O.C. Sha (LMMS Artist)

Listen to O.C. Sha

French Polynesia has at least one good LMMS producer: O.C. Sha. He is relatively new in the game of music making, still he has risen to be one of my favorite LMMS composers in the single month it took him to start with LMMS and produce 8 tracks. I have wanted to write about this artist for a long time, but I also wanted to give him time to release another song. Now he has, and he is better than ever.

He basically makes house, electro and moombhaton which he also describes his music as. He has his own style, and you will probably learn to recognize it. Just gotta love his characteristic wubs, they really fit the rhythm. When he tops it with short attack on his sounds it actually makes me want to dance! The drumbeat, which I guess is moombahton style, amplifies the party mood. Fat synths and LB302 are common sounds you will hear. I think he does a really good job when it comes to mastering and mixing on his latest tracks. If he continues to improve so fast, he could perhaps become the most popular LMMS user in the world already the next year...

O.C. Sha on Soundcloud

Mastering

Until this point, I have produced my songs in LMMS to the very last bit, also done the mastering in LMMS. When I tried to master with Audacity and its built in compressor and leveler I couldn't reach the level my LMMS-mastering was at without messing up.

Today though, with my latest song soon to come out, I matched the sound level from LMMS in Audacity. So I could now choose which one I would want to use. 

The top waveform is mastered with Audacity, and the bottom is pretty unmastered LMMS, I would definitely worked more with it or lowered it a bit you see. So basically this picture gives me a very good reason to master with Audacity, a lot less peaking! 

One could probably achieve less peaking and the same level in LMMS if one added limiters and/or compressors on the master in addition to a lot of tweaking. However exporting a sound with low levels to Audacity and then amplifying, leveling and compressing seems to give me better control over the peaking. One can immediately see when it is going to peak. UPDATE: Leveling is only limiter and compressor combined, so using only the compressor is a better alternative.

With that said, although the bottom waveform seems like distortion all the way, I cannot hear so much distortion because of peaking in the LMMS version. So it isn't that bad, and again, I had only worked a small amount on the mastering in LMMS.