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Joels dodgy production tip.
Hi... i think im going to start trying to write up at least one, somewhat indepth, production tip a day.... if that fails, then ill shoot for once a week. It's free, and it's just advice, so lets leave my namesake and work out of it... i really enjoy writting about this stuff, so dont fucking ruin it for me, and ill GLADLY write heaps more 
hope you find it useful!
Dec 2. - Unison
Unison is generally achieved by most VSTi's by adding more voices of the same timbre to create a louder or more spread out sound. For example.... by hitting one note, the Synth will actually produce 2 or more voices. Many VSTi's usually have this feature in their UI... and sometimes the control is great and all that, but sometimes you might want a little more control over that to make a sound thats more to your liking.
The problem i've always found with unison (especially in the low end) is that you more often than not get weird phase problems... this is just caused by a given number of voices accidently colliding into each other at some point which will phase a certain part of a sound out, resulting in some notes sounding thinner or way more present than others, even though youre mashing the same note repeatedly. I hate to say it, but youre always going to run into this problem. However one technique ive managed to live by is recording the same sequence over and over and over and over until one gets randomly spat out that i can live with after ive recorded it. Of course that worked out for me for a while.. but then i got thinking, theres gotta be a better way.
Well first we need to see where the problem even stems from... in this case, its stereo. You can totally hear the effects of a shitty unison if you monitor it in mono. Not to say we need to monitor everything in mono, but its good practice just to keep a mono insert on your master chain (just for reference from time to time). Of course, depending on the plugin or synth, Unison is usually gradually or radically spread out over the L/R channels as the number of unison voices increase. For example... a 4 voice unison bass might be panned accordingly; 1 voice panned 100% on the left and 1 voice 100% on the right... plus, 2 more voices panned 25% L and 25% R ... and so on. Of course, theres also a pitch factor involved... this value is normally called "unison detune" and all that does is *slightly* detune each of the unisons voices by x amount. The reason this sounds so "lush" is because you have detuned stuff on the left and right now... giving the sound a stereo image. In fact, this is alsmot exactly what a "chorus" effect does, only a bit different.
I've always been a bit of an analogue nut.... ergo, alot of the synths i noodle around on are Monophonic (only capable of playing one voice at a time with no unison) So... to get a thicker sound out of them... i follow the basic principles of how a polysynth would create a unison... and hell, dont be scared to try this on a VSTi either.
Record your riff / loop... one voice / one polyphony. Now by one voice, i could be talking about any given number of Oscillators used to make up that voice, but for simplicities sake, we'll use a pulse or whatever, doesn't matter. Now, re-record the same thing again on a new channel and try changing the pitch by 9 cents or something (or just record a few loops of the same thing and get your scissor on). Lets go for a 4 voice unison to keep it easy.... so rinse and repeat that 2 more times
now youll have 4 channels, all mono, panned center and hopefully playing the same recording / wav / whatever... so lets get in there with the imaging. take the first 2 channels and spread em out L and R say one channel hard left, the other hard right. i dont really care. whaytever sounds good to you. then do the same to the other channels... just try to keep it balanced, otherwise your sound will be panned in a weird spot. (you can pan it wierd if thats your thing, but the key is to spread it. hopefully my leet ascii diagram might help... where 1 2 3 4 are your recorded tracks on the Left Center Right scale thing im gunna invent just now.
L --1---2---C---3---4--R
so there you go, by now you should have a bit thicker sound. And now youre probably asking, well.. why dont i just turn the unison on and use 1 track instead? well... now you have alot more control over the sound really, and since its now Wav data... and not random waveform starttimes your VSTi decided to spit out to make it "more analog sounding" you can get in there and tweak the weird notes... and by tweak, i mean nudge bits of each of the 4 tracks forward and backward in time by a teeny tiny bit (which is usually all it takes to fix a dodgy note) .... and since youre on seperate channels... now is a good time as any to get all experimental with it and maybe run some effects on some of the channels... i.e. a slight reverb on voices 2 and 3.... or strip some low end out of 1 and 4.... your plugin probably didnt support that.
anyways. hope you found that bit useful, saved my ass many a time, and definatley gave me the satisfaction that i've actually worked on something to make it better then using some fuckin preset.
Interesting read, thanks!
Thanks for the tip.
If you really keep these up, it might be nice to have a sticky with all your production tips in it, or at least one page that contains links to them all so we can put it in the Production Tutorial sticky.
Top advice, Joel, we really appreciate you doing this for us!
Re: Joels dodgy production tip.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by deadmau5 |
Re: Re: Joels dodgy production tip.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Excellent tip on recording a mono synth multiple times and changing the pitch to create unison with WAVs. I have done that with the Little Phatty before and it sounds massive. :-) |
wrong link sorry
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Richard Butler Good read. I'm not sure if my bass here is phasing (and too loud / bassey for that matter), so can anyone tell? Comes in just after 15 secs. I've taken vocals off so it can be heard better. I've always liked big panned basses, yet a lot of pepes say it MUST be mono! it "all" doesnt have mono.... but the meat of it does... just like i mentioned in the thingie... try doing a 3 channel unison... center one channel... add your eq / comp on that bass, thats the meat of the sound no doubt... then hard pan the other 2 (or 4) channels outwards to the L and R... but its important to strip most or maybe all of the low end on the panned ones, your LF is going to be in the center where it should be... and youll still get some cool imagaging shit happeneing on the L and R. Track01.mp3 - 10.20MB |
Sorry that was a link to a shite old trancer, please igmore as I meant to post a short sample of bass line only.
Cool tip, Joel! It would seem that using an analog synth would minimize phasing issues due to the natural variations that you'd expect to see between waveforms. I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to try to simulate that variation to the waveform of a VA synth by modulating the PW just a tiny bit using LFO with a random waveform, or a free-running (i.e., not tempo-synched or re-triggered) triangle or saw. Just a thought.
Thanks for this tip and keep 'em coming!
Tips appreciated, keep em comin please
Thanks for taking the time to write this up, Joel. I'm sure everybody appreciates it.
I will definitely take the time to try this out, because I always seem to kill the sound when I attempt to use Unison on my soft/hard synths. This technique seems to give you a lot more control.
I enjoy reading this!
Thanks, may i have another!
cool beans a lot of people in the production forum will be glad to have you around never understood all the hating tbh
Thanks for the tips. Keep them coming.
Nice read. Stuff like this will definitely help as I'm starting to produce, deadmau5es or not. Looking forward to seeing more. You should be safe if you stick to the Production Studio, hopefully people won't come in here and ruin it for everyone.
DEADMAU5, SUP BABY GIRL?
Agree... Hopefully more artists will follow Lolo & Joel's lead and post tutorials here. I know that quite a few read here but don't post.
Nice read Joel cheers for taking the time out.
Thanks man interesting read for sure! Hopefully none of the COR nerds come trolling in here
Thank you.
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Kevy Kev Thanks man interesting read for sure! Hopefully none of the COR nerds come trolling in here |
what is a COR nerd ?
Someone who posts a lot in the "Chill Out Room" section of this site.
i have no idea what hes talking about, can someone simplify this for me?
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