Basic Production TEchniques I use.

How I make music, production techniques I use as well as                                                    VST's employed.

In this Blog post I will do a basic walk through of the thought process I go through when making a piece of music. I will make a piece at the same time and post screen captures/print screens, so you can follow along with what I am doing. This piece will be a dance production and will verge on trance using well known trance style patterns and soundsets. I will be using a mixture between Akai MPC studio (MPC-64) for drums and sample processing and Steinbergs Cubase (Elements 8) for sequencing, these techniques could be potentially be used in any DAW which you may have to hand, i.e Cakewalk, Protools, fruit loops (even though they are all different but they all work in the same context.) 

I mainly use the following VSTi's (Virtual instruments): Nexus, Serum, Kontakt 5 (Sample based synth); Alicia's Keys (piano), Sitar Delic (Sampled sitar), Evolution Strawberry (E.Guitar) mandolin, Diva (Demo),  Z3ta plus, Vanguard, and Sylenth (Demo), Kong Audio Qin (ethnic sample based synth)

I use the following VSTe's (Virtual effects (EFX)): Antares Auto Tune, Orange vocoder, Izotope Ozone 7,  Waves IR-1, Presswerks, PSP Vintage warmer, Box Vengo Voxformer, Vocavee (free VSTe). 

I have the following hardware; KRK G3 Rokit 6 Active Monitors (studio speakers), Akai MPC Studio controller, Yamaha A3000, Yamaha Tyros 1 (which I use as a controller keyboard and has a great built in extensive computer controlled synthesizer), Art Valve Pre Amp, Behringer 2024 DSP Multi effects rack, Akai S4000 and Akai S6000 offboard samplers, Behringer 16 channel mixer, PC; with i7 3.2GHz,128GB SSD PCIe, 2TB HDD, 3GB GPU, Presonus Audiobox iTwo external  USB soundcard, Shure SM58 dynamic microphones x3, Presonus M7 Condenser microphone, Audio Technica studio headphones, Presonus Studio headphones, Sennheiser reference gold headphones and two pairs of Heco Lab 2 Pro Reference speakers with a pair of nakamichi power amplifiers. I also have a melodica, two Stylophones and a Weltmeister Diana 120 bass accordion, now that's the kti out the way lets sort out setting up a project in Cubase! 

• Starting out! 

Firstly I load Cubase and load up a dance template which has the sound setting tuned to 48 KHz running at 24 Bit, this tells all; the tracks, imports and VST's to record and playback at this resolution, a lot of DAW's this is automatic, but I have had issues in the past so better to be safer than sorry! 

Firstly I set the tempo, in cubase you do this by typing it into the tempo box on the Transport panel, this project I will crank it up to 128~BPM which is a medium speed for Dance music. I will bring up my first synth by pressing F11 and bringing up the VST menu (again this varies by DAW), I'm going to start by adding "Pikes" which are fast bursts of a high and very short synth sounds, it could be acoustic guitar or something digital, in this example song I'm going to open Nexus and use the Acoustic Guitar sound, I'm going to start by opening up the piano roll and lay out my basic pattern like so....(Pic #1)

                                                                                Pic 1

I'm then going to add a second line of notes over the top to bring to make it sound better and give it more variation. (Pic #2)

                                                                                 Pic 2

 I then will add my second synth which will be a Bass sound, I usually have two bass sounds running in parallel to each other, firstly a Sine wave; which gives a lot of bass frequencies and low end rumble, for this I will use a VSTi called Sub Boom Bass and/or Serum or Nexus as they all have their own quirks to the sounds they produce, but in this example I will use Rob Papen Sub Boom Bass as it has a lot of low end growl and I unlike many of the other mentioned synths can be modulated (which will give the sound some wobble and this will give the piece more depth). 

I will then start to think about a pad sound, for this I have the choice of either Diva (which has some nice deep pad sounds), or nexus which is an overall good synth for dance and trance songs, or there is vanguard which again is really good at dance songs, and  I will use it in this case as it has what is called a "Trance gate" which will make the sound stutter, or in other technical terms it is a gate which turns the sound on and off in rapid succession or to how you program it. (Pic #3)

                                                                             Pic 3

Next I'm going to play with the cut off to make the trance gated pad to sound further away and lower in the mix and use automation to bring it up as the track progresses. I go to the bottom of the screen and I find "Vanguard" and find the lane which controls the effects, I then change it to "Filter f", turn on write mode the "R button" then draw a ramp like so. (Pic 4#)

                                                                             Pic 4

Now I add modulation to my Sub bass sound in Sub Boom Bass, by changing the parameters in the GUI here (Pic #5) and opening the automation lane underneath and selecting CC16, and writing new data in same way that I did the Cutoff change above.

                                                                            Pic 5

Now I'm going to add some samples, I won't go into great deal here on tutorial, but will do a specific tutorial at a later date. So I will start by adding some drum samples and then we will do some vocals. I'm going to do this by loading up patches on my MPC Studio and firing them using MIDI commands via the piano roll. sSo I go to the VST bar and select MPC-64 and load in a kick, a couple of snares, a couple of Hi Hats, and maybe a special FX i.e: a reverse cymbal or drum sound with large reverb or delay on it and chop it up to suit my tune. 

So after I've hunted through my sample directory on the PC and through my onboards samplers, I compile what I want load them into my software and drag and drop the sample onto a pad on the MPC , and set all the samples to one shot/not on mode so the sample ends when your finger is removed from the controllers pad. (Pic #6)

.                                                                            Pic 6
Now I go into the piano roll in Cubase and set the trigger points, while playing the song back to get them sounding in time. This is my completed sequence.

                                                                                 Pic 7

Now that's sorted ou I go back into MPC and add maybe some reverb, trim the samples and get it sounding nicely polished. Next Im going to do some light arranging, add a piano using Nexus and then I'm going to record a basic vocal using a mono audio channel and my condenser microphone, then I'm going to run it through Auto tune and retune my vocals (as I'm not the best singer in the world by any standard).

So I'll start by adding some effects to the tracks I've got now, I'll show you a selection here now to give you an idea, and I'll explain each one.  

The first is Reverence which is what's called a Convolution reverb, this one tries to emulate different locations reverbs, i.e like studios and churches, to halls to your bathrooms, in Dance music I try to use plate reverbs as a personal preference and not to much reverb i the mix either, just subtle hints there is a reverb there.

The second is a multiband compressor and this one is a expander also, this tool is used for cutting and boosting certain levels during mixing and is a paramount tool for mastering. You can also get single band compressors, but I find multiband compressors easier to use. Again this is a personal preference to my style of mixing and mastering.

The next is a Equalizer (EQ) this one is a vintage modeling one which is meant to emulate valve EQ's of the past, this one is part of the Izotope Ozone 7 package and I find it extremely good at boosting bass levels in deep house and drum and bass tracks, giving my tracks added warmth and giving my tracks a good shine about them.

The next is a Exciter and filter which again is modeled on valve technology, so expect it to give extra warmth to your recordings and I haven't use this edition as of yet as I've only just got it for christmas, but I know some valve emulators you can get some pretty grimy distortion out of them if you crank them up too much, but quite usually the effect of warmth is so subtle it is quite hard to pick out unless you apply it to every track and apply it again to the final master at the end. Unfortunately the emulations can't usually hold a stick to most hardware and outboard equipment which is built with valve technology, even the cheaper kit with 12AX7 architecture can be pretty effective in imparting warmth onto the final tracks, so be a ware when buying VST's as I mainly got thi ne for the filter functionality and the valve but was a bonus, but be careful when getting stand alone valve exciters as some just in my opinion, just don't work!

The next one is orange and Antares Auto Tune. Orange is a vocoder and autotune is a pitch corrector (quite a powerful oe at that and is a legendary piece of kit). Orange can get some every Daft punk style vocals out of it and everything inbetween. Use auto tune if you want to sound like Cher or T pain, from light correction to stupidly robotically usage it can do it, but its hard to use and I'm only starting to learn how to use it, it aint cheap either, m version is several versions old and I got it cheaper than the newest version now as the newest release is nearly as much as my PC (or my basic system anyway) and It's only now compatible with Protools, boohoo. Oh well.

After going through those basic effectors, I will now write some basic lyrics, and get back to you after I've recorded my bit!


I will release part two and the link to the song in question later this evening...