New Drum n Bass Production Standard?

Logic Audio was always a favourite DAW for drum n bass production but does Logic 9 stand tall?

Its an interesting question since I’m a die hard Cubase user, however,  every now and again I find myself wandering around and checking out what’s happening with the other sequencers out there. I find it refreshing to explore other DAWs and experience a different kind of work flow (or pull my hair out in frustration trying to figure them out!). This helps the creative juices flow a little more readily which could only be a good thing. I managed to finally get a copy of Logic 8 when I purchased my wife an Imac24 a year ago, so I’ve had some time to dig around a little and get my hands dirty. Well I must say that I wasn’t at first really impressed with what I saw, so it was back to Cubase land for moi! I found the audio editing to be “illogical” and some of the work flow to complexed.

Then Logic 9 came out and to be honest I wasn’t fussed at all with its arrival.

I mean, the feature list basically put it on par with the rest of the other DAWs. out there. However all was not as it seemed for lurking in the program lay some very cool new features/plugins just perfect for drum n bass production.

1. Amp Designer – Very cool plugin allowing you to mix and match 25 amps, 25 speaker cabinets and 3 mics you can place around the speaker cone. The sound of the amps are brilliant. All of them have there very own flavour and all very very useable.

The cabinets and mics sound great as well. Insert the Plugin on your bass channel and volia! You have instant access to a wide variety of sounds and textures at your disposal. I found the plugin perfect on my mids (reese bass) and awesome on my sub bass. I’ve yet to put it on my drum buss but I have all the confidence in the world that it would sound great.

2. Pedalboard – Here you have a collection of 30 stompboxes from all over the place! Fuzz, Delay, Chorus, Flanger, Treble, Wah, Overdrive and Boost. The pedals themselves sound wicked, alone or joined up together. The majority of them have a real analog sound to them. The developers over at Apple didn’t hold back on these ones. Even though we have the likes of IK Multimedia Amplitube and T-Racks and Peavey’s Revalver I do wish these plugins were available to everyone! Damn you Apple! In particular the chorus, phaser and flanger pedals sound best. Really lush sounding and warm. Quality all the way!

3. Convert to Sampler Track – I’m not really sure if Logic was listening to us drum n bass heads or not when they implemented this one but its just what the doctor ordered. Mucking about with Recycle and the EXS24 was down right CRAP! So I’m really glad they took the bull by the horns and did something about chopping up beats!

They really did a nice job of it too! Except they should have given you the option of having a multiple out EXS24 when you sliced up the audio track. This would have made more sense but hey, lets just cross this bridge first. This little feature makes chopping up old funk breaks just perfect for drum n bass or any other breakbeat orientated music. The EXS is a very capable sampler even if its a bit long in the tooth now! This feature alone is going to save you plenty of time! Trust me!

4. I wont go into detail about every new feature but some other worthy of mentioning are:

Bounce-in-place. I say FINALLY! EPIC WIN!

Flex time – Not bad at all.

Selective Track Import – very interesting.

Drum Replacer – Could be interesting

All in all the new Logic 9 is a nice surprise. Its not say, perfect but no DAW out there is. I still love the automation system in Logic and I personally still love the way it looks and lets not get me going about the awesomeness of Logic’s Space Designer Reverb and Delay Designer! In fact I would say that it has never ever looked and sounded so good! Plenty of top notch drum n bass producers cant be wrong! Now get over to the Apple store and check out the videos if you haven’t already. Definitely worth a look.

See you on the dancefloor.

dauntless

No Frills Locus Sydney

P.S For some great Q&As with big Drum n Bass artists or some general chit chat head over to sydneyfriction.com.

I regulary post and hang out there.

Peace

Howdy, I’ve got to make this drum n bass production workflow tips brief as I have 100 things to do today so I’ll just blast you with some cool bulletstyle points about how I’m getting down right now!

1. If you don’t have an idea when you sit down to right a tune, GET ONE! That’s right, go out there and start sampling or listen to some music etc.

2. Focus on getting all the elements of your tune together first! Don’t spend time on compression or effects or whatever. Get your musical elements down!

3. After you have all your bits booming/smashing up the place and your dancing around to your own tune like a mad person, start mixing down. You want to start mixing down after you have all your elements because when it comes to EQ or compression its all relative to whole track! For e.g. Why boost the snare at 200hz if the tune requires a tight little pokey snare? Listen first to the WHOLE tune then make the call. Same goes with compression etc. Don’t forget when your mixing down to leave a little headroom. I’m mixing my kick to around -12db. This seems to be working okay for me right now. Why -12db? Well I was originally mixing to -6db but I found out quickly I was running into the red too much. So now I leave a little room for my compression/eq/limiter.

4. I’ve also been spending some time making Kontakt instruments/banks/presets. I’ve found this to be so important when your writing because you have to work fast when inspiration strikes. Kontakt 3 is awesome for this as it has the cool quickload feature and a very good search function. I’ve also discovered Chicken Systems Translator Pro to help me with converting samples into Kontakt instruments. Very very handy indeed. Works great as well!

Well, only a quick 4 points on how to improve your drum n bass prodution but hopefully you got something out of it!
See you on the dancefloor.
Peace
Daunltess
No Frills Locus Crew Sydney

P.S. I would to hear your feedback/comments about how YOU work etc.

Howdy, every now and again I go through my old Future Music or Computer Music magazines and watch the masterclasses for a bit of inspiration or gain a little more knowledge. Now the majority of videos that they’ve brought out focus on the “house” music genre but there is still plenty of stuff you can learn from them. Besides that i’ve also found I’ve picked up new bits of information that i’ve missed in the past. Anyways, check out the videos and let me know what you think. I think Ian is a very talented producer and conveys what he is trying to teach very well. The videos are quite varied in that he goes over drums, arranging and remixing for radio etc.

In the studio with Ian Carey

There are also a few Ian Carey videos on Youtube where he talks about how he uses his favourite Sonnox plugins.
Enjoy

I keep getting asked all the time, what do I need to get started if I want to write Drum n Bass? The answer is never simple but I’ll try my best to explain to you some of the pros and cons of certain setups. There is probably one crucial factor if when your starting out and ask the same question all the time, are you using a Mac or a PC? This question has become important since Apple took over the reigns of Logic back at version 6 making the software available to Mac users exclusively. This meant that if you were a PC user and Logic was your sequencer of choice you either had to buy a Mac or put up with v5.5 on the PC for ever. Not a good situation of PC users you would agree. Some would argue a great move on Apple’s behalf but that’s another blog post. In the meantime whilst all that craziness was going down Steinberg (creates of the hugely Cubase) was getting taken over by Yamaha but unlike Apple, Yamaha decided to keep the dual platform sequencer the way it is and not divide the camps so to speak. So, if you got a Mac probably stick with a Mac and if you got a PC stick with Cubase. Now this is a very broad generalization here so don’t bite my head off.

So now that we have divided you into Logic users and Cubase users. Let us continue on. Oh, I’m going to stick with the main sequencers here so if you are using Sonar or Ableton please don’t send me hate mail and that you think I should die. I just stuck with what i believe are the main sequencers. Ableton and Sonar are both excellent music producing tools in there onright. Cubase just happens to be my sequencer of choice because i’ve used it for so many years. Infact  I started to use it way back when there was Cubase VST then Cubase SX etc.

Okay, so what next for making cutting edge classic drum n bass? Well, your probably going to have to get  a soft synth or two and here you most definitely spoilt for choices. To start with I would probably recommend a versatile synth like Rob Papen’s Albino 3 and the lovely sounding Arturia‘s minimoog. When it comes to sampling the choices narrower but the clear favourite here is Native Instruments Kontakt. Hands down Kontakt is a superb sampler and Kontakt 3 is no exception even if the filters are a bit on the naf side of things. I totally stay away from the Kontakt Player, I just don’t see the use for it especially if your using Kontakt already. Native Instruments have been leading the way in making some of the most breathtaking plugins for a long time now so do yourself a favour and check all their plugins out.

So there’s a few instruments there to get you going but what about equalizers and compressors? Well for years it was all about the Waves bundles. Then Waves came out with the SSL and API bundle and this catapulted them into “must have plugins” status. Things have changed somewhat now as major  companies have jumped on board and started to make plugins themselves Sony Oxford, SPL and Abbey Roads and Focusrite to name a few. The Sonnox Plugins are exceptionally brilliant! I really rate the Dynamics and EQ plugins. Other companies like Voxengo and Sonalksis produce a variety of plugins for all occasions so make sure you check them out, some are even for free! Like Span which I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs.

One more thing i should mention to you when concerning writing dnb. Don’t go to crazy with adding plugin after plugin to your plugins folder. Get to really know what each plugin does and how it works. Play around with them, automate them learn them inside out. It can take years to fully understand what each and every plugin does. Take the time and start slowly, drum n bass ain’t going nowhere. Believe me.

Peace

djdauntless

http://myspace.com/dauntlessdnb

http://sydneyfriction.com