Ponylectric Machine

Hehe, wow, thanks a ton!!! Will do!

This remix took wayyy longer to do than I thought it would! I started in January and during the span of the process I learned something hugely life changing about myself, got a boyfriend, broke up with said boyfriend, and blew my studio monitors (I originally had the sub bass cranked way too loud; sounded good on the headphones but my monitors got hit hard by it). I'm glad to finally be able to move on! Hope ya enjoy it! https://youtu.be/TyGdkc5Ippo

Wow! Nice! You've got some serious chops!

Thanks! It's not quite my usual style, but I used to listen to a lot of metal, so maybe that's where I pulled that from. Good to hear, thanks! I'll get a hang of it eventually. My synth design still needs quite a bit of work.

Sounds great; keep it up! Can't wait to see what's next!

No problem! That's pretty impressive for doing that on iOS garageband! I have that on my iPhone and all I use it for is jotting down melodies before I forget them or making sure I'm singing in the right key because doing anything else is too much of a pain in the butt for me! Yeah, I'm on the older version of it, but if it hasn't changed too much, it lacks the ability to automate or add effect plugins to tracks, so most of my advice couldn't apply to it. However, I think you can still go in and edit the midi (unless it records it as audio; haven't tried using it with other apps as inputs) by double tapping somewhere on the instrument track and tapping edit, which'll let you drag around the notes, but that's probably too much of a hassle on ipad.

Sounds pretty good, I can tell you put a lot of thought into it! I used to mess around with blending electronic music with symphonic music, too, as well as do medleys of songs I liked, so I can see where you're coming from. As for some suggestions, I think there's a few things that need some work. Also, I might be able to be a bit more precise with my suggestions if you let me know what DAW and VSTs you're mainly using for the track. First, the piano and lead synth. It gets a bit out of sync at times, around 1/16th to 1/32th off. I'd sugest using quantization if you're recording midi/vst based piano. Also, do you record the whole piece in one go, or do you record it in segments? I used to record in one go, but I mainly just plot it in notation or record a basic run and prim it up afterwards in the midi now. It makes for a much cleaner song. Second, I'd suggest getting better drum samples. There's a bunch of nice free ones floating around on the web, and there are also nice ones you can either pay for or pirate. If you're going to pirate, I'd suggest Vengeance samples because they basically stole them from other artists anyway, but they are still usually decent if you mess around with them. If you're inclined to pay for samples, I'd suggest going with a VST like Toontrack's Superior Drummer or Steven Slate Drums 4. I personally haven't tried them, but I've heard great things about them. Also, make sure to record each individual drum track (ie cymbals, kicks, snares, hi hats, etc) and place them back into the track (make sure to mute the midi drum tracks after doing so). Then you'll want to add reverb to those audio tracks. A little goes a long way, so listen to each individually as you tweak the reverb, then again with the rest of the instruments. Reverb brings a lot of character and real-ness to the drums. Thrid, mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. And in a live setting, they're inevitable. When you're recording, however, it should be as near perfect as possible. With midi you can go through and fix 'em. It might take a while, but it'll be worth it. If it's a part like at the end of your mix where the notes are played in a way that it'd be hard or maybe even impossible to edit their notation and keep the effect in midi, open up multiple tracks, record the part multiple times, and if one isn't perfect, arrange the best pieces with cut/copy/paste until you can frankenstien one together. That said, a little bit of being out of time won't hurt if you're less than 1/32th off beat; in fact, it can make it sound more natural. Some DAWs like Ableton have a way to slightly simulate that to make instruments feel less artificial. A good rule of thumb is that you should feel it rather than hear it. Fourth, after The Perfect Stallion, the strings are barely noticible. It's most likely because they are competing for space with all the other instruments, which, for the most part, all happen to be in the same frequency range. It sounds like the strings are mostly centered, but strings are typically a very powerful effect due to the number of instruments necessary, so try emulating that by using stereo widening on them. Your DAW probably has a stereo widening plugin, and if not, there are lots of free ones floating around on the net. This will make them feel more like they are enveloping the listener rather than being a sound in the background. It's also a good idea to layer string sounds. If your program offers groups of different string instruments, like violins, violas, cellos, contrabasses, etc., try building the string arangement with each group, and if it still doesn't sound whole or coheisive enough, you can top it off with a layer of a whole ensemble. You can pan some of the middle sections/instruments, like the cello and viola, but keep the top and bottom centered and very wide. Hope I helped!

Sounds great for being put together so quickly, and the drums seem pretty fleshed out! I'd say keep experimenting with it and see what you can come up with!

No problemo, glad to help!

I agree with Taialin on inspiration. Solid inspiration is great for not only making a song more enjoyable and relatable for listeners, but it can also make a song memorable for YOU! When I go back and listen to songs I've done that were inspired by something, I still can see where I went wrong and should have improved, but it also brings me a nostalgic feeling of that time period when I wrote the song (especially if it was during a time period that I had a lot of fun experiences during; it almost brings me back to the way I felt during that time). Also on Taialin's point of recording the song idea when you get it, I +1 this 1000 times. I can't count how many ideas I've lost because I had them early in the morning on the way to work or college, and by the time I got there, if I hadn't keep repeating it in my head, it was totally gone. If you have an iPhone, I'd suggest the Garageband app. Not only can you play out the melody on a little keyboard, but you can record it too, from anywhere! If that's not an option, try repeating the song/melody over and over again in your head. Eventually, you'll probably just be able to recall it. I do that most of the time, but I usually need to play it on a keyboard to memorize what key it's in.

I've been playing since I was 7 (so 14 years?), and for me, improvisation came from not wanting to do my piano homework. My teacher was cool with it, so instead of doing the songs in the book 100% like they were supposed to be done, I usually played them with added bits, or sometimes in a different genre (playing a christmas or classical song with jazz rhythm and structure). It honestly really screwed me over when I joined marching band and played synth in it; I was so used to improvising that I hadn't really cared much for learning how to read all the intricacies of sheet music, so I had a tough time keeping up with others when we were learning our parts for the first time. Now I write electronic music, which I plan out in my head before I even start writing it, but when I do play actual piano, I usually stick with blues or jazz. If you want to learn improvisation, I'd highly recommend learning a couple blues scales. Once you know a blues scale or two, all you have to do is keep a rhythm with your left hand and do whatever you want within that scale with your left hand. Listen to some Johnny Winter ("Life is Hard" is a good one) and try doing what they do, then change it up. It'll also help you get a grasp for swing timimg, which can help with jazz improvisations later on. Another fun thing to practice is trilling. If you don't know, that's when you play two notes repeatedly very fast. It's very hard to do at first because your fingers likely don't have the muscles built in the particular way necessary for trilling, but you can build those muscles pretty easily by practicing trilling every couple of hours with this technique: 1. Practice a trill with your pointer and middle finger. (I recommend doing it on a piano or good keyboard, if that's not an option, you can do it on your leg or chair or some other somewhat soft surface with your fingers/hand held up about an inch from the surface). Do it until your fingers are getting too fatigued to keep a consistent speed, then, 2. Keep the trill going, but swap your middle finger out with your ring finger. Do it until your fingers are getting too fatigued to keep a consistent speed, then, 3. Keep the trill going, but swap your pointer finger out with your middle finger. Do it until your fingers are getting too fatigued to keep a consistent speed, then, 4. Keep the trill going, but swap your ring finger out with your pinkie finger. Do it until your fingers are getting too fatigued to keep a consistent speed, then, 5. Keep the trill going, but swap you middle finger out with your ring finger. Do it until your fingers are getting too fatigued to keep a consistent speed. 6. Repeat all on your other hand. If you do this often enough, you'll build muscle in your fingers pretty quick, and you'll see a noticable difference in your trill speed and endurance after about a month. Trilling is very useful for improvising, because it adds a nice bit of "fancy" to your flow. You can also trill in short bursts for a neat effect. Lastly, just go with the flow. The beautiful thing about jazz and blues is that mistakes can be part of the experience. Jazz is all about expressing an idea, while blues is all about changing negative, sad emotions into a positive, enjoyable melody that people can feel. When you improvise blues, just pour all your sadness out onto the keys and let them tell your tale for you.

It seems like it has a pretty active art community, at least as active as reddit's. I've always had a hard time networking with graphic designers, animators, and other music makers, so I figured I might be less afraid in this setting.

No problem! Side chain can be a pretty tricky thing since it depends on both the input and the compressor for the final effect. If you ever have trouble with it, if you aren't already, try duplicating the kick, making the duplicated kick a ghost kick, side chaining the ghost kick to what you want the effect on instead of the real kick, and then tailoring the ghost kick lengths to make the best sounding side chain (that way you can have really short bursts of pumping without reverb or a long decay on the real kick getting in the way). Drops are my weakness too, I can never seem to get them close enough to how they sound in my head (sometimes my only option is to improvise)!

Wow! I really like the melody, and the kick has a really nice thud to it! I think it would have benefitted from side chaining the kick to the organ on the drop. Side chain usually adds a nice bit of texture to a drop.

Hi! I'm new to the Poniverse and to making fandom music, but I've been around in other MLP communities (mainly the Plounge on reddit). So far my music on my main project has been pretty mediocre, so I've taken up making pony music side project based around an OC that follows a progression of genres to both improve my skills and to entertain more people. I still have a long way to go before my music sounds decent, so any criticism is really appreciated! This first song is about Pinkie's role of dealing with the parasprites in Swarm of the Century. I usually write chill music, so it didn't quite turn out how I planned due to my lack of experience in heavy stuff. Anyway, here it is, hope you enjoy!