The Friday Share A Production Tip Thread™

[frankiegrimes]

1) When making drums: Make your drum loop, then double the length and copy it over. Tweak a few things the second time around, and put it a little fill. Repeat.

2) Download this: http://www.kvraudio.com/db/valhallafreq ... lhalla_dsp

3) Never upload something to the internet without having listened to it on at least 3 different systems, and preferably a few days apart.

4) Record your own drum samples. Decent microphones can be got for under €100, and it'll completely improve your sound, and give you your own sound. Lightswitches, knives, glasses etc can be used to make clicks and hits instead of generic Vengeance samples.

5) Don't get DAW/plug-in/equipment envy. Learn what you have inside out before upgrading, and remember that huge tunes like Hyph Mngo have been made on budget set-ups.

6) Put a resonator on a snare. Instant synth sound. Tweak the filters/frequencies to carve your sound.

[wub]

3) Never upload something to the internet without having listened to it on at least 3 different systems, and preferably a few days apart.

Amazing tip.

[Ldizzy]

For a simple drum fattening tip, try copying your kick channel and move the hits down one octave. Mess around with EQ etc to find the sweet spot.

how did i never think of that!?

[jrisreal]

Don't ever look down on your own productions...that is one of the biggest enemies of progress IMO.

[Ldizzy]

1) put distortion on everything (well.. u know) ... try it... there is more then gritt to distortion and it can be rather subtle and musical... certain itb mixing engineers use distortion plugins on each channel to emulate hardware preamplified desk inputs... (it works i swear).

2) They do Notepad plugins for ur favourite daw if it doesnt have a cool one included with... u just put it in ur channel strip as an insert effect and u can open a text editor where u can put notes for further usage...

3)try to move stuff out the center of ur mixes, namely, verb.

[Manic Harmonic]

1) put distortion on everything (well.. u know) ... try it... there is more then gritt to distortion and it can be rather subtle and musical... certain itb mixing engineers use distortion plugins on each channel to emulate hardware preamplified desk inputs... (it works i swear).

2) They do Notepad plugins for ur favourite daw if it doesnt have a cool one included with... u just put it in ur channel strip as an insert effect and u can open a text editor where u can put notes for further usage...

3)try to move stuff out the center of ur mixes, namely, verb.

When you say distortion, are you referring to an overdrive type of distortion, or maybe something like the phase disortion in logic? I saw in a masterclass video that calyx and teebee use this technique with their analog board. I really need to get a mixer so I can use an I/0 for my guitar pedals...

Thanks for the notepad tip btw, I've seen some of those plugins and I think its time to get one. Im tired of using dashboard and textedit.

EDIT: Ldizzy, what notepad plugin are you using? I downloaded AUnotes and it crashed validation on startup, so I opened the audio unit manager and then logic crashed. I can't get it to work. Is it PPC only or something? It's the only one I could find.

[Toric]

Thanks for making me post this here, mods.

Keep a notepad next to your bed before you go to sleep so you can write down your thoughts as you wake up.

Good night
-T

[wub]

2) They do Notepad plugins for ur favourite daw if it doesnt have a cool one included with... u just put it in ur channel strip as an insert effect and u can open a text editor where u can put notes for further usage...

This weekend, trying to get my mixdown sorted, I swear by this one. Fruity Notepad on the Master with a breakdown of the changes I did to each of the 15 ( ) versions I tried before nailing the final one

[Manic Harmonic]

anyone know of a good notepad plugin besides aunotes?

also, in the same vein of keeping a notepad next to your bed, text yourself ideas whenever you have one. even if you dont end up using them in your current song, if your phone saves your texts for a long enough period of time you can go back through them and get a little inspiration if you have writers block or something.

[S1NTH3TIC]

notepad plugin, works on mac and PC

http://www.meldaproduction.com/freevstp ... otepad.php

[Ldizzy]

i use the Melda one... it comes free from their website... i dont use their other plugins .. idk why but they dont inspire me.. maybe im sleepin on something.. but anyways, their notepad does it.. as the AUnote one gave me a hard time too.... crashes logic everytime

[tavravlavish]

3) Never upload something to the internet without having listened to it on at least 3 different systems, and preferably a few days apart.

Amazing tip.

Does this still totally apply to people who don't have pro monitors and use headphones to mix? either way it'd be helpful and this is a good tip but I produce on decent headphones (until I get enough money to get pro monitors) so I kinda just do my best with what I have (skill and my headphones) and then just upload it. I do have a couple of other ways to check my mixes (speakers and lower quality headphones) but I mostly just don't bother. I can't want to get monitors so my mixes get more legit and people will start taking my productions more seriously (don't think that is the exact word I'm looking for but oh well)

I've kinda given up on good mixes and spend more time on what I'm making. lower quality mixes but more time spent on being creative/interesting and having good style.

[O Captain]

Quick tip about getting a nasty dubstep bass (This is basic stuff).
1. Find a gritty mid-range bass
2. Copy that track and pitch it down an octave
3. Use a fat sub-bass sound on the new track
4. Copy the bass pattern onto a newer track
5. Pitch it up 2 or 3 octaves
6. Use a scratchy lead synth
7. Blend the 3 tracks to taste

Simple, and easy.

[wub]

3) Never upload something to the internet without having listened to it on at least 3 different systems, and preferably a few days apart.

Amazing tip.

Does this still totally apply to people who don't have pro monitors and use headphones to mix?

I'd say yes, but only because I remember making tunes waaaaay back when I first had FL5 and getting them to sound "good" on my computer speakers, then listening back to them in my car and them sounding like complete arse.

I've kinda given up on good mixes and spend more time on what I'm making. lower quality mixes but more time spent on being creative/interesting and having good style.

Sound quality will always play second fiddle to innovation IMO.

[wub]

I posted this elsewhere but it's such a good tip...

- In FL, set yourself a sampler channel, load a sample in (doesn't matter what), then adjust the Cross Fader (CRF) dial so that it loops a very small section of the sample.
- You can now 'play' your looped sample using the MIDI keyboard/piano roll, to have the loop going up and down through the notes as you do to create a stuttering effect to be played over the beat. Adjust to taste where you want the start/end points to be.
- You can also try this with granulizer to adjust the pitch without altering the speed.
- Add effects to taste.

[Manic Harmonic]

Someone might have already posted this, but here's a trick I used in my current wip right now for some frequencies that were clashing. basically i had some short vocal samples scattered throughtout the verse that were clashing with a pad, and cutting out certain frequencies on the pad just made it sound like shit.
Here's what I did:

-bounced the pad down to audio, made 2 tracks.
-inverted the phase of the second track and use an eq peak to push up the frequencies that were clashing.
-put a noise gate on the phase-inverted track, sidechained to the vocals
-adjusted the volume on the phase-inverted track until the tone change on the pad wasn't noticablle, but just enough to keep it from clashing with the vocals.

so now everytime you hear the vocals, it's cancelling out that frequency on the pad. worked wonderfully.

[Perfecture]

A few of my tips and things I do:

-For fatter sounding basslines (NOT SUBS) layer 2 or ever 3 different sounds. Make sure you EQ correctly so that there are no clashes.

-Dont be scared of layering (drums, basses etc) more than you think or more than people say you should, there are NO written rules in production, you should achieve the sound you want YOUR way. for example my Snare sound that I now use for all my tracks which took me a while to get as I had a certain sound I wanted uses 4 different snare sounds. I have 1 low 2 mid and 1 high. This may sound like alot of snares but It has achieved the sound I wanted and I have eq'd correctly so there are no clashes or phasing. For My kick I have a similar setup but use 3 kick samples.

-For fatter Snare sounds try using little to no reverb at all. Although reverb can make things sound bigger space wise, it can really take away the punch and fatness of a sound.

-BUY MONITORS if you haven't already

-Notch out the 200hz frequency as narrow as possible on sounds that don't need this range, to leave more room for the snare to punch through the mix.

[victor w]

-Dont be scared of layering (drums, basses etc) more than you think or more than people say you should, there are NO written rules in production, you should achieve the sound you want YOUR way. for example my Snare sound that I now use for all my tracks which took me a while to get as I had a certain sound I wanted uses 4 different snare sounds. I have 1 low 2 mid and 1 high. This may sound like alot of snares but It has achieved the sound I wanted and I have eq'd correctly so there are no clashes or phasing. For My kick I have a similar setup but use 3 kick samples.

This is common, but newer producers never seem to do this! But yeah, my kick alone can easily be 5 or 6 samples. But I mainly make house, so it's important to make sure the drums are pretty enough to be played alone.

And is it weird that I literally sidechain every single thing (even in my dubstep)? Or is this normal..

[tylerblue]

-Notch out the 200hz frequency as narrow as possible on sounds that don't need this range, to leave more room for the snare to punch through the mix.

Not all snares hit at 200hz

[cmgoodman1226]

A tip to get instant fat drums:

Make your beat as you would normally and once you've got it as you'd like make a copy of each track, the kick, snare, hats, shakers e.t.c.

Make a reverb aux send and send the reverb to each of the copy tracks, also add some compression to taste. The idea is to get the copy tracks to sound unrealistically big and squashed and washy.

Next insert a gate on each copy track that's keyed to open as the hits from the original track for that instrument's amplitude goes over a threshold (basically side-chained), mess with the timings/threshold on the gates.

This immediately fattens up the drums as the overly compressed/reverb version are only outputting audio in keeping with their non reverb/compressed counterparts. The effect is almost inaudible but adds considerable punch and width to hits without sonically altering them to an overly noticeable degree.

Of course mess around with wether you actually use reverb or compression and to which degree for each, or more of course, add different effects to the copied versions and mess with them as you see fit.

The central idea of keying the copied counterpart track to open in keeping with its unaltered version keeps the timing tight for the hits, so within that envelope you have room to screw with the dynamics of the audio to get some interesting effects.

Its like side-chain compression, in reverse...

check it out.

Sorry if I'm sounding like a newb here, but how exactly do you "insert a gate"? I completely understand what you are doing but I have no idea how to do it.