webstarr wrote:You mention it takes you several weeks to complete a tune, do you usually focus in one at a time or do you have several different projects on the go concurrently?
i used to only ever do one at a time. more recently i've had a few things on the go
webstarr wrote:Also quite a broad question but how do you approach your DJ sets?
play tunes wot i like in an order wot makes sense
Disco Nutter wrote:I think I didn't see this one pop up, skip it if it has been asked.
How do you deal with creative blocks? Do you work through them or do you wait them out? Any tips?
usually i'll oscillate (over a few months) between writing and discovering new music, so often the blocks tend to come at the end of writing periods and going out and listening to loads of new stuff helps. and not just dance music.
also, see my answer above - in the end i found that working on one track at a time is generally very bad for creative blocks
eldoogle wrote:Ha I'd love to be able to group groups. Anyways, do you tune your drums? If so, only the kick? Or everything?
depends! sometimes. i almost never set out to program my drums in key or anything like that, but often i'll hear a drum with a discernible pitch and think "this isn't right" and change it. i have perfect pitch though ("perfect pitch" always sounds like i'm bragging... my perfect pitch is actually pretty rusty) so i usually do these things by ear and don't think about them much.
Skrew wrote:Do you know of any books similar to "Becoming a Synthesizer Wizard: From Presets to Power User" or "How to Make Noise" that use NI software in the book. Not like manual on how to use the synths, but how to make sounds with them. Massive was the first synth I ever learned then Razor, but I still don't understand how to make a certain sound, what waveforms to use, differences in filters, etc. Not really just a how to make a wobble thing, but just sounds in general.
no, sorry. FM8 is a pretty standard FM synthesiser, and massive can be used as a pretty standard subtractive synth. i don't know of any books that cover wavetable synthesis or the more obscure stuff (modal bank like prism, and whatever the fuck razor uses), sorry, but i never studied audio engineering so i don't really know many books on the subject full stop.
synthesising "acoustic" instruments is as much to do with analysis as it is to do with synthesis; for example, in order to synthesise a trumpet you need to examine what kind of waveform a trumpet makes and how certain parameters (e.g. listening angle, valve positions, etc) affect the sound. making a phat bassline doesn't really have that analytical component; it's more about deciding what kind of sound you want, according to certain achievable parameters, and working out how your current tool set can approximate it. that, and happy accidents.
check out the SOS "synth secrets" series... lots of great tutorials in there.
jyro wrote:Hey Objekt. Much support for the great things you do...
In a response to someones question relating to panning, you mentioned that certain panning do not translate well to vinyl. Do you have any mixing do's/don't you could share with us with regards to preparing for vinyl pressing?
good mixdown practice is good mixdown practice. the only specific vinyl no-no i can think of is heavy "side" content in the bass, since vinyl is cut in such a way that the mono content makes the needle oscillate laterally (left-right) and the stereo content makes the needle oscillate vertically, so lots of stereo content in the low end can make the needle jump out of the groove or the cutting stylus "bottom out" into the aluminium base of the master lacquer. but this is actually not bad advice for digital mixdowns either, since club soundsystems are often limited by the power of their subs, and making sure your low end is mono-only can maximise the amount of low end power you get out of a crappy system (think about it like this - if you pan something hard left then you have to boost it by 6dB to get the same volume out of it, and that might trigger the limiter earlier than if it were in mono). same applies to a heavily limited radio mix (if your track is destined for the radio).
vinyl can sometimes be sensitive to unnatural artifacts from stuff like MP3 compression and aural exciters... but none of you are doing that to your premasters right?
in most cases, any special treatment required for vinyl will be taken care of by a good vinyl mastering engineer. i strongly recommend having your track mastered by someone who will cut the master lacquer in house, since good mastering is a feedback process in which the engineer is constantly doing test cuts to see what the actual vinyl will sound like (often quite different), and compensating accordingly in his/her mastering job. not all mastering houses actually do this, and this is of course not an option if you master a track at studio A and cut it at pressing plant B.
oh, and don't squash things - vinyl has no 0dBFS. just cut the damn thing louder if you want it louder.
