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No. 9
Feb 8, 2005

by R. Guyovich
Are there any good interviews or anything with pop/rock producers listing their general plans of attack, etc.?

I'm trying to get some different viewpoints in production.

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Laserjet 4P
Mar 28, 2005

What does it mean?
Fun Shoe
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/expert-question-answer-archives-read-only-archive-not-open-new-posts/

http://www.soundonsound.com/search?section=%2F&Keyword=Secrets+Of+The+Mix+Engineers

All that doesn't say 'eSub' should be accessible to you.

xpander
Sep 2, 2004

Reposting for new page, being able to reproduce that bass will cheer me up for months.

Pie in the Sky
Apr 16, 2009

whoops here we go again



Pie in the Sky posted:

The bass in Get Down by Jack Beats (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3fh-yZSWoU). Can be heard specifically starting at 1:37.

I can tell it's probably a square with high resonance and a speedy LFO on the cutoff, but I can't seem to replicate the cleanliness of the sound. It's super punchy but no muddiness. How? All I can get are dirty squares that come close but are all yucky with distortion-y type nonsense in the lowend.

Ideas?

Reposting for the same reason as the the guy above me.

IanTheM
May 22, 2007
He came from across the Atlantic. . .

Pie in the Sky posted:

Reposting for the same reason as the the guy above me.

Just experiment with detuning, because the out of phase-ness created my having two oscillators detuned sounds kind of like an LFO anyway.

Pie in the Sky
Apr 16, 2009

whoops here we go again



I tried messing around with that too, but I couldn't get it to sound so clean...

Mr. Belding
May 19, 2006
^
|
<- IS LAME-O PHOBE ->
|
V
I'm trying to recreate this track in Logic as an exercise to get to learn to the program. I worked on it a couple of hours last night and got what I think is a decent start.



The drums are just an 808 kick, with a snap sample from garage band. I think they are pretty close. For bass and the main synth I'm using EFM1. I think these are alright, but certainly not perfect, and I'd like advice on tuning them a little more.

The thing that I couldn't replicate at all is the high pitched warbly pad at the beginning of the song. I'm using the ES2 and tweaked it around a lot and got something I like, but it's definitely not right. It's way off. I don't even know where to start on fixing it. I'm really new to synths.

edit: Oh, and the original has lots of weird slides and tricks with the bass. I haven't really tried to tackle them. :/

Mr. Belding fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Jul 25, 2009

Laserjet 4P
Mar 28, 2005

What does it mean?
Fun Shoe
What you call the "warbly pad" is the EVP88 (e.g. a Fender-Rhodes electric piano) with a tremolo effect :).

If you route an LFO to the amplifier of ES2 you should get something similar. Furthermore, tune your bass drum - the one at the start should be 2 semitones lower. As for the slides - use portamento and just record a few slides as samples. Using audio warp or whatever it's called in Logic, you can cut 'm to size properly. Alternatively, try to automate the coarse tune of the oscillators if that's possible.

Sorry for the late reply, was on a holiday and the iPhone doesn't do Tindeck.

RizieN
May 15, 2004

and it was still hot.
How about this bubbly almost fart like bass sound at the beginning of Yoshimi pt 2?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViB5nnPRuYo

I imagine it should be easy, I just don't quite know where to start

micropenis
Jul 19, 2004
An '04 Mac user from the UK. What's worse?
Sorry if this has been asked hundreds of times but I've always wondered how Trent Reznor / Nine Inch Nails got that sound in Terrible Lie during the bridge/breakdown bit.

You know what I mean:

You make me throw it all away
My morals left to decay
How many you betray
You've taken everything
My head is filled with disease
My skin is begging you please
I'm on my hands and knees
I want so much to believe

*DO DA DO - DA - DO - DA DO* :)

I heard Pretty Hate Machine when I was about 5 years old and that sound has stuck with me for years, I think it's really cool. Especially when played live. They even used a similar sound in Closer live for their LitS tour.

mr_package
Jun 13, 2000

Braggot posted:

Sorry if this has been asked hundreds of times but I've always wondered how Trent Reznor / Nine Inch Nails got that sound in Terrible Lie during the bridge/breakdown bit.

Ring modulator, I think. Source has aliasing so probably some kind of sample either slowed down or sampled on 8- or 12- bit sampler @ 32/24 khz as well.

Laserjet 4P
Mar 28, 2005

What does it mean?
Fun Shoe
Modulate the pitch of a triangle or sinewave oscillator with a pink noise source - but the suggestion of abusing a sampler for this is good, too - it explains why the higher pitched sounds are shorter than the lower pitched ones.

mr_package
Jun 13, 2000

Yoozer posted:

Modulate the pitch of a triangle or sinewave oscillator with a pink noise source - but the suggestion of abusing a sampler for this is good, too - it explains why the higher pitched sounds are shorter than the lower pitched ones.
The aliasing is a dead giveaway: Pretty Hate Machine was made before bit-reduction plug-ins after all. ;-) It's either done on an old 8- or 12-bit unit, or sampled at a low rate.

Or, the initial sample is pitched very very high and it's stepped down 1 or 2 octaves.

I used to do this to squeeze more sample time out of an old sampler: sample at 2x normal speed @ 24khz then step down 12 steps to get back to correct pitch, effectively halving the sample rate to 12khz.

OMGWTFAOLBBQ
May 18, 2008
Something tells me this is really simple, but I can't get it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V775PPuBc7Y

The lead synth from "Riverside" by Sidney Samson.

Make me feel stupid.

Laserjet 4P
Mar 28, 2005

What does it mean?
Fun Shoe
Don't use basic waveforms, use a looped sample. Detune two oscillators (waveforms are left as an exercise for the reader), hold a note for a while, then chop at a place you shouldn't. Put it in a sampler, loop it, see what you get.

Try getting a mix where you hear this sound solo and slow it down with Audacity.

OMGWTFAOLBBQ
May 18, 2008

Yoozer posted:

Don't use basic waveforms, use a looped sample. Detune two oscillators (waveforms are left as an exercise for the reader), hold a note for a while, then chop at a place you shouldn't. Put it in a sampler, loop it, see what you get.

Try getting a mix where you hear this sound solo and slow it down with Audacity.
Haha, well maybe it's not so simple after all. It's so nice though, isn't it? That entire track is built around that riff and it's so sick that it just carries it.

Hmm. Use a looped sample, eh? I think I know what direction you're trying to lead me in. I'll fire up my rig tomorrow and see if I can figure it out.

Thanks.

Toxygen
Jun 19, 2007
Freeing Your Mind (for a small fee)
I have a loop from a collection of loops I purchased along time ago (The Ugly Remnants Volume 1) and I really want to know how to recreate the sound of the keyboard so I don't have to use the loop. Preferably how to make it in Reason.

Here it is:


Any ideas?

mr_package
Jun 13, 2000

Toxygen posted:

I have a loop from a collection of loops I purchased along time ago (The Ugly Remnants Volume 1) and I really want to know how to recreate the sound of the keyboard so I don't have to use the loop. Preferably how to make it in Reason.

Here it is:


Any ideas?

It's an "ACID" style tb303 (or clone) loop. Triangle wave -> resonant filter with portamento ("glide") enabled.

Just grab ReBirth-- it's free now. Or use any of the 303/acid sounds already in Reason.

http://www.rebirthmuseum.com/

GrazoTheClown
Jun 23, 2006
One Man. One Way.
Haven't really read the thread to see if this has been mentioned yet, but.....

Any and all tips to create Atmospheric Pads would be greatly appreciated.

deck
Jul 13, 2006

SeraphSlaughter posted:

I have an Audix D6 and a fairly decent kick drum.

How do I make it sound as ridiculously powerful as the kicks on Veil Of Maya's "The Common Man's Collapse" or Born Of Osiris' "The New Reign"?

example tracks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRIjMVfk3Hg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnfh1wTPH7A

so good

All modern studio metal drum tracks are 100% samples. Anyone that tries to deny this is either the producer protecting his "secret", or a moron.

You can put a telephone on the kick and run SoundReplacer on the track, and get the same result.

Laserjet 4P
Mar 28, 2005

What does it mean?
Fun Shoe

GrazoTheClown posted:

Any and all tips to create Atmospheric Pads would be greatly appreciated.

Buy Omnisphere. Failing that: Layer. Layerlayerlayerlayer. Don't use single synth sounds - use multiple. http://theheartcore.com/music/ni_pads.mp3 stacks multiple plugins - Massive, Absynth and probably something else I forgot about.

Combine sample-based synthesis (ethereal choir sounds) with plain subtractive analog. Vary in volume (using LFO with random waveforms, or periodic waveforms like triangle/sinus out of phase in different tempos during play so the sound evolves.

Resample long, drawn out reverbs - listen to http://theheartcore.com/music/reresample.mp3 (which is a synth chord with reverb where the tail is resampled, looped, and resampled after reverb, again).

Don't be afraid to stack 3 or 4 plugins, each with entirely their own FX chain, on top of eachother.

Computer Jones
Jun 22, 2005

mr_package posted:

It's an "ACID" style tb303 (or clone) loop. Triangle wave -> resonant filter with portamento ("glide") enabled.

The 303 has a saw waveform and a weird M-shaped "square" wave or something, but not a triangle.

Don't forget distortion/overdrive, too!

mr_package
Jun 13, 2000

Computer Jones posted:

The 303 has a saw waveform and a weird M-shaped "square" wave or something, but not a triangle.
Oh yeah, that's what I meant though.

usualhandle
Dec 29, 2007
Nothing special about this handle.
Hey, how do I get this sound:



It's a sample from a DRTRON mixtape, and I know it's a reverbed, filter swept, trance synth lead, but I can't get it out of my alesis ion to save my life. should I be using PCM wave forms? Synced oscillators?

I have a electribe MX also that can do a host of fun PCM waveforms and has better onboard effects than the alesis, but it can't do craaaaazy signal routing, I guess I could chain them and get the reverb out of the electribe and the nice signal routing from the ion.

Anyway, any help would be appreciated.

nah thanks
Jun 18, 2004

Take me out.

usualhandle posted:

Hey, how do I get this sound:


That's Mars by Fake Blood. I'm pretty sure he's using a sampler, not a synth there. So he plays the notes on a synth, resamples it, loads it into a sampler, and away he goes.

usualhandle
Dec 29, 2007
Nothing special about this handle.

squidgee posted:

That's Mars by Fake Blood. I'm pretty sure he's using a sampler, not a synth there. So he plays the notes on a synth, resamples it, loads it into a sampler, and away he goes.

Hrmn, well that's cool. I couldn't figure out who dr tron had sampled so I couldn't do anything other than try to recreate the sound by ear. Listening to the song in the original tempo and all that it sounds JP-ish. I'll have to try the Ion's Roland filter mode and some synchronous oscillators when I get home.

Do you mean that Fake Blood samples a synth sound, screws with it in some way and then plays it across the scale or that some sound is sampled and played?

Laserjet 4P
Mar 28, 2005

What does it mean?
Fun Shoe
I'd say that they're even sampling an entire fragment of a track.

But yeah, that's called resampling and it's a common trick. The reason every chord sounds different is because they pitched stuff up and down - besides the pitch, the equalizer "profile" (for a lack of better description) moves up and down, too. This is most obvious when sampling acoustic instruments; a single piano note in the middle of the keyboard will sound dull when it's transposed down and bright when it's transposed up.

If you want to emulate this, the most obvious route would to construct each chord separately and use agressive EQing to boost and cut parts - and differently for every chord.

usualhandle
Dec 29, 2007
Nothing special about this handle.

Yoozer posted:

I'd say that they're even sampling an entire fragment of a track.

But yeah, that's called resampling and it's a common trick. The reason every chord sounds different is because they pitched stuff up and down - besides the pitch, the equalizer "profile" (for a lack of better description) moves up and down, too. This is most obvious when sampling acoustic instruments; a single piano note in the middle of the keyboard will sound dull when it's transposed down and bright when it's transposed up.

If you want to emulate this, the most obvious route would to construct each chord separately and use agressive EQing to boost and cut parts - and differently for every chord.

Hrmn

So I need to get a nice juicy unison lead going through a TB or JP lowpass filter, then run it through a bandpass(or limit, whatever.) filter whose frequency is being modulated by a BPM synced LFO?

Or I could just have the band filter track the keys more than normal and have that take the place of the modulation.

Would that even get close?

Sarah Cenia
Apr 2, 2008

Laying in the forest, by the water
Underneath these ferns
You'll never find me
I've always wondered how the texture of the guitars was achieved in the Nine Inch Nails song, "Mr. Self Destruct". To me, it truly is the "saw-like guitar" that people so often use when describing songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wExEP0n-FX0&fmt=18
(the part in question starts at :19 and ends at :41)

The few times I've been able to find information on it, I remember it being described as actual guitar playing being recorded that was then "treated" afterward, but there was never any further information -- so really, anything you could give me would be very interesting.

AircraftNoise
May 9, 2008
Ive been listening to a lot of Radiohead and Ive taken notice of their use of the Ondes Martenot. Are these any VST plugins or whatnot that can recreate that eerie, floaty sound?

Buying an actual Ondes is out of the question, as they are rare and expensive.

pelswick
Jul 29, 2006

i dont care about report card
I ONLY CARE ABOUT GUITAR
just slap a bunch of glide, vibrato, and a long attack and release on your synth and you're set

Computer Jones
Jun 22, 2005

Any idea how I can make replicate this lovely pad sound?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBwUJMZNOgQ#t=1m56s

I get that it's probably synth strings with a load of reverb, but I'm having trouble getting it right.

Jesse James
Oct 11, 2009

IchiGO?
First post on SA, first post in ML, and I have to say this forum is AWESOME! VERY informative.

So I've been producing for about 3 years or so and been DJing for almost 2. I'm not too sure if you gents and ladies are familiar with Treasure Fingers or Kill The Noise. If you haven't heard of them, please cram these in your earholes:

Treasure Fingers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5J2BFXgLL0

Kill The Noise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdsXiygFNdI

I am currently trying to incorporate both sounds into my mixes and production, but I'm having a monumentally hard time with a particular sound:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3K13DcFR9I

It starts about 15 seconds in and pitches with the song. It's almost like a droning sound, but not really. It's like the uplifting backup.

Jesse James fucked around with this message at 08:57 on Oct 14, 2009

theflyingexecutive
Apr 22, 2007

Jesse James posted:

I am currently trying to incorporate both sounds into my mixes and production, but I'm having a monumentally hard time with a particular sound:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3K13DcFR9I

It starts about 15 seconds in and pitches with the song. It's almost like a droning sound, but not really. It's like the uplifting backup.

poo poo, someone will be able to tell you for sure, but it's a really simple square (and something else) waveform with glide and some reverb action on it.

Jesse James
Oct 11, 2009

IchiGO?

theflyingexecutive posted:

poo poo, someone will be able to tell you for sure, but it's a really simple square (and something else) waveform with glide and some reverb action on it.

I thought the same, but I'm having a problem with the square. I've added reverb to the line 6 mixer in Reason, and I'm just not getting the same sound. :/ I'm close, but not at the proper pitch or volume.

Ghosts n Gopniks
Nov 2, 2004

Imagine how much more sad and lonely we would be if not for the hard work of lowtax. Here's $12.95 to his aid.
Found another sound I want to re-create, the bubbly (probably chorused) lead 2m48s into http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7itqjWKbU4

Any immediate clues come to mind? Wish my EA1 was cool enough to replicate it.

wayfinder
Jul 7, 2003

MrLonghair posted:

Found another sound I want to re-create, the bubbly (probably chorused) lead 2m48s into http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7itqjWKbU4

Any immediate clues come to mind? Wish my EA1 was cool enough to replicate it.

Try a square wave, FM modulated, with portamento enabled (edit: actually not sure if that's correct but listen to the youtube below). I think the default preset in the Pro53 VSTi is quite close to what you want.

edit: this sound http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVw5EaWHovc

wayfinder fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Nov 11, 2009

mr_package
Jun 13, 2000

MrLonghair posted:

Found another sound I want to re-create, the bubbly (probably chorused) lead 2m48s into http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7itqjWKbU4

Any immediate clues come to mind? Wish my EA1 was cool enough to replicate it.

1. harmonized lead / arpeggio panned left / right
2. mono / lead (one note at a time)
3. portamento (glide)
4. short but pronounced filter envelope "hits" when the player retriggers the portamento

Not sure about the wave form but it's nothing special, just a basic analog lead type sound. It's very bright though. I can't tell if that's due to filter characteristics / resonance or just oscillator timbre or EQ.

It also may be highpass filter instead of standard 303-y lowpass.

Because it's Dream Theater they are probably doing something much more fancy to get that "exact" sound (especially regards to the filter envelope behaviour) but the above is the basics and should get a reasonable facsimile.

edit: what wayfinder said, in other words, sorry.

bionictom
Mar 17, 2009
(presumably) easy to figure out, but i'm a noob when it comes to sound programming.

I really like the Bass in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXMdKE5K9Ks

Can you point me in the right direction?

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pelswick
Jul 29, 2006

i dont care about report card
I ONLY CARE ABOUT GUITAR

bionictom posted:

(presumably) easy to figure out, but i'm a noob when it comes to sound programming.

I really like the Bass in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXMdKE5K9Ks

Can you point me in the right direction?

my guess is two slightly overdriven octaved square waves

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