Keeping Music Less Repetitive With Pitch LFO Tutorial

Ok. So this is a nice little refreshing tip I had kind of forgotten about...but its a charm. In your tracks sometimes, you will be using a sound that repeats. "NO WAY Mr. DANCE PRODUCER" you say? Yea Yea, but, repetitive music doesnt have to be dull. Sometimes, especially percussion elements like blocks, cow bells, bongos, djembes, congas, etc...need to have small variations in them so they sound less computer like. I come from a background of organic instruments, and later found electronic music. So, when I think about a natural instrument being put into a track, I like to decide if I want that sound to actually sound REAL, or sound unnatural. When real is the case, then I like to think about all the factors that go into making that instruments unique sound.

I host full moon drum circles in Osaka here every month under Osaka Castle (rad place by the way). So, I get a chance to think about sound dynamics at least once a month with a bunch of other musicians, and different people each time.

Lets take a djembe so to say. What sounds go into making it different, and how are we going to do that in ableton live.

1. Drummers Strength - This is how hard the drummer is hitting the drum. Easily changed with velocity or volume envelopes.

2. How far away is the drummer? - That is changed with the master volume of the track or tracks.

3. What is the ambiance of that place they are drumming? - Reverbs, volume, even delays can create this.

4. How funky is he? - This is controlled by moving the drums notes forward and backward in time, or applying a groove from the groove pool.

5. Is the drummer letting the drum ring out, or sustaining it with his hand? - This is easily changed by just changing the volume envelope and making it with only an attack...or just shorten the sample.

6. What is the pitch of the drum? Now this is the hard one, and what I want to talk about today.

This is the core fundamental of this idea of changing the pitch of anything with LFOs, so the loop will not sound as boring. For illustration purposes only, I am showing how to do this with a hand drum....but, it can be applied to ALMOST anything, and is especially good for organic rhythmic elements, or really repetitive sounding parts that might annoy you in a mix.

Back to the hand drum now, for those of you who dont know a lot about drums....they actually have TONS of great tones. By moving your hand around the top, around the outside, catching a little bit of wood in the hit, catching a little bit of the hide around the outside, cupping your hands, rolling your fingers, sustaining it all the while....trust me...there are TONS of tones on a hand drum. As a matter of fact, the science of it tells you, that unless the drummer hits in EXACTLY the same place every time...the pitch should be a little different each time...and hand drummers are usually rocking it out hard, and feelin' that groove...and from my experience...hand drummers like to trance out when jamming. So I doubt that their brains are saying "lets make sure I hit in the same place every time." So we need to be able to create that almost RANDOM changing of pitch...but not so drastic as to obviously change the pitch by a semi tone (unless that is the desired effect). This concept can be taken to the extreme and turned into some super fucking awesome effects, but today we are going to talk about how to do it VERY subtly, and turn our boring, stagnant loops into dynamic, realistic, loops.

So, what I am going to do is take a simple bongo loop for now. Usually I would make one using one hits, but for the purpose of this tutorial, its just a background sound for me to add some dynamics to. Since it is an ACTUAL HAND DRUM recording, and not super short, it has real pitch sounds changing in it already. What I want to do is add a few extra attack drum taps to liven it up a little, and really make it sound less repetitive. You could do this to ALL of the loops sounds if you wanted to...and you created them all by hand, but sometimes....its good to have a backbone, and then add a few changing sounds into it. Either way can sound good.

So 1 audio track with a bongo loop, 1 midi track with a simpler and a conga one shot hit -

Mine are in yellow -


As you can see, I am only using the attack sound of the conga hit because I just want to add a few of those drum hits where the drummer mutes the sound of the drum after they hit it. More of a high pitched THWACK!

Now I am going to play my bongo loop and record a few extra drum hits. I am also going to move the midi notes around a little bit until I get something I like -

This is what I came up with. I had to shut the grid off to get them just right. Just a couple extra drum hits. I also tuned it so its in the same pitch as the other drum loop.

So, now we have a couple nice sounding attacky drum hits to add some dynamics to this repetitive sound. Now, please keep in mind, this is just a basic example. If you were to really take care of your drum loop, and use all one hits, separating them on a couple different tracks, and then use the following method...you can get beautiful changing sounds, or you could get a total sloppy mess. That is why I am showing you this in more of a TOOL fashion, because in this explanation, we are using it SO subtly, that, if applied right, should almost be unable to be noticed when listening to the WHOLE track.

First thing we are going to want to do is turn on the LFO in the middle of the simpler -

Also make sure RETRIG is OFF because we dont want it to re-trigger the LFO every time or that would then become a predictable change and would still make the drum hits repetitive.

Now, what we want to do, is use the pitch LFO (beside the transp) and change the rate (freq) a little bit to get a subtle changing of pitch.

For the purpose of understanding what is going on here, put the LFO up quite a bit and just start tapping your simpler (with midi controller or keyboard) and watch the pitch go up and down.

What we want to do is do that SO subtly, that it is working within the detune range of the sound, and just making it sound less boring.

I ended up coming up with these very SMALL parameters for my rate (freq) and LFO -

Now, if this was done correctly, you should almost be UNABLE to notice the difference. But, over time...this can amount to a lot. Especially if you apply it to other corresponding rhythms. Sometimes, it may be nice to have one of the more dominant rhythm parts, something sitting in the lower frequencies...to be unchanged at all. So it holds everything together, and then use this method on the other smaller, less bassy percussion. This is just MY idea, and from my experience, how I like it to work. You can however apply pitch LFOs to everything, and if you mastered this idea...using multiple tracks to make your rhythmic percussion, you could in theory, recreate the unpredictable, yet kind of predictable sounds of any organic percussion instrument.

Also, keep in mind, if you apply this technique (or any pitch LFO technique) to other sounds like synth stabs, pads, tech house bass etc etc etc, you get some fabulous results. Again, this was an example of thinking long term with your rhythm, but go wild with your pitch envelopes & LFOs. They can be really surprising.

Hope this helped! Keep makin tunes!!!

FroBot

Side-Chain Fast Percussion Tutorial

Most of you dance music producers are familiar with side chaining at this point, and have found the wonders that it can do when applied to a bass track. But side chaining is, more times than not, a tool rather than an effect. Recently, I have been judging dance producers knowledge of music around the concept of side chaining, and how much they use it. Side chaining is an extremely useful tool for making sure that your kick punches as strongly as possible. Sometimes, after you make a track, and take it into the club...it just doesnt have the punch it had at home. This can be due to many things, but one of the things can be the sounds you happen to have overlapping your kick. By using side-chain compression, you can make sure your kick stands out on its own, and punches its way through the other sounds in the mix. Today, I am going to show some examples of where to use this, specifically with 1/16 note high hats, but it is also important for other fast percussion elements.

When I say "fast percussion", I mean high hats, hand drums, snare rolls, claves, cow bells...ANYTHING rhythmic and fast that happens to have a transient on the kick.

As I mentioned before, when I listen to tracks, I specifically listen to if an artist used these techniques when making their track. When side chaining percussion, its almost as if you "MUST" do it, rather than an artistic choice. Its up there with EQing, and mastering...things you must do to get maximum clarity and pump. If an artist just left his 1/16 note HHs without any compression or volume change on the kick transients, something in my head says "ahhhh, he doesnt know that concept". I actually went back, after learning these techniques, and fixed all my old tracks up before sending them to get mastered. It made a world of difference.

A few things I want to note to beginners. I know, when you start making music, you will first hear the word SIDE-CHAIN. And I know its normal to then think, "oh shit, I have to side-chain my music if I want it to sound good". This is so far from the truth you wouldnt believe it. Side-chaining is no more than another creative tool that should be applied when it is needed. Its basic purpose is to allow room for another sound to shine through or hide in the background...however, that being said, it has become a creative weapon in the arsenal of producers due to its feature exploitation. Amazing little bugger. But, before using a side-chain compressor, think to yourself "Does this need side chained". "Are 2 elements conflicting?" "Should one sound be lowered when the other one is playing?" If nothing is conflicting, then more times than not, side-chaining wont be of much use. (in a tool sense, I do not mean in an artistic sense like side chaining pads or whatnot). So make sure you understand what side-chaining actually does, before you go applying it randomly. A few hours with a few books about compressors, and ableton tutorials, and you should be up to speed a little bit....so do yourself a favor, and do it before applying these ideas.

So lets start with what we are actually doing with the side chain compressor. Its a pretty simple concept. Pretty much, you are letting the kick activate the compressor...so every time the kick hits, the volume of whatever you have the compressor on, goes down when the kick hits. Basically, ALL you are doing is changing the volume (GAIN REDUCTION). The reason we do this, is because, have you ever looked at a kick by iteself on a spectrum. It is a beautiful display of rolling frequencies. Kicks are elegant artistic pieces....amazing displays of frequency carving. They are so beautiful, and so powerful...that we want them to HOG the show, when its their turn to shine. They get to shine "4 to the floor"...and we want to make sure they receive their full, unaltered glory. When leaving a sound like a HH sitting on top of it, it will...more times than not, just weaken your kick in one way or another. We need to try to keep our fast, rhythmic elements noticed, but not causing problems. Also, due to our brains "concept of comparison", we perceive the rhythmic parts in a different way as they cut in and out really fast...especially when the kick stands out in between them giving them quick changing dynamics....ALL in a rhythmic fashion.

So before I go any further, I want to talk about how to make sure your fast percussion is clean WITHOUT using side chaining. This is most easily done when working with midi notes, but can also be done in the clip editor, in the volume envelopes of an audio clip. So lets look at a 1/16 note HH track...just tapped in and quantized for now.


These are just some midi notes launching a quick HH sound. Now, the easiest way to act as your own compressor in a sense, is just to change the velocity of the midi notes where the kicks hit. This is KIND OF what the compressor does...but, you just change the volume of it in its original form. Bring the volume down on the HHs where the kick transients are like this -

Now something you should keep in mind when using the midi approach, is that, you may need to alter the 2nd midi note (one after the kick attack), if your kick has a long tail. If your kick is longer than 1/16 of a bar, you may still be ruining a part of your kick by bringing in the percussion so quickly. You also can use the volume envelope in the midi editor to control it instead of your velocity bars -



If I were doing it with a sample, I would use the envelope editor in the clip editor and draw down the volume where the kick hits. This is a shaker sample loop -


Its nice this way because you can bring the volumes up in different spots to change the whole sound of the loop.

Now, by doing these methods, you will run into less problems in general with your kick and fast percussion. But another way, and a fun, sometimes almost unpredictable way, is to use side chain compression. You can either try using a fast percussion with the volume envelopes changed and fixed, or, just try using a regular loop...where there are definitely conflicting sounds between the kick and same transient hits of the fast percussion.

Of course, you will need a kick track, and a compressor on your fast percussion track.


Now activate the side chain within the compressor (push the little arrow first to open up side chain), and select your kick as the input -


Now, for those of you who dont understand your compressors, I am not going to go into all of it. Study your compressors, they are your friend. But I do want to add a few notes about options at this point.

***Most of you ABLETON USERS who are pretty familiar with your compressor, may have noticed, and heard other people noticing, that FF1 mode "clips" less that FF2 mode. Ive noticed it, and many others on the ableton message boards have said it. BUT...in this situation, where side chaining your fast percussion...it is TOTALLY WORTH IT to try both modes. When I do my HH side chaining, some of the results I get out of FF2 mode are great!!!! Especially when changing between PEAK & RMS mode. Some of the results you get from the high hats, can sometimes become monsters of their own...sounding NOTHING like the original sample. So, I do recommend playing around with FF2 mode, as well as FF1 mode when trying this type of side chaining.***

So anyway, back to where we were. I am going to choose FF2 mode for now, since I like it here, and leave the compressor on PEAK now so the attack stage sounds nice...put my ratio up just a smidge so it brings the volume down a little bit more, drop my threshold, and see what I get. I also need to play around with my attack and release parameters. Again, these parts can really change up the whole sound of the fast percussion -


I actually ended up liking RMS mode better here after putting it in. But like I said, changing between ALL THE PARAMETERS here really can give you some interesting outcomes....more so than any other side chain application I have tried....I am always just dumbfounded at the amazing HH sounds I get out of this...even using parameters that a sound engineer would look at you and be like "NO WAY MAN"...it really gets into an artistic realm here just by chaining the modes of the compressor, and can make totally unpredictable (or predictable) rhythms.

Well anyway, hope that helped. I think this is a really important part in getting your fast percussion to sit nicely without causing problems in your mix. You can even try side chaining it with your snares, or other things that would make sense here. But, dont forget, you ultimately make the decision of what you want to stand out....and that doesnt mean going to your volume fader and moving it up.

Peace!

FroBot