Need some serious help, intermediate trance producer here, please :)

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-- Need some serious help, intermediate trance producer here, please :)

Posted by lp026713389 on Jul-02-2011 23:55:

Need some serious help, intermediate trance producer here, please :)

Hey guys,
I'm brand new in this forum, looks amazing so went ahead and registered. Anyway I'm going to try and make this as short as I can, and anyone with relevant information please share Now I tried searching for the topic I needed help in but for some reason the search isn't working for me right now...

Anyway, basically guys I'm using FL Studio to make uplifting trance influenced by Daniel Kandi, Arty, Mike Shiver, A&B, etc...I know my basics and I actually have 2 tracks in the making right now. Also, I have been watching FL Studio tutorials over the past 3 years but have only gotten to taking FL Studio up about a month ago. I need help with the following:

In all these tutorials, I see the guys in the video adding compression (FL compressor), soundgoodizer, FL limiter, FL fast LP, parametric EQ, filters, etc... to channels like the kick, snare, clap, pads, piano, plucks you name it.

My question is, can someone briefly explain what the essential filtering" FX are and what they do (compression etc)and how people know what instruments to add them to? like for example how would I know that I'm supposed to compress a kick but not a pad? its really frustrating because I really have great compositional potential but I just need to find my way around these FX. I think I got everything else under control I know the cutoff frequency stuff, attack/gain/sustain/decay and I also know automation clips and all that. The FX however are what's keeping me back. There's just too many of them and I don't know what some of them do, or what instruments (percussion or pads or plucked etc..) to add these FX to.

Oh and might I add, I do know my scales and I'm pretty well-rounded in music theory but can someone also explain these things to me please: DETUNING, and waveforms (sine, saw, etc...) when are they suitable in what genres/situations etc...I mean I also don't really understand the point behind detuning, why would someone want the sound of their instrument to be off key? :S

HELP?!?!

Posted by derail on Jul-03-2011 04:23:

You're asking a thousand questions at once.

There are some mixing basics, but then there is also massive scope for mixing creativity (which sometimes goes against the basics).

Any instrument can be compressed. Any instrument can be left uncompressed. Some people may always compress their kick drum, others may never compress their kick drum. Same with pads, basses, other instruments.

You can try other people's advice, and if it works well for you, you can keep doing that. But that doesn't mean it's the only way of achieving an excellent overall sound.

Regarding the topic of detuning, it generally doesn't mean detuning it to the point where it's half a semitone out (which would sound quite dreadful). A typical range of detune may be around +/- 7 cents (where 100 cents is a semitone). It means that sounds can be made a lot "lusher", with the slightly detuned voices spread out across the stereo spectrum.

I'll end with a plug for my website InsideMixes (www.insidemixes.com). It's designed to help with the process of taking strong musical ideas and turning them into great sounding songs. The song packs contain all the information about the synths that were used, the effects/ EQ/ settings/ etc, with comments about why they were used in that way. They also contain the full multitrack files so you can isolate each sound and hear what's going on/ compare it to the sound in your own mixes. Send me a private message if you'd like a demonstration song pack.

Posted by sicc on Jul-03-2011 05:30:

As dude said above me, you are asking 1,000 questions at once. In regards to Equalizing, this is rather helpful;

http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...threadid=383094

Try to find threads, and google such things as compression, and different parameters with in the VSTS you use. I learned pretty quickly that hands on experience and doing some reading was the only way to move forward. It comes with practice, just like anything else. read read read read.

Posted by Energy_3 on Jul-03-2011 10:50:

I think you tube too if you can sniff out the crap amongst the good. Im not sure what DAW ur using but logicninja seems to be rather knowledgable of things above mentioned.

Posted by lp026713389 on Jul-03-2011 11:03:

Re: Re: Need some seriously help, intermediate trance producer here, please :)

quote:
Originally posted by CalvP
It's sunday & i'm tired so i'll keep this short

Many many questions, which is good because you're inquisitive! unfortunately they're all based on theoretical situations. No two tracks will ever be the same, therefore you can absorb all the theory in the world, but you need to constantly apply it session after session...do that & you'll gradually find your way, find your unique style & come to learn when to cut or boost or compress or limit etc etc

Keep with it

Thanks for the tip man, but it would really help if I knew the basics of what these filtering tools do? Like in simple terms what does compression, limiting, lowpass, detuning etcc do?

Posted by kitphillips on Jul-03-2011 14:58:

You're confused because you're approaching things from the wrong direction.

You're asking what instruments to apply certain effects to, and expecting us to enumerate a list of instruments and the effects to apply in this sort of mechanistic way. That's not how it works.

You'll find that understanding what the effects do will allow you to make those choices for yourself, and work out when you should apply them and what the results should be. So you should probably look at what compression, "soundgoodizer" (wtf) and everything else is actually doing to the soudn to determine whether thats something that needs doing to YOUR sound.

PS
And it should be bleedingly bloody obvious that these details would be found either by the mystical powers of google or using the stickies (which you undoubtedly looked straight past in your quest for the "new post" button).

Posted by tehlord on Jul-03-2011 15:50:

These are not intermediate questions.

Posted by EddieZilker on Jul-03-2011 16:01:

quote:
Originally posted by tehlord
These are not intermediate questions.

They're barely suitable beginner questions.

I say this at my current rank of advanced dilettante.

Posted by sicc on Jul-03-2011 17:15:

Re: Re: Re: Re: Need some seriously help, intermediate trance producer here, please :)

quote:
Originally posted by CalvP
I know right now you're probably feeling daunted by all these details, but you have to remember not ALL of this will be relevant. If you take it one subject at a time (making sure you do as much practical as theory) it will all start to click believe me

Nick Thomas Guide To Mixing this is a great free in depth PDF on all things mixing.

Sound Synthesis Education this has all the synthesis info you could ever need.

Rick Snoman Dance Music Manual: Volume 2: Music Theory and Practical Composition & this is a great book if you fancy splashing some $

Everyone favours a different learning style, some like following videos, some like reading books, some like trial & error etc work out which method works best for you & get your head down...make sure in 6 months time you come back & share your new found knowledge on here though ok

That sound synthesis education website is awesome, thanks for posting it!

Posted by Normie on Jul-04-2011 07:17:

Go to www.boyinaband.com

Dave, the dude over there, uses Reason but his 7 day song tutorials will give you a great insight into different ways of using effects and why. These tuts are pretty thorough and helped me immensely starting from scratch. His tut on Trance covers everything from sidechaining to arps to gating to pretty much all of it.

There are far more detailed/specific tuts available and you may love or hate the songs themselves but he covers a lot of ground professionally and in an easy to understand manner. There are a number of genres he covers so give them a shot. And no, I am in no way associated with him or his site/band.

Be prepared for British humor

Posted by Richard Butler on Jul-04-2011 12:51:

Re: Re: Re: Need some seriously help, intermediate trance producer here, please :)

quote:
Originally posted by lp026713389

Like in simple terms what does compression, limiting, do?

It may help you to approach this in the following manner;

Before a compressor was invented, the engineer had to 'tame' a dynamic sound (one which went from loud to quiet) by using his hand to ride the mixing desk faders.

Then someone came up with the idea of using electronics to mimick what the enginner was doing, that is, to even out the volume so that it was smooth and listenable.

After these early days engineers started using these new tools as something to add an effect to a sound. They for example pushed the input volume hard and recorded the drums through it. This gave a nice roomy feel with lots of impact.

As Kit says, the only way to really understand when to apply what, is through lots and lots of practice.

The interpretation of good musical ideas into a a decent well crafted track is what producing is all about.

We all have a view on this but my own personal view is that the musical ideas bit is the easier part. Putting them into a context that people want to consume is the hard bit. There are a million highly trained competent classical musicians out there, but although having that grounding is very useful, a very different skill set is employed in production.

One of the common themes I've picked up is noob / frustrated producers complaining they 'have these immense ideas in thier heads but cannot translate them into a track'. I have immense paintings in my head, but fuck tyring to get em onto canvas! The only way to get it done would be a load of practice. No amount of reading would be 'that' useful - I'd need to hit the brushes.

Posted by DJMiakoda on Jul-04-2011 13:26:

Re: Re: Re: Re: Need some seriously help, intermediate trance producer here, please :)

quote:
Originally posted by Richard Butler
It may help you to approach this in the following manner;

Before a compressor was invented, the engineer had to 'tame' a dynamic sound (one which went from loud to quiet) by using his hand to ride the mixing desk faders.

Then someone came up with the idea of using electronics to mimick what the enginner was doing, that is, to even out the volume so that it was smooth and listenable.

After these early days engineers started using these new tools as something to add an effect to a sound. They for example pushed the input volume hard and recorded the drums through it. This gave a nice roomy feel with lots of impact.

As Kit says, the only way to really understand when to apply what, is through lots and lots of practice.

The interpretation of good musical ideas into a a decent well crafted track is what producing is all about.

We all have a view on this but my own personal view is that the musical ideas bit is the easier part. Putting them into a context that people want to consume is the hard bit. There are a million highly trained competent classical musicians out there, but although having that grounding is very useful, a very different skill set is employed in production.

One of the common themes I've picked up is noob / frustrated producers complaining they 'have these immense ideas in thier heads but cannot translate them into a track'. I have immense paintings in my head, but fuck tyring to get em onto canvas! The only way to get it done would be a load of practice. No amount of reading would be 'that' useful - I'd need to hit the brushes.

Well said IMO.

Posted by lp026713389 on Jul-04-2011 16:59:

Re: PS

quote:
Originally posted by kitphillips
You're confused because you're approaching things from the wrong direction.

You're asking what instruments to apply certain effects to, and expecting us to enumerate a list of instruments and the effects to apply in this sort of mechanistic way. That's not how it works.

You'll find that understanding what the effects do will allow you to make those choices for yourself, and work out when you should apply them and what the results should be. So you should probably look at what compression, "soundgoodizer" (wtf) and everything else is actually doing to the soudn to determine whether thats something that needs doing to YOUR sound.

PS
And it should be bleedingly bloody obvious that these details would be found either by the mystical powers of google or using the stickies (which you undoubtedly looked straight past in your quest for the "new post" button).

I've never thought about it that way before, but that makes perfect sense. Thank you so much for your reply

Posted by lp026713389 on Jul-04-2011 17:01:

Re: Re: Re: Re: Need some seriously help, intermediate trance producer here, please :)

Posted by lp026713389 on Jul-04-2011 17:02:

quote:
Originally posted by Normie
Go to www.boyinaband.com

Dave, the dude over there, uses Reason but his 7 day song tutorials will give you a great insight into different ways of using effects and why. These tuts are pretty thorough and helped me immensely starting from scratch. His tut on Trance covers everything from sidechaining to arps to gating to pretty much all of it.

There are far more detailed/specific tuts available and you may love or hate the songs themselves but he covers a lot of ground professionally and in an easy to understand manner. There are a number of genres he covers so give them a shot. And no, I am in no way associated with him or his site/band.

Be prepared for British humor

THANK YOU!

Posted by skyhunter on Jul-06-2011 00:25:

Posted by Normie on Jul-06-2011 00:30:

Preach it Brother!

IMO, BIAB/Dave Brown is an incredible teacher. I have learned so much, so fast there. And the way he presents info makes it easy to go out and find more on a given subject, since he gives so much background on the 'why' aspect.

Posted by lp026713389 on Jul-06-2011 09:30:

Posted by Pagan-za on Jul-06-2011 12:34:

Out of interest, I downloaded the 7day psytrance vids from BIAB, and I must say, they were way better than I expected.

Rather enjoy watching them and I'm planning to get a few more.

I just enjoy watching stuff like this when I'm bored, and thats one of the better series I've seen.

Posted by Omair Mirza on Jul-08-2011 18:37:

boy in a band is a great site. does anyone know of a similar site for Ableton users?

Posted by Storyteller on Jul-08-2011 18:45:

Checked his proghouse tutorial a few days ago. Not really anything new but nevertheless very insightful. This guy is really good at explaining things in a simple, funny and pleasant way.

Shouldn't be too hard to translate what he says to any other sequencer if you put some time into it, right? Just take an alternate plugin than he does and do a similar thing in Ableton for instance?

Posted by Zeus Alvarado on Jul-08-2011 19:07:

I would recommend reading some good books to get a hold of the basics of what you want to learn. After you learn some theory, its a matter of practicing. Some good books that I have read and highly recommend are "Dance Music Manual (second edition)" by Rick Snoman and "How to make a noise" by Simon Cann. These incredible books will walk you through the basics of sound design, and were written for producers in mind. If memory serves me well, I believe the "How to make a noise" ebook is actually distributed free of charge, try giving it a search.

Posted by Omair Mirza on Jul-08-2011 19:25:

quote:
Originally posted by Zeus Alvarado
I would recommend reading some good books to get a hold of the basics of what you want to learn. After you learn some theory, its a matter of practicing. Some good books that I have read and highly recommend are "Dance Music Manual (second edition)" by Rick Snoman and "How to make a noise" by Simon Cann. These incredible books will walk you through the basics of sound design, and were written for producers in mind. If memory serves me well, I believe the "How to make a noise" ebook is actually distributed free of charge, try giving it a search.

Thanks a lot for the reading material advice! The "How To Make A Noise" is free for the digital version, but I am having all sorts of problems trying to get the file to open. Anyone else have this problem?

Posted by skyhunter on Jul-09-2011 00:09:

quote:
Originally posted by Storyteller
Shouldn't be too hard to translate what he says to any other sequencer if you put some time into it, right? Just take an alternate plugin than he does and do a similar thing in Ableton for instance?

In FL Studio, just replace Thor with instances of Synth 1 and 3xosc and layer as needed

Posted by Zeus Alvarado on Jul-16-2011 13:54:

quote:
Originally posted by Omair Mirza
Thanks a lot for the reading material advice! The "How To Make A Noise" is free for the digital version, but I am having all sorts of problems trying to get the file to open. Anyone else have this problem?

Hm, didn't have a problem when I opened the file.Perhaps the file was corrupted during download? Or maybe your PDF Reader is having problems? Try downloading Sumatra, its a lightweight PDF reader, and open up the file with that. Should work.