Progression

A blog about sounds.

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Original track continued: FX

Instead of  hardware reverb, Logic’s own Space Designer convolution reverb was chosen, as this was considered to have a more appropriate and relevant sound to the subject matter; a natural, large open space reverb was required, and both plate and spring do not have as much scope for making a natural sounding reverb.

Automation was used subtly to smooth the compostion; for example, the echo was automated in the “plane rumble” sound, this was to add ambience and progression/movement within the peice, and also to cover up a slight clicking issue at the end of the sample which was not audibly pleasing. This was done by sending the signal through a bus to an echo effect, the modulated element in the echo was the Repeat function which was set to a base percentage of 64%, and the Colour function was adjusted to make a darker sounding, more atmospheric tone.

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Original track continued: synthesis

One of our harware pad patches was created by adding 2 sawtooth waves together, with one being tuned up to the 5th and detuned to the value of 56. The initial “voice” of the patch was created with a medium attack, medium decay and with a long release. The lowpass filter cutoff was then modulated to react to the sound by opening up the attack more. To complete this patch, some slight chorus was added at a non quantized value.

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Sound creation

Field recording was not the sole method that was used to capture real life sounds; a selection of sounds were created and recorded in the studio, a notable sound was the heavy breathing that was recorded to add a sense of reality to the piece and make the scenario seem more exciting to the audience. This was then looped using Kontakt and repeated at various intervals in the piece. The microphone we selected was a condenser microphone; the reason for choosing this was for its tonal characteristics. As the breathing was not percussive or particularly transient, it was felt that the condenser would encounter no problems and be suited for the task.

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Found Sounds

To prepare, our group took out a field recorder, and explored the Headingly Campus both inside and outside.

We were able to capture about 10 minutes of continuous sounds in natural environments which was very enjoyable. 

Below are some examples of good sound sources that we captured

Snapping twigs

Hitting pipes

Moving furniture across different floor surfaces

Closing and slamming doors

Elevator sounds

Wind

Birds

Engines, generators and ventilation fans

We had to keep monitoring our gain levels, as some sound sources required a steady control of the input gain. For example: some of the sounds were far away, so we had to turn the gain up, and then a car would drive past very close by and cause major clipping.

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Original track continued...

Music and Preparation

The counterpart and more complex melodies were created by using preset patches of both bad and glass sounds. Again, we used presets to make the mix sit well, and then we replaced them with our own sounds. There isn't any point in working out a melody using a sound which is completely unlike the sound you plan to finish with. There is always a danger of  'overcooking' synths which is why this technique was better.

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Original Track

Concept

We chose to do a piece of music for a game such as Medal of Honour or Halo. The group took a long time to decide on how to proceed.

Firstly we planned to compose the musical element by using a factory preset piano sound. Then to change the sound to a synthesised sound we designed. The plan was to then add the atmosphere by creating and placing our found sound samples, after having done necessary editing to them.

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Finished Remix

Here is the finished remix. It's titled 'Dystopian Siren'.

https://soundcloud.com/stanley-vickery/finished-remix

All in all I have thoroughly enjoyed this project and I certainly will be doing a lot more field recording and using Kontakt as well.

I feel very satisfied with the finished remix; our original was not up to scratch so I took the opportunity to try and get a great sounding remix, which I feel I have succeeded in doing.

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Remix: Structure and Final Touches

I followed the standard dance music structure formula by adding a new sound or takinga  sound away every 16 bars, The phrasing was in 64bar phrases, which is why the track breaks down before a build for 16 bars between bar 65 and bar 97.

I love Ableton as composition becomes so enjoyable when composing by looping. I made all of my individual elements into loops, and entered them into Arrangement view. I then was able to create sections. You can see below that each chapter that goes down, either something has been added or taken away.

To add embelishment, I bounced down the track, found an interesting section and then reversed the audio; this adds more tension to the build.

Automation was not needed, as the reverb and delay were either wet enough or had enough feedback to fade in and out of sections without me having to adjust anything.

Asides from individual reverbs being placed on some tracks, I wanted to add some ambience to gel the percussion, so I created an FX send to a reverb and then sent the hihats to it as well as the snare.

Finally, I went back and mixed the levels one last time. I did this by bringing all the faders down to 0dB, and then bringing the kick up and snare to match them, I then proceeded to bring up each element slowly until it sit well in the mix. A few minor adjustments were then made once all of the faders were up, and my mix was finished.

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MIDI Mapping

I used Kontakt to map 4 percussive elements onto one track

This was great as it enabled me to play a rhythm on a keyboard with different percussive elements. I then used this to record a rhythm. ONce the rhythm was made, I then made 5 identical copies and then for each one I deleted all of the other percussive elements. This was so that I could process each one individually

In all fairness, I could have used the function within Kontakt that enables users to insert FX, EQ etc, but I prefer to use Ableton's own plugins.

My minimal drone was stretched over the lower octaves; I wanted a surreal sound, so I deliberately did this to get some strange changes in timbre when playing chords; this is because the lower notes take longer to play than the higher ones which causes some strange flutter noises on sustained notes.

Again, the same technique was used on my bass sounds: I only spread one sample across the lower octaves. I had originally taken samples of each note in an octave to place in, but I found that this way made the bass sound better. Similar to what I did with my organ sample earlier on in the blog: 

https://soundcloud.com/stanley-vickery/using-one-octave-sample-over-1-octave

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Remix: processing

I enjoy using saturation, ping pong delay and reverbs to fill up spacious mixes and to give nice stereo width and ambience to my tracks, so my remix was no exception.

Here is the link to the playlist on my soundcloud with examples of elements within the remix detailing how they sounded before and after FX and processing.

https://soundcloud.com/stanley-vickery/sets/synth-pre-and-post-fx-and-mixing

Below are screenshots of all of the processing used on the sounds on the soundcloud playlist.

Presence bass processing

Hardware Choir Echo

Korg Minimal Drone

Low End Bass

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Mixing: EQ

Until this point, I have opted to catalogue the different skills I learned according to their lesson. The example we were given to mix was a Nirvana track, however I felt it more efficient to incorporate this into my remix project.

I have chosen to show 2 examples of a section within my remix where all of the tracks are playing; the first example is with all EQ on all tracks switched off, the second will be identical but with the EQ settings switched on. Screen shots will then follow to give evidence of the settings used on each individual element.

The above image shows the section which I have selected.

Below is the link to the un EQd version.

https://soundcloud.com/stanley-vickery/section-of-my-remix-with-all-eq-turned-off

and below is the same section with EQ on.

https://soundcloud.com/stanley-vickery/after-eq

Hi Hats

I had 2 hihat sounds, the EQ I used on them both was the same: I dipped the frequencies at 7.35 kHz as these were irritating to the ear. I cut off anything past 18 kHz and used a high pass at about 4 kHz.

Echo Snare

As I was aiming for an industrial, dystopian style track, I wanted some fuzzy sounding echo snares; to make this sit better in the mix, I placed a high pass at 300 Hz, to get rid of the unwanted low end rumble, I also dipped the EQ at broadly at 1kHz as this sound had a lot of frequencies in that region and it was making the mix muddy.

Kick

My kick sound was designed to sound crunchy and lo-fi whilst still having a decent low end and presence.

I boosted the sub frequencies slightly, did a massive notch cut at 5kHz and took out the 'air' by attenuating at about 10kHz. The EQ shape is very unorthodox as I used both boosting and attenuation. I found that this sounded great so kept the settings.

Dystopian drone

This is the main synth which gives the whole peice its tonal identity and mood; as it is the focal point, I did both a high pass and low pass to take out the unwanted frequencies and to give space to the rest of the mix. As it is an extrememly resonant sound, I did a wide attenuation in the area of the spectrum where the frequencies created the most muddiness. 

Bass

I duplicated the bass in order to have one part with presence and reverb but not low end, and the other I kept without reverb and cut out the high frequencies.

The reverb version had this EQ on:

The low end bass part was EQd as follows:

When the 2 are shown next to each other, there is space around the 100 - 400 Hz range which leaves room for the kick and other elements.

Ebow drone

I duplicated the ebow drone, to do a similar process to the bass; one part had a lot of reverb on and the other had more presence.

Both versions had the same EQ though.

Rolling Snare

The rolling snare track ahd plenty low and high end, so I attenuated the low frequencies gently, still ensuring anything below 100Hz was completely gone. I boosted the crunchy part of the sound at around 1 kHz and then attenuated the high frequencies to get it sitting further back in the mix.

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Visit Original Link

And here is the same bass sound with FX and processing on. I added:

1) Saturator

2) EQ was set to have a low pass at 1.32kHz, notch at 279Hz and high pass at 201Hz

3) A reverb with a predaly of 10,1ms, decay time of 26.6 seconds, set to 62% wet.

4) A sidechain compressor placed post-reverb to give a pulsing texture-in this snippet, the sidechain was not active as I soloed the channel to bounce it. 

This was a duplicate I made of the original bass sample; the reason for this was so that I could cut the bass on one and add reverb, and the other I cut the high frequencies from and processed differently. The two different bass sounds were then mixed to taste.

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Visit Original Link

Here is what my sampled bass originally sounded like pre processing

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Singling out individual elements

I used the MIDI sample map in Kontakt to lay down n overall percussive groove, the final groove is comprised of 5 different elements. I then duplicated the groove over 5 individual channels and then singled out each element in order to compress and EQ each differently.

In this image, you can see the original collective groove at the bottom and then each element has its own dedicated channel.

A little more convoluted, but I prefer this technique as it gives me a lot of extra scope to process elements seperately.

NB I chose not to use any processing within Kontakt solely so that I could use this technique instead.

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Working with Percussion

Here are the individual core percussive elements.

In order from the top: 

Helicopter arp sound to add to ride element.

Hihat taken from the synthesised drum loop we made originally.

Snare taken from the original loop.

Main kick body sound captured by recording someone breathing into a mic.

the sub element of the kick which was a small section of the sub boom sound which we synthesised; I searched for the section of the audio which had the most smooth sub sound.

Here is the link to a playlist on soundcloud which plays each individual element, and there is also an example which plays all of them together in the rhythm.

https://soundcloud.com/stanley-vickery/sets/individual-percussive-elements-within-the-track

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Remix project

The final part of the assignment was to make a remix from our 3 minute long score. After some thought, I decided to use Ableton Live, as I find that my workflow is a lot quicker and I find it easier to get my ideas down coherently.

The first step was to trawl through the audio from the original Logic project to find some suitable sounds which could then be mapped in Kontakt.

Above: the original logic project

As the original project was more ambient than rhythmic, I concentrated on getting a good range of musical and atmospheric sounds, which could then be manipulated to create drum sounds. The overall remix is going to be an ambient techno track, as I feel that the sounds I captured are best suited to this. I also feel that this plays to my strengths as I am a techno producer.

I bounced 20 audio files from the original, just by setting a loop, soling the track and then bouncing as seen below.

Next, I collected the audio files in a new folder for easy access and to minimise any problems that Kontakt may encounter with locating files.

This was the end of my initial preparation; I was now ready to move over to Ableton Live 9, to start working with Kontakt.

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Vocal tuning

Week 5.

Vocal tuning.

Cubase has a very similar in-built tuner to Melodyne and AutoTune, so that is the DAW that I worked in for this tutorial.

I highlighted the whole track, and then adjusted the straighten [itch slider to its maximum: this is complete overuse of the function but the effect is noticeable, which is why I am using it as my example for this post.

https://soundcloud.com/stanley-vickery/super-autotune

In this picture, the straightened sustained notes are evident, these were full of fluctuations and vibrato prior to this processing.