Tips from the subsekt / Fxpansion Competion [NOW CLOSED]

[Críoch]

Hi Guys,

The prizes were good. The prizes are gone. The competion is now closed.

Thanks to everyone who entered.

Cheers,

James, Paul, John & Sam

[Monktec]

Hi everyone, I have a very useful tip for the new producers out there. I noticed when I'm listening to newer producers tracks the overdone low end in their productions. It makes the track sound very muddy and there is a simple way to fix this problem. It's called subtractive eqing, don't worry it's easier to do then it sounds. First add a eq to your bass line, next cut out the high end frequencys to about 152Hz. This setting will change abit depending on how you want the bass to sound. The reason being alot of your vsts provide the full spectrum of sound and it may sound great all alone, but in reality one vst will eat up very valuable frequency space in your productions.

basscut.jpg (17.32 KiB) Viewed 5090 times

[Lokua]

I guess this is more of tutorial or collection of tips but it is all centered around the same foundation.

Unsynced "Synced" Delays

Using a calculator you can find millisecond values for note values.
I'm really bad at math so I use this very handy tool (windows):
http://www.analogx.com/contents/downloa ... eeware.htm

There are plenty delay calculators online but be careful, many are inaccurate.
To calculate millisecond delay times manually:
60,000 / tempo = 1/4 note in milliseconds
from there you divide by 2 for 1/8, by 2 again for 1/16, etc.

Now for the tips:

Say you want a slap-back reverb on a snare or percussive tone; with a tempo of 127, a 32nd note will be 14.76ms, a 16th 29.52, a 1/4 note = 118.11 etc. Entering 14.76 on a reverb's pre-delay means the reverb will not be heard until 14.76 milliseconds (or a 32nd note) later. Using millisecond values that correspond to actual note length keeps everything in immaculate timing and adds a lot to a sound or track's rhythmic pulse. Make that clap really clap-back!

My understanding of reverb is that much fuller since I started doing this. Being able to hear the reverb of a sound at a different time of occurrence without having to make it totally wet (and thus louder / inaccurate) is helpful.

The big prize of course is when you want delays that are smaller than a 16th note (synced delays rarely have finer resolution than 16th notes). For example (tempo still at 127) with Ableton's Simple Delay set to TIME instead of SYNC, on the Left and Right channels you can enter 14.76 (for a 32nd note) on the left, and 19.68 (for a 16th triplet) on the right. With no feedback you get an awesome "synced" stereo width to the sound, with a lot of feedback you get crazy tails of enharmonic frequencies that are rhythmically connected to your track. There is nothing stopping you from using more than one of these unsynced "synced" delays. Imagine a sound's delay slowly shifting from a 16th later to a 32nd later and back (you know you want to try it right now ).

You can even use ms calculations (or straight up regular synced values) as a way to apply groove unconventionally. With a mono delay set to %100 wet and %0 feedback you will effectively shift the sound forward to whatever time value your delay is set. This is delay literally (not just an echo). Interesting results can happen when you move something a dotted 32nd (or whatever) forward. Of course you can do this manually by moving midi notes, this way is just fun and provides room for experimentation (and delay parameters you can automate, respectively).

Hopefully this opens doors for new producers and/or inspires you.

---

One more thing! Below is something I quickly put together to illustrate how I personally use everything mentioned above (perhaps overly so). Everything from using micro-delays to add harmonic tails to the bass to shifting between multiple delay units to add movement to the saws and hats, and basic "synced" slap-back reverb all over the place are present. - Peace

[Patriek]

My tip is to make the music that's authentic. Don't try to copy or let anyone tell you what sound you should produce! Be creative and think out-of-the-box. Don't be afraid to experiment

[Críoch]

Great tips Guys - Keep em coming : )

[brad p]

Hi Dudes. Nice site and awesome competition. My tip is to keep everything separate in the mix.

You can have too much in there so be careful. Subtract what you dont need and see what you can leave out. How many bands comprised of just a guitar, a bass and a kit of drums? Its nice to have some space and leads to a much more professional mix. Not only is reducing the amount of elements fighting one another an effective approach, but it is also more pleasurable for your ears to listen to and your brain to process.

[jon_fisher]

My first tip would be to not over think what you are doing, listen to the sound as you are creating if and listen to how every added element changes the original sound.

Don't apply FX at the start, build a solid sound first and then apply FX as icing on the cake.

Learn how individual Waveforms sound on your synth, this way you will be able to deconstruct sounds easier if you know what you are listening to and how each waveform effects another.

The same with FX like Phase, Flange and distortion, learn what they do to a sound so that you know how to hear them on a sound you want to re-create.

Mixing Oscillator shapes and Volumes is a very important part of sound creation learning to mix them is essential to developing your sound designe skills and will help develop your over all mixing skills, learning to shape a sound to fit the mix instead of depending on Compressors and EQ's will benefit every aspect of you sound.

Nice site and thanks

[kuba_rubacha]

always bring a towel

[helloitsmeagain]

Unsynced "Synced" Delays

nice tip man! i'm embarrassed to say i'd never even considered this... played around with the ideas a bit today and got some interesting results.

and...

always bring a towel

I never leave home without one.

[Mush]

Dont smoke crack..

[Program]

Regarding the delays; there's a trick I learned. 30000 divided by your BPM = exact ms of an eight note.

[Mslwte]

Even though I'm excluded from the competition my tip would be turn your screen off and use your ears.

[dijin]

simple- experiment!
experiment with everything, try crazy things like dropping the same midi pattern into different tracks, drop it all into audio and run it through any effect you can think of, then reverse it and do it again, then just sample the effect trail, whatever floats your boat, just try doing things you would never normally do.
Writing a track can be very formulaic, you get your drums, your synths, put your builds in and follow the formula
forget the formula, use samples of anything and everything and make it your own. Chop samples up turn them around and just try stuff that shouldnt make sense. Dont stick to putting the same set of plugins racked up everytime, try allsorts of sequencers and drop the audio from one to another, just experiment.
not really a production/synthesis tip though


samples
that simple, everyone knows the 808/909/ synth rack and the formula for a track but its the samples that can change everything, make something pedestrian into a worldbeater, and the only way to do that is always be listening, always be on the hunt, whether its films, soundtracks, field recordings, wherever the concept comes from, chop it effects, whatever you want, but the sample still makes all the difference.
Its all too easy with technology now to load up a studio and keep writing in the same way, but my tip is, and im not going to win with this cos everyone nows anyway is GIGO, an old sampling phrase, garbage in, garbage out.
It stands true in the age of plugins and easy presets. Sample your own work, re-edit it, chop it up and mess with it, Sampling is basically audio, and audio is the new songwriting.

[Duffdeal]

If you've got a sound which sonically 'fits' your track but that you aren't going to use for whatever reason, don't delete it just yet. Open it in the awesome bit of free software - Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch -
http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/
(in Ableton you can right click on the loop/sample>show in browser then drag it straight from there to the program)
Stretch it out for 20 seconds or so, mess about with the processing, bounce to wav and see if you can use it as fx/atmosphere.

If there is some variation in the sound you can end up with some nice evolving pad noises.

Voila

[helloitsmeagain]

MAKE MISTAKES

switch off your grid.

learn to play the piano. even if you suck, like i do, you can play it at a slower bpm. you get great mistakes.

use guitar effects on vocals. use vocal effects on drums. read the instructions, then ignore them.

and now i'm gonna cheat, cause i posted this before... kinda...

I find synths sit better in the mix if everything below 300Hz is mono.

Dropped a multiband dynamics on your synths (group them if you can to save resource), and kill everything above 300.
Then a slap a utility after that and make it mono.
Then duplicate that and get rid of the utility. also, reverse the band. now everything below 300 is off.

For added spectacularness*...

next to the multiband dynamics for everything above 300, drop another audio effect rack.
2 chain inside. each with an EQ8 at the start, one dealing with mid and one side.
My multiband doesn't get rid of it everything below 300 so kill the freq below 100 on the mid.
on the side, i drop some spatial fx. example: gave it some spin with auto filter, ping pong delay, chorus etc.

* experimentation. i totally made that word up.

[ozias_leduc]

lovely thanks man, i can post now

okay i call this phantom distortion, and it's good for rougher techno

one way to have drums (or anything) interact in an gritty/aggressive way is to bus them together and apply overdrive. eg, bus your kick and your Porc together, then put an overdrive on the bus. the effect isn't completely unlike the sidechain method; the Porc gets eaten by your kick (although in a nastier way)

however, this makes a mess of your kick and isn't always desirable

but we can have a totally clean kick distort your percussion (or whatever) if we additionally have a second bus , and set them up like this:

bus 1 - kick and Porc are fed into it, has overdrive plugin
bus 2 - as above, except that the kick ALONE is fed into it

now we phase invert bus 2 (if using ableton utility plugin , click PHZ-L and PHZ-R) to subtract the distorted kick and voila - we have the kick's devastating effect on the percussion; yet the kick itself has disappeared and can be routed elsewhere!

it's also handy to have a third bus to go between these 2 and the master

there is plenty of room to experiment with this technique also. assigning midi knobs to both distortion plugins with slightly different parameter ranges can lead to interesting results

[endfindead]

To compress anything, set your compressor as follows: attack 0, release 0, ratio at max, threshold 0; no makeup gain. Solo the channel and bring your attack up until you get the attack sound you want, this is like a magnifying glass for transients. Next, set your release, which will affect the internal rhythm of the sound; then pull the ratio back until the sound 'jumps out'; then bring the threshold up until the gain reduction is just biting in around 3-6dB of reduction. Once you do it in this order, your compression will never suck again. Of course, this doesn't work for 'effect' compression, but you know how to do that already!

[chiska]

Hello.

My best tip would be for every production you do, do everything with love and for yourself, and this will reflect all your essence and honestly in every project you create.

Greetings and good day.

[Walsh]

automate..... everything....


even if its just a tiny bit of filtering, it changes everything in your mix.


Loving all the tips so far!

[gavisthename]

I love the Ableton Saturator and use it loads as my goto clipper/distortion!

Driving individual tracks into its built-in limiter makes them fat and really poke through the mix. Also it saves on headroom by clamping down on spiky bits of audio! Really adds thump to kicks too!

Smash your tracks through it, great for techno!