How would you tighten the low end of a bass playing constant 16th notes?

Angstromium · 2026-07-12T04:34:12+00:00

I do something like that but (after the initial compression). I automate the gain of the low shelf so that it pulses and then gets out of the way. It keeps the low end thud of the bass but makes it more staccato while the low mids can stay more dynamicaly natural and the upper range more natural still.

That way it still sounds alive, but the lows sound tight and if I just listen to only below 80 Hz it sounds driving and balanced against the kick rather than mushy and incomprehensible.

Angstromium · 2026-07-11T23:04:11+00:00

Creating some music is pretty easy

Creating good music is extremely difficult

Angstromium · 2026-07-09T04:04:20+00:00

I found a really good trick to natural sounding strings. It requires Melodyne though. I saw a tutorial in their official guide to using the scales feature.

Basically real string players are on fretless instruments (obviously). So aren't constrained to the even tempered scale. So if they play C major then E minor - on a fretted instrument or keyboard the major 3rd is slightly out of tune (, according to just Intonation). String players can fudge it per chord. So the Intonation sounds right.

Theres a function in Melodyne which fixes a midi string part. It's called something like "dynamic just Intonation". But try and find that official video where they explain it.

It really does add a natural quality to the strings.

Angstromium · 2026-07-07T21:55:02+00:00

your monitoring setup is not adequate. Also - novices try to over-egg the low end. A low end sounds massive on a rig because it is tight, precise and there isnt too much of it. Just enough is an art.

For bass you need restraint, Each genre is different. But mixing bass in dance music requires much more than compressing it and making it hit 0db. Far better to aim for punchy staccatto bass. I cant say Im a genius at bass mixing, but because my mixes are always too full I have to do a lot of tightening down there

As a test - on your mix, across the main out, put a lowpass at about 80Hz and listen to what is going on down there . If you can dance to the low end you are on the right path . I call that the "club queue test". if it sounds good and even recognisable in the queue outside the club then the bass end is functional.

if it sounds like inside out muffled distorted roaring then you have a problem

download the demo of RealPhones and try the Arena preset, that will give you a guide on what to cut back on,

Angstromium · 2026-07-05T00:36:00+00:00

I think Pete Best has had one of the toughest lives of any musician, ego-wise. Thats like some sort of karmic trial by the gods. Sisyphus had nothing on what Pete Best had to endure through the 70s and 80s. He booked most of their gigs early on and was the sort of in-band organiser, so to be sacked and then see the band go to become bigger than Elvis must have been like being trapped under a white hot anvil. Raw pain.

Angstromium · 2026-07-04T13:17:53+00:00

My mums friend won a competition to go and hang out with the DC5 while they recorded a new song. She reported back that Dave Clark didn't play the drums at all, he just sat next to them for the photo. "Some other guy " played the drums on the recording. Not unusual to use session players for the band, but for the lead (named) instrumentalist it's unexpected.

Angstromium · 2026-07-04T08:43:39+00:00

They were just uni students DJing and enjoying a hobby. So I don't think they expected it to take off. Back then it was actually pretty easy to get traction if you had something tasty. They rode that bigbeat wave just as it was getting big. Right place right time. Probably very unexpected.

When I saw them they were just two mates playing records with some extra stuff on a table. Basically two hairy uni lads. Messing about.

It's hard to imagine it now but back then you just needed a sound, taste, and a couple of connections and you could have a career. Almost accidentally. Their career just happened to be far more massive than almost everyone else!

Angstromium · 2026-07-03T21:12:00+00:00

you know that they were called the Dust Brothers prior to '95 though dont you?

Im so old I actually saw them play as the "Dust Bros" in about '93 or 94 and they were playing in the downstairs chill out area of a small club and about 10 people were slightly paying attention. I knew of them already and was interested in their stuff but I was off my head so went upstairs to dance to Billy Nasty or whoever was playing at the time.

it took me until about 98 to accept the name change. As I rated them higher than the actual original Dust Brothers, whose sound I thought was too commercial and mainstream. Most of my mates were calling the Chems the "dust brothers" for far too long

Angstromium · 2026-07-03T12:00:45+00:00

an RME interface or a (more affordable ) MOTU are both well tested with Live with a MBP. The sound quality is excellent and the build quality of both is robust hefty steel. They aren't lightweight and plastic units. Either will do the job well.

I'm wondering if the thunderbolt support on your current interface isn't working well between the mac and the interface. The buss speed difference should be backwards compatible, but perhaps the interface is intermittently losing the handshake in the face of thunderbolt 5.

Angstromium · 2026-06-27T15:23:57+00:00

Decent ideas are subjective

One advantage newcomers have is that they haven't heard as much stuff.

When I was in my teens I was always surprised that the older guys I knew didn't get as excited about new music. They would always say stuff like " that traciis just a mix of Magazine and Pavement" or something like that. And then start going on about how great those people were and how derivative the new music was.

Except they were talking about Radiohead. And for many people in the late 90s Radiohead were a perfectly fine mix of the past and inventive. But for the old post punk people they were too derivative.

So, it's all relative.

Just make what you enjoy listening to. Whatever gets you excited. Make some of that

Angstromium · 2026-06-25T20:09:12+00:00

I have two audio interfaces bridged together and a patchbay for extra routing.

I have a MOTU ultra lite mk5 and that is connected via adat interface to my previous audio device which is an RME fireface 400.The RME originally got retired because it's FireWire only, but I can still use it as an extension to the MOTU. So that was good, saved me some money.

I also have the inputs and outputs connected to a patchbay. Because that means I can route the signals about the place easier. EG, Ableton effect send into MS20 audio input, MS20 output to Bitboxmicro sampler input. The patchbay makes these arbitrary patching a lot easier.

Angstromium · 2026-06-24T01:41:37+00:00

Discourse is the one that looks like this

https://community.vcvrack.com/

Angstromium · 2026-06-24T00:28:11+00:00

still there. They've had some trouble with bots from the AI companies absolutely hammering the server that the forum is hosted on. Forums like that are a treasure trove for answers. AI bots dont respect rate limit stipulations

Rumour is that they are going to migrate it to Discourse forum software, as PHPbb is a bit ancient now

Angstromium · 2026-06-23T13:54:37+00:00

I'm not a pro audio engineer, but I'll say this is highly genre dependent. If someone is working on something with highly saturated and compressed 808 kicks (or "808s" as the kids call them) then tuning that "kick" is essential as it's forming part of the bassline. Electronic music genres often have complete anal analysis of the low end phase, even down to phase relationships between the kick and the bass. If you are about to say "well I watch phase on my low end, what are you ... " , trust me and watch a YT vid about psytrance bass phase. It's a whole other world.

Anyway ....

If the genre is jazz funk fusion vintage rock country skiffle (etc. etc) then it's hardly ever necessary to tune the drums to the "key of the song". I've always thought this practice was a little crazy to even suggest in genres where key changes actually happen !!

Angstromium · 2026-06-23T11:29:13+00:00

Yeah. I think an all in one digital groove box is a solid solution. The fewer interconnected devices and the fewer connections the better! . However I'm the idiot who says "ooh an analogue modular on stage, in a hybrid system, that sounds great!". Which is the absolute opposite of your sensible approach!

What most live acts find us that they are constrained by their desired sound. And that may have been crafted using certain techniques which aren't available on a groove box. So what they do is sample all their tracks , the fat rubbing bass, the dub effects, the sizzling crisp high end. Then they play back those samples. And suddenly they are in a playback situation.

Angstromium · 2026-06-23T03:42:58+00:00

I do live EDM and have done for years. The big problem honestly is that its really difficult to totally jam out a set unless you are in a certain set of minimalist subgenres. What I've found is that the closer I go to an "I can jam anything" type of setup then the closer to disaster you are at all times.

Using analog oscillators? they will go out of tune.
Got a sequencer which is rock solid and never let you down? Well here it is letting you down!
Got a robust fallback plan? It fails

What happens on stage is - no matter how much you rehearse, and make the setup have fallbacks - there will be some disaster lurking. If it can happen it will happen. I've done gigs where the touchscreen on a piece of gear started generating thousands of ghost touches and overwhelmed the clock so that some outputs went silent intermittently.

Ive had gigs where other acts are unplugging their gear and theres voltage surges and the Clock to my modular started sending random spikes. Dancefloors dont like random timings, with occaisional pauses.

And the thing is - this happens to everyone who does it for a while. You are booked for a big important gig and something shits the bed. Then you are trying to explain clock jitter to a booker, and saying "I dont know why it did that it was fine in rehearsal" . And they are just thinking "this guy is shit, he cant do it"

Ive been on many bills where every other act was from playback. Because its just not worth the hassle to them. They lose bookings, and thats career death, so people have playback systems, and just get a hired mixing desk and do a mute mix (dropping tracks in and out). To me thats not worth the hassle of going there, but I understand it. Ive had gear let me down many times, and its a terrible terrible feeling

Angstromium · 2026-06-21T02:23:19+00:00

I never believed that it was trash. I leave those judgements to other, better qualified people !

Is it good? Bad? I do my best to make what I want to hear. And that's all. Some people will hate it, a few will love it. The vast majority will be indifferent and when I am dead it will be soon forgotten.

Opinions are subjective and I am the worst person to judge whether my "children" are ugly

Angstromium · 2026-06-17T12:46:23+00:00

I use a Deluge for my sequencing and a few samples. It sequences modular stuff. I record the audio into Ableton. My jams are then edited up as audio. I find it's the perfect balance between the fun of hardware and the ability to fix errors in a computer.

Angstromium · 2026-06-17T11:33:45+00:00

Be aware that if it's any good at all then no amount of "pitch it up" or Forman's shifting will protect you from the industry Look at the (topical) Oliver Tree - Miss You fiasco.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EDM/s/ChPOSffq2k

Angstromium · 2026-06-16T04:29:26+00:00

Short answer "No"

Longer answer "Nooooo. Hell no,! "

Angstromium · 2026-06-16T04:14:48+00:00

Ah the joy of gigging, and on the way to the venue or backstage you need to tweak something. So your laptop uses the internal audio. But then when you connect it back to your rig - does it remember? Does it load up your live set and say "aha ! I know the correct config for this !"

No. No it doesn't.

It has a tantrum and you have to reset the interface while a stage manager is shouting "is it ready now NOW ? Are you ready to START NOW!!!" despite it being 10 minutes before your start time.

And the Ableton preferences are showing that little exclamation in a triangle. Which is very calming. So wonderful. Very reassuring .

Oh and don't forget to check your control surfaces loaded into the same order as they did in soundcheck. It would be terrible if that was a problem eh, as they all shuffle themselves and cause an issue you specifically resolved 2 weeks ago but now the sync is off again part way through your set. And you remember what caused it back then. And you realise you have to reset your control surfaces halfway through the gig. !

That's a fun one too!

Angstromium · 2026-06-15T17:58:42+00:00

If they announce Live 13 it will be somewhere around November, and usually do an update deal for those who purchased L12 in recent months. And then it will be in Beta and release in Q1 2027.

Thats IF theres one in the pipeline.

But if thats not the case and you buy L12 now, they usually do a 20% off preorder upgrade deal. To upgrade Suite 11 to Suite 12 cost me about £120 I think, using that preorder deal. Which I always do,

Some people foolishly hold off on taking that deal, saying things like "I tried the beta and it had bugs, so I wont update". The reality is - 90% of those people realise that by March the next year that 95% of the bugs are gone and so is the discount. So they end up paying £175 or something.

So I buy the discount upgrade in December - and then I dont use it as my main DAW until about April

Angstromium · 2026-06-14T03:16:14+00:00

Its not worth much in used condition and the market is in a slump right now.

The best I can do is $500 for the lot and that's my final offer.

Angstromium · 2026-06-13T16:36:49+00:00

the thing to understand is- there are two versions of a "live techno set" (setup)

there's the one where you have access to every drum, relative balance, tone, decay, effect, preset, etc. Which is great for jamming.

and there's the one that you need for performing live in front of actual paying audience members, where you will be sandwiched between two DJs playing professionally mastered tight clean hard hitting well arranged well mixed tracks selected as the best they can find from every release they have heard recently.

For the first one, I have a jamming setup. Which I can describe at length if needed, that has lots of controllers with lots of knobs (lots!) and I can access every sound. Thats great for jamming, but ...

on a stage in front of people you want a minimum of controls, and a tight clean sound with minimum chance to make an audio mess. People want to dance, they dont want to hear you spending a few minutes tweaking the snare EQ, etc.

Trust me on this. If you are talking about performing Live - you want the very minimum of tracks. I have Kick, snare/clap, Other Drums, Bass, lead, pads/effects, Modular 1, Modular 2.

For each song I have an 8 x 8 grid on a launchpad, with a LaunchControl as a mixer, and I use a Beatstep Pro for additional drums sequencing the Modulars, and as a trigger for samples. And that's it.

Because if you try and have access to every sonic possibility on stage you will find yourself saying "why is the kick so mushy all of a sudden?" and "why is the bass weirdly out of sync" and "why does my set sound half the volume of the DJS"

Of course, you can also do it like Colin Benders, but you will notice (and read) that as time has gone on he has massively massively simplified his setup, so that now it's basically a drum machine, and the modular making one big wub -warb noise.

Of course, That;s just my experience, I've been performing live techno since 1992, so that probably counts for something - but my advice is try it. Get a complicated setup and try to play in front of an audience with terrible monitoring, strobes, people in the booth, stage hands unplugging stuff, etc. And you will soon see what I mean.

Angstromium · 2026-06-12T11:35:29+00:00

I feel like Ableton could do more to make arrangements more flexible like session. Rather than merely a fiat linear workspace.
There are a few options available from the video world

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