More productions tips...

1) Sidechain your kick to hats and percussion, kick cuts through more and gives a nice pumping feel to your beats.

2) Distort your sub bass (I like "datube" in cubase), then lowpass filter the noisy stuff. This adds extra harmonics that will make ur bass more audible on inadequate systems.

3) Sample weird and random ambient stuff, clip from a movie or something, eq in and compress it under your drums, adds a nice airy feel to them and gels them together when mixed in right.

4) In cubase, when you use the scissors to cut clips it leaves a nasty pop that you have to fade out, instead use the size tool and size to taste, usually it will cross at zero to avoid that extra step. If anyone knows how to "autofade out" clips when you cut them in cubase pls let me know!

5) If you have a hardware sampler, sample your synths through them first, helps take out the sterile nature of them. If not, bitcrush them (very slightly) to help them fit in with samples.

6) If you sample something from vinyl, its best to sample from zero so its centered on a key, then pitch it up by semitones in the computer. Otherwise you may be stuck having to shift synths and basses up/down by cents cuz they'll be a little off, which is a royal pain

7) Hook rca outs from your tv to your computer and record random stuff, never know when you might get a great sound or vocal snippet

8) When you're not feeling inspired to write tracks but want to be productive, fuck about in sound forge etc. making sounds and fx. This is something I used to spend hours doing before my production got decent and I neglect it too much now. or you could dj

9) If synths, keys, etc. from a synth or midi keyboard I like to noodle over the whole track, then chop the good bits as if it were they were samples and retrigger/arrange to taste. often you will do something dope accidently while soloing as compared to just playing a little loop you composed
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Take a sample compress it. sidechain it under a kick drum to get it pumpin'. cut up some acapellas sprinkle throughout also with other sounds to add flare. compress it. make some whooshes, usually some white noise with a filter + delay will do the trick. compress it. then to finish it off throw waves l2 or izotope ozone on top. oh and then compress it again.
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To increase stereo effect pan an instrument to one side & use a slight delay 30ms or so for the other side. Can also notch out freq on one side then boost the same freq on the other side. Remember to check it works ok in mono still. 35-50ms will usually transfer badly to mono.11-35 is usually ok.
The built in track delay in live is very useful for this.
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Another thing I like to do to make things stand out in the mix is set delay with medium feedback at around 40-45 ms, thickens things up a bit
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Don't feel the need to compress the living shit out of your drums, use compression subtly then a bit of eq to help the different sounds sit together properly.
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(1) Instead of applying alot of reverb, which muddies up the mix alot, apply a slight temposynced delay , and then a slight reverb on that. Sounds just as good (if not better), and doesn"t muddy it up as much!

(2) Instead of having one lead synth playing a complex part, have two synths play simpler parts that combine to the complex part. Have one synth be up front, and one slightly filtered and reverbed so that it sits in the back of the mix. I got this tip from tee boy, thanks!

(3) If you have a square lead which needs to be detuned too far before it sounds "fat", apply a bit of PWM on the square wave.

(4) If you're distorting something and it doesn't sound fat enough unless you apply so much distortion that it becomes unclear (or in general if you want a fatter distortion), turn down the distortion and put a chorus in front of it. I got this tip from The Chase, thanks!

(5) When you're fading in a part, filter it slightly at low volume and have the filter open up more as it gets louder. The effect is barely noticeable but makes the fade in more noticeable.

(6) Make a bus in your sequencer with a hi-pass at around 150, and route everything except bass and kick to that bus. That clears up the bass regions without you having to do it manually on every channel anyway.

(7) When you're using an old break and it sounds too dull and weak, try giving it a bit of hi shelf gain at 8000 and then compressing on medium settings. If the kick is still too weak, hi pass it at around 200 and layer your own filtered kick on top of it.

( Depending on music, you might want to consider having two basses - a warm sub bass in the low range, just filling in between the kick, and a soemwhat higher bass, either an acid-ish saw or pwm, with a little bit of unison and filter env. NEOkILLER X2 does all of this really good.

(9) If you have a clap that you're not happy with because it sounds too weak, do the old 80s trick and put a gated reverb on it, and compress that. This works really well with an 808 or 909 clap.

(10) For lower bass that plays at the same time as the kick, put a sidechain on the bass. If you're making a dance song and want to induce the super-rave-jump-up effect, have the kick sidechain the entire song for about 8 bars after a drop.

(11) Either apply reverb only to a non-bass bus like above, or apply reverb with alot of low cut on the master bus. This prevents the kick from making mud out of your mix.

(12) If you have a synth arp and a lead synth playing, don't make both a super-saw. Instead, make the arp slightly filtered with a slight filter envelope and not detuned quite as much, and open the filter a little when the arp needs to be emphasized and the synth isnt playing. Most people that listen wont notice it at all.
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1.Finish tracks
2.Dont worry about what everyone else uses just get good at what you use
3.Spend time on your gear not your money
4.Make a track a day...they wont all be good but atleast your working out and learning.
5.Your monitors and ears are the most important gear...some of the best known House tracks were made on 32mhz machines with 16 megs of ram or less
6.If you want to make tracks that sound like the hot ones out now its usually a waste cuz by the time you get your track to market the hot new sound is changed and there are already 50 lame copycat versions of that hot track already...make waves dont ride in behind them.
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J-Jay said:-


Route all drums to two stereo buses. The first buss (1&2) will be dry and I usually have the stereo bus faders at 0 (vu/db whatever the fuck it is). The second stereo buss (3&4) has my compounder on the insert.

This stereo compressor has attack and release at the fastest settings, ratio at max and threshold at infinity (max). I usually have make up gain at around max aswell. Then I push up this (compressed) second stereo buss faders (3&4) to about -10 vu/db.

That way you have the dynamics of the dry stereo group matched with the hard/pumping compression of the compressed stereo group and it gels the drums and makes them sound like their all "one loop".

This techniques works so well on drums.
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Jay J's post about "New Youk Compression".

Compression (old School Mix technique)

OK now see if you follow this. Make 2 identical drum busses. (on a console output all the drum channels to both busses 1-2 and 3-4) So now there are 2 stereo busses. (In Logic with Pro Tools I tell each drum track to output to buss 32-33 then make 2 aux channels set to recieve that same input) So now there are 2 stereo busses with the same drum information.

Compress the shit out of one pair. The fastest attack you have and the fastest release with the lowest threshhold and the most amount of compression. Now with one channel being clean mix the other one underneath slightly. Now just adjust the level of the compressed buss with the main buss till you have the desired amount of thickness in the drums. REMEMBER IF YOU DO THIS WITH COMPUTER COMPRESSION you have to also put the same processors on the the clean channel just don't have them doing any prcessing so this way the plug in delay is the same. If you don't do this the two will be somewhat out of phase and sound like crap and you'll think this technique sucks.

Sometimes the compressed channel gets a little low and high shelf eq to bring out the fatness (bottom) and the crunchiness (top) at the same time. and aggain if you add eq to the compressed channel ad the same eq plug-in to the uncompresswed channel but don't set any of the parameters or have it bybassed.

I learned about ths trick about a year ago and I love it!!

It basically brings out all this noise and crunchiness so even with real clean samples It can sound like a loop really quikly.

Hope this helps.

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