, delay, and compression. It’s not cheating to use those, every professional does. Reverb helps with the acoustics of the vocals, and can often make up for recording in a less-than-ideal environment. Compression smooths out the peaks and brings all the vocals up to a more or less similar volume, so that there are no big jumps in loudness depending on how close the singer/screamer got to the mic. On the flip side, overusing effects can be just as bad, so use reverb in moderation. Also, chill with the overlays. Yes they sound cool every once in a while, but you’ll never sound like that live unless you have 2-3 full time vocalists.

Improper Cab Mic’ing

Mic’ing up a guitar/bass cab can sound really good… if done right. Trouble is, most people don’t do it right. I’m no mic’ing expert, so I use digital guitar amps and cabs. I suggest that to up-and-coming producers who don’t have the resources and/or experience to successfully mic up a cab. Because even a bad digital tone will still sound better than a horrible mic’d real guitar amp.

Bass Mixed Too Loudly/Too Quietly

Some local producers mix the bass way too loudly in the mix, to the point of where it’s competing with the guitars and making the mix sound muddy. Others mix it so quietly that it’s barely heard, negating the whole point of having a bass. Mixing bass tracks is something that should be handled delicately.

Awful Bass Tone

I’ve heard bass tracks that sound like floppy rubber bands, and others that sound like fat blobs of bass. For most metal mixes, a distorted bass sound fits in quite well with the mix. Not too distorted, but just enough to blend with the crunch of the guitars, while simultaneously standing out every so slightly. The fact that I’ve dedicated two separate points to bass is testament to the fact that a lot of local producers completely skimp out on the bass tracks. Just because it’s not front and center doesn’t mean it should be ignored. When done right, the bass can add a lot of punch and character to the mix.

Poor Mixing In General

I’ve heard local bands with terrible mixes. Every factor could be perfect, but a bad mix can ruin everything. A lot of people half-ass the mixing process, even though it is vital to a good sound. Mixing is not something that should be done in 10 minutes. You have to tinker with it, see what’s too loud, what’s too quiet, etc. Then you have to come back a couple hours later and then listen to it again, to see if anything stands out too much. Vocals are usually mixed too loud these days, which is fine for pop, but not for rock/metal where the instrumentals are just as important. Also, a lot of producers don’t listen to their mixes on various systems. I’ve seen producers only use expensive studio monitors, or only headphones. Great monitors or great headphones make any mix sound better, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of music listeners are not audiophiles with perfect studio headphones. No, the vast majority of listeners listen through crappy iPod headphones, or through terrible cheap computer speakers, or in mediocre stock car sound systems. Therefore, you have to test on these systems and make sure your mix sounds good on everything.

In conclusion, this is by no means an exhaustive list of everything that can be done wrong; it’s simply the most common mistakes I hear with a lot of demos. As much as you might think it’s all about the music itself, a good recording is crucial to getting people to listen to your band more than once. Plus, unless you’re extremely talented/unique, a good quality demo will attract a potential label’s attention so much more than a half-assed mediocre one.

A demo is everything for a local band, why half-ass it?

Notes On The New Design

The sidebar’s back! Despite all of my ranting against sidebars, I decided to include one in this version. But fear not, it’s not a typical archive/category sidebar, it’s somewhat useful this time. There’s the all-important search box, a short bio, and links to my other sites. I’ll probably add social links at some point.

New fonts. I decided to stick with Droid Serif as my content font, with Amaranth as my headline/title font. Both are possible for free thanks to the awesome Google Web Font service. The font selection isn’t the largest yet, but it’s totally free with no restrictions unlike Typekit’s free package. The content font size is also generally larger this time around, for easier reading.

I brought the wood back, because I still really like how it looks on Z-Up. Everything’s been spaced out more, because everybody’s got big monitors now, no sense in cramping everything together. The whole site is left-aligned now, it looks fine on most monitors, but if I start to dislike it, centering it would be easy enough.

The comments section has been moved over to Disqus. A lot of people already have Disqus accounts, and it lets you sign in with a bunch of different accounts, which is more convenient for commenters. Plus it’s got a pretty clean design, so customizing it was quicker than customizing the default WordPress comment system.

The pages have been updated. The about page has been long overdue for an update, being that I have a pretty big focus on audio production/engineering nowadays instead of just web design.

All of the pages have been updated, I made sure to check. So no more broken archive pages and such. I tested this new design in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, all on Mac. Should be similar enough on a PC, but with uglier font rendering. I don’t care about any version of Internet Explorer anymore.

That’s about it, I guess. Leave me a comment if you like/hate the new design.

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, passed away today at the age of 56. The tech world has indeed lost a great man, a visionary, a marketing genius, and a passionate CEO.

Few, if any, CEO’s cared about their products as much as Steve Jobs, he obsessed over every detail until everything was perfect. He rescued Apple from the brink of bankruptcy and turned it into an extremely profitable heavyweight— that alone is impressive. He envisioned revolutionary products such as the iPod, iPad, iMac, and iPhone. Now whether you like Apple or not, you must admit that he was quite influential in the tech world.

His death came as a shock to me, because it was so sudden. I knew he didn’t have long to live based on his resignation as CEO, but I wasn’t expecting him to leave us so quickly. I regret that I’ve never met him in person, now I’ll never be able to. I certainly won’t ever forget about him, he was almost an idol to me.

Throughout history, we are blessed with having true geniuses that radically change the way we live. In the 20th century, we had Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, and in the 21st century we have Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. So long Steve Jobs, you will truly be missed, by me and the tech community all over the world.

Update: Now that the iPhone 4S is out, I’m noting what I guessed correctly. Notes are in bold.

Design

A lot of people are saying that Apple will return to using an aluminum back for the iPhone 5. While aluminum is more durable than the glass back on the iPhone 4, it would be very un-Apple to ditch a still-new design. That’s like if Apple ditched the unibody Macbook Pro design after a couple of months. Plus, nearly every smartphone nowadays has an aluminum back, I doubt Apple would follow the trend, that would be very unlike them. It’ll probably be thinner and lighter, no doubt about that.

Yep, same exact design, no change at all.

Processor

No doubt about it, Apple will probably put a dual-core chip into the new iPhone. Whether it’ll be the same one in the iPad 2 or a different one remains to be seen. The RAM will probably be bumped up as well, to keep things speedy.

Apple A5 dual-core from the iPad, just as I guessed.

Camera

The iPhone 4′s camera is looking a bit dated nowadays, especially in the face of these eight megapixel smartphone cameras. It’ll probably keep the integrated flash and sensor, but with an increase in the resolution.

Wow, I actually guessed this exactly. 8 megapixels with an improved sensor.

4G/LTE/sjslf

It’s been long enough, every other new phone nowadays has some kind of faster-than-3G data feature. I’m expecting the new iPhone to have this, and maybe with a Qualcomm multi-band chip it can be carrier independent and international (technically speaking, I mean. It might still be tied down to a contract. More on that later).

Thanks to some “revolutionary” antenna technology, the iPhone 4S now pretty much has “4G” speeds.

Operating System

It’ll have iOS 5. Duh.

Duh.

Display

I doubt that Apple would introduce a larger or higher-res display, because that would cause further fragmentation, as well as pissing off a lot of developers.

Same exact display.

Carriers

There have been many hints that Sprint will get the new iPhone, and there have been rumors that T-Mobile might get it too. If the new iPhone has a multi-band chip, this is entirely possible, technically. Now whether Apple’s reached agreements with all the carriers is another story. It would be in their best interest to get the iPhone onto every carrier, because that means people will have one less reason to not buy one.

Yep, the iPhone 4S supports both GSM and CDMA, making it a truly global phone. It’s still probably locked down per carriers. Sprint has the new 4S and will be getting the 4 as well.

Now of course, there is the possibility that Apple might even offer a fully unlocked, carrier-free iPhone, for a way higher price of course. Then there’s the possibility of a pay-as-you-go model, but that’s largely up to the carriers.

Haha, no that didn’t happen. Contracts only.

Memory

Since there are hints that Apple might be killing off the iPod Classic, it would be in their best interest to bump the higher-end model’s memory to 64gb at least. Even better would be a 128gb iPhone, or a 128gb iPod Touch. It wouldn’t be prohibitively expensive either, flash memory keeps getting cheaper and cheaper.

Yep, 64gb iPhone 4S available. No 128gb iPhone nor iPod Touch. Perhaps in the next update?

Buttons

Apple might just completely replace the physical home button with a capacitive one, or just ditch it completely for an entirely gesture-based panel.

Only prediction that was way off, nothing was changed. Maybe on the iPhone 5?

Conclusion

This could be either a full-on redesign, or just a revamp with the new features mentioned above, meaning an iPhone 4S instead of an iPhone 5. Or there could be both an iPhone 4S and a brand-new iPhone 5. Who knows? Apple’s kept this new iPhone tightly under wraps, no catastrophic leaks, meaning the reveal tomorrow will be all the more exciting.

It actually turned out to just be a slightly upgraded iPhone 4. I guarantee that the next update, the iPhone 5, will be a lot more major than this one.

I use it a lot for sharing ideas with bandmates, or design mockups with clients. For that, it’s a perfect little tool. I’m also pretty glad that it never got super popular, because at the time I was making it, I knew very little about the costs of running a big website.

Recently, Z-Up’s been hacked numerous times by some foreign script kiddies. At first, they simply placed popups, which I promptly removed. The latest breach completely took down the homepage and deleted all of the uploads. I apologize for the inconveniences this may have caused for those who relied on Z-Up to host stuff, but it was mostly out of my control. I was planning on cleaning out the uploads folder anyway, these guys just did it in a much more crude manner.

Update: I’ve fixed the security hole, Z-Up’s back up and running. The hack was a basic extension exploit, whereby the “hacker” uploaded an exploit script with a name such as image.php.png. It would bypass the uploader’s extension checker, and then the “hacker” would be able to use the script from a browser. In this case, it was a server file browser script, so they had pretty much full reign over the server. After deleting every last one of these files (this guy tucked them into every corner of the server), I secured the uploads directory by disallowing scripts to run, using an .htaccess. I used the word hacker in quotes because this was a freely available exploit script, which means this “hacker” is nothing more than a script kiddie. On the positive side, Z-Up’s more secure now, and I did a bit of cleaning on my server, removing old (and potentially vulnerable) installs of Movable Type, Expression Engine, and Chyrp.

I’m still debating on whether to password-protect Z-Up, because I really don’t need people uploading stupid internet memes to it all the time.