EKT Share Your Secrets

Don't get me wrong mate i'm not gonna knock people for using exclusively hardware, so long as they're not a smug cunt about it

Each to their own, especially if all you're making is acid

Don't get hung up on the idea of sitting down & producing a perfect track from scratch. You'll never get anything done. Instead just make whatever comes naturally. When you're done let it rest a while (hours, days, weeks, months, years, whatever) then listen to it a few times. If it sounds like shit put it away & no one else will ever have to hear it. If there's a good idea tucked away in there use it to make a slightly better track. And from there an even better slightly better track. Eventually, in theory, you should have some primo tunes (assuming you're not the type to overwork things to sterility, but even that can be remedied by throwing in random ideas from left field every so often).

At least that's my thinking on the matter.

My advice to everyone is: take some time to go insane in an educated manner. Cultivate your dreams. Learn to inhabit them. Then learn to pull them apart and mend them back. Become who you were before you started trying to find yourself, if that makes any sense.

The tech, the production, the studio tricks, the knowledge... they all come with time and being a nerd. Chance is if you're reading this now you're at least part nerd.

But my greatest secret to making what i make is being me. Being you should be the greatest weapon of your arsenal. I say "arsenal" because, IMO, music is a battlefield. Always will be.

P.S. Though i may come of a bit troon-ish, I assure you I'm not trolling. Fire away though, this is super gay, i know.

Gay but true.

today i learned to save a snapshot in reaktor. now i need to find out how to automate stuff better.

  On 8/5/2010 at 6:48 AM, ieafs said:

  On 8/4/2010 at 8:25 PM, Jimbob said:

You know what i've wondered how they make that dubby plate reverb sound for fucking FOREVER

 

and now I know. I can die a happy man

 

Cheers

it's just kind of an approximation of the twang of a spring reverb though yeah?

Yeah, but I use it with spring reverb as well!

my tip: hardware does not replace knowledge. people tend to buy hardware when they stuck in production but hardware will not make you a better composer. I have met people with 3 floors of dream equipment and all of their music sucked because their arrangement was shit.

some random tips:

- drugs and alcohol don't actually make you create music better

- creating music is not a solution to solving realworld problems

- true inspiration is never fully realized

- when you feel like giving up, that means you're close

  On 8/5/2010 at 10:56 AM, chax said:

- when you feel like giving up, that means you're close

Solitude is invaluable

  On 8/4/2010 at 5:01 PM, impakt said:

OK here you go:

http://home.no/csal/sample.mp3

 

Just Maschine and some treated reverb/delay units :)

nice! more maschine in this thread

  On 8/4/2010 at 10:33 PM, wahrk said:

  On 8/4/2010 at 3:06 PM, thanks robert moses said:

i usually get it as wet as possible with spit. remember everyone, body fluids are better than lube.

  On 8/4/2010 at 4:02 PM, iamabe said:

that sounds awesome. can you supply an audio example?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5icxcGRCZI&feature=related

  On 8/5/2010 at 1:54 AM, Cryptowen said:

Don't get hung up on the idea of sitting down & producing a perfect track from scratch. You'll never get anything done. Instead just make whatever comes naturally. When you're done let it rest a while (hours, days, weeks, months, years, whatever) then listen to it a few times. If it sounds like shit put it away & no one else will ever have to hear it. If there's a good idea tucked away in there use it to make a slightly better track. And from there an even better slightly better track. Eventually, in theory, you should have some primo tunes (assuming you're not the type to overwork things to sterility, but even that can be remedied by throwing in random ideas from left field every so often).

 

At least that's my thinking on the matter.

I like this mentality but I never seem to be able to put those seperate sketches together into a real track. I sketch lots and then listen to my ideas later but rarely feel like actually going back to them. any tips? motivation?

^Sometimes what I do is figure out what key/tempo the original track was in (assuming it mostly sticks with one of each) and then go record a bunch of instrument parts that fit that. Usually just improvised material on whatever I feel like playing that day (of course, if you do this with synths & a sequencer you could record a whole bunch of versions of the same sequences). Then I take the recording of that & make it into a few dozen sample loops. Armed with those, I go back to the original song & break it down piece by piece, trying out the new parts with different effects, changing their speeds up or down a few octaves, mixing them together, anything I think might work. Lots of times it doesn't, but when it does I find it helps the song feel a lot less one-note.

Of course, up until this year I was making songs entirely via this collage method, with no original structure to follow. I sort of want to go back to that...

  On 8/5/2010 at 8:09 AM, impakt said:

  On 8/5/2010 at 6:48 AM, ieafs said:

  On 8/4/2010 at 8:25 PM, Jimbob said:

You know what i've wondered how they make that dubby plate reverb sound for fucking FOREVER

 

and now I know. I can die a happy man

 

Cheers

it's just kind of an approximation of the twang of a spring reverb though yeah?

 

Yeah, but I use it with spring reverb as well!

I quite liked that you were suitably vague with your description. I applied the technique to some source material and it ended up nothing like your demo but I was pleased with it anyway.. so success.

Actually that's one thing I like to do from time-to-time. Read about some other musician's technique and then use that as the basis for my own experiment. It's a nice alternative to breaking me out of some of my own habits. In the example above the source material was a jam on an Arp Odyssey emulation within Reaktor. The setup for the jam was based around a couple of sentences from a John Foxx interview where he talked about what it was like making electronic music back in the day. As I recall, it was Odyssey emulation -> space echo emulation -> phaser -> marshall amp emu -> "vintage" eq -> "vintage" compression -> tape emulation. Maybe I'm OCD about these things....

john

  On 8/5/2010 at 7:01 AM, Hanratty said:

today i learned to save a snapshot in reaktor. now i need to find out how to automate stuff better.

if you use Ableton Live it can be a pain. The following from the NI forums:

http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showpost.php?p=108226&postcount=6

Although apparently they've improved automation in 5.5 but I've not bothered with the beta so can't comment. As I can't for any other host...

john

  On 8/5/2010 at 7:53 PM, jeyemusik said:

  On 8/5/2010 at 7:01 AM, Hanratty said:

today i learned to save a snapshot in reaktor. now i need to find out how to automate stuff better.

 

if you use Ableton Live it can be a pain. The following from the NI forums:

 

http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showpost.php?p=108226&postcount=6

 

Although apparently they've improved automation in 5.5 but I've not bothered with the beta so can't comment. As I can't for any other host...

 

john

Yeah automation was always an issue in Live. Some instruments would work and other would randomly not. Im going to give 5.5 a run in Live today after Im done figuring my way around the standalone and report back.

  On 8/5/2010 at 7:50 PM, jeyemusik said:

  On 8/5/2010 at 8:09 AM, impakt said:

  On 8/5/2010 at 6:48 AM, ieafs said:

  On 8/4/2010 at 8:25 PM, Jimbob said:

You know what i've wondered how they make that dubby plate reverb sound for fucking FOREVER

 

and now I know. I can die a happy man

 

Cheers

it's just kind of an approximation of the twang of a spring reverb though yeah?

 

Yeah, but I use it with spring reverb as well!

 

I quite liked that you were suitably vague with your description. I applied the technique to some source material and it ended up nothing like your demo but I was pleased with it anyway.. so success.

 

Actually that's one thing I like to do from time-to-time. Read about some other musician's technique and then use that as the basis for my own experiment. It's a nice alternative to breaking me out of some of my own habits. In the example above the source material was a jam on an Arp Odyssey emulation within Reaktor. The setup for the jam was based around a couple of sentences from a John Foxx interview where he talked about what it was like making electronic music back in the day. As I recall, it was Odyssey emulation -> space echo emulation -> phaser -> marshall amp emu -> "vintage" eq -> "vintage" compression -> tape emulation. Maybe I'm OCD about these things....

 

john

You got your daisy-chain in the wrong order, put the phaser before the space-echo and you've got it going the way I was talking about :)

so I'm not the only one who doesn't like automation in Live? I mean, seriously, what kind of DAW doesn't have latch/read/other automation options? such a pain in the ass... I feel like I have to do all my automation by drawing instead of live recording.

  On 8/5/2010 at 8:05 PM, impakt said:

You got your daisy-chain in the wrong order, put the phaser before the space-echo and you've got it going the way I was talking about :)

Almost, that's what I did for the source audio. I then cut that up into little fragments and arranged rhytmically (but with no regards for the grid) like some refugee from early 00s Mille Plateaux and then ran that through a setup like you described. I ended up with a slightly rhytmic texture that I'm using as an intro to a song.

john

  On 8/5/2010 at 8:36 PM, iamabe said:

so I'm not the only one who doesn't like automation in Live? I mean, seriously, what kind of DAW doesn't have latch/read/other automation options? such a pain in the ass... I feel like I have to do all my automation by drawing instead of live recording.

Map the parameters to your controller, click record whilst playing(make sure no channel is armed), and record your automation that way?

or even with your mouse if you don't have a controller, then play back and everything should be there

Is that what you mean? I tend to draw most of my automation in Ableton, dunno why it just happens this way

  On 8/5/2010 at 8:36 PM, iamabe said:

so I'm not the only one who doesn't like automation in Live? I mean, seriously, what kind of DAW doesn't have latch/read/other automation options? such a pain in the ass... I feel like I have to do all my automation by drawing instead of live recording.

You know, the deeper I get into Live and then other software like FL Studio, Renoise, Cubase, etc, the more I'm starting to think that the real secret here is that, for production, Live might be

*gasp*

overrated.

  On 8/5/2010 at 8:48 PM, jeyemusik said:

  On 8/5/2010 at 8:05 PM, impakt said:

You got your daisy-chain in the wrong order, put the phaser before the space-echo and you've got it going the way I was talking about :)

 

Almost, that's what I did for the source audio. I then cut that up into little fragments and arranged rhytmically (but with no regards for the grid) like some refugee from early 00s Mille Plateaux and then ran that through a setup like you described. I ended up with a slightly rhytmic texture that I'm using as an intro to a song.

 

john

Sounds cool, post it!

  On 8/5/2010 at 8:55 PM, Jimbob said:

  On 8/5/2010 at 8:36 PM, iamabe said:

so I'm not the only one who doesn't like automation in Live? I mean, seriously, what kind of DAW doesn't have latch/read/other automation options? such a pain in the ass... I feel like I have to do all my automation by drawing instead of live recording.

Map the parameters to your controller, click record whilst playing(make sure no channel is armed), and record your automation that way?

 

or even with your mouse if you don't have a controller, then play back and everything should be there

 

Is that what you mean? I tend to draw most of my automation in Ableton, dunno why it just happens this way

Example: I record some midi notes. I go through for another pass to let the notes play while i record automating cutoff and shiet. whether or not Overdub is on, the notes get erased if i am attempting to record anything over the existing midi region, whether it be more notes, automation, etc. I can't figure out how to record additional shit on top of an existing region. Annoying as fuck.

  On 8/6/2010 at 2:39 AM, iamabe said:

  On 8/5/2010 at 8:55 PM, Jimbob said:

  On 8/5/2010 at 8:36 PM, iamabe said:

so I'm not the only one who doesn't like automation in Live? I mean, seriously, what kind of DAW doesn't have latch/read/other automation options? such a pain in the ass... I feel like I have to do all my automation by drawing instead of live recording.

Map the parameters to your controller, click record whilst playing(make sure no channel is armed), and record your automation that way?

 

or even with your mouse if you don't have a controller, then play back and everything should be there

 

Is that what you mean? I tend to draw most of my automation in Ableton, dunno why it just happens this way

 

Example: I record some midi notes. I go through for another pass to let the notes play while i record automating cutoff and shiet. whether or not Overdub is on, the notes get erased if i am attempting to record anything over the existing midi region, whether it be more notes, automation, etc. I can't figure out how to record additional shit on top of an existing region. Annoying as fuck.

oh my god iamabe.

nobody else reply to this i'm making a screencast.

[youtubehd]

NjIDedDgMR4

[/youtubehd]

all you do is de-activate the track arm if you don't want to overwrite midi. global record catches all your automation changes, track arm catches audio and midi notes.

this could have easily been said in words but i think both IAMABE and I were inspired by a format we saw in another thread so i kinda want to promote these kind of mini-tutorials with visuals/sounds to go along with these great tips we've been getting so far. hence the vid. plus i just got snow leopard and wanted to try the new built in screencast in quicktime.

sorry for the resolution, i guess a full-screen capture of my 1900-1200 screen does not fare well with a tiny forum youtube video. click through to youtube if your eyes hurt.

also, this:

[vimeo]

12542222

[/vimeo]

made this about a little while back. haven't gotten around to posting the patch as my site is a WIP but if anybody wants it let me know.

it may not be relevant to a lot of you as it's specifically ableton and max4live, but the concept could be explored further using other tools. maybe show me variations in more vids/audio clips?