Making your own SimSongs tutorial

[jihnsius]

Have gotten a couple requests on teaching people how to make DDR mixes / remixes. Heres a little tutorial to either make you realize its not worth the effort and/or send you on your way.

No, I will not "n00b" down the terminology to fit your "n00bness" if you dont understand it. If you really want to do it, you will learn.

-Beginning
a. Get Fruity Studio 4 (www.fruityloops.com), load a midi file of whatever you want to remix, load all channels on it.
b. Replace all the midi instruments with samples you see fit via right click > load sample (assuming you have samples. Never use the Fruity samples, theyre all horrible. If you dont have samples, i suggest getting a program like Soulseek (slsknet.org) or just browsing the net for sites that specialize in electronic music (www.serious-sounds.net) with people that can offer them).
c. Save as zipped flp. (file > export > zipped loop package)
d. Load another midi, replace midi instruments with other samples.
e. Save as zipped flp.
f. Copy whole channel piano rolls and paste them into the other file (the "main" one you want to mix), under a complete new Sampler. (
g. Continue this process until you have elements from both that you want.

-Step Sequence.
a. Copy each channel, and paste them all into their seperate tracks.
b. Now, take each track, cut all notes in the piano roll into corresponding sections that you hear have a difference, paste those into new tracks.

-Sequence.
a. Open the Sequencer. Sequence each track to your liking to make the actual song. (make sure the play mode is on Song and not Pattern).
b. Adjust the tempo by right clicking the tempo box, clicking Edit Events, Ctrl+A, delete. Close that window, now change the tempo by clicking and moving the mouse up and down.

-Mixing. (optional, recommended)
a. Send specific channels to an fx send via clicking the sample box on the Step Sequencer, and sliding the FX box up and down.
b. Go to that corresponding FX send via the FX dialog box, and add FX to make it sound better (eq, reverb, delay, compression, whatever..)
c. Add a master layer of whatever you think will sound better. Usually includes slight eq changes, compression, ultrimizer, and a dB meter to make sure things dont get too loud / quiet.
(Mixing takes a lot of time and practice. Its possibly one of the least understood things in music production. Running time for mixing an 8 minute tune for a professional probably runs around 10 hours, depending on the complexity, all the way up to a weeks time.)

-Export as mp3, wav, whatever.
a. Click file > export > mp3, wav, whatever.
b. Choose settings for the file, ie. Bitrate, etc.
c. Click OK! > and wait for it to export (Might take a while depending on the complexity of the track and speed of ur comp. An 8 minute track takes about 20 minutes to render on my 966 Athlon.)

As you can see, its a long process, but once you learn and understand it all, its pretty simple, but rather time consuming! I seriously think people shouldnt bother going through the whole learning of music theory, fruityloops, downloading samples, and etc. if they just want to make a remix or two.


Well, there ya go... Have fun!

- Dj JinX

[jihnsius]

Via this process (or one quite similiar), in Fruityloops, This is what I banged up tonight:

http://24.161.221.229/xenon.mp3

my xenon remix..
if anyone wants to make stepfiles for it, feel free!

edit: actually, no, dont make a stepfile.. the songs not done yet