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Production values and Budget

I know I'm not the only broke college student here. I struggle with recordings that sound more like 1960's scifi than a modern music production. I suffer from a lack of decent gear, all my income goes to college debt instead of upgrades so I will be stuck with this junk until I graduate (spring 2008). (dell laptop from 2002, evolution mk461c midi keyboard, fruityloops, NOTAM DSP[$30 program from the electronic music foundation, an educational thingy], freeware collection, $300 sony cd player stereo thingy which I plug my sound jack into)

So I wonder is how much production quality has to do with budget, what I can do with the things that I have to make it sound better, And what small invesments would be the most effective in improving my situation.

Google gave me this quote from tweakheadz.com

quote:

Can it be done with budget gear? Good question! Depends on who you ask. The best answer I've heard so far is: "You can get 95% of the way there with the right budget gear if you know how to use it. I used to say 90%. However, the recent few years have brought such tremendous advances to sound quality that the heavy line between pro gear and home gear is getting thinner. But it's that upper 5% of quality that you pay dearly for." Of course it is that 5% that distinguishes truly professional production, the sensuous air above the vocal, placed in a beautiful, near black reverberant space, the crispness of the tortise shell pick strumming acoustic guitar, a warm yet distinct bottom to the bass that feels good in your gut, a stereo image so alive you'd swear you were there! Oh, I could go on... However, in today's music there is a shift away from production values and a new focus on the intent and vibe of a piece. Good music, even if made on some crap cassette 4 track, will win more hearts than a professionally polished turd. You don't have to agree. I drive Chevys and my mileage does vary. But by tweaking your gear, setting all the levels just right, you can do great things

Seems they beleive 90% of it comes from how a person uses the gear, however crappy it may be(but is mine TOO crappy?). I posted this question to ask about trance specifically, how much does quality depend on budget, what are some things we can do to get by with a smaller budget? What would you say is the minimum invesment (all the hardware except the computer, assuming no vocals or mics) to acheive a tune of adequate quality?

I try to save on stuff, I have a complete set of free software that I know how to use, but the tradeoff there is that nobody can help me with those programs because not many people use them, and I have to spend hours tweaking stuff to make it all work, mucking with config files and compiling this stuff is pretty unproductive but I get better results with it than I do with my copy of fruityloops. I try to keep everything inside the computer because I have crappy speakers and mic, I try to take it to different stereos to get second opinions since I don't have proper monitors. I try and do unusual things like play with compositional algorithms, making my own noises with csound and other freeware in attempt to compensate for lack of high-end source sounds, but it can only go so far. I've even tried to build little circuits myself like RC lowpass filters and buzzing noises from a 555 timer, but those experiements, while they make sounds that please me, don't appeal to others because they sound bad compared to high-end hardware and nobody appreciates DIY stuff like that except the makers themselves, especially in the trance scene.

So I was wondering, what are some specific things you guys can suggest for acheiving quality production with a low budget? I am quite familiar with "garbage in = garbage out" so there is no need to bash my abilities at composing, I'm talking strictly production values here. I'd like to beleive that there is an audience to music that has a good vibe in spite of low quality production, but in EDM it seems that quality has as much to do with production values as it does with composition.

Hopefully I'll be able to pull enough money with a computer engineering degree that this wount be a problem in a couple years, that is if trance survives that long(joke, hehe).

Seems all you need these days is a computer and software to arrange your sounds Wouldnt worry too much about bucks = bang. Dont use it myself but fruity is a great program, Pro (i.e. signed) Tracks being produced with it all the time. Dont see trance dying off anytime soon either

I would have to agree with Tweak. You can get very decent results even with the free software of today, you shouldn't worry about the extra 5-10%. Even if you would own the expensive hardware, you wouldn't have the experience to take the full advantage of it. An experienced engineer could make a better sounding master with free software, than you (or I) could with his gear.

You just need to find the right software and learn to use it. For freeware synths, check out Synth1, Triangle II and Superware P8. For plugins: http://www.kvraudio.com/

There has got to be something more specific that can help. I agree with you all that it requires experience moreso than gear. So I have all these cheap/free programs, but I wonder which traits of their output make it quality, what are the traits of a piece of music with quality production and what are some little things that you personally do in attempt to obtain those things.

Say I set up this synth to make a goofy buzzing sound, my sounds always come out sounding "raw", I don't quite know how to describe it. It doesn't sound like its coming from an instrument, it doesn't sound like I can point to where it is coming from on the stage, just a "raw" buzzing noise. I try to do stereo panning and reverb(those are the things I read about that give a sound the feeling of coming from somewhere), but still someting about it still sounds a little off, I play with these compressions because I read that compression is important, but that just makes it loud, echoey, to the left or right, but still sounding "raw". That being just one example of the many probelms I have in reaching quality sound.

I wonder what it is I am missing, if it is improper use of effects, bad initial sound design, some sort of EQ trick or something that I havent tried yet, just wondering what makes it sound so "off", why it always comes out so ugly. I just do this for fun, not trying to get famous or anything, just playing with sound and persuing quality, but I feel as if I am not making any progress toward that goal.

I guess you couldn't really answer unless I posted some noises, maybe I'll get around to that in a few weeks.

Well there's no such a thing as a recipie for music creation, specially electronic music because the sound source can be anything, not just instruments. Eq, crompressors, etc don't work like magic, if the sound recorded is bad, it won't get better, in the other hand you can screw a good recording when using eq and compresion on sounds that don't need it.
In your particular issue i think that you should try to experiment more with fx and filters (compresion, reverb, etc...), start with a mono sound, and try different things (saving many versions as you want) until you get the sound that you want.
Listen some track with a sound that you like and focus on that particular sound and later try to reproduce it. In the process you will learn what filters/fx you need (and amounts of it) to produce a similar sound.

no recipes, know that one all too well, and that really isn't what im asking for, just some clues.

So some sort of manipulation of effects will help make it sound convincing and not "raw", I guess that helps a little.

I try to separate these things, composing and producing. Say in the realm of composing I do my synth programming, sound design, and line up all my rhytms and melodies and stuff. All of that subjective, those things being external to the kind of "quality" that I am struggling to reach. I think I know what I need to work on in order to write better rhythms, melodies, and timbres, so I'm not asking about those things here. But I don't know what I need to work on to raise the "quality" of the recording, the "production values", it is hard to identify just what it is that makes it. I read alot about dynamic range, stereo spread, proper use of EQ and compression to give each sound its own place in the mix, those types of things are hard to do on the cheap, things keep coming out sounding cheap, and not cool cheap(like a lead from an amiga chip), but crappy cheap(like a low bitrate mp3).

It doesnt sound like playing music, it sounds like circuit experiments, or a sound generated in matlab.

Kinda thought amiga sounds where cool. Suppose your looking to expand your sonic pallete, maybe if you posted examples of what your stiving for would help others to point you in directions. If its more sweaping pad sounds or plucks then the superwave and synth1 mentioned above would do that.

Finding EQ and compression kind of hit and miss myself, experimenting could be another word for it . Been plowing through all the tuts sticked at the top of the production forum and all the ones listed over here http://www.computermusic.co.uk/tutorial/features.asp ... *goes back to experimenting*

I think the last thing I need to do is more reading. I've read all of those computer music tutorials, I've read everything on tranceproduction.com, I've gone all through the tweakheads guide, I've taken courses in electricity and signal proccessing, I've taken books out of the library, and I'm even taking a computer music class at school right now where this guy teaches about "electronic art music".

It is a real problem of mine, spending too much time reading and not enough on practicing.

quote:

Originally posted by Zombie0915 Say I set up this synth to make a goofy buzzing sound, my sounds always come out sounding "raw", I don't quite know how to describe it.

I think I know what you're getting at here... a lot of times you'll get a nice synth or something going, but once you stick it in the mix it's too raw or in-your-face sounding. Some tricks to making stuff sound smoother (and more pro)... Stick a phaser or a chorus (ever so subtle! experiment with different settings) on it. Probably the most important would be EQ! A nice trick is to use EQ to reduce the frequency peaks in the sound. Set up an EQ with a very narrow Q, set the gain to maximum, and sweep it around the frequency range. The places where it sounds really, really awful are peaks, and once you've found them, use the EQ to reduce those peaks! By reducing the peaks, you draw attention away from the fundamental frequencies of the sound and open up the rest of it's frequency range, resulting in a more distant, interesting sound. Don't be afraid to make drastic cuts, the goal is to make the sound fit into the mix, and it could sound pretty weird solo-ed. This all helps to achieve a smooth frequency response with your sounds, which is essential to getting a mix that approaches the pro level.

quote:

Originally posted by Zombie0915 proper use of EQ

is the answer to all of your problems.




only production tools you need is your sequencer and some synths (and some quality percussion samples, of course). If you're gonna invest in some VST, i would HIGHLY recommend Pro 53 and Vanguard.

you need to just sit down and play around with synths until you get it right... if you have a specific question then forums are the best place to go, but honestly, you're nto gonna learn until you sit there and figure it out on your own. after months and months of playing around and making music, your ears will be trained to know what sounds "right" and what doesn't. it's a long process and there's really no easy/fast way out.

all the best

I used to think you could accomplish the same with a laptop and headphones as you could with high end gear until I saw some people actually producing in a semi decent studio. It kind of all clicked then.

Seeing hardware synths run through a big mackie desk with focusrite compressors and lexicon fx was just so immediate. The sound quality seemed to be right there from the start. You can accomplish the same with just software ofcourse, except it might take you a bit longer to get it right. Obviously one has to weigh up the pros and cons of both, since big studios are expensive and fiddly which can even hamper productivity.

At the end of the day though, its about knowing your tools and playing to their strengths.

Well, I think unrortunately you can read all you want, though if you start experimenting thoroughly and give it loads and loads of time just being at it, I think you'll come a tremendous step further.

I personally didn't read too much on eq, compression, effects and so on, I merely gave some attention to some compression tutorials (but then again not that extensively compared to some others perhaps). The rest I did all with fiddling and tweaking until I thought it sounded right.

I have bought myself some good software over the years, though I myself too started with the cheapest of the cheapest.

Don't let any prices fool you towards their value for money in a production environment. If you look at the Synth1, which is a completely free synth (and let's dearly hope it stays that way), you'll see that price - and size- obviously don't matter at all.

Apart from Synth1, you can get some damn fine free effect plugins from Kjaerhus Audio as well (the Classic Series), which for me, together with the standard FL plugins, are a nice alternative to the enourmously expensive Waves plugins.

ok, the general theme seems to be EQ manipulation, I could definately practice that some more. So most of these "production values" issues seem to center around proper usage of effects?

It is hard sometimes identifying just why things sound so ugly, that is what this thread is about, figuring out what stuff I need to work on to raise these production values, so far the answer appears to be my usage of EQ and other fx. My ears aren't trained to hear production values very well, even when I'm listening to other people's music I have trouble identifying which pieces have quality production and which ones do not(I can hear the obvious things though), so I tend to judge things more by their composition, but I would like to get better at identifying quality production and acheiving it in my own work.

Thanks for the clues, I can work on EQ and stuff

Yes, EQ and effects are definately indispensable to your overall sound. Compression is another thing, though normally this will not affect your 'sound' as much.

quote:

Originally posted by Icone The rest I did all with fiddling and tweaking until I thought it sounded right.

I do plenty of my own tweaking but I feel as if I am not getting anywhere, what specifically should I be trying to tweak better? I know this sounds alot like I'm asking for a recipe, but I'm really not so please dont read it in this way. I just wonder, which attributes of thses sounds tend to require such tweaking, which attributes should be left alone. I try and try to get things to sound right but what almost always happens is they just sound even more wrong than before. It is really easy to say "just sit down in front of the thing and persistantly tweak stuff" but it is not helpful advice, the trial and error needs to be focused in some specific direction or I just go the wrong way!

So in general, what kind of things did you experiment with to get things to sound right, what do you mean by "fiddling and tweaking"? When I think of tweaking I think of turning knobs around on a synth and pressing keys until something sounds interesting, then I add that noise to the rest of the sequence, and at that stage it sounds like "low quality", so I try to do more of this "tweaking" by fiddling with things like reverb, EQ, chorus, delay, and whatnot, but then it gets all distorted and nasty sounding rather then getting any better, it just gets all "blurry" when I try to tweak, so I wonder what kind of tweaking I should be doing rather then the stuff I am doing now.

Dunno if this is any use, but Im finding trying to create music and produce music at the same time is a pain. So Im either creating a score or working out how to make an existing score sound richer as opposed to trying to do both at the same time as it seems to defeat itself. So Im banging out some ideas, melodies, breaks, etc as quick as possible to get an idea down before loosing focus then when I feel Im done I will keep pushing to get some other musical ideas down as quickly as possible ... then save it as new file and start tweaking that new file, point being I have a point that I can refer to do decide if my new tweaks are better or worse. I keep incrementally saving my changes too at certian points ending up with 10 versions of a song. The rest is dumping into CD or tape an listening to it in the car or mp3 player or at m8s house to get a feel for how it sounds as a listener instead of as a producer.

If im not creating or producing then the rest of my spare time is spent tinkering with instrument patches and sounds to be used for tunes

EQ wise sticking to basic rules just now of
Kicks get a high pass filter set between 20 and 80 hz
Bass is set with another highpass filter which is above the kick (30 to 100)
everything else gets slapped with a highpass filter in the range of 100 to 300hz but always above the bass

as for the rest someone mentioned using a notch filter and sweeping it over the other parts to suss out where the ugly spots are for a parts EQ.

It all depends

So you separate your composing, producing, and sound design? I try and do the same thing, I would like to read more about your process.

So you lay out all your composition as fast as possible so as not to lose your ideas. In this phase something that helps me is messages I leave to myself on my phone. Whenever I think of something and am away from my computer I'll call myself and sing it out on my answering machine so I don't forget it. This is not really the stuff I ask questions about in this thread though, because I know what I need to do in order to improve on these aspects. I listen to other music, slow it down and disect it, practice the piano roll and train my ear to sense music and rhythm better, that is stuff that, while I am not very good, I at least know what I must work on to make it better.

So then you adjust this composition in alot of different ways. I am kinda handicapped here because I have only a tiny amount of hard drive space, around 8 gigs that I can spare for audio, and that gets used up pretty fast, perhaps an invesment in an external HD is in order, shame my laptop has no usb 2.0.

Then you do your sound design at a different time, interesting stuff. If you were starting a piece completely from nothing, which would you do first?

If you do nondesetructive edits with your samples then you could have sample repository for your song and share those samples between each song. That would save a lot of space as the actual project file would be less than 1mb.

Writing wise starts with what part comes up as good first and the rest follows. Could be a section looped and being edited in step time like an arp or a base line, then make a copy of it and make more edits for variation or could be playing out chords and melodies with a 4/4 kick acting as metronome in realtime. Also a fan of serendipity and always listening out for good accidents to happen like making a mess of an edit but it sounds pretty cool

singing into a tape sounds interesting, like that idea m8

The answering machine thing is actually alot of fun. I got a little drunk at the bar last night and then inspiration struck me, so I called myself and left a message on my phone. Some other kids caught me singing into my phone and thought it was funny, so they grabbed my phone and did some singing of their own. It actually wasn't that bad, I'm considering using it . I have several messages full of drunken bar singing from last night, both from myself and other kids, yay. I do alot of other silly things to try and remember stuff, like writing down phonetic spelling that attempts to describe the sound I'm imagining, or drawing little pictures that I try to use to remind me of the thing that I thought of(I have all these pictures that no longer make any sense to me, sketched on napkins and on the backs of old homeworks, all scattered around the desk where my computer sits), but that kinda thing doesn't seem to work as well as singing into my voice mail, even though I am a really crappy singer and my phone captures my noises very poorly.

I could save on HD space doing samples and project files, that's a good idea, much better than giant exported audio files, which is sometimes necessary with all these incompatible freeware programs that I'm stuck with. I do my sample editing in audacity, which is nondestructive, but my sample repository is embarasingly small. Maybe I should take some time to build up a bigger set of source sounds and patches.

It seems that we have a similar work flow, that makes me feel a bit better about what I'm doing, sometimes I just get this idea in my head that I am going about things all wrong and that is why it sounds bad. I guess I just need to keep trying and work on my FX some more, thanks for the encouragement everyone.

psyklolink's EQ tip is probbably the single most important thing to learn about EQ. Everything else stems from that. As for sound & Production values some of the best and mostoriginal tracks I've heard are some of the rawest.

Learning to produce ASOT style is very worthwhile, but it's certainly not the only way to make records..

It depends on what you are afer..

If you are on the zero budget vibe with older hardware you could always take a peek at some of the linux distributions & tools out there.. Things like Ardour ( http://ardour.org/ ) and Rosegarden ( http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/ ) are actually pretty useful right now, and will get you playing for free, and return you good karma for not warezing.

You can even get CD distributions that you pop in and boot from, with no need to wipe down your HD..

two words:

STEAL SOFTWARE

I'm sorry. But I don't care who, WHO tells you on this board not to do it; that it "loses it's meaning when you steal software."



YOU CAN'T AFFORD 100$ vsts and 1000$ sequencers and neither can I.

I have mounting college debt and I'm only 20 I do not have a good income source yet.

I openly admit I produce on a pirated version of Nuendo 3.0, with a pirated copy of Waves 5.0 diamond bundle. And an upgraded version of ProTools (the original version 6.1 came with the Mbox, but the 7 upgrade was "illegal"). As well as a bank of other stolen VSTs. Does that make ANYTHING I produce less artistic or worthy? No.

Until you get a really really nice job, and can afford to indulge yourself in the pro-audio world, don't bother paying for a thing. If you're not making a dime of your productions (I sure as shit ain't). Then there is no harm.

I'm pretty passionate about paying for good things. And I gladly pay for music I love. But if some decently sized companies like Waves, Digidesign, or Stienberg are going to want me to fork up thousands of dollars of dough to LEARN... LEARNNN how to produce and mix music, they can go strait to hell.

I'll gladly pay for all my software when I get the money. Gladly. I swear to God I will someday.

But for now sir, you like me, are better off learning from whatever you can get your poor little paws on.

Trust release groups like H20 and steal, steal, steal!

Sorry that I went on a rant on this. I don't mean to change the subject really. Just passionate I guess.

As for your question "Is my gear too shitty?"


A simple way to go is this:

Get a solid sound-card. M-Audio 2496 (pci-based), or an Audiophile USB (both relatively inexpensive) or any other similar product that can process good clean 16bit 44.1khz sound.

Get solid head-phones. Don't recommend DJ Phones at all. Stay away from cheap-o 50 dollar headphones. If you want some solid headphones that will give you some very true and balanced sound I recommend the the AKG K240M . I am going to grab a pair after I heard how a friends sounded. Unlike like the Sony 7506s (which seem to be everywhere) which are notorious for accentuated highs, and dimminshed low end. The AKGs are pretty much spot on. Bass will be back in your mix. And your high end will be a lot more true. They have a semi-open air set up which gives you a great sense of depth and space in your mix as well.

Good luck.

---Adam

EDIT:
As to free-ware solutions. They aren't industry standard... yet. And most people do NOT want to bother with a linux box. It's no stretch for me. I'm going to be building a linux box very soon JUST for ardour which concievably could/will be a VERY usefull solution. But it does NOT HAVE MIDI YET. So for most electronic music producers, it won't be very usefull.

Free-ware is always a good way to go. Try using the Kahurues (spell?) Classic Suite of VSTs. Can't go wrong there.

^ You're a god damn idiot.

Besides H20 doesn't say "steal, steal, steal". Their policy is "Try before buy". Cubase SX3 for example, doesn't even have a demo version.

I am actually running linux on my laptop right now, I use Ardour, seq24, zynaddsubfx, om synth, and alot of that kind of stuff, so I have free software pretty much covered. I also play with dyne:bolic livecds on occasion. I have been messing around with linux audio since summer last year, its been a real learning experience. I actually talked about the linux audio stuff with a requiter who works for redhat and he acted pretty impressed by it, wouldnt that kick ass to get hired by redhat just for playing with some noise software? Graduation is still a couple years away though, but I thought it was an interesting possibility.

Hardware wise I could do much better though, my sound card and speakers are very poor. Maybe I can get an echo indigo io pcmcia card for my laptop and those headphones you mentioned, I could probably find around 200 dollars somewhere.

I'm not trying to sound like ASOT, I hate ASOT, twinkly proggy trance sucks balls. I am just sick of sounding "low quality", I want to have higher production values. I know certain rawness can sound good, I have plenty of raw music in my collection that I enjoy. But Production values are very important it seems, nobody enjoys a tune when it sounds like it was recording by a fifteen year old in his mother's basement.

I have a bad ear for production values, I will pick tracks I enjoy and share them with people, and they will tell me that they are low quality sound, pointing out issues with mixdowns and mastering and things that I don't know how to improve upon. I just listen for composition so I don't even hear this "production values" very well, but they remain important regardless. Im just a bit tired of it is all, I want high quality productions for as little money as possible.

Heyas,

So, basically what I think you are getting at is you need to spend a lot of time LISTENING to many many tracks, and try and pick them apart in your head. To understand how somthing is done is a very big step in the direction of being able to do it yourself.

I used to st in the back of clubs just listening and watching the crowd react to music. It was very very enlightening..

If I was you, I'd start by working on remixing a bunch of tracks that you (and by the sounds of things your firends) like. By copying is a very good way to start learning actual technique.

There is stuff in the linux world that is of a quality of the level you are at (And stuff I actually still use in a pretty significant studio). There are many out there who resort to downloading large collections of Warez and really it's just like trading cards. They lack the understanding that makes those tools truely powerful.

If you know your tools you can get very very far without spending much.

Time, Money, Quality. Pick 2. You have little money and want lots of quality so it's going to take time.

It's a long journey and there are shortcuts. the thing is it's the hourney that matters, not the destination. Hence shortcuts are a waste of time.

quote:

Originally posted by Chronosis ^ You're a god damn idiot. Besides H20 doesn't say "steal, steal, steal". Their policy is "Try before buy". Cubase SX3 for example, doesn't even have a demo version.

I'm not a god damned idiot. And I know they don't advocate stealing. I'm all about trying before buying.

I should be more careful, however, of arranging my words with more thought than that post.

Forgive me for coming off as such a nub.



edit:

quote:

Originally posted by Diginerd Time, Money, Quality. Pick 2. You have little money and want lots of quality so it's going to take time.

Very true. I totally forgot that idiom. And as Diginerd said. It's all about the reference material.

When I want a mix to sound like one of my favorite artists, I'll commonly rip it as a wav then throw it in the timeline and go from there. Balancing my hats like they do, and etc. That's a very common trick.

It's hard to learn though. I learn something new everyday.

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