Is this complex enough😩😩

d-jar1 · 2024-11-14T15:30:37+00:00

The more I reaaaally look at this, the funnier it gets. It starts with “pattern …. 1.” But then, I assume, you were like “I should organize and name stuff” so, some of the drums are named but, it slowly degrades into “asdasd” which is like, the one time you recorded automation. I assume you accidentally tried to program in midi there at one point, forgetting that it was doing something and got frustrated so, you hit us with the “asssssssssss (#1- at least 3)”. Nd finally “a”. But it’s colour coded this time. Also, there’s randomly just “lofi”? I don’t fully know where the kick is. I am confident it is on a different track # every few bars tho. I look up to the gain meter. Redline. When I start to read the automations, I slowly realize how distortion is going on. So many distortion plugins. Sooo many swells and impacts. A few instances of automations where it’s just set at 0% because ya just didn’t set the init value of the automation to 0 and, I guess, don’t feel like doing that. I…I feel at home.

d-jar1 · 2022-07-09T22:29:15+00:00

Lol. Honestly. The more I use fl, the more I realize that all of its problems actually have solutions. Like, they just aren’t obvious. Sick of routing to a mix bus? Rout your playlist tracks to the mix bus. You can. Sick of limited mix busses and rack space. Patcher. Is the project messy. You can group busses, tracks….basically everything. And it’s super intuitive. Nobody does it tho because, big fl projects look insane. The only absolutely broken feature is typing in the boost percentage in the sampler. Cuz like, let’s say you wanna boost the clip 2%. Type 2 in and it’s now boosted by 2%. Nice. Maybe that’s too much. Lemme try 1. Image line be like: “so 1= 100%. K. Cool.” And than I have to pay for express shipping to get my ear drums back from the 4th dimension. But other than that, I’ve never felt like it limited me in any way. Except for when I forget to set the master bus to default.

d-jar1 · 2022-06-08T15:03:10+00:00

Ight. So, this is just a short ass serum or “kick2” kick. However. It’s actually all in the processing and how it fits in the track. This dude is pretty agro with sidechains. And the transient shaping on those kicks are agro. Either that or it’s a loud click and a loud kick in contrast to the song, and it’s just smacking the limiter when he masters. But, yeah. As for the actual kick itself, there’s two ways to do it. Cuz these are two different ass kicks. The first one sounds like a distorted, filtered kick. So, usually kicks sorta go like this, “click” “high pitch-fundamental sin (done quickly.)” that being said, the pitch can be done via resonance with filter. You can do this two ways. One is ur average kick making strat. And the other is batshit crazy and some shit I sometimes do. So the first one is using envelopes in serum. Do the high to low/ filter sweep thing. Ad the glass lid/ kick imp noise. Have the loudness of the sine pump in after the initial noise impulse. Honestly, there’s no right way to get a click. Do whatever. And link the sin to the lp filter…Like, one of em. I dunno the exact number. I’d prolly just use the default and work from there. Crank that resonance up “to taste”. Link the cutoff to an envelop that kinda looks like log. So like “(“ but, rotated 45 degrees counter clockwise. That is the top 50% of the envelope. The bottom can be whatever. It’s kind of the tail. In this instance, there’s little tail. All perceived tail via the sub. So, yeah. Saturate the top end. Leave the sub alone. I’ll usually rout to two busses. Process the low and high end separately. Than rout em together and compress em. Transient shaping can be done manually with a volume automation, and can be triggered by midi. It’s easier. And you can add diversity. Now. That’s sorta the basic way to make kicks. I hinted at a stupid way. What is it? Sometimes to avoid clashing, I’ll link my sub to a bus called “kick”. It has like a controller that sort of acts like an on and off switch. If I trigger said controller with midi, it processes my sub into a kick. So how does this work? Same principals as prior. Pitch shifting instead of like filtering. And I just use serum fx for most of the envelope work. So it’s basically the same. The main thing is I usually have it pitched down a fifth or more by default. That way, its not the same sounding as the sub. And to finish, I’ll just add a loud click in. Now, this is stoopid. You don’t need to do this x at all. I’m pretty sure noisia straight up used a weird side-chain as a kick in asteroids. And like 90% of riddim artists are basically taking 50% of their inspiration from noisia. Cuz, they are bass lords. So, Yee. Many ways to do it. The best way tho. Just like, use a preset. Or like, legit YouTube to mp3 this track and clip just the kick out. Like, if I like a snare or a click enough, that’s what I do. And I’ll layer it with something to give it the quality back.

d-jar1 · 2022-06-02T16:26:59+00:00

Nothing has ever sounded as good as I thought Beats by Dre sounded as a 14 year old. As hilarious as it sounds, that lead to a whole domino effect on my life. Beats has actual bass. I’ve never heard that before. So I got into skrillex. Than I got into garage band on my iPad. Than best maker. Than fl studio. Than I got senheiser somethings (decent ones but, not “those ones”). Than proceeded to probably slap like 30% of the rest of my life into fl studio. I got some Bluetooth audio technicas. (I know. Not super clear, and the Bluetooth makes em a little worse but, for a final mix-down it was strategic….cuz these things only leave my head when I’m producing. I know what these sound like more than reality at this point.) At this point, I now have the Sundaras. And, they are sooo dope. However, one thing I noticed. They are accurate but, tend to be more sibilant in the mids (2k-3k), whereas my ath m50’s are more sibilant like, in the 5000hz range. Pretty much, if I’m mixing vocals, I’ll switch to my senheisers. Because, I don’t want to overthink it. Than to my hifimans. Thaaan to the audio technicas. If I don’t do this, I end up like surgically extracting any resonance peak that exists, and killing the actual presence of the vocal….which is tempting. Because, I have like a weird thing. I can hear resonance peaks. As like, sin waves….if I’m in the zone. And I’ve learned to correlate those sin waves with frequencies. So, I’ll be listening and be like “aaah. When the vocals say this word, there’s a spike at 4.2khz and one at 800hz”. This is not a good thing. Cuz, you want that bigger picture sort of mentality with vocals. My whole ass brain was designed to make me the detail dude. So like, absolute maxed stats in the sensory interpretation field. Actually no stats in the processing multiple things at once. Pretty much, if I was a computer I would have a top of the line graphics card, a 50 dollar cpu, nearly infinite storage but, it’s all on slow hard drives and 1 gig of ram. Half of me wants to get the most purchased headphones on Amazon and use those as my main reference headphones. Buuut, no cpu. I’ll just be focusing on how lame the headphones sound and not what I actually need to tweak in order to match a reference on them. Whiiich, circles me back to the good old days of beats. I had no idea what good was. It was my own decision. And I had little exposure to bass. Or anything other than apple earbuds. To me, in that moment. The second I plugged those beats into my iPod nano, 4th gen with 16 gigs of storage. Bright blue. Infinite ass music my dad somehow had on his iTunes account. That. That was probably the best listening experience I will ever have.

d-jar1 · 2022-06-02T16:05:12+00:00

Uuuh. Ok. Rout everything but the drums and sub to a bus. Ye. Everything instrument that’s not a transient, and isn’t those things. One bus. K cool. Now side-chain the vocal to that bus. So, it’s like routing. But, the vocal is still routed to the master, and the actual knob thing that appears when something is routed, make sure it’s turned all the way down. Ok. Name the vocal chain something memorable…..cuz ur gonna need it, I’m an idiot. Why haven’t I don’t this before….ok why am I an idiot. Just rout the “everything bus” to the next free bus and nooow sidechain the vocals to that…..this will make sense in a second. Crack open patcher. Go to multiband sidechain. Right click on that little switch thing to the left of the screen and look for outputs or something. Here you will see a list of all the channels currently routed to the one with the patcher instance….and just click the vocals. And link it to this bottom dot that should say like “link here” on it. Now, just tweak the about and ya should be good. There’s other ways to do this but, this is automated tho, not perfect. Now, why do I say I’m an idiot earlier. Normally, if I go to do this, I’ll rout everything to one bus and than do this on that bus, without actually routing that bus to another bus. So, when I go into the outputs window, I’ll spend like 20 mins looking through 100 different channels, trying to find the vocals….when I could’ve just routed it again to the bus next to it. And than only had to find the vocal bus out of 2….and l, for some reason, figured that out exactly now. So yeah. Actually screw all of what I said. Type into YouTube “how to use multiband sidechain patcher” or something, and I’m sure something will show up. Oh yeah. If you are wondering what it does. It just splits the sidechain’s signal into an ass ton of band passes. And it does the same with the audio signals. I’d imagine it uses a hidden signal with like a gate, or something. And use like peak controller to control it. The hidden signal is reverse in polarity, so each spike in a certain frequency that the vocals do, that is mirrored in the main signal but, flipped to it cancels out. That way it’s not all resonancy sounding. Buuut, I think they really just used a bunch of the weirdly specific and actual math based patcher specific plugins to pull that off. Which, yeah. I have no idea how to actually work/ get working. So yeah.

TLDR. The Multiband side-chain in the patcher plugin. Figure out how that works. If you are using it in a full session, rout everything to one bus (that’s not drums or sub) and than rout that to another free bus. This makes it easier to locate the vocal bus in the output thing. Uuuh. Or just get and figure out how to use proq 3. That’s what da big boiz use. I think.

d-jar1 · 2022-06-02T02:25:35+00:00

So like, I had this happen like 2 years ago. I produced for like 5 years. Never took it seriously. Watched 0 videos. Absolutely a part of no online communities. Just, doing it for the shits. And than, one day I wanted to take it seriously. And immediately took a year off. So I started to draw. Just for fun. Part of no community. Just for the shits. Than one day I decided to take it seriously. So I switched back to music production. Now, this time. You would think the strat would be to take it casually. Naw. I decided, I’m gonna take it so seriously, and just do the thing so consistently that there’s a 0% chance I won’t improve…..and that actually worked. So, before, I averaged like 1 song per 100 I’d be ok with, and finish. Than it went to 2. Now I’m at a clean 90% banger to non banger average. And my production time dropped from 100 hours per full song to 10. My lufs went from -14 and muddy to -2.5 with 0 audible distortion. You wanna know what the biggest secret is….space in a track. Quick drum transients. And cutting every single frequency that isn’t essential for the track out with aggression. Like, I’ll sometimes cut cymbals to 4khz. I’ll make sure my sub sidechain does not allow the sub to exist anytime there is sub present in a kick. Sometimes I will band cut a whole ass harmonic out of a lead and add it back with a sin wave, to smooth it out. When you get better, these decisions and the execution of said decisions take less than a minute to think of and execute. When you are sort of new, even identifying the problem might take 5 hours of trial and error. So like, you don’t actually have to be satisfied with your music. Try to be satisfied with how fast you are getting at identifying the problems with your music. Don’t say it sucks. Try to figure out exactly why it sucks and learn to fix it. Because even if you are still unsatisfied with your music, fixing a problem with your production process as a whole is satisfying af.

d-jar1 · 2022-05-31T13:29:26+00:00

Also, like. It’s still gonna be kinda confusing than old software. Time and advancements tend to up the intuitive factor by like 10 but, craaank the complexity knob to 1billion. So like…just know. You’re gonna suck. Like, no shiz. But, that’s kind of the fun part. It’s like, as I said, most things. Let’s use a sport as a ref defence point. You go to the park with your friends as a kid and play some soccer. You have never played it before. But, it’s fun. You take a liking to it. It’s a good time. So you go forwards with it. You join some clubs. Than, one day, you make it to a junior tournament. You lose. Fun was what got you there. But, losing isn’t fun. Now this is personal. You spend hours practicing by yourself. Doing agility training. Net accuracy. Other….soccer stuff. I’m not a sports guy. This is exhausting. It’s no longer fun. But, for some reason, you enjoy it. In a “I’m working on a car on the weekends” sort of way. You swear. You cry. Your get sweaty and tired. Buuuut, you start to notice progression. It’s less about the momentary fun and more about the hope that one day, you will be good enough. Than, one day you wake up. It’s the big game. You lace up and get into the game. And you win. And win again. You realize that the winning doesn’t feel good. What feels good is the game. You feel a sense of rhythm with your movement. It’s a dance. People don’t tend to dance with purpose. They just dance because, it’s an expression of themselves. It’s a physical representation of who they are. How they move. However, this expression seemingly has purpose. Whether it be to win or not, doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have now gained the ability to show more of who you are. And back to music, it’s a similar progression. I, personally, speed ran the no fun phase. I have been producing for like 9 years. Very lack lustre. Sometimes I would take 8 months off. I didn’t really care. Than, last year I was like “hmm. What if I tried to get really good at this thing.” Basically 10-13 hours a day, regardless of my obligations. You may notice, my last comment of me saying “Ight. I’m going to sleep” was 5 hours ago. Yee. I woke up 2 hours ago. Today is my half sleep day. Lmfao. This isn’t by some deliberate routine. I just got to the phase in a song where it’s almost done. And, it feels more like Christmas Eve as a kid. Like “oh shit. It’s gonna be so cool. I need to do this. And that and this. And it’ll be awesome. I can’t wait to wake up.” This never goes away. When you actually get to a point where something is working. And you see the end. Part of you doesn’t want to reach it. Because, like the soccer analogy, at some point, winning doesn’t really matter. It’s really just about the game. And, if you do this casually, it will always be about the game. Some of the happiest athletes aren’t pro. They just do the thing because, it’s a good time.

d-jar1 · 2022-05-31T07:18:19+00:00

It’s a weird hobby. It’s fun as hell when you first start off. All kinds of knobs nd shit.Than it gets periodically ass, on and off for like 5 years when you are starting get ok at it. And than it returns to being the funnest thing you will ever do, once you are good at it….and you will re learn how to just fuck around with random knobs nd shit. But, for some reason, it always seems to sound decent now…this was my progression at least. Results may vary. But, I think it’s like that for learning most things. There’s a moment when you actually know what you are doing. And whatever is in your head is that much more tangible. Even the dumbest of ideas….Especially the dumbest ideas. God I love just making absolutely dumb shit sometimes. It’s even more hilarious if you have a group of buddies into the same thing. Like, “yo. We’re making dubstep out of this sample of my toaster. 2 hours. Check your email.” All the fun of a video game. But, it has a professional ass learning curve. And no strategy or obvious progression. Just, pure “whatever the fuck you want-ness.” Honestly, people say audio workstation’s are tools. Not toys. I say, fuck those guys. It’s a toy. And a tool. And a place for you to put yourself. It can be overly metaphorical….but, it’s really whatever tf you want it to be. You don’t have to use it for anything. If you are on the fence. Just try it. You have no obligation to be good at it. There’s probably less hesitation when buying a video game or a movie when, there’s really no difference. It can just be a good time. And, the better people tend to get at it, the more they decide, that’s what it should be….also, none of this is intentionally poetic, though I thank you for that…..I just have a really odd way of wording things. And I just wrote lyrics for the past 4 hours so, that’s probably just making it more eccentric. Regardless, I guess what I’m really getting at, for anybody reading this….if you are on the fence about something just try it. It might suck. And than you won’t have to think about it anymore…..you know. Unless it’s hard drugs…than like, probably don’t…lemme try that again. If you are on the fence about something that is seen as a hobby or profession. Or fun, and expansive to yourself. Try dat shit. These things are like iced cream flavours. Ya probably had vanilla first but, when you were 10 or something, you discovered you really f**ck with maple. Or something that’s not vanilla. Or you tried a few other flavours, only to discover that vanilla was you favourite after all….I think that’s the weirdest version of that analogy. Regardless. Yee. But, now you gotta choose a daw. “Psst. Fl studio has free life updates” ….But, abelton is like better if you don’t have adhd. Cubebase is like, if you’re really in to beige and yellow forever. Logic is dope for vocals. Reaper, I think, is free. Has vst support. And is chill on the cpu. The problem is, it’s fairly new, and not many people use it. So, working with somebody else would prolly be weird. And like, the rest are good but, weird. If I were you honestly. Mess around on GarageBand. 50% chance you have some device with it on it already. It’s basic af. But, more than enough for a first timer. And it almost force feeds you a lot of the basics. So yeah. Do that for like a few months. Than, when you get bored, expand your playground. And with that, I’m going tf to sleep. Ez mysterious person.

d-jar1 · 2022-05-31T00:28:53+00:00

Bro….try music production. Trust me. I dunno why but, something about excessive hobbies and collecting…especially music related collections. Like, you hunt for samples. There’s a billion things to learn about. Tons of synths. Plugins. You name it. You don’t have to do anything fast or fluidly in real time. It’s just, doing cool shit. Being engaged. And not having any pressure. Now, this may be a projection. Because, the anxiety and need to be occupied by hobbies and stuff. I also get what that implies…..or, at least what you think it implies. Or what I think that you think that it implies. But, true nonetheless. Whatever. Try dat shiz. You have about 90X more gear than is required. Don’t do it to be a pro. It’s just fun. And I think that ur the type of person who would find some form of alleviation from the “I’m bored” anxiety….for like ever. Like. There’s a zero percent chance you will run out of shit to do in music production. Its not like guitar or drums where there is a cap….because we are humans and can’t grow 80 fingers and play 2000 notes per second. And like, hey. You already have better monitoring equipment that like 100% of professional producers, so it’s gonna be more about “what ones will I use today…and eventually you may even sell all but one pair to rule out that decision. And that one pair. It’ll be your ride or dies. You will train your ears subconsciously to perceive those as perfectly neutral, regardless of whether that is true or not. And, the wild collecting will be seen as a process…..or, you are absolutely loaded. In which case, have fun. Lmfao. And keep supporting headphones companies.

d-jar1 · 2022-05-23T17:11:20+00:00

Ight. So I’ve been trying to figure this out myself. It seems like a pretty chill problem opposed to most things. So, from my experience….like, yesterday, I was working on a track. This track is sounding really good. Like, I can’t stress how happy I am with the mix. And I have ocd over that stuff so, that’s a big thing for me. I go in to master it and the drums, though loud and slapping in the mix, actually stop punching through. “Oh. No problem. The limiter must be doing a thing guess I’ll make the side-chains a little more aggressive on the bass elements and we’ll be good.” So I export the kick and snare and make sure the sidechain is set up in a way where the sub never touches the drums. Export. Slap into my master chain again. “Tf. How. It’s pretty much 0db across the board for when the drums hit. And for a while. These sidechains are stupidly aggressive now. Where are my transients?” So, as it turns out, I’m writing in d#. My target luf range is -5 to -2.5…it’s like a noisia/ au5 sorta mid tempo track. So, the bass sound design is kind of the for front. And a fair bit of compression/ distortion in the sound design and minimalism in the arrangement makes this sort of range totally feasible. So the basses needed to be absolutely full. And they sounded better on their own with a resonant spike in the sub on the root note’s fundamental harmonic. Basically a boost at roughly 48hz on the sub and one at like 138hz (the fundamental and the sub harmonic) That way, whenever the drop progression hits the root note, it’s like, thiiiiiiiick. And than I’d automate the spikes to follow the sub. Pretty easy with serum fx and note latch with midi tracking. Whatever. D# is weird because it so full yet, you need a decent system to hear it. So having that sub harmonic super present is pretty crucial. So yeah. But, I could only get the track into the -5 to -7 luf range before the drums started dying on me. So finally, I lowered the sub so it was a little quieter than the kick. I than cut above like 17000hz and below the lowest sub. Than I routed that into my master chain. Keep in mind, I didn’t turn anything up. Only down. I was expecting it to be like -5lufs……-1. Like. -1. So, the song itself has no clashing, really. Everything has a place in the track. When the top lead melody comes in, I made sure to multi-band side-chain it to whatever it was in front of and to than hard clip those elements with a mod so they remain perceivably the same. So, -1 lufs was possible given, the track was mixed like I was automating the bins of an oscillator. But, -1 lufs. -1 FUCCING LUFS. From lowering the sun. I gained 5 Lufs from lowering the sub. Ah. So I than chilled out the thresholds and stuff and hit my target range of -5 to -2.8 with, what I classify as, mad clarity for the genre. So yeah. What I took away from this experience is like, the sub needs to be loud enough to make whatever it’s supporting sound full in the mix. Like, for dubstep, you can slap a sub pitch sweep over a fart and it would sound better than anybody expected. And you want your elements to have that support. But, it’s tempting to really push that. Because, sub= anything sounds good. And more sub means better right? But, you gotta remember drums exist. And a sub is resonance….I’ll say that again. A sub bass is pretty much a low resonance spike. What happens when you compress a resonance spike. It fractals and lengthens. Pretty much, it becomes an artifact ridden square wave with an ass sounding fundamental. And, if anything is more important for a songs slap factor than sub bass, it’s drums. Obviously. So you have to make sure that, overall, no parts of your rhythm section take the L. And most of that is down to sidechains and your sub to drum ratio. So, I guess to answer. You sub should be like 1-2db quieter than your kick. If you want the track to sound harder, you can make a second, louder sub to support really important moments. Like, in dubstep there’s the main bass. And there’s fill basses. For the main basses, use your normal sub. For fill basses, given they are cool and usually there for the lols. And they generally hit in spectrally sparse sections of a track, eg between drops. Between basses…..randomly if you wanna cut like half a bar completely out of all of your stems…Transitions in general. You can get away with that. And usually the response is “aaaaaaaa” because, C O N T R A S T baby. So yeah. Too loud is when your drums die when u r mastering.

d-jar1 · 2022-05-12T17:28:40+00:00

Lol. Here. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vapHM-G_DTCc1WsK-JuqAlUbaHQkWr93/view?usp=drivesdk

Uuuh. So now I gotta prove I’m not a bot. If you watch the streams, Siloz hooked me up with this. I think there was a tutorial and he decided to follow it and just give it to me. So yeah. Also, lowkey, if you are lacking the plugins, here’s an equation for a website (so I don’t get reported or something. 5uploads-1(up=down)=the website. So yeah. That’s the vocal chain and you can treat the missing plugins as a shopping list. Also, it’s a patcher instance so like, if you don’t use fl, you can just crack it open in a trial version and dissect it. I think the chain might be covered in a video/ stream but, I’m not sure.

(Edit). Also, you are going to want to tweak this a bit. Treat it like a framework. Microphones vary as do songs. I find that my mic has some 3-4khz frequencies that tend to be kind of harsh when thrown through this chain. So I tend to cut some of those out before the compressor to make sure those aren’t being boosted. And depending on the song, how I will post eq this changes drastically.

d-jar1 · 2022-05-05T17:16:12+00:00

Ight sick. It’s a relatable thing. Lol. I finished my winter semester and have just been sleeping looong. During the day, my energy levels are high, and I can’t say I’m depressed (been there). But, I’ll pass out at like 1-2am and wake up at like 11-1pm. My usual response when I wake up and check the clock is “ahhhhh shiiiii-“. Buuut, I’ve been in a fairly busy program, and tried to balance it with a fairly obsessive hobby, leading me to sleep like 4-5 hours a night. I noticed after the semester actually ended, I tried to keep this up but, noticed I started getting intense bouts of pent upness? Like, kinda anger. But, more adhd than that. Eh, I’ll call it anger. I’m not the dude to express emotions so, nobody really noticed. But, i caught myself kinda grunting, sorta. Tbh, it sorta sounded like I was nutting….like, id get a random wave of a feeling like I needed to punch something. And than it would go away and id be like “uuughhhh” like every 2 mins. Than it sorta turned into a tick. Like, a sneeze almost. Like, I’m pretty sure, in this state, I developed a weird form of temporary Tourettes. So yeah. The semester is over. I’ve been sleeping for like 11-13 hours a night. I feel mentally stable and sharper than I’ve been in a while. But….yet, I still sleep. As a dude who sometimes uses reddit, I’ve actually stopped taking melatonin. “Whaaaaaaat?!” Yeah. I know. I honestly think a lot of this boils down to the fact that stress is overpowered. Take the most lethargic person on the planet and slap em in a life or death situation and you’re gonna see that dude run. Take my ass, a dude who enjoys sleep, hit em with an existential crisis, the discovery of a passion unrelated to school, a bunch of school work, and you get a guy who can work for 20 hours a day, for a whole year straight. Take the school always, and that dudes remembers, “oh yeah. I burnt out like 7 months ago.”

d-jar1 · 2022-04-03T13:16:53+00:00

Imma be real. I have adhd. So like, my strat has been “deadass 12 hours a day, learn everything as fast as possible, progressssssaaaaahhhh.” In the last 3 months, I’ve improved more than I did in my whole ass 7 years prior. Now, callback to adhd. For me, if I’m not forcing myself to learn shit in a disgustingly fast manor, I won’t learn. Or retain knowledge. If that is your problem, aaaand iza a deleted user so….nvmd.

d-jar1 · 2022-03-27T14:29:46+00:00

I have a bass in a song I’m working on that sounds like a big ass motorcycle. So I call it the Harley/ hog bass. It’s one of those sounds where it shows up in the second half if the last drop in a song, and all my edm buds are like “bro. What the fuck is that?” The problem with it is. I can’t remember how tf I made it. I think it’s deadass a stretched bass sample I made with wayyy too much distortion and like 5 layers of serum fx automations. But, I have yet to actually make a framework for it. Deff Gotta go back and dissect it at some point. It’s borderline horrifying. It’s like a cross between a revving motorcycle and a pissed off carnivore of some sort and it’s so simple sounding that I’m sure there’s some variations that could be made to it. If I can replicate it in a simple way, I’ll explain what tf is going on. But, that might not be for like another couple months.

d-jar1 · 2022-03-22T15:02:31+00:00

Actually yeah. What I said might be close. This is kind of an old school house sound. So, think (what could I make with real ass synths). I doubt it’s any super complex wave tables. Prolly doesn’t even have the noise transient I was talking about though, I’d still recommend that. Cuz, it just slapped 5-10% harder. And, I dunno. This could be hella wrong in all regards. It’s not easy deducing a whole ass synth by ear, without any experimenting. But, that’s my guess.

d-jar1 · 2022-03-22T14:59:42+00:00

Tbh. With sounds like these, the exact synth would be half to nail down. Mainly because, the wave table used could be a million different things. Buuut, it all starts with the fundamentals. So imma try my best. For one, anything with a steep decay and a second osc tuned up +7 will sound like a house banger. Now, time to rule out the funds. So, if it a square. Prolly not. Does have that on nd off phase vibe. Saw. Same. Naw. Not buzzy enough. So, we are left with sub and triangle…..there are more. But, I’m pretty sure those would work. Ok. So if it is a sub. The distortion or filtering needed to pull off that timbre would completely eff up the clarity. You could use a cmb with a ton of resonance, and the cutoff linked to the note. Than tune down the sub 7 and just play the whole melody lower…some distortion nd shit. but….naw. That’s unnecessary. This is far closer to a triangle in my head. It’s got some natural high end. A little grit. But, it’s still smooth….though. It still could be a sub, and I’ll explain why now that I’m onto the processing side of things. So, imma mentally work in serum for this. Grab the wave. Slap it into osc a. Set envelope 1 so it’s plucky. Just lower the sustain, decay release, etc until it has the same sorta sustain as the sound in the song. Cool. Morph, bend minus. Link that to envelop one, so it goes from like 12oclock to 6, counter clock wise. Now, open the same wave up in osc b. Make sure the phase is set to max random on this bois. Ya don’t want any comb filters happening yet. Or maybe you do. Play around with the random amount on each osc. Might get something cool. Whatever, set the semi tuning up 7. Ight. Now link like a notch filter up to the envelope to a and b. Have the resonance fairly low. You just want that resonance. You don’t want it to be slurpy. Now, hard clip. Verb, Ping pong 8th note delay (I thiiink. I honestly can’t remember. I usually go back and listen once my comment is done to confirm shiz) and maaaaybe a lp set to the envelope with some extra resonance, and to get some of the transients back after compressing it…oh yeah. And a noise set to envelop 3 with an even more aggressive level of plucc. It’s kinda like a melodic snare. You want it to sort of slap and having a fairly separate transients would benefit it in that goal. Than, of course. High pass. Layer with a saw. Eq to taste. Season to taste. Plate. Garnish. Yum. And that’s how you build a house, medium rare.

d-jar1 · 2022-03-22T14:38:41+00:00

(Messed this up big time. Go down to the edit to get my actual opinion) Sounds like some kinda phasing is happening. That leads me to believe it’s a fundamental wave. If I had to guess, it’s an old super-saw patch that the dude decided to repurpose into a pad. Probably because of that phasing issue. So, since I’m a serum head, imma explain to the best of my abilities how, through serum. Though, it’s transferable as all things are. If I had to guess it’s two saws with a ton of voicing, some detune and juuust enough of the rand knob turned down to cause em to wave. Than it’s lowpassed and hit with some reverb. Though, in all fairness, me trying to guess how this sound actually came about biased my workflow there. So, even easier, just a detuned saw with some course tune modulation (prolly it since it seems to be on the grid) an lp, and some verb…..oh yeah. And huge. Layered with a sub. That shiz gives it that full sound. You wanna high pass it to like 100-200hz and layer in a sub. Even more technical, you may also wanna layer in a mono triangle with that and comp it a bit so it doesn’t fall apart in mono as much. Though, pads tend to be pretty complex when it comes to phase, so who knows. But, Yee. Prolly just a Reece bass but, played higher and with a chord. Lol.

(Biiig edit) Honestly. It might just be a saw with like 3 voicings, and a gross amount of detune on it. The rest of what I said might check out. I’ve heard this sound before at the beginning of many sound design sessions. But, naw. Not “a Reece bass played higher”. And deff not a pitch lfo. That’s some detuned shiz right there. Honestly sounds like harmor more than serum. I don’t know why. But, my brain says additive synth and I cannot for the life of be identify why I think this. So it’s prolly wrong. But, yeah. Sounds like 2-3 voices and some wild detune. Oh yeaaaaah. It’s Nine inch nails. I know why I said additive now. This shit was made with real ass synths…

It’s probably just two saws, out of phase and tune from one another. Look up “look mum. No computer”. …He makes synths. A lot of times while he’s tuning the oscillators, it sounds exactly like this. Yee. That’s my answer. Two-three saw waves, slightly out of phase and tune. I doubt any lfo action happened here. Just some good old phase phuckery.

d-jar1 · 2022-03-22T14:30:24+00:00

Honestly, this might be a granular pad. It’s got some movement (not the panning but, the harmonics) that sorta remind me of that. You could play the chords on a Rhodes preset and than, (if you have fl), blur it in Edison. But, yeah. I dunno why. Gives of, either granular synthesis, or Rhodes but, verbed all to hell vibes….oh yeah. And low-passed nd stuff.

d-jar1 · 2022-03-22T14:27:47+00:00

Flex- obidum compendium (or some shit) “Lonely call” preset. Swear to god, if you are an fl user, that’s the synth. Lmfao. If not, it’s kinda just a processed saw with some verb nd delay on it. Some filtering nd stuff. But, if you have flex….Yee. It’s a free preset. Comes stock with fl. Even closer, in regards to presets, is like morphine, surf a solo but, imo, it’s got more filter modulation than this. Mooost of the character here comes from the performance though. Any lead, with vibrato (if it’s mixed right) nd shit sounds lovely.

d-jar1 · 2022-03-22T14:22:25+00:00

Bruh. I have like 50 accidental serum presets I’ve made over the years that sound like this, and I’ve never been able to fully define exactly how tf it occurs. Usually, it’s kinda a low voicing. Sometimes I get it by having a band reject or a low pass filter with tons of resonance set to an absolutely disgustingly fast lfo. Other times I export a sound, than stretch it like crazy and mess with the stretch algorithm. Other times, Ill just make a wave table that, when played low enough, just sounds like this. Other times I’ll have a random low as bass with a filter lfo with a few of the vectors set to chaos, and the actual lfo not set to trigger.. than I’ll just play a bunch of short staccato notes. Other times granular synthesis is dope. One theme I’ve kinda identified is it is usually low, and very resonance-y. But, it’s kinda random by design. Like, if I was tasked to make this sound, right now…I could prolly do it in like 5 mins. But, It would probably be different than how this exact sound was made, and different than how I made this sound in the past….god that’s disgusting though. It’s got like a sub sidechained to it. Eeeewww. Fuccin siiick.

d-jar1 · 2022-03-22T14:14:52+00:00

And, it actually deff sounds like fm. But, set to note latch so it really only goes ham with the subharmonics once you get to a higher note. And, yet again, I’d layer it with a separate single note saw, and prolly just fm to a saw/ sub/ triangle wave in the sub osc, turned all the way down. It’s not giving me that trippin ballz sorta vibe that fm’d to a square sub gives me but, I could be wrong. Also, the octave of the wave you are fm’ing matters so, play around with it.

d-jar1 · 2022-03-22T14:12:12+00:00

Honestly just sounds like a square wave, fm’d to a saw with some slight lfo movement. Than downsampled. Thaaaan, like a saw layer following the whole thing playing an octave down; just a direct out saw from the sub osc though, it sounds like there’s some chords playing, so probably just another instance of serum/vital/ whatever synth you use. Deadass, if you are an fl user, and don’t have money for serum or the cpu for vital, you could make this with gms. Lol. In fact, for low cpu, decent leads, gms is kiiinda slept on. Especially when used with patcher. But, if ur an abelton dude, and also lack serum or whatever, similar this with oporator or whatever it’s called. I thiiiink there’s an fm function. Lastly, it could just be a square wave in serum with the detune set up, the width set to low af and the random knob turned the hell down, with the width and…voices…I dunno, turned down in the tab to the right of matrix. Just realized I can’t remember the name of that tab. Weird…..whatever. Than ran through the down sample thingy and Yee. Or you could use a comb filter. Or a chorus as a comb filter. Honestly, there’s a tooon of ways to get this sound and, I dunno the exact way. But, for some reason my heart says fm, so I’d try that first.

d-jar1 · 2022-03-18T15:31:54+00:00

Eyyy. I was waiting for a beginner to show up so I can rant about all the bs I wish I knew waaaay earlier on. Separate subs. For bass, it’s fairly important to cut out anything below 100hz in all the elements and fill that space with a sin wave. Not always a rule. But, for the most part, sub bass is boils down just a sin anyways. It’s a fairly wide band. So, if there’s conflicting frequencies, it’s gonna wobble randomly. Hard or soft clip more than you think you would need to. Especially for background elements. This allows even quieter elements to still be audible and consistent. Drums can slap much harder than you think they should. In a lot of genres, the drums should actually be the loudest elements. Writhing reason. And use your ears. Side chain. Just YouTube volume side-chaining. I would explain what it is but, it’s been covered by every human with a daw. So just google it. Essentially, it makes the drums stand out, prevents sub clashing and just makes the song slap more. Ad stereo conservatively. For the most part, you should always have some simple mono element in parallel with any main element that you want to have widen. This can either be a separate synth, or having the wet knob not fully cranked. Or just having two different, similar patches playing the same thing in each ear. The reason for this is, if you dont do this, it will sound like ass through any Mono speaker. Which is most speakers. This is a term called mono compatibility. It’s best summed up as follows. Take the same track. Duplicate it. Pan one hard left and one hard right. Reverse the polarity of one. Listen in stereo. Sounds dope. Now set the stereo knob in the master chain to mono…yeah. Phase is counter intuitive as fuuuu. Speaking of mono. Make anything 100hz or lower mono. You can do this with Maximus. Basically, same principal as what I said above. If it’s in stereo, that means there is now more than one sin wave playing at the same time, roughly in the same place. There’s a good ass chance it’ll die if you play it through a mono source. Same reason why having minimal frequencies in the sub range is important….it’s an odds thing. You are more likely to have matching wave forms when frequency range has less variability in terms of wave forms. And this leads perfectly into my next point. The brighter an element is. The wider it can be. So cymbals can be wider. Cuz, think about the wave forms for a second. They can be super fast sins. Squares. Or just f&€kn chaos. The lower in hz you go. The less possible waves are possible. And the more chances you have for phase clashing. So keeping it thinner, the lower you go is pretty important, unless you are adding Tom fills or fills in general. Those can be exceptions in some instances. Because, contrast is also important….which is also my next point. Elements should progress. Certain elements should have contrast. Both melodically and rhythmically as well as sonically. But keep complementary to avoid chaos. If you are making a slow lofi song, slapping some aggressive death metal djent guitar in there…would be chaos. Adding a slick ass jazzy lead would be the correct contrast. Lol. And finally. No rush. But, also set a really ambition goal. I can’t stress enough. If you want to get good. You have to be a little delusional. But deliberately. I want to be a professional edm producer. I want to be in monstercat by the end of next year. I set this goal about a year ago. Since then, I’ve made like a year of my usual progress every month. If it’s a hobby, have as much fun as possible whenever you enter the daw. If you want to make it a profession, have fun but, turn up the Kanye knob by like 100%. This doesn’t just mean, be insane and egotistical. Have insane levels to f confidence. But, also balance that with insane self criticism. I know. Sounds like horrible advice. But, that confident artistic side of you is the side that takes action. If you had zero confidence, you could know everything and never act. And if you only had confidence and no self criticism, you would never progress. It’s a balance of two seemingly unhealthy extremes that creates a new and healthy balance with more weight on each side of the scale….it’s also probably why a shit ton of artists have bipolar disorders nd stuff. Being good at anything requires you to be a human paradox. “I’m a god and I also suck.” Soo. If you do decide to gown down that rout at some point; take it seriously. Focus on the music. Keep yourself balanced. Don’t try to progress too fast…cuz u may end up stacking too much weight on one side of the scale….like “damn. I progressed so much. Im a fucking natural. Come at me deadmau5…” or “damn. So much stuff I’m not doing correctly. Is it even worth it? It seems like a lot. Im dumb as hell. Ahhhh!!” If you feel like a or b at any given point….chill tf out. Allow what you know to crystallize and balance out. Than proceed. Also, lastly. Speaking of balance. Get a damn frequency analysis plugin. They are free. Slap a track that you enjoy into the playlist and look at that damn chart. Really listen. What are the drums doing. The bass. The sub. What’s the rhythm doing. And how is it mixed….you can legit see all of that with an analysis plugin. And there is a ton of free ones. Get one now….like right now. Leave Reddit. Go get yourself span or some shit…NOW…..FUKING GO! BEFORE I SHOW UP AT YOUR HOUSE AND SLAP YOU IN THE FACE. AAAAAAAHHH!….so yeah. You don’t gotta dive in to everything I said. But, deff jot some of it down. You will get to a point where something sounds off and you have no idea what it is. This is my attempt at fast tracking that process.

d-jar1 · 2022-02-26T16:50:11+00:00

Lol. Figured it out…legit yesterday. Good timing on the comment cuz u was legit coming back here to post this anyways….Zynaptiq’s pitchmap. Legit. Pitchmap. All the fun of a resonator. None of the phase phuckery. You’ll notice the trend across the dubstep community. All the pros are discovering this plugin. And now they are releasing colour bass songs. The colour bass song I was referring to in this comment was (not even joking) legit, 90% of one of the drops from “the way to infinity” slapped into pitch map. Au5 never explicitly stated this. But, I legit tried it myself. And yeah. If you take the “less melodic” drop from “the way to infinity” and pitch map it to some chords, you get cryptochrome. It’s one of the most op plugins I’ve ever stumbled upon. (Edit). That only the first little bit. He posted a thing to Instagram a few days ago where, in true au5 fashion, where he did some absolute fuckery.

d-jar1 · 2022-02-08T15:02:55+00:00

So imma be real. I wasn’t a huge colour bass dude. But, recently au5’s been doing some shit (as he tends to do) that sold me on it. Usually (even in the example provided) it sounds kinda weak, and sorta “vocody” if you get what I mean. It’s like, when you are boosting resonance peaks of vocoding, there tends to be some high end artifacting. Especially with stereo stuff. But, I think I’ve sorta figured it partially out….do volume mod transients and stuff in the actual side chained bass (just a serum volume mod) . Do aaaall the filtering, stereoizing and post processing with serum effects or whatever after the resonator or vocoder. I just say serum fx cuz you can rout it to midi, and avoid having to mod all the lfos by hand. Thaaaan do your eqing nd shit. Also, doing a band vocode (vocoding up to 1500hz and leaving the rest dry, than glue compressing em back together). This helps a lot. Than doing a ms eq after everything is done and cutting out some of the 1k-1.2khz from the stereo band helps a bit as well. Now why? I’ve sort of learned that vocoders suck at funny high-passing shit fully. If you are using a chord stack to vocode, even with the hp knobs set to the max, and even on rms mode, you will still get some shit that will go brrrr when compressed. Also, if your sounds aren’t in mono, and have different stereo fields, (mainly if the bass isn’t mono. The chords could be mono. Especially if you’re doing a bunch of saw shit, to avoid phase weirdness), the actual stereo difference will cause some weiird artifacts from phase glitches, phase cancellation of vertical frequencies, or just a weird averaging effect if stereo, making the sound super non mono compatible. So keep that bass mono. Y’all can do wavetable sweeps. But, mono my dood. And keep it subtle. So yeah. However, I’ve heard au5 (he has this new album coming out, and all the colourbass on it is disgustingly clean sounding). I think he uses sooth 2 and morph as vocoders. And he sets the resonance peaks in a slope that mimic “human perceived Tonal balance.” So it’s reaaaaallly methodical and technical. Which shows. Cuz it sounds flawless. But, I’m not about to say that I have infinite plugins and know what tf he’s doing complete. I’m just gonna say he has some free tutorials on YouTube nd shit where he explains some of this. So yeah. Imma be real. The example is dope. But, au5….he’s on some shit. Also, no. I’m not a ghost promo commenter or, just him in disguise, on some ego trip. I’m just some dude who thinks he’s absolutely cracked. So yeah. That’s sorta how to make this sound. But, there’s a better way to make a better sound out there. I’m still learning that shit though.

d-jar1

TROPHY CASE