At last…

Well, i finally took the plunge the other day and booked in a real mastering studio for 2 days of drum and bass production madness!
I was really keen to see how my tunes were going to sound in a proper super acoustically treated room.

There was plenty of reasons for me wanting to be in a real studio but the main reasons for me was the lack of distractions I would have and the room itself. Sometimes its really hard to get tunes finished at home for whatever reason. Whether its work, or the mobile phone rings or friends pop over or whatever. All these distractions just pushes the finishing off of the tune that much further away. So after negoiating some the time off with my lovely wife I made preparations for an exciting 2 days.

Two Heads Are Better Than One!

I’ve been working a lot with my homeboy FUJ and to be honest he has been a great inspiration for me in the studio. I’ve written before about the benefits of working with somebody else in the studio and I’m still a great believer in the practice. Apparently you have some blind spot in your brain so if you have somebody there in the lab with you they can pick up on your mistakes its called ____
and is a really fascinating subject so check it out later.

Anyways…

Fuj promptly arrived in the morning to help load the van with all the equipment and away we went….So I thought.

Had I Upset The DnB Production Gods?

On the way to the studio on one of the busiest streets in Sydney I promptly broke down. No lights worked on the van, no hazards NO NOTHING! I had a whole street of cars, trucks, vans and buses behind me so I jumped out in my flip flops and starting pushing the van down the street to the nearest side street. Luckily it wasn’t too far and Fuj was just up the road so after a quick call he came round to help me out.

Ripped my brand new pair of shorts as well!

Totally Wrecked Brand New Pair of Shorts

We tried jump starting the Van but to no available. So I send Fuj to buy me a new battery for the van as we thought this was the main problem. After a few minutes Fuj arrived with the new battery and in no time we were at the studio and having some fun!

I can hear clearly now…

After we set all the gear it was time to get GRIMEY!

I brought my Event Opals in the studio and they kicked major ass (the cheap Tannoy Reveal sounded great as well). They sounded as good as the day that I bought them in the show room. I will be the first to tell you that my unit/flat is absolutely terrible sounding but you probably know that from a couple of previous posts. However, being in a proper studio made me realize just how bad my room really is and to be honest I was NOT going to fix it using the Behringer Ultracurve or IK Multimedia’s A.R.C software (although ARC is pretty damn good!).

Reaktor Studios

The real benefit of working in a treated room is the confidence it gives you when you need to perform any task EQ, Compress, Stereo spread etc. Now when your boosting or cutting say a kick drum you know that your making the right decision for the sample/track/. I have a standing wave of 50hz in the room so anything in the Key of G just BOOMS like crazy! Very annoying YES! Could I live with it? Hmmm…

First Thing is First

For the first few hours of studio time I just listened to music. My own stuff. Noisia’s stuff. My own stuff. Had a cry. Then back to Noisia, Phace, Misanthrop, Fresh etc. It’s important to do this to get your ears to the new surroundings. Every hour or so I would take a break and walk outside to reset my ears. I was loving the studio big time and I hadn’t even started to do work yet!

Reaktor Studios - Heaven for a Bedroom Producer

Getting Started

Because my room/unit is so bright I was amazed at how dull sounding all my drum hits/breaks were in the studio. So I quickly set about fixing that problem by doing a quick clean out of the crap samples from my personal library. Man… there was quite a few bad apples in there and its a boring part of drum and bass production but it has to be done. The same process went down for the kicks and hats etc.

I then went on a marathon 12 hour studio session just working on beats and bass and everything in between. As it was my first proper studio session I just went through some of my older tracks to see if anything good was lurking in the project folders. I was happily surprised to find quite a few bits that i really liked and I marked them down to work on later.

I was really shocked by my experience in the studio. Sure my knowledge and skills have improved over the last 6 years or more but I was literally blown away by how cool the whole experience was.

What Next Then?

Well, if you’re producing at home, in the garage, in the bedroom. Take some time out to acoustically treat your room as best you can. Your beats may not be as bad as you think they are but the room is making them sound terrible. Now, I’m sure Noisia and Phace sounds brilliant in your lab but this brings me to the next part…

A/B your shizzle!

I’ve also spoke at lengths about A/Bing your stuff with quality tracks. Now, I’m going to say it to you again. DO IT! You have to do it. There is no other way of knowing whether or not your stuff is making the grade. I’ll admit I haven’t been doing it as much as I should but all that changed BIG TIME. I’ll write another post on the best practices of AB testing your stuff but for now just grab some of your favorite tunes and play them next to yours. Easy as.

Headphone <3

My whole trip to the studio was not all bad. The good news was that stuff that I had made on my Sennheiser HD650s sounded great! Sure I had to tweak a few things here and there but all in all I was extremely happy with the results I obtained from using them. As a by product at home I only use the HD650′s now. I’m planning on getting some crap PC speakers as this seems to be a very popular choice for big named producers. PC speakers are tiny and they don’t throw sound all over the room so they would be perfect for my setup at home.

Studio’s offer a great way to work undisturbed from the world. A really good studio will give you the clarity and confidence to make important changes to your tune thus helping you create better tunes and mixdowns. AB a crap load and if you have a very difficult room to work in like myself work mainly on a good set of headphones and every now and again using some cheap PC speakers.

Right now me and Fuj are finishing off some tunes so that we can polish them off in the studio together in a big session. I really can’t wait to show you guys whats been going on. Till then I hope your beats are smashing up the dance.

Speak soon.

Dauntless

Back To Your Roots

If you’ve ever had writers block in the studio ( and lets face it who hasn’t?) or can’t finish a tune or other catastrophes then have a crack at getting back to your roots and sampling some shit. Now for some that might mean going down to the local $2 used record shop but for me that means chugging my way through the mountains of sample cd’s that I have on my HDD and in my CD wallets.

You see, even though you can write a tune with just some drums and some bass the reality is you is going to need some more sounds. Pads, FX, Swooshes, Vocals, Movie snippets are all required in your work. Ok, maybe not in all your work but you get the point. Anyways, like I made the point in an earlier post about drum n bass production.  Collect and prepare  all your samples first before you start arranging. This makes the arrangement part that much easier and mixing down the track will NOT be a living nightmare.

Anyways, to help me with this NOT so enjoyable task I’ve enlisted the help of Ableton Live and its brilliant audition/explorer window. (narrow strip down the left side)

So, all I do is…

1. Set the BPM at 172-174

2. Import a break. (Probably one of mine)

3. Pick a sample folder

4. Start auditioning some sounds and dragging in the ones I like

5. Oh… I use the arrangement view, NOT clip view. (hit TAB button)

6. After I have finished with the folder I will Collect All and Save (file menu)

7. Delete folder

8. I have also worked out that if you “consolidate” all the samples you like you can find them

easily in the project folder for use later on.

9. Just save what ever sounds you like. FX, Bass, Drums or whatever. The idea is to just weed

out the crap samples from your HDD first.

What Generally Happens…

What I find usually  happens is I’ll quickly get some sort of groove/vibe going straight away. I’ll find a pad/atmos sound and then some stabs and then fx. (I suppose it depends on what sample cd I’m auditioning. ) I’ll lay out the samples in some of sort of arrangement that makes sense e.g. Swooshes at the end of bars, Hits at the beginning etc. Then if its a solid vibe I’ll save the project under a descriptive name e.g. Jungle vibe and move on. I’ll mute the parts and continue on finding samples.

This is a great way of working quickly and efficiently. Being able to work quickly as a producer is a skill that can not be underestimated. I’ve been searching for years for a work flow that could get me good results but still allow me flexibility.  Ableton has given me what I wanted and I’m a happy man indeed.

What About Me…

Ok, what if you don’t use Ableton Live? Well, I suppose you could use Media Bay in Cubase or the Add media in Logic. However, I just don’t see them as good. Don’t get me wrong they ARE good but just not as good as the one in Live. Also you could try using Kontakt Sampler and using the “next sample” feature which gives you the option of playing the samples but I’ve found that to be hit and miss.

What Next?

After I’ve gotten all my samples together its time to work out their pitches and weed out the samples that just don’t fit the track. Sometimes I’ll place a “holding Bass” groove in there to project to see how all the samples fit temporally and continue on with either finding more samples or doing a quick arrangement. Right now at the moment I’m NOT 100% on mixing down in Ableton Live but I’m giving it a go anyways. Its not perfect by any means but I’m willing to live with the restrictions.

So, I hope you get down and dirty and find or create some phat ass sounds to use in your projects. Also, if you haven’t tried Ableton Live yet give it a shot, it might work out for you and that ain’t not bad thing!

Well, to be honest I’ve struggled in the studio in the last few weeks. Some times its been good but most of the stuff I’ve been firing out just has been an utter ball ache. So what to do when things aren’t going well for in the LAB?

Well, I needed some inspiration and I turned to the Q&A on “The Grid” for some much needed advice and boy was I glad I did! One of my all time favorite producers in Optiv from the Cause4Concern and his Q&A was a blinder.

Here are a few notes from the Q&A:

1. We start off with a relatively simple drum kit or loop,
2. Find a sample that evokes some kind of vibe,
3. Work on some bass and from there just add elements that reinforce the idea.
4. Usually the first half of any session is about sound design and preparing samples. Then we arrange the sounds and start on the arrangement.

This is how I kind of work right now but notice point 4? First half sound design and the second half arrangement. Optiv mentions that he never starts to arrange until he has all the sounds just right. This is a BIG BIG BIG tip. If you’re trying to do some major tweaks to your samples in the arrangement phase things are NOT going to go well for you. DON’T jump the gun with the arrangement. Get the sounds right before moving on. Keep adding and adding parts to your track until you can’t add anymore. Then arrange. This should help you keep your flow when arranging and, ultimately help you finish tunes as well.

Let’s face it. Drum and Bass Production is tough. So getting your work flow right is CRUCIAL if you want to write good quality tunes in a small space of time.

Best of luck.

Okay, over the last couple of months I’ve been formulating some cool new drum and bass production techniques and song writing techniques. Some haven’t worked as well as I wanted but some have proved to be “outstanding!” This one technique below is absolutely smashing my productivity meter through the roof!

SET A TIME LIMIT

Yep, I’ll say it again… “set a time limit”. This one killer technique has improved productivity a million% and I’ve written more stuff in the last month than I have all year!

Here’s the steps I go through:

1. 2 hour time limit. (yep, 2 hours is all you/I get! )

2. Find your samples, drums, bass, atmos, vocals, etc…

3. Fire up Ableton Live 8

4. Put down the atmos to get a vibe.

5. Work out the Bass line.

6. Drums go next.

7. Fx goes in about now.

8. Arrange the thing out to about 240 bars.

9. Freak out about the lack of time!

10. Allow 15 minutes for quick mixdown.

11. Done.

Now, before people freak out about the 2 hour time limit. DONT! Its only a time limit. I just made the damn thing up. It helps me work quickly. Which is the point. Also it ain’t going to be no Noisia, Current Value mega production standard tune. No, its just a technique to fire up the tune making juices and get some finished tracks under your belt!

Now, I don’t go back and do the tune when the 2 hours is up. I MOVE onto the next track. I’ll revisit the tune in a few days. This lets me be critical and judgmental later. Which is when you want to be, not when you’re trying to be creative!

So to sum every thing up.  SET A TIME LIMIT! I can’t say that enough. Oh and be really strict with it as well, no distractions, no emails, no Facebook etc. When 2 hours is up, your done! Put down the mouse. Take a break. Have a coffee. Go for a walk blah blah blah. You get the point.

Most importantly. Give it a whirl. See how you go. Even if you write a tune in 4 hours 19 minutes 34 secs you ain’t doing too badly are you?

Anyways, enough yacking from me.

If you have a bunch of questions about this technique or any others just write them below or shoot me an email.

Speak to you soon.

Dauntless

Why review the Zoom H2 Handy Recorder?

Well, a friend of mine was looking for a field recorder that was portable and easy to use. He wanted it to be fully featured but most importantly he wanted it to be under $200.

Well that’s easy I thought to myself, there’s loads of recorders out there!

Wrong.There isn’t that many portable recorders out there that fit the bill as I thought and the truth is most of them are pretty bad. However, the Zoom H2 does all the above quite nicely, read on to get the lowdown.

Check out some more information about the Zoom H2  here

Sample time with the Zoom H2

I’m a big fan of sampling. I think sampling adds that personal touch to a tune and makes your tracks that little bit more unique then a person who just uses samples taken from a sample CD. Now, don’t get me wrong here. I love sample CD’s and they definitely have there place but if you want to stand out you need to get your hands dirty and sample some vinyl or some sounds outside your window or down the street!

Now, I’m a lazy sod. Probably just like you and so sampling just seems like a big giant time guzzler. First you got to get to the shop, then you have to search through all those records and find the good ones, then you have to… you get the picture. Well, you can’t avoid all that hard work at the start but at the end you can and I’ll show you how the Zoom H2 saves you time!

What I do is plug the Zoom H2 into my mixer. (my new Allen & Heath Xone 42 BTW). Then, I’ll get a good level and record all the vinyl snippets at once. I just let the Zoom H2 continue recording whilst I play each and every bit of vinyl that I may have purchased or have lying around. The great thing is because I have my CDJ’s plugged into the Xone 42 as well I can sample from soundtrack CD’s etc. That’s great but…

Zoom H2 meet Mr Wavelab

Won’t I have a really long messy file? Yes, its true. You’ll end up with a pretty big file to deal with but that’s where my secret weapon comes into play. Wavelab 6. I download the file onto my computer using the USB feature of the Zoom and load it up into Wavelab. Then I use Wavelab’s Split Silence tool to chop up all the bits for me. Easy as that. Wavelab will even put all the files neatly in one new folder for me. I can then apply fx or eq or what ever I want directly onto the samples no worries.

Zoom H2 and No Frills Drum and Bass

I’m also using the Zoom H2 to record my Drum & Bass mixes and the results have been great. Because of its ability to switch between from .WAV to .MP3 I can record a No Frills Drum and Bass gig no problems what so ever! That’s over 5 hours of music, brilliant! However, the fun doesn’t end there. Because I’m recording at 320kbps the sound is very very good!

Check out the video below on how easy it is to use!

Features of the Zoom H2 I love

There’s a whole bunch of stuff I love about the Zoom H2.

• It’s small enough that it fits in the palm of your hand. Its a little bulkier than an Iphone but compact in design so you can take it anywhere without it being a hassle.
• The Zoom H2 takes a standard SD Card which is great because they’re so dirt cheap now its unbelievable. The unit takes 2 standard AA batteries which is great because I hate buying weird batteries that cost a fortune. AA batteries you can find everywhere and really affordable.
• One of the great features of the Zoom H2 is the one click record function. Just 1 click to arm the unit and then another click to start recording. Its as easy as that. You can instantly get recording with literally 2 clicks of a button. This is why the Zoom H2 is so intuitive to use.
• The Zoom H2 has 4 microphones that are built into the Zoom H2. This is how the unit is able to record 360 degrees. Absolutely perfect for recording a band or in an interview situation.

What others are saying

With over 468 reviews at Amazon with an average review of 4.5 out of 5 the Zoom H2 is killer!

Here are some of comments to date:

• “As good as the Edirol R-09 for about half the price!”
• “Much better and easier to operate than the Zoom H4″
• “H2: Great little recorder”
• “Take your new podcast to the next level”
• “Awesome Quality and Price”
• read more review here.

How much is the Zoom H2 going to cost you?

It’s hard to give you a price on the Zoom H2 because prices can and do change all the time. However, currently right now at Amazon the Zoom H2 is going for around $150. Which is over 56% off the retail price which is an absolute steal.

Anyways… if you want to find out more about the Zoom H2  or read some more review click here.