simple studio tricks!

what b born droid said!

in a mix situation, compressors are not there to achieve loudness anyway. They're here for modifying the dynamics of a sound, either by extending it (for example giving more attack to a sound, which means expanding the level difference between the attack and the rest of the sound) or by diminishing it (for example doing the contrary of the first example = compressing, strictly speaking).

When you compose and mix a track, you shouldn't think about loudness imo, but rather about achieving a balanced mix where sounds blend naturally with each other, both in the frequency domain, dynamics, spatial localisation and depth... If you achieve that, then your mix will sound full and as a consequence of that also louder as a poorly mixed track (unless we're talking about a mix where dynamics are already squashed). Then it's up to you to determine what you want from the mastering and to what extent you want to compress the track to make it sound louder (mastering is also here for other matters by the way).

Anyway it's not the best idea to master your own tracks : when you brought your mix as far as it needs for being mastered then it's very likely that you don't have the distance with it anymore which you need to make a good master. And I don't think uploading on soundcloud needs you to care too much about mastering so it's probably enough to make a quick one yourself if you really want to, but try not being too severe on compression because it's likely that you hurt the sound more than helping it (because this lack of distance, and also maybe because you're not aware of all the subtleties of master compression).

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simple studio tricks!

lol, but I guess that's the point of all those debates. Nothing is so simple like you might want it to be. If you want to get into music making then you'll have to be prepared to learn and unlearn stuff, to make mistakes, etc... and as far as you can go there will always be another step. Hopefully, most of the time and if you pay attention your ears are there to give you an idea if it sounds good or not.

SIMPLE SINEWAVE TRICK:

One can bring out a bassline by copying the MIDI notes to a sinewave track, then lowering the notes by an octave. This can also be done with leads, and, the sinewave can also be brought up an octave. But for max effect, the sinewave should be at subtle levels. Anyway, this really brings out melodic qualities of whatever track you're trying to emphasize.

aAAAaaAAAAAAAAAaaaaAAssssss for compression..... Holy shit, is compression a hardcore topic. I remember I was "once tested" talking to some mixing engineer dyude in Sarasota, and he was asking me what compression was for, and I was like, "To make shit louder", and he was like, "No...- that's what makeup gain is for." And then he fuckin' dropped the mic and walked outta that place, cuz he served me so hard.

That Ocarina track is a fuckin sweet piece of music,,,,,, noice

  On 4/26/2015 at 4:51 PM, peace 7 said:

 

23:

 

"Yo dawg, I heard Jerome got deaf last week from a internet ad, yo. The last thing he heard was: 'Congratulations! You've wo-'"

firstly LOL and 2ndly ,,,,, you see, they're everywhere maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan

DAW users - know and learn your keyboard shortcuts :)

"DAW users" reminded me that music is not only a computer thing. Holy shit, my brain..... So speaking of analogue-esque shit: Don't hotplug anything! That is, no ripping out mics or plugging them in with phantom power turned on, guitar cable into amp with volume and gain on 11, etc. Nothing good comes from popping at 7000 decibels.

Compression is a tricky effect in a nowadays context.

I agree that it changes the dynamics and texture of a sound, but this changes are so deeply rooted in our ears in 2015 that we take them as granted. Nobody really expects to hear an organic, defined sound with peaks and downs 30 db apart, even in music without drums. We can debate around what is more clean and polished and "right" but in the same way people were angry with Phil Spector and then with Brian Wilson, not to mention The Beatles, all of which helped to start this compression craze we're experiencing just today. It is in human's nature to want to hear music in an undivided piece, with all parts distinct but still parts of a greater whole, or maybe we were culturally taught this way - either way, here we are. In 2040 bands will be berating their producers "Come on, make it sound more brick walled, like in the 2010s, we want it to have more of a nostalgic bang." It is not wise to brush off contemporary production techniques and faults as something that will pass, but to follow it to its extreme and discover there a new way to which we are already progressing. So yeah, I think that compression nowadays is actually mainly a loudness tool - especially for million and million of attention hungry producers that breed over Soundcloud and Bandcamp - but even more than a loudness tool, it is an essential part of the 2015 sound.

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Dude! I was rocking this track the other day in my SC stream. Never knew it was a fellow wattmer! So kewl!

Heh, sweet. By SC I guess you mean Starcraft? Awesome xD

Compression is very necessary in most contexts, even classical imo. I always chuckle to myself when i see my brother listening to classical and he unknowingly turns it up during quiet parts and then the crescendo comes on really loud and he reaches for the volume again. I think humans naturally gravitate toward compression based on the fact that we're so quick to fuck around with volume controls when the dynamics are out of hand

  On 5/12/2015 at 7:47 AM, Danny O Flannagin said:

Compression is very necessary in most contexts, even classical imo. I always chuckle to myself when i see my brother listening to classical and he unknowingly turns it up during quiet parts and then the crescendo comes on really loud and he reaches for the volume again. I think humans naturally gravitate toward compression based on the fact that we're so quick to fuck around with volume controls when the dynamics are out of hand

you bring another aspect of the compression debate: your brother plays with the volume control when listening to classical music because the dynamic range is important. fair enough but you probably forget to mention that he's not listening to the music in a "good" listening environment. Because if he was in a quiet room with not too bad speakers (and if the recording is well made) then he wouldn't need to do that, and this situation can easily be seen as the more "optimal" one for listening to music, especially when it's important that it sounds natural (a classical group or orchestra naturally has huge dynamics). So I'm sure that your brother is happy when he can listen to this music without having to play with the volume control ; now if you compress this music so that it can be heard into say the car or in a flat in the middle of the city with opened windows without having to play with the volume knob, then it won't sound natural when you listen to it in optimal conditions. In this context, adjusting the monitor level during listening is simply a lesser evil.

back to the discussion on aesthetics of compression, nowadays standards etc.. I repeat that I don't mean that compression is bad, can't sound good etc, it's just that I would find exciting that producers think about that whole debate more, so that there's a slow evolution towards more dynamics in general. I believe what makes music interesting is variety and surprise and overly used compression definitely doesn't help that. Being more reasonable with compression doesn't mean stopping using it, even in extreme amounts : you could for example go for that huge sound during a given part of your track and then take it down when it doesn't need to bang anymore. variety and surprise!

This compression talk reminded me of another very effective yet simple studio trick..:

RIDE DEM LEVELS IN REALTIME!

What I mean by that is, if you feel a track should be louder (like just the bassline, for example), then automate a volume rise at that section, for that respective track. Section too loud? Then automate a volume lowering at that section, for that respective track.

Despite all the "automatic" compression and other perceived audio level tricks, manually raising and lowering levels brings a lot of dynamic power to a track. Pop music is pretty pro at this (or at least it used to be, anyway).

  On 5/12/2015 at 1:14 PM, peace 7 said:

This compression talk reminded me of another very effective yet simple studio trick..:

 

RIDE DEM LEVELS IN REALTIME!

 

What I mean by that is, if you feel a track should be louder (like just the bassline, for example), then automate a volume rise at that section, for that respective track. Section too loud? Then automate a volume lowering at that section, for that respective track.

 

Despite all the "automatic" compression and other perceived audio level tricks, manually raising and lowering levels brings a lot of dynamic power to a track. Pop music is pretty pro at this (or at least it used to be, anyway).

A+.

I always do this when mixing shows. I mostly ride the dialogue and music live and hit 'back and play' to jump back 3 seconds when I feel something is too quiet or too loud.

Here's an example:

http://i.imgur.com/KpBF9FP.png

  On 5/12/2015 at 2:18 PM, paranerd said:

 

  On 5/12/2015 at 1:14 PM, peace 7 said:

This compression talk reminded me of another very effective yet simple studio trick..:

 

RIDE DEM LEVELS IN REALTIME!

 

What I mean by that is, if you feel a track should be louder (like just the bassline, for example), then automate a volume rise at that section, for that respective track. Section too loud? Then automate a volume lowering at that section, for that respective track.

 

Despite all the "automatic" compression and other perceived audio level tricks, manually raising and lowering levels brings a lot of dynamic power to a track. Pop music is pretty pro at this (or at least it used to be, anyway).

A+.

 

I always do this when mixing shows. I mostly ride the dialogue and music live and hit 'back and play' to jump back 3 seconds when I feel something is too quiet or too loud.

 

Here's an example:

 

http://i.imgur.com/KpBF9FP.png

 

Lovin' dat back n' play action~

awesome thread. :) thank you for the tips, guys.

Speaking of field recording.....

ULTRA 3-D SOUND~!

You can use any pair of headphones with the speakers facing outward as binaural mics. If they are earbuds, I suppose you can tape them to the side of your head... Over the ear headphones work the best. It's important to wear the headphones when recording, because your head blocks/reflects/whatevz the sound-- so when played back on headphones, it sounds ultra real and 3-d.

If anyone out there hasn't tried this, I highly recommend it!!!!!

old but useful...he's not electronic but who cares:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/dec97/tchadblake.html

uses a lot of binaural techniques

  On 5/13/2015 at 8:48 AM, bendish said:

old but useful...he's not electronic but who cares:

 

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/dec97/tchadblake.html

 

uses a lot of binaural techniques

What're you, from the future-past? (p.s. cuz article does not show up)

p.p.s. I got interested in binaural recording by experimenting, but then I realized that's how Cornelius did a lot of 3-D audio on Fantasma.

If you copy paste the link text it works for some reason

weird...maybe this...

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/dec97/tchadblake.html

These big name mixers are just a world apart from this electronic music malarkey...its when the two spheres cross over that things get interesting...Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Jim O'Rourke etc

Cornelius's Point was a big one for me...never heard Fantasma...will check

Tipper did a binaural album called Surrounded I think.

Here's a great technique called "worldizing"...used by the likes of RDJ and Howard Shore:

Say you have a sterile-sounding soft-synth part that needs some depth, some character, some grit...

Solo it, play it through your monitors, and then set up a condenser mic out a few feet to record it

(The farther away the mic, the more room ambience obviously)

This is something I wish folks like Plaid would do to offset the clinical soft-synth sound that they always seem to have

(Which often is appropriate but maybe not always)

Along those same lines:

If you're drawing in notes on a piano roll, not everything has to fall perfectly on the grid

Try giving rhythms some lilt and character by having things slight ahead or behind

And vary those velocities, yo

Give your lines some shape

If you have a phrase like "1-e-and-a"...accent the last note to emphasize the syncopation

You can never go too wrong (tastefully and sparingly) accenting upbeats to give the line some forward push...

  On 5/16/2015 at 4:37 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

+1 for velocity. also remember velocity is more than just "volume", it's a modulation parameter assigned to each note. i might have posted this itt already but you can have a lot of fun layering sounds that react only to a specific velocity range. good rhodes and piano sampler patches will have the harder notes play samples of the piano being hit harder, not just turning up the volume on one set of multisamples. there's a good patch on roland's xv series of a steel guitar and when you hit the keyboard hard it does a vibrato bend on the note, it adds to the realism so much...but not enough for me to put a steel guitar synth sound in my tracks haa. but you can use this principle on your own sample patches.

 

also, as probably discussed, velocity on filter cutoff is great for drums.

Absolutely, great point.

I recently started using the modulation matrix in ShortCircuit (amazing freeware sampler IMO) and while I planned on assigning different samples to different velocities, I stumbled into a workaround of sorts whereby:

you assign any or all of the ASDR parameters (I usually just use A, D and R...sorry S) to velocity

and sometimes a touch of pitch envelope

(so that higher velocities roughly approximates the way a drum head responds to hitting harder and sorta bends up a tad)

but anyway I stumbled on all that trying to approximate ghost notes on a snare drum

which tend to be a bit more staccato because a soft hit doesn't excite the actual snares as much as a louder hit

I was just getting sick of the sound of ghost notes sounding identical to normal snare hits

anyway blah blah...

  On 5/16/2015 at 4:11 AM, LimpyLoo said:

worldizing

It's great fun. A cheat to this is using Audio Ease's Speakerphone. It's my favorite futz plugin.

http://www.audioease.com/Pages/Speakerphone/speakerphone.html

  On 5/16/2015 at 4:11 AM, LimpyLoo said:

Here's a great technique called "worldizing"...used by the likes of RDJ and Howard Shore:

 

Say you have a sterile-sounding soft-synth part that needs some depth, some character, some grit...

 

Solo it, play it through your monitors, and then set up a condenser mic out a few feet to record it

(The farther away the mic, the more room ambience obviously)

 

This is something I wish folks like Plaid would do to offset the clinical soft-synth sound that they always seem to have

(Which often is appropriate but maybe not always)

 

Along those same lines:

If you're drawing in notes on a piano roll, not everything has to fall perfectly on the grid

Try giving rhythms some lilt and character by having things slight ahead or behind

 

And vary those velocities, yo

Give your lines some shape

If you have a phrase like "1-e-and-a"...accent the last note to emphasize the syncopation

You can never go too wrong (tastefully and sparingly) accenting upbeats to give the line some forward push...

Also you can move the microphone while recording to create a phasing effect. Similar effect when you move your head back and forth at the beach or other noisy environments

Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting In a Room" is the sort of reductio ad absurdum of "worldizing"...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jU9mJbJsQ8