Producer Tips

[savage]

I posted this also on the Tokyo Nights forum last night but I saw that some ppl wanted to have some tips as well for the contest here on AHS so here they are... hope they come in handy for you ^^



Kicks
- Layer 2 kick drums, one hard with less low for the attack and a deep one, type 808 for the low sound.
- Or mix 2 drum sounds by setting the envelopes. Use the attack of one and the decay of the other.
- The sound of a kick drum can be sound more aggressive through white noise. The noise should go through a gate with the kick in the side chain. Each time when the kick plays, the gate opens and let a bit of noise through. Mix this with the kick drum, perhaps with a bit of low pass filter to reduce the higher sounds.

Making grooves
- Put the signature on a different size then 4/4, put them for example on 6/8. Make some tunes and put the track on mute. Then put the signature on a different one, like 12/16 and play the same tunes again. Put them on 4/4 again and play the drum track in. You can get nice rhythmic patrons in this way.
- Send your snares to a delay and give them between 40 and 60 milliseconds delay. Let the feedback chance by a random LFO. This can give really exotic snare rolls.
- Use an appreciator on a drum kit with for example only snares and claps. Put the velocity on random and put it a bit slower then 100%, according to the tempo. Then put a midi delay on it with note-shift. Record it with overdub and mute it sometimes on your feeling. The original notes then will be cut out but the note through midi delay are in the muted part still being played. Delete in the grid or step mode some of the unnecessary notes.
- A cowbell on each count can work very well with a broken beat out a percussion.
- Put 2 open hihats á la 909 right after each other with a heavy gate on it, this sounds really good.
- Put some reverse 808/909 kicks every once in while between the track. Cut these so that the decay is short and everything will go to pump nicely.
- For a wide effect in the drum track: Pan the first track with a sample out of a drum kit 100% left and another one on the 2nd track at 100% right but then a half tone transponded. This can be done with claps, closed hihats or crash cymbals. You can get a bit of a chorus effect with this.

Bass
- Is the mix finished but don’t you have a ‘real’ bass sound, think about a low synth brass or a French horn from a sampler or rompler. Make sure these are wide in the stereo field and search for a nice low bass sound. It should actually just not be noticed which is the best.
- When a bassline isn’t heavy enough, you can always put another one there with an octave lower with the same notes and less velocity. This will sometimes also make sure that the high will life a bit more.
- Let really smooth a 303-sound with the bassline walk along. And then play a bit with the equalizer.
- When a bass needs more body, layer this with a sine wave.
- Double a synth-bass with a bass guitar. This works really well, especially when synth is very low and/or has a slow attack and the bass guitar much attack and has much high. Especially a slap-bass sounds great with this. Use as less compression on the bass guitar to let out the dynamics really well. You can, if you want to, use more effects like a chorus.
- Play on a bass guitar 2 times the same things, pan one hard left and the other hard right. This will give you a wide flanger effect.

Wide sounds
- When a sound, for example, needs to fill the background over the whole stereo field, do the following: First record the sound normally in stereo. Copy the track. The first track panned hard left, the other hard right. Record another in mono by combining left and right and put this one low in the volume in the middle. Add a bit long reverb and you’re finished.
- For nice wide strings and leads: put a reverb on them, add a phaser or a flanger over the reverbed sound or chorus for a bit more subtile effect. You can also high pass filter this signal to get it better in the mix and to prevent stereo phase difference in the low later on.
- Take a specific pad or sequence and pan this 100% left, copy a second track and pan this 100% right. Shift the right a few milliseconds.
- Static brasspads can be sounded better when using 2 saw’s. On the first saw you should put a little pitch bend upwards (through pitch EG) and the second one can this also be done but isn’t needed, you can also put this one down.
- With trance: when a track goes on to the climax (just 1 beat before it is there) certain sounds, like the strings and leads should be expanded/panned from mono through wide stereo and then comes the climax.

The mix
- Some drums (like snares or claps) can sometimes sound a bit better in the mix when you put an envelope on them and the put attack a bit higher. Especially with heavy compression it can give a nasty tick on the beginning of a snare.
- Do you have an instrument in your end mix that is overruling, like a tom. Use an parametric EQ on that channel, put the Q high and the gain really high. Turn the frequency until the it is really over steering. You now found the bad frequency. Put the gain now below 0 and the instrument is tamed.
- It is better to use negative EQ then to boost. Same goes for the volume of your tracks.
- Let every important phase of your track or mix be listened to a roommate/colleague/friend. After many hours of working you wont be able to hear certain things. They usually are able to get out a few bad things or say what they think sounds good.
- For more high in the mix: let a ride cymbal go really smooth on the 1, 3, 5, 7 etc. Subtle, with a velocity of 50 or so. Perhaps next to another one, what more on foreground ride. In a busy mix you wont be able to hear this good and it gives your mix more high.
- For more transparently in difficult situations you can use noise (from a softsynth for example), hi-pass filter over it, then a phaser and then add this to the mix with a really low volume. For example to make some parts, like the refrain, more ‘floating’.
- Try to keep acoustical piano’s dry. This sounds good in a mix, make sure fore a good stereo sound.
- Put a little bit or reverb over the hihat, tabla, conga, bongo etc. This gives more depth and sounds more dynamic.
- Sometimes by panning individual tracks, the balance of the master mix isn’t really good anymore. This usually happens without notice, the master is the place to correct this.

Creativity
- Use instead of 4 bars, 16 bars to record the track. This will force you to play something that stays interesting. You can in the 16 bar loops also make more variations which you can use on a later time. Arrangements can be build faster and easier when you use bigger blocks in your track.
- Try to draw something in the grid of your sequencer that looks nice. Then listen to what you’ve made. Take out the notes that doesn’t fit in or move them.
- When it doesn’t work to let the strings and leads sound good, then don’t just start using effects but look good to the accords. Make them wider. Add notes. Add another range with a lower octave and another on the higher notes but then an octave higher. There are many possibilities. The nicest accords are those which are done 4 times or more. When you are satisfied, then use effects.

Compression
- When you have a phat bass sound which pushes the kick away once in a while, put a compressor on the bass and let the kick play in the side chain. Every time when the kick sounds, the bass will be ducked and the kick will be good. If you do this right, then it won’t be noticed that the bass is ducked.
- The bass and kick through one compressor usually gives more competition between those two.
- Make a sound’s attack lower by putting the attack on the compressor as fast as possible. Then experiment with the threshold button to just take out the top of the attack so the attack itself and the decay sound equal in loudness. Pump this up to make the attack longer which sounds great with kicks.
- Use a gate with compression because you will also be pumping noise.
- Usually you should use the compressor before the EQ because you do not want to have your EQ-settings be gone through the compression.
- Bandcompression gives an analoge feeling and a bit more definition to a track or mix. This can usually only be done by putting it on analogue tape but with programs like Steinberg Magneto it can also be done. It’s a typical effect which you do not hear very well but really does it’s job.

Searching for sounds
- For a different effect: make or search a weird sounding sound and put it through a tempo-delay with loads of feedback. Send this through a compressor and send this through a side chain into a kick for a pumping effect. To spare the CPU a bit you can best record this effect and put it on a track before you run this through a compressor.
- Try to add ‘organic’ sounding sounds on the background. You wont really hear them but they add a lot to the total.
- For a different, extra sound below: copy & paste a midi-track, put at the copy the velocity dynamic on 150%, the volume soft and send this through a synth which you do not think is able for the production.
- Adding a different layer to the drum loop: copy the drum loop, filter high and low, time stretch 2 times, pitch -240% and send this via a bus through echo without the direct signal.
- If you are a bit stuck in your composition, try to put random midi channels between each other, without certain riffs are played by a different sound or a drum track is played by a synth, or the other way around. Sometimes there can be something nice.
- When a specific sequence can’t be interesting enough, chance it to the 16th note or so, it will sound really different. This can also be done in the middle of a track and also with drum loops.
- Try to find out how different tracks sound together when you send them to the same compressor. Sometimes a combination (like hihats and a synth) is perfect.
- Send a loop through 2 channels, o none channel a lowpass and the other a highpass. Mix them together and experiment. Put for example a high pass on a flanger.
- A variation on the reverse reverb, but now for midi-notes. Record a melody, make the attack long so this will walk beyond the rhythm of the track. Shift the whole midi track forwards as much as possible so it walks the same as the rhythm of the track. Nice effect when using leads.
- Use a delay as send effect and put a flanger, bitcrusher, phaser or something similar after that. By playing with the send lever you can get weird but nice delays.
- Make a loop of sequence copies and send every other copy through a drastic effect. Now you have a few variations of a loop. Use mute, cutting and pasting to make a nice combination with interesting effects.
- Mix a drum loop on half speed to let the song sound slower.
- Layer your synth or analogue strings with real strike samplers.
- Send a sampled loop through the velocity filter. Trigger the filter envelopes with your own groove. Put a tempo-synced delay on the output of the filter.
- For a bit of variation in the sounds: send the velocity information also towards the filter-cutoff or pitch.

Vocals
- The sucking effect with vocals is a reversed reverb. Record a reverse reverb with some distortion different. Move the echo’ed track back as much as needed to make it end the same time as the original vocals. So with the last sound of the singer, the echo will stop as well. The echo will start a bit earlier then the singer which gives the sucking effect. Also works nice on synth-leads, effects and snares.
- Don’t use the standard (ping-pong) stereo echo with vocals but put one echo lef ton 1 beat or a half beat and the echo right on 2/3 beat. A nice panning echo.
- When putting a reverb over a vocal, put the predelay a bit higher. This make sure that the vocal comes off your reverb for a split second and it makes sure it doesn’t drown. Use a high pass filter to delete lower frequencies, like rumble. After this all you can add a light stereo chorus to make the voice come forward a bit more.
- Already recorded vocals can be doubled by stretching a copy with several milliseconds so you can make two tracks, left and right, which are a bit different. With long vocals you should cut them into pieces of course.
- Send the last word of the vocal through a delay where you put a flanger behind. This makes the delay trail sound wide.
- Sample a ‘Ooh’ and a ‘Aah’ of your own voice. Cut and loop this to make it reasonably sound like the original. Copy the sound and transport this 1 octafe higher. Make the mono sound stereo, add chorus and finished.

Mastering
- When you have mixed a track, do not master this. After long mix sessions you are usually to intimate with the song and a complete sighting is lacking usually. When you have mixed it and want to do the mastering yourself, wait a few days before mastering.
- Listen to your mastered mix on as much possible devices. You will be surprised how different a mix can sound on different systems.
- Do not master towards 0dB, but keep it to -0.1dB, some cheap CD-players clip at 0dB.
- Be careful with compression and limiting. Do not push the mix dead, leave space to breath. Over-compressed and limited mixes usually sound ‘tired’.
- The acoustics of the space where you master is really important. Try to eliminate background sounds, this can be the way on how you hear the track really chance.
- Mastering engineers use a bit of ‘mastering echo’. This is a bit of stereo reverb on the master track.
- Do the fade ins/outs after mastering. When you do it before, you’re compressor/limiter can react weird and your fade will sound weird.
- After the compression you should listen to all frequency areas because the compression (this is due to your settings and compressor) can have complications on your frequency spectrum. So if needed you should use a bit after EQ.
- If the overall EQ is not really something you like, you can try the following: Find a song which can be compared, analyse with Steinberg’s mastering edition’s freefilter the overall spectrum (‘learn button’). Do the same with your own song and match the spectrum (for a part). This can work nice, the songs wont sound the same but it usually gets better.



And here's a little something about basses and kicks which is copied from a Dutch forum:
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This is for beginners, keep that in mind...

I have read a lot of questions lately on the net about people wanting to get that driving kick + bass. Well, I may tell you a few pointers that should get you on your way...

The first thing you will have to do is getting a clean bass sound that sits right in the mix without any further enhancing. Don't go equalising it if you want to hear more bass. First things first. Now search a good kick in your sample library. Kicks & Compression are the perfect marriage. Just connect one compressor directly to the kick with following settings: Ratio: 16:1 ; Treshhold: Low ; Attack: High & Release: Low. Now your kick should be kicking your arse...

Ok, so we've got the kick & bass... how do we mix those two together?

An absolute must is a decent pair of monitors, positioned correctly and with you sitting in the correct position. Without this you will be a long way from home...

Now put your kick + bass in the sequencer and loop it. Be sure that just those 2 are playing. Solo the kick and adjust the volume so that it is peaking just above 0 dB. Do the same for the bass. If you play the 2 together make sure there's no clipping. With the help of Reason's compressor we can smooth the levels out. Connect one compressor to the group (both Kick & Bass). Starting settings could be: Ratio - 6:1 and a fast attack. Twiddle with the Release knob to get the thing pumping... you may want this or you may not but do not exagerate, remember: less is more! Now comes the hard part... Equalising.

All I can say about Eq'ing is to raise the volume of your monitors real loud and just listen to your loop. Now just connect a PEQ-2 to your bass and twiddle the knobs... Keep twiddling until you "feel" your bass fits and make sure it doesn't hum. And again, good monitors are really a MUST for this...