What Production Technique Are You Enjoying / Rinsing atm?

[Críoch]

Things that I like doing at the moment..

Ableton's Looper.

Wondered how the hell I could use this. Think I've found something satisfying for pad type drone sounds.

Stuck a load of different sounds on different channels. Synths.. Strong Drum hits.. Brassy analog type synth sounds. Blend them with the faders to sound ok. All the outputs were being routed to an audio channel with a reverb Set to a bit wet to hear. Ableton Looper is AFTER the reverb.

Everychannel.. Each Pattern's notes were going for about 1bar, just enough to sustain the various sounds.. Or get an idea of their tone. Did a few chords at different octaves with some of the longer patches. Each clip was about 4 bars long to let the sound taper off.

Make the reverb 100% wet. Hit play.

Hit the Freeze button on the reverb ( was using a ballad reverb in lives plugin).

Looper was recording over 5bars on 'adding overdub', do that everything keeps getting layered on top. Hit record on looper.

Next, I began to tweak slightly the parameters of the reverb. I could hear the subtle changes being added to the loop. Grainy.

Then I put some plugins before the looper. Hot swapped through several of the redux presets (the subtle ones), hopping quickly back to the default, which added bursts of hiss. These became rhythmic as more layers were added.

Had a grain delay default preset saved which is 0% wet.. So I Positioned that again before the looper after I got rid of the redux..

Everything still looping & adding the next 5 bars, recording over what has been put down before it.

Gradually added in a few % wet of grain delay.. Raised the pitch.. Added feedback. Sounded cool.

Stopped the looper. You can change the speed of the loop & extend it. I resampled this & put it into simpler.

Added some dirt from the ms2 filter.. Got the lfo working a wee bit on the pitch & cutoff. Random panning. Long attack & release on the ADSR & it sounded like a pretty interesting, textural pad with some delay added via TAL Dub.

Reminded me of the kompakt label sound / early Joachim Speith resampled pads. He told me once about resampling stuff, chords into his sampler. It's something I should do more.

One thing I found with it was that while looping / recording., it was best to work gently adding fx or changes as spikes in sound distorted it took away from the overall pitch & flow of the drone.

[msl]

That sounds awesome! Must try it... never use the looper ever.

Enjoying the new slice feature on Simpler with the mono sequencer placed before it... load in a breakbeat or whatever and sequence the slices... randomise etc, loads of fun.

Have had amazing results running bass or synth lines though speaker/room emulations... (the free Beyerdynamic Virtual Studio for example) and mixing that back in with the original, basically re-amping but ITB.

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[Markus Wolf]

That sounds awesome! Must try it... never use the looper ever.

Enjoying the new slice feature on Simpler with the mono sequencer placed before it... load in a breakbeat or whatever and sequence the slices... randomise etc, loads of fun.

Have had amazing results running bass or synth lines though speaker/room emulations... (the free Beyerdynamic Virtual Studio for example) and mixing that back in with the original, basically re-amping but ITB.

.

Is the mono sequencer a Max4Live patch? So many ways to skin a cat with Live. I opened Ableton's Arpeggiator. Once I find a setting that I kind of like, I duplicate the track 3x's so there is a total of 4 tracks. I open the midi clip on my first Arp track and set the length of the clip to 4 bars. First arp track I fill out say A3 note for the 1st bar, second track I fill out A3 note for the 2nd bar, 3rd track 3rd bar, 4 track 4th bar etc. I hit play on all the tracks, so they each get a turn playing the arp. I adjust the repeats and settings on the arps so there is a nice variation and the same time tweaking my effects chain on the audio and tweaking the actual synth itself. I like this method visually over drawing in automation. Its easier and the arp settings need some tweaking but you can get some good results if you experiment with this. You guys will prob already do this one but some times my audio on the returns have really nice harmonics or sounds, due to the effects chains ive setup, often I send the audio from the send track to sends only so nothing but the return is muted. I sample the return and then use this. Thats really good for ambience and weird kind of harmonic ghost note kind of stuff. Another one I recently learned from conversation with Hades which is similar to what i mentioned above, is having my returns on my mixer sent to actual channel strips as opposed to just being on the returns and blended directly with the original signal. This gives me more control, allows me to use the EQ's on them separately, and I can record it into live as a separate channel. Funny when im hanging out in the studio with producer friends or talking to more experienced guys things that are basic and elementary for them are light bulb moments for me at times. You might be missing the most basic ideas with gear you already own and it takes someone to actually show you, which shortens the learning time of you stumbling on that feature possibly later on.

[msl]

Yeah the Mono Sequencer is a one of the max plugin's but you could use any sequencer so long as it has a randomise function... its almost like cheating hahahah... instant techno. I load in loops of baselines I've recorded and the results are just jaw dropping especially with the new filters in Simpler, they are amazing also.

I learnt about it from this video and just replaced the Instant Haus plugin.

youtu.be/72PtrbDe1hY

[Koichi]

Things that I like doing at the moment..

Ableton's Looper.

Wondered how the hell I could use this. Think I've found something satisfying for pad type drone sounds.

Stuck a load of different sounds on different channels. Synths.. Strong Drum hits.. Brassy analog type synth sounds. Blend them with the faders to sound ok. All the outputs were being routed to an audio channel with a reverb Set to a bit wet to hear. Ableton Looper is AFTER the reverb.

Everychannel.. Each Pattern's notes were going for about 1bar, just enough to sustain the various sounds.. Or get an idea of their tone. Did a few chords at different octaves with some of the longer patches. Each clip was about 4 bars long to let the sound taper off.

Make the reverb 100% wet. Hit play.

Hit the Freeze button on the reverb ( was using a ballad reverb in lives plugin).

Looper was recording over 5bars on 'adding overdub', do that everything keeps getting layered on top. Hit record on looper.

Next, I began to tweak slightly the parameters of the reverb. I could hear the subtle changes being added to the loop. Grainy.

Then I put some plugins before the looper. Hot swapped through several of the redux presets (the subtle ones), hopping quickly back to the default, which added bursts of hiss. These became rhythmic as more layers were added.

Had a grain delay default preset saved which is 0% wet.. So I Positioned that again before the looper after I got rid of the redux..

Everything still looping & adding the next 5 bars, recording over what has been put down before it.

Gradually added in a few % wet of grain delay.. Raised the pitch.. Added feedback. Sounded cool.

Stopped the looper. You can change the speed of the loop & extend it. I resampled this & put it into simpler.

Added some dirt from the ms2 filter.. Got the lfo working a wee bit on the pitch & cutoff. Random panning. Long attack & release on the ADSR & it sounded like a pretty interesting, textural pad with some delay added via TAL Dub.

Reminded me of the kompakt label sound / early Joachim Speith resampled pads. He told me once about resampling stuff, chords into his sampler. It's something I should do more.

One thing I found with it was that while looping / recording., it was best to work gently adding fx or changes as spikes in sound distorted it took away from the overall pitch & flow of the drone.

Hey thanks for this! Great idea
I'm using Paul Stretch at the moment to create drones/pads out of audio tracks. It's a timestretch standalone program. Can stretch any audio up to 10000000000 times or something! Works especially well with orchestral / music with lots of instrumentation.
GUI looks awful but it does the job!
youtu.be/DLqZ1x6nSU8

[Hyle]

I just dived into FM Synthesis, which is very deep and complicated.
FM8 is fu**ing deep and I'm having trouble to learn some things... Sounds stupid but I'm considering throwing some money to someone to teach it to me.

[Markus Wolf]

I just dived into FM Synthesis, which is very deep and complicated.
FM8 is fu**ing deep and I'm having trouble to learn some things... Sounds stupid but I'm considering throwing some money to someone to teach it to me.

ADSR has some good NI courses and last time i checked FM8 was one of them...

[tsaro]

Using pattern gates a lot lately, just taking whatever and playing in (almost) random/over the top patterns, and then throw on things like comb filters, distortion, ringmod, freqshifters etc. Get a pattern going with the gate, most times it captures nice raw bits to resample.

Also just throwing them on any rhythmic part/sound that doesn't fit quite right with the rest of the track, and punching in just a few triggers to see where the hits should be. Some times you can actually just leave it like that if you fiddle with attack/decay a bit, and maybe give it some swing.

[winston]

I just dived into FM Synthesis, which is very deep and complicated.
FM8 is fu**ing deep and I'm having trouble to learn some things... Sounds stupid but I'm considering throwing some money to someone to teach it to me.

ADSR has some good NI courses and last time i checked FM8 was one of them...

i have watched a couple of the ADSR tutorials and there was quite a lot of 'do this, then do this...' and little explanation of the theory behind it. when i tried it it was 99c for a month trial so it was neither here nor there.

i'd recommend a tutorial from Dance Music Production - synthesis 2, which is all about FM synthesis and they use FM8 to go through the examples. it's one of the few tutorials from them that i don't own, as learning FM is down the list on things i should do. if it is like any of the the other tutorials from them, including one about subtractive synthesis, it will set you right.

[ashley BORG]

On those rare occasions I get a chance to do anything, it's usually going around house field recording, especially the kids and their toys.

Then some heavy processing in Live. Between that and mangling my DnB library there's a bit of aimless fun, which is all I can at the moment.

[Alume]

Since I got the multiclock I've been able to enjoy a 100% hybrid setup.

Its truely so much MORE FUN.

[Críoch]

Some cool stuff in here.

The new Simpler really is wicked. If I've got some kind of vocal or drony sample.. I prefer using the arp with it more so than a Step Sequencer. I just keep tweaking the sequencer otherwise haha.

M4l LFO Tool on the Sample Start Point FTW.

[Markus Wolf]

On those rare occasions I get a chance to do anything, it's usually going around house field recording, especially the kids and their toys.

Then some heavy processing in Live. Between that and mangling my DnB library there's a bit of aimless fun, which is all I can at the moment.

what do you use to record? i was thinking of pickin up a zoom h4n used they go for cheap around these parts.

[Críoch]

Just found myself doing something else that I thought I'd share..

Know when you are moving notes around in a midi clip.. or adding them etc.. and they sound cool running over the beat but you dont know where to program them. Or to program it properly would involve making a long midi clip with lots of variation?

My lazy way.. sometimes.. of doing it, is to route & record the midi output of the track in question to another midi channel. When you hit record, go back into the original clip.. select all the notes you want and use the <- & -> keys on your keyboard to move them left / right. Or draw them in, whatever you like.

Any movements you make / additional notes you enter, will be recorded into the midi clip on the new channel.

Drag the recorded midi clip onto the original channel, hit play & edit. Try it on a bongo.

EDIT: Guess the benefit of doing this is that it can be used to add variation to an existing pattern by jamming a 'phrase' rather than banging notes on a midi keyboard or step seq.

[Koichi]

On those rare occasions I get a chance to do anything, it's usually going around house field recording, especially the kids and their toys.

Then some heavy processing in Live. Between that and mangling my DnB library there's a bit of aimless fun, which is all I can at the moment.

what do you use to record? i was thinking of pickin up a zoom h4n used they go for cheap around these parts.

I use h4n - great quality for field recordings. Can use as usb mic straight into ableton too.

[ashley BORG]

On those rare occasions I get a chance to do anything, it's usually going around house field recording, especially the kids and their toys.

Then some heavy processing in Live. Between that and mangling my DnB library there's a bit of aimless fun, which is all I can at the moment.

what do you use to record? i was thinking of pickin up a zoom h4n used they go for cheap around these parts.

I use h4n - great quality for field recordings. Can use as usb mic straight into ableton too.

I have a Yamaha one. Nothing too fancy. I do all sorts of shit with it. Put in in loo roll tubes, tin cans, under cushions, in socks. It's pretty good since it has a limiter. Also I have an app on my phone robovox which exports WAV and has a number of inbuilt effects. So i get some really cool drone and metallic sounds.
Just chucking these into the new simpler using Volume shaper as a gate and some added Fx gets some really cool sounds.

Also I've been doing quite a lot of mouth based stuff, like beat boxing, making basslines and riffs. Its actually alot of fun, and more relevant to me as a sample library than sample packs or even making synth patches.

[Planar]

I just dived into FM Synthesis, which is very deep and complicated.
FM8 is fu**ing deep and I'm having trouble to learn some things... Sounds stupid but I'm considering throwing some money to someone to teach it to me.

Just start a thread and Im sure we can help. I love FM8!

what do you use to record? i was thinking of pickin up a zoom h4n used they go for cheap around these parts.

A bunch of us use Tascams. There's a thread on field recorders if you do a search. top tip: get a contact mic to go with it

[Hyle]

I just dived into FM Synthesis, which is very deep and complicated.
FM8 is fu**ing deep and I'm having trouble to learn some things... Sounds stupid but I'm considering throwing some money to someone to teach it to me.

ADSR has some good NI courses and last time i checked FM8 was one of them...

Thanks, I'll check it out.

[Hepta]

I've been experimenting with layering of different sounds and have gotten interesting results, never done much of that before.

[Markus Wolf]

I've been experimenting with layering of different sounds and have gotten interesting results, never done much of that before.

Details I need Details!!!!! JK, Do you mean layering with different timing or layering as in One sound exactly layered with another sound. Im guessing its the second.