Music Producers / Studio Thread

[jcotteri]

Little advice... quit producing and just sit and listen to NIN records for 6 months or so. The stuff that Trent Reznor was doing in 1992 was absolutely amazing for it's era, and of the hundreds of acts I've seen one of the absolute greats. I'm letting you off on the basis of your age, otherwise you could consider yourself disowned! Seeing that shit on eBay makes me realise that NIN actually might well be done with this time, though I somehow doubt Trent Reznor is done writing music... probably just going into film scores, total electronic music or something else like that.

On a vaguely relevant note I was thinking just yesterday that there's a lot to be learnt from older electronic music, especially if you want to do what you want to and be more 'musical' (as someone with a fair shout of classical and jazz training I use the term loosely, as it's a terribly inappropriate and misused word). Main thing I remembered was the 'pump' from the kick/bass sidechain, and harking back to the late 90s when trance took over there was no such thing to my knowledge. For the most part on near enough every single track released around '99 or so the bass only landed on the offbeat: kick-bass-kick-bass-kick-bass-kick-bass.

The other thought that struck me was that most of these rules very much primarily apply to four-on-the-floor Euro-wank. Listening to, for the sake of example, Burial (as probably the most iconic producer of our times), most of these rules are very much not in evidence. The kick doesn't drive the track, in fact the dominant drive is in the mid range; most of the drum sounds including the hihat have had a pile of treble filtered out of them; the tracks aren't mastered to ear-splitting levels etc. Not really sure what that highlights apart from the fact that concepts of 'good' production values are cyclical and subject to change (and rehashing, see: post-punk/chamber pop/Phil Spector/shoegaze/New Romanitic revivals etc.) just as the cuts of our jeans change in a cyclical fashion.

Beer fuelled ramblings over.

some of the worst advice ever given.. You should stop posting when drinking..

Haploid.. Tell me what your requirements are for some monitors and I will give you a recommendation..

Oh by the way that ebay auction was just them clearing a lot of busted up touring shit (apart for a few guitars and mic pre's).. There was hardly anything worth noting in there.. If shit was getting sold then you wouldn't be seeing 6-7k prices..Mostly fanboys just buying broken guitars..

[blosom]

damn youve some nice software their fatale, i love having a crack with albino 3, its a real good synth to get into and learn, also massive..im not a logic user myself though....i use cubase, ableton, reason inside the box....

edit, most of that stuff from 9inch nails on ebay looked far too expensive to me....i wouldnt have paid what they were going for!!!!...thats just me though.....

[jcotteri]

^that's caus it was getting bid up by fanboys.. Even my flatmate was considering copping some busted guitar..

ie.. Nord Modular with 7 days left was already 1000+++ lulz

I'll take this waldorf though.. hahha ...

[blosom]

microwaves do have a nice sound about them, i probably wouldnt want 2 pay much more though.....you can bet your life it'll double in price though..and look at the shipping!!!!!! wtf!!!!!....pity it didnt come with the last photo too...

i found a yamaha ps-3, at a carboot sale about 6 months ago....i paid £5 for it......it was circuit bent by a real pro. its wicked!!!......i know this synth is a piece, but now it has audio out, and all sorts of crazy mod bent nonsense i love it......ill have to put some pics up in here sometime... .

[ROYALEFATALE]

damn youve some nice software their fatale, i love having a crack with albino 3, its a real good synth to get into and learn, also massive..im not a logic user myself though....i use cubase, ableton, reason inside the box....

massive is one of my favorites as well, shame it eats CPU cycles like crazy, i try not to have more than 2 or 3 massive-enabled tracks in the same project at one time, only working with 2GB of RAM

[blosom]

^ ha ha yep thats why its called massive....bounce your tracks down. turn them into audio. it cements them solid, and also if you leave all the synths as midi you can get playback problems, eats all your cpu, as youve seen, bounce them down then you can have 20 tracks of massive;)

[ROYALEFATALE]

trust me i know all about that haha when i first fire up logic i can only get a few secs of playback before the inevitable pop-up that the CPU is overloaded, takes a few minutes of playing a large number of tracks to 'warm up' for some reason, i rarely bounce tracks down as i arrange everything as i go, unless i know the entire structure in some cases i'll create all of the drum patterns and bounce them to audio tracks, i can live with the occasional playback cracks/skips in certain MIDI instruments, thankfully it's not present in the final bounce

[haploid]

Haploid.. Tell me what your requirements are for some monitors and I will give you a recommendation..

I need a pair of monitors, under about $550, that can put out with relatively flat response, low distortion, and drivers capible of accurately displaying frequencies down to probably about 40hz. Thanks!

EDIT:

only working with 2GB of RAM

Hey man sorry to burst your bubble... But I'm working on a 3 year old G5 with only512MB of RAM. I'm upgrading soon to an MBP, but it is possible to work on a highly incapible machine.

[ROYALEFATALE]

FCK just checked, i only have 1GB LOL 512 must put a hurtin' on your CPU, anyway just wanted to share this: http://www.zombienation.com/ zombie nation is doing a sort of contest/collabo where anyone can send in random sounds, the sounds get voted on, he'll make a loop out of those sounds followed by another round of voting then a track will be produced from that, interesting idea and no doubt it will be good

[haploid]

I literally have to bounce every single track numerous times. It actually becomes sort of useful when you want to do microedits and shit like that. Getting 4GBs with my next computer though

[blosom]

you have to bounce in this day and age......i used to use 512gb, i think most of my tracks on myspace are done with 512....now i have 4gb......its great at the start, but after a while you want more.....

[kiefer]

My problem is that I'm never satisfied with the sound enough to ever bounce and I'm always tweaking the synths. Any tips on getting past this? Do you bounce your tracks with our without effects?

[blosom]

get the track how you want it, bounce it at 24bit. you should be working with 24bit from the start though....and all samples 24bit....you can bounce at 16bit, not as good as 24, but saves disk space.

[ROYALEFATALE]

My problem is that I'm never satisfied with the sound enough to ever bounce and I'm always tweaking the synths. Any tips on getting past this? Do you bounce your tracks with our without effects?

exactly my problem, that's why i only really bounce drums, there's no need to tweak as they're all sample-based

[kiefer]

get the track how you want it, bounce it at 24bit. you should be working with 24bit from the start though....and all samples 24bit....you can bounce at 16bit, not as good as 24, but saves disk space.

do you usually bounce it with all the effects or add them later?

Also, I was outside of a club once talking to someone about audio production and we were talking about getting basslines to sound big and full (super musicgeek status). He said something about compressing and bouncing over and over but I didn't really understand what that meant. Does he mean compressing by exporting at lower bitrates or using a compressor, anyone know? I really don't think I understand how to practically use a compressor

[blosom]

what do you think? would you bounce it with all the effects and be done with it?

or bounce without, add them later, and run your cpu back up!!!!........bounce with ALL effects on, that way you can take them all off the track, and have more power

edit, your mate outside the club was high on white doves n purple butterflies by the sounds of things.....you can make a good bassline, mono, bounce it down, then double the part up to make it heavier or eq them differently, then compress them together on the same bus........if your making anything these days you need to know how to use a compressor....its not too hard to learn

edit, again,.....sorry i was being a bit of a penis there...its easy to say its easy to learn when you know how to use a compressor....compressors are probably the hardest things to learn, but thats what has to be done...learn....i would say get one and muck about with it on extreme settings. put the ratio to the top, so its acting like a limiter, and try it with fast attack slow release times, and vice a versa, and just listen to what its doing....

[kiefer]

I think it could be useful to save some effects such as reverb for after so that it can be adjusted to fit the mix, which is what I kind of was asking. and i have a basic understanding of what a compressor does, i just dont understand things like "take 5 kick samples and compress them all together" or "compress them together on the same bus", care to elaborate?

[blosom]

ahhh right gotcha. what do you use?

[kiefer]

logic 8

10char

[blosom]

right, i dont use logic, like you probably know but, i think they are auxileries or send effects......you basicly bounce all your tracks, then if you wanted to add reverb to alot of tracks, like you would, you put your reverb on a auxillery. that way tracks can share it so you dont have to put a seperate reverb on every channel, thus saving processor power, read up on your logic pdf under send effects, auxilleries.......sorry for my poor spelling of auxfknilleriys. you would adjust the amount you need from the channel mixer somewhere.....you could just put reverb on seperate channels, but reverb is hungry and its soon gonna fall over if you have 10 verbs on 10 channels. if you have 1 verb on the send effects channel, you can 'send' it to the 10 tracks and only using the 1 verb....

[haploid]

right, i dont use logic, like you probably know but, i think they are auxileries or send effects......you basicly bounce all your tracks, then if you wanted to add reverb to alot of tracks, like you would, you put your reverb on a auxillery. that way tracks can share it so you dont have to put a seperate reverb on every channel, thus saving processor power, read up on your logic pdf under send effects, auxilleries.......sorry for my poor spelling of auxfknilleriys. you would adjust the amount you need from the channel mixer somewhere.....you could just put reverb on seperate channels, but reverb is hungry and its soon gonna fall over if you have 10 verbs on 10 channels. if you have 1 verb on the send effects channel, you can 'send' it to the 10 tracks and only using the 1 verb....

Bus effects also help to unify the different tracks.

[blosom]

^ you mean reverb/compression on the buses? have you decided on some monitors yet, or you gonna stick with the rokits haploid?

[haploid]

^ you mean reverb/compression on the buses? have you decided on some monitors yet, or you gonna stick with the rokits haploid?

Yeah. Ummm. No. I like the Rubicon R8As... Maybe I'll go with them?

[jcotteri]

Do yourself a favour and spend a little more..

Blosom you need to cop a spell checker or something...

[haploid]

Do yourself a favour and spend a little more..

Blosom you need to cop a spell checker or something...

Recommendations?

[kiefer]

right, i dont use logic, like you probably know but, i think they are auxileries or send effects......you basicly bounce all your tracks, then if you wanted to add reverb to alot of tracks, like you would, you put your reverb on a auxillery. that way tracks can share it so you dont have to put a seperate reverb on every channel, thus saving processor power, read up on your logic pdf under send effects, auxilleries.......sorry for my poor spelling of auxfknilleriys. you would adjust the amount you need from the channel mixer somewhere.....you could just put reverb on seperate channels, but reverb is hungry and its soon gonna fall over if you have 10 verbs on 10 channels. if you have 1 verb on the send effects channel, you can 'send' it to the 10 tracks and only using the 1 verb....

Thanks for this, I've used bus's before to use side chain compression but I never really realized using it for effects till reading this. Now I know why my songs always gave me the cpu error. I'm gonna try and use this on some old tracks and see if it makes any difference. thanks for the help, i have a million questions that I'll probably be asking very shortly after finals are over

[ROYALEFATALE]

SLAYERRR, that's pretty sick, can't help but make the Justice - Master of Puppets comparison though, has the same vibe, although i prefer yours

[haploid]

Thanks a lot. I guess I was kind of inspired by that, but I've always thought Slayer was sick and have been meaning to do this for a while. You're right though, Justice's sets are fantastic.

[ROYALEFATALE]

http://www.mediafire.com/?4rtyymwnujz

some excellent reads on dance music production, these two books cover any and everything

[destructodisk]

i made dis yesterday... soooo fun workin wit gucci, he's a cool dude

http://soundcloud.com/k-cell/gucci-mane-pillz-k-cell-remix