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Hey guys, long time reader and first time poster


I have been producing for around 4 and a half years and more recently in the past year have really started experimenting with incorporating more neuro bass elements into my songwriting process.

Once I have completed the sound design portion of creating one or more tearing bass or growl elements that I would like to use in a track(freq splitting / processing /re sampling etc) one area I have been finding I have been struggling with is adapting and incorporating those sounds into an arrangement. I usually find that the variations and arrangements I come up with are just not generating the interest and groove that I want them too.

I was wondering if you guys might be able to provide any insight or be open to share any techniques on how you move about incorporating your designed sounds into your tracks. My usual process is once I have a sound I am happy with, bounce the final sample out over 1-4 bars and just manually start cutting the audio in the arrangement view and trying to get rhythm I like over an 8 - 16 bar loop. I will always have some drums going on underneath while doing this too help drive things along and allow me to get more of a feel.

As I am currently not satisfied with the results I'm getting, I'm really interested in exploring new ways of doing things and would love to see what other processes some of you guys use to achieve this!



pce all

bump*

what I do (and to me, makes more sense) is to get your melody/arrangement/bassline/whatever down first. Get those notes and tones in there with a basic patch. You know what you want your growling bass to sound link... or maybe you don't. Look at the motion/groove as a template to layer your sound over. I find that when doing sound design on bass's that have already been laid out and automated to a certain extent it help me get the right sound quicker... the process makes more sense, to me anyways.

TL;DR Try creating a skeleton of what you want, using your imagination as to what everything will eventually sound like.

awesome idea, cheers mate!

I don't ever tend to bounce any of my basses or any instruments within a track, i prefer to work with midi (Ironically i'm only on a 32bit Vista home premium OS). Once i play a lead/hook on the keyboard, i just tend to layer more parts and sounds as i go along.

'Nother approach is to just load up all the sounds into a multisampler and jam with 'em. Let the sounds suggest the groove instead of trying to apply them to a separate/preconceived structure in your mind.

greats ideas! I'm def gonna experiment with some of these techniques tonight. thanks guys

I try to make these TWO unique sessions. Ill either sit down and just design synth patchs, drum racks and beats OR i sit down and pull from those sounds and create a track, not worrying to much about creating the core sounds, ill still throw a new preset together if something isnt fitting quite right, but jsut having 2 seperate mindsets has helped me with the switch from design to compoistion/arragnment.

I get a nice sound and riff with a sound, freeze the midi, bring it on a audio track as a wav and take it from there. Each song is different though and requires a different process. I love not knowing what I'n going to do, creating a patch, bouncing it and adding to it from there.
Think outside the box an do mire than just frequency splitting and adding effects; use other processes and liadin your sounds into a sampler is an awesome way to create or recreate a riff. There have been times that I wrote a 4 bar riff, loaded the samples into the sampler and recreated my drop and break after it
I like to build from nothing with minimal ideas and let the ideas fliw as I'm writing or designing a patch. My latest track I've been working on startin with a growl that was 3 samples; a fast growl, a slow growl, and a 2 bar riff and just tweaked them and chopped them up into a really sick and heavy drop. My favorite part was doing that and then like 2 days later when I had almost all the drop and intro arrangement locked in, I tossed on a sub and it killed it. What I'm saying is that this track started out with 3 samples arranged in 4 bars, then it became 8, then 16 then 32. I don't think I added any high end elements until day 2!!

First come up with the idea for the track, than produce the sounds and arrange it.

thanks all

AxeD wrote:First come up with the idea for the track, than produce the sounds and arrange it.

This.

Pull out and squirt over dem

my theory dont try to do anything in one day. take your time you have ages and dont rush things.
dedicate a week to make drum loops or w.e next week you will be eager to try something new like basses and end up making some twisted sounds, just spend your time and be dedicated. more detail you have into little things even if its the small details that you cant really notice can make a big diffrence
there are so many dubstep noobs that want to become a big shot and they want to rush things wich will lead to no where , and there are producers who take ages to learn

and i know this might be off topic but no matter if your music is shit or not you dont make music for the people, you make music for you and you only to enjoy it and have fun

Even excellent sound designers like Billain and Seamless (the "How to Bass" guy) seem to have weaknesses in the arrangement portions of their tracks.

I think if you approach writing a tune "sounds first", (as in, you create completed bass sounds as processed audio files with filter and effect sweeps and pitch changes. Not talking about synth patches.) you make it harder to actually arrange a track because now you have to make your tune fit the sounds rather than the other way around.

I don't have experience with this approach to producing but I should think you would use such "completed" sounds for little one-shots whenever there is space in your loops while using more flexible patches to create the body of your melody and chord progression. However, after you have a large library of sounds to choose from, then you'll have the necessary flexibility to arrange without having to rely on pre-processed synth patches.

Grain of salt and all that, I'm no expert.

Dont bounce the sound to audio too early. Try using MIDI as long as you can before your Cpu goes 100%. Try adding more sound to the composition, and when you feel that a previous sound is not on place you can always change something. Dont be afraid to delete whole tracks, if something doesn't sound right in your mix (some sounds are sounding good alone, but not as good when you mix them with other sounds).
And most importantly: RULE NUMBER ONE: "Dont follow the rules"
Cheers!

Ocelots Revolver wrote:Even excellent sound designers like Billain and Seamless (the "How to Bass" guy) seem to have weaknesses in the arrangement portions of their tracks.

I think if you approach writing a tune "sounds first", (as in, you create completed bass sounds as processed audio files with filter and effect sweeps and pitch changes. Not talking about synth patches.) you make it harder to actually arrange a track because now you have to make your tune fit the sounds rather than the other way around.

I don't have experience with this approach to producing but I should think you would use such "completed" sounds for little one-shots whenever there is space in your loops while using more flexible patches to create the body of your melody and chord progression. However, after you have a large library of sounds to choose from, then you'll have the necessary flexibility to arrange without having to rely on pre-processed synth patches.

Grain of salt and all that, I'm no expert.

I second this. My strong point is definitely designing sounds, and a lot of the time I go for making a bunch of awesome sounds first, but I tend to not finish those tracks.

The tracks that turn out best for me, and I finish (in a more or less timely manner), are the ones where I've more or less created an entire track with just drum and stuff, like I've got the skeleton of arrangement, then I fill it in with what I had in mind (but had not created necessarily.

I think this problem stems from, I'll be writing drums for instance, hear a sound I've laid down, decide I don't like it, and go completely off track from writing the track to some bullshit sound design that takes two hours, and I end up with a worst sound than before.

Also, I tend to over listen to parts of my song, and I generally get tired of synths and stuff much faster than drums. (i.e. if I create a drum loop I like, I probably will go and listen to it a ton but chances are I'll still be fine with it versus if I had a bunch of crazy sounds I'd probably get tired of them much faster)

Arrangement is definitely an extremely important aspect of production that gets forgotten with all the sound design that goes on in a lot of productions.

meh I just sound design until I have a nice midrange loop, throw a bland drum beat underneath it and try to get a 16 bar loop going on, work everything else from there. don't waste time designing risers, incidentals or shit like that, there are good sample packs for those and unless it's a lead/pad driven tune, don't waste time on those as well, just tweak presets.