If this section doesn't cover everything you wish to know, just go ahead and e-mail me.
The Archive
The former and original version of this site. It had links to around 550 tracks and I launched it on the 15th of July 2010. It was on Yola hosting and it had some other content besides the tracks which I didn't include in Track Library because it didn't serve the purpose of the site. The reason I transferred to Blogger is because I knew I'd have more options with the layout of the site, which was important to me. The Archive is no longer in existence along with my account on Yola.
How the tracks came into being
First thing you need to know is that I don't make these tracks, I just collect them. From what I've learned so far, there are multiple ways these tracks came into being:
- Some of them are rips from Guitar Hero and Rockband. They contain Moggs (files with multiple separate tracks that can be edited out using Audacity).
- Some of them (the instrumentals), have had their vocal tracks removed through software. It's important to know that this is not an easy job and there are very few people that are able to do it properly. I have to say I've tried it myself, but like every other amateur I've ended up destroying the quality of the rest of the instruments (most of the time the drums are affected).
- Some of them are out of special edition albums which besides the normal songs hold the original isolated tracks or instrumentals. Examples: Lamb Of God's Sacrament and Wrath albums and Nightwish's Dark Passion Play album.
Where I get the tracks from
I've gotten almost all of the tracks from YouTube. Here's the general procedure I have for every track:
- Download it using YouTube Downloader
- Convert it to .mp3
- Organize and evident its existence
- Compress it to .rar - (not after MegaUpload went down)
- Upload it to MegaUpload - (not after MegaUpload went down)
- Hyperlink it to Track Library - (not after MegaUpload went down)
Unfortunately, because of EMI Music and other complaints, the biggest track channels on YouTube are now closed, though not before I had my hands on their tracks.
My interpreted drum tracks
Almost all of them are from Disturbed and there are 3 basic things you need to know about them:
- I write them in Beatcraft Drum Machine
- All of my interpreted drum tracks are written in Beatcraft Drum Machine, a program from Acoustica. I don't really play them on the drums, I don't even own a drum set. - Hi-hat and cymbal silencing
- Mike Wengren from Disturbed uses this technique a lot but I am rarely able to reproduce it in Beatcraft so if you happen to notice that I haven't, it's not by mistake, just that I wasn't able to. - Incorrect volume levels - YouTube tracks
- Concerning the tracks uploaded on my YouTube channel, the volume levels for different drum parts may be too high or low. I am constantly working to get the right volume levels for the drum parts in every different song, so the newer the upload, the greater chance the volume levels are correct. However, since I made this site, this should no longer be a problem because all of the interpreted tracks here are reworked and corrected.
Combining the tracks
I don't combine the tracks into backing tracks. The reason for this is quite simple, if I were to make a backing track for every instrument of every song, I'd have to make a million combinations. This shouldn't worry you though. If you want a certain backing track you can make it yourself using Acoustica's Mixcraft, it's quite easy.
Track standards
It's really hard for me to determine definite standards over what makes a track worthy of entering my collection. There's a lot of poorly edited content on YouTube so I have to listen to each track carefully before I make my decision. There are certain vocal tracks I haven't added just because they have the background instruments track playing along behind them. In the meantime I'm also hung up on what bands to add and whether or not the small number of tracks I've found from a certain band will stop me from adding them. Also, I'm trying not to be biased over the genre of the bands I add even though tracks from some genres are more downloaded than others.
Spreading the content; because sharing is caring
Advertising and making this site popular is the hardest problem I've had to face with. There was a time when I spread the news about it through YouTube comments and even though that was the biggest contributor to my visits at the time, it still remained very inefficient and hard to do. At the moment, most of my visitors are probably coming from my YouTube videos or channel which is definitely not enough in comparison to how many people are interested in these sorts of tracks.
