[Production] Share One Idea From Today.

[Zero_Idea]

Interesting way to make big claps and snares.

Take a noise/drum sample and make an audio effect rack to create a gated reverb.
Add some saturation or compression after to stick the reverb to the sample
I like driving it through SDRR desk mode.

I've really enjoyed this sound on my last couple projects.

You hear gated reverb and you think Phil Collins but with the right sample it becomes a nice industrial shot. And with some nice aggressive FET style compression it can really slap.

[Zero_Idea]

https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advi ... ted-reverb

Here's a nice article about setting up gated reverbs. I forgot to mention you could use a send as well but I treat the audio effectrack as a send and have a dry and wet chain.

[Críoch]

Interesting thing from yesterday..

Got an 808 drumloop going.. had some reverb on certain elements. Didn't have any clear objective tbh, just wanted to make an unusual sound.

I slammed a few multiband compressors after it ( would take them off later).. which pulled up the reverb & drove out the Bass completely. A very airy sound. I bounced it. Half timed it in a simpler / sampler.. sliced it to 1/8 or 1/4 notes added an ARP (experiment with octaves & notes)& delay.. & it sounded nicely moody & textural.

Sometimes this method yields nothing ,but it's always good fun & occasionally it produces something excellent.

[tsaro]

Yeah, resampling in general is something to keep in mind, I also tend to go through phases where this falls by the wayside and then I 'rediscover' it, even though it's easily the most powerful technique available. Maybe it would be a good *lifehack* to put a post-it with RESAMPLE written on it on my monitors, so I don't forget it.

And to keep it on topic, something that might be worth mentioning , any old hihat or plain noise signal can be made to fit your track with nothing but a chain consisting of 1. EQ (into 2. an overdrive/saturation, into 3.another EQ and finally a reverb and maybe another eq to sculpt the reverb, if needed on a send/aux, full wet so you don't hack into the balance you're created earlier. Oh and if you have compression on your drum bus, individual envelopes are key. That goes for any drum sound/sample you've got going on really, though with your envelopes you can really gain control over the way the sound is grabbed by the compressor.

[Lost to the Void]

Sample/resample at high rates 96 or above

Because everything sounds better pitched down, and pitching down stuff sampled at high rates removes aliasing artefacts (unless you want that).

I do this a lot as I pitch everything down all the time.

[mindstuff]

When you finally get the sounds the way you want them remember they were sounding like shit just before that point.

[Ostbahnhof]

Yeah, resampling in general is something to keep in mind, I also tend to go through phases where this falls by the wayside and then I 'rediscover' it, even though it's easily the most powerful technique available. Maybe it would be a good *lifehack* to put a post-it with RESAMPLE written on it on my monitors, so I don't forget it.

looool i feel exactly the same way! i always forget (?) to use resampling as a technique, and then when i 'remember', i start using it like crazy

maybe because it's so easy to get different sounds, i find myself not paying much attention to it (which should be the opposite)

[Críoch]

Operator.

This has been a bit quiet recently haha

Just something I'm doing now.. thought I'd share in case people dont do it or hadnt thought of it before. Probably v.basic FM to most, but useful if you dont meddle with it much. It allows you to get a wider range of tones than just simply adding in an extra carrier as a modulator IMO. A bit more tweekable using the fine controls of A & B.

It also makes sounds that have more movement in them than just your standard FM metallic Donk or woody bass sound.. which are quick to dial in on its default setting. Operator is very immediate. This covers detuning the various operators / carriers / modulators or oscillators by plus or m1nus amounts.

Default algorithm.

D
C
B
A

Some Operator I tell thee_ 2021-04-19 160950.jpg (9.69 KiB) Viewed 151462 times

You can push the FM a bit harder by dropping the coarse of modulator (B) down to 0.5 (dropping an octave). Increasing the fine of B to max (1000) basically makes the carrier (the bottom osc - A) and the modulator (the top osc - B) the same 'pitch'.

Decreasing the fine amount on B you are kinda doing a negative detune. If you experiment increasing the fine amount on A, you can add even more movement. Sounds great on sines.. but changing the wave on Osc (modulator) B can produce all kinda of strange tones that sound cool with some spread,filter & resonance. When you increase the detune on A.. it is essentially detuning the whole master pitch, as everything is running through A on the way out.. but I still think there is an interaction going on that you dont get unless you do this.

The Coarse of A can be dropped to 0.5 to if wanted. Sometimes you need to play a sound down as low as C0 to get it sounding nice / interesting.

Experiment with different waves & algos. One of the biggest tone shapers are the volumes of the various modulators (oscs) and how they are affecting eachother. Can sound quite reese bass with some slight detune. Sometimes unclicking the phase button on the modulator can be cool. You can also get arp type effect by using a short envelope on one of the modulators and setting the envelope to 'Beat' and choosing 16ths or whatever. Same is possible with the filter envelope. And Pitch Envelope.

If you do this same Osc / Operator / Carrier / Modulator setting on the last algorithm. .the traditional subtractive synth algo.. it will let you detune your waves + & - , rather than just being able to detune one by a positive amount. Nice for pads & of course, gets reece-y.

[seanocean]

was yesterday.. but i had been doing this sort of thing for awhile with outboard gear. I tap in on the machine the sequence and the drum machine sends the midi to the daw in a midi recording and i arrange the midi in the daw with automation and then use the drum machine as a sound module. that way i can focus on tweaking instead of arranging and tweaking at the same time (or swap out kits for other kits that i like). but instead of sending the entire drum machine in a recording i take one instrument and give it full focus and add sound treatment and add that as a performance layer as an audio track in the daw. then sort of fit that track into the existing mix with more sound design. I plan to keep doing this layer by layer until all tracks are recorded in multitracks in the daw and fit super well. then do more post production, filtering and chops if necessary. it's a lot of work but the sound is well laminated and robust.
i just have to stop myself from adding 700 tracks.

[Lag]

Since distortion's character changes with the amount of power you send through it, I would layer a sub oscillator sound with a hihat, distort it and then high-pass it to get rid of the bass and it's distortion-created harmonics. End result - a hihat way crunchier and soundpornier than I would get from just putting distortion on a single hihat sound.

As an alternative I will use a send-return distortion channel to send a bit off the bassline to it, and then send anything I want "crunchied up" to it. The problem which can occur here is that any reverb that I have on the elements turns into -noise- instead of -space-, so then I'd have to use reverb send that goes into the bus/glue compressor which gives everything it's character and bounce. Can be tricky.

Anyways, this kind of crunch is the result:
youtu.be/HBN1rIVS-bo
youtu.be/QDiQcB7Y_KA

[Críoch]

was yesterday.. but i had been doing this sort of thing for awhile with outboard gear. I tap in on the machine the sequence and the drum machine sends the midi to the daw in a midi recording and i arrange the midi in the daw with automation and then use the drum machine as a sound module. that way i can focus on tweaking instead of arranging and tweaking at the same time (or swap out kits for other kits that i like). but instead of sending the entire drum machine in a recording i take one instrument and give it full focus and add sound treatment and add that as a performance layer as an audio track in the daw. then sort of fit that track into the existing mix with more sound design. I plan to keep doing this layer by layer until all tracks are recorded in multitracks in the daw and fit super well. then do more post production, filtering and chops if necessary. it's a lot of work but the sound is well laminated and robust.
i just have to stop myself from adding 700 tracks.

Thats a good idea man. How are you finding , coping with jitter sending midi back into the machines & out again as audio to the DAW?

[Críoch]

Since distortion's character changes with the amount of power you send through it, I would layer a sub oscillator sound with a hihat, distort it and then high-pass it to get rid of the bass and it's distortion-created harmonics. End result - a hihat way crunchier and soundpornier than I would get from just putting distortion on a single hihat sound.

As an alternative I will use a send-return distortion channel to send a bit off the bassline to it, and then send anything I want "crunchied up" to it. The problem which can occur here is that any reverb that I have on the elements turns into -noise- instead of -space-, so then I'd have to use reverb send that goes into the bus/glue compressor which gives everything it's character and bounce. Can be tricky.

Anyways, this kind of crunch is the result:

Ah yeah.. the fizzy hats. Rides too.

Love that sound. 707 cowbell distorted is another beautiful one.. but doesnt need to interact with the bass in the same way to sound great. Super aggressive with OD.

The M1 Finger Snaps are cool too

[Críoch]

Messing around with a techno loop today. Dont really make techno very often..

Inspired after finding these old Ableton Reverb Kick settings on a USB stick: http://www.subsekt.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11636

Wanted to add some percussion.. so did a normal enough, quick trick.. throwing 8 random p3rcussion samples into a drumrack with an arp on 16ths in front of it. TWeaked until something fitted the groove.

power cuts.jpg (30.3 KiB) Viewed 151408 times

If you add a few bars of notes, legato in a midi clip, you can cycle through different arp directions & offsets to find something useful. Its fast.

midi.jpg (30.2 KiB) Viewed 151408 times

But it sounded a bit Ben SIms - not a fan . I decided to resample a long tweak of it.. going through the MS20 filter in Live and a distortion, the Airwindows CR1604 plugin. Theres a record I had in mind, Sound Associates, Power Cuts.. in particular a track called Metal Fatigue. They made it by sending stuff through a MS20 & CR1604 & split it up over the keys of an Akai sampler.

I just split it over a few audio tracks & found some interesting parts to turn on & off with the buttons on my midi controller. Good fun.

Now, onto the next thing

Power Cuts 2.jpg (30 KiB) Viewed 151408 times

[kronk]

would love to hear it... any audio?

[Críoch]

Freeze of a quick live recording

https://soundcloud.com/crioch/22-audio- ... O8NrFdx638

[kronk]

cool.
so the drums are a loop & the squaky hi pitched noise is on the arp?

[Críoch]

Drums are normal ableton 909 rack.

Yeah.. I had random p3rcussion in the arp & did a pass of an autofilter on ms20 mode with airwindows cranked after it. Audio resample 1.

Used that to get some small loops & sounds. There was other things that I didn't bring in. Some of the fx sounds are from that loop.

I got the audio of the arp & fed that back into the autofilter on ms20 & airwindows. Overkill, bit did another pass of some of that stuff & recorded those res sweep sounds. Just cranking it. Audio resample 2.

Later, I took the audio of the first arp stuff & put it into a project with a more 808-y electro vibe. Stuck it into simpler, split it into regions & got an arp on 16ths to pick out some parts that went together. Sounded cool. Distorted but not all fuzzy , cos it was more staccato.

I like doing stuff like this. Doesn't always sound good, but when it's working, it's cool.

[kronk]

i dont have the patience... just fire up shit and hope for the best

[Críoch]

Haha.. ah, it didn't take long, as you can tell. Just a quick mess about

[mindstuff]

i dont have the patience... just fire up shit and hope for the best

^^^ I like this.

Got the Strymon Deco pedal yesterday, opened it up, moved the jumper to stereo, connected it to the analog four, set Deco to stereo wide, holy fuck...shit just got wide.