Discuss the various methods you use in music production, from compressor settings to equipment type.
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By ArKyve-31 Sat Apr 21, 2012 1:35 am
Hippotron wrote:I was working entirely on the MPC for a while (no DAW) and I wanted to emulate that side-chain sucking effect on some cymbals.

Here's what I did:

Put the same cymbal sample on two different pads.
Set both so they are mono and will mute each other.
Turn the attack up on one of your cymbal so that it fades in when triggered (adjust to taste).
Load a bass drum to another pad and set it to simult trigger the cymbal with the slow attack.

Now every time you hit the bass drum it will suck the cymbals to zero before the slow attack cymbal fades in.

Remember to use the cymbal with regular attack whenever the bass drum is not being triggered.

You might want to set up another pad that only triggers the bass drum.

Here's what it ended up as:




good post, nice beat too. thats a simple thing but still clever, maximizing the mpc's "outside the box" potential
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By AntonPD Sat Apr 21, 2012 9:57 pm
it sounds very basic, so nevermind if you already do this:

it is possible to pan something more left than right, but still 'experience' the sound as coming from the right: very slightly delay the left side, so the image shifts to the right. then you can pan away (more to the right, back to the left)

this is useful for me, because i like 'stereo', but panning things goes at the expense of being able to hear everything from each speaker (i want the girls in the club shaking their asses on top of the left speaker to also hear my diminished chords and tritone substitutions played by a flamenco guitar that is supposed to be in 'the right half'. this trick gives me more leeway to pan stuff slightly back to the middle, without giving up the imaging)

(you can swith 'left' and 'right' around in what i said of course 8) )
By séance Tue Apr 24, 2012 12:39 am
My advice to beginners and veterans alike is to keep a session log anytime your working. A very in-depth and well documented session log that entails every step you take during production. Add steps to your log immediately after completing them. This is imperative to making you a better producer and engineer. Taking notes might seem tedious, but the notes will reveal to you flaws in your work flow. The more you document your sessions, the more you will start to realize unnecessary or illogical steps in your production. Your notes should be so detailed that an entirely different producer and engineer could recreate your session step by step. These notes might also be of serious advantage to you later if you need to reference past work, these notes will also help mastering engineers tremendously improve your master tapes. These days, I won't touch a component of my studio unless I'm ready to document it, This even applies to practice sessions.


This is the best advice I could ever give any engineer, so, take it or leave it.
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By es-k Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:03 am
ArKyve-31 wrote:
Hippotron wrote:I was working entirely on the MPC for a while (no DAW) and I wanted to emulate that side-chain sucking effect on some cymbals.

Here's what I did:

Put the same cymbal sample on two different pads.
Set both so they are mono and will mute each other.
Turn the attack up on one of your cymbal so that it fades in when triggered (adjust to taste).
Load a bass drum to another pad and set it to simult trigger the cymbal with the slow attack.

Now every time you hit the bass drum it will suck the cymbals to zero before the slow attack cymbal fades in.

Remember to use the cymbal with regular attack whenever the bass drum is not being triggered.

You might want to set up another pad that only triggers the bass drum.

Here's what it ended up as:




good post, nice beat too. thats a simple thing but still clever, maximizing the mpc's "outside the box" potential


niiiiice!!!
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By Hippotron Tue Apr 24, 2012 8:01 am
es-k wrote:
ArKyve-31 wrote:
Hippotron wrote:I was working entirely on the MPC for a while (no DAW) and I wanted to emulate that side-chain sucking effect on some cymbals.

Here's what I did:

Put the same cymbal sample on two different pads.
Set both so they are mono and will mute each other.
Turn the attack up on one of your cymbal so that it fades in when triggered (adjust to taste).
Load a bass drum to another pad and set it to simult trigger the cymbal with the slow attack.

Now every time you hit the bass drum it will suck the cymbals to zero before the slow attack cymbal fades in.

Remember to use the cymbal with regular attack whenever the bass drum is not being triggered.

You might want to set up another pad that only triggers the bass drum.

Here's what it ended up as:




good post, nice beat too. thats a simple thing but still clever, maximizing the mpc's "outside the box" potential


niiiiice!!!


Glad you like it.

While I'd never say no to new gear, your material limitations can often help you to find creative ways to make sounds.
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By Menco Wed Jun 20, 2012 12:18 pm
CHOPPING IN ABLETON LIVE: getting different sections of a song chopped up in one drumrack.

As most Live users know, converting a sample to a new drum rack midi tracks is a great feature to have ur samples spread out over ur pads quickly.

What I found quite annoying was getting multiple parts chopped up into the same drumrack. But there's a way to get that done.

1) Get ur parts in an audio track in live. Cut and discard the unwanted parts. Make sure the samples are tight.
2) Now drag them towards eachother closely. Make sure they overlap eachother as seamingless as possible, making it one long phrase
3) Highlight the complete phrase, right mousclick and select the 'consolidate' option.
This will turn the multiple sections into one sample.
4) Right mouse click and hit the 'slice to midi track' option.

Since the autochop function can be off most of the time, or u just want to alter a few start and end points it's also a pain in the ass to work with large samples/ lot of slices sometimes. Adjusting start and end point of 40 plus slices can be quite tedious.

Last week I had a 64 slice project, and couldn't get it fixed properly in Live. So I dumped the consolidated sample into my mpc2500, and chopped it up in there. Converted it to a sliced program, saved it into a new folder and dumped that folder back on my music files HD.
Enter that folder thru the Live file browser, select all the samples by using the shift+arrow buttons and drag all those samples to the pads of ur drumrack.

Only downside of this method is that I had the choke group for each pad individually. There must be a way to work around that, but haven't found it yet.
Still it took me less time then adjusting start and end points of 64 slices.
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By -niN Wed Jun 20, 2012 2:10 pm
maybe somthin to spark ur creativity..

I remember somone asking how to make more intresting drum (patterns) in here..

Just thought of trying this: Start with the ghost notes :idea:

leave the metronome click on. at 1/4 or 1/8 if you prefer..
1. This is gonna help peeps understand what "swing" means.
2. peeps can understand the % settings in the swing function. because they might be able to hear it better.
( dudes been saying they don't notice any diffrence... ??? )
3. You might come up with mad diffrent rythms u wouldn've thought of otherwise..

Add the down beats and heavy pronounciations afterwards..

brings me to 4: maybe they won't be on the typical counts..

think about it.. try it and post ur results.
By boy_blunder Sun Jun 24, 2012 12:13 am
just found on jjos2xl you can use the data wheel to select multiple events in the step edit screen.

in the step edit window, hold shift and push the up button to select the event above, then just use the scroll wheel to go select up or down from there.

that's gonna save me lots of button pressing :D
By Bathmutz Thu Jul 12, 2012 10:55 pm
Maybe a obvious tip for some people here, but I came up with this idea and think it's pretty cool.

You know how each snarehit, guitarpluck, or whatever sounds different each time you hit/strum/whatever the instrument?

I was thinking, when your sampling a stereo record in mono (Left or Right) sample it both left and right individually. That way you have to 2 types of sounds of everything you sample, to get a more natural sound. For instance when sampling a kick and a snare, record them mono Left and mono Right. Because of the stereo image the left and right sample will sound a little different. Sometimes it even sounds like the tuning is little different.

Edit: Sorry not very clear maybe, I mean to get a little more variation in the sound/character of your samples.
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By drukqs2369 Sat Aug 25, 2012 1:22 am
takkin wrote:Thanks for the tip, i'll check out Onra, never heard of him.

Delas got perfect drums to me, phat and old school sounding, but still got that modern polish. (Cheer ft. Large Pro is dope!)


both these artists drums are simple as hell, plain ass drums over loops. just very sampled.
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By es-k Thu Sep 06, 2012 1:30 am
drukqs2369 wrote:
takkin wrote:Thanks for the tip, i'll check out Onra, never heard of him.

Delas got perfect drums to me, phat and old school sounding, but still got that modern polish. (Cheer ft. Large Pro is dope!)


both these artists drums are simple as hell, plain ass drums over loops. just very sampled.



another example of hhow important sample selection/sound selection is compared to complex patterns... its all about the groove, and groove can be vvery, veryyyy simple... and still be dope if it SOUNDS dope.... think thelonious monk lol
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By sirparksalot Thu Sep 06, 2012 4:54 am
-niN wrote:maybe somthin to spark ur creativity..

I remember somone asking how to make more intresting drum (patterns) in here..

Just thought of trying this: Start with the ghost notes :idea:

leave the metronome click on. at 1/4 or 1/8 if you prefer..
1. This is gonna help peeps understand what "swing" means.
2. peeps can understand the % settings in the swing function. because they might be able to hear it better.
( dudes been saying they don't notice any diffrence... ??? )
3. You might come up with mad diffrent rythms u wouldn've thought of otherwise..

Add the down beats and heavy pronounciations afterwards..

brings me to 4: maybe they won't be on the typical counts..

think about it.. try it and post ur results.

Good tip...almost like jazz drumming if you wanna think of it that way...your ride/hihat are laying the rhythm/feel down, kick is following the bass, and the snare is helping accent and follow the horns...
By Faru12 Wed Oct 17, 2012 9:07 am
This is a really good thread. Like going through all these tips and tricks and trying them on my MPC.

I don't know if my tips and tricks are already mentioned, and they are anyway a bit basic, I'm guessing:

1. Stay critical to your mixes, your drums, tunes. If you think you have done it perfect, there's no room for improvement, which can't be right. You will stay motivated, when listening to it critical. You think, I can try this, experiment with that. This really helped me improving my skills in mixing and creating my beat in the MPC.

2. Experiment. Especially in mixing this will help improving very much. Just experiment, listen to it on the headphone on the way to work. When its not sounding right, take it out, or change it. At some point you will get a result you think boooom, that's the shit.

3. NY Compression (already mentioned a few times). This is crazy! Basically just add compression on a side chain and adding it to the track (Drums or Vocals, or whatever).

4. I read a few people saying they chop the drum breaks longer, than they actually wanted, so they don't get annoying pauses between let's say Kick and Snare. It's not the same what I do, but it still gives a really good result: Create a sidechain (FX in my DAW). In my DAW I have space for I think 8 inserts on the FX Track. So I insert a reverb (not a really long one). Second Insert is an EQ set up, to take all the lows out. So the Kick is not giving annoying sound back. Last I add a compression to that insert. So add a small amount of this side chain FX to the whole drum track. Not too much, that its obvious. Just a bit. You will hear the difference really quick.

5. For Mixes: If you got a setup which was working well for one track. Save it down as a template in your DAW. When you go to mix your next track, put it in to the template. From that template start experimenting.

6. I bought me a little notepad. I'm sitting in the train for almost an hour to go to work, I listen to all of my beats during this time. Then I have many ideas what I can change, what I can try,.... Usually I got home and was thinking I had this brilliant idea, but forgot it. Now I write it down in my notepad, so it's there when I go home.


I read many tipps and tricks about drums. But what about the samples? Does anyone know how the guys getting such a nice and warm sound? How they get everything, that it gives you one product, not a track where you can almost here that there are different tracks.


Anyway very nice thread. Cheers guys!
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By astral_Signal Tue Nov 06, 2012 3:47 am
MPC or DAW

1. Parallel Compression: Duplicate sample then compress the hell out of that duplicate, blend in with original sample to taste.

2. EQ Reverb returns: Out of habit I apply simple (not drastic) EQ to my reverb returns. The advantage is I can scoop out unwanted low end, apply a low-cut shelf, or even boost contrasting frequencies to the dry signal.

3. Filter split: Duplicate a program (or audio file), make one program your high-pass filter version, and the duplicate your low-pass filter version. Combine the two, add compression. This will often work best if your samples are in MONO. The real advantage of this technique is you have independent control of both a HI and LO pass version of itself. Add a 3rd program of just the mids and you have even more to funk with. (Thes One is the master of this).

4. Re-create originals: This may or may not be taboo here! When I started out making beats, I would often try to re-create my favorite Hip Hop beats if I had the same samples. The process along the way helps show you how they achieved that particular sound (before mix-down/mastering).