Pro Tip: Controlling Dubstep Bass

Ever had trouble manually matching LFO rate to the tempo to make dubstep bass? Have a keyboard that uses splits or combis? Try this tip for instant wobble gratification!

1. First use this tutorial and get your basic wobble bass patch ready. This will be the slow version or 4/4 filter sync

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZYDmw2pYOk

Come back when your ready.

2. Create a copy of the patch on the upper registers of your keyboard

3. Adjust the copy’s filter mod rate to 16th or 12th notes. This is the faster wobble sound.

4. Adjust the filter if necessary. Transpose down appropriately.

Now you can just hit a key on the upper registers to get the fast wobble or hook in your musical phrase. The filter is perfectly matched to the music, allowing you to experiment! Creating multiple copies of the same bass with slight modification creates interest for the listener.

Tips: Making out of date synth patches on new systems

Dreaming of owning a keyboard with a 6mb sample rom library? Thinking of selling your entire studio to get that new sound? Try these simple tips to get bigger synth sounds.

1. Use a double delay instead of reverb. Digital delays are the best. You can try one tight delay (30ms or so) and one long delay (250ms), then pan each to the left or right. This creates a larger sound space.

2. Filter the sample, or analog modeling synth with a Lo-Fi sample rate down-conversion (destructive). Change the bit rate to 12 or 8 bit. This would simulate old sample roms or digital synthesis.

3. Combine a choir (ahh) sample with a short percussive attack sample. Many pad patches have been created this way with various string type sounds or percussive strikes and plucks. Many keyboards based on rom libraries let you create a sound with two “oscillators” in the patch. Again use the tips above on something like this to make it sound bigger. This is the scariest tip.

4. Experiment with sample speeds, transposition zone, and formant. If you have a roland sampler with vari-synth or ableton you may be able to get low-fi type results on modern samples, as if you were to take a smaller section of the rom sample and stretch it to fit the keyboard. Sometimes its better to turn these new pitch correcting/stretching technologies OFF and let the samples run.

5. Use a stereo choir effect or guitar pedal

The old tricks are the best tricks.

Automator Action for Quick-Launching Rewire + DAW Setups

Each time you start a new song it can be a hassle to setup a complex DAW environment that includes Rewire, Internal and External Midi Instruments, and Audio. Using template songs and Mac OS X automator you can get to the full power of your computer in less than 30 seconds with one button click.

Download the Files (Includes Automator Action, Application, and Song Templates for Logic & Reason 4)

File Location: Home—>Audio—>StartupTemplates

If you decide to download the files you may have to customize them in automator and rebuild the script (thankfully Apple makes this easy). This would be required if you wanted to launch Ableton instead of Logic Pro along with Reason. You may want to customize the instrument selection to your liking in both the Reason and Logic templates. My custom setup of useful Reason and Logic instrument presets is provided. Once thats done, just put the automator app into your dock for a one button studio quicklaunch!

Once the script has run, Logic Audio and Reason are perfectly synced, with all your instruments ready to rock.

Guitar Hero Drums + Osculator Tutorial

A nice tutorial with photos & video to get your guitar hero drum set working with your computer.

http://www.vultrix.com/index.php/2009/12/04/guitar-hero-drums-as-a-real-drum-kit/

Inside the Yamaha QY100, Changing the Battery

This is explains how to change the factory internal battery in the Yamaha QY100 sequencer.

What you need:

CR 2032 Lithium ($2)

Philips head screwdriver

1. Unscrew every screw in the back. A gold colored screw is at the position shown.

2. Pull back the casing slowly to reveal the copper shield. Mind the wires in the bottom right.

3. Unscrew the two copper colored screws which hold the shield down. Open the shield forward, still connected.

4. Push the old battery further into the case from the front (left to right in the pic). Remove the battery. You can also gently use a small screwdriver to pry it loose. Replace with a fresh battery.

5. Carefully re-assemble. Power up. The screen should say “Factory Preset” on its first startup.

DIY Acoustic Insulation Vid

Found on Synthopia. Check out this guy’s blog

Downloadable Frequency Chart (PDF)

Ever needed a guide on frequency to help you mix? Ever needed to know where a sound will fall without looking at the meter?

Print out this chart from Stereoklang (PDF)

While a good start, I don’t agree with it.

Critiques: Sounds starting at 200hz are not warm, as shown. These sounds clear and contain alot of information, some which is harsh! (Snares) Warmth is created under 80hz. You can increase warmth by increasing sub bass. Wheight is also wrong. It should be depicted as 100 hz and up, which is a range that the human body can feel, sort of like getting punched (kick drum attack). The rest in the diagram is OK.

One Key Drum Programming Tips

Ever had trouble timing drums on a keyboard? Use this tip to consolidate your drums onto one key to reduce errors.

How it works: Accents trigger fast snare and bass drum (high velocity), and normal strikes (low to high velocity) just play bass drum and optionally a soft/quiet/blended snare. This allows you to naturally play rock rhythms on the same key and frees up other fingers.

For this to work you’ll need a sampler that supports custom velocity sensitivity and at least two samples per key. I used the V-Synth. I’m sure this will work in Reason or anything remotely modern.

1. Find your drum samples. Bass, Snare etc. Setup zones or make keymappings for drums.

2. Place a Bass Kick – 0-127 Linear Velocity (straight upward graph) on Middle C. This is OSC1 on the V-synth

3. Place a Fast Snare – 100-127 High Velocity (highly peaked graph) also on Middle C. This is OSC2 on the V-synth

Thats it. Now its slightly easier to play rhymthms on a keyboard using a single key.

BONUS TIP: Make a bass drum sound slightly more real! Using a variation of above you can blend a bass drum sample and a soft snare. Why would you want to do this? In real life when you press the bass pedal your resonating the surrounding drums (the snare’s springs). In studios where samples are recorded their goal is to isolate sounds and make sure this doesn’t happen. If your using samples from entirely different kits or electronic drums this method will blend them. If we add a soft snare sample to our kick drum at much lower volume you can blend them like its coming from one drumset. Make sure you use appropriate velocities for this. You don’t want the snare to actually sound like an accent or compete with the real snare.

I hope this helps people make more natural sounding drum rhythyms or inspires someone to do something new with sample layers.

Online Monitor (Loudspeaker) Placement Calculator

This is just about the best online monitor placement calculator I could find. It even has a database of loudspeakers for a projected frequency response. It also accounts for things like chairs, carpet, and floor construction to calculate reverb times. Utterly awesome & free.

Tip: If you need your monitors farther back to the wall than suggested, draw string in a line to the corners of the room from your listening point and then move the speakers back on that axis. This keeps it in the proper distance ratio. Then use this diagram to fine tune and avoid the micro-dead zones (sonar-like lines).

Optimising Your Studio Acoustics with Software

The subject of studio acoustics can seem like black magic – but don’t let it scare you off. You can make easy changes, that could vastly improve your recording and mixing environment, with the help of free or cheap PC software utilities, as we discover this month.

LINK

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