Post your production tips

[Stefan Anion]

Originally Posted by JustMike

... step away from the computer and learn a damn instrument.

i totally agree. when i started out, there was no reason or vst instruments, it was either hardware or bust, so i had to learn how to play keyboards.

even if you're using reason or whatever else, if you're not playing at least keys and learning about chord structures you're missing out. also taking lessons won't hurt. currently i know only 3 chords on the guitar, but i wanna take lessons next year to expand that.

[Deff Gordon]

oh yea...

get a vaporizer and some good smokey smoke.

no schwag. the good shit.

/best advice evar!

[Blake]

Originally Posted by stargazer

if you want to learn chords on the guitar... Guitar Center sells a book for cheap that lists the majority of the chords with finger patterns... then you can just sit down with a guitar and play them...

I believe you're speaking of Mel Bay's books. They are GREAT for learning, and pretty cheap.




I heard there was a book thats about $100, that teaches EVERYTHING you need to know about playing the piano. It is supposed to guarantee that you learn and all that good jazz. I want to get it, but can't remember the name of it, anyone know?

[Stefan Anion]

i took piano lessons when i was about 12. my teacher was this really old german dude with long hair and no patience...after 2 weeks he kicked me out because i was playing too loud and showed no promise of ever being a musician....

[james d.1]

Do not try to take others samples from records and fix them to you use could lead to getting sued by copywriter.. make your own samples . and 909 drum sounds are ok but mess with others .

[tekloid]

Originally Posted by james d.1

Do not try to take others samples from records and fix them to you use could lead to getting sued by copywriter.. make your own samples . and 909 drum sounds are ok but mess with others .

ahahaha.. buddy, if that advice was ever used there wouldn't be 4/5ths the hip hop/"electronic" records we have today. unless you're playing in the big leagues(neptunes et al.), or made a crossover underground hit(hype - ready or not), you don't have much to worry about. there's always a good chance that you can get clearance on the sample as well. also, you can always mangle the sample a bit beyond recognition in turn making your own sample out of a sample. but i would agree on the "make your own samples" bit. it's just as important, but again, the majority of this music was built on the sampling of other tunes. they don't call them samplers for just any reason!

if anything, just don't sample melodies and riffs from your fellow genre producers like an inbred twat. common elements that have been ripped and used times over are ok(grey area), ie. in drum and bass it would be the tramen break, locust reece, etc..

ez

[Plato]

The 1 thing that has helped me the most over the years of writing music is to put yourself and all your bullshit aside, go into it with the right mindset, set goals and try to accomplish somthing. Fucking about is fine as far as playing with sounds, creating patches ect. But you need to discipline yourself in order to make things happen.

The pieces i have been most happy with have come from somthing specific i am trying to convey. An idea or theme im trying to get across. Not just sitting down to see what happens(not that thats bad) I work best when i feel like i am communicating somthing with each note and sound, rather than fucking about.

Good luck to all.

[james d.1]

Originally Posted by tekloid

ahahaha.. buddy, if that advice was ever used there wouldn't be 4/5ths the hip hop/"electronic" records we have today. unless you're playing in the big leagues(neptunes et al.), or made a crossover underground hit(hype - ready or not), you don't have much to worry about. there's always a good chance that you can get clearance on the sample as well. also, you can always mangle the sample a bit beyond recognition in turn making your own sample out of a sample. but i would agree on the "make your own samples" bit. it's just as important, but again, the majority of this music was built on the sampling of other tunes. they don't call them samplers for just any reason!

if anything, just don't sample melodies and riffs from your fellow genre producers like an inbred twat. common elements that have been ripped and used times over are ok(grey area), ie. in drum and bass it would be the tramen break, locust reece, etc..

ez

i agree but you still have to be careful you never know what can happen.. that is all . and im talking to people if you are going to press it..

[sealvl]

bootleg that shit

[tekloid]

some shit i lifted from doa's grid.

"Gated reverb with-out a gate"

Put together a phat break, doin' all your EQ'ing, compressing, what-ever.

at the final stage when yer just about ready to resample it, slap yer best reverb ontop of it, but use a bit more(and a slightly longer tail) then you normally would....

Now drop the tempo in your sequencer down to like 50bpm
and resample the break with all that extra space between yer hits.

Now chop the break up again, and load it back into your sampler.

Now play with the ADSR on the individual hits. You can control the amount/decay-curve of the reverb much more easily then if you were using an actual gate and sending everything to multiple channels.

Build Up effect.

Load a short sample into a sampler

Set the sample so that it loops while pressing the note until you release it

set the slide option on (or portamento)

set the slide time to more than 2 seconds

now play your root note say C1 then play C3

Everybody layers snares, right?

Notice how on the real breaks each snare hit sounds different, because sticks hit different spots on the snaredrum every time.

To fake this, let one of the snares (the sharper one) play normally, but put a narrow notch or comb filter on the other one and automate it (LFO's just fine tho). Now ecery snare hit sounds bit different, not really like a real break but adds action to the overall sound.

You'll need to tweak filters frequency and resonance settings, tho.

^^^ a sample and hold LFO would be gangbusters for that trick. Nice tip!

My contribution:
Run a send from your main mix to a compressor and back. (not an insert, you have to be able to fade it in)

set the compressor to something right fucking nasty, like 5:1 at -20

crunch that fucker down, makeup gain to bring it to zero in the compressor.

at mixdown time, fade it in till you get that weird humming pumping breathing at just the right amount for taste.

oldschool timestretch tip:

load a sample into your sampler (hard or soft, it doesnt matter).

map velocity to sample position.

filll up 8 bars (or whatever) with short notes, 32nds, 16ths, 64ths, make a funky pattern if you like.

draw a ramp of the velocity from 0 at the start to 127 at the last note...

this will accurately timestretch any sample to any amount of bars you like, regardless of the original tempo of the sample. it can also be fun on breaks (run them backwards, stretch the kick over a bar, etc,) - also try randomising the velocities for some random sounds.

Watch it with the compression. You're gonna poke someone's eye out.

one tricky thing i never heard mentioned. some time ago, i needed a ghost hit but i didn't have one in the break i was using. no other sample seemed to fit. none of the usual 'just make it softer/eq it/filter it/pitch it up/down blah blah' did shit.
the snare was compressed to a 'smash' sort of sound and i wanted a tick sorta sound for the ghost. so -
i used an expander.

That "Roni Size" ducked white-noise snare sound in software.

I had read that huge snare sound came from keying the snare to some white-noise via a gate.

Anyone else who has tried to set-up a keyed gate in cubase or the like will feel me on this, It's HUGE pain....possible to do but not very quickly or efficiently...

SO........

run yer snare to a seperate out and use a send so you've got it on one of the group channels. Now slap a vocoder on the group channel and set it to carrier to "white- noise".

Baddabing, badda bang....

Oh, and running a send of yer whole drum track to a vocoder can have some very kewl results as well.....see, above.....

My tip is to use the delay parameter to make your rhythms sound more life like. I am not talking about echo, tape delay or delay lines just so you're not confused. It is a well know funk trick to apply some negative delay to your snares (+ve delay makes sounds later, -ve delay makes them earlier) so they sound rushed and urgent. Hats often like a touch of negative delay too. Put delay on the kick drum to make it sound dragged and laid back. In house music the main offbeat snare sounds simultaneously with the kick drum. If you use this technique it means the snare will hit just before the kick which sounds rude. As with many production tips, be careful not to do too much. A bit of delay in your bassline will put the attack just after the kick drum so that they won't sound simultaneously preserving precious headroom in the bass region.

Try volume envelopes on your individual drum hits rather than compression on your whole break

very cool effect for vocals...i guess its called pre-verb

first off, make sure the vocal sample your using has a little bit of dead space before the beginning of it to give you some room to work with

then, reverse the bit you want the effect on or reverse the whole thing whatever your going for i guess

then, put a good amount of reverb on it preferably with a long decay and then reverse the vocal again and voila!

you can try this with delay to get another cool effect

DIY dub delay:
send one of your sounds to a (digital) delay through and aux is easiest, put the delay on another channel.

(example: ch1: sound, aux1 -> Delay in, ch2: Delay out)

This way, you can feedback the delay onto itself by adjusting aux 1 on channel 2. Now you can adjust the channel's EQ to taste do make those endless filtered delays. Be really careful with the feedback though.

metallic sounds, loops:
Set a delay to a really short time (a few ms.) with a delay amount to taste. This way you get a really metallic sound like the Sonic Mines in StarWars ep.2.

Predator screaming: Make some scary sounds (you screaming, or grunting) and add a subtle ringmod with a slow lfo if possible. It sounds like you are the Predator.

Sidechaining Synths To Percussion Lines in Logic :

This is well known but no one has mentioned it so fuckit. load up a synth patch and record some melody in your sequencer. Then Load up a Noise Gate or Autofilter on the synth track and choose your drums/hi hats/bongo tracks as the sidechain source. Do abit of tweaking and you should come out with some good results. Also sidechaining Your basslines to your drums via autofilter can create some sick twisted blines

Another Logic Trick this time utilising the Tremelo plugin...this ones really cool

The default tremelo patch is an auto panner and you can use this to create a variety off pulsating fx by crossfading between 2 seperate aux objects....

Load up a pad sound or something similar in an audio/audio instrument track. Next load up the logic tremelo plugin onto a stereo buss and make sure the bus's audio output routing is empty. Then feed 2 stereo aux objects panned hard left and right respectivley, from this bus object. Now route both Auxs to another bus this time in Mono which then feeds the mix normally. Feeding the stereo buss from a channel causes audio to sweep between the 2 aux channels each of which can be given different Eq/Modulation settings etc. The Mono buss object then combines the 2 aux channels into a singal channel which can be panned to match the original source if required

SIDECHAINING with CUBASE SX and Waves C1 sc in 9 steps

If you want to know how to use sidechaining in SX, read this. I just figured out how it works, took me ages

I recommend trying this with an easy 4x4 kick pattern and a basic subbass, makes it much easier to see and hear the results.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. start a new project and create 3 tracks - a kick drum, a subbass and a STEREO group channel

2. Insert the Waves C1 sc into the stereo group

3. pan the kick hard left and the bass hard right

4. route the kick and the bass channel to the stereo group

5. open the Waves C1 sc, and set KEY Mode to L>R
now the kick is "gone", your bass should only play on the right side.

6. to bring your bass back to the center open the mixer and RIGHT-CLICK on the PAN fader of the STEREO GROUP.
there are three options, one gets the desired result (and i forgot which one ). you'll see two panning faders there, just put them BOTH to the center. just try until you find the right option, if you get this working the hard part is done.

7. open the Waves C1 sc and lower the treshhold to -30db.

8. pull up the ratio and see how the gain reduction meter starts pumping to the 4x4 groove of your kick. you're almost there.

9. but now you wanna hear your kick again, right? create a new mono group, then go to your kick channel and SEND it to this group.
That's it!

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[Anomaly]

Originally Posted by tekloid

some shit i lifted from doa's grid.

I must be way behind. Half of that went right over my head....

[JustinLee]

Distortion on EVERYTHING!

Mainly I just play with routing fx differently now. Put a room reverb hard pan left and a hall reverb hard pan right on snares, shit like that. Distortion the reverb pan on a noise is a fav too.

[Spaceinsex]

normalize

this is key...

[Left]

Originally Posted by Spaceinsex

normalize

this is key...

mmm, imo, don't always normalize to 100% (or unity) when layering a sounds after full normalization it's much easier to clip....QUICKLY.

[knucklehead]

Originally Posted by stargazer

some of these responses remind me of something Giorgio Moroder said recently... and i'm paraphrasing as it was a longer statement... "electronic music has been infiltrated by hobbyists thinking they are musicians"

so i would also say that it would be a good idea to learn how to play an instrument... any instrument will do... but the piano would be a nice start for electronic dance music...

and even if you dont think you need to learn to play an instrument to learn about song structure and music theory... i would say that if you learn about those things independently from learning how to play an instrument then you are really taking steps towards knowing how to play an instrument anyway, so you might as well learn the instrument as well as they go hand-in-hand

i think that is some really solid advice because of the fact that i don't (yet) know how to play an instrument. it's really frustrating to be able to come up with melodies in my head but have no ideal how to play them on a keyboard or even put down the notes in a sequencer. i know if i could play a synth i could create some killer shit of my own.
so, what would be some good reccomendations for learning how to play a piano or keyboard? community college looks like a good avenue to me, but i'm open to other suggestions.

just to contribute my $0.02- this may be obvious and simple, but sometimes the simplest things go over looked. if you are producing something like psy trance with a good pulsating 16th note bass line, to keep the kick and the bass from muddying each other up just leave out the bass notes wherever your kick will be hitting. this tends to be overlooked especially if you are just starting out and using a lot of presets.

p.s- this thread is fucking great. it is one of the longest intelligent threads i've ever seen in the ddm.