Compression, EQ, mixing, mastering and more

Packed with step-by-step production tutorials

Includes exclusive tutorial files Download details inside

From thE makErs oF

£7.992013 Edition

164 PAGESof pro tips

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contents

06 SETUP AND WORKFLOWGet off on the right foot with our guide to fixing your studio and setting it up for maximum flexibility, sound quality and productivity

13 mUSIC THEORYLearn the unshakable music laws that make great tunes. Become an instant expert with our features on arrangement, melody, tempo, groove and more

36 SOUND DESIGNPower tips for making better sounds. There’s everything from a synthesis masterclass to programming perfect percussion to creating your own drum sounds

76 EFFECTSTake your sounds to the next level with the latest processing tips and tricks. Don’t miss our guides to compression, reverb, delay, distortion and more

119 mIXING AND mASTERINGTake control of your track and put together the perfect mix. Then power it up for maximum impact with our ultimate guide to mastering

Section by section

Production Manual 2013 Edition

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06 STUDIO START HERE A shabby studio will lead to shabby productions. Start here and shape up fast

36 FUTURE SYNTHS Want to make bigger, better synth sounds with a thoroughly modern, cutting edge?

52 PERCUSSION Our guide will help you to infuse your beats with percussive groove. Shake it, baby!

65 LAYER YOUR SOUNDS Turn weak basslines, feeble percussion and struggling synths into hard-hitting sounds

70 TO THE BEAT OF THE DRUm Combine the realism of live drums with the powerful punch of electronic percussion

119 THE ART AND SCIENCE OF mIXING Everything you need to know from the basics through to advanced techniques

124 TOOLS OF THE TRADE Why your mixing armoury should contain both essential tools to tackle problem sounds and creative devices for sonic sculpting

130GET ORGANISED Setting up your computer might not seem like the most exciting mixing project you’ll undertake, but do it properly and you’ll be free to focus on the important thing: your sound

136 EQ To make awesome-sounding mixes, you need to know EQ inside out and from top to bottom. In this section we take you on a journey of equalisation realisation

148mASTERING You’ve written a killer tune and mixed it to perfection – now give it a professional high-gloss finish with our expert guide

setup and workflow

sound design

mixing and mastering

13 START TO FINISH If you struggle to write anything more than a four-bar loop, help is here at last

19 THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO mELODY A catchy tune can make the difference between a crowd pleaser and a floor-clearer

24 TEmPO mENTAL Cunning tempo changes can turn good tracks into awesome ones.

30 IN THE GROOVE Make your beats infectious by shuffling your drums off the grid and into the groove

98 REPEAT OFFENDER Tired of playing it straight with delay effects? Then break all the rules and tap into the hidden potential of delay in our forward-thinking guide

104PITCH PERFECT Want sweeter melodies, punchier bass, tighter drums and lusher synths? Then get busy with pitch manipulation

108ENHANCE YOUR SOUNDS It’s time to zero in on the best bits with our creative techniques to lift sounds out of the mundane and into the marvellous

114 SIDECHAINING From pumping basslines to subtle filter effects, sidechaining is an essential technique

76 COmPRESSION From the basics to complex dynamics, we show you how this essential effect works

87 DIRTY TRICKS Our ears are accustomed to clean, pristine mixes –but a bit of dirt can be a great thing

93 THE ART OF AmBIENCE Reverb plug-ins can sound spookily realistic or purposely synthetic, but whichever you prefer, you’ll get more from them with our guide

music theory

effects

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audio and more to accompany the tutorials inside

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Of the many aspects of music production, it’s probably fair to say that tempo isn’t

high on the list of big, calculated decisions. Many are happy to leave their tracks ticking over at their DAW’s default tempo – usually 120bpm. For those who produce in a genre that demands a faster or slower beat – drum ’n’ bass or the aptly named downtempo, say – it’s easy to type in a tried-and-tested tempo, and roll with it. But why follow the crowd?

In this feature, we’re going to drag the tempo from conventional to crazy. We’ll show you how to use your DAW’s real-time tempo functions to transform the feel of your tracks, both subtly

and blatantly, and investigate how to spice up songs by switching the BPM from fast to slow, and back again. All DAWs have a range of tempo manipulation tricks up their sleeves, and they can prompt everything from delicate human swing to more dramatic changes.

We’re also going to explain how to sync a backing track to the tempo changes found in samples and MIDI parts performed freestyle. Plus, to avoid anyone having a ‘huh?” moment on the dancefloor, we’ll reveal how to use effects to smooth out your temporal dalliances.

Now, you might be asking why you’d want to mess with tempo. Isn’t part of the point of

writing music with a computer that it can keep everything in perfect time? Well, yes – but that doesn’t mean you have to slavishly stick to a single tempo all the way through all your tracks. Your computer makes it easier to experiment with crazy timings because it will keep all the parts together automatically, so drop your pacing prejudices for the next few pages and let your creativity roam free.

Logic is our DAW of choice here, as it features handy beat matching and tempo map options. Most major DAWs can handle global tempo changes, though, and we’ll divulge some equivalent functions in Cubase as we go along.

Cunning tempo changes can turn good tracks into awesome ones. We explore subtle shifts,

sudden leaps and clever distractions

tempo mental  /  music theory  <

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Normally, you’d record audio and MIDI parts using a click track and a count-in to make sure that everything falls in line with a predefined tempo. This is essential for music that needs to be strictly fitted to a rigid grid. However, you don’t have to adhere to such time-based dictation – it’s perfectly possible to record a part freestyle (without a metronome running), then use your DAW’s tempo-mapping functions to match the global tempo of the track to the timing of your recording – sort of like quantise in reverse, if you will. Thus, you can capture your own groove, with all of its timing nuances, then use that part to provide a humanised swing for your other tracks. The same technique can be used on both MIDI parts and samples, albeit with a few minor differences.

For MIDI clips, simply play in your part without worrying about the timing, then align

the first downbeat with beat 1 and work through your clip from start to finish, matching the points that the DAW ‘thinks’ are beats with the beats in your played rhythm. This technique works well with rhythmic MIDI parts and repetitive structures, with which it’s easier

to determine which MIDI notes should be linked to which beats in the timeline. Syncopated rhythms are harder to beat-match, but with a little practice it is still possible to get a good result as long as you know which markers to use.

In Logic, you’ll notice that if you try to link a beat marker to an event that’s too far away and would result in an extremely fast or slow BPM, you’ll get an error message asking you to choose another marker. This is helpful for keeping your mapping on track.

If you’re looking to bend time to fit a sample, the process is essentially the opposite of something you probably do all the time: using editing and timestretching to make rhythmically loose samples fit a strictly quantised track. Instead, you’re making your song’s timing fit the groove of a particular sample. Check out the walkthrough over the page to see how it’s done.

“You can capture your own groove, then use that part to provide a humanised swing for your other tracks”

Production Manual 2013  /  25

tempo mental  /  music theory  <

> Step by step ��Creating�a�tempo�map�from�a�freestyle�MIDI�part�

We play in a little piano riff with the click turned off – this will be used as

the basis of a track. We’ve made our tempo changes really obvious, so you can hear the effect clearly. In reality, these changes would be much more subtle. (Audio example: Map 1.wav.)

1We open Logic’s Matrix (piano roll) editor in a separate window and click

the arrow next to Global Tracks. This opens a list of default global parameters. Right-clicking in this box or pressing Alt+G brings up the option to display Beat Mapping, which we’ll need for the next step.

2We select all the notes in our track and drag the first one onto the nearest first

beat of a bar – Bar 5 in this case. Now we work through our riff from start to finish in the Beat Mapping editor (above the piano roll), using the mouse to map each marker to our chosen notes.

3

Now we can see the results of our mapping changes being made in

Logic’s Global Tempo track. We’re careful to cater for longer notes that cover more than one beat, such as the one shown above, which lasts for four beats.

4The upshot of all this is that the changes to the tempo of our track are

now automated to follow the ‘human’ timing of our MIDI phrase, which still sounds exactly as we recorded it. Having this tempo map in place gives us the ability to make everything in our track adhere to the tempo of our piano part.

5Logic will use the tempo track as the basis for playback, adjusting the other

tracks by timestretching audio and MIDI clips. For this to work, any samples need to be converted to Apple Loops and have the Follow Tempo box checked. In our example, you can hear a simple MIDI bassline track and sampled beats change tempo as the piece plays back. Nice! (Audio: Map 6.wav.)

6

Reverse�quantising

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The guide to

PercussionPercussion

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In many styles of music, a basic “kick, snare and hats” drum beat is

the backbone of the rhythm, but that on its own is often not enough to make your track groove. To really get things shuffling along nicely, you’ll need to layer up some percussion parts to add excitement, flavour and groove to your beat.

Much like programming realistic drum kit parts, percussion is one of those areas of music production that many computer musicians think they’re approaching ‘correctly’ but probably aren’t. Just like any other acoustic instrument, playing percussion involves a specific range of techniques and styles that require training and practice to master. Obviously, as a MIDI programmer, you don’t actually need to be au fait with the physical specifics of heel-toe conga technique or the tambourine thumb

roll, but if you’re looking to program authentic tracks, it helps to know what these things sound like.

In this tutorial, we’ll tackle percussion from a number of different angles. First, we’ll program a layered percussion ensemble alongside a bass/drums/keyboard groove using MIDI and samples, demonstrating some standard rhythmic approaches to the instruments involved. Then we’ll move on to creating percussion lines for electronic/dance tracks, processing and combining sampled loops in order to create a larger-than-life ‘top line’ to sit on top of a four-to-the-floor drum groove, and carving up REX files to make custom percussion loops.

Finally, we’ll bring synthesised percussion into the picture. From classic sounds like the TR-808 cowbell and 909 rimshot, to the intriguing, complex tones

made by today’s software drum machines, mixing wholly ‘unreal’ sounds in with your sampled instruments can give rise to stunning hybrid percussion tracks, whether they’re used for reinforcement or as standout elements of your track. We’ll use FXpansion’s amazing Tremor drum synth for this, the demo of which can be downloaded at www.fxpansion.com if you’d like to follow along.

Good percussion parts can have a hugely beneficial effect on almost any track, elevating it both rhythmically and texturally. Even the addition of just a simple conga or shaker part can transform a dull rhythm track into a more complete sounding, syncopated, ‘human’ groove, particularly if the main drums are overtly electronic sounding. Let’s hang about no longer, then – those bongos aren’t going to play themselves…

Whether you’re crafting laidback jazz numbers or banging out hard-hitting dancefloor smashers, our guide will help you to infuse your beats with percussive groove. Shake it, baby!

PercussionPercussion

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> Step by step Adding crowd noise to a disco track

We’ve got a funky disco track going on, to which we want to add some

European ambience. It’s freesound.org to the rescue: we search for ‘French bar’ and download the file. We also search for a ‘woo’ crowd sound to layer over the top. (Audio example: Disco1.wav.)

1The bar ambience is in mono, so we copy it and place it on two tracks,

panned slightly left and right. To give the ambience a stereo effect, we make the start and loop points of the sample different for each track. The ‘woo’ sound is also mono, so we add a chorus at high Intensity to widen the sound. (Audio: Disco2.wav.)

2We need some claps towards the end of the track to encourage our listeners

to do the same. We use a free multisampled Kontakt patch called Snaps and Claps (www.cinesamples.com/retail) and introduce them into the mix with increasing velocity and loose timing. (Audio: Disco3.wav.)

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> effects / dirty tricks

Audience participationThe sound of an enthusiastic audience has always had its place in record production, from classical recordings, complete with the noise of the concert hall patrons, to happy hardcore tracks made to sound as if ravers are chanting along. Nowadays it would be unusual to record a vocal without a soundproof booth and acoustic shielding to minimise reflections and noise, but in their 70s heyday, disco producers thought nothing of throwing the whole band and vocalist together in the studio to record everything in just one take – laughter, clapping and all.

With audio signals often remaining within the confines of the computer from the start of the production process to the very end, it’s all too easy to keep your tracks free of the sounds of the outside world. However, adding the noise of an audience or other performance-related ambience can give the music added life, imparting an authentic real-world feel.

Another reason to add crowd noise is as a signpost to indicate to listeners in a dancefloor

setting when they should be clapping or cheering along. Particularly notable practitioners of this technique are German hard dance act Scooter, who use it in quite literally every track they make, dropping chants, clapping and recordings of the crowd singing along into the mix.

At the other end of the scale, subtle use of bar ambience with light chatter and laughter can be heard in many Hed Kandi-style house tracks. Barely noticeable, the balance between the music and the background ambience gives an impression of good times and a relaxed crowd enjoying chilled beats. These tracks are perfect for beginning-of-the-night warm-up sets.

Keep it realWhen you’re thinking about adding this kind of noise, consider the ebb and flow of what the crowd might be doing at any given point in the course of your track. This will help you maintain a realistic sense of perspective and stop you filling every corner of your tune with clutter.

For example, not many people will be dancing throughout a drum-free breakdown, but there might be plenty of clapping, stamping of feet (on the beat) and chatter. Later, when the beat kicks back in, the sound of talking will be minimal as people won’t be able to hear each other over the music. Tailor your programming and the volume levels of your ambience accordingly.

It’s also important to watch the EQ levels of the background chatter. Too much low-end rumble will muddy the bassline and emasculate your kick drum. Use a low-cut filter to do away with everything below around 300Hz if you’re worried about this. High frequencies above around 5kHz can also be removed, as these won’t travel in a noisy bar or club.

Unless you’re going for an all-out assault on the senses, keep the noise level high enough to be heard but low enough not to be intrusive. If necessary, use sidechain compression on the bassline or kick, automatically ducking the volume during more bass-heavy moments.

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“Analogue recording setups of the past would fall prey to a considerable amount of hum and feedback”

Experiment with different amp/cab/mic combinations and create the sounds of analogue setups using a

dedicated package such as IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube

These days we producers have it pretty good in terms of noise, what with the majority of our signal chain being virtual/digital. However, the analogue recording setups of the past would fall prey to a considerable amount of electrical hum and feedback from the numerous tubes, capacitors and transformers found in the typical studio. This was never more the case than when recording instruments with low-amplitude output signals, which required preamps to raise the signal to an acceptable level for mixing.

If you’re looking to recreate the sonic effect of a particular vintage recording technique, it’s very useful to think about the signal chain found in an analogue studio. Let’s take a 70s vocal part as an example.

Vintage vocalsThe vocal would most likely be recorded in a wooden booth with a microphone, so you might choose a boxy-sounding reverb to start off with and a vintage microphone emulation plug-in (perhaps via a convolution processor). In the analogue studio, the signal would then need to be preamplified and routed to the mixing desk, which would introduce some electrical noise and compression as the signal passed through its built-in valve amplifiers. This effect could be emulated using a noise sample and a vintage compressor plug-in. As a finishing touch, a plate reverb might be added to the vocal – and once again, such effects can be emulated using vintage-style plug-ins.

The signal path would degrade slightly at every stage, and so by the time it was recorded to tape (mimicked with a saturation plug-in, of course), it would have picked up plenty of background noise. Most plug-ins feature wet/dry level controls that let you determine how severe the degradation you’re emulating is, so you can achieve anything from a subtle classic vibe to full-fat, old-school over-saturation.

Gritty guitarsGuitar signal chains are potentially even more complicated than vocal ones, as the vibration of the strings is first captured by a pick-up and then fed to a guitar amp, before being recorded with a microphone and routed into the mixing desk. The multitude of different combinations of pickup, amp, cabinet and mic makes endless combinations of guitar sounds possible. Most DAWs these days include high-quality guitar-orientated plug-ins to help you emulate this, enabling the application of a variety of virtual mics and amps. If your DAW is bereft of such processors or you just want more (and, broadly speaking, better) options, Native Instruments

Guitar Rig, IK Multimedia AmpliTube 3, Studio Devil Virtual Guitar Amp II and other products of their ilk are well worth investigating.

Layering a looped electrical hum sample into a track is easily done. Simply connect a jack lead to an input on your audio interface, hold your finger over the tip and the ring, and record the resulting sound. Watch your speakers, though, as you might end up generating some pretty massive transients – so keep the volume turned down. Leads being plugged and unplugged can also make for interesting sounds.

Most household appliances (especially fridges) produce background noise, too, which can easily be sampled. Inserting this kind of electrical feedback into your tracks can make for lots of interesting effects, especially if you’re working in hip-hop or any of that genre’s offshoots. Dubstep basslines also benefit from plenty of low-end hum, and electrical noise makes a great alternative to a simple sine wave. The trick is to use hum and noise sparingly as genuinely creative tools.

Over the years, artists have used all sorts of crazy techniques to mould distinctive sounds using the various different types of loudspeaker in existence. Leslie cabinets with rotary speakers were used with the earliest synths to modulate basic waveforms, and the employment of different cabinets and speeds could produce everything from slight tremolo to full-on flanging effects. There are plug-ins out there to emulate this sound, but be careful when using them, as they can cause stereo phase cancellation – check your mix in mono to pinpoint any disappearing audio.

Audio output equipment like phones, walkie-talkies or megaphones can be very effective when it comes to creating an intimate sound. For a great example, take a listen to the vocals from The Buggles’ 1979

global smash Video Killed The Radio Star, which were recorded using heavy bandwidth limiting. This technique is still very popular and you’ll hear telephone-style vocals peppered throughout the recent history of pop and urban music. Using filtering can also help to disguise a dodgy performance.

To get started with this effect, set a band-pass EQ or filter to allow only the 500Hz-2kHz range through, and bitcrush the signal to 8-bit resolution. If you’re a fan of this kind of processing but don’t want to have to put any effort in, Audioease Speakerphone 2 is a vintage speaker modelling VSTi with a comprehensive selection of patches, including imitations of portable audio devices, PA systems and cabinets. With just a few clicks, it can emulate speaker effects from any era or environment.

Hanging on the telephone

Make your vocalist sound like they’re singing through a telephone to create a

sense of intimacy with the listener

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Chain reactions

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Want sweeter melodies, punchier bass, tighter drums and lusher synths? Then get busy with pitch manipulation!

Modern software offers so many ways in which to manipulate sound that it’s easy to

overlook the impact that pitch inflections can have both on music and the sounds used in it.

Stepping outside the world of computer music, we can find countless inspiring examples of musicians embellishing their playing using bends, vibrato and ornaments such as grace notes. Applied correctly, these musical devices can make simple melodies seem sophisticated and busier lines flow more naturally.

Rewind your mind to the dark days of trackers and 8-bit chip music. Back then,

masterful pitch manipulation was commonplace and a necessity for those wanting to make the most impressive, expressive tunes possible. Back then, pitch and volume were often the only things you could manipulate, so myriad tricks, ranging from the subtle to the extreme, were employed to coax emotive gliding leads, pumping drums and even the illusion of chords from the plainest of oscillators and samples.

Over the following pages, we’re going to show you how a basic tune using simple sounds can be enhanced using nothing but pitch-programming trickery. We’ll sidestep typical

methods like pitchbend and mod wheel vibrato, instead revealing alternative ways of achieving the same effect. We’ll also look at how pitch modulation can make drums and bass more punchy and inject life into static synths. We won’t be radically overhauling our sounds but instead showing how they can be enhanced at the source without reaching for effects like EQ and compression or fancy mixing techniques. And while our demonstration track is a nod to the chiptune days of old, rest assured that such fundamental techniques are truly universal in their range of applications! So, let’s go…

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Pitch perfect

> Step by step Programming pitch ornaments

Let’s look at how a simplistic melody can be jazzed up with fast extra notes

– or ‘ornaments’ – directly within the piano roll. We’re using a basic monophonic legato saw lead sound in ZebraCM (CT Lead.fxp). Have a listen to our basic melody, the opening notes of which are shown above. (Audio example: Lead 1 - Basic.wav.)

1We’re going to sneak in very short notes that will add ‘flavour’ without

changing the melody as such. Disable ‘snap to grid’ and draw in a note starting just before the first one (C), a whole tone down (B�) and slightly overlapping. Make it so short that you hear a quick ‘slide’ into the main note, rather than a discrete note.

2For the second note, let’s try something different. Add a brief note

just after the start of the second main note (B�), a whole tone above it (a C). It sounds fine, but the main note sounds like it’s ‘late’ because it doesn’t settle down until just after the beat. You can fix this by moving the notes a tad earlier, as shown.

3

We can create a juicier ending for the second note by drawing in a ‘fall’ –

think of a guitarist sliding down the frets, or a keyboardist running their finger down the keys. To make it more musical, use notes in the key of your tune (F minor for us). Note that we overlap our ‘extra’ notes – you’ll find out why soon enough.

4So far we’ve stuck to notes that are in key, but you can toss in some

‘outside notes’ too. It’s good to use these to ‘connect’ adjacent notes – such an example is called a passing note. We use this technique on the second passage in our song – it gives a smoother, lazier feel to the transitions in this case.

5Ornaments usually use notes close in pitch to the note they embellish, but

you don’t have to use them like that. Here, we use notes one octave above the main tune for a bleepin’ chiptune feel reminiscent of old videogames. (Audio: Lead 2 - Ornamented.wav.)

6

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You may have noticed that rapidly gliding from a high note to a low one

gives a sonic ‘punch’. This is a staple technique of drum synthesis, but the principle can add impact to any sound. Here we’ve got a dead basic bass sound (CT Bass Plain.fxp). Right-click the empty knob to the lower-right of Oscillator 1’s Tune knob and select Env2.

1Now the second envelope, Env2, will have an effect on the pitch – turn up

the knob you assigned in Step 1 to hear it. Make sure the Attack and Sustain of the second envelope are at 0, and adjust the Decay to taste. You should now hear a punchy attack. Try the different envelope Modes while you’re at it to hear the differences they can make.

2

At Decay values above 25 or so, this sound has a thumping kick to it – like a

kick drum, in fact (Audio example: Bass 2 - Kickin.wav). This can be cool for harder styles of music or FX, but here we just want a subtle enhancement, so we set the Decay to 15.5 and back Osc1’s Env2 amount off to 36. The bass sound now has a percussive click that gives it more presence. (Audio: Bass 3 - Punchy.wav.)

3While the start of the note is higher in pitch, it sounds muffled. This is

because the filter doesn’t move with it to a higher frequency, thus the attack’s harmonics are relatively dull. This is easy to fix – just use Env2 to open the filter a tad too. Bear this in mind whenever you use pitch modulation, especially when it’s over a large range.

4

> Step by step Creating a punchier bass using pitch modulation The upper hand

There are a number of advantages to using the automated glide method detailed above instead of pitchbend. First of all, you’re not bound to any particular bending range, so you can create wild multi-octave bends and leaps with ease.

You also don’t have to worry about overshooting notes or coming to rest in a slightly sharp or flat position, as the glide will always come to rest on the notes you programmed. And, unlike with pitchbend, this alternative method makes it easy to visualise the notes you’ll actually hear.

If you prefer to program parts rather than play them in with a keyboard, this technique can often be easier than trying to draw in pitchbend curves. But if you are more of a player, why not try assigning the glide time to a controller such as the mod wheel, as we did in the walkthrough to the left?

Some synths have multiple glide modes that affect the curve used to transition from one note to the next. For example, a linear mode may always glide at the same speed, no matter whether you’re jumping one note or one octave; whereas a time-based mode lets you specify how long it’ll take to leap between any two notes regardless of distance.

Don’t think that glide is just for soaring lead parts, either – we used it on the bassline to create incidental slide and divebomb effects later in our tune.

> Step by step Automating the Glide parameter

Now let’s hear our melody with glide/portamento applied – this makes each

note slide in pitch to the next. Increase the Porta knob to about 20, then make sure the Mode is set to Legato so that glide only occurs where notes overlap. Usefully, this is how we programmed the ornaments in the previous walkthrough.

1While the melody plays, twiddle the Porta knob and hear what happens. A

longer glide time transforms the first note and its grace note into a single bend going from B� to C, for example. Use automation of the Porta knob to get it just how you want for each section, or control it with MIDI for the same effect. Here, we’ve used MIDI learn (right-click the knob) to bind Porta to CC1 (mod wheel).

2You might want to subtly adjust the timing of certain notes now. For

instance, some bends sound better if they begin earlier, as it’ll take a short while to reach the destination note. Check out our WAV and MIDI examples to hear how it ended. (Audio examples: Lead 3 - with Glide.wav.)

3

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