I’m taking extra care with the rest of my music making fun so I may not post tunes for a while, but I’m working hard to get stuff out that I can really be proud of.
I’m now affiliated with Binge Records and am actively looking for dubstep talent to sign. If you want to send some tunes in for consideration an avenue of contact is the contact form on this blog. If you prefer, my AIM screenname is “hubsmoke”. This would all be easier with DubFWD…
Which brings me to update that the DubFWD service is coming along nicely. I am nearly feature complete (WiX mentioned a cool idea to me today, so I’m going to have to add that before I consider it feature-complete) Anyhow, soon on to minor GUI fixes, then internal testing, then public testing. Woo! It’s really cool and will smooth out the process of sending people tunes better than any other service out there (and for free!)
Also, DubFWD - Dubstep Radio (formerly The Crackpot: Dubstep Radio) will commence this Sunday morning from 12AM-2AM (Saturday night/Sunday morning!) on WMUC 88.1 FM broadcasting from College Park, MD
Hey all! I’ve teamed up with WiX and Coda of JumpDownMusic to present you with the following Baltimore dubstep event for March 18th, 2009. It’s gonna be a great time, so make sure you get out and party with us, along with brilliant dubstep producers ULTRABLACK and NUMBERNIN6
Also the day before, Ultrablack, WiX, Coda, and myself will be performing in Philly as part of the Magical Ultrablack + Hubsmoke + WiX + Coda Topless Two Day Tour of Philly and Bmore!
Update (2/19/09): Harrisburg, PA show now confirmed Braptizm @ Spy Club (Friday, March 20th) Flyer on the way.
I’ve been working on DubFWD.com nearly every day and have made quite a bit of progress. Uploading and transcoding to 128kbps mp3 works, and the upload process is streamlined to the max for ease and simplicity. The key to this site is everything is sooo simple. I’m having a lot of fun working on this, and I hope I can start some alpha testing when it is feature-complete within the next couple of weeks. The first cut of the DubFWD Audio Player is featured in this screenshot:
Click to see it big! Anyway, still got my work cut out for me in terms of the UI, player interface, and logo, not to mention ironing out some whacky initial bugs I’ve been seeing. Anyway, comments are appreciated. Also, my brother has been pushing to change DubFWD to dubFWD (notice the lowercase ‘d’), what do you think?
Finished this one up recently…now I’m going to change gears a bit in my production. I think I’ve done a good amount of experimentation with this particular crunchy sound, and I’m going to experiment a little bit more. I was really proud of what I did with “Wound”. It received the best response I’ve ever gotten for a track so far, so I felt a bit uneasy with going outside of that sound. Though I’m still very in love with these tracks, I want to branch out way more and go crazy with experimentation. My brother showed me some of Distance’s dubstep work and it was no surprise to me that both he and I both come from a metal background. I’ve really fallen in love with Distance’s sound and I’ve become a bit inspired to widen the spectrum as he has with his productions. I’m not saying I’m going to try to emulate his sounds or anything like that at all, just simply experiment more and try to give my productions more of my own character. I’m still learning so much on the technical side of things, but I really enjoy the process and can’t wait to give it another 6 months to see where it goes.
Through experimentation I’ve learned a lot about mixing and a teensy bit about mastering these past couple weeks. There is so much value in mixing down correctly. I did some reading to try to improve my mixdowns and I’ve learned that it is very important to:
1) Set all of your tracks’ volumes (sub, drums, synths, etc) all the way down when the arrangement is complete and you’re ready to mix down
2) Turn up your monitors very high until you can bring up the drums to about -15dB with it sounding as loud as you can bear it (it’s all about monitor levels…seriously, louder the better)
3) With the drums at the right level, bring in the sub-bass until it’s working with the kick drum nicely (this can be tough, but you just have to do it the best you can and make sure you test it on a different system if possible)
4) Mix everything else in one at a time, and get all the levels so the master level peaks at about -6dB max (less if possible, if it starts getting to even -3dB, I say start over and turn UP your monitors)
5) Then bounce out to WAV and master with EQ til the sound is to your taste and you can mess with stereo panning and all that (but I don’t really know much about the right thing to do for that) and mess with a limiter until it doesn’t go above 0dB.
This method is probably very obvious to most people (or maybe not, or maybe it’s not even “correct”?!)…but for me, “Heroin Eyes” was the first time I did this, and I think it sounds more “mastered” than my other tracks. At the same time, I’m so new at this that if I get any of these tunes signed for a release I will most certainly have the mastering outsourced to someone with more experience and actually knows what they’re doing. I’m happy with what I’ve done so far, but there is an incredible amount of knowledge to gain simply through mixing down and mastering alot of tracks.
In other news, I’m building a prototype of a service I’m calling “DubFWD”. It will essentially be a place exclusive to dubstep producers (and DJs) to upload unlimited tracks for free. I plan on have many features tuned to the needs of the people on dubstepforum such as easy high-quality mp3 sending (possibly with the option to mass PM a set of users on dubstepforum, something that is currently unavailable on dubstepforum, but I think I know how to do it externally), also charts for tracks with the most views for all time/year/month/week/day as well as once-click mp3 request, easy display of the producer’s (or DJ’s) preferred method of contact for inquiries, as well as a one-click way of letting a producer know you’ve used their tune in a mix or live. All free! BUT, this is only a local development prototype that I’ve JUST started. I’m experienced with web application development, but I’m definitely going to face some challenges I never have before, so I cannot promise anything at the moment. I can say, that I have registered www.DubFWD.com and www.DubForward.com (cuz I really don’t want to say “Dub F-W-D” anytime I’m talking about it haha). I’m posting all of this information here because I’m trying to really commit myself to finishing it as soon as possible.
I’m no graphic designer, but I made a quick logo that is certain to go through some changes by my graphic design friends, but I’m all ears for feedback, suggestions, and what DubFWD may mean to you if you’re a dubstep producer/DJ.
