Tuesday, June 22, 2010

NOTES FOR 6.23.2010

(Todays Session Above)

Another great session this morning. Got about 4 hours in...and have this track mostly finished besides EQing. Got all the little mistakes cleaned up, panning finished, and vocals added. This track is called "House Sucks"....ironically a house track. I found this AMAZING funny sample from youtube of this guy talking about how much he hates house music and house clubbers. It worked perfectly!!!! This is one of my fav tracks right now. Notes - 

The youtube sample had some really bad mid noise in it...which was hard to remove without destroying the intelligibility of the vocals. I tried playing with EQs and gates...but it still sounded bad. I would have to say that I am not the most knowledgeable person about cleaning up poorly recorded vocal samples...but I did find some magic within the multi-band dynamics presets. I used the "REDUCE AMBIANCE" preset, and removed some of the mids...and it really cleaned it up. I mixed that with gates and EQ 8, and it ended up sounding great. There is still a smidge of noise in it...but really unnoticeable. My engineer should be able to clean that tiny little bit....hes really good with vocals.

Its really nice to remove ONE KICK within a bar, and replace it with a slightly advanced reverse snare sound. It really throws the swing especially when there is already a heavy swing within the track.

Always remember to pan your shakers....but remember to do it symmetrically. It really FILLS out the song.

I have recently have had a desire to use 2 separate bass sounds in different parts...but you must really take care of masking. I actually tried something new today...cutting the kick, and the other bass...and threw a one shot bass sound in that spot. Used track on/off automation on some other tracks....and it created a really nice bass SLAM.

When adding a delay to vocals (which is quite common in all electronic music) to the end of a vocal line, its good to separate your vocal track into 2 tracks, then apply the delay to the 2nd track which only has the part you want to delay. Ive found then when delaying a vocal sample, its really hard to get the timing of the delay right without it scooping up parts preceding the part you want to delay. If you separate it, the delay will only capture EXACTLY what you want it to. I have done this a few times in the past few tracks, but didnt really note it.

When panning a main part of your track (something that sticks out)....its good to only pan it a little bit. I really like to pan even my main parts (besides bass and kick) because it really helps with masking....but too much really takes away from the power up the center. I have been finding that 10-13 left and right can help with masking, but still keep the power up the middle.

Dont forget the power of AUTOPAN. Most of the time, when I am panning (stabs especially), I use the normal automation within the track. But sometimes, using autopan can give you some really swirly revolving pans. Its good to mix those with arp sounds or pads.

Also, up until now, when I was panning a long synth sound that I wanted to go from left to right or vice versa...I started from the left and went to the right or vice versa. Today, I started in the center...and then went left...and then symmetrically balanced it with a 2nd one starting at the center and going to the right. It kept the power on the first hit of the bar, and then moved it away. I even added a little reverb to it so it disappears nicely.

Reverse snares (or reverse anything) can really add nice swings almost anywhere in a track (not just beside the snare or clap). In the future, I definitely want to experiment with the placement of reversed samples. I just recently got into using them....and never realized the power until now!

Well thats it for today. My final track came back from mastering today....so this weekend, I am going to go to some of my friends clubs and test them during the early hours before opening....sit with a chair dead center between the speakers and take notes. Hopefully, I will be uploading them next week.

Peace!

FroBot

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