Category Archives: Production tips

Feb 15 2011
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Home studio, Music, Production tips

Production tip – drumsticks and the perils of patch browsing

Two tips in one post today. Why? Because they’re short and sharp and I need something to fill the looming postaweek deadline!

Drumsticks

I’m not a drummer, however, a couple of weeks ago I took delivery of a £2.99 pair of drumsticks from eBay. Having recently invested in an Alesis Palmtrack, I’ve developed the ‘found sounds’ sampling bug. Whether it’s me making silly noises with my mouth or banging spanners together, I’ve managed to create all manner of richly dynamic percussive sounds for use in my tracks. What’s better, they’re not from a sample CD, nor are they nicked from another record (two past times I indulge in equally and having nothing against, incidentally). They’re mine, I made them and no one else can claim to be their keeper. A bit like fitting your own bathroom, there’s a tangible sense of pride in that.

But… there’s only so many noises you can make by hitting things with your hands and there’s nothing quite like the tactile feedback of a drum stick, hence my purchase. It’s something I highly recommend any aspiring producer/beat maker/sonic experimentalist has a bash at, literally. Not only can you hit things more accurately and procude variations in timbre and tone, you can also use them to enter 64th note drum frills and hi hat patterns if you’ve got a midi controller with some decent pads on it. Give the latter a try – you won’t be reaching for the quantise button afterwards, I promise.

One slight problem, you will look like a tit walking around the house hitting things with drum sticks.

The perils of patch browsing

I’ll keep this one short. If you’re browsing the patch bank of a synth and come across something which appears to fit the track, stop and use it (although, please fiddle with it a bit to make it your own). If I could have a pound for the number of times I’ve gone past that point, hunting pointlessly for some kind of patch nirvana, I would have a lot of pounds. And no music. There’s a reason you liked it… so stick with it.

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Nov 21 2010
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Home studio, Logic Pro, Production tips

Maschine/Logic Workflow For Non MPC Heads

 

Native Instruments Maschine

Maschine - Not a natural partner for Logic

 

Feeling I needed something a little more ‘hands on’ for my beat making and sampling needs, it was with a degree of caution that I added Native Instruments’ Maschine to my studio.

If you’ve arrived here, you’ll most likely know what Maschine is, therefore I won’t bother explaining it in great detail, only to say that it is NI’s attempt at drawing the beat making crowd away from their MPCs and into a very clever marriage of dumb midi-driven hardware and powerful plugin-based software.

Does it work?

It’s a complicated answer, unfortunately. Certainly, from an MPC-syle beat creation perspective, Maschine is a joy to use. Sampling, too, is brilliantly implemented, making the process of building loops what it should be – fun and endlessly addictive. Time simply disappears while you’re using this thing.

Hip Hop producers will love it and will be able to create sparkling productions completely within Maschine itself, with no need to switch to a DAW. Me? Not quite so simple, unfortunately.

I have no interest in working with scenes and building up entire songs in that manner. The reason I bought Maschine was to gain an easy, more old school way of sampling and creating loops and drum tracks. The problem arises when you move over to your DAW of choice and mine happens to be Logic which, I’m sorry to say, is simply not a good partner for Maschine.

Yes, you can drag and drop midi, but its a little cumbersome and, due to limitations with Logic’s use of AU plugins, Maschine itself is pretty much useless as a soft synth. That’s unless you’re willing to start adding the ancient art of program changes into your projects. I’m not.

While considering the very real prospect of giving up and selling my shiny new bit of kit I came across a number of workflow suggestions and one in particular caught my eye.

If you don’t mind (or even enjoy) working with Audio as opposed to midi, I highly recommend using that method of getting your Maschine-created beats into Logic. There’s one problem, though. Maschine will only allow you to drag entire groups into Logic which is fine and dandy unless you take some pride in the individual processing of your sounds. The solution is stupidly simple, but easily overlooked.

Before dragging your audio across, solo one of your sounds in Maschine (for example, the kick). Then drag the audio into the DAW. The resulting audio file will contain just the soloed sound. Repeat the process for each sound and you’ll relatively quickly have individual audio files for each of your Maschine parts, all ready to be processed and arranged in Logic. A little bit long winded, but effective.

It’s convinced me to keep Maschine, anyway…

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May 06 2010
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Home studio, Logic Pro, Production tips

Production Tip – Side chaining in Logic Pro

Logic Compressor

Logic's Compressor

Few electronic music genres fail to benefit from the pumping, sucking sound of side chain compression, yet it is one of those effects which many new producers struggle to get to grips with – not least because there are so many different ways of achieving it.

Finding the easiest method has troubled me for a while, but thanks to a recent issue of Future Music, I now have just that and feel it worth passing on to anyone who cares to read this blog.

I won’t bother explaining what side chain compression is. Partly because it’s almost impossible to put into words and partly because, if you’ve reached this page, there’s a damn good chance you’re familiar with it anyway. If you’re not, listen to the opening few bars of Eric Prydz’s Call On Me. The ‘ducking’ string sound at the beginning is probably the most commercial example of it.

The tutorial I’m using is based on Logic Pro and its bundled compressor, but the same principle will apply for most DAWs. It also assumes a fairly good working knowledge of Logic.

Make sure you set this all up in your standard template so it is always present for every project you start.

The key is to create a hidden, silent, infinitely looping midi track. Pick a sound or single hit, although don’t be naturally tempted to reach for the kick drum bank – a tight hi-hat or short, snappy snare will actually do the trick better. These types of sounds are far tidier, frequency-wise and will ensure that they trigger a clean side chain signal when played. It’ll probably also help here if you boost some of the mid and top end and roll off some of the lower frequencies in the EQ.

Stick your chosen sound on a four bar loop and loop infinitely. Depending on what type of sound you’ve picked, you may need to whack the level up to get a good signal, but I’ll let you be the judge of that. Regardless, this can be tempered for each project, depending on how severe you want the side chain effect to be.

Send the output of the track to a bus and mute the bus track.

To keep things tidy, hide the track you have the looped four bar hit on by clicking the ‘H’.

That’s your side chain trigger set up. Simple as that. Now, whenever you want to squash the bejesus out of a synth patch, for example, add a compressor to the track in question and choose bus 3 in the Side Chain drop down box at the top right. Bring the compressor threshold way down to -30-40dB, the ratio as low as you like, knee at 0 and bring both the attack and release down to around 10ms. Adjust as you see fit.

As with many side chain tutorials, the above may seem complicated at first, but this is in fact the simplest method I’ve found yet. Have fun.

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Jan 18 2010
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Home studio, Music, Production tips

Production Tip – Walk Away

FaderAnother quick, non-technical production tip, for anyone that cares to take notice of this section of my blog.

Anyone who makes music will know the eternal frustration that comes from listening to the same eight bars of a melody or bass line 300 times in a row. Those poor people living with bedroom producers will also be keenly aware of how hugely irritating this practice can be.

It’s easy to loose sight of what you’re doing or trying to achieve if you over-listen. Whilst it might seem necessary to loop those eight bars and jam over the top in an effort to inject a new lease of life into your first verse, it can also be very counterproductive.

Like many people, I’m always working on two or three tracks at any one time. As soon as I start to get frustrated with something, I’ll save it, bring up another project and move on. Leaving it to settle, even if only for a couple of hours, can work wonders. When you come back to it, it’ll sound fresh and you’ll instantly be inspired to add to it*.

Quite often, I’ll bounce a rough mix, or even just the basic outline of a track to MP3 and stick it on my iPod. Then, using the ‘I’m just going out to walk the dog’ excuse, I’ll get some fresh air and have a listen. It’s incredible how different a track can sound when you take it out of the studio. Just remember to make a mental note (particularly if you are dog walking) of any changes you need to make on your return.

Try it. Walk away from what you’re doing. Like a good bolognese, music needs some time to settle. Daft analogy, but true. Sort of.

*Very occasionally, it’ll sound like dog shit. In this case, consign it to your trash can – you were right in the first place.

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Jan 09 2010
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Home studio, Music, Production tips

Production tip – don’t forget to include the mistakes

It’s crossed my mind recently that, whilst I’m not exactly Quincy Jones, I have spent a large amount of my free time making music. Along the way I’ve developed some good and (more commonly) some bad habits.

Anyone that makes music will be aware of the little idiosyncratic techniques picked up through trial and error and how much they come to be relied upon for every track produced.

I’ve got plenty. Most will be very specific to the way I work, some you may find useful. So, I’ll try and keep these tips semi regular.

I’ll start with mistakes. Without fail, every track I’ve written has at least one mistake in it somewhere (some may argue it lasts the duration of the song). Whether it be a reverb tail that never quite goes away, a midi note out of place or some screwed up automation, it’ll more likely make than break the production, in my opinion.

So, the first tip is a simple one. Leave those mistakes in. If, like me, you’re not a fan of razor-precision computer music and like a bit of feel and humanity, you can do a lot worse than leave those errors in.

And don’t worry, they’ll happen naturally, so it’s the one thing you won’t have to put any effort in to!

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