Mega Music Talent

Posts Tagged ‘tutorial’

Sound design is a very competitive, tricky and time consuming process, new trends appear, and die very quickly. Good wholesome sound design requires innovation, a great amount of patience and sometimes a good nights sleep! If you stick to the simple yet effective fundamental theoretical approaches and techniques listed here, then in no time you’ll be the elite Vanguard sound designer you always dreamed to be. Yep, you too can achieve the sound of that French guy with the long hair…

Think of artists such as Spor, Noisia or Dirtyphonics. These people use conventional waveform selection, usually saw and square, but go crazy on everything else. Curiosity gets you places. So let’s throw the rulebook out of the window.

Try literally randomising your settings to start with: slam together different oscillator wave forms, envelopes & fllter settings. For example go crazy on waveform selection sometimes, mix and match. What you thought was a no go, is usually a ‘$%@k me that’s a crazy!’ sound. Your next step will be to refine your raw sound into something more usable and more importantly controllable.

Messing around with the LFO is great it adds depth to your sound, try to add LFO into your sounds and keep the speed low to give a fattening washy effect. Nearly every sound in ‘Oxygene’ by Jean Michelle Jarre (one of my synth programming heros) uses LFO.

Don’t use too much release in a dance lead, sometimes just a little will do, try using hardly any attack, a mid amount of sustain, and a mid amount of decay.

The detune control is a killer and can be the key to any anthem based dance sound. Try taking a sound with no detune and turning the detune knob to around 54% and compare the results.

You often don’t need 16 or 32 voices, sometimes just 5 can be enough, you’ll find turning the voices down can give your mix a more minimalistic sound. This Approach can also relieve essential CPU resources too if your running low!

The Vanguard’s filter can be extremely versatile: for plucky sounds try a low 24 decibal. For bass try low 12 db. For acid sounds try band+shp, notch and format. Being careful in this department can really help determine how your sound sits in the mix, so take your time and experiment.

The Vanguard’s trancegate effect can give some really cool effects – for more subtle fx don’t have it on max, keep the contour control knob low and the gate to around 60%. You can also get some crazy results by playing with the stereo and speed controls of the trancegate.

I’m not a big fan of the Delay unit on the Vanguard. It works better for me on background noises, so if your sound’s the centre piece I’d set the delay to ‘Widen’ with a short delay time to give your sound more stereo width.

The reverb unit on the Vanguard is great for electro. To get the ‘Benassi’ type reverb try this: adjust the mix to around 35%, pre-delay to around 40%, room size to around 15%, damp all the way up & width to 50%. This gives your sound that ‘sidechained’ feel. Glide can also be great on this kind of sound when you have overlapping notes in your sequencer.

So there we have it – a few points to consider when making your own Vanguard sounds – good luck!

Author Bio: Mark is a passionate DJ who loves to remix and make tracks with various Synthesizer Patches and electro loops. Mark works for dance midi samples in the UK who sell various DJ producer packs. Click for more information, here.

Slapping a whole load of sounds on top of each other usually results in a muddy incoherent mess so what are the secrets of creating a rich, full sounding, thick mix? We’ll explore a few of the tips and tricks that you can use to clean up that mix.

1) Kick Drums: choose your sounds carefully, layering several kick drums with the qualities that you like can result in a thunderous speaker flapping kick, so flick through you sample collection and choose some favourites. Load them up into your sampler of choice – NI Battery is especially good for this since it gives you easy access to individual controls for each drum hit.

Now comes the fun part: try tuning each kick separately as well as filtering (high pass filters work great for cutting unwanted low frequencies from kicks) and balancing the volumes of each. You may want to shorten some of the samples down so you only get the portion of the sound that you like too. Compression with a high attack and fast release may also help to give your layered kick extra ‘smack’. Layering a closed high-hat on top may also help you get some serious impact here. Once you’ve achieved the sound your after it makes sense to re-sample (render, bounce or what ever your DAW software calls it) your kick layers down to a single drum hit so you’re only dealing with one sound, then re-import them into a single sampler instrument.

2) Bass: This can be tricky, since low frequency sounds have a nasty habit of clashing creating phasing effects, while this can be pleasing in some cases many dance genres require a constant driving bass sound.
Start off with a low frequency bass that you like the sound of, something warm and fat. Then try adding a higher mid-range layer to thicken it up – you may find that they phase, to cut this out try using a high pass or low cut filter on your mid frequency sound. Try adjusting the oscillator settings of the synths your using – this may really help to gel them together. A Little detune on the mid-range stab may help too. This really is a black art and even seasoned pro’s can have difficulty getting it right so experiment! You can try using multi band distortion on some of your layers, this can really add some grit so your sound if it’s needed. Another trick some producers use if they make a bass sound that they like which phases is to sample it – just sample a long note of the layered sound and use it in your favourite sampler – voila!

3) Synths: First off is good sound choice, choose your lead sounds carefully, a nice rich warm starting point will really help out as with all your layers. Once you’ve tweaked your first sound try adding another copy of the same sound in a higher octave – this may really help to thicken your sound. To achieve a different flavour try adding a third layer with different properties to the first, say one with a rougher edge. Pro’s routinely use 4 layers for my lead sounds, often in different octaves to add depth to the synth mix. Experiment with panning here too – while this is outside the scope of this tutorial it can really help separate sounds.

Next separate your lead sound from your bass – this involves a hefty low cut or high pass filter. Start to cut around 200 Hz and adjust until your bass cuts through, but your lead sound isn’t too thin and weedy. Camel Phat is a great tool for this, and of course gives you many additional control over your layered lead such as distortion and a secondary filter. I’d recommend sending all your chosen lead sounds to an Aux or Bus channel and processing them together. You may find that a light dose of overdrive or even very very light bit crusher can help tighten up and bring out your sound. A limiter may also help the overall level of sound of your synth mix from spilling over.
So some final points to bare in mind:

1) Be brutal – if it doesn’t work dump it – even if it took you 2 hours. Start again! Experiment!

2) Use different sound sources – try sounds and samples from different synths, every synth has its own strengths and weaknesses and combining them can make a mighty combination. For example for lead sounds the Access Virus can be warm, wide and rich, while reFX Vanguard can sound wimpy in comparison. However the Vanguard’s sparkling top end can add a layer which will make your complete layered lead sound cut through your mix.

3) Try using overdrive plugins and multi-band distortion – used lightly these effects can really help shape your mix.

4) EQ – use your ears! If it sounds wrong then hit re-set on your plugin and be gentle! On lead sounds try pulling out these frequencies: 700 Hz, 1-2 kHz, 10-12 kHz, these may help to add warmth, presence and high-end sparkle respectively.

Author Bio: Felicity is a freelance writer, writing occasional pieces in the UK about House Loops. Dance MIDI Samples also specialise in cd samples and Computer Music MIDI files in the UK.