Sound Design, Mixing, & Studio TechniquesNeed to know how to make a specific sound? Want to improve your mix? Need advice on micing-up a drum kit? This is the area for you.
The one thing that I actually do very rarely is convert failed projects, or their individual tracks into audio piles, but every time I do I'm pleasantly surprised at the added things I can offer up to some other project.
Cool drums from one, stuttery stuff I built here, key play from another, etc.
EDIT - Has definitely helped with the brick wall I've been hitting for a while now.
DBL EDIT - Also, duplicating a track because you want to use it in a quieter or louder portion and deleting the opposite portions = simplicity.
Last edited by bbb; 29-08-2017 at 03:04 AM..
Reason: added info.
Recently I got excited by a very simple thing, using effects on my Ipad to process audio on my groovebox, then I just resample and layer. Haven't been doing that in a while...
Using lots of saturation and excitation instead of compressors.. it sounds so much better (for my music), I mix twice as loud (-14 to -11 LUFS easily) and it's a hell of a lot easier and faster.. I feel like I'm actually making music instead of overcoming engineering challenges. Because let's be honest, turning things up always feels better than dialing them down.
Recently I got excited by a very simple thing, using effects on my Ipad to process audio on my groovebox, then I just resample and layer. Haven't been doing that in a while...
The simple joy of chopping audio and mangling audio.
This!
I'll also never get over resampling multiple tracks and throwing them into a granular sampler.
Also, just setting up a whole drum rack and triggering a shitload of samples together to resample. It's super simple, but even pitching the whole glob down by a few semitones makes a cool, unique layer of shit to fuck with.
OK..no, seriously..Reverb. It's one of my main (sad) pastimes..opening up a VST at random and applying a reverb plug on it and seeing where it takes me. I find it a great way to relax and basically noodle with software. Add into the mix a little delay, until you end up with this crazy [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click here to register] kind of thing going on and wild horses can't drag me away from the computer!
polyrhythms, multi-track-pitch-shifted cv modulated delay lines, downsampling by saving files at shitty bit depth with software like ableton or audiofinder to create low-fi samples or whatever
I enjoy finding a nice loop or short sequence and then turning on bits of the effects chain Electro-Harmonix #1 Echo --> Boss Harmonist PS-6 --> Korg Kaoss Pad. Real nice granular texture from the Echo, wild pitch shifted random jump noise from the PS-6, and I've always liked the expression the Kaoss Pad give. All of them on will make you want to go a bit crazy at times.
In a few days I'm buying a portable field recorder.
I've got lots of ideas of wierd sounds and vocals to add to my tunes to make them more complete and interesting.
When I get stuck, I do this thing where I take a really basic sound like a guitar or synth line or field recording and run it through a random stack of effects (like 5-10). Then I take whatever comes out and high or low pass it and maybe pitch it up or down and then hard pan it. Then I do similar stuff to something else and hard pan it to the other side. Then I sum it to mono and start jamming over whatever thing came out of the mess. And then I'll just keep doing it with more things like drums or whatever until I have a basis that I find interesting.
I'm not a visual artist, but I think there's techniques like this where you draw something and lay another sheet over it and copy it and do it over and over until it's morphed into something else, like an artistic game of telephone. I have no idea what it's actually called, but it's gotten me over some blocks and out of some slumps since it produces random but cool stuff for me to work with.
Recently I got excited by a very simple thing, using effects on my Ipad to process audio on my groovebox, then I just resample and layer. Haven't been doing that in a while...
I'm going to be doing a lot of this in the near future.
What techniques have you excited?
Re: What techniques have you excited?
