My first dub

[Captain Cainer]

So, I have been playing around with my little project but I really am not feeling this. I have been messing around with my wobble for like a week and just cant get that sound that I am looking for. I am currently using FL Studio 9, is that the problem? Also, I feel that this is nowhere near an actual track. It feels very plain and quite elementary. Critisism is fine but links to tutorials or something to really get me to get that dirty bass line and really get me on the right track. I am really looking forward to what everyone has to say!
[EDIT, accidentally put a # at the end of the link ]
My project:
http://soundcloud.com/captaincainer/dub-project-1-1

[Iorek]

your link don't work man

[Captain Cainer]

your link don't work man

Sorry bout that, it should be fine now! My bad! xD

[jamiecypher]

I would personally suggest getting a different digital audio workstation. I've heard of people getting decent results in FL before, but it's pretty rare and usually requires some expensive VST plugins. What are you controlling your synth oscillation with? the Sytrus Plug-in VST is pretty commonly used in FL. I personally use Ableton Live 8. I'm still a novice myself, and am working on my second track now. If you would like to pick my brain on the bit of knowledge I have, feel free to hit me up. If you plan on continuing with that existing track, i'd suggest turning that hi hat down. It's really overpowering. Your bassline could use a sub-bass as well to beef it up a little. Not bad for a first attempt. You can check out my horribly mixed first track in my sig.

[duhbears]

it seems that most everyone on the youtube community is using native-instruments massive. i have used it myself and the variety of wobbles you can make with it are great. downside is it costs $200, i'd bet a large amout of people that use it have pirated it. i'm not condoning theft but that is one method that many people use. anyway great track, super job for a first attempt, keep it up

[Captain Cainer]

Thanks everyone for the feedback, in regards to Ableton, I am downloading it now. My friend had FL 9 readily available so I went with that. If you could point me in the right direction as to properly using Able that would be awesome. I will look through this site and youtube for some tuts, but a lot of it is meh... Cypher, listening to your track gave me this awesome "Venitian Snare Dub" vibe which totally fucking rocked as I have been a percussionist for 14 years. As for getting the wobble, I spent quite some time using Sytrus, looking for that right sound. I will def turn down the hats, I thought the same thing as well but my friend who heard it and liked it with the hats up, so I went with it.

I will keep updating with progress, thanks a million, everyone's help is quite motivating! ^_^

[inkarv]

easy capn cainer. good first attempt. just keep at it. just sit down with ur DAW and just go through everything, changing everything, thats the best way ur gonna learn, hands on!

[Captain Cainer]

easy capn cainer. good first attempt. just keep at it. just sit down with ur DAW and just go through everything, changing everything, thats the best way ur gonna learn, hands on!

lol, didnt mean to sound hyperactive Learning proper dub, getting it to sound dirty but good is like... well...

hahhaaha

[Captain Cainer]

Hey guys, here is an update to the previous track. Let me know what you think! I didnt switch to Able yet, this is still done in FL9.

Here is is: http://soundcloud.com/captaincainer/dub ... t-1-part-2

[Captain Cainer]

Well here it is, I think that this is one of the last edits I will make. Can anyone offer some ideas/criticism?

Version 3: http://soundcloud.com/captaincainer/dub ... -version-3

[oprs]

I would personally suggest getting a different digital audio workstation. I've heard of people getting decent results in FL before, but it's pretty rare and usually requires some expensive VST plugins. What are you controlling your synth oscillation with? the Sytrus Plug-in VST is pretty commonly used in FL. I personally use Ableton Live 8. I'm still a novice myself, and am working on my second track now. If you would like to pick my brain on the bit of knowledge I have, feel free to hit me up. If you plan on continuing with that existing track, i'd suggest turning that hi hat down. It's really overpowering. Your bassline could use a sub-bass as well to beef it up a little. Not bad for a first attempt. You can check out my horribly mixed first track in my sig.

you have no idea what your talking about..
so please dont add input on DAWs until you understand all of their capabilities.

[Ayatollah]

I would personally suggest getting a different digital audio workstation. I've heard of people getting decent results in FL before, but it's pretty rare and usually requires some expensive VST plugins. What are you controlling your synth oscillation with? the Sytrus Plug-in VST is pretty commonly used in FL. I personally use Ableton Live 8. I'm still a novice myself, and am working on my second track now. If you would like to pick my brain on the bit of knowledge I have, feel free to hit me up. If you plan on continuing with that existing track, i'd suggest turning that hi hat down. It's really overpowering. Your bassline could use a sub-bass as well to beef it up a little. Not bad for a first attempt. You can check out my horribly mixed first track in my sig.

are you fucking dizzy mate

[adover]

I would personally suggest getting a different digital audio workstation. I've heard of people getting decent results in FL before, but it's pretty rare and usually requires some expensive VST plugins. What are you controlling your synth oscillation with? the Sytrus Plug-in VST is pretty commonly used in FL. I personally use Ableton Live 8. I'm still a novice myself, and am working on my second track now. If you would like to pick my brain on the bit of knowledge I have, feel free to hit me up. If you plan on continuing with that existing track, i'd suggest turning that hi hat down. It's really overpowering. Your bassline could use a sub-bass as well to beef it up a little. Not bad for a first attempt. You can check out my horribly mixed first track in my sig.

are you fucking dizzy mate

What he said!!

Nowt wrong with FL Studio!

Anyway, feedback on the version 3 of the tune - good first effort, its obvious it is a first effort but you're giving it a go and theres a massive improvement from the 1st to the 3rd edit so you're making progress. You've got a steep learning curve ahead of you so sit tight. The main things you will want to learn at this stage is:

Bass processing - look for posts that involve splitting the bass into 3 parts
EQ'ing - Learn it, get it right, make your tunes sound heavy
Layering of beats - invaluable - but remember only use the BEST samples - otherwise it's pointless - buy sample cd's if you need to
Compression - to get the tightness

Those 4 things will get you started onto a path of improvement - all the best

[Captain Cainer]

I would personally suggest getting a different digital audio workstation. I've heard of people getting decent results in FL before, but it's pretty rare and usually requires some expensive VST plugins. What are you controlling your synth oscillation with? the Sytrus Plug-in VST is pretty commonly used in FL. I personally use Ableton Live 8. I'm still a novice myself, and am working on my second track now. If you would like to pick my brain on the bit of knowledge I have, feel free to hit me up. If you plan on continuing with that existing track, i'd suggest turning that hi hat down. It's really overpowering. Your bassline could use a sub-bass as well to beef it up a little. Not bad for a first attempt. You can check out my horribly mixed first track in my sig.

are you fucking dizzy mate

What he said!!

Nowt wrong with FL Studio!

Anyway, feedback on the version 3 of the tune - good first effort, its obvious it is a first effort but you're giving it a go and theres a massive improvement from the 1st to the 3rd edit so you're making progress. You've got a steep learning curve ahead of you so sit tight. The main things you will want to learn at this stage is:

Bass processing - look for posts that involve splitting the bass into 3 parts
EQ'ing - Learn it, get it right, make your tunes sound heavy
Layering of beats - invaluable - but remember only use the BEST samples - otherwise it's pointless - buy sample cd's if you need to
Compression - to get the tightness

Those 4 things will get you started onto a path of improvement - all the best

This is what I am talking about! Straight to the point! When I look into these four topics, should I start a new project or keep going with my current one?

[jamiecypher]

Apparently I upset some people. I was just trying to offer advice, and see many "first dub" posts get ignored. I may be an amateur but I was just trying to shed some insight on what I went though. I personally did not have good results with Fruity Loops, and for me it seemed easier to visualize what I was trying to achieve in Ableton. Maybe I just didn't understand Sytrus that well, or maybe it was because i've never heard a track made on fruity loops that sounded as polished as one created using Ableton or Reason. Use what ever you are more comfortable with. If you would like some very well put together guides for using Ableton, I'd suggest visiting Tom Cosm's site @ http://www.cosm.co.nz .

Keep it up Captain Cainer, I wanna hear what you come up with next, esp. now that I know you're a percussionist. I play Trumpet, Keys, Guitar and Bass personally, but I wish I had more drumming under my belt.

[oprs]

lol you have never heard of a track as polished eh?

[jamiecypher]

Could you provide an example maybe? I want to hear something that a FL Wizard has done. Thanks! (no sarcasm)

[Captain Cainer]

personally i feel that any software can work as long as you have imagination, understanding of the software, and good midi samples to really get that professional sound.

i really appreciate everyones input and ideas, thanks to you all, i have a more informed approach on really making the most of my music!

[WiseEyes]

Cap,

I'm using Fruity 9 and I'd say that the amount of wobbles possible is quite unlimited. The idea behind it is that you have to learn how to use the Automation system that FL has behind all of their knobs. You can use just a basic square sample, set it to loop on itself so that you can hold it for however many beats you want, (the CRF knob when you click on the channel button). Besides that, you can use SimSynth and mess with the cut knob on it, shuffle through some of their bassier presets, or custom set everything to itself. SimSynth isn't even a VST, it's an older fruity synth that's been around for quite a bit. But yes... the automation... I'll upload you a screenshot here in my next post and show you where it is.

Basically if you right click on any knob in any "native" fruity synth, (i.e: not VST's) or any knob that's actually in fruity, you can click "Edit Events" and you can set the levels for anything in time so that it's part of the loop too. To get the wobble sound for anything I use the LFO tool. This can be accessed by clicking the little down arrow in the very top left of the "Events" window for the levels. You can select a section of time and then open the LFO tool and set up your wobble exactly how you want it, from fast to slow, or slow to fast. I use this exact method in my track here...

Soundcloud

The first bass I use is just a simple saw that I put through an effects channel and added a little "filth" to it by using the Fast Distortion and putting the volume of the effect on low. If you'll notice, on each effects channel there's an equalizer that is a set of 6 knobs and it shows a graphic of your curve. Each pair of two knobs represents one control point. There are three control points in total that have different frequency / volume settings as well as one more which controls how "wide" the point is so to speak. I just turned up the middle node then I use that first knob directly under the gain slider and right click on it and click "Edit Events". After that I LFO that point out since it controls the frequency of my middle node. You can automate multiple parts of all these nodes if you want, allowing for a really wide range of home-made effects for wobble.

The second bass if you'll notice after the small break in the middle of the song is where I really actually started to learn how to use the LFO tool. I was just editing the levels in time by myself before, (you can do that by just basically drawing it in on that Events editor window for any knob.) This is fine to do, and you can use the different mouse buttons to control the "paintbrush" differently. One of the buttons draws in and the other creates a fine gradient line between one point and the other... lol, I'm going to have to make a video about this for everyone to understand, but anyway, that's the same exact idea that I used for this second bass lead. This time though I edit the events of the "cut" knob in a Fruity SimSynth channel. Using the right type of settings on the simsynth, and the bottom octaves on the piano roll, I make my bass line, then I use the edit events on that cut knob and go to town with LFO settings.

This is just two ways I've made wobbly bass, but there are so many others. I think it's a bit weak to just bust out massive and use some pre-made stuff. Makes the music sound the same as everyone else using Massive. Though it's probably great, I'm not much of a VST guy. If I can make it from scratch I do it that way cause it's way more control. If you know how to do event editing in fruity, you're good to go on just about any wobble, zig-zag, squiggly line, or whatever the heck you want to draw out in time for any setting of all of the hundreds of controls and effects that fruity has built in.

[WiseEyes]

The main things you will want to learn at this stage is:

Bass processing - look for posts that involve splitting the bass into 3 parts
EQ'ing - Learn it, get it right, make your tunes sound heavy
Layering of beats - invaluable - but remember only use the BEST samples - otherwise it's pointless - buy sample cd's if you need to
Compression - to get the tightness

Those 4 things will get you started onto a path of improvement - all the best

Agreed adover. I think though that the samples as far as wobble bass goes doesn't really make a difference if you know what you're doing. You can make any original sample sound like something completely different from what it was. It's mastering in the end which will give the professional feel.

Especially as far as wobble bass is concerned. You can start with just a simple normalized small sample of a square wave and there's really no more ... raw you can get than just the raw shape of a very basic kind. It's what effects you add and how you equalize and automate the equalization of that square sample which make it have a professional feel.