New tune

[KimyReizeger]

Indeed, but it's a 'bit of a given' that your tunes haven't got...

I had initially thought 'is this some kind of veiled criticism?' but genuinely believed we were discussing the general nature of music production, whereby yes, it's a bit of a given that a tune should have some decent musical substance.

I take these points though and understand them. I definately put too much effort attempting to emulate things I've heard from a technical angle; trying to conform to some abstract of idea of what a nice mix is at the expense of interesting / volatile / complicated musical ideas. It's all just about trying to find individuality as a music producer by way of taking inspiration from what other people do. However, I see changes on the horizon and think I will ease off on over-production in future / try and allocate some more funding and resources to my over-stretched musical faculties!

[Stripey]

MySpace.com - Reso - London, UK - Techno / Drum & Bass / Electronica - www.myspace.com/corgrimey

play the tune "if you can't beat em"

this pretty much illustrates why you don't need naff compression tricks to make a "stomping dancefloor banger", and that even in a tune of this type you need a bit of subtlety in how you approach the mix.

[lovers_spit]

MySpace.com - Reso - London, UK - Techno / Drum & Bass / Electronica - www.myspace.com/corgrimey

play the tune "if you can't beat em"

this pretty much illustrates why you don't need naff compression tricks to make a "stomping dancefloor banger", and that even in a tune of this type you need a bit of subtlety in how you approach the mix.

Can you produce our up and coming set of demos, Stripey?

[The Kernel Loaf]

We need more stuff like this in Aberdeen. Seriously.

[KimyReizeger]

MySpace.com - Reso - London, UK - Techno / Drum & Bass / Electronica - www.myspace.com/corgrimey

play the tune "if you can't beat em"

this pretty much illustrates why you don't need naff compression tricks to make a "stomping dancefloor banger", and that even in a tune of this type you need a bit of subtlety in how you approach the mix.

Yeah it's nice. A real stomper + continually evolving / growing out of itself musically.

[KimyReizeger]

MySpace.com - Reso - London, UK - Techno / Drum & Bass / Electronica - www.myspace.com/corgrimey

play the tune "if you can't beat em"

this pretty much illustrates why you don't need naff compression tricks to make a "stomping dancefloor banger", and that even in a tune of this type you need a bit of subtlety in how you approach the mix.

How do you personally go about rounding off tunes? Do you simply use your ears and adjust things till you like it? Or are there any kind of basic techniques which you always apply? Do you do much to the actual 'master' channel or just let each part of a song flow and speak for itself?

[Stripey]

How do you personally go about rounding off tunes? Do you simply use your ears and adjust things till you like it? Or are there any kind of basic techniques which you always apply? Do you do much to the actual 'master' channel or just let each part of a song flow and speak for itself?

I never put any fx on the master bus of the mixer. Usually i have seperate mixer channels for kick/snare/hats/percussion etc, summed to another mixer channel, and the same goes for the basses (sub+mid) if necessary, then other sounds like pads/vocals/stabs etc i usually just send them to their own individual mixer channel and have them coming through on their own. All of these individual channels will have their own insert fx chains as needed to get it a) sounding how i want it to sound and then b) sounding good in the mix.

As I said I never put any fx on the master bus, ppl quite often use realtime spectral analysers to make judgements about things like extreme low-end bass which the average near-field monitor won't reproduce accurately, but tbh if you are really familiar with your speakers and know how material in the same genre sounds on those speakers you can make a pretty accurate judgement about such things after a while. Rendering a rough mp3 and giving it a listen in the car, the hifi or your mp3 player can sometimes help point out any glaring problems, but yeah ultimately you have to trust your ears.

[KimyReizeger]

Simplicity and continuity. They will be my new personal buzzwords I have a really un-ideal (almost farcical) set-up at the moment and will be moving soon hopefully into a place that will allow for a good, consistent listening environment, which along with a set of decent nearfields should sort me out.

And then I'll forget about production and make goddamn music.

[tomrogers7]

I never put any fx on the master bus of the mixer. Usually i have seperate mixer channels for kick/snare/hats/percussion etc, summed to another mixer channel, and the same goes for the basses (sub+mid) if necessary, then other sounds like pads/vocals/stabs etc i usually just send them to their own individual mixer channel and have them coming through on their own. All of these individual channels will have their own insert fx chains as needed to get it a) sounding how i want it to sound and then b) sounding good in the mix.

As I said I never put any fx on the master bus, ppl quite often use realtime spectral analysers to make judgements about things like extreme low-end bass which the average near-field monitor won't reproduce accurately, but tbh if you are really familiar with your speakers and know how material in the same genre sounds on those speakers you can make a pretty accurate judgement about such things after a while. Rendering a rough mp3 and giving it a listen in the car, the hifi or your mp3 player can sometimes help point out any glaring problems, but yeah ultimately you have to trust your ears.

thats some pretty good words there. For dance and electro its great to use analysers so you can see which frequencies are overpowering others, in clubs they often have limiters which cut out frequenices that go over a certain level, but it also helps you make a better sound when your track gets annihilated by myspace compression (if you use it)

I would strongly reccommend using mastering eq, compression and sometimes reverb. Sometimes subtle use of things can totally tighten up a mix.

kimy was totally rocking it out though at the tunnels on friday, really enjoyed the set!

[Stripey]

I would strongly reccommend using mastering eq, compression and sometimes reverb. Sometimes subtle use of things can totally tighten up a mix.

tbh if it's a good mix, it might need very little in the way of "mastering", or even none atall in some cases. These days I usually just normalise the render and sometimes use a multiband limiter if neccessary. It's definately easier to do things like that "offline" when you can actually look at the waveform and make more informed judgements about limiting etc anyway.

[Swingin' Ryan]

I quite liked that 'critical evaluation' one. I tend to like my electronic stuff quite fidgety and glitchy like Dntel or Figurine etc, so this is probably a bit more straightforward and danceable for my tastes. I liked when the more 'bleeping' synth came in around the 1:50-2:00 mark, infact had that been used throughout the song I would have probably liked it quite a lot.

[tomrogers7]

tbh if it's a good mix, it might need very little in the way of "mastering", or even none atall in some cases. These days I usually just normalise the render and sometimes use a multiband limiter if neccessary. It's definately easier to do things like that "offline" when you can actually look at the waveform and make more informed judgements about limiting etc anyway.

normalizing? limiting? interesting.

[KimyReizeger]

My God I am truly enjoying these guys:

MySpace.com - Komytea - Turku, FI - Techno / Electro / House - www.myspace.com/komytea

[Edgar Graham]

All those tunes sounds like they've been taken straight from a Steve Lawler set. You got any of his cds? Viva, Viva Toronto and Lights Out 3 are all amazing. You'll probably find heaps of tunes you like from those if you're keen on that myspace link you posted.

My friends are going to Ibiza next week and for some reason Steve Lawler isn't playing Space on the Sunday they're there. GUTTED.

[nytclubber]

i agree! Viva, Viva Toronto and Lights Out 3 are absolutely amazing!!

[ca_gere]

that leto synth is really good, thanks for the tip.

[FatHand]

MySpace.com - --voRr-- - Leeds, UK - Classical / Techno / Experimental - www.myspace.com/vorr

Hey Bryn, this is a link to the guy I was telling you about at your gig last week. I love the production on these songs and they are really well construted. My fav is Outlaws with a special note to the break down at 3 mins. You know that white noise you were using... something similar used here and it sounds brilliant. Really good use of delays as well.

I love it when songs sound simple but there is actually a lot going on, down to the quality of production in conjunction with decent music.

* additional myspace to look at is the group that this guy Vorr plays in (live dance obviously) called Speculum. I think there are some live videos of them doing their thing.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=100033323

[KimyReizeger]

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes:

[Edgar Graham]

Deadmau5 is rather bizarrely playing in Inverness on the 23rd. Quite fancy a trip up for it. That "Reward is Cheese" tune does my head but it'd be a good night.

Have you heard this? It's fun.

YouTube - Fake Blood - Mars [New!]

Sort of like Bay of Figs on acid.

[KimyReizeger]

Just whacked up a new un called Flows Like Gunk, pretty much in response to this thread. Fairly regular house with a classic jazzy edge..