The Hit Factory: The Stock, Aitken, and Waterman Story

During the 80's, the production team of Stock, Aitken, and Waterman were an almost unstoppable pop music hit machine.  Their heavily-sequenced, kinetic sound propelled some of the biggest hits bands like Dead or Alive, Bananarama, or Bronski Beat ever had.  This is a great look back at their legacy with lots of input from those who worked with them. (And fair warning, you WILL get Rick-Rolled, since they also produced Rick Astley.)

[via Digivoka on YouTube]

Premature Reverberation

The psychedelic era of music in the 60's led to many experimental production techniques, but perhaps none was use quite so much as playing taped performances in reverse, or mixing the forward signal with a backwards copy of itself.  As time marched on, these types of sounds evolved into high-glass reverse reverb effects often used in the club music of the 80's for dramatic special effects.  It's still quite a cool effect these days, used correctly.  So today, I'll show you how to start experimenting with this technique in your own music.

1.  Select a track you want to try the effect on... guitar leads and vocals are particularly well-suited for these types of effects.

2.  Make a copy of the audio you want the effect on and move it to a new track.  Use your DAW's audio editing features to reverse the audio of the second track.

3. Apply a medium-long reverb to the reversed track and bounce it, making sure to set the end point of your bounce so it doesn't cut off the reverb tail.

4. Import your bounce and replace your reversed audio track with it.  Use your DAW's audio editing features to reverse the track yet again.

5.  Now you can tweak the levels between the dry track and the reverse reverb track to set the desired wetness.  Don't be afraid to experiment with adding additional processing to each of these tracks, either.  You might create the next trendy variation of this effect.

Bring Your Drums Back to the Eighties

Regardless of what you think of the actual music, there is little doubt that the eighties was exciting time when it came to music production.  Electronics were taking center stage in the mainstream, technology was coming down in price, and experimentation with new technology was rampant.  Although many of the records from that time sound almost quaint now, at the time, these albums were cutting edge.  Unsurprisingly, 80's music and production has been back in vogue, with many new artists emulating the techniques and sounds of bands 30 years their senior.  So today I thought I would talk a little bit about how to give your drum tracks a more 80's vibe.

1.) Choose Sounds Wisely

A huge part of getting an 80's drum sounds relies on using sounds that were actually used during that time period.  This isn't as difficult as it sounds, as although there were tons of instruments to choose from back then, there were a relative handful that found their way on to most of the pop records of the time.  Of course the TR-808 is an obvious choice, but remember that the 80's saw the birth of sampling drum machines like the Linndrum, the Oberheim DMX, and the E-mu Drumulator, all of which appeared on countless records back then.  And don't forget to add some doofy Simmons toms to the equation.  Want to emulate the more "big budget" sound of the time?  Try to find some Fairlight CMI drum samples.

2.) Produce Differently 

The fact of the matter is, 80's records sound different from modern records.  This isn't just the sounds used, but the production techniques.  What is probably most noticeable is the way tracks are EQed.  80's records generally have much less low end than modern records, so while your kick drum can have some weight, you might want to avoid the bowel-shaking subs so much modern music centers around.  Keep in mind also that with very few exceptions (Peter Gabriel is a notable one), almost all albums recorded during that time were recorded on tape, and not digitally.  The effect this has can be subtle, but noticeable, especially if you drive the tape a bit.  Sure, buying an old tape deck and recording to it will give you the most authentic sound, but on a more practical level, there are tons of tape saturation plug-ins available out there that can lend this quality when properly applied.

3.)  Reverb Differently

Most modern pop music is extremely dry-sounding when it comes to the use of reverb.  The opposite was true in the 80's where reverb and effects were used much more heavily, often crossing the line into gimmickry.  This might require you to think a bit differently than you do when working on a track with a more modern sound.  For instance, while it's quite unusual to hear more than a bit of ambience on a kick drum track these days (trance intros and breakdowns excepted), it was not uncommon for both the kick and the snare drum to go through a reverb for a more bombastic, exaggerated sound.  Because this can often turn into mud, producers often used the technique pioneered by Peter Gabriel's producer Hugh Padgham (often mis-attributed to Phil Collins who later used the same technique), which entailed applying a noise gate to cut off the reverb tails.  Gated reverbs are not difficult to find in plug-ins (especially among convolution reverbs), but it's an easy technique to do yourself.  Just put a noise gate after your snare reverb and adjust the gate's threshold and attack/decay settings to taste.  Also try putting some compression AFTER your reverb to exaggerate the reverb effects.

What other 80's production techniques do you like to apply to your own drum tracks?

Mix n' Match

Some time ago, I wrote an article suggesting that you could get interesting results on drums if you combined a dry snare with a fully-wet reverbed different snare at the proper levels, you could get some unique sounding drum and percussion sounds.

It just so happens that this works on synths, too. Try setting up a lead line on a dry (no reverb) synth lead sound. Copy that sequence to a new instrument track and call up a different synth lead. Now, feed the second synth lead through any sort of reverb you like with the wet dry mix at 100% wet. You can get some really striking sounds this way. Don't just try it with reverb either. Try distorting one layer and keeping another clean, etc.

Trevor Horn Talks Production

Saw this over on Synthtopia and thought I'd share it here, as Horn has always been one of my favorite producers of the 80's. He's got an amazing memory, too. Here, he talks about producing Frankie Goes to Hollywood and what makes "the perfect song".

[via Synthtopia]

BBC Radio 2 Documentary on Production of Early Pink Floyd

There are still 2 days left to listen to BBC Radio 2's audio documentary on the production techniques used on the early work of Pink Floyd.  Though this pre-dates the band's electronic experimentation, COME ON IT'S FRIGGING PINK FLOYD.

[via bedroomproducersblog]

The Prodigy: More Than Meets the Ear

A 50-minute documentary on the methods of the infamous Prodigy.  (Thanks to Nick Matalski for locating the elusive third part!)

What Stomp Box Sounds the Best on a 909 Kick?

[via Synthtopia]

Treating Your Drums Right

One of the easiest ways to bring the production quality up in your home studio recordings is to record each individual drum sound on its own track, thus allowing you to process each one individually. Of course, there's something to say for taking a less precise approach (read up on the recording of the drum track for Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" for a good example), but if a clean, punchy, and clear drum track is your aim, read on.

So, today's post will be about how best to effect each part of your drum track. Remember, at the end of the day, the only real rule is if you think it sounds good. If it sounds right, it is right. Rules were made to be broken.

Kick Drums

Unless you are making a style of music that depends on the more extreme ends of the bass spectrum, the first thing to do is to apply a highpass filter to your kick. Filter everything out below around 50Hz or so. This will clean up your low end significantly and give your mix more headroom by getting rid of frequencies most of your listeners won't hear on their systems anyway.

The next step I usually take is to add some compression. How you compress your kick really depends on the style of music you make. A good starting point, however, is to set your ratio to 4:1, set your threshold so its reducing your signal by about 6db, then set you attack and release to taste. If you make more hard-edged styles of music like French House or EBM, you might like to use a bit crusher (12-bits sounds great on kicks) or an overdrive on your kick. This essentially works like a limited and will add some extra harmonics that will help give your kick a harder edge.

You can use an additional EQ to emphasize different frequencies and further shape the tone of the sound. Try boosts between 60-80hz to add some clubby subs. Need some more smack to the attack? Try a boost somewhere between 1800hz-4000hz.

Kicks are generally kept pretty dry these days, but if you're going for a more retro sound, try adding a little gated reverb for some 80's flavor.

Cymbals

Again, I find it a good idea to begin the processing chain for cymbals like hi-hats and crashes with some subtractive EQ. Even though cymbals are generally very high-frequency sounds, you'd be surprised at how many errant low frequencies that are present in some of them. Filter these out with a highpass filter set to eliminate frequencies below 500hZ or so. If you need some extra air and crispness, try a slight boost in the region above 10kHz. Don't overdo it, just boost by a db or two.

Adding space to the track depends on the sound you're after. Consider adding a little room reverb with a 20% wet level to give your cymbals a more "live" sound.

If you're doing certain styles of dance music that requires chunky sounding cymbals, you might want to add a little bit of bit-crushing.

Snare

Begin yet again with some subtractive EQ, rolling off the frequencies below 100Hz or so. The "body" of a lot of snares is somewhere in the 200-300Hz range, so boosts or cuts to this region will generally help you shape how heavy a snare sounds. Boosts in the 3000-700Hz range will help add a little punch and brightness. Want to add some air and crispness? Boost in the 10kHz+ range. Keep boosts subtle. If you need to EQ too much, you might be better off finding a different snare.

Compression is a good choice next. Start with the same basic settings that I recommended for kicks and shape it until you have something you like the sound of. The recommendations about bit-crushers and overdrive apply here too.

Next up, try applying some reverb. To be current, you generally want something pretty short here, such as a room reverb. Keep the wet level around 20%. For a retro or dub sound, try using a spring reverb setting.

Toms

Apply the same general settings as you have applied to your snare, but allow more lower frequencies through, EQing it more like your kick drum. Compress as your snare and shape to taste.

These are some general hints to get you started processing your drum sounds individually. How you apply this to your own material will depend mostly on your own taste. One trick many producers like to use after producing all their individual drum parts is to send all of their drum sounds to a bus, and compressing the entire kit together by a small amount (try 2:1 ratio, and 2-3db reduction on your threshold). This gives the effect of "gluing" the individual elements together into a coherent sounding mix that sounds like it came from a single kit.

Anything you feel I've missed? Any valuable drum processing secrets you think your fellow Waveformless readers might benefit from? Share them in the comments!

Tutorial on Making "Complex-tro" Basslines

Self-Sidechained Reverb for Fun and Profit

If you’ve made any sort of dance music in recent years, chances are very good that you’ve experimented with sidechain compression. For the uninitiated, this is a process by which you compress a signal very hard, but use a second signal (usually a 4 on the floor kick drum) to control when the compression kicks in. The result is a rhythmic “pumping” that can add a lot of excitement and energy to your track. Today, I want to discuss a slightly less conventional type of sidechain compression many of you may have heard in the music of artists like Benny Bennasi. In this case, we’ll be using the compressed signal as its own sidechain to create a pumping reverb. I’ll be creating this in Logic, but you should be able to adapt this technique to any decently-featured DAW.

1. Create an audio instrument track and call up your softsynth of choice. This technique is most commonly used on lead sounds, so go ahead and find a nice buzzy lead.

2. Record a short riff using this lead and quantize it.

3. On the mixer page, turn the knob of Bus 1 all the way up to 100%. Then, on Bus 1’s channel itself, change the OUTPUT assignment to “NO OUTPUT”. What we’re doing here is to send the original lead sound to a place where it can be selected as the sidechain source. So we don’t want to actually need to hear it on this bus, we’re just using it as a control signal.

4. Now, turn the knob up on Bus 2 to about 20-30% and on the Bus channel itself, insert an instance of your favorite reverb plug-in, followed by Logic’s compressor effect. The order of the effects is crucial here, as we want to pump the reverb signal itself.

5. On your reverb effect, call up a preset that’s of about medium length and is very bright and reflective.

6. Now for your compression settings. At the very top right of Logic’s compressor you’ll see a drop down menu marked “Side Chain”. This is where you select your side chain source. You should see Bus 1 as one of the available sources. Select it. Set the compressor’s RATIO to somewhere around 5:1, set your attack to around 10-15 ms and your release to around 50 ms. We want to compress this really hard, so set your COMPRESSOR THRESHOLD to a relatively low value giving you at least -20db of reduction.

If you’ve done everything correctly, when you play your lead, you should hear the lead coming through relatively dry until you release the key, at which point you’ll hear the compressor kick in and the level of the reverb suck “upwards”. Experiment with different lengths of reverb until you find something that is musically pleasing for the tempo of your track. If something this extreme sounding is not your cup of tea, keep in mind that with more subtle compressor settings, you can use this same technique to keep a reverbed lead line from sounding too muddy or indistinct.

Raising the Dead

I'm getting ready to leave for a short European tour a week from now, and as a result, I'm trying to get as many loose ends tied up as possible. One of those loose ends is to finish up the production of a track for SD6, a band on my label.

We had discussed recording a new song from scratch originally, but as both Brandon (the band's lead singer and songwriter) and my schedule began to fill up, he suggested to me that we resurrect an old song we had abandoned many years ago when we started the recording of their debut album. 7 years, to be exact. I remember really liking the song back then, but Brandon wasn't happy with the vocal, so we left it off. So I thought I'd share a bit of the process and what can be learned (hopefully) from it.

TOTAL RECALL

I'm fairly anal about backing things up (*pause for laughter*). Like most people who are fairly anal about backing things up, I came that way by learning the hard way. So generally, speaking, if it's a project I worked on, I have it backed up somewhere. Seven years can be getting into sketchy territory for some CD-Rs. For better or for worse, when it comes to backing stuff up to CD-R, I generally spring for more "premium" media. I wouldn't be surprised if these were as much of a scam as high end audio cables, but they haven't failed me yet, so for now, I'll stick with what I know. So, my first step was to find the back-up and attempt to bring it back onto my Mac. Fortunately, that turned out to be as simple as dragging the files to my hard drive.

RESTORATION

The files copied without any problems, but that didn't mean I'd necessarily be able to open the files. While these were Logic files, and I still work in Logic, they were from Version 5 - many, many revisions ago. Logic is designed to be backward compatible and for the most part, the project came back without too much trouble. The two biggest issues here were: 1.) these were recorded back when I had an old Emagic AudioWerk 2 soundcard, so I needed to re-assign the outputs on my channel to my new soundcard, and 2.) there were a bunch of out-dated plug-ins. This brings up a good thing to remember - if you have a track that is dependent on an unusual plug-in or softsynth, bounce down a copy of the track to audio. This way, if the effect is impossible to replicate with a newer plug-in, you still have a copy of the audio effected as you want it. I did encounter a handful of technical gremlins, mostly weird graphic glitches - but nothing that would keep me from the job at hand.

REMEMBRANCE

Another good thing to do when you're backing up a project is to bounce down a full mix as a "demo". This can be especially helpful if the person doing the mixing and production is different from the one who recorded it. So, I gave a listen to the original demo. As I remembered, it was a kinetic, syncopated track with a good groove to it. And it still was. The problem was, it wasn't really a song in the state we had it - more like 5 minutes of a good groove. So this would be an area I would need to concentrate on... adding more of a sense of structure to the song so the listener doesn't get bored with it. The vocals were fine on the original, but we decided if we were going to start this from the ground up, we should apply that to everything and we ended up re-recording the vocals. Another problem was the arrangement. The track was originally sequenced on some older Korg workstation and some of the sounds were a bit uninspiring, while others were clearly muddying up the mix. So I would need to replace some of the recordings with better sounding synths.

RECREATION

One hitch I encountered here was that the band had recorded the instrumental tracks at someone else's studio. This person just recorded straight from the Korg's sequencer, so there were no MIDI tracks at all. So any part I wanted to put in a different octave, change the sound of, or layer, I'd have to play over from scratch. Fortunately, the elements of the song were relatively simple, so learning and re-programming the parts was not a big issue. It's well worth working on playing things by ear if you have the motivation to. It can take awhile to learn, but the time it can save you down the road is immeasurable.

REARRANGEMENT

As I mentioned, the original track was one that sort of starts and keeps doing what it's doing until it stops. There wasn't a lot of tension in the way it built and even though there were separate verse, chorus, and bridge parts, there was little to differentiate them. The original rhythm was built around a pair of stuttering, syncopated drum loops. I liked these a lot, but discovered these loops were not very tightly timed, so when I tried to program new drum parts on top of them, the new parts sounded out of time. So I decided to replace the drum loops with some new loops, and to use the introduction and removal of these loops to help build and lull the energy level to keep the feel of the song evolving.

The original stuttering loop was great, and I recreated it for the intro of the song, but we want this to be a song the DJs would like to add to their set, so I felt we couldn't keep this feel for the length of the track. Therefore, I began the track with just the spare, stuttering loop, gradually entering a hi-hat part, and a couple of additional "top" loops. Then, after the first chorus, the loops all slow down and a steady 4 on the floor beat comes in. I decide that the bridge portion of the song would be the perfect place for a breakdown, so I stripped out most of the drums in this part, gradually re-introducing them until the whole thing kicks in again.

As I mentioned, the sounds used in the original were making the arrangement sort of ho-hum, so I went through and replaced sounds for something more interesting. One of the main parts of the song is a propulsive, Moroder-like sequence that runs throughout almost everything. This not only came across as a bit monotonous in the original, but the Virus sound I originally used was distorted and a total frequency hog. My solution was to replace the sound with 3 additional sounds. The first two would be arps I programmed in Vanguard. These used LFO modulation to change the sound as it played, and to add a bit more unpredictability, I set the LFO speeds on both to different random values, so the two sequences would modulate against one another in a constantly shifting, more interesting way. I also added the same riff an octave down with a tight, analog-sounding bass I made in Omnisphere that would kick in when the 4 on the floor beat did.

RERECORDING

With most of the music in place, we re-recorded the vocals. Originally, we thought this might not be necessary, we discovered that the old vocals, which had been recorded to the original, slightly-off-time drum loops and no longer matched up with the new material. So we took the opportunity to record everything from scratch and to add some new harmony parts sung by Brandon's wife, Jessica. Everything here went pretty damn smoothly. The biggest obstacle was that I was recovering from a cold and had to desperately keep myself from having a coughing fit in the middle of someone's vocal. Mission accomplished.

RESULT?

That I can't share with you just yet, as I haven't finished the track, although I hope to have it done tomorrow. But I can tell you that this has been a really valuable learning experience. The new track is a huge improvement over the original we did 7 years ago. Although I disagreed with the decision to not release the track at the time, I'm now glad we waited. We ended up with something way better than we ever could've imagined all that time ago. So the next time you're ready to toss some track that isn't working into the trash, give it a second thought. You never know what it might teach you further down the road.

Add Some Beef to Your Beats

If you're doing club music, you know that getting the low end just right is extremely important. Of course, you're much better off spending some time auditioning sounds at the beginning to find a sound that is close to what you want already than trying to whip it into shape with plug-ins, but sometimes you still need to do some tweaking. It's no surprise that there are a number of bass enhancement plug-ins out there, each of which work in slightly different ways and vary in quality. But if all you need to do is add some sub to your kicks, you probably already have the tools to do so.

I'll be working in Logic, but you should be able to replicate this fairly easily on any DAW that allows side-chaining and includes a noise gate.

1. Select the track containing the kick drum you want to beef up. Side-chaining in Logic needs to be done via buses, so we need to send our kick drum to a bus. Under the SENDS section of your track's channel, select Bus 1 from the drop down menu and dial the send knob all the way up.

2. We don't need to actually hear the signal coming through the bus, though, so on the channel strip for Bus 1, change the OUTPUT from STEREO OUT to NO OUTPUT. You'll find this menu right below the name of the bus. Now we have the kick drum being sent audibly through our audio channel, and being sent silently to Bus 1.

The reason we don't want to hear the output of the bus is because we're just going to be using it as a control signal, not an audio signal. SIDE-CHAINING is the process of using the audio from one channel to control some aspect of a plug-in on another channel. This is most commonly used in dance music where a kick drum is side-chained with a compressor on a pad or strings to create a pumping effect. We're going to do something similar here.

3. First we need something to side-chain, though. So create a new instrument track and insert an instance of any synth that has a good sine-wave on it. If you can't think of any and are using Logic, just called up an instance of EXS-24. It defaults to a sine wave sample. Record a long, sustained note. Be careful to choose a note that fits the key of your song. This is where the beef if going to come from, so having an 'off' note will really make a mess of your low end.

4. On the channel strip of your sine wave instrument, insert a side-chainable noise gate. I'm using Logic's included NOISE GATE. Firstly, we need to select a source for our side-chaining. So hit the drop down menu in the upper right hand corner of Noise Gate and select BUS 1, where we sent our kick drum. You'll need to experiment with different settings, but initially start out with your ATTACK at o, your HOLD at 60ms, and your release at 12ms. It's especially important to have a bit of a release at the end, as this prevents annoying clicks. Now, press play and adjust the THRESHOLD value until you can hear your sine wave coming through right beneath the kick drum, hopefully adding the sub energy you're looking for.

Don't stop here, though. Try effecting your sine wave channel in different ways - overdrive it or saturate it to add harmonics, sculpt it to perfection with EQ, etc.

What's in Your Vocal Chain?

I thought today it might be fun to compare our favorite effects chains for using on vocals. Every track obviously differs according to what you need, but most of us probably have some basics we use fairly regularly. I'll start, and you can feel free to join the discussion in the comments.

I record my vocals on an AKG C-3000 which I've had forever. It's nothing fancy, but I think it sounds pretty good with vocals, as it seems to have a little bit of a mid-range bias, and this can be helpful in getting your vocals to sit right in the mix. The down side is, if you've got a singer with a lisp, or just a sort of "spitty" way of singing, the mic will exaggerate it.

The mic is plugged directly into the XLR input on my MOTU 828 mk II. I'd love to have a fancy, high-end recording strip for stuff like this some day, but for now, this does the job just fine. Very neutral sounding, so it gives you a good starting point.

Once I've recorded several takes, the first thing I do is to build a comp of the best bits from each take. This way, I'm starting with the best results possible. Now's also a good time to listen for mic bumps, mouse farts, or other unwanted sounds that need to be edited out.

The first item in my typical vocal channel is an EQ. The sole purpose of this EQ is to filter out the unneeded low frequencies. The reason it's first in my chain is that I want to get rid of them right away, so they don't effect the way the compressor works. Having an EQ cutting out the lows is really a good habit to get into for almost any channel (aside from bass and kicks, although even they can use a cut around 40Hz and below). It will clean up the low end in your mixes and free up all sorts of headroom in your mixes.

Next up, I have my compressor. Even though I have a LiquidMix, which has models of classic analog compressors, I actually prefer Logic's built-in compressor on my vocals. It's a very clean and neutral sounding compressor and really lets vocals come through clearly. If I need "character", I can always add it later. I tend to compress my vocals pretty heavily... a ratio between 6:1 to 10:1 with an aggressive amount of reduction and relatively fast attack. There really is no magical setting that will work for every voice. You just need to spend some time experimenting to find what works the best with your vocals.

I follow the compressor with another instance of EQ. Unlike the previous EQ which consisted of a heavy low-end cut, this one is aimed at boosting a couple of key areas. I'm putting it after the compressor because I want to exaggerate these frequencies in the already-compressed signal. I find this allows for more subtle results and a greater ability to fine-tune easily. My typical boosts are around 1500Hz - this is an area often associated with intelligibility of vocals, and can help fit a vocal "in" the mix instead of on top of it - and at 10k, which adds a little "air" and presence. Neither of these boosts are more than a couple db's a piece.

The second EQ is followed by Logic's Sample Delay plug in, which is designed to allow you to offset the left and right channels of a track at the sample level. When you delay one side versus the other, the result is a stereo "widening" effect. I think this makes the vocals sound a lot slicker and more professional, but it also helps the vocal fit in the mix better. It might not be right for every case, but give it a try and see if you like it.

Finally, I have to aux sends, 1 which goes to a reverb, and another that goes into a delay. I'll use different ones for different purposes, but I always keep my send levels pretty modest... about 20% or so. This helps give the vocals space, but without overwhelming them. Vocals are generally mixed pretty dry these days, so mess around and find what sounds right in the context of your song.

That's it. Pretty simple. How about you? What's your go-to effects chain for mixing vocals?

Essential Dub Effects

Dub is one of those genres that has sort of perpetually been hip. Started in the late 60's in Jamaica, dub was a remix-oriented subgenre of reggae, but as time went on, it's reach and influence would eventually surpass the style that spawned it. The influence of the genre mainly stayed within the reggae community until the mid-late 70's when punk artists such as the Clash started picking up on it and incorporating it into their own music. In the late 70's producer Martin Hannett would make extensive use of dub production effects and techniques to sculpt the icy, precise sound of Joy Division. At techno began to arise by the late 80's and early 90's, dub effect would again come into vogue, particularly the use of tape echo with artists aligned with the more ambient end of the spectrum. Now that we're into the 21st century, the sound of dub has influenced many IDM and tech house artists, not to mention inspiring the rise of dubstep. So while you might not like dub music as a style, consider for a fact that you may really like the effects used to produce the genre's general sound... and maybe you didn't even realize it. So here's a look at a handful of effects worth checking out if you want to infuse some dub influence into your music.

1. Tape Echo
A tape echo is generally exactly what it sounds like. It's a device that produces echo by recording the incoming audio and then playing that back on specifically spaced playback heads to create each individual repeat. Tape echo has some specific features that set it apart from your bog standard digital delay. The first is that the echos can be made to degenerate in tone with each repeat, so each echo can get either progressively brighter or progressively darker as it goes on. Quite a nice effect! The other is that the tape echo can be made to feed back upon itself, so the echos gradually BUILD in volume, distorting and contorting with each echo in a really interesting, organic way. Tape echo effects can be great for adding atmosphere and life to just about anything you feed into it, so be sure to experiment. Don't be afraid to try assigning a MIDI controller to the tape echo plug-in's parameters for some real time tweaking. Logic Audio comes with a really nice tape echo called Tape Delay, but several other ones are available for free. Not all of them are built the same, so be sure to try them all out to see which one suits your needs the best. Check out: TAL Dub-III, or MDA DubDelay, or LowCoders King Dubby or GSI WatKat.

2. Spring Reverb
Back in the days before digital reverbs, most reverb effects were produced by causing the vibration of an actual physical object such as a metal plate or spring. The spring reverb has an especially unique sound, with a spooky, almost subterranean, liquid vibe. The fact that it is not used nearly as often these days also makes it stand out as sounding very "retro". In fact, it's the first effect I reach for if I'm trying to make something sound more 'vintage'. Try it on snare drums especially. Instant retro vibe! Free reverb effects can be a bit hard to come by, so for free options, you might get better results looking got impulse responses that can be loaded into a convolution reverb such as Logic's included Space Designer (which comes with a ton of nice spring reverb settings to get you started). To get started, check out the following: Fokke van Sanne's Impulse Reponses, or EMS Spring Reverb IR, or EchoChamber's Free IR's.

3. The Dub Siren
The dub siren was a very simple, usually hand-built synthesizer that usually consisted of a sweepable oscillator, an LFO for modulating pitch or amplitude, and little else. It was used by some artists to add spacey swoops and unusual FX type sounds to their productions. Very often these were fed through loads of tape delay to further "spaceify" them. If you're on a PC and work with VST format plug-ins, you can check out Interuptor's Dub Siren. To be honest, though, just about any simple virtual analog should be able to emulate these sounds Just use a single oscillator set to a basic analog waveform. Assign an LFO to modulate that oscillator's pitch. Then try altering the amount and speed of the modulation in real time. Incidentally, in case you thought the description of what a dub siren is sounded an awfully lot like the recently release Korg Monotron, you wouldn't be far off. The Monotron is marginally more complex, but it could be incorporated to dub siren duties very easily.

If you enjoy messing around with these genre-specific effects, start picking apart other genres you come across and try to figure out what the effects that help define what that genre are. See how you can apply to your own music, even if it's in a totally different style. You may inadvertently create the next big thing!

Waveformless Video Tutorial: Rhythmic Gating on Drums

Mechanical Vocal Effects for Fun & Profit

The man vs. machine dichotomy is one that has long fascinated us. Its influence touched all aspects of society, but it seemed to especially catch fire in the musical community. In Britain, worried orchestral musicians protested synths, afraid - correctly, perhaps - that these new fangled instruments would replace them. Similarly, the widespread popularity of drum machines had a lot of skilled drummers feeling a bit nervous. But the electronic musicians embraced it to the point where it wasn't enough to simply utilize the machines - they wanted to become machines. From the cold, alienated sound of early Gary Numan, to the mechanical rhythms of Kraftwerk, the artists expressed this merging of man and machine in different ways, but one of the most common ways was to make use of studio tricks to take the human voice and strip away its humanity.

So today, I thought we'd look at some of the techniques, past and present, that can be used for this purpose.

• Crush them bits
Part of making a voice sound more robotic is making it sound as if it is coming from a speaker instead of a mouth. There are a number of ways of doing this, but I think a combination of a bit-crusher and amp simulator does the job nicely. The bit-rate on your bit crusher isn't important, the key is to downsample the sound quite a bit. On Logic's BitCrusher, try somewhere around 14x for some nice aliasing and metallic artifacts. The amp simulator helps to make this basic sound sound as if it is coming from an old speaker. You don't want a full blown Marshall shred setting, obviously, just something with some presence. Here's what it sounds like:



• Keep it old school
In the early days of hip-hop, up and coming musicians recorded in very basic studios and had to make the most of very limited set-ups. It's no secret that Kraftwerk was a huge influence on the early hip-hop records, but few of the artists could afford an actual vocoder to produce those robotic vocals. What a few of them did instead, was to set up a delay unit to extremely short settings, resulting in a rattling, metallic effect. Yeah, it didn't sound the same, but if it was good enough for Afrika Bambaataa, I say it's good enough for you. This effect can be a little trickier to pull off with a lot of modern delay plug-ins, because most of them are so oriented towards syncing to your sequencer. We need something with REALLY short delay times. I chose Logic's Modulation Delay. Your feedback should be set fairly high, and you want to make sure the delay times aren't being modulated... we want them constant. The end result should sound like this:



• Vocoders
Probably the most obvious choice for this type of effect. Fortunately, software vocoders are abundant these days and many of them are even free. I'm not going to go into the depth of how to use a vocoder here - read your damn manual. But be sure to experiment with different carrier sources. Especially mess around with using noise or amelodic samples/audio sources for a carrier for some unusual effects. Here's an example of the 'classic' vocoder sound:



• Put a ring on it
Ring Modulation offers a fairly wide range of unusual sounds when applied to the voice. The sound designers on the Star Wars movies employ this effect quite a bit both for robotic voices or to simulate far off transmissions. Applying a ring mod effect to your vocal recording opens the door to digital shrieks, harsh bit-crush type effects, and oddly mechanical timbres, so be sure to mess around with the settings. Often even a small tweak can result in quite a different effect. Here's just one example of the type of effects possible:



• Smack my pitch up
Pitch correction/auto-tune effects don't have to be used for evil. Instead of using them to suck the life out of some faceless diva's wailing, you can use them to transform a human voice into an unfeeling automaton. This technique is a bit more subtle than the others, so it'll sound better if you combine it with some of the above techniques. The key here is to remove as much of the variation in the voice. Celemony's Melodyne is great for this in that you can not only quantize the pitch, but you can draw out pitch variations and drift to get eerily emotionless sounding vocal treatments. Here, I've combined it with some subtle flanging with a high feedback level:

A Modular Approach to Drum Sounds

Finding the perfect drum sound for your track can sometimes feel like the quest for the Holy Grail.  One kick has that perfect level of sub-bass, but lacks the 'smack' you're looking for.  One snare might have the perfect amount of punch, but is lacking body and weight.  And if you're like me, you probably have literally thousands of drum samples on your hard drive.  You can waste hours auditioning sounds looking for that mythical perfect drum sound when all you really want to do is make music.

One great way to avoid this problem is to take things into your own hands and create your own "Frankenstein's monster" drum sounds by combining multiple drum sounds that each have a component to the perfect sound you're imagining in your head.  Layering has always been a great way to create new sounds, but when working with drum sounds, there are some important things to remember.

• Be sure the sounds are sufficiently different.

If you're layering drum sounds with different characteristics, it's best not to select two very similar sounds with varied qualities.  In other words, try not to layer a really bassy 909 kick, with another 909 kick that has more smack to it.  While you can make this work with some clever EQing, it can introduce phasing problems and frequency mud when the shared frequencies combine.

• Be smart about EQ

Speaking of which, in the interest of keeping your sounds clean, be sure to be smart about EQing the unneeded frequencies in each layer just as you would when you're mixing a song.  If you're using a layer to add sub-bass oomph to your kick, be sure to filter out any higher and mid frequencies since these will be added by the layer you're using to add the smack/impact. Likewise, if you're using a layer to contribute to that mid-range punch, you don't really need all those low frequencies, since they're being provided by your bass layer.   

• Compressing twice as nice

The nice thing about building drum sounds this way is that each layer can have its own processing.  So you can compress with a really fast attack and long release on a layer to add sustain and body to one layer, and compress the layer you're using to add punch with a slower attack to emphasize the transient.  When you're done, applying some light to moderate compression to both sounds together via a bus can help glue together the different sounds to make it sound more like a single sound than two sounds combined.

•  Process separately

Don't stop at compression or EQ, though!  Each layer can have a completely different processing chain to help you further shape your sound.  Add some saturation or distortion to your sub kick for a harsh gabber kick, but keep the attack clean to preserve the transients that can sometimes get destroyed by distortion.  Add a little ambience to the crack of a snare to help it "smear" into the dry body portion of the sound.  Don't be afraid to get crazy with filters, glitch effects, and all other manner of more extreme effects, either!

•  Change your tune

Most drum sounds contain at least some semblance of a musical note to them.  When you're combining sounds, it's important to make sure that all the layers are tuned to the same general note.  Your ears are your best guide here, and when you hit the "sweet spot" where both layers are in tune, it should be obvious.  But if you need a little help, you may be able to get some help via a guitar tuner plug-in that detects note pitch.  This depends on how prominent the tonal characteristics are, obviously.

•  Resample your sample

Once you've got the processing and balance between both layers of your drum sound, take the time to bounce the sound out as a single sample that you can import into your sampler of choice.  You'll build a decent customized drum library in no time and save yourself a lot of work in the future.  You might also consider bouncing out the individual components.  Build a library of processed layers, so you can have, for example, a bunch of attack and punch samples, or sustain and body samples that you can freely interchange and experiment with.

Creating the Illusion of Distance

Even when one is talking about mixing to stereo (as opposed to 5.1), a song's mix can be very three dimensional.  Perhaps not literally, but in the same sense that a painter can simulate the way an image diffuses the further it is away from the viewer, it is not terribly difficult to simulate the characteristics of a sound that is far from the listener.  This can be brilliant at setting a mood and creating a real sense of depth.  Here's two easy steps that when used together can really give them a sense of three dimensional space.

1.  The first thing to remember is that, with all other things equal, a low frequency wave will travel further than a high frequency wave.  If you've ever approached an outdoor venue while a band was playing, no doubt the first thing you were probably able to hear is the rumble of the kick drum.  So distant sounds aren't very bright (in terms of tonal balance, not intelligence).  Use a lowpass filter or roll off the higher frequencies with your favorite EQ to simulate this.  The further the sound is intended to be from the listener, the more high end you should roll off.

2.  If you are standing far away from a sound source in a reverberant environment, there comes a point where you will be hearing more of the actual reverb than the original signal itself.  Thus, if you want to create the illusion of distance, you'll also want to play with the wet/dry mix on your reverb of choice.  The 'wetter' the signal, the farther away the sound will appear to be.

For best results, you'll want to utilize both of these techniques simultaneously and in the correct balance.  Nothing too difficult to figure out with a little messing around.  What about you?  Any favorite techniques for putting a sound "far away" from the listener?

Another Approach to Gated Drum Sounds

Some time ago, I walked you through how to create your own 80's-tastic gated drum sounds. As with just about anything related to music production, however, there is more than one way to achieve an end. So today I want to show you an alternate, slightly more flexible way to create gated drum sounds.

The first step is to select your drum sounds. Once you have done so, apply a medium length hall or plate reverb to the sound in question. Whether you do this as a send or insert, you want a ratio of about 80% dry to 20% wet.

Once you've selected a reverb you like, go ahead and bounce your drum sound down to an audio file. Trim off any excess 'dead space' and load it into your sampler of choice.

Usually, when dealing with drum sounds, you'd select your sampler's "cycle" mode which plays the sample from start to finish no matter how long you hold down the key that triggers it. In this case, however, we want to turn this mode off so that the sample only plays as long as you are holding down a key.

Once you've done this, you can control the length of the "gate" simply by changing the length of the MIDI note. The advantage this holds over traditional gating is that literally each note can have its own gate length allowing for much more dynamic gated effects. For example, you can have a long reverb on the 2 and the 4, and have short, cut off "ghost" notes playing in between. The effect is wonderfully artificial and "fake" sounding, but can lead to some very cool sounding rhythms if you play around with it enough.