Yoozer

What kind of samples? Percussion? Effects? Simply expand your collection beyond what's in the factory library. Even then, if the sound works well and you choose it for that reason instead of "lol I dunno are there other bassdrums than fl_kick_001.wav", why not use it? You can replace them by something else or try to roll your own. Just effects aren't going to make it completely unrecognizable or have such a far-ranging influence that they might not be fit for the genre anymore. I used a rather weak snaredrum; D16 Devastor turned it into a great underground drum 'n bass snare.

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/10/19/176209 They look pretty cool, though.

Good ones are offered in both flavors. As a sampler, Kontakt can do a lot more than NN-XT. The downside is that it's also more complicated. A whole lot of formats are offered in EXS24 (Logic) and Kontakt format, but not always in Reason's format. Big orchestral libraries generally work better on Kontakt because of the scripting and keyswitching. You uh, are aware that these things have knobs that are not just there for decoration, right?

bgc's comment about making mental notes is exactly how I learned synthesis. I'd add my recommendation to start with something relatively simple like Synth1 to mess with; Absynth has its GUI spread out over several separate screens and doing something in one screen may affect another. Then again, for this material synthesis is only partially helping. Absynth is a good example; there are several complex, long-drawn out evolving sounds in there which you get by using complex LFO shapes for modulation. Recording your own material is a good suggestion too. I've created oriental-sounding chromatic percussion by sampling a glass and a cardboard tube, then using microtonal scales (sadly enough I no longer have the result). Look at the third video here: "Psychoacoustic sampling". Ignore the technobabble; it's just mostly that. What you can see is that they draw from a variety of sources, and by souping it up using effects, you can get something really neat out of it. That's not so good - because it defeats the purpose of a forum. Plus, people with similar questions won't see your solutions that way, if you keep everything in a conversation via PMs. Just ask here - you've already got a thread for it, right?

It's not like we're still in 1983 where each synth has 32 presets and by the time Stock, Aitken and Waterman were done with it everyone knew them by heart and could puke 'm because they heard 'm so many times. A synthesizer's range of sounds is an ocean; presets are points to jump off from so you can get where you need to be faster. There's no difference between this bunch of settings or the next, except for the fact that one of 'm was included from the factory. As for those $15 for AAS Ultra-Analog: spend 'm. You'll be glad you did.

If the external input of this thing was supposed to fit, I'd have shot myself already. But yeah. http://www.studioelectronics.com/products_se1x.php

Yay! New toy! Which reminds me, I should take some pictures again, soon.

DLL files are the plugins. When a softsynth you've downloaded has only that and no nice setup.exe or something, you can simply copy the DLL file to your plugins folder, and you're done. The "sounds" are something different; "sound" is the wrong term. Rather, use the word "preset" or "patch" (on some hardware synths they're called "programs"). The name "preset" comes from organs; the name "patch" from modular synthesizers where you couldn't store anything in memory; you'd have to shoot a picture of the front panel or write down all the positions of the knobs and all the locations of the patch cables. When you have a plugin such as Synth1, there's no actual file that makes sound. A preset contains all the settings of the knobs, which is just a small list of nubmers. When you have a something like Kontakt, each preset consists of both the settings and a bunch of .wav files. Either of the two alone won't be of much use; you can have a whole stack of samples but the preset gives them the cohesion.

This is mainly for electronic music, but if you look at something like REFX Nexus, you see that they sell the thing itself; and sample libraries. By the time you've finished buying all of those - you've lost a lot of money. Conversely, if you would've bought something like Sylenth1 or better and learned programming, you would've probably nailed 3/4ths of those sounds. Furthermore: "Oh god I need this sound but have no idea how to make it" *buys plugin* *finds out only 10 presets are usable* *hunts for next plugin* I've seen people work exactly like that; they'd end up with 200 plugins (mostly downloaded, of course), and no way to use them to their full potential.

Argh. I mailed them, got a reply a few days later (they must've been swamped), and I thought Akoustik was included; but only Elektrik was confirmed. I told 'm I wanted to see the Scarbee Rhodes released as Kore pack. I hope that's going to happen...

Preset use isn't bad. It's just terribly expensive and tends to catch you with your pants down at exactly the wrong moment.

Like mentioned, why upgrade to 3 when 4 is out? Also, Akoustik Piano and Elektrik Piano are now included in the library.

The mastering chain in Reason is complicated. The complexity is hidden in a single Combinator with a handy list of presets, which is nice, but not clarifying. Because the Combinator can be reduced to a single rack strip in Reason, it's attractive to leave it closed and then pick a preset that suits you. This is similar with all-in-one mastering plugins like Izotope Ozone (which has a bewildering user interface). Because complexity is optional you don't actually know what happens when you zap through the presets - but more importantly, you don't know why that particular choice was made. Start with no mastering combinator at all. Put an acoustic drumloop in NN-XT - preferably something that hasn't seen any editing at all yet. Throw the M-Class compressor over it. Study what it does; systematically experiment with changing one value at a time. Try to map for yourself why it has an effect here or there but doesn't seem to do anything with anything else. Then, do the same with separate percussion instruments; what makes the snare drum splat, what makes the kick thump? Then, add the M-Class EQ after the compressor. See what happens; and try it before the compressor, too. By boosting or cutting part of the frequency it can influence the reaction of the compressor because most of the volume energy is in that range and you just cranked it down or up. The reason you should try to do this with an acoustic drumloop is so that nobody else with an EQ/comp/limiter has had the chance to ruin everything on beforehand. E.g. there's actually something to kick or inflate left.

Don't throw limiters or compressors over things. Just make them not clip in the first place. If it's too quiet, compressors are not the solution to the problem. Turn the volume of your speakers up.

You don't have to assume: http://www.computermusic.co.uk/page/computermusic?entry=subscribe_to_computer_music 3 months = $30. Single issue in a store is most likely around $15.

More expensive, more control: http://www.image-line.com/documents/grossbeat.html Works on a Mac, too: http://www.sugar-bytes.de/content/products/Effectrix/index.php Though the fact that you're not bound to a pattern is probably worth something.

And they're all completely useless. The X-Fi stuff is switched off for audio production. Besides, it wouldn't be of use anyway - whoever's listening to your work doesn't have the same gimmick switches. Make sure it sounds amazing on a regular speakerset. There's no black magic involved, and the EQ / stereo widening / "vitalizer" effect works on the regular mix, too. Harmony is right; it's not something you just smear on top of it like an improverizer effect.

http://music.hyperreal.org/dj/AVH/ Anything with direct drive (not belt drive). Better start practicing as much as possible, then. Also in terms of learning how to warm up the crowd; these people on the floor don't know you. Build up, break down, gradually develop in the time you are allowed to DJ.

may work too.Other than that isolating anything is like un-baking a cake back to its original ingredients. No. A wave editor is of much more use.

What I wouldn't give if you could force these people at gunpoint if necessary to adhere to a standard for these things, instead of seeing all of 'm implement the same idea in half-assed, slightly different ways. Call it the Preset Genome Project if you want to. As for Reaktor, I'm assuming that it simply takes a lot more time to get everything in place, especially since one of the big word-of-mouth selling points is the user library. djp: If you want physical models, check out http://co.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=userlibrary&type=0&ulbr=1&plview=detail&patchid=7742 if you don't have it already. A breath controller will come in handily.

Your MM8 can do the same. I'd say it's a good entry level board with enough sounds on board to keep you busy for a while; in order to record audio too, I'd also start looking at an audio interface. The MM comes with Cubase AI so that may be of use too. Check the goodies on the CD.

Why should it be an "either" situation? "Mainstream" misses the point. The ultimate underground music is played in the cellar of a club nobody goes to by a DJ nobody heard of. It's not a good definition, and it's most certainly not an excuse to have unpolished work accepted. Most pieces of music for older consoles are short and have a catchy hook - exactly what you'll find in mainstream. Most mainstream music has a slick production; nothing wrong with that. Most of the remixes are instrumental. That already takes 'm out of the mainstream, because mainstream instrumental music is generally very genre-specific (electro house, trance) or not mainstream enough (when was the last time you saw a drum 'n bass in the Billboard 100?).

For libraries, http://www.loopmasters.com offers a lot of material that's cheap and directly downloadable. http://resonantvibes.com/ has useful packages too. In modern tracks you usually no longer have the 808 or 909 snare drum, but an acoustic snaredrum that's been processed. Processing includes a chain of effects; distortion, compression, equalization. Processing may also include layering; if you use an EQ to remove all the high frequencies of a traditional TR-909 snare and layer it with an acoustic snaredrum where the lower frequencies are removed, you can get a completely new sound. For drum and bass, what helps is to take a classic breakbeat (like the ) and to chop it in parts. The waveform is shown here: http://earz-mag.com/em/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/amen-break-wavelength.jpgAs you can see there are several "peaks" where the drum hits. Essentially, you could consider it as a bunch of isosceles triangles on their sides. You put a marker at the base of the triangle. The "end" of the sound is defined by the triangle's tip. The trick is to replace the instruments with something else. You could do this by simply silencing the original and replacing it with another kick drum, or you could attempt to map the "groove" - the placement of each triangle's base in time - to a step sequencer. This doesn't always work as intended. For instance, a drum and bass loop can be defined on a 16-step sequencer as follows: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 kick x x snare x x hihat x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x However, if you do it like this, it sounds very static. The original groove doesn't exactly divide everything in 16 steps for the hihats; the pair of steps (1 and 2) are closer together, with 1 starting at the right position, but 2 starting earlier, which gives you a "chickah" effect instead of a "chick chick" (two distinct hihat samples). The original breakbeat generally sounds good because all drum sounds "bleed" into eachother. This makes it sound like a whole, instead of separate tracks and separate samples that don't all come from the same drum kit. A drum kit is recorded by putting separate microphones - sometimes 2! - per drum. However, when you hit the snare drum, the hihat and kick drum mics are so close by that they just can't help picking up that hihat sound. Furthermore, the room reverberates, while electronic drum sounds are very "dry" since there's no reverb in an electronic circuit. The holy grail is to create a realistic sound with samples. This means that you should try to avoid tight quantizing (by not constricting the samples to 16 steps), add variation (a drum is never played the same, twice), add groove (by varying volume and slightly varying timing), add bleeding (ambient effects) and use good samples (several recordings per drum sound even though they are at the same volume). For (tribal) house, the cheapest trick in the book is simply to record a fragment of Brazilian samba from a world music radio station, the drum-heavy kind you hear at their carnivals - and to remove the low frequencies while layering it over purely electronic percussion. This adds groove to the electronic percussion while retaining the force in the kick and snare, and it's been used countless of times - and still works! Youtube's got some great tutorials on drum and bass percussion. You'll find that a lot of people omit the fact that they spend hours in processing the kick and snare with effects.

The shape of the mouse assumes that your hand is completely symmetrical. The keyboard assumes that your fingers are going to get longer from thumb to pinky. Ergonomic keyboards don't look that cool, though.