What Levels Do You Keep Ur Drums, Bass and Samples ?

Hi guys, new to this forum, I have many questions as I am a newbie learning how to make beats on the mpc ren

I have a few questions, when you are making a beat, do you play all the kicks, snares and other drum sounds with the "Full Level" on?

I note this makes the kicks and snares reach "0db", which is kind of loud right as it leaves no headroom if you want to master ?

Do you turn down the kicks and snares, hi hats etc in the mixer? and to what level?

Also when you have samples what level do you keep them at for example -12db? -6db etc?

Same question for the bass

Do you throw on a master when ur done with the beat and what headroom do u normally have left?

you can play stuff with full level on and later go back and fine edit the volumes or when the beat is tracked into a daw, you can just alter the volume of the entire kick track or entire clap track, etc.

usually what i do though is play everything normalized and when it comes to adjusting my levels, i decide what i want to stand out above everything else and then lower other tracks one-by-one.

i normalize all my samples and sounds, but i keep the master volume of the mpc at -6. that's usually enough headroom for me later on to add distortion, reverb or other effects.

Peace

also, about bass... if you mix and pan correctly for each individual beat, the bass shouldnt be that loud to stand out. my bass is usually set between -7 and -9db after effects are added.

then again thats where monitors and subs come into play. you may not realize just how much bass you have on shitty monitors and end up playing too loud when on decent/pro speakers.

good info

can I ask why you normalize everything?
to give you more loudness ?

If you are talking about headroom in the MPC then that is completely different to headroom in the DAW itself.

In a DAW you have summing to contend with, and any gain processing dynamics will affect the headroom.

I leave acres of headroom as I work in a 24 bit system and the noise floor becomes redundant.
Another thing to remember is that of 'driving into the headroom' with an effect/dynamic .

thanks for the reply, tbh I was mainly talking about the mpc and doing everything inbox at the mo

StillLearning wrote:good info

can I ask why you normalize everything?
to give you more loudness ?

for mixing, i've heard its best to lower everything one-by-one and then slowly start raising the levels of other sounds on-by-one so that the mix will set right, and for me i guess normalizing just puts everything on equal ground you could say.

i guess i just find it easier having to only lower the volume of something, rather than always turning it up and constantly adjusting volume. if everything is normalized, it makes it easier from the get go to find a comfortable volume.

I turn everything down about halfway in the mixer in the mpc then work from there doing small adjustments to volume/panning/effects etc until it sounds right to me. I don't have monitors yet and just use studio headphones to get an accurate sound

Usually, I just let the MPC do it's thing. Max level & velocity until I get the notes input properly. After that, then I get in there and adjust things by hand. After I track out to the DAW, I have even more control so I can get in and make 'micro adjustments' that no one cares about... but totally can make or break a nice jam.

medearis wrote:Usually, I just let the MPC do it's thing. Max level & velocity until I get the notes input properly. After that, then I get in there and adjust things by hand. After I track out to the DAW, I have even more control so I can get in and make 'micro adjustments' that no one cares about... but totally can make or break a nice jam.

I was wondering how people track their songs out. I don't have a mixer yet so I don't have a convenient way of getting into the daw short of muting each track individually and doing it that way. I just have a fast track pro with two inputs. Is there an easier way until I can get a mixer?

Some MPCs/OSs allow you to bounce individual tracks internally, and transfer them into a DAW as a WAV file.

If yours doesn't, then yes, you track in with multiple recording takes/passes, you mute everything except the track(s) you want to record, record each track or pair of tracks individually, either while the DAW and MPC sequencers are synced, or by using some sort of audio sync marker to visually line up the multiple passes after they are recorded.

I am not sure a mixer is going to make the process much, if any, easier, unless the mixer is operating as a multichannel audio interface for your DAW, and thereby allowing more than 2 channels to be tracked into the DAW from the MPC at once. In which case a multichannel audio interface would achieve the same results (in terms of tracking the MPC anyway).

SimonInAustralia wrote:Some MPCs/OSs allow you to bounce individual tracks internally, and transfer them into a DAW as a WAV file.

If yours doesn't, then yes, you track in with multiple recording takes/passes, you mute everything except the track(s) you want to record, record each track or pair of tracks individually, either while the DAW and MPC sequencers are synced, or by using some sort of audio sync marker to visually line up the multiple passes after they are recorded.

I am not sure a mixer is going to make the process much, if any, easier, unless the mixer is operating as a multichannel audio interface for your DAW, and thereby allowing more than 2 channels to be tracked into the DAW from the MPC at once. In which case a multichannel audio interface would achieve the same results (in terms of tracking the MPC anyway).

Thanks for the info. I feel like my mpc (2500) probably has the capability to bounce tracks down. I just haven't gotten there yet I suppose. I kind of wanted to get an older tascam mixer just cause I like old stuff but I know it's no really practical. But yeah I suppose an audio interface would do the same thing and be way more convenient.

Can't bounce but you can resample in a 2500.

i just want to add something here regarding normalizing. its def something you shouldnt be doing all the time. i feel like a lot of people (beat makers in general) like to normalize everything, without realizing how destructive it can be.

no beef champloo, but i cant think of a worse recommendation than you gave the op. normalizing isnt supposed to be used like your using it. and you def shouldnt be normlalizing every track in your DAW because its easier for you to mix something that is already closer in volume. i cant state enough how wrong this is.
normalizing isnt a fix all for volume errors, and it sholdnt be used as a crutch like this.

the most basic part of mixing is getting good levels without clipping the master fader. so start with the volumes of everything all the way down, then bring up each fader one by one.
try starting with the kick, then bring up the snare, and get them sounding good together, then bring up the hi hats and the rest of the drums, until you get a nice sounding kit. listen to your favorite record and see how their drums are level wise; try to copy that.
next bring up your bass and get it grooving with your drum,s and do this with the rest of the tracks.
make it your goal to get the mix as load as you can without clipping the master fader. after you get good levels, start adding effects, and know that you will have to re-adjust the faders after this as well because eq,compression and reverb will also add extra volume to your mix.
do not rely on normalizing unless you really need it. ie say you recorded a track that you just cant get loud enough, normalizing might be an option then, but only then.

the only reason you would really want to normalize something is if the volume was so low that it wasnt working in your mix and you couldnt re-record it.
alternatively, in the mpc it might be alright to normalize a drum sound every once in awhile if its too soft, but def dont go normalizing everything, too many people go about doing this to everything and they dont realize that they shouldnt until its too late. you always want to try to get the proper volume from the start. normalizing will bring up the volume ofyour sample, but it willl also bring up the noise floor. you usually want to get rid of this extra noise when your mixing, not accentuate it.

one last thing, normalizing isnt supposed to affect the dynamic range of your audio file the way a compressor does, but ime it can (or at least create the illusion of that and rendered my sample un usable).
i had a sample that started out quieter in the intro and built up until the beat dropped, but after i normalized it, the sample was un-usable because the intro was wayy louder than it was originally and it sounded like it was pretty much the same volume as the part after the beat dropped. luckily i didnt save it like this, so i got my original sample back, but it really messed up the sound of that particular sample.

to answer your original question, yes i usually play with the full level on, then like champloo said, i just adjust the individual hits accordingly after the fact.
even at full level, you usually dont have to worry about them being too loud for your daw though, because if your samples were clipping, you could hear digital distortion.

when i am mixing a rough instrumental, i usually make it so the peaks hit at -2.7 to -2.0 ish, that way it will never clip when adding vocals over it (this is more of a personal preference though, because i could leave less headroom and still be fine, because the 2 track rough mix will always be used as just that, a rough mix.
the final mix is a different story, i will mix it to about the loudest i can without clipping, like i stated above, although, you could leave 2 or 3 db of headroom for the mastering engineer also, as they usually like a bit of wiggle room. i tend to make my mixes more dynamic than "radio pop" music though, so even if i do let the peaks get pretty loud, the main sections of my song will usually be at least a db or 2 below that. play with it and mix every chance you get, practice def helps 10fold when it comes to mixing audio.
hope this helps!

Damien, some decent advice there pal but not entirely accurate.

Normalising using Peak is non destructive and adds nothing at all to the file bar raising the noise floor and that is dependent on which bit depth you use in your DAW.

Normalising has very little to do with dynamic range unless you use it in RMS mode and even then it has very little to do with the gain staging of the signal path within your DAW.

You are right that normalising and compression are completely different and I wish more people would understand this: compression has precisely dik to do with volume and everything to do with dynamics.

Headroom has little to do with a normalised file. It has everything to do with bit depth and sensible gain staging. I have devoted an entire chapter to this very subject in my latest book on Low End Theory. The area most seem to ignore is: do you drive into the headroom with a dynamic or work the dynamic post?

If you are dealing with samples off vinyl then normalising is one solution to having a strong signal, but the better approach is to make sure the pre or amp takes care of the signal's strength.

BUT TBH, and I have a feeling this is where you're coming from, the most important aspect is the bit depth and gain staging. If you're working in 24 bit then you don't need to worry about the noise floor and therefore can leave acres of headroom. A 16 bit system works completely differently.

yes, thats exactly what i was trying to say, i dont understand exactly what normalizing does enough to explain it like you can though. thanks for clearing that up for me.

also like zukan said, always make sure you are getting the most out of your signal beforehand because if you record too low, you may not be utilizing the full amount of bit depth, and if you dont use the full amount of bit depth, some frequency information can be lost.
maybe zukan can explain that better than i can.

you guys might also want to read this:

http://www.presonus.com/news/articles/s ... -bit-depth

and a fun fact: the reason why dvd's are so much quieter and louder than cd's relates directly to the bit depth they were recorded at. 24 bit audio has 144db of dynamic range, while 16 bit audio (cds) can only re create 96 db of dynamic range.
thats why someone can be whispering in the movie and you have to turn the volume up, and then 5 seconds later its blowing your system up with an explosion sound.