Discuss the various methods you use in music production, from compressor settings to equipment type.
User avatar
By Lampdog Wed Oct 04, 2017 3:13 pm
So make the resulting samples even cleaner.

Put hihats through a hi pass filter and lower/raise the filter until you get the clean signal you want.

Same with the bass, but use low pass while raising/lowering the filter to give you only the deep bass freq you want.

Snare, I'd use high pass and lower it until I get what I want.

Using filters will help cut down on the muddiness of the total mix of the whole beat/song/track.
User avatar
By sciguy Thu Oct 26, 2017 5:34 pm
fun fact it's actually super easy to synthesize an 808-style hihat.

just open up audacity, make a square wave like 1kHz or so (make sure to select the anti-alias option, or else it'll buzz like shit)
pop that into ur MPC, layer 4 of them on one pad, and just detune them randomly (I dunno, spread them out over like an octave or something). And don't make them whole numbers, make them decimals, so it's not nice intervals.
Then adjust the release envelope on the pad, to make it cut off quickly.
Then add some bandpass and/or highpass filters, play around with the cutoff and resonance.

That's almost exactly how the 808 did it. (The 808 used 6 square waves, and a "dirtier" amp envelope circuit, but you can get pretty close this way)

Want an 808 cowbell? Layer just 2 of those squarewaves, and tune one of them +7 and change (so it's not exactly +7). Then do the same game with the amp envelope, and this time definitely use a bandpass filter with pretty strong resonance. Two of the square wave oscillators in the 808 actually served double-duty for the cowbell, as well.

The 808 ride cymbal also used those same 6 squarewaves, just a different sort of envelope and filter than the hihats.

The snare started off with basically the same circuit as the bass drum (a decaying sine wave), but higher pitched. Then it also mixed in some white noise (you can generate white noise in audacity too), put an envelope on it, and then mixed the sine wave and the noise through a filter.