Music Producer's Ask RA

Thought it was a good idea to have a questions thread solely for us producers seeing as there is now quite a number of us making music on a regular basis.

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Dear RA,

When i complete a project, the sound file show the highest peaks of the track obviously when there is a lot of details going on. How do i effectively boost all the levels of the track so that in effect the less deatiled parts of the track are just as loud as the most busiest parts. (this may have some relation to normalising or ad-limiting).


Cheers

Ben

Have you tried compressing your track?

There are so many compressor plug ins in Logic i dunno which one to use.

I'll play around with it

eq is your friend. it's just a matter of cutting and boosting certain frequencies and normalising. use compression lightly on seperate tracks and only if needed. also multiband compression can be great if applied properly. don't compress the entire mix if you're planning to get it mastered by an engineer. I hope this helps but you can find shitloads more info dogsonacid.com honestly that place is a fuckin goldmine of info

Anyone here use fruity loops and know anything I can download to make good hoovers besides the 3x osc thing it has?

download any soft synth with a good chorus i.e juno x

make a sample from it

whack that sample into the piano roll

fuck with the pogo or automate the pitch using the event editor

viola :thumbsup:

DnB question:

Am interested to know how peeps make their secondary snare loops in their DnB tracks. I know mine always suck ass & was wondering if there are any tricks?

Cheers,

Justin :)

yeah just for the record they're called ghost snares :teehee:
and the best way to get these is to chop up funk breaks.

Ooh, spooky :lol:

Cheers for da info - may look around for ghost snare sample packs :)

have u made them up yourself before though?

you dont really need to find any ghost snare sample packs considering they are just the same as ordinary snares, except they may differ in pitch/volume/length/etc

I was thinking of a sample pack where they were already arranged. I usually try to use higher pitched snares when I "try" to create them myself, but it still sounds off..

take a funk drumloop, put it into your beat slicer, cut out the kick and the snare and bobs your nanna. try it with a clean amen break and fuck around with it until you get the jist of it. :)

Yeah think I got some amen stuff somewhere - will give it a go tonight

Ta :)

yeah its what khem said.. just make sure you edit velocity on the note itself so that youre lowering volume for that hit and possibly changing length of note

or fine use of delay/echo is your friend for percussive ghost notes. also helps if you put a lil panning in your ghost notes to make the track sound more full.

Heyall.

I am trying to make custom arpegiator midi files in Z3TA soft synth.
I have followed instructions and am having no luck at all getting it to work.

Has anyone tried to do this and if so, could u help me out please.

In the instructions it says

"1- Create a 1-bar, 4/4 type-0 MIDI file with your arpeggio "

Is there some type of software that does this, I've tried both reason and ableton and am geting no joy.

This post has been edited by ralpheeee: Jun 18 2006, 05:10 PM

tough one there
I must say I haven't actually tried to make my own arp in z3ta as there is already about 200 :lol:
but I'll do some research and fuckin around and see if I can find somethin for ya

quote I found on some website while googling:

One undocumented problem had me baffled for a while. The normal installation puts all Z3ta+ files in your preferred VST plug-ins folder and the Cakewalk folder (for DXi operation). When I first tried to create my own arpeggio patterns, they wouldn't play back because I was working in the wrong folder. My pattern appeared in Z3ta's menu even though it wasn't actually there, because the arpeggiator patterns were named arp001 through arp200, and the numbers for which there was no file in the folder weren't grayed out, as they should have been.

let me know if this helps at all

Thanks 4 the tips!

I've tried making the midi clips in ableton, i think i got a little closer last night.

Retroblaster : I've been doing exactly what u said, but i'm getting no sound at all. Untill last night, when regardless of what type of midi clip i made, it still came up with the same pattern ; very strange!. I'll keep trying tho, I would lurve to make my own arpeggios!!

Oblivious: thanks for looking that up man, I had already found that and tried it, I'm definitely using the right folder coz i tried deleting one that was in there and then when i tried to play it, it was gone. Realy apreciate your efforts!!!

I'll keep trying, i'm bound to crack it eventualy.

UPDATE:

Figured it out. In the instructions it says name the file input.mid, which i was doing.
however all i needed to do was name it input, the .mid tag got automaticaly put on there. Farkin hell that took way to long to figure out.

This post has been edited by ralpheeee: Jun 20 2006, 05:41 PM

RA,

Does anyone knows of any audio software that allows you to build a sound by manipulating its waveform? Basically adjust the frequencies then hit play and see what sound it makes? I have a sweet idea that id really like to try out..

cheers,

Ben