Discuss the various methods you use in music production, from compressor settings to equipment type.
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By Gstachz Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:08 pm
Sometimes when i make beats on my MPC they sound really cluttered. Is that the EQ or Mono/Stereo settings. I only have like 5 or 6 tracks per beat and they sound not right. Like too many sounds, even though it isnt that many. Any help or tips??????? :?: :?: :?: :?: :?: :x
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By Smoove03 Thu Oct 14, 2004 7:13 pm
adjust your volumes.

do ALL of your beats sound that way? maybe you should change where your placing your instruments. maybe the way your playing the melodies are cluttered. may be the effects you put on your tracks.

also try adjusting the decay setting on some of your samples. maybe the samples you use have a long tail on them and they bleed together. i dont know. i would check the volumes.
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By trupro Thu Oct 14, 2004 8:03 pm
Smoove got it right. You also had a good answr within your original question. If everything don;t sound good the way it is, try keeping kick/snare/hat & bass center, and various levels of stereo wideness on synths and keyboards. Samples should be panned the way they came from the record, which is 100 wide on both sides for a true stereo field, or else you may have phasing occur. Sometimes, you can create space if the sample sounds good panned dead center on L & R, as long as it don;t phaze out. Also, smoove touched on the writing having alot to do with the pocket. Like, the beat may not require a complex bassline, but you put one in, and then it's od'ing. That being said, a huge cause for the clutter is also poor tuning. COuld be one, or many, instruments or samples, and they could be a little or alot off. But if so, you gonna get a hank-shocklee-public-enemy-on-crack-supermess that needs some cleaning up. Do what he say. Start wit dat panning, and truncation. Also, chops in a succession on the same outputs should cut eachother off. Pad1 plays, then you het pad 2, and you want it to cut the previous, and so-on down the line. To do that, go to parameters, hit a pad, open window on the mono/poly/note off field, and move th cursor down to one of the two slots. Hit the pad before it, and it appears as one of two that can be cut off with the pad you are editing. DOn;t forget to move to the top feild again before hitting another pad to make it a cuttof, or you change the one it's having this effect on, rather than the one that executes it. I'm rambling. Check the manual if you use the MPC. This is the ish tho', and you can skip being anal about the end points of truncation, long as you know what order you wanna paly them out and cut them off in.
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By ieism Thu Oct 14, 2004 9:59 pm
You gotta make not too many sounds take up the same frequency. For instance: a heavy bassdrum can struggle for room with a bassline cause they're largely in the same freq. range. So to compensate, you cut some of the low of the kick, in fact this goes for all instruments that are not intended to be bass.
A lot of instruments overlap too, and when you add vocals things get even more cluttered.
I've printed this out and hung it on the wall in my studio:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Aug01/a ... d32b92159e

By lo-fi Sun Oct 17, 2004 1:32 pm
I know for many people it's the way they program their rhythms that causes this problem. Rests are key. Try not to fill every bit of space there is with a sound. You'd be surprised how much silence there is in many good hiphop beats.
Also, try not to 'play a little rhythm' with every drumsound; triggering it once or twice every 2 bars is enough for a lot of things. More complicated is not always better.

Maybe if you post an example we could hear what the problem is.
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By Gstachz Mon Aug 29, 2005 4:05 pm
thanx but i guess i dont really understand how to "center" my bass or drums. lately my bass seems to mesh with alot of the other crap in my sequences. is this because i need to eq bass better? how do i center stuff?

By The Beat Conductor Mon Aug 29, 2005 9:31 pm
ieism wrote:You gotta make not too many sounds take up the same frequency.


You have to find a good balance with all ur sounds.
By arocdadialectic Mon Aug 29, 2005 11:24 pm
If you have four or five instruments competing for space in a 4 bar loop or even a 8 bar loop, you sound can become muddled.

I noticed a while back that if if I comped on my piano track, had a guitar strumming on a track, as well as organ or strings in a relatively short loop, the whole thing started to sound like a wall of sound rather than a cohesive piece.

Instruments need space to breathe.

Check out the way Dre's camp or Scott Storch use their instruments (patches or live) efficiently.

Peace
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By Antonym Tue Aug 30, 2005 1:32 pm
popular music is alllll overcompressed these days. DO NOT BE AFRAID of setting the levels so low on some stuff that you can barely hear it. this creates a much richer sonic fabric. take a melody that you think should be subtle and TURN IT DOWN. your listeners will hear it but they won't know thatt they hear it. however, if it was missing, they'd know.
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By Smoove03 Tue Aug 30, 2005 1:52 pm
Antonym wrote:your listeners will hear it but they won't know thatt they hear it. however, if it was missing, they'd know.


very true!!