Download audio file (slavery_dlux.mp3)

Description of the track:

I tried to make a hip hop beat that was on the lines of a slavery aspect.

Terms of Use: This track is available for download.

Have a listen to the track and offer your constructive criticism for this Workshop in the comments section.

• Do you enjoy the song or track itself? Does it have potential?
• Can the arrangement be improved?
• How did you find the mix? What would you do differently?
• What do you enjoy about the rhythm track? What can be done to improve it?
• Is the choice of instruments relevant and effective for the style/song?
• Are the lyrics (if any) effective? Does the style, arrangement and genre of the song suit them?
• Can you suggest any specific techniques that might improve the track?
• Do you have any other constructive feedback?

Need constructive criticism on your own tracks? Submit them for a workshop using this form (new link). Most but not all submissions are published. There may be a wait of up to two months.

March of 2009

However, with a little dive into Logic’s environment and Piano Roll editors, you can make sophisticated, arpeggiated lead lines (hereafter: arp line) just like the pros.

Step 1

At the heart of any arp line is a great synth patch. Logic hosts a number of synths that would make excellent sources, but we’ll use the oft-overlooked, yet powerful ES1 synthesizer for its punchiness and simplicity.

Load one instance of the ES1 synthesizer in a new instrument track in Logic Pro. From the drop-down menu of presets, select 06 Sequence Elements – Saw Sequence. Set the octave to 8, select Wave 2 for the Sub-Osc waveform, and add a slight amount of Glide to the patch. Your final patch will look something like this:

ES1 Patch

Step 2

Now that we have a sound, we can hop into the dreaded Environment window. The Logic Environment is feared by many, but the truth is that once you have a basic understanding of it, you can accomplish some powerful things.

Open the Environment window by pressing Command + 8. In the upper left corner, click the down arrow to expand the drop-down menu of Environment layers. Select Clicks & Ports. You should see a set of connections similar to those in the image below.

Clicks and Ports

This window essentially shows the MIDI I/O of your keyboard controller or interface. You’ll notice that at the end of the chain is the ‘Sequencer Input’. This is the last item in the line where Logic receives and routes MIDI input to your tracks.

Step 3

While there are several ways of connecting an Arpeggiator Object, I’ve found this method to be quick, reliable, and relatively straightforward. It has the additional benefit of allowing you to record the arpeggiated MIDI signal, which helps if you wish to edit the notes later on.

From the ‘New’ menu, we’ll select Arpeggiator, and the result should be an Arpeggiator object in the window. Drag the cable output from your ‘Input Notes’ object to the input of the Arpeggiator object. Likewise, drag the cable output of the Arpeggiator to the input of the Sequencer Input object. The result will look something like this.

Arpeggiator object layout

Step 4

After completing the steps above, select the Arpeggiator object and note the panel to the left of the main Environment window, which displays the properties of the Arpeggiator object. Here is where we can begin to tune the way in which the object will affect our incoming MIDI signal.

Have some fun experimenting with the effects of each parameter. For this tutorial, I’m going to use the following settings:

Arpeggiator settings

Step 5

Now that we have our basic setup, we’ll begin recording a few arp lines! Select a tempo that’s appropriate for your tune – I’m going with 110bpm here.

By putting your transport into PLAY or RECORD mode, your incoming MIDI data will now be modulated by the Arpeggiator object. Experiment with this for awhile to get a feel for how it works, then record a few variations using simple chords and intervals. You’ll find that while using this Arpeggiator is an imperfect art (occasional missed notes and late changes), a few short moments in the piano editor to move a few things around will help clean things up to perfect sync.

Download audio file (1.mp3)

First arp line of ES1

Step 6

Now that we have a few variations of our arpeggios, let’s liven them up a bit using a couple of simple techniques. First, we’ll add in some variations to the arpeggios in the Piano Roll editor.

For the first arpeggio, I have a simple alternating octave of 16th notes. I’ll select all the notes in this section and use the Transform – Fixed Note Length function. This will shorten the duration of the notes and give them a bit more punch. I set mine to 120 ticks.

Next, I’ll add in a few third and fourth octave variations to some of the notes, resulting in something like this.

Octave variations

I’ll use a similar process on the second arpeggiated section, adding in some octave variations and adjusting the note duration.

For a closer look at creating cool ostinato effects, check out this tutorial by Ryan Leach.

Download audio file (2.mp3)

Adding more detail to the arpeggios

Step 7

Now that we’ve tuned our arp lines, we’ll add some simple effects to them using Logic’s delay plugins. For this particular style, I really like Logic’s Tape Delay, so we’ll insert one instance of the Tape Delay plugin into the insert track of the Arpeggio arrange track.

We don’t want the delay to overpower the punchiness of the arp line, so here are the parameters I’ve used for this plugin.

Tape Delay

Here’s the final result of our arpeggios using Logic’s ES1, Tape Delay, and the Arpeggiator Object from the Environment window.

Download audio file (3.mp3)

Final arp lines

And for good measure, here’s the whole lot, blended together with a nice dance beat. Enjoy!

Download audio file (4.mp3)

Final mix!

What To Backup

There are primarily two data pools that you will need to backup, your project data and system drive. It is clear why you need to backup your project data, simply because it is your work and it is probably what gets you paid.

It is also important to backup your system drive so as to minimise the downtime should your system drive fails. Having a clone of your system drive allows you to quickly replace your failed system drive and get back to where you were again.

You can also backup your sample libraries but quite often you can recover those from your installers if you do not want to use more backup space. That would fall under personal preferences.

Getting Started

Using an automated backup system takes the pain out from remembering to backup your data. It runs on a scheduled time and knows what backup source and destination. There are many software solutions out there that allow you create such a backup system.

Depending on your choice of a PC or a Mac, the software and method that you would use will defer. Being a Mac user, I will be able to recommend some specific choices for the Mac but it will not be difficult to find a piece of software that does the same job for the PC.

My choice of software for the Mac is Carbon Copy Cloner. It allows me to schedule a backup task and choosing my source folder and destination folder. These are just basic functions that most backup software will have.

Choose a good time for the backup task to run. Obviously, the computer will need to be running at that point of time. If you chose to do an incremental backup, the task will not take long unless you constantly make huge file changes to your drive. I am only working on individual projects at a time so my backups usually take a minute or less.

You can also choose to run the backup manually when you wish to. This could be after a large amount of work and you’re playing it safe.

Choose a Backup Type

There are slight differences in the type of backup that you can choose from. The differences are how the program handles data that have changed.

Firstly, there is the clone option. The program just ensures that there is an exact clone of the backup source. Files that no longer exist on the source are deleted. This type of backup will help when you have a drive failure but does not help if you need to recover a file that you had deleted.

Secondly, there is the backup and archive method. Files that have been changed or deleted are moved to another folder and archived. This takes up more space on your backup drive but provides the possibility of recovering a file that you have deleted.

Backup Your System Drive

Besides backing up your data, it is also good to keep a backup of your system drive in case that it fails. Having a backup of your system drive minimises downtime by allowing you to replace the failed drive and clone your system to exactly the way it was before.

For Mac users, Time Machine which ships with OS X was designed to help recover from such a disaster. However, it still takes a few hours for your drive to be restored using a Time Machine backup. You can use a backup software like Carbon Copy Cloner to perform an exact clone of your system drive to reduce the time needed.

For Windows users, the backup methods mentioned above would work well too. However, a backup and archive method would require a lot of backup space since files changes are much more common on the system drive. A standard clone should suffice for most users.

Its Not That Complicated

Building a backup plan might sound complicated but it is rather easy if you take it a step at a time. Know what is most important to you and make sure you have an extra copy.

The Altered Chord Series

This is the sixth article in a seven part series on altered chords. In the first part I explained that by lowering or raising a tone of a chord by a half step you can change the color and function of a chord.

Part 1 looked at altered V chords, Part 2 at altered II chords, Part 3 at altered VI chords, Part 4 at altered III chords, and Part 5 at altered VII chords. We will continue the series by exploring various ways to alter the IV chord.

Diatonic IV

The fourth diatonic chord in a major key is a major triad. In the key of B it’s E major. If you add the seventh (a major seventh above the root), you get a major seventh chord (maj7).

It’s harmonic function is considered that of a subdominant chord. In an earlier tutorial called The Basic Functions of Harmony, I explained that a subdominant chord is like moving away from home. In diatonic form it has a certain sense of stability, but as we will discover, in altered form it feels much more transitional and strives to resolve.

The IV chord is so basic and common that it doesn’t require much discussion. Here’s a very traditional I-IV-V7-I progression:

Download audio file (1_I-IV-V7-I.mp3)

Altered IV

The most common alterations of IV include:

• iv (minor, borrowed from the minor mode)
• IV7 (dominant 7, borrowed from the dorian mode)

Altering Each Chord Tone

As explained in the previous tutorials, a chord is “altered” by lowering or raising one or more chord tones by a half step. Since there are four pitches in a maj7 chord that gives us four choices for tones to alter, 1 3 5 7.

We’ll go through one chord tone at a time and examine the results of altering each of them.

Altering the Root

Lowering the Root

Lowering the root of a major seventh chord just turns the root into the seventh. Rather than an altered IV, it’s more like a vi chord:

Raising the Root

Raising the root alone changes the chord to a #IV diminished triad or #IVm7b5 chord, which can serve several purposes.

It could be the IIm7b5 in a minor II-V progression resolving to iii:

Download audio file (3_m7b5.mp3)

Or for a voice-leading/line oriented progression you could use the #IV like a passing tone, notice the smooth chromatic line from G down to E:

Download audio file (4_Passing.mp3)

You could also have a chromatic line going up in the bass, like this progression that uses #IV as a way to increase the tension between IV and V:

Download audio file (5_raisedIV.mp3)

Altering the Third

Lowering the Third

By far the most common alteration of IV is to lower the third and get iv, or “four minor”. It’s been used so many times in so many styles that it’s certainly a cliche, but I’ll admit that I still love it.

It’s a sound you are probably familiar with:

Download audio file (6_iv.mp3)

In a previous tut on Secondary Dominants, I used the Beatles song “In My Life” as an example with iv being used twice.

The first time IV plays for two beats before changing to iv, in essence depressing and saddening the chord by moving it from major to minor:

Download audio file (7_Life1.mp3)

Later on in the song, iv is used as the landing chord for a deceptive cadence, providing us with a nostalgic and sad surprise:

Download audio file (8_Life2.mp3)

Another Beatles song that uses a move from IV to iv is “If I Fell”. Listen for the change in the bridge on the lyrics “And I would be sad,” at about 1:00 into this video:

Raising the Third

Raising the third of a major chord changes it into a sus4 chord. In contemporary styles such as film music, sus4 is a great way to create a sense of neutrality. In the sense that “major is happy” and “minor is sad”, sus4 is neither of these emotions, and thus gives you some more flexibility.

Here’s a “film score” style example that goes from Isus4 to IVsus4 and back to Isus4:

Download audio file (9_sus4.mp3)

Something else that helps with that soft and neutral sound is that the sus4 of the IV chord is the b7 of the key, which helps lend to that open and gentler sound.

Altering the Fifth

Lowering the Fifth

A maj7 chord with b5 is quite unusual and not something you’ll run into very often. But I suppose it’s possible that if you lowered the fifth and the seventh, you could actually think of them enharmonically as leading tones into the root and third of the I chord.

Meaning, if your chord is F A Cb Eb, think of it as F A B D#. The B and D# both resolve up a half step into C and E, and the F and A can both resolve by a whole step to G:

Download audio file (10_halfsteps.mp3)

If you lowered the fifth and third a half step, and the seventh a whole step, you could change the chord to a IV diminished seventh chord, which when alternated with I has a beautiful and romantic sound.

This example from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, an excerpt of Waltz of the Flowers, is a perfect one:

Download audio file (11_Nutcracker.mp3)

Raising the Fifth

Raising the fifth creates an augmented chord, or IV+. Although useful for altering I and V chords, an augmented IV chord doesn’t really serve much “functional” purpose.

Altering the Seventh

Lowering the Seventh

Lowering the seventh changes the IV chord from major seven to dominant seven, or IVmaj7 to IV7.

IV7 is most commonly found in the basic 12 Bar Blues, in which every chord is a dominant 7:

You can really hear the b7 of the IV chord on the guitar fill after the line “She’s my sweet little thing” at 0:43.

Another place you can find IV7 is in the song “Brain Damage” from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon:

Download audio file (12_BrainDamage.mp3)

The song is in the key of D. The b7 of the IV chord, lowering the third of the key from F# to F natural, helps create a sense of quirkiness. But it’s especially tritone of B to F, non-diatonic to the key, that adds a sense of “lunacy”.

Raising the Seventh

Raising the seventh of a major seventh chord is essentially meaningless because you just end up back at the root again!

Conclusion

IV is a great chord to alter because it’s already functionally a little more free than I or V. It doesn’t have to have a sense of firm stability like a tonic chord and it doesn’t have to create a strong feeling of tension and need to resolve like a dominant chord. Instead it’s a moment of transition, and thus you have more freedom to play with it’s color by lowering or raising it’s chord tones.

As mentioned, the alteration you’ll hear quite often is iv minor. But as you can see there are a lot of other options out there if you’re willing to experiment and be creative.

Next up and concluding the series will be the Altered I chord.

Please leave your comments and questions below and we will continue to discuss them in the future parts of the altered chord series.

Psdtuts+ — Photoshop Tutorials

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  Making modifications to your car or truck in Photoshop can be a lot of fun. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a pimped out truck modification using photos taken with a simple point and shoot camera, with no advanced lighting setup. Let’s get started!

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  Photoshop is great at seamlessly combing photos to create an entirely new scene. In this tutorial we will create an elephant sundae using several stock photos. Let’s get started!

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  In this article we will be featuring the work of Michael Oswald. Oswald is a digital artist with a unique style. His technique involves a combination of photo manipulation and digital painting techniques and the results are often stunning. Let’s take a look!

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Nettuts+ — Web Development Tutorials

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  Sublime Text 2 Tips and Tricks (Updated)

  Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest and most incredible code editors to be released in a long time! With a community and plugin ecosystem as passionate as this one, it just might be impossible for any other editor to catch up. I’ll show you my favorite tips and tricks today.

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  An In Depth Analysis of HTML5 Multimedia and Accessibility

  In this tutorial, youll learn how HTML5 helps to provide you with several ways of presenting your media content to users. As a result, youll increase the availability of your media to users with different
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  Writing an API Wrapper in Ruby with TDD

  Sooner or later, all developers are required to interact with an API. The most difficult part is always related to reliably testing the code we write, and, as we want to make sure that everything works properly, we continuosly run code that queries the API itself. This process is slow and inefficient, as we can experience network issues and data inconsistencies (the API results may change). Let’s review how we can avoid all of this effort with Ruby.

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Vectortuts+ — Illustrator Tutorials

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  How to Illustrate a Microscope in Illustrator

  The microscopes is a symbol of our civilization. Throughout this tutorial on how to illustrate a vector microscope you’ll take advantage of numerous Illustrator tools. You will learn how to use blends, art brushes and 3D rendering in Adobe Illustrator. Let’s get started!

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  This work is a common project created together with Iaroslav Lazunov and Alexander Egupov. We have used 3D rendering, Blends, Opacity masks, making this three-dimensional stage with vanishing points. Learn every step in how to create this picture gallery work.

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  If you’re serious about creating a typeface design, then you’ll need some solid resources to get started. Learn effective typeface design workflows, how to take an initial spark of an idea from sketch, through Illustrator, into Fontlab, and then work your creation into a complete and custom font design. Here are multiple tutorials that show you how to create fonts in Illustrator and Fontlab, and you can also dive into articles that describe the foundation of quality type design with ample inspirational examples.

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Webdesigntuts+ — Web Design Tutorials

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  A Beginner’s Guide to Pairing Fonts

  Pairing fonts can be a challenge. Selecting two or more fonts which work well is one thing – selecting two which work together to achieve your typographic aims may have you reaching for the aspirin. Let’s see if we can alleviate any headaches. This guide will help you get started with font pairing for the web.

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  With the continuous growth of the Internet, online marketing has gotten bigger every year, and along with it, the advertising industry. One major factor in all this craziness is buying and selling ads.

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  Twitter’s Bootstrap is an excellent set of carefully crafted user interface elements, layouts, and javascript tools, freely available to use in your next web design project. This video series aims to introduce you to Bootstrap; taking you all the way from downloading the resources, to building a complete Bootstrap-based website.

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Phototuts+ — Photography Tutorials

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  HDR: Love it or Leave It?

  There are few techniques in the photography world that divide our community as much as HDR. High dynamic range images, or HDR images, are a special type of composite image that combines several images at different exposure settings in order to create an image with increased dynamic range. The look provided by HDR is loved by many, and disliked by perhaps just as many. In today’s article, we’re going to take a better look at what HDR is, and get some opinions from photographers using HDR.

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  Inspiring Images of Cars and Motorcycles

  Cars and motorbikes have been around for 100 years. Throughout the century, they have looked beautiful, satisfied our need for speed and become a symbol for thrill seeking. Today, we’ll look at photos ranging from brand new Ferrari’s to classic muscle cars.

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  Quick Tip: GIMP Portable – Take Your Editing Software With You

  While a number of smartphones now offer photo editing basics (and a plethora of apps to expand things even more), the portability of a solid photo editing program has been hard to come by. Photoshop is a monster in regards to space requirements and its ability to work on any system where it is not expressively installed. Picasa can be fairly ‘lightweight’ but lacks many of the more advanced photo editing tools. So what about GIMP?

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Cgtuts+ — Computer Graphics Tutorials

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  Modeling, UVmapping And Texturing A Low Poly T-Rex In Blender, Part 1

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  Due to the shear number of polygons often required to make believable 3D trees, creating realistic ones for use “in-game” can be a challenging, time consuming task. SpeedTree from IDV aims to change all that with it’s intuitive UI, ease of use and powerful toolset. Making believable trees and plants has literally never been easier!

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Aetuts+ — After Effects Tutorials

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  Dominoes” CameraTracker and Cinema 4d Case Study – Day 1

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  Key Tips To Becoming A Successful Video Freelancer

  Youve watched thousands of tutorials. Youve put in countless hours and spent many late nights working on personal projects. Youve finally come to the conclusion that this may just be something you would like to do for a career. It can seem a little intimidating at first, because how are you going to convince someone to pay you to do this? Up until now youve been your only client. How do you get more? Im going to share my insight and experiences on how to successfully launch your freelance career this year!

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Audiotuts+ — Audio & Production Tutorials

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  Free Professional Quality Audio Unit Plug-ins for Mac

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  While I do agree with the saying, “The tools are only as good as the artist,” I also believe the opposite is true; that at some point the artist can only be as good as his tools are.

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  Quick Tip: Drum Processing Part 4: Tips and Tricks

  This short series of quick tips is designed to give you a good overview of the audio processing techniques involved in creating a professional sounding drum beat for use in house, electro and breaks in Cubase. In this final part we will look at a few ways to add even more life to your drums.
  
  Here is a sample of the type of beat you could expect to end up with at the end of this series of tips:

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  Quick Tip: Use the Doubling Technique for Quick Drums

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Activetuts+ — Flash, Flex & ActionScript Tutorials

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  Create a Microphone-Controlled Flash Game: Code

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  Why Bother With jQuery? A Guide for (Former) Flash Developers

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  An Introduction to the HTML5 Gamepad API

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Wptuts+ — WordPress Tutorials

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  The Rise of HTML5 in WordPress

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Mobiletuts+ — Mobile Development Tutorials

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Battery showing the sine waves of the 808.

The first thing I have done is instantiate Battery (this can be done in any DAW and sampler) with a static kick drum sound from an 808. This is to lay the basis for my kick drum and generate the necessary low frequency sine waves inherent to clean and pronounced sounding kicks.

Next, I went through my library and found a velocity layered ‘real’ kick sample to lay on top of the 808.

Download audio file (808.mp3)

Download audio file (Vel.mp3)

I then recorded both kicks and sent them through a free app. called Transcribe! (you should check it out www.seventhstring.com) which helped me to tune both kicks to C (an arbitrary tuning, but that is what we will work with here – I had to pitch the velocity layered kick form A to C).

The analyzed kick drum.

I then filtered out most of the high end of the 808 and the low end of the velocity layered kick so they were not overlapping as I wanted the fundamental bass of the 808 with the rather organic top end of the velocity layered kick to meld.

The left filter is for the 808, the right for the velocity layered cell.

Download audio file (Comb. & Filt.mp3)

I then went to the modulation menu in Battery and set a tune modulation by envelope to both drum sounds and set it to a fast attack and quick decay in order to modulate a octave + of pitch which accentuates the attack phase of both kicks.

The modulation envelope in the bottom left.

Download audio file (Mod.mp3)

I then went in with Logic’s transform tool to randomize my MIDI layers. I gave the tops a +- 10 random velocity from what I had selected previously as I wanted to take advantage of the different samples of the velocity layers and I gave my bottom end a +-5 as I wanted my lows to remain constant and not articulate too much. If your DAW does not have something like this, you can easily add some randomization by hand.

Logic’s Transform Tool.

Download audio file (Rand.mp3)

From there I took out some mid lows with an EQ to get rid of unnecessary sonics and tighten up the sound-basically get rid of the floppiness of it. I then added some point to the attack with the high shelving filter and cleaned up the bottom end and added some punch with a resonant low cut.

Logic’s Channel EQ.

Download audio file (EQ.mp3)

You can definitely use more than two sample layers for this trick, but you should also be careful not to overdo it and make your sound muddy. I have found 3 for the kick is about the maximum for me. Snares and other elements which consist of a lot of harmonics can be layered more depending on the sound you are going for, but you should still be careful not to overdo it as you will just have to get rid of the extra information later on.

Although this trick is really no replacement for a live performance, it can give the feeling of one and is a great substitute for expensive studio and recording time. Furthermore, as many mixers drop the bottom end of kick recordings for pure sine waves anyway, this kick layering trick sounds great and current for the time/effort involved while allowing for a large amount of control over dynamics and sound variations.

In this tutorial I’ll show you how to set up side-chain filters using Fabfilter’s ‘Pro-C’. Don’t worry if you don’t have this I’ll suggest some alternatives as we go. You should be able to create almost identical effects using Reason, Logic or Cubase.

Step 1 - The Source And Destination

The first thing to think about here are the specific sounds you want to use. There is the ‘source’ which will be used as the trigger for our compression effect and the ‘destination’ being the audio we actually want to process.

Of course depending on the situation these two sounds could vary drastically but in this case I am using a drum loop to apply some syncopated gain reduction to a synth line.

Download audio file (1.mp3)

The two untreated sounds we’ll be using here

As you can hear our drum loop contains sounds of a few different frequencies. If we were to apply traditional side chaining / ducking the synth line would be reduced in level every time a transient event occurred. Using frequency dependent side chaining we can home in one element in our drum loop and use it to apply the reduction. Here’s how…

Download audio file (1b.mp3)

Treated with traditional side chaining the synth loop is compressed continually

The synth line is side chained using the whole loop as a trigger

Step 2 - Some Basic Routing

Ok, so first up things need to be set up correctly. Luckily the routing here is pretty much identical to a standard side chain compressor. Things will vary a little depending on which DAW you are using but in Logic it’s just a case of telling the compressor which audio stream you would like to use a side chain input.

The Pro-C is routed for side chaining

Ableton Live, Cubase, Reason and Pro Tools all now include side chaining as a native function and the process is equally straight forward in all of them.

Go ahead and place the compressor you are using on the channel you want to process (in this case the synth) and select the source as the side chain input. (the drum loop). This is as complex as it gets and you should be ready to go in no time.

Step 3 - Finding The Frequency

With this basic routing in place we are ready to start tweaking the compressors settings to ensure we have targeted only the chosen frequency range for our side chain effect. For this to work you have to double check that the compressor you are using has a side chain filter. Logic’s built in compressor does as does Reason 6’s channel strip dynamics.

Reason 6 is capable of side chain filtering

… As is Logic’s stock compressor

No matter which compressor you can use there will be an option to activate the side chain filter. In Logic’s compressor it’s in the drop down section of the plug-in, in Reason it’s in the filter section of the channel strip… Again every DAW and plug-in differs but the theory remains the same regardless.

The Pro-C has an ‘expert’ section that slides open and reveals the side chain filter. Once engaged high and low pass filters can be applied to the incoming side chain signal. To hear what you are doing here the effect can be auditioned in isolation.

Pro-C’s Expert section reveals the side chain filter

Here I simply applied a low pass filter until all that could be heard was the kick drum in the loop. This means that the side chain effect will only occur when this low frequency signal is present. A great trick.

A simple low cut is applied to home in on the kick.

Download audio file (3.mp3)

The low pass filter is isolated to help identify the correct area

Step 4 - Tweaking The Ducking Effect

From this point on it’s simply a case of adjusting the threshold and ration of the compressor to attain the desired amount of gain reduction. This is also identical to using a standard side-chain compressor.

It’s really important at this stage to get the attack and release times set correctly. I like to use a very fast attack time for any side chaining application. This is so the effect is as near to instantaneous as possible. Saying that a very small amount of attack (a few ms) can help to eradicate clicks and pops.

With these simple settings in place you are done. You should find that you can use this in the same way as any other ducking effect with the added bonus of being able to target a very specific area of your sound.

The final effect in action

Download audio file (4.mp3)

The two sounds together with the final effect in place

Step 5 - Some Ideas And Other Uses

So as we’ve seen this technique is awesome for clamping down on a kick drum in a loop but what else could it be used for. Well essentially you could apply to any signal. I’ve used it to create clutch groups in the past, ducking a closed high hat pattern with an open high hat signal and also to clean up busy percussion loops.

Another obvious and more traditional use for this type of processing is de-essing. By feeding a duplicate of your vocal to the compressor as the source an intense high pass filter can be employed to eradicate any sibilance in the signal.

Ultimately the way you use this is up to you but I find that it allows much more freedom than standard static side chain compression.

Note: this tutorial contains embedded audio that will not display in a feed reader. Click back to the site to read the tutorial with audio.

1. Drum Patterns

The drum pattern is the backbone for you song, it gives it structure. In general, there are two kinds of drum patterns:

• Simple Patterns
• Complex Patterns

Simple patterns, or “lunchroom beats” as they’re often known, are patterns that you probably are most familiar with. They’re the ones you tap your foot to (hence “lunchroom beat”, as you can reproduce it by banging your hands on a lunch table). Probably among the most common drum patterns out there, they usually have a set pattern that repeats every 8, 16, 32 or 64 steps.

Complex patterns are, well, complex patterns. They still have a set pattern, but it’s much more difficult to tap along with. They usually have drops/mutes, delays and other complex effects to heighten the anticipation on the track.

Now we know what kind of patterns are available for us, so let’s move on to the actual drums. DJ Khaled’s I’m So Hood is an example of a somewhat complex pattern

Download audio file (1.mp3)

2. Drum Samples

One of the things that stands out about hip-hop, that I’ve lightly touched on in previous articles, is the unique drums. Ethnic drums such as bongos, congas, tamboras, and more, all add flavor and originality to your drum patterns.

Beyond that, move away from your workstation’s stock drum sounds: they’re boring. Odds are they’ve been used on a hundred tracks before yours. Dig around the internet, find some royalty free drum samples, or get behind a drum set and start sampling your own.

Experiment with various objects as instruments (coins in a plastic cup, car keys, even your chain). Maybe they sound bad, or maybe you stumble across something that sounds incredible and gives you dynamics you were missing. Just make sure you EQ properly, and aren’t throwing garbage sounds into your track for no reason. Sounding unoriginal yet pleasing is probably better than sounding original but terrible.

Make sure you’re not loading up the basic sounds every time you go to the studio to work on a track.

Try something new, and the results can be spectacular.

The Neptunes are world famous for their unique drums. See an example of this in Ludacris – “Money Maker” (Feat. Pharrell).

Download audio file (2.mp3)

3.  Mutes

Muting your drums patterns, or muting elements of them, adds suspense and excitement to your music. It is by far the most commonly used technique in hip-hop production.

One of the most obvious uses is the muting of drums when switching between verses and the chorus. It is very common to mute hi-hats during verses, and including them in the chorus, as well as muting or changing elements to create a bridge.

They also help create an intro or outro for your song, where you can lead in with simply kicks or claps. Mutes also give the music some excitement and suspense. Dropping an occasional kick can add liveliness to the music. Muting is one of the best techniques out there, so try adding some into your music.

Note the mute after the short intro in Shareefa – “Need A Boss”, to create a unique silence before they return with the main beat.

Download audio file (3.mp3)

4. Offsets and Doubles

While we’re on the subject of making your music more lively, let’s talk about offsets and doubles. Offsetting a drum is taking a drum that normally falls on a certain quantized step, and offsetting it to a different step.

For example, if you have a kick on step 1, and a clap on step 5 as a repeating pattern, try moving the clap to step 3. It makes the listener do a quick double take, and adds flavor to a pattern that would be simple otherwise.

Doubling a drum is taking your drum pattern and adding “ghost” drums to it. If you have a kick on step 3 and a clap on step 5, try putting a dynamically softer kick on step 2. It will create a type of drum roll, leading up to the louder kick. You can apply this technique to all sorts of drums.

Note the somewhat offset kick in the second half of the drumbeat in Timbaland – “Apologize” (Feat. One Republic). Since Timbaland usually has irregular rhythms in his music, it’s not exactly an offset, but it illustrates the concept.

5.  Flamming

As defined in live drumming, a flam is a rudiment consisting of a quiet “grace” note on one hand followed by a louder “primary” stroke on the opposite hand. The two notes are played almost simultaneously, and are intended to sound like a single, ‘broader’ note.

However, even if you’re not working with live drums, you can still flam your drums. Most drum machines have a flamming option, so try using it. You can play with the offset feature to lengthen the time between the flam and the actual drum hit.

This is a very popular technique when it comes to snare and hi-hat rolls, and it’s a very common technique that can be applied in the “Humanizing” section, so keep reading.

Take a look at this quick lesson on flamming live drums.

6.  Polyrhythms

Polyrhythms are just what they sound like: multiple rhythms played on top of each other. An example of a polyrhythm is 4 evenly spaced beats against 3, with the 4 beat pattern being faster than the 3 beat pattern.

They are very prominent in African music, and since much of hip-hop is influenced by African music, polyrhythms appear often in hip-hop. It gives a very unique sound when there are several patterns being played on top of each other.

The simplest form of this technique is having kick and snare as one rhythm, and hi-hats as another. A step up from that, is having drums like bongos or congas giving another rhythm on top of the kicks. In its purest form, polyrhythms in hip-hop have two or more kick patterns playing at the same time. Regardless of which way you use them, they add complexity to an otherwise simple pattern.

In Pharrell – “That Girl”, the congas add a different rhythm on top of the kick/clap beat.

7. The Human Factor

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is the laziness of modern producers. So many producers have a nice drum pattern going, chose some great samples and then just stop. There’s so much more you can do with drums, so get used to putting extra effort in; it’s worth it.

Reason has an interesting new feature in version 4.0, called ReGroove. I personally haven’t toyed with it enough to be able to praise or disown it, but the concept behind it is important. Applying a “groove” to your pattern takes the pattern, and gives it a human feel.

It’s important for various patterns, as it will take the various drums and slightly offset them by milliseconds. Think about it in realistic terms. When your drummer sits down behind the drums and starts playing, does he hit each drum in perfect timing?

Of course not. This liveliness is what gives the drums their flavor. Too many young producers just let the sequencer put each drum sound in perfect timing, when actually it sounds better to give it some realistic life and variance. You don’t need Reason or its ReGroove to accomplish this.

When you’re recording your track, consider playing your hi-hats or snares directly from your MIDI keyboard without quantizing them. You want to be very careful doing this, as you still need to be close to the correct rhythm, but sometimes having some variation gives your drums life.

Rihanna – “Umbrella” is a track with a live drum feel.

Download audio file (7.mp3)

8. The Importance of EQ

I can’t stress the importance of EQing and mixing your drums properly. AUDIOTUTS already has some tutorials on the subject, so I’m not going to give it an entire lesson. However, it is very important to have proper EQing on your drums to give them the fullest sound.

Additionally, mixing the drums is highly important. The drums need to really bang, so the volume needs to be somewhat loud. However, high volume tends to distort the drums. Volume isn’t the only factor that makes drums loud and full, so play with reverb and other settings as well.

Mixing is also essential in order to maintain proper levels between the drum elements and other song elements (most notably basslines, which often lie in similar frequencies to kicks). Sit down and really put some effort into making your sound as clean and “big” as possible; you won’t regret it.

The Clipse – “Fast Life” is an example of a song with poor mixing. The album version doesn’t have this issue, but for some reason the version that Koch Records uploaded does.

Conclusion

There you have some of the key ingredients in creating hip-hop drums. Start with a good pattern, choose some high quality, unique samples, then change up your pattern with mutes. Try offsetting and flamming, and add a groove to the track. However, there is such a thing as trying to do too much with drums.

It’s easy to apply all the techniques I’ve outlined here, but just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should. Sit down and listen to your drums, and make sure they’re unique and lively, but not overdone.

Resources

Berklee Music have posted some good drum video tutorials on YouTube.

• Create the Hottest Beats with Reason
• Programming Hot Beats in Ableton Live
• Adding Drum and Percussion to Hip Hop Beat Using Reason

Also, here are some video blogs from premier producer, Ryan Leslie. He illustrates many of the techniques that I’ve outlined.

• Ryan Leslie Makes “Addiction”
• Ryan Leslie Makes Sometimes for Cassie
• Ryan Leslie Makes I Gets Money

This short series of quick tips is designed to give you a good overview of the audio processing techniques involved in creating a professional sounding drum beat for use in house, electro and breaks in Cubase. In this final part we will look at a few ways to add even more life to your drums.

Here is a sample of the type of beat you could expect to end up with at the end of this series of tips:

Download audio file (Audio Example 000.mp3)

Tip 1: Adding a ‘Clap Build’

Adding a short ‘build up’ sound prior to your claps is a neat touch that is simple to achieve. Simply load in an extra clap sound, making sure you use one that sounds similar to the clap/snare in your track, but most importantly make sure it’s relatively long.

All you need to do now is to use volume automation or an envelope somewhere to increase the volume at the start, removing the transient impact of the clap. Once it sounds right manually move it into position before your main clap sounds to get that build up effect:

Download audio file (Audio Example 1.mp3)

Tip 2: Sidechaining Your Percussion

Applying a little subtle sidechain compression to your percussion / hi hats can really help to give your beat some movement and adds to the groove it generates. The first thing to do is to route all your hi hats and percussion to its own group channel, then add a compressor to that track and sidechain it from your kick drum.

If you’re not sure how to set up sidechaining in Cubase have a look at Mo Volans’ great tut here: How to Set Up Sidechain Routing in Logic, Cubase & Reason.

In this example I’m hitting about 6 dB of gain reduction every time the kick hits. With a release time of 500ms the compressor has ‘let go’ by the time the next kick drum hits and we get a nice subtle pumping sound. In this audio example you can hear the hats/percussion before and after sidechaining is applied, and then with the rest of the beat.

Download audio file (Audio Example 2.mp3)

Tip 3: Distortion

A little light distortion can work wonders to toughen up some drum sounds, or to help something cut through the mix a bit better. In the example I have been working through I think the clap could do with a bit more emphasis, so I’ve loaded up the standard Cubase distortion, and added just a tiny amount to the clap/snare group – you can hear a big difference:

Download audio file (Audio Example 3.mp3)

In this example I’ve used a very light bit crusher to add a little crunch and noise to the open hi hat. Some people don’t like this sound but I think used sparingly it can add some real character to the right kind of beat.

Here’s a before and after:

Download audio file (Audio Example 4.mp3)

Tip 4: Compressing Your Drum Buss

A final compression tip to really help gel your whole drum part together and add yet more punch and weight is to compress everything together. Route all of your drums – kick group, snare/clap group and percussion/hi hat group to one group track, and apply a compressor.

The PSP Vintage Warmer is a popular choice for this application, as are the Waves compressors, but for this example I have used the Cubase Vintage Compressor, aiming for just 2-3 dB of gain reduction:

Download audio file (Audio Example 5.mp3)

Again, the effect is subtle but that little extra punch and definition helps bring the beat together and should help it sit better within your mix. I also like the added ‘roughness’ that using these vintage style compressor adds. Some people even like to mix in a little mild distortion at this stage for an even rougher drum sound. Another great trick at this stage would be use parallel compression instead of this standard approach.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series, there’s plenty of room to experiment with the various tips and techniques throughout the process to refine your drum sound and make it your own. It’s also worth mentioning that you may find that you wish to go back and tweak your drum sound when it is inserted into the mix with the rest of your instruments.

One of the panels talked about vocal recording techniques. It was hosted by the SAE Institute, with Mixerman and Joe McGrath as panelists. Mixerman is well known for his Daily Adventures of Mixerman, and Joe McGrath has worked with artists such as B.B. King, A.F.I. and Green Day to name a few.

Recording Vocals by Sirius Rust

During the two hour session I took a bunch of notes, and I am happy to share them with you here below:

Use Whatever Mic Works

Even though many people will tell you to use this or that microphone, because that’s how it was done on this great record, sometimes it doesn’t matter. What worked on a different record and a different singer might be completely inappropriate for your needs.

There is no one-stop microphone for vocals. Every singer is different, and every session demands a different approach.

Focus on the Vocal

When you’re tracking a live band, and everything is playing at once, minor mistakes or problems are irrelevant.

Mixermand talked about his session with Ben Harper where everything was tracked live. When tracking everything live, don’t worry about minor instrument mistakes. It doesn’t matter if the performance as a whole, and especially the vocal, is great.

You can’t expect everything to go exactly 100% according to plan, and since the listener is probably focused on the vocal, those little imperfections just make the record more authentic.

Don’t Tear Down a Singer

Sometimes you need to coach a singer in order for him to nail a great take. Some guidance and constructive criticism is a great way to get a better performance out of a singer, but don’t tear him or her down with too much criticism.

If you’re doing take after take after take without any success, maybe it’s time to take a break; come back another day; or figure out a different way to get the performance you want. There’s no way you’re going to get a great performance if you’ve crushed the singer’s ego with too much criticism over his singing.

A Great Take is a Great Performance

On the other hand, if the singer does an amazing job, then minor sound issues are trivial compared to the soulfulness of the performance. Just like minor instrument mistakes don’t matter when you’re focusing on the vocal of a live performance, the same goes for minor sound issues in the vocals when the performance is perfect.

On the whole, imperfections are fine as long as the listener is captivated by the great performance of the artist. Nobody cares if there’s minor headphone bleed, or even tiny tuning issues. It’s all about the performance of the artist.

Don’t Sing Too Much

Don’t try to nail an album’s worth of songs in an afternoon. It’s too stressful and absolutely unattainable. Even a great singer struggles to nail that many songs in a day.

Rather, spread out your vocal recording sessions to make them more enjoyable and productive for everyone. You can’t expect a singer to just nail every song in one take, sometimes you need to spend time punching in an making everything sound perfect. If you’re trying to make everything perfect in a limited amount of time, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

Mix the Way You Like

Of course, every engineer has a specific way that he records and mixes. At one point a minor fight broke out between the panelists when they argued over their respective mixing techniques. Both of their sounds are good, and they obviously have a footprint in the industry.

That just goes to show how no one mixing or recording technique is the same. Mix the way you like, and make things sound like they way you like them sounding. Hopefully, other people will like that sound as well.

No one technique is wrong, it’s how you use them. If your techniques in the aggregate sound terrible, then you might need to re-think your mixes, but if you broke the rules with everyone loving the outcome, who cares?

Don’t EnginEye, EnginEar.

Last but not least, use your ears. Even though you might think that EQ curve looks good for a vocalist, it all comes down to how it sounds. It’s good to use your eyes for a bunch of different things, checking the meters, gauging the speed of the gain reduction meter on your compressor, and yes, even checking EQ curves every once in a while. But in the end, it all comes down to how it sounds.

When confronted with someone criticizing your mixes, you can’t say to him: “But it looked so good in DAW at the time…” In the end, it’s all about how it sounds, not how it looks. Don’t Engineye, enginear.

Conclusion

It’s always great to get some perspective and ideas from the experts in the field. Mixerman and Joe shared a lot of insight into both of their respective approaches to vocal recording. The performance is the most important part of any production, sound always comes second.

Don’t overload your singer with too much work and don’t go overboard with criticism. Use the microphones that sound right for the job, even though they’re not the industry standards. Don’t focus on minor mistakes when the recording as a whole is amazing, and use your ears and conviction to get YOUR sound. If it sounds good, it is good, regardless of how you made it.

Most beginners getting into audio have a lot of questions about computers. “Is my computer good enough?” “What type should I buy?” “Do I need any special components?” What would you tell them?

In this week’s Audio Premium content, Bobby Owsinski continues his series on improving the sound of your room. This week he covers isolation – what works, and what doesn’t.

To learn more about what you get as part of Audio Premium, read this. To take a peek inside this tutorial, hit the jump!

These days it seems that nearly everyone has some sort of recording ability in their home, but that doesn’t mean the space you use actually sounds good. In this series, we’ll look at how to improve your listening environment for a lot less money that you’d think was possible. In Part 2, we’ll look at the principles of isolation.

If you’re building any kind of studio, especially one at home, the first question that both musicians and engineers ask regarding acoustics is, “How can I make sure that my neighbors don’t hear us?” When it comes to soundproofing, there are some very basic principles that just about anyone can understand that will get you 90 percent of the way there. The problem is that every extra percent of isolation that you wring out of your space from that point costs exponentially more money.

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This being said, I scoured the internet in search of free audio plug-ins that are both compatible with Mac (though not necessarily exclusively) and are of the utmost quality. Having just returned from my journey, dusty, dirty, and sporting a full on mountain man beard, I present to you my findings: Eight freeware Audio Unit plug-ins from some of the biggest names in the industry.
 

1. Camel Audio – Alchemy Player

• For: Mac/Win
• Download it here

Camel Audio’s Alchemy Player is as you guessed, a smaller version of their flagship synth Alchemy. Under the hood it sports the same synth engine and sample playback capabilities and comes with a 1 GB sound bank.

Bonus Content – If a gigabyte of sounds isn’t enough for you, when you sign up for a free account you will have an extra 380 MBs of sounds bestowed upon you.

2. U-He – TyrellN6

• For: Mac/Win
• Download it here

U-He is best known for their Zebra synth. A little side project between U-He and German online magazine Amazona.de gave to the world TyrellN6. I have used this synth in many a project and I must say that I am pretty amazed at the quality of not only the synth itself but the  huge patch library it comes with.

3. U-He – Zebralette

• For: Mac/Win
• Download it here

Speaking of the Zebra synth, say hello to his little sister, Zebralette. Zebralette is a single oscillator from the Zebra synth packed into its own synth. Don’t be fooled though, Zebralette is way more than a watered down version of Zebra.

4. Applied Acoustics Systems – Swatches

• For: Mac/Win
• Download it here

AAS makes some of the most advanced physical modeling synths on the market today. The Swatches library, which plays via the free AAS Player, is a collection of their best presets from across their entire line of synths. You can also purchase additional sound banks to expand your sound palette.

5. IK Media – AmpliTube 3 Free

• For: Mac/Win
• Download it here

IK Media is well known for their excellent guitar amp and effects emulation software, so it makes sense they would release a free version of their ever popular AmpliTube 3 Software. Although this is a trimmed down version, there is still plenty to keep you shredding your axe, including nine stomps boxes, four amps, five cabs, three mics, two rack effects plus more.
 

6-8. Native Instruments – Komplete 8 Players

• For: Mac/Win
• Download them here

Native Instruments is a company that needs no introduction, which is why I don’t understand how these guys always get left out of “Free Plug-in” lists. They are in my opinion the cream of the freeware crop. With the introduction of Komplete 8, the free players are the exact same product as the full versions, which can be updated via online purchase. The free players consist of the Kontakt 5 Player, Reaktor 5 Player, and Guitar Rig 5 Player, and ship with over 3 GBs of content.

Do you know of any other freeware soft synths or insert effects that are a cut above the rest? Let us know in the comments.

Welcome to the second part of my series covering all you need to know to start recording your first song.

Last time around, we spent some time thinking about the reasons and methods behind home recording and looked at some bare rudiments or writing and arrangement. This month, we’re going to dive right in and run through some of the core techniques and methods that you’ll rely on in your productions.

Track Types and Routings

In every project, you’re going to have to deal with two basic types of track: “real” audio and software instruments. For example, if you’re a guitar player like me, you might program software percussion and bass tracks, then record live guitar tracks over them.

In addition, you may want to route audio signals through auxiliary or buss tracks. With this technique, you can send multiple tracks to a single channel strip and, if you want to, vary the amount of each individual track that is sent.

So, for example, you might group all of your percussion tracks onto a single fader so that you can control their master level and apply EQ and effects to the whole group while still being able to work with the individual tracks. Another common example is that you might place a commonly used effect like reverb on an auxiliary track and send varying amounts of each instrument to it, thus applying a varying amount of the same reverb to every instrument in your track.

In the image above, you can see the “Sends” dials on each instrument track sending varying amounts of their signals to the master “Reverb” track.

This can get complicated and is a subject you will naturally become more familiar with as your skills and experience develop, but for now the above is sufficient for a working grasp.

Templates

Anyone that’s written more than a few letters, essays or reports knows that a basic, formatted template loaded with key information and perhaps even a few stock phrases is an indispensable time saver. Music production is much the same: if you routinely write and record three-piece rock songs, you’re certainly going to save yourself a lot of time and work by setting out a template with all of the basic tracks, routings and effects you tend to use.

Most DAWs have the facility to save a template, and for any that don’t, you can simply save a normal project file and remember to use the Save As… function every time you start a project with it.

Writing MIDI

Software instrument parts are played by MIDI, and MIDI is quite rightly the stuff of nightmares for many musicians – certainly for any guitarists who’ve ever been down the 1980s style “refrigerator rack” road – but in this case, there’s little to worry about.

Each software instrument will need to be programmed with what notes to play and when to play them, and this is achieved by what amounts to a digital version of the those punched cards that make a pianola work.

This information can be entered via any number of methods, but the simplest and commonest ways are:

• Enter the notes one at a time using your mouse
• Play the notes, either all at once or in multiple “passes”, using a MIDI enabled keyboard

Alternatively, if your DAW supports musical notation, or you use notation software which will output MIDI files, you can program your instrument via a normal musical score.

Loops

Loops were briefly mentioned last time, and shouldn’t need much introduction. Basically, this is just a means of repeating a section of recorded audio, and can be a very useful technique for building out and arranging your songs quickly, allowing you to focus on creative ideas and decisions rather than performance.

Often, it’s necessary to tidy your audio up before it can be looped – if you’re rushing to get your ideas down, chances are your timing and accuracy aren’t perfect – and most modern DAWs have a range of tools to help you do this. In Logic and GarageBand, for example, the basic trimming tools along with Flex, which allows you to move notes and chords around in time, can make something useable out of the sloppiest of performances.

Putting It Together

So these are the basic techniques and ideas we use to put together a basic recording. Below, you can see a simple mix using some audio loops along with a simple software drum pattern, which is also looped.

Download audio file (Full.mp3)

Though there’s not much to it, just a couple of very simple chord changes really, we already have a decent sounding track to serve as the basis for generating more ideas and moving things around to find a perfect arrangement, and all using the simple techniques outlined above. It’s that easy!

Next Time

So why not fire up your DAW, program some tracks, record some loops and play around with routing your instruments to auxiliary tracks? Next time, we’ll look at some of these steps in more detail, consider some methods of producing and testing ideas, and look at some of the processes involved in a typical recording workflow.

Panning

Often times those with hearing loss as the result of an accident have lost hearing in only one ear. For those who suffer hearing loose in only one ear try flipping around your stereo field to hear the other side; just switch around your master pan. If you are wearing headphones then just turn around the headphones to the other ear. You will still need to keep and eye on the meters as a visual cue to make sure you are not clipping and such but make your best guess then flip the pan around to check yourself.

Use Metering

It is common for engineers to use various plugins to check different aspects of their mix such as phase, levels, etc. and these can be very beneficial to those with hearing loss. If you are mixing a hard rock track that to you sounds somewhat similar to a popular hard rock track then use that popular track as a reference. By playing that track through your metering plugins you can get a visual representation of what is considered “good” by popular music. Here are a list of plugins you should consider and why.

• Frequency Analyzer: These plugins will give you a graphic representation of how loud or soft the different frequency bands are. In this way you can see if your bass is too loud, treble is too soft, etc. Just be careful with your reference material is more than likely been enhanced through mastering and you do not want to be mastering in the mixing process!
• Phase Meter: The benefit for a phase analyzer is that you can get a good representation of the stereo field and what things will be knocked out of phase if summed to mono. This will also be a good way to check your stereo imaging if you are worried that one side of your mix might be left or right heavy you’re your hearing loss.
• Peak/RMS Meter: This is not just a normal peak meter you see on mix track. The benefit you have to a plugin that shows both RMS and peak volume is that you can keep track of your overall volume (RMS) and the peaks that cut through. The RMS will be very important in determining the perceived loudness of the track. Again be careful with your reference material as if could have been severely compressed from mastering.

Mix In Mono

Usually the greatest issue engineers will face when mixing with a hearing issue is the stereo field; so the best way to compensate is to mix with no stereo field! If you can make a killer mix in mono then when you pan it out to the sides it will open up your mix and give you a really good result. Even if you do not have hearing loss this is still a good idea try. The other benefit you have to mixing in mono is that if the stereo version of the track ever gets summed to mono you will not have worry about phase cancellations! (at least not as much anyways).

Summary

That about sums it up in how to quickly get mixing with hearing loss. Remember, no ones ears are going to be perfect forever and a lot of these tricks are good practice for any engineer regardless of how good their hearing is. Hope you enjoyed these quick tips! See you next time!

Step 1: Create a Track

First create a chord sequence in C major with different minor and major chords. This will be the backbone of the melody which will be arpeggiated. Create a Thor and use the Digital Headhunter preset. Don’t tweak any parameters.

Next create a Scream 4 destruction unit on it. Use the warp mode and tweak the body controls a little bit to make the Thor distorted. Lower the low frequencies to make the mids more present. I feel that the high frequencies are too harsh, so lower them a little bit too.

Here how is it sounds so far:

Download audio file (Chords.mp3)

Step 2: Make an Apreggiator

Reason 5 offers an excellent arpeggiator device with lots of feature. Tweak it a little bit:

• Set the rate knob to 16th
• Mode: Up and Down
• Octave: 1 octave
• Tie at 2 o’clock
• Insert: 3-1

Use the pattern function and place some rest between the notes.

Here’s how it sound so far:

Download audio file (Arp chord.mp3)

Step 3: Modulations

Create a Malström in order to modulate some parameters in the RPG-8 Monophonic Apreggiator. Use modulator A and B to modulate the Tie and the Velocity in order to make the pattern interesting.

From time to time the note length will be longer and the velocity will change the values all the time. You can use different curves with different rates and different destinations. Feel free to experiment. Refer to the parameters on the picture.

Step 4: Rewire in Ableton and Use Some Effects

Reason 5 is a good DAW to make sounds, but I really like Ableton’s built-in effects and the things that you can do with third party plugins.

Rewire the two DAWs. (If you are not familiar what is rewiring please read Using Rewire to Expand Your Audio Toolset ).

Use a Compressor to make it, using the Waves LA-2A emulation.

The sound is quite good enough, but I would like more filter modulation. Use the Soundtoys Filter Freak plugin. It is a great plugin for making movement in the frequencies. You can see the parameters on the picture.

I’ll explain what it does. Around 4600 Hz a low pass filter will filter out the high frequencies – a moderate modulation value in every 1 dot rate along with a sine wave. So it will create filter movement. Cool isn’t it?

Use some EQ to filter out the unwanted frequencies. And give it some pumping with a side chain compressor. Last but not least, used a reverb and a ping pong delay on a return channel to create some space.

You can listen the final sound here:

Download audio file (Arp chord final.mp3)

And in context:

Download audio file (Arp chord final context.mp3)

I hope you’ve enjoyed making music!

I’m looking forward to 2012. How can we help you grow as a musician and producer this year? Do you have any questions you’d like answered, or topics you’d love tuts and tips on? Let us know!

To learn more about what you get as part of Audio Premium, read this. To take a peek inside this tutorial, hit the jump!

In this second part of our series, we’ll look at the process of birthing the idea into a coherent form, and beginning to tend the idea, to cultivate it, and begin to shape it…

So now you have an idea, you’ve captured its essence, and you’ve decided that you are going to begin sketching around it. Move now to your workspace, studio, or wherever you do your ‘productive’ creative work. This is where you’ll begin to take the seeds of your idea and work with it, nurture it, and begin to slowly shape it into the Song that is yet to come.

Get the Full Tutorial!

Didn’t hear about Audio Premium? It’s an additional, in-depth tutorial, published each week just for our Premium subscribers (on top of all our regular free content!)

Tuts+ Premium gives you access to your very own library of courses, tutorials and eBooks, available whenever you need them. Join a community of over 15,000 members and start getting better at the skills you care about.

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Join Premium and Expand Your Audio Knowledge!

For those unfamiliar, the family of Tuts+ sites runs a premium membership service. For $9 per month, you gain access to exclusive premium tutorials, screencasts, and freebies from Nettuts+, Psdtuts+, Cgtuts+,Activetuts+, Phototuts+, Aetuts+, and Vectortuts+! For the price of a pizza, you’ll learn from some of the best minds in the business.

Become a Premium member and have full access to this tutorial today!

What Do You Want to See on Premium?

Is there a specific technical aspect of audio production that you really want to learn more about? How about a very advanced technique that you could never quite grasp fully?

We really want to make our Premium content as relevant and useful to you as possible, so do send through your comments and requests to audio@tutsplus.com. Let us know what you want to see, and we’ll commission top-notch audio experts to teach you!

Update: The winners for this giveaway have been selected. Thanks to everyone who participated.

If you are a frequent reader of our site, chances are, you are already familiar with UPrinting. They are an online printer that offers business cards, poster printing, postcard printing, and much more. UPrinting is a frequent sponsor of this site and we are very excited to partner with them on another giveaway.

Up for Grabs

Today, UPrinting is giving you several options to choose from. You can enter to win 500 standard business cards, 100 postcards, or 1 poster print. The choice is yours! More details can be found below.

500 Standard Business Cards
2" x 3.5" US Standard, 2" x 2" Square, 1.75" x 3.5" Slim
14pt Cardstock Gloss / Matte, 13pt Cardstock Uncoated
Front and Back Printing
3 Business Days Turnaround time

1 Poster Print
18" x 24"
Semi Gloss / High Gloss
1 Business day print turnaround time

100 Postcards
5" x 7"
14pt Cardstock Gloss
Front Only Printing
2 Business days print turnaround time

Rules

• To enter, submit your entry and select which product you would like.
• You may only enter once.
• Follow UPrinting on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ (Optional)
• Make sure to enter a valid email address so that we can contact you.
• Entries will be accepted until Friday, January 20, 2012 at 11:59 PM, EST.
• Shipping is free to U.S. and International residents.

Winners Announced

Here are our five winners of FiRe 2, chosen at random:

• Mike, who commented, “I’m getting an Iphone this week so if I win this it’ll be a great starting bundle gift lol.”
• Vincent Lee, who left the comment, “The Fire 2 Field Recorder looks like it a good app to have if your into recording sounds on the go!”
• JohnnyBlues, who complimented, “Audiotuts+ is the best tutorial site for whatever DAW you might be using! I learn so much here.”
• And Jim Sphar, who left the comment, “This looks to be a very powerful application for iPhone.”

Congratulations! You’ll all be contacted in the near future about how to receive your prizes.

And you weren’t lucky enough to win a copy for free, you can always head over to the App Store and grab yourself a copy.

FiRe 2 – Field Recorder

FiRe 2 will again revolutionize what you expect from a portable recording application. FiRe was the first iPhone recorder to display an accurate audio waveform in real time, the first to support markers, Broadcast WAVE metadata, and the instant downloading of files in multiple file formats.

FiRe was the first application on any platform to offer native SoundCloud integration. Now FiRe 2 incorporates into its original elegant design a stunning list of powerful new features including:

• Advanced editing suite with SmartEdits, Bezier fades, change gain, normalize, looping playback, regions and more
• Improved Transport screen with faster and smoother drawing and larger waveform view
• EQ and Dynamics effects by Audiofile Engineering
• iTunes file transfer
• Enhanced input processing powered by iZotope™
• Record in background
• DropBox integration
• Regions

FiRe 2 is available on the App Store. For more info, visit www.audiofile-engineering.com/fire.

How to Win

For the chance to win, you need to do the following:

1. Leave a comment at the bottom of this page.
2. Go to www.audiofile-engineering.com/fire, and click the Facebook Like button on the sidebar.
3. Tweet this Tweet or Like Audiofile Engineering on Facebook.

Five winners will be chosen at random.

This giveaway is open worldwide, but make sure to get your comment in before midnight Sunday, January 15, 2011, AEST.

Rules and Conditions

• To enter, carefully read the instructions above.
• You may only enter once. Duplicate entries will be disqualified.
• Envato staff and people who have written more than two tutorials/articles for a Tuts+ site are not eligible to enter.
• Make sure you use a valid email address when you comment so you can be contacted. Email addresses will not be made public.
• Entries will be accepted until Sunday, January 15, 2012, midnight AEST.
• Giveaway is open to all jurisdictions.
• You must be of legal age in the jurisdiction that you reside to enter.
• Giveaway is void where prohibited.

This competition is sponsored by Audiofile Engineering.

The term acoustics refers to the properties that affect how sound moves around a room or space. From live performance to recording, the acoustics of a room have a significant effect on what we hear. The amount of reflected sound, when it occurs in relation to the original (or direct) sound, and the balance of frequencies in those reflections combine to make the acoustic properties of a space.

Factors that affect a room’s acoustics include:

• size
• shape
• angles of walls/ceiling
• materials the walls/ceiling/floor are made from
• size/shape/material/placement of objects in the room

We rarely have control over all of these factors, but we usually have control over some. Keeping these factors in mind and strategically manipulating them can dramatically improve your recordings.

The prime component of acoustics is reverberation. Reverberation can be broken down into three elements (see Fig. 1). Sound waves that travel directly from the sound source to your ear (or microphone) are referred to as direct sound. Sound waves that reach your ear by way of reflection off of a surface are called early reflections. Early reflections generally happen within 10–100 milliseconds of the direct sound (depending on the size of the room and placement within it). The third element is reverberation, which is made up of sound waves that travel around the room reflecting off of multiple surfaces. The length of reverberation will vary depending on the size of the room and the nature of the surfaces in it. In a large cathedral, for example, sounds may reverberate for 4 or 5 seconds whereas a small room may only have a couple of hundred milliseconds of reverberation.

When treating a room acoustically, there are three main factors to consider: absorption, reflection, and standing waves. Absorption is the amount of sound energy that is absorbed by a surface. It is common practice to have rugs in a studio space that can be moved or removed as required. It is also common to use acoustic foam on the walls, ceiling, or on movable panels to absorb and break up reflections. On a budget, a similar result can be achieved using egg cartons. Their shape works very well for trapping high frequency reflections (see Fig. 2).

Low frequencies can be more difficult to control, so bass traps are frequently used to keep them in check. Bass traps absorb low-frequency energy that can build up in a room causing muddy sounding recordings. They come in a variety of styles, most of which are designed to be placed in the corner of the room.

A room with very few reflections is referred to as sounding “dead”. Conversely a “live” sounding room has many reflections. Both of these environments are useful in the recording process. Voice-over work is frequently done in a dead room to make the speaker seem very close to the listener, whereas many engineers prefer a live room for acoustic instruments or vocals because of the added high frequency “sparkle” it can add (much like the effect of singing in the shower).

Reflection is the opposite of absorption. Reflected sounds and their tonal characteristics have a significant effect on the sound of a recording and should be considered when choosing a room to record in or where in a room to place the performer and microphone(s). A basic empty room (four parallel walls with nothing on them) provides uninteresting reflections as sound travels out to the walls and then reflects straight back. These reflections can be made more complex (and therefore more acoustically pleasing) by use of diffusers (panels designed to create a variety of reflections), dividers (movable, freestanding panels), and by strategically placing available objects within the room for sound to reflect off of.

The material a surface is made from will affect the frequencies it reflects. Hard, smooth surfaces (such as wood or tile) will reflect most high frequencies, whereas soft or porous surfaces will absorb them. Mid-range and low frequencies will be absorbed to some degree, but not as easily as high-frequencies. The frequency range of the instruments being recorded should be kept in mind when considering reflections in a room.

Standing waves occur when a sound reflects off of parallel surfaces (such as walls, or floor and ceiling) then back into each other. Where the reflected sounds meet they begin to cancel each other out. This cancellation occurs in different locations for different frequencies, so moving the performer or microphone to different parts of a room can yield different sounds. In order to avoid standing waves and their effects, many studios are built in a way that specifically avoids parallel surfaces. Since it is rare in a home studio environment that we have the option of using a room without parallel walls, we must rely on diffusers, dividers, and other methods of breaking up reflections.

Acoustics in Your Recordings

When beginning a recording it can be a good idea to take a mental (or even written) inventory of the acoustic environments you have available to record in and their individual strengths and weaknesses. For example most bathrooms are full of surfaces that reflect a lot of high frequencies (tile, porcelain, glass, linoleum, etc.) and are reasonably small. This means plenty of bright, short reflections and may be a good choice as a location for recording vocals or acoustic instruments. If a room has too much reflected sound, blankets or carpets can be added to absorb some of the sound energy.

Another example of a possible recording space to consider would be a stairwell. The close walls and high ceiling will give a range of reflections, some quick (off of the close walls) and some longer (off of the high ceiling). A carpeted stairwell will be mellower sounding, whereas wooden stairs will sound brighter. This can be an interesting space to record percussion instruments.

A common way to take stock of the acoustic qualities of a space is to move around the room while clapping your hands, singing, or whistling to get a feel for its sound. Not only will different spaces have different acoustic qualities, but the sound of your recordings may differ greatly depending in where the performer and the microphone(s) are placed within an individual room or space. The proximity of walls and objects in the room can affect the reflected sound as well as the tonal content of these reflections (see Standing Waves). For this reason it is important to use care when choosing where to position the performer and the microphone(s).

This is a playlist of a nine-part video series, and goes for 1:20:53.

This short series of quick tips is designed to give you a good overview of the audio processing techniques involved in creating a professional sounding drum beat for use in house, electro and breaks in Cubase. In this part we will look at adding hi hats and percussion to our kick and snare drums.

Here is a sample of the type of beat you could expect to end up with at the end of this series of tips:

Download audio file (Audio Example 000.mp3)

The Basics

Ok, so let’s start with something straightforward, and add in the classic offbeat open hat sound. Once again I’m using the Vengeance packs, and I’ve selected this open hat sound:

Download audio file (Audio Example 1.mp3)

The sample that you choose at this point is really up to you – try and find a sound that compliments the rest of your beat – I’ve chosen this one because it’s bright, lively and clean. You could even consider layering up 2 open hi hats much like we did with the kick and snare sounds in the previous tutorials.

To add just a little definition to the open hat I have also layered up a closed hi hat with it. Nothing fancy is needed here, I chose a faily uninteresting sample, it’s just there to back the open hat – here’s how it sounds before and after:

Download audio file (Audio Example 2.mp3)

Lets add these to our kick and snare parts and see how it sounds. I’ve just put these open hats on every offbeat 8th note, snapped 100%. You can see the kicks at the top in purple, the claps/snares in blue, and these hats in yellow:

Download audio file (Audio Example 3.mp3)

To add a bit of interest to the stereo image here I’ve used exactly the same delay technique I used on the clap sounds in the previous tutorial to delay the right channel of the hi hat – here’s a before and after:

Download audio file (Audio Example 4.mp3)

The next addition I’ve chosen to make is a simple 8th note ticking away in the background. Subtle layers like this really help to add some energy and brightness to the top end of a track. I’ve snapped the notes to every 8th note, and made every other one quieter by lowering it’s aplitube on the track, as demonstrated here:

Here’s how it sounds:

Download audio file (Audio Example 5.mp3)

Adding Syncopation/Swing

Now we have some presence in the top end we need to do something to add a little groove or swing to the track. Everything we’ve programmed so far pretty much sits square on the grid, and is all a bit robotic. Here I’m adding just one simple hi hat sound prior to every other open hat to give the track a bit of swing.

Rather than use a swing function in the snapping I have simply turned off the snapping altogether and manually placed the hat where it sounds right. Don’t worry if you don’t get it in exactly the same place in every bar, as long as it sounds right to you a certain amount of variation can actually add a lot of life to your beat!

Here’s how it sounds without, then with the rest of our beat. You should be ablet to hear just how much of a change adding one simple hi hat like this makes:

Download audio file (Audio Example 6.mp3)

With this syncopation in mind, I’m going to add another layer, this time a shaker. I’m starting off by simply drawing in 8th notes with one shaker sample:

Download audio file (Audio Example 7.mp3)

Now I’m adding a slightly different shaker sample (you could reuse the first one and pitch shift it up or down slightly)to add the syncopated notes, again by manually moving them with the snapping turned off.

Download audio file (Audio Example 9.mp3)

Now by simply deleting some of the notes from the sequence you can make a nice rhythmic pattern. Here’s how it fits with the beat so far:

Download audio file (Audio Example 10.mp3)

Filling out Your Beat with a Loop

The last thing I’m giong to do here is to use a loop sit behind the beat. I’ve chosen this simple loop from the Vengeance Essential House pack:

Download audio file (Audio Example 11.mp3)

I’ve chosen this loop because it doesn’t have a prominent kick or snare, and I like the little conga skitter in it. When you add it to the rest of the beat it sits nicely at the back and fills out the gaps in the sound:

Download audio file (Audio Example 12.mp3)

A Few Notes

That’s pretty much all the percussion I think this beat needs, though you could consider adding more congas, bongos, tambourines etc depending on how full you want it.

It’s worth mentioning that I have not applied any EQ or compression to these hi hats and percussion instruments at all. In some cases you may wish to add a bit of brightness to some of the sounds, in which case a boost or shelf at about 12 kHz will really add some sparkle. If you’re looking to add a bit more presence and body to the hats try boosting at around 8 kHz. I often find that I select samples that fill the frequencies I need, and consequently I often hold back from EQing them untill I hear them sit in the track as a whole.

Keep a look out for the final tut in this series where I will be going over some neat tricks to get the most out of your drums.

1. In 2012 We’ll Expand Our Focus

When Audiotuts+ came into being, it had a narrow and specific focus. It provided tutorials on a short list of DAW applications. Since then we’ve experimented with adding content on other related topics – music theory, musical instruments and mobile music, for example.

This year we’ll expand our focus even further. While we’ve been focused on a short list of specific DAWs – Logic Pro, Reason, Cubase, FL Studio and Pro Tools – this year we’ll start accepting tutorials and quick tips that cover more DAWs. Are there any in particular that you’d like us to cover?

Then there’s instrument tutorials, which we started toying with last year. Most of these were about guitar, but we gave you a couple about drums, and picked up that you were keen for piano/keyboard tutorials too. We’d like to make these more prominent in 2012. Would you like help learning your instrument of choice? Which instrument would you like to see covered?

We’re also planning to produce more regular product reviews, in terms of both gear and software. What type of review do you find most useful? A post that covers just one product in detail, or a comparison of several similar products so you can see more easily which you should choose? And what types of products should we cover?

Finally, since 2008 we’ve covered an impressive range of topics. But we haven’t covered every topic. And those we have covered we haven’t exhausted. This year we’ll become more strategic in choosing our topics. We don’t want to keep repeating ourselves – we want to cover every relevant audio topic and subtopic as helpfully as possible. Which topics are we missing?

2. In 2012 We’ll Broaden Our Appeal

Many of the tuts on Audiotuts+ are geared at the intermediate user. An absolute beginner won’t know what to do with them, and an expert might find as many new insights as we’d like. This year we’re aiming to provide more content for both absolute beginners, and experienced gurus.

Firstly, we’ll schedule two Basix tuts every month, and these will be aimed at those who have never produced music before, or have just started. We’ll choose the most important topics for the absolute beginner to understand, and make sure they’re the ideal resource to get them on the right track.

Secondly, we’ll aim to post advanced material more often. If you consider yourself an advanced audio geek, what types of topics would you like us to cover?

And finally, we’ll publish videos and screencasts on a more regular basis this year. I personally love written tutorials, and there will always be a place for them here, but sometimes there’s no better way to learn something than to actually see it being done. If you’re a visual learner, we’re planning more content for you this year.

3. In 2012 We Want More Community Involvement

We want to get you more involved this year. Think of it as us giving you some homework. I think we’ve kept our loyal readers far too passive – and most people learn better by doing than just reading.

So we’ll do something about that this year. In the first half of the year we’re planning to run two community projects. This will involve giving you the opportunity to actually create something, and then show it off to the world.

For example, the guys over at Aetuts+ could throw together a video sequence, and you could produce the soundtrack or foley track for it. We’ll show off your submissions, and maybe get everyone to vote for the best. We could throw in some nice prizes to get you motivated.

What do you think? Would you like to get involved? Do you learn better by being more active? Can you think of any cool projects? Let us know in the comments.

4. In 2012 We’ll Build a Better Premium Program

I’m really proud of our new Premium site. It’s been a lot of work, and a long time coming. But it’s more than worth it. This year we’ll be aiming to take our premium program to the next level.

One thing I’d like to ask you. In 2010 and 2011 we cut down on the number of sample/loop packs we offered our premium subscribers, offering more tutorials instead. What do you think? Would you like to see a monthly audio pack, or do you prefer getting more tutorials? What do you see as best value for your money?

Well, thanks for reading – and for commenting. We’ll take your feedback very seriously. I’m really looking forward to 2012. Hang on for the ride of your life!

In this week’s Audio Premium content, Toby Pitman explores a huge list of delay tricks for guitarists.

To learn more about what you get as part of Tuts+ Premium, read this. To take a peek inside this tutorial, hit the jump!

Delay is probably the most versatile effect in any guitarist or engineers arsenal. This is because many other effects that we use like modulation are actually delay effects repackaged with another name. In this tutorial I’ll show you 10 different delay tricks most of which can be achieved using the simplest of delay plugins.

Delay and Echo effects have been around since the 50′s in recording. From the first Echo Chambers to Tape Echos pioneered by players like Les Paul to the state of the art processors of today it’s hard to get away from this effect! But it’s not all about ‘echo’! Many different and surprising sounds can be produced from this time based effect. From Chorus to Reverb (thousands of tiny delays) there’s a lot you can do delay!

Get the Full Tutorial!

Didn’t hear about Audio Premium? It’s an additional, in-depth tutorial, published each week just for our Premium subscribers (on top of all our regular free content!)

Tuts+ Premium gives you access to your very own library of courses, tutorials and eBooks, available whenever you need them. Join a community of over 15,000 members and start getting better at the skills you care about.

Join Today!

Join Premium and Expand Your Audio Knowledge!

For those unfamiliar, the family of Tuts+ sites runs a premium membership service. For $9 per month, you gain access to exclusive premium tutorials, screencasts, and freebies from Nettuts+, Psdtuts+, Cgtuts+,Activetuts+, Phototuts+, Aetuts+, and Vectortuts+! For the price of a pizza, you’ll learn from some of the best minds in the business.

Become a Premium member and have full access to this tutorial today!

What Do You Want to See on Premium?

Is there a specific technical aspect of audio production that you really want to learn more about? How about a very advanced technique that you could never quite grasp fully?

We really want to make our Premium content as relevant and useful to you as possible, so do send through your comments and requests to audio@tutsplus.com. Let us know what you want to see, and we’ll commission top-notch audio experts to teach you!

Audiotuts+ is a great audio tutorial site, but we’re not the only kid on the block. What other tut sites do you visit and find useful?

Sonoma WireWorks have updated their very popular iPhone interface, GuitarJack. GuitarJack. Model 2 is now out and is compatible with all the latest versions of iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Model 1, which I reviewed for Audiotuts+ a while back, was compatible for iPhone 3 but Apple changed their connectors on their latest models, rendering GuitarJack model 1 useless for up-to-date Apple junkies. But now with the latest version of GuitarJack, you can use it on your iPhone 4S and your iPads.

First Impressions

When you open the box, the first thing you notice is how slick it looks. GuitarJack model 1 had a cool beveled black look to it, but the nickel plated design with the stainless steel sides make it look so much better. The only drawback to the design is that it quickly gets smudged with fingerprints, something the former black design was more resistant to.

Although Sonoma claims that you don’t need to take your cover off in order to connect the GuitarJack, I actually did need to take my cover off in order to connect the device. I would blame it on the cover design rather than on the GuitarJack, since they seem to have designed it in such a way as to have a gap for where the cover would go.

Specs

GuitarJack has a few options for connecting audio in or out. It has a 1/4 inch instrument input for connecting your guitar. I suppose you could probably connect any instrument that connects with a 1/4 inch plug, but for the sake of simplicity I just used my guitars,  a Suhr Custom 017 electric guitar, and an Ibanez acoustic guitar.

There is a 1/8 inch headphone jack to monitor your sound, as well as an additional 1/8 inch input for an external microphone. The specs on these inputs and output are below, taken from the Sonoma WireWorks website.

Line/Headphone Output:

• Max level (16ohms): 1.23Vrms (95mW) => 1.00Vrms (63mW) For comparison, the iPhone 4 headphone output into 16 ohms is about 45mW.
  
• Max level (10kohms): 1.30Vrms (+4.5dBu) => 1.00Vrms (+2.2dBu)
  
• Freq resp: +0.02/-0.20dB => +0.05/-0.40dB Noise level: -95dB => -97dB
  
• Dynamic range: 95dB => 96dB
  
• THD (600mVrms): 0.0025% (-92dB) => 0.0020% (-94dB)
  
• Stereo crosstalk: -70dB => -88dB

Line/Mic Inputs:

• Noise level (RMS, A-weighted): -88dB => -96dB

• Dynamic range (RMS, A-weighted): 88dB => 96dB THD (-3dBFS): 0.05% (-66dB) => 0.008% (-82dB)
• Stereo crosstalk (1kHz): -86dB => -96dB
  

GuitarJack is easy to set up. Just plug it in and download some of the free apps that work with it. They automatically recognize the apps so with a guitar and headphones you are ready to enjoy simple. high-quality mobile audio.

GuitarJack has the advantage over other iPhone audio interfaces in that it uses its own A/D converters and doesn’t rely on the iPhone’s built-in microphones or headphone outputs. GuitarJack control panel allows you to select the input and impedance level of the instrument or microphone you are using, creating a very versatile control panel for most of your needs. It is somewhat bulky on the end of your iPhone, but the added bulkiness is the price you pay for added audio quality.

Apps

GuitarJack isn’t really anything without its apps. Just like any interface, it needs some sort of software to do what it does, and there are some great little apps that you can use with GuitarJack.

GuitarTone

GuitarTone is an amp simulator that allows you to connect a variety of different amp models, complete with different microphones and effects. Just plug in your electric guitar, select one of your favorite amps, throw a ribbon or a dynamic microphone in front of it and you’re off playing some very convincing tones in no time.

If you’re in love with modulation and effects, there are tons of different effects you can add to your chain, such as a phaser, reverbs or distortion pedals. The clean amps are fun to play with, but I’m a really hard sell when it comes to heavily distorted amp emulators. There is always a certain tendency for the distortion to come off as a bit too fake and digital. Not only with GuitarTone or GuitarJack, but just with distortion simulators in general. There’s just something lacking when you don’t have actual sound waves pushing actual air through the speaker cones.

All in all, GuitarTone is very much fun to play with, and it’s free. It comes bundled with a bunch of amps and effects but if you’re hungry for more you can also buy additional ones to satisfy your appetite.

Taylor EQ

The Taylor EQ is also one of their free apps. It is a lot fun to play around with if you’re an acoustic guitar player. It has a bunch of different EQs to model certain acoustic guitars and it even has a 5-band parametric EQ that you can access through the Advanced tab.

However, the GuitarJack control panel is not accesible through the Taylor EQ for some reason. It gives me an error message saying that GuitarJack is not compatible with the iPhone 4 and that Model 2 is coming soon. It’s a strange message since the apps works fine, and I can use all the other aspects of it, but to change any of my input and output settings I have to go back to any of the other apps.

FourTrack

FourTrack is the studio inside your iPhone. It’s a four-track recorder that’s incredibly versatile. Since GuitarJack has an additional microphone input, this really opens up creative possibilities. Technically, with two really good mics you could record a really nice acoustic performance, with one microphone picking up the vocals while the other one is plugged into the guitar.

I plugged my acoustic guitar into GuitarJack via the normal 1/4 inch input and I used my Zoom H2 Portable Stereo Recorder to record my vocals and overall room sound. That’s just one of the many ways you could use the FourTrack along with an additional microphone. Other options might include recording meetings or interviews with only your iPhone and a small portable recorder on the table.

When you have everything coming into your iPhone instantaneously, sharing it online becomes much easier. For only an extra $9.99, the FourTrack is a really great companion for GuitarJack, especially if you want to use it for serious idea gathering or interviews. I know I’ll be using it during NAMM 2012 to either take interviews or record on the spot commentary.

Overall Impression

GuitarJack 2 is everything that GuitarJack 1 was, and more. The sound quality is really good, and it’s probably one of the better sounding iPhone gadgets out there. Some of the apps are free, and the FourTrack is well worth the extra ten bucks.

If you’re in the market for a mobile audio interface, you should seriously consider checking out GuitarJack. It’s versatile, giving you input and impedance controls for many situations and is great for on-the-fly audio ideas, whether you’re doing interviews or sketching out your songs. Overall, a great contender is the mobile audio market.

One area of compression that appears to remain a mystery to some is that of buss compression. This is one that I’m asked about a lot, so let’s take a look at the ins and outs of the process and shed some light on the subject.

Step 1 - What is Buss Compression?

Essentially buss compression is no different to any other compression treatment. The only real discerning factor here is that buss compression refers to the practice of applying a compressor to a whole group of instruments or even the entire mix.

If your not familiar with the term ‘buss’ don’t worry — it’s really just jargon for group. Many different manufacturers and DAWs have different names for groups, such as auxiliaries or busses. They all do more or less the same thing and group several instruments together.

A drum group is perhaps one of the best examples of when we would use a buss/group and indeed buss compression. It’s very likely that you would insert individual compressors on some of your separate drum tracks,s but even with this processing when combined the drums may lack cohesion.

By routing all your drum tracks to a group or buss within your DAW you are able to adjust the volume of the whole drum track and even apply EQ and other processors to them as one. You should notice your drums take on a more consistent dynamic signature, and you will also enjoy higher perceived volume levels and a natural cohesion of the sounds. This is sometimes referred to as ‘audio glue’.

Basic buss routing in Logic Pro

Step 2 - Single Band Buss Compressors

There are a few different types of compressor that are commonly used as buss compressors — single (or full band) and multi-band models.

Some consider a true buss compressor to be a traditional single band compressor of a very high quality or with custom components. Technically, any single band compressor in your plug-in list can be put to work as a buss compressor but some would argue that such a critical task deserves a dedicated processor. Some cheaper tracking compressors may introduce unwanted artifacts and dramatically reduce dynamic range.

There are several companies making dedicated single band buss compressors. These are usually geared towards mastering but are just as useful when used on drum or instrument busses. These plug-ins often emulate hardware or are modeled on famous hardware units. This component modeling often eats a fair amount of CPU overhead and therefore latency induced by these plug-ins can be higher than more straight forward processors.

A great example of a modeled buss compressor is the ‘Waves G Master Buss compressor’. This is directly modeled on the compressor in the master section of the famous SSL 4000 G console and is actually endorsed and licensed by SSL themselves. This is super close to the real thing and has to be heard to be believed. Throw one of these on your master buss and the separate elements in your mix should magically become one.

Waves G Master Buss compressor

Universal audio also make some great buss compressors including their own take on the SSL model and another from Neve. They also provide a great buss processor as part of their precision mastering range. The precision mastering compressor has a few really cool functions such as a high pass filter to avoid pumping effects and a wet/dry mix function.

UAD precision buss compressor

UAD Neve 33609 buss compressor

Download audio file (2.mp3)

Basic loop dry

Download audio file (2b.mp3)

Basic loop treated with SSL buss compression

Step 3 - Multi-band Compression

Multi-band compression is arguably not dedicated buss compression but can be used in exactly the same way with great results.

Mastering grade multi band compressors can be indispensable tools for reducing the dynamic range of a group of instruments (or your mix) without coloring the overall sound. They do this by using several compressors, each acting on a specific frequency range. These ‘slices’ are divided using crossover or bandpass filters and usually fully adjustable.

Waves linear multiband

Using this method means you can home in on problem areas of your mix without affecting others. Although you may not get the cohesive effect that single band buss compressors achieve it will certainly marry mix elements together to some degree. Of course if you feel the need you can experiment with a mixture of multi-band and single band bus compression.

UAD Precision multi-band compressor

Download audio file (3.mp3)

Basic loop treated with multi-band compression

Step 4 - Buss Compression in Mastering

Bus compression in mastering is very common and a lot of buss compressors are actually specifically designed for the task. A buss compressor will often be one of the first processors in a mastering engineer’s chain and is important in achieving a polished final master.

The mastering buss compressor’s main job is to reduce the dynamic range of the mix, taming peaks and therefore raising quieter sounds. This will all result in a louder more defined mix but the whole process should occur transparently and be pleasing to the ear.

It is for these reasons we tend to try and use the highest quality compressors we can here. Low ratios and high attack/release settings are also desirable as they tend to reduce any noticeable artifacts and drastic gain changes. These mastering compressors tend to work at very high resolutions and use advanced algorithms to achieve their sound, so its always advisable to splash out on the best you can afford for this task.

Although basic results are possible with cheaper plug-ins, using a stock compressor bundled with a DAW might not be the wisest move here. Saying that, some DAW manufacturers are making real steps in this area and are starting to supply mastering grade plug-ins as standard.

Step 5 - Parallel Compression

The way in which your buss compressors are routed has a huge impact on the final result. To create loud, high density signals while retaining strict control over the wet/dry mix of the compression effect we can use parallel compression. This is essentially a form of buss compression but requires a little routing to take place.

By making a duplicate of your instrument or master buss, you are able to place your buss compressor on one of these and leave the other 100% dry. The buss compressor can then be used with much more aggressive settings and mixed in to taste. This way the final signal mainly consists of the untreated dry audio and retains most of its original character. This is really great for drums but can be used on pretty much any group of instruments including your masters.

Parallel compression routing in Logic Pro 8

Download audio file (5.mp3)

Real drum sound dry

Download audio file (5b.mp3)

Real drum sound parallel compression

Step 6 - Serial Compression

Another great way of routing your buss compressors is in serial as opposed to parallel. This involves using multiple compressors (perhaps of different kinds) on the same channel or buss. These compressors can be used at different stages in your effects chain and can achieve much more transparent compression than one compressor alone.

Try this on your master buss to catch wayward peaks on your mix and create cohesion. The separate compressors on the chain can be chosen for their specific features or character, giving you a cocktail of your favorite processors.

Mastering project using 3 buss compressors in series

Today we are going to cover how to add some flavor to your chords and compositions using Altered Dominant chords, namely those that alter the 5 of the chord. These chords can be great for adding tension to your music and are often exploited by Jazz players for adding more harmonic dissonance and density. If you have heard of these types of chords but never knew exactly how they were constructed then this tutorial is for you. We will cover everything from basic structure to different voicings of the chords and try to apply them in a creative context. If you want to alter your progressions on the way back to the tonic then read on!

What is a Alt Dom Chord?

In order to effectively use a Alt Dom chord we first need to understand what exactly a Alt Dom chord is. An Alt Dom chord is simply a dominant chord (centered around the 5th of the key) but with a minor 7th on top (hereby creating a Dominant 7th) and the 5th and 9th of the chord either lowered or raised by one half step. This in turn gives us either a b5 or a #5 instead of a natural 5 as well as a b9 and #9.

However for our purposes we will only concern ourselves with the 5th for now. Remember also to always include the minor 7th of the chord when working with Alt Dom chords. Finally, do not confuse the 5th degree of the chord with the 5th degree of the scale.

The 5th scale degree of the C Major scale is a G. If we were to play an G7b5 in the key of C major we would have to flatten the 5th, a D in this case, and replace it with a Db. Notice, how the G is the 5th of the key and D is the 5th of the chord? If you are still having issues visualizing this concept here is a written out example…

Download audio file (ex_1.mp3)

Remember, always go to the 5th of the chord you are playing no matter what key you are in. If it says C7#5 then your 5th is G#, if it says Bb7b5 then your 5th is Fb. End of Story. Remember that there is no major or minor in this case since these are dominant chords. However you could resolve to either a minor or a major chord after the fact if you so wished.

Download audio file (ex_2.mp3)

Inversions

When contending with inversions of any chord the rules always seem to change ever so slightly depending on the type of chord and the Alt Dom chords are no different. With 7ths we had how to voice them, with 6ths and Sus we had to be careful how we interpreted our inversions, and with Alt Doms we actually do not have too many traps to be aware of however it is still good to go over the rules anyways. Let’s take a look at what the quirks of inverted Alt 5 chords are…

As we have discussed in the previous articles, an inversion is simply a reorganizing of the notes of a chord so that the root is no longer in the bottom of the chord. Which note is in the bottom of the chord will then determine which inversion of the chord we are using. Since Alt Dom chords have 4 notes, we can only have 4 different voicings, root position, 1st inversion, 2nd inversion, and 3rd inversion. So if a C7#5 has the notes C,E,G#,Bb in root position, then E,G#,Bb,C will give us a 1st inversion. Finally we will have G#,Bb,C,E for 2nd inversion and Bb,C,E,G# for our 3rd inversion.

What is nice about Dominant chords is that unlike the chords in the previous tutorials, the inversions do not imply different types of similar chords. With the Sus chords we could shift around which chord and Sus we were using, Alt Dom chords cannot do this. While you theoretically could come up crazy names like a Emaj#4#5 for a first inversion C7#5, you really are not implying any other chord other than an Alt Dom chord.

Download audio file (ex_3.mp3)

Expanding Alt Dom Chord

Thankfully with Alt Dom chords, extending them to have more notes and have a richer sound is very easy and is almost required. Traditionally if you wanted to alter a Dominant chord, you will alter not only the the 5th of the chord but 9th of the chord as well. Another way to think of this is to take a make your Dominant 7 chord a Dominant 9 chord and alter the 5th and 9th. Let’s look at an example…

A C9 is C,E,G,Bb,D which of course is our base Dominant 9. If we were to alter that chord to have a b5 and a #9 then we would have C,E,Gb,Bb, D#; this chord would then be represented as C7b5#9. The reason we do not refer to it as a C9b5#9 is because that would imply a natural 9 at the same time as a #9. Rule of thumb is if you have no alterations then refer to the chord as a Dominant 9 (C9 for example), if however you do have an altered 9 then refer to it as a Dominant 7 with the altered 9 added on top(C7#9 or C7b9). Remember also that it is fairly normal to alter both the 5th and 9th of the chord.

Finally here is one more idea for expanding your Alt Dom chords, try using both the b5 and #5 at the same time! This is not always a commonly used technique but it has its uses especially if you want to add some real density to your chords. You will often see this done with the #9 and b9 as well. Here are some examples to listen to of the Altered Dominant 9ths using both raised and lowered 5ths and 9ths…

Download audio file (ex_4.mp3)

Using Alt Dom Chords

Now that we have a solid grasp of the fundamentals of Alt Dom chords we can finally start to apply our knowledge. If you have noticed already, Alt Dom chords have a very similar feeling to a regular Dominant chord but with an even more jarring quality. These are dirty chords that want to move and there is no other real way to put it. They are designed for high tension that (hopefully) will have a greater feeling of resolution followed after. Of course if you wish to have a more open feeling to the chords then spacing the notes further away from each other would give you that effect.

To stir some musical creativity here is an example of some basic chords I worked out and then expanded into something more. I have included which chords I am using and what inversion they are. Keep in mind this is not the proper way to notate these inversions; it is simply an easier to use reference. Finally I kept the chords in closed position for simplicity’s sake. You could experiment with different more open voicing if you wanted a wider range of sound.

Download audio file (ex_5.mp3)

Final Thoughts

That about covers the basics for Alt Dom chords my friends. Experiment with different progressions and variations of the chords to what kind of tension works best for you. Remember that the any Dominant chord wants to resolve to the a tonic but maybe you will keep suspending that resolution to add even more tension. With these new-found chords what will you alter? What will you Dominate? Thanks for reading!

Oh, and it’s due by 5:00.

Sadly this scenario is not all that far off from reality (but that’s a discussion for another time). When you have barely minutes to produce a track, chances are you’re going to have to rely on drum loops to get it done on time. The time needed to program an original and vibrant beat just isn’t there.

But a lack of time doesn’t mean your track has to be boring. With a very simple trick you can get a lot of life out of a simple drum pattern without much effort.

Double and Change the End

The problem with most drum loops is that they get boring very quickly. And Rule #1 of music is: Never Be Boring! Once your listener becomes bored with something they will tune it out and not really be aware of it anymore.

The trick to making a boring loop seem more interesting is this: Start with a short loop. Double it in length (copy paste), but on the second copy make some small change to the very end, like a variation or a fill. Now take the entire part so far, double it and change the very end. Rinse and repeat.

With this idea you can turn 1 bar into 64 with only 7 unique measures of music.

Why It Works

It’s a simple technique and it works for simple reasons.

Beginnings and endings (repeats in the case of a loop) are the most noticeable sections for your listener, and those are the parts that are going to reach their attention.

Generally your listener will be distracted by all the other elements you have going on in the middle, and so variety in the drums won’t be as important. It’s only when they hear the clean end of a section, usually a 4, 8 or 16 bar part of the song, that they’ll even feel any variety in the pattern.

An Example

The basic idea:

• 1 bar loop
• Double it, but modify the last beat
• Double it, but modify the last beat or few beats
• Double it, but modify the last few beats or full bar
• And so on…

For demonstration we’ll start with a very basic drum beat:

Download audio file (1bar.mp3)

Copy and paste to double it in length, but modify the last beat. So I’ll add a kick on the & of beat 3, and an open hat on the & of beat 4:

Download audio file (2bars.mp3)

Do it again to go from 2 bars to 4. This time I’ll make a simple snare fill:

Download audio file (4bars.mp3)

Do it again to go from 4 bars to 8. For this one I’ll do a bigger fill with toms:

Download audio file (8bars.mp3)

Already we have an 8 measure beat that is not an incessant and repetitive loop. For a 16 bar pattern I would just double the whole thing again and change the last few beats.

Conclusion

This technique can be used for much more than just drums. Think about how you can apply it to other situations. Perhaps an accompaniment part such as a rhyhtm guitar pattern just needs a little variety to come to life, or an ostinato pattern won’t feel so repetitive and hypnotic if you vary it up following the same “double and change the end” principle.

In no way do I condone this as a way to produce lasting art, but sometimes we have to do the best we can in the amount of time given. In many ways it’s like applying the Pareto Principle, aka the 80/20 rule. You could think of the unique changes you make on only a few beats for drum fills as the 20% of actual “content”, but 80% of what actually reaches your listener’s awareness.

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So far in this series we have looked at the typical plug-ins and processors you will need to mix your music and we have also delved into the world of hardware. So far you should be pretty clear on some of the kit you will need to get the job done.

In this instalment we are looking at software again but this time we focus on the very heart of your productions, the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). There is a huge amount of choice here with an ever growing number of different products on the market begging for your attention.

As this is a pretty general and often misunderstood subject I’ll attempt to break things down a little bit and really get down to the details you should be looking at when choosing this incredibly important and often expensive part of your recording set up.

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Trick 1: The Haas Trick

The Haas Effect is a psychoacoustic effect that was first discovered by Helmut Haas in 1946. It has to do with the way humans localize sounds emanating from anywhere around them. The concept is rather simple in that it is based on human anatomy; a sound emanating from the right of a person will hit his/her right ear slightly before hitting the left ear and vice versa. Hass’ findings teach us that the directivity of a sound is solely determined by the initial sound a) if the secondary sound arrives between 1-35 ms later and b) at no more than 10 dB louder than the initial sound.

To set up the Haas mixing trick (not invented by Haas, but named after his discovery) you will need two copies of a mono track, one panned to the hard right, another hard left and simply delay one of the tracks by 1-35 ms (any longer will begin to create an outright delay). The source will appear to be coming from the non-delayed side, while producing a thick and textured sound.

Here I have set up a basic mono synth and sent it to two separate aux. tracks. The first I panned hard left and the second I panned hard right. From there I put a tape delay on the right channel and set it to a 30 ms delay with no feedback and 100% wet. I then adjusted the level and rolled off some of the high frequencies of the delayed signal to further differentiate the two channels.

Download audio file (Before.mp3)

This is how it sounds just before the delay is added…still pretty mono.

Download audio file (Haas.mp3)

After the delay, the sound is much fatter and natural.

This trick is most often used in instances where one would want to fatten a mono sound panned to an extreme (distorted guitars are a common recipient of this technique), as an alternative to traditional panning where one would need greater control over stereo placement, or as a more realistic pan option where one would filter and attenuate the delayed signal (as I have done) to add dynamic and frequency differences as well.

When using this trick, it is important to remember that such small delay times are bound to bring up phase issues / comb filtering and one should experiment with different delay settings while the mix is summed in mono in order to avoid canceling out large portions of the sound.

Trick 2: The Outside of the Speakers Trick

This one is even easier to set up and gives a far more pronounced effect. All one needs to do is invert the phase of either the left or right channel – and done! On loud speakers now, the sound will appear to come from somewhere outside the speakers and envelope the listener.

It’s a pretty great effect in its own right, but does come with a few drawbacks. The first, and most obvious is that it will completely disappear when summed to mono (assuming both channels are at the same level). The second is that it only works on loud speakers and is most pronounced only when the listener is centered in the speaker’s sweet spot. As such, it is mostly reserved for special effects and not commonly used.

Download audio file (Out.mp3)

Listen to this track on speakers and use sparingly in the mix.

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  Outstanding Tutorials, Quick Tips, Articles and Interviews from Vectortuts+ in 2011

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  A Year in Web Design: How the Experts Saw 2011

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  Get Into LESS: the Programmable Stylesheet Language

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  Tips to Get Started with Still Life Photography

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  How To Track Footage That Is Out Of Focus

  In this tutorial we are going to take a look at a simple, but interesting idea. The main point will be to show you how to work with footage that is out of focus making if difficult to track. After we track it we are going to attach the camera interface elements and fake some depth of field to create the illusion that they are floating in space and shift in and out of focus like the rest of the scene.

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• 

  DIY – Create A Camera Dolly Completely From Scratch

  Ever wonder how to get smooth footage from your video camera? Today you will learn how to build a Camera Dolly that will help you acquire this type of footage. Get out those dusty power tools, buy some cheap supplies at your local hardware store, and you’ll be on your way to capturing some amazing footage in no time!.

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  How To Create A Dr. Who Time And Space Vortex – Tutsplus Premium

  In this tutorial well be creating a Time & Space Vortex (like that used in Doctor Who) completely inside of After Effects. We will be using Trapcode Particular and Trapcode Shine to create the vortex. I will then teach a vital Expression that drives the camera and completes the Effect. Once you have mastered the effect, you can personalize it to create whatever Time-Tunnel you desire! All of Time and Space awaits you…

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Audiotuts+ — Audio & Production Tutorials

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  Drum Compression: Get Your Attack and Release Times Correct

  Compression can be a tricky one to get your head around, and even if you’ve got your head around the threshold and ratio settings without the attack and release times being set correctly it will always be difficult to get the desired effect. This quick tip will outline a really handy trick I learned from a friend a few years ago which allows you to get your attack and release times just right. It’s primarily designed to work on drums but the same principles will apply to any percussive sound.

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• 

  Quick Tip: Punchier Drums with the New York Compression Trick

  Ever have a mix where you wish the drums were bigger, more energetic, more in-your-face? I first heard about this technique in Bobby Owinksis, The Mixing Engineers Handbook, and it has since become a staple in my bag of tricks. The technique is a more aggressive take on parallel compression that can really add punch to your mix.

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• 

  D Mixing Part 6: Depth

  In this segment of our mix down tutorial, we are going to begin to look in depth into depth. Depth within any mix and listening situation is paramount to proper sonic understanding. Much like we see in 3D, we hear in 3D and taking out any one of these dimensions only serves to create a flat and unnatural sound. As such, the most common tools which give the illusion of depth (reverb and delay) become an important and necessary part of mixing.

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Activetuts+ — Flash, Flex & ActionScript Tutorials

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  Getting Started With EaselJS: A Flash-Like Interface for the HTML5 Canvas

  There’s been some resistance from Flash developers to our new HTML5 content. In this article – aimed at experienced AS3 coders – we’ll look at EaselJS, a JavaScript library that makes working with the HTML5 canvas very similar to working with the Flash display list.
  

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• 

  AS3 Quick Tip: Hacking the Event Flow

  Sometimes you may find yourself needing to modify the behavior of a component for a user input event. This article will explain how to do so by modifying the event object in-flight, before it’s processed by the component. That’s right, you can lie and cheat. In code.

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• 

  in Flash and Web Apps: A Retrospective

  With the year 2011 at a close, it is time to reflect upon some of the major industry events of the year. A lot happened… we’ll pick out some of the bits and pieces that will be most interesting to browser app and game developers from the world of industry, web, runtimes, operating systems, mobile, and more!

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Wptuts+ — WordPress Tutorials

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  WordPress 3.3 “Sonny” Is Finally Here! What’s New?

  The latest and greatest version of the WordPress software — 3.3, named ’Sonny” in honor of the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt — is immediately available for download or update inside your WordPress dashboard. We’ll be covering lots of the new features of 3.3 this week, but for now, go and great the latest version! As we’ve mentioned before, it’s the best way to keep your WordPress site safe and stable.

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• 

  Getting Loopy – Ajax Powered Loops with jQuery and WordPress

  In this tutorial, we give you a starting point for creating AJAX interaction in your blog. We follow a step by step process, showing you how to load posts based on the viewers page scroll. The tutorial covers enqueueing scripts, setting up an AJAX handler, how to get a file outside of WordPress to use WordPress functions and access the database, and logic for loading posts on user page scroll.

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  Saintly” Practices that All WordPress Developers Should Strive For

  Here on Wptuts+, we talk a lot about the ‘how’ and less about the ‘why.’ Of course, we are a tutorial site, so that’s the goal, right? Well, as a followup to last month’s article on the “Cardinal Sins of WordPress Plugin Development“, today we’re going to look at a few practices that, if every developer followed, would make the world a better place (well, at least our world!).

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Mobiletuts+ — Mobile Development Tutorials

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  Getting Started With Kindle Fire Development

  The Kindle Fire is the new touchscreen and e-book reader from Amazon. This device has generated a lot of buzz, and for good reason! It is currently the best selling Android tablet, with millions of units already sold. This tutorial will teach you how to begin making apps with the Android SDK specifically targeted for the Kindle Fire.
  

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  iOS 5 SDK: Storyboards

  Storyboarding is one of the most exciting new features about the iOS 5 SDK. Take a look at the wealth of functionality offered by Storyboards in today’s iOS 5 SDK tutorial!
  

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  Titanium Mobile: Build an Image Uploader

  This tutorial will demonstrate how to build a custom progress bar by creating an image uploader with Titanium Mobile. Specifically, the demo project will allow you to select an image from the device photo gallery and upload it to a remote server for storage. Both the Titanium Mobile code and the server-side code will be explained. Now, let’s get started!
  

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Happy New Year!

We’d like to wish all our readers a very Happy New Year! Why not take a look at our Holiday Wishes post to see a video message from the Envato HQ team, and find out more about what you might have missed over the Christmas period.

We hope you’ve enjoyed everything that we’ve had to share this year, and look forward to publishing thousands more top-quality tutorials, articles, freebies, and resources in 2012.

Thanks for being part of the Tuts+ community!

A preamplifier, or preamp, is a device for boosting the level of a signal. Specialized preamps exist for a number of purposes, such as a guitar preamp or a phono preamp, but the most common for recording purposes is the mic preamp.

The preamp can significantly affect the tone of a signal. Much like microphones, many studios have a variety of preamps on hand to allow them to create the right tone for the application. The quality of the preamp’s construction and components, as well as whether it works on transistors or vacuum tubes, are among the factors that will affect its tone. Tube preamps are often used in digital recording to help “warm up” the tone of the signal.

Often preamplifiers are packaged with an equalizer and a compressor in the same unit. This combination is referred to as a channel strip.

Preamplifier Controls

Preamplifiers often have only one control, gain, which controls the amount of signal boost provided. This should be set at the highest level possible without the signal distorting in order to provide a healthy signal to the rest of the signal chain.

Most preamps have the ability to provide phantom power. Phantom power is a current supplied through the microphone cable to power condenser mics, active DIs, and some other devices. If a preamp has phantom power capabilities it will have a switch, usually labeled “phantom” or “48V”.

Many preamps also have a pad feature. Turning on the pad will reduce the signal at the input by a specified amount (usually labelled on the pad switch). This is handy in situations where too much signal is coming from the microphone.

A low-cut is also common on preamps. This will place a high-pass filter on the signal, cutting all signal below a set frequency. The cut frequency varies from one preamp to the next, but the switch will almost always be labeled with it. A low-cut can be used when recording an instrument that does not generate any frequencies in the range being cut. This will reduce unwanted low-frequency rumble that can make its way into the recording through the mic stand.

Phono Preamps

Phono preamps are used to connect a turntable to a mixer or other device.

In the early days of record production, manufacturers ran into the problem that creating a loud, low sound required a deep, wide groove to be cut in the record. This often resulted in the record lathe cutting right through the disc, or breaking the wall to the next pass of the groove. To solve this problem, records are recorded with a slanted frequency response, meaning the lower the frequency, the quieter it is.

A phono preamp takes the signal from a turntable, grounds it to prevent hum, restores the original frequency response, and provides a line-level output that can be accepted by other devices.

We’ll take a look at the different types of effects typically used and the ways in which you can create them. You should be able to follow this tutorial using pretty much any DAW and any capable soft synth. In this case I’m using NI’s Massive and Logic Pro 9.

Step 1 – Up Risers, Down Risers Whooshes And Washes

So the truth is that this family of effects get called all sorts of things by different producers. You might hear some people calling them up and down risers, others might simply call them whooshes.

At the end of the day no matter what you call them they all do very similar jobs and are also made in very similar ways form one studio to another. These effects are usually key in creating smooth effective transitions, builds and drops.

I think the reason I’m asked about the creation of these effects so often is the fact that they can literally bring a project to life. Once these effects are mixed and placed correctly try playing the track back with them muted and you’ll wonder how you ever lived without them.

Let’s take a look at the different ways we can create these essential dance music effects sounds. Before you jump in and say that I haven’t included your favourite method or sound, hang fire! This is really meant to be a round up of the most common techniques used and not a definitive list.

Step 2 – Noise, Noise, Noise

As I’ve already said these effects can be produced using a few different methods but I’d say right at the top of the list is the use of white noise. You can nearly create all the effects we are talking about here using noise as a sound source.

The vast majority of modern soft synths feature a solid noise generator. By feeding the noise through a simple zero attack, zero release amp envelope and a low pass filter you already have the basis for some simple but effective transitional effects.

Massive creating a basic noise patch

The real key to bringing these sounds to life is modulation and effects processing. We’ll look at how to apply these two elements to our basic noise based to turn it into something really usable.

Download audio file (2.mp3)

The noise bed we’ll be using

Step 3 – Modulation Is Key

So we have our static noise bed and it;s time to make it move either, up, down, around, or side to side! This can be done by using LFO’s and envelopes to control specific parts of our synthesiser.

For instance if we want to create a classic rising effect we could use a slow attack envelope to effect the cut off frequency of the low pass filter. We could then add some release and match the settings roughly using a amp based envelope. This would give us a rise and fall on release.

A rising effect is created by mapping an envelope to the filter

Download audio file (3.mp3)

The simple up riser effect

If you wanted the opposite of this you could use a decay based envelope to close an open filter. This would give you a rising and falling patch to use. Of course any of take place.

The opposite effect is achieved by mapping a decay based envelope to a closed filter

Download audio file (3b.mp3)

The opposite downward effect

Beyond this you can try using LFOs to create auto-pan and filter wobbles within the movement of the envelopes. This is just basic stuff as you start to build your first transitional effects you will soon start to add extra modulations for variation.

Auto-pan and filter wobble are added using LFOs

Download audio file (3c.mp3)

The modulated signal

Step 4 – Full Effects

To add some dimension to our noise based effects we can use some basic processing. Spatial effects such as reverb and delay work very well here to give a sense of depth but you can also try modulation to introduce even more movement.

I often find that a phaser works very well with any white noise based patch and it’s certainly one to try. If you find this a little intense go for a chorus or ensemble.

Logic’s Phaser adding movement

Delay and reverb will not only add width to your sound but it will also smooth out any rough edges. If you have sudden start or end points in your patch a well timed stereo delay will help the transition be smoothed and introduce continuity to the next section of your song.

Delay and reverb coming from Massive’s internal effects

Download audio file (4.mp3)

Effects adding space and smoothing the whole patch.

Go ahead and make your own noise based transition effects and in another tutorial we’ll look at mixing these with samples and other synthesised patches to create more complex effects mixes.

How was the list built? We collected every 2011 tutorial, quick tip and article that had ten comments or more, and sorted them according to how many visits they received in the first week. For good measure we took into account Facebook likes, star ratings, and traffic rankings for the year. The Top 20 posts in the list made the cut.

So here they are in order:

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  1. 4 Foolproof Ways to Make Your Home Studio Sound Better

  Author: Björgvin Benediktsson

  It’s easy to make music at your home today. However, you can’t put up low budget monitors and a microphone and call yourself a studio. There is a difference between a nice home recording studio – even if it’s just one spare room – and a low-cost corner in your bedroom, especially if you want to make money with it. We all start somewhere, even if it is in the corner of our bedroom but what separates the men from the boys is being able to take it to the next level. What follows are some of the foolproof ideas to make your home recording studio sound better.

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  2. 6 Different Frequencies and How to Spot Them

  Author: Björgvin Benediktsson

  I can never get enough information on EQ. I love to know how everybody EQed a certain vocal or drum sound to get that tight punch or shimmering highs so prominent in a mix. When you’ve mastered the EQ spectrum and you know where to go when you need to fix or embellish something, you are definitely ahead of the game.

  If you can listen to a sound and say to yourself, “Oh that needs a little more 250 Hz,” or “I think a cut at 1.2 would totally do the trick,” then you have something to be proud of. You are hearing something that nobody else around you hears. And that’s something to be proud of.

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  3. How to Create the ‘Like a G6′ Bassline Sound

  Author: Mike Elliott

  If you listen to the radio, go into upscale bars, or dance at the clubs you probably have heard Far East Movement’s ‘Like a G6′. Aside from the icy vocals from the artist Dev, G6 has a very memorable bass line. If you wanted to know how to recreate that sound for a remix or to have it as a sound option in your own track then read on like a G6!

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  4. Drum Compression: Get Your Attack and Release Times Correct

  Author: Jack Wiles

  Compression can be a tricky one to get your head around, and even if you’ve got your head around the threshold and ratio settings without the attack and release times being set correctly it will always be difficult to get the desired effect. This quick tip will outline a really handy trick I learned from a friend a few years ago which allows you to get your attack and release times just right. It’s primarily designed to work on drums but the same principles will apply to any percussive sound.

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  5. 5 Simple Ways to Add Punch to Your Drum Parts

  Author: Mo Volans

  In this tutorial we are taking a look at how to add punch, shine and edge to your drum parts. So whether you have a cool drum loop that lacks that certain something or an entire drum group that needs a lift, these simple steps should point you in the right direction.

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  6. 6 Simple Ways to Achieve Separation in Your Mix Downs

  Author: Mo Volans

  Creating a full, rounded and involving mix can be pretty challenging and one of the hardest bits is placing each instrument in it’s own defined space. Once you move past more than three or four elements there is always a danger of things becoming muddy. This is why we need to create separation.

  Ensuring that our instruments are clearly defined is not quite as hard as you may think. Like anything else in music production it really comes down to technique and experience. Let’s take a look at a list of ten things that should help you when completing your mixes.

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  7. Why You Should Use Metering Tools while Mixing and Mastering

  Author: Björgvin Benediktsson

  Last AES convention I met a manufacturing rep for a very prestigious equipment company. He was demoing a piece of equipment for me, showing me all the great knobs and buttons that it had to offer. Then he said something along the lines of, “We don’t include a screen for these things since you’re supposed to mix with your ears.” That’s when I took my exit stage left. I think imposing a viewpoint like that is just plain wrong.

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  8. Dubstep for Beginners – Part 1: The Drums

  Author: Mike Elliott

  With three equally important focal points, this tutorial series will initiate you each of these areas of dubstep and how to start producing your own grooves. This first tutorial will focus around the drum beats and what makes the dubstep beats unique. Get ready for some head nodding grooves!

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  9. Quick Tip: How to Ensure Your Masters Are Not Overlimited

  Author: Mo Volans

  More and more relative beginners are taking on their own mastering. This is great but if you plan to get the job done yourself there’s a few key things you should know before starting your first mastering sessions.

  One of the key things to look out for is the final level of your finished master and the amount of reduction to your music’s dynamic range. In most cases you will only need to look to your final limiter to address both of these issues. Let’s take a look.

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  10. Audiotuts+ Top 6 Software Synths

  Author: Adrian Try

  I remember discovering pro synths way back in 1982. I was amazed – with one instrument you could create almost any sound you could imagine. I fell in love with them. Now we can do all that with software.

  About a month ago I asked you what you thought was the best software synth. You answered. Five synths stood out above the rest. In this article we explore them.

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  11. How to Create a Wall of Acoustic Guitars

  Author: Björgvin Benediktsson

  This tutorial is going to teach you a nice technique on creating a thick wall of acoustic guitars in your mix. It’s not only a mixing tutorial but it cover both the recording and production process. We’ll be going over some music theory to create a layered guitar sound and then record it in such a way that we can create a shimmery wall of strummy acoustic guitars.

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  12. What Is the Best DAW for Beginners?

  Author: Adrian Try

  If you’re getting started with audio production, it won’t be long before you have to start making decisions. These decisions will potentially cost you lots of time and money. And one of the first of these decisions is about software – which digital audio workstation (DAW) software should you choose?

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  13. A Basic Guide to Mixing and Mastering

  Author: Hugo Tromp

  Mixing and mastering are the two base components of professional producing. Do you have a home studio and do you want to record your own instruments, such as the guitar, the piano and the drums to make an awesome track? This article provides all the knowledge considering mixing and mastering that you’ll need to produce your very own track!

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  14. Making Your MIDI Strings Even More Realistic

  Author: George Strezov

  As I said in my previous article Making a Convincing Melody with Sampled Orchestral Strings, one of the toughest things when making a MIDI mock-up is the string part. Sadly for me, since my last tutorial, I haven’t had the chance to try Hollywood Strings or LASS, so I’ll be doing this tutorial with my good old friend East West Quantum Leap Orchestra Complete, without blending different patches, using just one!

  So, before going to the tutorial, there is no point in lying to you. MIDI is always a temporary option. For us, the film composer guys, MIDI is a solution till the time we can record a live orchestra.

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  15. Tighter Vocals (Backing or Doubling) Using the Flex Tool

  Author: James Arter

  The vocals are always the most important part of a mix. They sit right up front and are the main thing that the listener will latch on to. If they sound too lazy and loose, it can throw the whole track out and give an overall messy feel.

  Now, getting the vocalist to sing rhythmically and on-the-beat is one thing, but trying to get them to do that again for either a chorus double, or backing vocals, is another! When it comes to parts like this, that need to be spot-on, there’s something you can do in post-production to help the situation out. With the use of the Flex Tool, in Logic, I’ll show you a quick tip to do just that.

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  16. 20 Windows DAWs Worth Using

  Author: Adrian Try

  Most of the world use Windows computers, so the chances are you’re one of them. So if you want to produce music on your computer, what are your options? Fortunately there are a heap of them – most of the big name digital audio workstation software works fine on Windows, and they’re not your only choices. So sit down and take a menu. We list the “big gun” software you can choose from, some inexpensive (less than $100) alternatives, and a few free options.

• 

  17. 20 Podcasts that Musicians Should Subscribe To (And Why!)

  Author: Adrian Try

  Rather than listening to music as I drive, shave and garden, I regularly listen to podcasts. That way I’m not just being entertained, but educated as well. In this post we introduce you to the Top 20 podcasts musicians should subscribe to.

  A podcast is like a radio show, only distributed via RSS over the internet. Some are professionally produced, but many are done by amateurs. Most are about a particular interest or topic. And there are a ton of them on music and recording – some featuring indie music, others exploring music technology, and many explaining techniques for playing and recording music. In this article we’ll focus on the podcasts that teach you about producing music, and not the ones that help you discover new music. Maybe we’ll cover those in a future post.

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  18. Quick Tip: How To Get A Clean John Frusciante Tone

  Author: Adrian Figallo

  In this tutorial I’m going to show how to get that classic and iconic clean-Stratish tone using just modeling technology. I’m using Guitar Rig 4 to get it, but you could use whatever software or real amp, as long as it gives you a Marshall-like tone.

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  19. 3D Mixing Part 5: Creative Routing

  Author: Will Walker

  Sorry for the long delay in continuing this series. I just moved across the country which took a bit more time and effort than I had originally hoped. In getting back on track with this tutorial, we are going to begin to look at some interesting ways of setting up our mix routing to maximize our mix-down flexibility; allowing us to shape our sounds into something with a more personal and artistic feel. As with any artistic endeavor, many of the settings and choice of effects shown here are going to be largely subjective, but much of the routing and underlying principals will help give you a solid jumping off point in making your mixes and sounds more diverse, interesting and personal..

• 

  20. Quick Tip: Use Multiple Audio Interfaces on Mac OS X

  Author: Hector Lee

  This is a true gem for Mac users especially when most DAWs do not allow you to use multiple audio interfaces. This can be very useful if you have multiple audio interfaces and want to use them together for more simultaneous inputs and outputs. I am sorry about this tutorial will only apply to Macs so Windows users are out of luck.

Winners Announced

Here are our four winners of Quiztones for Mac, chosen at random:

• Dominic, who commented, “This looks like a great app. I studied audio engineering and had to use this CD set for ear training. Needless to say, I barely passed. The CD set was annoying at best. This app looks a lot better! Good luck to me.”
• Abraham, who left the comment, “So keen! To completely honest I’ll be buying this even if I don’t win. Haha.”
• Francisco Hernandez, who left the comment, “Thanks!”
• Rob, who left the comment, “Hell yeah!”

Congratulations! You’ll all be contacted in the near future about how to receive your prizes.

And you weren’t lucky enough to win a copy for free, you can always head over to http://quiztones.net and get yourself a late Christmas present..

Quiztones for Mac

Quiztones ($19.99 value, requires 10.6.8 or later) is a frequency ear trainer for amateur and professional audio engineers and musicians. It uses frequency-altered tones, noise, and musical loops to train your ears and help develop more acute listening and frequency recognition skills.

Quiztones will…

• Sharpen your ears & frequency recognition skills
• Improve your mixing & EQ’ing chops
• Prevent noise buildup in your mixes & recordings
• Eliminate the need to sweep for frequencies

Quiztones is available from the Mac App Store or Audiofile Engineering Store. iPhone and iPad versions are available from the iOS App Store.

For more info, visit http://quiztones.net.

How to Win

For the chance to win, you need to do two things:

1. Leave a comment at the bottom of this page.
2. At the bottom of the Quiztones website, click on one of the social sharing buttons (Like, Tweet, or +1).

Four winners will be chosen at random.

This giveaway is open worldwide, but make sure to get your comment in before midnight Christmas Day, Sunday, December 25, 2011, AEST.

Rules and Conditions

• To enter, carefully read the instructions above.
• You may only enter once. Duplicate entries will be disqualified.
• Envato staff and people who have written more than two tutorials/articles for a Tuts+ site are not eligible to enter.
• Make sure you use a valid email address when you comment so you can be contacted. Email addresses will not be made public.
• Entries will be accepted until Sunday, December 25, 2011, midnight AEST.
• Giveaway is open to all jurisdictions.
• You must be of legal age in the jurisdiction that you reside to enter.
• Giveaway is void where prohibited.

This competition is sponsored by Audiofile Engineering.

To learn more about what you get as part of Audio Premium, read this. To take a peek inside this tutorial, hit the jump!

When using synthesisers, samplers or drum machines, one of the key ways of making your patches dynamic is the use of modulators. For many this is an area that seems complex and perhaps slightly daunting. The first thing to get your head around are the various types of modulators we use.

To ensure that the beginners amongst you grasp every area of the subject I’ve broken it down into easily digestible bite sized chunks. We’ll look at most of the common types of modulator used in most software based instruments.

Get the Full Tutorial!

Didn’t hear about Audio Premium? It’s an additional, in-depth tutorial, published each week just for our Premium subscribers (on top of all our regular free content!)

Join Today!

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Join Premium and Expand Your Audio Knowledge!

For those unfamiliar, the family of Tuts+ sites runs a premium membership service. For $9 per month, you gain access to exclusive premium tutorials, screencasts, and freebies from Nettuts+, Psdtuts+, Cgtuts+,Activetuts+, Phototuts+, Aetuts+, and Vectortuts+! For the price of a pizza, you’ll learn from some of the best minds in the business.

Become a Premium member and download this tutorial today!

What Do You Want to See on Premium?

Is there a specific technical aspect of audio production that you really want to learn more about? How about a very advanced technique that you could never quite grasp fully?

We really want to make our Premium content as relevant and useful to you as possible, so do send through your comments and requests to audio@tutsplus.com. Let us know what you want to see, and we’ll commission top-notch audio experts to teach you!

It doesn’t take long to build up a sizable collection of files when you get into audio. Now’s a great time to sort them out. What advice would you give to a beginner about organizing their files?

This short series of quick tips is designed to give you a good overview of the audio processing techniques involved in creating a professional sounding drum beat for use in house, electro and breaks in Cubase. In Part 2 we will look at the snare drum/clap sound.

Here is a sample of the type of beat you could expect to end up with at the end of this series of tips:

Download audio file (Audio Example 000.mp3)

Choosing Your Samples

As with the kick drum, choosing appropriate samples is a really important part of getting the right sound – the starting point for all your hard work is right here, so make it count. As before I am using samples from the vengeance packs, as they seem to provide everything I am looking for in a sound like this.

For a really fat snare/clap sound I will be using four samples – two snares and two claps. Layering these together really helps to build up a full, rounded sound that should cut through your mix with plenty of energy and punch. As with the kick drum I am using one sample to provide the low end and one for the high end. Here are the samples I have selected for the snare:

Download audio file (AUDIO EXAMPLE 1.mp3)

As you can hear, the first sample has a solid low end to it whilst the second has some nice bright noise to the top end which will help it to cut through the track nicely.

I’ve taken exactly the same approach when it comes to choosing samples to make up the clap part of my snare/clap sound – you can hear the first sample with some nice solid bottom end and the second adding some high end brightness and clarity:

Download audio file (AUDIO EXAMPLE 2.mp3)

Now we have our samples loaded in, I’ve laid them out on a track so they sit on every beat like this:

Here’s how they all sound together:

Download audio file (AUDIO EXAMPLE 3.mp3)

It’s worth noting once more at this point that the samples you choose really do make a huge difference to the sound – the samples in this example are definitely leading to an electro/house type sound – here is an example of some other samples combining to make a more breakbeat-esque snare/clap sound I have lowered the volume of the last clap in the mix as it was a little too loud – you may wish to adjust the balance of your drums if they sound a bit unbalanced.

Download audio file (AUDIO EXAMPLE 4.mp3)

Positioning Your Samples

To add a bit of life to the sound you can try moving the samples off the beat slightly, staggering them to give a fuller sound. You can do this by turning off the snapping in Cubase and manually moving the samples off the beat like this:

I find this can be a little irritating when it comes to editing your beat, so I prefer to delay the entire tracks using the offset control in the track settings. It’s the control below volume and panning with the clock symbol:

This way you can stagger the samples but they can stay perfectly snapped to the beat on the track. I usually find that adding something between 2 and 50 units here does the trick, splaying out your tracks. In this case I have opted to delay both snares by 2.55 so they still hit together but are slightly offset from the kick drums. Here’s how it sounds now:

Download audio file (AUDIO EXAMPLE 5.mp3)

Note: For a more solid, breakbeat type snare/clap sound I would be tempted to offset things much less – play around and see how you like it!

Adding Stereo Image

Whilst some drum samples come with some stereo information many don’t, and adding a bit of stereo delay can help to add some subtle interest to your track. To do this I am going to add a slight delay to the right channel of each of my clap sounds using the stereo delay. Leave the left channel untouched with the mix on 0%, then delay the right channel by about 20 ms, making sure to put the mix on 100% and to turn off the delay filters – your unit should look like this:

I’ve actually saved a preset of this effect to save me having to dial in these settings all the time. Here’s a before and after:

Download audio file (AUDIO EXAMPLE 6.mp3)

I usually apply exactly the same effect to the other clap sound, but leave the snares untouched.

Dynamics Treatment

I usually like to leave the snare/clap track relatively uncompressed, but a little is always a good idea to help the samples gel together and add a little extra punch. You can use the same trick as before to find your attack setting.

Here are the settings I ended up with – in this before and after (two hits before, two hits after) you can hear very little difference in sound, just a slight tightening. Compression like this will also help to control and low frequencies that might be lurking in there…

Download audio file (AUDIO EXAMPLE 7.mp3)

I’ve also added an envelope shaper with similar settings to the kick drum to add some punch, though I’ve extended the attack to cover that wider attack period created by the splaying of our drum hits:

Download audio file (AUDIO EXAMPLE 8.mp3)

EQing Your Snare/Clap

The final step here is to add a bit of EQ to fill out the sound and add some presence. Using the standard Cubase channel EQ I’ve rolled off the sub at 80Hz using a high pass filter, and added some bottom end weight at 194 Hz. Finally, a couple of presence boosts at around 2 kHz and 6kHz add some top end presence and definition. Here’s a before and after:

Download audio file (AUDIO EXAMPLE 9.mp3)

Keep a lookout for the next part in this series where we will be looking at hi hats/percussion.

The word phase is used to refer to points along the progression of the cycle of a sound wave (see Fig. 73). Points along this progression are designated in degrees, just as if the sound wave was a circle. The point where the sound wave is furthest into positive amplitude is 90 ̊, where it reaches the center line again is 180 ̊, the point furthest into negative amplitude is 270 ̊, and so on.

When two identical signals are not perfectly aligned, they are said to be “out- of-phase”. When out-of-phase signals are combined, they will begin to cancel each other out in areas where one is in positive amplitude and the other is in negative amplitude and boost each other when they are both in positive or both in negative amplitude (see Fig. 73), resulting in a washy modulated sound. When two identical signals are 180 ̊ out-of-phase (a vertical mirror image) they will cancel each other out completely, resulting in silence.

Most problems with out-of-phase signals come from delay effects or from poor stereo mic placement. When phase problems result from delay effects, the solution is usually as simple as adjusting the delay time until the phasing stops. Phase issues from mic placement can be avoided by using coincident pairs (mics placed with the capsules together) or by following the 3:1 rule (mics should be three times as far from each other as they are from the instrument). Because phase problems only show up when the two signals are being played through the same speaker, it is very important to always check mixes in mono.

When two mics are used on the same instrument from different sides, for example miking the top and bottom of a snare drum, the resulting signals will usually be 180 ̊ out-of-phase from each other. This can be fixed by reversing the phase on one of the signals. Many devices have phase reversal circuits, which are usually labelled with the “Ø” symbol. If a phase reversal circuit is not available, a mic cable can be made to reverse the phase by swapping its hot and cold leads at one end. This is usually a last resort, as it makes the cable unusable for any other application and creates the possibility of accidental phase reversal by inadvertently using the modified cable.

A Message from Envato HQ

Although the Tuts+ team is spread over the globe, Envato HQ is where much of the Tuts+ magic happens! It isn’t looking traditionally Christmassy in Melbourne at the moment, but we have a special holiday message from everyone at head office:

From everyone at Envato we want to wish you a Happy Holidays and look forward to seeing you all refreshed and ready for another big year in 2012! From Envato HQ to the community, we’ve created a little video to share the holiday cheer. Enjoy!

Music is Kids Holiday Theme by AudioJungle Author CraigHall

Gift Guides & Freebies!

Wondering what to buy your fellow geek this Christmas? Never fear! You may have left it it a little late, but our holiday gift guides can still come in handy. Here are a few great places to start:

• The Official 2011 Nettuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 30+ Gift Ideas for Browser App and Browser Game Developers
• 10 Last-minute Gift Suggestions for the Musician in Your Life
• 36 Great Holiday Gift Ideas For The Cg Artist!
• The Official 2011 Phototuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 20+ Great Gift Ideas for Any WordPress Developer

We also have a couple of exclusive freebies and discounts, just in time for the holidays:

• Get $6 Off Our New Rockable Book: “How to Record Great Music”
• Exclusive Freebie: 50 Crisp Web UI Icons

The Christmas Freelance Freedom Comic

The “holiday jingle” comic encapsulates everything that we love and hate about freelancing. Don’t forget to sing along to the “Jungle Bells” theme music as you read it…!

You can also enjoy the whole back catalog of Freelance Freedom comics over at FreelanceSwitch.

AppStorm Giveaways

We have two fantastic competitions running over at the AppStorm network over the holiday period, and there’s still time to get your entry in to stand a chance of winning:

1. Business Productivity Bundle Giveaway —Each bundle includes a license to Daylite and Billings Pro – it’s the perfect combination for getting your business organised and making money!
2. The AppStorm Holiday ’11 Video Game Giveaway — In the spirit of this season we’ve hand picked a few critically acclaimed, and award-winning, games released over this year to give away to our readers!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

All that’s left is to wish you a very happy holiday on behalf of everyone at Tuts+! We hope you’ve enjoyed everything that we’ve had to share this year, and look forward to publishing thousands more top-quality tutorials, articles, freebies, and resources in 2012.

Here’s to another exciting year at Tuts+, and thank you for joining us on the journey!

How did you go? What topics would you like to see future quizzes on?

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These days it seems that nearly everyone has some sort of recording ability in their home, but that doesn’t mean the space you use actually sounds good. In this series, we’ll look at how to improve your listening environment for a lot less money that you’d think was possible. In Part 1, we’ll look at the major considerations and concerns that everyone building a studio faces, and sometimes overlooks.

Before you begin to swing a hammer or set your credit card down to buy materials, it’s a good idea to take a look at what you’re trying to do and analyze your needs. It’s very easy to overlook a number of critical items that at the very least can bug you later, or at most impair your ability to mix or record music.

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Given that we know how to mix levels and pan the drums, there are really only three things you need for a great drum sound: EQ, compression and reverb, but the ways that you use these three processors is what shapes your drum sound.

Trick 1 – Steady with Compression

Problem: Drummers don’t hit the drums equally hard. But the listener wants consistency in the drum sound. Solution: Using compression to steady each hit so that every drum hit is more or less at the same volume.

A good starting point on most drums is a compressor that’s compressing just a few dBs, with a medium attack and a release in time with the song. Start with a ratio of 4:1, you still want some dynamics but you also want consistency in the hits.

Quick tips:

• Kick Drums – In rock and pop you want real consistency in your kick drum. I recommend a starting ratio of around 6:1.
  
• Thundering Toms – Heavy tom hits can benefit from a higher ratio, especially if you let the initial attack through with a medium attack.
  

Also, using different compression models can result in different sounds. Switching between a slow optical compressor and a fast VCA model can make a lot of difference to the overall sound of the drum. If you have different compression plug-ins, take them all for a spin and see which one you like the most. One isn’t necessarily better than the other, they just sound different.

Trick 2 – Clean Up with EQ

There are three simple steps to EQing a great drum sound.

• Step 1 – Cut the mids
  
• Step 2 – Boost the lows for power
  
• Step 3 – Boost the high-mids for point
  

Drums can sound inherently boxy. Annoyingly even. And those boxy frequencies reside in the mids, around 400 Hz or so. Maybe a little lower, maybe a little higher. But if you boost the mids, scan the spectrum and cut when the boxiness pops out, you’ve immediately made your drums sound better. Just by cutting the mids you’ve subjectively boosted the lows and highs, since the spectrum now looks like it has more lows and highs than it does mids.

If you still need extra power or point to the drum, keep following the steps. Point is what’s sometimes called attack on toms, click on bass drum or crack on snare. It’s the high-end of the drum that compliments the low-end power of the drum.

• Kick – The beater is found around 2–4 kHz, and the boosts depend on the type of “click” you want in your kick drum.
  
• Toms – The lower the tom, the lower the point is found. A 10” tom will have its attack at a higher frequency than a 16” floor tom.
  
• Snare – Search around 3 kHz for the crack of the snares. Beware of cutting too much low end from the snare because the fundamental frequencies are found around 500 Hz. Therefore, use narrower cuts on the mids than you would on the kick or toms.
  

Similarly, the low-end follows the same path. The lower the drums, the lower the “power” frequency of the drum is.

• Kick – Real, punch-in-your-gut power is down there in the 50-60 Hz range. You should also focus on the 80-100 Hz range because those lower frequencies can’t really be heard on most consumer speaker systems. But if you want that real power, check out a good artificial way to get a 50 Hz boost in your kick drum with my tutorial: Enhancing the Kick Drum with Sine Waves.
  
• Floor Toms – A similar fullness and power is found in the 80 Hz range. If you have a hard hitting tom part where the floor tom plays a big part, boosting the 80 Hz can give the part much more power.
  
• Snare – You can actually filter the snare drum up to around 100 Hz without compromising the quality of the drum. But the body and weight of the snare can be found in the 150 Hz region. If you want a thicker snare, boosting around 150 Hz will give you a meatier snare.
  

Step 3 – Use a Master Reverb

A master reverb on all tracks is a great way to give the drum kit some depth and space. Send all of your drums to the same reverb, and use the sends to balance the amount you want for each drum.

Leave the kick drum relatively dry, but add more reverb to the toms for instance. Which type of reverb you choose depends on the song you’re working on, but I’ve found a nice drum room patch always gives me just the right amount of depth without cluttering up the mix itself.

Trick 4 – Parallel Compression for Punchiness

Lastly, if you find your drum sound lacking a little punch, parallel compression is the way to go. Parallel compression is just another way to use your compressor. Now, instead of connecting it to every separate drum track you’re creating a punchier sub group that you mix in with your clean drums.

There was a really great quick tip on parallel compression a while back, Punchier Drums with the New York Compression Trick so I won’t go into the details. But rest assures, parallel compression is the #1 trick to solve any punchiness problems.

Conclusion

Following these simple steps, compressing the individual drums, EQ’ing the lows, mids, and highs, and adding the drum group to a reverb as well as a parallel compressor I’ve created a tighter, and punchier drum mix.

Listen to the unprocessed drum tracks first:

Download audio file (DrumsDry.mp3)

And then listen to finished product here:

Download audio file (DrumsWet.mp3)

Follow these simple tips whenever you’re mixing drums and you’ll get an amazing drum mix every time.

Synthesis can certainly be a daunting subject. There are a huge number of software instruments on the market now, many of which feature different forms of synthesis and varying styles of interface. To the beginner this huge choice and tech jargon may be slightly confusing, to say the least.

To help clear things up let’s start by taking a look at the ever popular area of subtractive synthesis and how to create a basic effects patch. I will show how the patch is made and explain each step and also recreate the sound using some instruments from popular DAWs. Obviously the recreations may not be exactly the same as the original patch but they should show that any synth can be used to create a good range of sounds.

Step 1 - FAW Circle Soft Synth

For this tutorial I have chosen to use a synth called Circle to demonstrate the initial creation of the effects patch. Unfortunately it’s not free but when I was searching for the right instrument to use, it ticked all the right boxes. It is available as VST, AU and a standalone application, and it’s also Windows and OS X compatible. It runs for 20 minutes in demo mode, so there should be plenty of time to try and recreate the patches. You can download the demo here.

The demo has limited load and save functions so you may have to settle for the screen shots when following the steps. Alternatively, you can recreate the sound using your favorite soft synth or load one of the patches in the Play Pack. If you have Ableton Live, Reason or Logic, you are in luck.

Step 2 - The Initialized Patch

The best place to start when programming any sound, on any instrument, is a blank initialized patch. It’s sometimes a good idea to have one oscillator switched on but all envelopes, filters, LFOs and modulators should be at zero. This way you won’t be influenced by a particular preset or routing that was previously loaded.

Looking at the initial patch I have constructed using Circle, you should be able to see that only one oscillator is turned on and that it is a saw wave. Most synths tend to use one saw wave oscillator in their default patch, more out of tradition than anything else but it is certainly a good idea to build your new patches this way, then any synth you use will have the same starting point.

Moving on we can see that the filter is set to a low pass model, it is also completely open with no resonance dialed in. The filter is also not modulated by any other part of the synth, and in fact there are absolutely no modulations going on anywhere at this point. Circle displays its modulations in a very innovative fashion, using colored circles in each area of the instrument. These can be simply dragged and dropped to achieve the desired routing.

The envelopes are also reset, creating an on/off effect, with no attack or release at all. Both the amplitude and filter envelopes have identical settings at this point to avoid any confusion. The LFOs are all at their default values and no routing is taking place. The result of all this initialization is a very simple and straight-forward saw wave patch with no frills. Try making one of these for your favorite synth, or maybe there is one included in its sound bank.

Initialized patch

Reset oscillators

Reset filter

Reset Envelopes

Download audio file (2.mp3)

Step 3 - Setting up the oscillators and filter

Once we have initialized our patch we can start to build the sound from the ground up. It’s a good idea at this point to visualize the sound you want to make and picture the steps you will have to make to achieve it. In this case I want to make a resonant, falling effect that is modulated by an LFO as it falls. I need the sound to have a decent amount of impact and play back at no particular pitch. Think of this stage as writing yourself a brief for the sound you want to make, you can then work through all the requirements to construct your patch.

I have decided to opt for a noise oscillator as this will provide a good base for an effects patch and it will prevent the sound from playing back at a certain pitch and therefore will lend itself to being used in any project. Circle has a dedicated noise oscillator, so I have turned off the saw wave. Other synths may have oscillators that can simply be switched to noise, every instrument differs in its operation so be prepared to spend a few minutes finding the right parameter.

Your noise oscillator should now play back in the same way as the saw wave in the initial patch, with an on/off type effect. We are now ready to add some resonance to the sound using the synth’s filter section. I have chosen a low pass filter model as this is what we will be using to create the downwards sweep. I have then turned the resonance up to nearly full. I haven’t gone all the way due to the fact some filters will ‘self-resonate’ at very high settings and in effect become their own oscillator, masking any other sound source used. I wanted to hear the noise really come through in this patch, so I held the level back a little.

To let you hear the effect of the filter on the noise waveform I have performed a manual sweep across most of the filter’s range. You can really hear the resonance as the sweep takes place here and it compliments the noise really well. The sound is starting to take shape but is still very rough around the edges.

Noise Oscillator

Resonant low pass filter

Download audio file (3.mp3)

Basic noise oscillator

Download audio file (3b.mp3)

Resonant noise sweep

Step 4 - Envelopes

The manual sweep in the previous step gave us a good idea of how the final patch will sound but now it’s time to automate that sweep so it happens every time we hit a key. We do this by using an envelope to control the movement of the filter’s frequency. This involves setting up a modulation mapping that enables the envelope to control the filter. Don’t worry, this is pretty easy and with most synths (especially Circle) it is a transparent process.

To allow the envelopes to control the filter in Circle, it is simply a case of dragging the small colored circles that are situated in various places on the synth to the desired location. The mapping is then complete and the two sections of the synth linked. Of course in other instruments the process may be different and can involve modulation matrices or a group of dedicated knobs but the theory always remains the same.

The amount of modulation can now be set, and here I have moved the fader all the way to the bottom giving the envelope a negative polarity. Using the snap control on the filter you can adjust the curve of the fade which has now been created. A perfectly sculpted filter sweep has now been created which sounds considerably smoother than the manual version.

Filter modulation

Inverted values

Filter envelope fade

Download audio file (4.mp3)

Envelope filter sweep

Step 5 - LFO modulation

To add some extra movement and interest to the sound we can use LFOs to modulate any part of the sound we like. Here I have used one LFO to control the cut off frequency as the envelope sweeps it. The result is a wobbling effect as the frequency drops.

For further depth the LFO speed is then modulated by the original filter envelope, and this causes the LFO to slow down as the sweep progresses. A really nice effect and very simple to create. When all the different components come together you have a really usable effect that can be created with just about any synth.

LFO modulations

Download audio file (5.mp3)

Final synth effect patch

Step 6 - Patch Recreation

To show this sort of sound can be created on most synths, I”ve quickly recreated the patch as closely as possible using some popular synths that are bundled with well-known recording software products.

Reason’s Thor:

Download audio file (6.mp3)

Logic’s ES2:

Download audio file (6b.mp3)

Ableton Live’s Analog:

Download audio file (6c.mp3)

Play Pack

What’s Inside?

Making great music and quality audio has more to do with your knowledge and skills than the equipment that you own. That’s why the book’s called “How to Record Great Music… with Whatever Equipment You Got!” It will give you the information you need to start producing music using whatever gear you already own as a starting point.

Björgvin explains:

When I was studying sound engineering, and was just starting out in the industry, I was intimidated by all the things I seemed to either need to have or know how to use. I got tired of always looking for tips and practical help online, especially when all I usually ended up with were sites that were more interested in showcasing the newest sample library or synthesizer, rather than actually teaching you how to do certain things or use some of the audio production tools that are out there. I had a ton of questions, and I wished there was a simple and straight-forward book I could refer to – but there wasn’t – so I decided to turn things around and change that by writing a book myself.

This is the book I wish I had when I was learning the ropes, and I’ve tried to keep it broad and make it a practical guide to audio recording and engineering. I personally really like quick tips and I feel that practical applications are crucial to remembering how and why to use a specific technique, so I won’t be delving into the theoretical specifics of every little thing, but I’ll try to give you an overview of the basics and the practical knowledge needed to start in the world of audio engineering and recording music.

Here’s a brief overview:

• What Makes a Good Sound
• How I Record Great Music
• An Introduction to Microphones and Mic Techniques
• The Recording Workflow
• The Audio Mixer
• Audio Editing

Want to know more? There’s plenty more detail on Rockable Press.

About the Author

Björgvin Benediktsson is a musician and audio engineer. He has written 82 tutorials for Audiotuts+ since May 2009 and runs his own successful audio blog called Audio Issues.

You can learn more about Björgvin in his Audiotuts+ interview.

Buy Now and Save

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• Buy eBook via eJunkie: $9 (normally $15)
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