DSF Q&A Sessions Vol.16 : DJ MADD

[madd]

ok, well, mr Madd I have a Q for you my man. I see you use the sidechain with the kick and sub, presumably to keep those peeks under control. Now whats you take on the sidechain setup, are you keeping the attack and releae as short as possible? When I keep em very short I get the typical popping sound every now and then where a little oscilation is left stunted as it kicks in or fades back out. Ive tried various things to sort it out, and I can iron out a lot of it, but I can never get it 100% smooth. So the question is do you get the same pops/blips on your setup, and if so do you try and adjust things to get rid of them like upping the attack etc or do you just leave them in and let the kick mask any little blips that occur as the sidehcain ducks the sub?

ez!

I think I only touch the treshold on the sidechain plugin and even that doesn't happen too often, i tend to find the standard setting working pretty alright most of the times.
i don't get pops blips but when the sub is ducked it can sound a bit distorted due to the weird volume change but a little adjustment on the treshold usually fixes that for me
Trying not to push the loudness too much these days and the extra headroom does make a lot of things easier and it sounds much much better so you might get rid of pops if you just pull back the master?

[madd]

>: )

What are your favourite sample packs for drums? And do you spend time processing individual hits and making samples as opposed to doing it whilst you're writing a tune? I've worded that horribly lol but i think you'll know what i'm getting at.

Do you practice mixing? And what do you prefer - the process of making music or the buzz when you drop it live?

And finally, tell us your favourite joke atm... sure it'll be hilarious.

sup james

Recently I built a little folder of my favourite things from various samples cds / samples I recorded myself and my favourite 808 packs. From the popular ones I guess the vengeance drums are alright if you can layer them wisely and there were some nice funk breakbeat packs floating around which can be perfect for that.

I had some shitty numark decks back in the days when I practiced mixing almost every day for years and after I got my first pair of technics that thing sort of died out. Not sure why but I guess when I'm home alone making a tune is more interesting for me. Dropping my tunes for the first time in front of a decent crowd is always a big buzz but I do get hyped when I'm on the tunes and think an idea is standing out of the rest :)


Ok this one works better when telling it in person but you'll get the idea

A guy from Australia moves to England and has trouble driving the car, after almost crashing into someone the other driver shouts at him
- Oi mate you came here to die ?
- Nah I came here yestaday.

[In The Shadows]

cheers for the reply

[Jak The lad]

Thanks for doing this.

I've only recently found out about your tracks and they are right my my street.

Are you able to share a screen shot of one of your tracks in your sequencer? Be good to see how you work.

alright been out in the last 3 days but im back! : )
here you go mate, a screenshot of The Battle which is forthcoming on Wheel & Deal (audio on myspace)

Large, thanks for this

[syrup]

i forgot this

is "so far away" coming out?


and
i'm quite intrigued, inspired by the topic that popped in the production a while ago, what's the strangest/most unconventional producing technique you have ever used?

[Grace]

Hiya. Props for doing this man.

I haven't been producing long, and i always get days of doubt. Did production come to you naturally or did you have a to work at it like the most of us? And do you ever look back on your first tunes(if you still have them)?

Thanks again.

[kuklee]

nagy fel madd.

[madd]

i forgot this

is "so far away" coming out?


and
i'm quite intrigued, inspired by the topic that popped in the production a while ago, what's the strangest/most unconventional producing technique you have ever used?

no idea man, that was one of the tunes i tought thats going to get picked up quick and it didn't, oh well one day i have to do my own freeizm i guess : )

I don't think i have any strange techniques nowadays (apart from putting everything together in audio i guess) but when i was playing around with fl studio for the first time i remember having fun how you can pitch up and down the whole project. I made some alright samples with putting kicks / percussions / random samples on rapid repeat with some crazy high bpm and exported it out to use in kontakt or whatever.

[madd]

Hiya. Props for doing this man.

I haven't been producing long, and i always get days of doubt. Did production come to you naturally or did you have a to work at it like the most of us? And do you ever look back on your first tunes(if you still have them)?

Thanks again. :)

Ez

Actually my very first plan was to make music instead of dj-ing but when I started to check out how things are done I figured I might aswell start the dj thing too cause this will take some time.
It really depends on how much time you put into it. I had a solid year of Cubase running in the background 24-7 and I was on it, but to be honest I probably still don't use 70-80% of it's potential.
Was def a lot of time but then again when I started on the older software like fast tracker and buzz (uh memories) I didn't really care or know about the whole mixdown thing so I wasted a few years
probably on just putting bad tunes together hehe.

I do have a few of the old tracker tunes and those are awful! If you mean the first proper tunes then yeah I do check those out sometimes.
Trying to pull myself back in the state where I just didn't know what I'm doing around the 140ish world and those tracks remind me of that I guess:)

[kuklee]

This might sound a lil bit insane and it's not production related...but was it hard to adapt to bristol's lifestyle after moving there from budapest?
Also what were the thoughts behind this action?

[madd]

This might sound a lil bit insane and it's not production related...but was it hard to adapt to bristol's lifestyle after moving there from budapest?
Also what were the thoughts behind this action?

It wasn't too hard. I was lucky cause I met a crew who helped me out from day1 and I ended up moving in with them. Special thanks to Phaeleh for that, I'm sure the whole Bristol experience wouldn't have been the same if he doesn't help me get settled.

The whole point of the move was to push the music and I think it worked out in the end. I met the Black Box crew who are my biggest supporters now and my main label and living in the same city can't be compared to a random blinking window on aim. In 2011 I will be flying back and forth more often as I'm renting a place in Budapest which will be my main little studio. Unfortunately no matter how much I like England at the moment I don't have a chance to get my own flat and I really need the freedom of being able to make beats whenever I want to without having to worry that I'm pissing someone off who wants to sleep :)
A couple of extra plane tickets do the job so I'm still able to do the gigs + spend the extra time with family and friends and have my own place back home

[kuklee]

niceone...hope it works out great.

[Grace]

I'll ask another then . You say you pretty much mostly work in audio, does this limit you in anyway because wouldn't the sound or melody you're after has to be already made instead of making it yourself? and are your drums in audio too?

Thanks again.


Grace,

[madd]

I'll ask another then :). You say you pretty much mostly work in audio, does this limit you in anyway because wouldn't the sound or melody you're after has to be already made instead of making it yourself? and are your drums in audio too?

Thanks again.


Grace,

Hi Grace

I used Kontakt first before moving on to audio so I know what I'm missing out on. I'm not sure what you mean about the sound has to be made already, when you load an audio sample into an audio track you can still process it add effects pitch it and pretty much do anything you want with it just like in Kontakt for example but for me it's much faster this way. The melody is defo a bit more hassle than just writing something in midi, but then again I'm not after too difficult melodies so I pretty much just duplicate and pitch to the notes I want. I really like it this way, for example different notes can be on different channels which means a note can have completely different effects within a simple melody. I'm sure this can be done in Kontakt but having a channel duplicating it and just removing / adding effects makes more logic to me and it defo helped my workflow.

The drums were in audio from day1. I load in the individual hits and build up my drums from there :)

[Disco Nutter]

Quantization?

[madd]

Quantization? :)

What do you mean?:)

[Disco Nutter]

Do you quantize all your drums, do you use some kind of swing, etc...

[madd]

Do you quantize all your drums, do you use some kind of swing, etc...

yes all the drums are quantized, if theres a swing it's just quantized on triplets etc.

[GRAYSKALE]

Biggup for doin' this one madd - First things first, I've gotta say your tunes are fuckin' immense!

As for the question, just wandering what your go to plug-in's are - like favourite delay, favourite 'verb etc?

Also, do you use any Hardware or is it a software rig your using?

[madd]

Biggup for doin' this one madd - First things first, I've gotta say your tunes are fuckin' immense!

As for the question, just wandering what your go to plug-in's are - like favourite delay, favourite 'verb etc?

Also, do you use any Hardware or is it a software rig your using?

Thanks glad you like the tunes!

The main plugins are the already mentioned Kjaerhus Classic Series which are free so you should find the pack via google.
I use the eq and delay out of that the most, they're quite basic but those do the job for me:)

I really like the Cubase built in plugins such as the QuadraFuzz and the reverbs, also the stepfilter is pretty cool. I use those quite a lot.
Apart from that I sometimes use Bionic Delay and FabFilter Timeless and CamelPhat. For synths it's Sylenth / Albino / Blue and the not so obvious ones are Tal-Elektro (free) and FabFilter Twin I guess.
I really should check out more plugins but this setup works so easy and fast for me that I'm afraid I would get lost checking / working out new plugins without actually getting much done.. lol

I don't have any hardware unfortunately but I'm planning to get something in the future, a virus would be very very handy!