Tips on more brutal/thick tracks?

[samdam1]

None of my synths/bass/drums or final mix down are ever filled out or thick or brutal enough. Please give me as many tips as you can!

Thanks in advance!

[Skrew]

Add more layers, widen the sounds, use stereo, ect. There are many things you could do.

[amphibian]

easiest thing to do is have your basslines take up 2 or 3 octaves. Thickens them up a lot - read the bass creation tips top of this forum.

[legend4ry]

Why would you want your music to sound brutal - last time I read the definition of brutal it would be your want your music to sound painful? Well thats not going to sell records or make anyone happy.



If you want your music to sound more full and crisp then........

1) Make sure you're filling up frequencies while having the sounds you're playing sitting in frequency bands which make them boom. If a sound is great on its own but sounds poo in the mix then you have freq-clashing, correct EQ and/or filtering will sort this out.

2) If you want to beef up sounds, use correct plugins for the job - Exciters, colourful compressors and saturators/distortion will do this but don't over-do it. I recently discovered that 90% of sounds won't sound crisp, clean and professional unless you're using correct signal chains with correct plugins.

Stereo width plugins are shit - i'm sorry but they are, if a sound has more than one layer, bounce them individually and pan them to different sides slightly, maybe automate the pan on your DAW - I find you'll always run into problems with bloating everything with stereo width plugins.

Being within the digital realm you'll be lucky to build a synth patch what sounds perfect without some sort of analogue emulation, multi-sample usage or extra processing.

3) LEARN HOW TO USE REVERB PROPERLY : I have listened to so many tracks where if people just added some subtle - short room reverb on a bus, took out all the low end and had it in the middle of mix it'll do a world of wonders.

4) Good sample choices from the start.

5) PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE... Ive been making music for nearly 6 years and only JUST within the last 6-8 months feel like its starting to sound how I want it to in my head.

[zerbaman]

u need teh bais and deh big 200hz snare famalamadingdong!

[Dystinkt]

sometimes it can come to things like good sample selection like leg said, in fact pretty much what leg said.

[Skrew]

Stereo width plugins are shit - i'm sorry but they are, if a sound has more than one layer, bounce them individually and pan them to different sides slightly, maybe automate the pan on your DAW - I find you'll always run into problems with bloating everything with stereo width plugins.

I like using them on vocal samples and pads. There not all bad, I really like the one Adobe Audition 3 comes with.

[Ldizzy]

Cosign on the Width plugins are shit... most of them are a patch for a lack of understanding of the panpot...

[amphibian]

I thought there were some good ones out there that really did create some awesome FX.etc?

[legend4ry]

^ I'd use it for creative reasons but not for engineering - personally!

[amphibian]

^ I'd use it for creative reasons but not for engineering - personally!

Ah yes, right. I understand the sentiment above now

[bassinine]

Make an audio track recieving signal from your bass track, band pass, tube dist, chorus and reverb. Any phase modulation plugins work well for adding percieved width to the sound. can try this in addition to what has been said already, you should make some progress.

[RandoRando]

Make an audio track recieving signal from your bass track, band pass, tube dist, chorus and reverb. Any phase modulation plugins work well for adding percieved width to the sound. can try this in addition to what has been said already, you should make some progress.

Your talking midrange bass right?

[bassinine]

yeah, i was. however, you can do this to a drum track too, put a slow lfo on a phaser/flanger/filters and get some interesting results... or on pads and leads.

have to tweak the filters a bit... but as long as you don't do this to the sub and kick it should be fine.

[tavravlavish]

3) LEARN HOW TO USE REVERB PROPERLY : I have listened to so many tracks where if people just added some subtle - short room reverb on a bus, took out all the low end and had it in the middle of mix it'll do a world of wonders.

Hah I'm the king of abusing reverb, 20 second reverbs for liffeee... I love smothering things in da verrbbb.

[tavravlavish]

lately if something doesn't sound fat enough, I'll stick a saturation/distortion on it, and mess with the volume, so basically turn the volume down and add a lot of subtle distortion. The overdrive plugin in logic usually does the trick, or the taltube.

[jaimelee]

lately if something doesn't sound fat enough, I'll stick a saturation/distortion on it, and mess with the volume, so basically turn the volume down and add a lot of subtle distortion. The overdrive plugin in logic usually does the trick, or the taltube.

Agree in principle but on Ableton too.

Cheap and easy method = Distort like crazy, add own choice effects then bounce into a return and add again own choice effects. Baddaboom! nice and thick

[raige]

the #1 rule/tip of this forum is never ask how to make a more "brutal" dubstep tune. and a VERY close second is never ask how to put screamo vocals in a dub track. those two words do not go with the word dub and should never be used in the same paragraph. EVER.

[jaimelee]

the #1 rule/tip of this forum is never ask how to make a more "brutal" dubstep tune. and a VERY close second is never ask how to put screamo vocals in a dub track. those two words do not go with the word dub and should never be used in the same paragraph. EVER.

That is very very true.. for dub. This is dubstep which is expanding out further each day into new things. Without new concepts it would have grown to what it is today. Granted some of it is horrible sounding, the achievements in understanding and methods is amazing.

[raige]

the #1 rule/tip of this forum is never ask how to make a more "brutal" dubstep tune. and a VERY close second is never ask how to put screamo vocals in a dub track. those two words do not go with the word dub and should never be used in the same paragraph. EVER.

That is very very true.. for dub. This is dubstep which is expanding out further each day into new things. Without new concepts it would have grown to what it is today. Granted some of it is horrible sounding, the achievements in understanding and methods is amazing.

well I was actually referring to dubstep as well, I just called it dub for short (my mistake I know dub is the classic sub heavy while dubstep is more for the wobs). I'm sorry, I'm all for experimenting and pushing the boundaries of 'genres' but screamo/brutal music and dubstep is just going to turn into another mainstream piece of shit. dubstep is electronic music, not metal or anything like it.