Music Production

Recently I just got the Pulsar Audio 1178. Clean interface with really easy to understand controls and meters, can't believe how readable this is compared to most other plugins. Also has a fun "All ratio" setting and adjustable saturation settings, from clean to clipping and a few in between.

I am like the Toy Story meme of "I don't want to play with you anymore" with all of my other compressor plugins right now.

I don’t think there’s a way to do a proper poll so if you don’t see your DAW mentioned in a top level comment, make the comment to the post. If it’s already listed, maybe just upvote it? That way we can get a representation of what DAWs are more among subscribers here.

I’m curious just because it’s always neat to hear what people use and how, but also to see how possible tuts or techniques can be explained in a way more people will understand. Or provide a variety of examples for various DAWs.

EDIT: Actually, I don’t know the best way to list the ones I use without making a few comments to this post. I’ll just upvote them if I see them listed.

Another great look at the gear and process behind a classic track. I love to hear musicians set the record straight on what techniques they used to achieve iconic sounds.

Edit: the video starts out as a correction/follow-up on a previous video “Nuthin but a G thang” by Dr Dre | Minimoog G funk Lead, but expands beyond that

So not entirely music related, but my don't-use-reddit policy and this looking like the closest not entirely dead community has led me to post sooo...

I have an audio question about recording levels. I'm doing voice-over stuff for some really bad Youtube videos I'd like to make and it never sounds remotely good.

I get that the recording volume should be just the green side of clipping, but how do you take a track, and then add it to other tracks and balance the whole thing to not sound like ass?

It always seems that it's either too loud or too quiet and I'm baffled as to how to tweak the mix correctly so that things sound right.

This is a simple technique that creates a beautiful spread on acoustic guitar. It requires a few things first:

• Acoustic guitar recorded on two tracks.
  • One track with a mic capturing the neck. I like to use a small diaphragm condenser.
  • Another track with a mic capturing the body. I usually go large diaphragm condenser.
  • (or go with some other XY/stereo mic config)
• Two aux channels with a reverb. One aux panned hard left the other panned hard right.

Usually when guitars are mic’d with two mics like this, in the mix you pan them hard left and right. Like body left, neck right.

The trick here is that for the guitar track you pan left, send a bit to the reverb aux panned right. For the track panned right, send to the left reverb aux. What happens is that the reverb will fill the opposing sides and creates a super spacious and wide sound unlike just sending both guitar tracks to one aux. You can get an even better effect if the reverbs each have a slightly different setting. That’s all dependent on the sound you’re going for though.

That’s it! I hope the explanation is not too confusing. If so please let me know so I can clarify any questions. Give it a try!

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/14281466

I've never seen computer keys used in place of piano keys before though I am sure being able to customize the feel of the switches is pretty nice. Are there production midi controllers that do the same?

Feedback welcome. Thanks for checking it out!

Thanks for listening!

Thanks for checking it out!

If you’ve listened to some 90s and early 00s ambient-oriented tracks and tried to recreate their sounds with just a synth, you’ll notice that downsampling and bitcrushing won’t get you the same kind of sound you hear in there. It will sound dull(er) and less… complete, lush, rich? That is because back in the day artists sampled their synths and the technical side of that process had some cool side effects.

You can sample in two different ways. You can sample whole chords, where your parallel harmonies and frequency stretching will combine into a weird but cool sound. Or, on the topic of this video, you can sample an individual note from a synth and have your frequency stretching happen with different magnitudes for every note of the chord. That will create an interesting and rich sound!

This Thought-Forms video will show you an exact how-to with some tips on how to develop that sampler sound once you get the basics. It’s quick, concise and really informative.

I hope you find this technique useful. AMN out!

There are a lot of great stereo imaging tools and spectrum analyzers. Most of them aren't free though. Having a good way to visually analyze loudness, frequency distribution and stereo image is incredibly important. Unfortunately, it is often the case that most default or free solutions are barely functional. They don't provide you with enough information to shape your mix or don't present it in a simple, clear and understandable format. (I'm looking at you, FL studio visualizers!)

SPAN is a spectrum analysis tool that will let you monitor your peak volume, RMS and LUFS. It shows you the frequencies that are passing through the plugin and you can customize the spectrum view by changing time, frequency and level ranges. If you want even more precision and control, you can adjust the fast fourier transform sample size, it gets that technical! You can also compare channels, left and right of the same channel or two different ones. Two channel comparison is the limit of the free version, SPAN Plus allows you to display as many channels as your DAW will allow. It also features a correlation meter that measures your phase alignment (1=fully aligned and -1=completely misaligned). It can also track your loudness stats thoughout the playtime to iron out any kinks. Handy, functional and no-nonsense tool.

MSED is a stereo analysis and encoding tool. It can help you manange your side and mid channels: your stereo image. It comes with a basic set of tools that allows you to pan, change levels, swap left-right channels and flip phase 180 degrees. The visualizers are pretty simple, you have your correlation meter from before, stereo pan meter and plasma-style vector scope. You might think you don't need it if you DAW provides stereo imaging functions of its own, but often times you're going to be playing guessing games in terms of how that audio will actually get processed: some DAWS merge your stereo tracks to mono, some don't. MSED takes care of that ambiguity and puts all of the necessary tools and monitoring in one spot.

These plugins are available in VST, VST3, AU and AAX for free! I really can't recommend them enough if you're starting out producing or are in need of simple tools that won't take a toll on your CPU with fancy advanced processing.

SPAN Product page: https://www.voxengo.com/product/span/

MSED Product page: https://www.voxengo.com/product/msed/

Making a great sounding pad is actually more tricky than getting some cool synth and drowning it in tons of reverb. I know I tried that the first time. And failed miserably. You don't have to!

Will is gonna walk us through different tricks and ideas to flesh out an ambient pad. Using a root tone, texture tones for highs and lows, some effects and simple automations will allow you to create a cool and easily customizeable(!) pad from scratch with any and all wavetables that you want in there!

Hope you find it useful, guys! AMN out!

Dubstep growls may sound like they’re simple, but getting a good growl sound is way more than just distorting some waves to all hell (though it may be a part of it). Using your envelopes and LFOs to shape the sound through filters, distortion and other effects will get quite a bit more complicated.

Noah will show us how to get a high quality, clean and powerful dubstep growl in the style of Virtual Riot, so you can put those skills and ideas to use in your own synth patches.

P.S: My posts will slow down from here on out as I have a bit more going on IRL than I did when I started. This one today is a quickie in between my schedule, but bigger posts will still keep coming and I hope you find it interesting nevertheless!

EQ is a really simple tool, but the way it works is anything but that. Different equalizers use different algorithms to process your audio, and most of them will affect your sound in unexpected ways.

The video will give you an overview on some technical reasons why phase weirdness happens with most EQs and also how an asymmetric EQ setup can give you unexpected Haas effects.

And man, does Sage Audio's video feature some sick beats!

I was looking for some good videos on automation and it surprised me that there’s not a lot of content relating to the decision making process, despite automation being a standard feature in any modern production software.

Automation is an important tool in any music producers kit and learning how to use it well is just as important as arranging your tracks, if not slightly more so for electronic tracks. One could say that in electronic music it is a part of arranging.

There are a lot of fun ways to automate your productions, like creating macro effects for your synths to use as buildups or additional texture. Today though, we’ll take a look at how Fabio from Noize London approaches making transitions, building and releasing tension, and working with emotion through gain automation.

Do you ever feel like you can make a great loop but you can't make a great song? I don't know if that's your experience, but I've been there before, and let me tell you, it's a nightmare. It brings to question all of your skills that you have developed so far, because you've been able to cruise through without thinking about it. But now it just isn't enough! I needed more variety in my tracks.

So if you're like me then this video is just for you. Nathan goes into a key concept about arrangement that will help you think about it in a much more constructive way. Every instrument can be played with different articulation, loudness, rhythm, etc. and it doesn't have to play all the time. So Nathan poses three big questions of arrangement: what is playing, when is it playing and how is it being played?

This video will show you how these questions give you insight into what you were doing subconsciously (and how to answer them in a creative way). It will provide you with a simple thinking process for arrangement decision-making that will ease up some of that tension between hearing the song in your mind and putting it into your DAW. So try it out!

Mixing in mono is one of those production "tricks" that have solidified in my mixing routine to achieve clearer mixes. It's a really easy shortcut to hearing levels and even frequencies of everything in your track without the distraction of stereo imaging. It also helps to figure out phase issues between closely tuned kicks and bass and correct your synth sound design too!

But sometimes the immediate benefit it gives us gets outweighed by a longterm one of improving your critical hearing skills. For example, if you use mono to hear frequency fighting between instruments, you're undercutting your learning experience of properly working with frequencies in stereo. After all, it's not uncommon to pan different instruments asymmetrically. Having stereo means you have two different signals that should be shaped on their own terms.

Michael is going to walk us through some of the things that mixing in mono can be used for and give some perspective on how those particular uses stack up in a more robust or specific production workflow. And, I hope this knowledge helps you in your own productions!

Alright, I've had some time to think about it, and we're gonna be staying open to comments. Sorry if this post upset you earlier, it wasn't my intention to be dramatic (though I understand that I most likely was). I'm not great at these things.. yet. I hope Lemmy's cross-instance communication options improve and we can get a better way to comment on posts between different communities later down the line. For now, we have to put in work to make this community and fediverse grow, so we can have a place to share knowledge and emotions that no corporation will run into the ground for profit.

Contents of this post before the decision was made, for reference:

This is one of those techniques that can really push you over from intermediate to pro. You need a good grasp on compression: what it does to your instruments and how it affects their texture. Parallel compression is simple, yet subtlety is what makes it work, you need good ears for compression for this to work in your favor.

The essence of parallel compression is immediate and delicate control of the different textures in your recordings or even synths. You make a compressor for different elements of the instrument. In drums it is your punches, your transients and sticknoises, your long releases on snares and the color of all noises: bright, muddy, etc. Sometimes a compressor will affect multiple qualities (but not all of them). Then you make your compressors exxagerate the elements you choose separately. Then you mix the compressors in a way that you find pleasing.

That's what I've gotten out of the video and if you want to get a better grasp for the subtleties with apt explanations from Gregory, then that's the spirit! Go watch it! If you can't hear the differences, try increasing your speaker/headphones volume. The effect is subtle so don't go too loud, just enough to hear the differences described. To avoid any potential hearing damage (in case you do go too loud and/or you listen on headphones), limit your loud volume listening to ~15 minutes or so.

How do you mix lots of instruments? Do you balance them all out so you can hear every single one that's playing? Then this one is probably for you!

In this video, Gregory goes into why you should prioritize a couple of melodic instruments in a mix and also how to think about mixing with the listener in mind.

Personally, it's been very helpful for me to formalize what I was already feeling. Sometimes I make a track with a focus on a couple of instruments and sometimes I try to balance everything out. Whenever I balance I feel like the track becomes too overwhelming to listen to and I was tearing my head apart as to why it happens on certain tracks and not the others. Now I know why, and I hope this video helps you on your journey too!