I want to get into electro *LOOKS AT PROTOTYPERAPTOR, BLIND, OTHER ELECTRO ARTISTS*

[BlackPanther]

Hmm if you use a 3rd party sidechain compressor, how do you route it through the kick? With the native plugins it's easy because all you do is set the input number on the UI

[Nabeel Ansari]

i do i know but as i said its not as option based in terms comparing to ableton.

You said peak controller was not comparable to Ableton, but have you tried the FL limiter?

[Yoozer]

Go buy this book. That'll give you a far better idea of what to do than to pick up buzzwords like sidechaining or loudness or mastering without having any idea what you want to do in the first place.

http://www.samplemagic.com/products/prod_b1_secretshousemusic.html

[BlackPanther]

Hmmm not a bad idea. I might have to pick that up with my next check. I might even go into guitar center and go barns and nobel style and just read a book while I'm in there xD. Thanks for showin me that Yoozer. Although I do think I have an idea of what I want to do, there's nothin like reading a book to help you with what you want to do with pinpoint accuracy.

[SonicThHedgog]

You said peak controller was not comparable to Ableton, but have you tried the FL limiter?

i have, its a good techneic, but i would rather use the peak controller, it simplifys work flow for me.

Eh, FL Studio works wonders and sidechaining has never been easier. I heard ableton was a good daw for dj'ing and stuff so when I finally decide to get into that area, I'll look into it.

Ableton is good for DJing but its really concentrated in producing, especially ableton suite version... which is only ableton live with vsts i think.

[Nabeel Ansari]

i have, its a good techneic, but i would rather use the peak controller, it simplifys work flow for me.

Are you serious? Peak controlling is not even side chaining!

The FL Limiter is an actual compressor that does what side chaining is supposed to do.

It also sounds a lot more professional and "elegant" as I recall Zircon saying in his FL Studio Sidechain tutorial.

Also, I find the peak controller harder, I would much rather just route the mixer track into another and put a limiter on that and set up the sidechain from there. There's also more control (actual compression controls like threshold and ratio)

[Cerrax]

I need to learn side chaining. It's very useful in many genres.

[BlackPanther]

Well this is the culmination of the time I put in since starting this post, up until this morning when I was doin final tweaks. There was a lot of trail and error a lot of mixes just sucked ass xD. Still workin on gettin the ear to notice the subtleties. All in all I think this turned out pretty good though.

Move your body(BlackPanther Remix)

[tweex]

Well this is the culmination of the time I put in since starting this post, up until this morning when I was doin final tweaks. There was a lot of trail and error a lot of mixes just sucked ass xD. Still workin on gettin the ear to notice the subtleties. All in all I think this turned out pretty good though.

Move your body(BlackPanther Remix)

That's pretty phat, Rashad! I'm dancin' in my seat.

[BlackPanther]

Wow, considerin my nubness, hearin that come from you after not conversing for a good while, that's quite an honor thanks Brian! I really do appreciate that =).

[DarkSim]

I would like to see some tips on getting a good, full bass sound and mixing it in

Was just messing around today using Sylenth Polar Virus trying to get a rasping, twisting bass sound using a simple square/saw bass with 1 voice, and I threw some modulation onto it. It sounded amazing, try it

[BlackPanther]

Is this a vst or somethin I can use with FL Studio? Well from the sound of it I could try this with some of the vsts I already have I'll give it a shot. Also check out my track so see if what I did works lol xD.

[DarkSim]

Yeah it was just a simple bass synth, so you could probably do it with any synth, and I used Glitch to play about with some modulation settings on it, although I'm sure there's probably an easier way to modulate stuff.

I'd love to check out your track, but I'm stuck on a boat and I get this message when I try to listen to anything:

Banned extension: .mp3

You are seeing this error because what you attempted to access appears to contain, or is labelled as containing, material that has been deemed inappropriate.

You see that? Your mix must be too inappropriate for my delicate ears

[Yoozer]

Is this a vst or somethin

http://www.lennardigital.com/modules/sylenth1/

but I'm stuck on a boat

Mirrored for your pleasure: http://www.theheartcore.com/music/bpmyb.psd

Right-click, save as, rename the file from .psd to .mp3.

[BlackPanther]

I'm definitely glad we got Yoozer around here, Mr. Helpful xD.

[SonicThHedgog]

Are you serious? Peak controlling is not even side chaining!

The FL Limiter is an actual compressor that does what side chaining is supposed to do.

It also sounds a lot more professional and "elegant" as I recall Zircon saying in his FL Studio Sidechain tutorial.

Also, I find the peak controller harder, I would much rather just route the mixer track into another and put a limiter on that and set up the sidechain from there. There's also more control (actual compression controls like threshold and ratio)

indeed its technically not sidechaining, but effect wise yes, and it easyer to controll the effect, but its still winds down to preference.

i find using the compressor time consuming but thats just me, but other then that i use ableton's compressor for sidechaining, i find it more easy when routing and less confusing then fl's

in my opinion tho.

^

If you want to get into electro might i recommend the Roland jp 8080 (RACK)

http://cgi.ebay.com/Roland-JP-8080-Rack-Mount-Synthesizer-Analog-Modeling_W0QQitemZ230511043973QQcategoryZ38071QQcmdZViewItem

, its a good synth and nice tone, usless vocoder tho. and Sytrus in fl is a beastly synth you will love it when you figer out its confusing as ***** look lolol

[DarkSim]

Yoozer, thank you kindly!

OK so now I've had chance to listen (on repeat for 45 mins), I'm going to give an extended critique on the song, as Yoozer's gone to the trouble of mirroring it for me. Bear in mind that while I like the song, I'm being extra critical because I'm trying to help you improve, BP

With that in mind, let's begin!

It starts off with a nice beat, I was half expecting Gimme All Your Lovin' by ZZ Top after that, but then the electro elements come in and the song gets going. I really like the zappy electro-toms that come in, and that right-panned delayed synth is very nice, clearly heard all the way through due to its stereo position, despite being pretty quiet. Gotta say, I'm not a fan of the vocals in this track, the voice is kinda annoying, and the lyrics are so basic they don't do anything for me. About the only bit I like is the "Whoooooooaaaaaaaaa" part, but then a synth could replace the voice there and it probably wouldn't detract too much from the song. It might do the track good to layer the vocals a bit more, but I'll concentrate on the actual music cos it's not like you sung the song yourself.

The first build comes in at 0:38, and that's really not much of a build either. If you listen to most of bLiNd's stuff, there's barely any point in the song where there isn't some sort of build filling out the frequency spectrum. Look at your spectrum on the master channel, and find holes that need filling, then slap some white noise in there. This has double an effect, firstly, it fills out the soundscape, giving the track a more epic feel, and secondly you can get away without a kick drum for a while, thus making the drop bigger. See Golbez 'n' Goblins for an example of this style intro. Skipping ahead, you do use this technique later in the song at 2:51, but it feels weak there. You need to be building up and fading out a lot more, unless you're in the main groove of the song. A really nice plugin is a "Fade to Grey". This will slowly turn whatever noise you have into white noise. I like to use a build leading into a fade to grey, and then automate it so that the "greyness" lasts as long as I want it to (usually for the breakdown period). Also sidechain that noise. At the end of Golbez 'n' Goblins, bLiNd uses fade to grey (probably) for the last 10 seconds or so, but you can use this to naturally lead in to a fading out for a breakdown section such at that at 2:51. There's probably a bit of greyness in Dance Nation too, but just listen to the amount of white noise there is in the background of Golbez 'n' Goblins, Dance Nation and Chemixtrixx. It's actually surprising.

All in all, good intro up to 0:45. The bassline's really the star in this mix, and when that comes in at 45 seconds it really gets going. Absolutely love the sound, but I think it could definitely be improved by making it sound much dirtier and then adding more sidechain compression. I find you can get away with a much more outrageous sound if you're sidechaining, because the ears get a break every beat. For example, a hoover synth can sound horrible if you play it continuously, but drop it a couple of octaves and add a sidechain, and it can sound like a really dirty bassline. Try adding light distortion or modulation to the bass and then increasing the sidechain compression on it. I've been listening to Chemixtrixx loads the past few days and I'm thinking you could have a bassline similar to that. Also, when sidechaining, don't have a hard knee on the compressor - use a smooth one (increase dB value). Then play with the threshold until you get something that sounds right.

I should mention at this point that I think you could also get away with turning up the master volume a little, I had to turn up my headphones to get the volume to match other OCR songs. Just a little, mind you.

Moving on! Again it's a pretty short build (6 seconds or so) leading into the the section from 1 minute onwards. This part's good, I really like the high harmonising synth. You've used it pretty sparingly which I think is a good decision. totally awesome 6 seconds from 1:30 where you twist and wind down that bass (what do you use to do that, out of interest? Is it Glitch with TapeStop and a slow wind down with quick wind-up?). Nice filtering and white noise, I just think it needs to be more energetic there. More volume and more sidechaining on the white noise and bass I think would help.

Good energetic verse up until 2:06, more nice synth variations. It's round about now I'm wondering where the snare has gone, you should try and turn it up a bit as it seems to be lost in there somewhere, despite being fine in the intro.

The breakdown, like I said, lacks white noise (or at least the volume of it, cos there's some sort of LFO synthy thing going on in the background, I just can't hear it too well). The final drop needs to be huge as well to let the listener know the song's reaching its climax. Listen to the build/drop in White Skies (4:14-4:41) or Dance Nation (4:14-4:44) for examples. When it hits back into the final chorus at 3:50, that needs to get everyone on the dancefloor going MENTAL. Some nice vocal panning towards the end - this could be done earlier as well to make the vocals a bit more lively. Maybe add a subtle synth in line with the vocals in the final chorus to emphasise them. That final chorus needs to go out with a bang, but as it is, I can only hear the vocal panning that's different from the first time it was played back at 1 minute. Raise it an octave? More sidechain? Lose the bass a couple of bars before it comes in? Add another snare layer? Not sure really, it's something I struggle with as well. But there are a number of things to try there.

I'd also have a bit more of an outro to make it more DJ friendly.

So, there's my essay on the subject. Please take it all with a pinch of salt, as I can't exactly offer you any of my work that's any better! I'm still a newbie myself but am trying to assimilate as much knowhow off here as I can. Hopefully I have been of some help!

[DarkSim]

Apologies for the double post, but it's far enough apart I think. Just wanted to post an Electro-style tune I've been working on for a couple of days, trying out some of the ideas and points raised in this thread. It's a cover of an old

I've wanted to do for ooooh 15 years or so, and I thought it'd be a perfect candidate for some messing around with new techniques.

You can find my version here.

That bass sound is just a single square wave and a single sine wave with a tiny bit of modulation around 230Hz. You should also be able to hear the fade to greys after each build, I've tried to keep as few channels as possible so that everything can be heard easily. I forgot to mention that effects are really important too, to keep a monotonous beat interesting. Every 4-8 bars, have some sort of weird effect in there (see also: Electrodispenser) to mix it up a bit. I was playing with my synth VST and made a weird sound that's a bit like a monkey jumping on some hot vinyl, so I decided to use it.

As an aside, I think djp posted a question on facebook a while back asking "what is 'Electro' to you?", and for me this would be exactly it - oldskool sounding synths with a fresh take on the music.

Sadly cracktros aren't accepted on OCR though so I won't be doing anything else to it unless I want to experiment some more. Apologies if there are any duff notes, it may not be 100% correct... I'll call it 'artistic interpretation' if there are

[BlackPanther]

Yeah I saw that and just forgot to respond. Thank you for the lengthy review I definitely appreciate it. I will definitely look into a lot that stuff although I disagreed with some of the other things like your issues with my builds, and drops. Builds and drops for house music I feel really doesn't have to be that elaborate or intense. I mean you do want some sort of buildup but I mean you don't want people hangin in the air for the beat to drop for it to come in full force. You generally want to keep the people moving unless this was meant to be some sort of epic melodic all out house song for the most part, all house music I've heard had builds and drops that were on the same level as mine.

Oh and the white noise thing. I have a little bit of noise, but I only wanted to add a subtle amount hence the "little bit of noise" lol. Any more and then there just woulda been too much and you could hear it I think it should be not heard but just present in the mix which I thought I did fairly decently =/.

Well those were the only disagreements I didn't really have a problem with anything else though. Oh and about that bass that I pitched down for the buildup to the verse section, it was just an 3xosc and I did a few tweaks to it and I just threw it into the mix. I have a problem with doing pitch bends with non-native vsts so to make it easier I used a native one so it's nothin special lol.

But yeah thanks again DarkSim. I heard your song and I'll give my thoughts in a pm or somethin just depends where I'm at when I get ready to do so xD.

[PrototypeRaptor]

and I've been patiently waiting for some video tips from PrototypeRaptor for some more help xD.

alright, I've tried to do this several ways, but I can't quite do it justice.

so what I'm going to do is make a few videos of me actually doing a remix so I can kinda tell you what I'm thinking through the process - that way I don't mess up and tell you to do something stupid... or to do what I do

so what I'm going to ask is what track you'd like me to work on a remix of for "learning purposes."

also, blackpanther, I think your track has the actual composition correct, but the production is holding it back.

your kick/bass/snare are very muddy - there isn't enough pop to make the speakers, well, pop.

some more aggressive compression on the bass specifically would fix that. or, you could layer in a higher "click" bass track to make the attack more obvious.

I'll recommend a sort of magic plugin as well - Refined Audiometrics CLAS.

Go look it up, throw it on your kick, snare, and drum bus.

Listen to the drums crack like nobody's business.

[BlackPanther]

If you're gonna do that, I'm gonna throw one out there - Gradius stage 6

And about my remix; Thanks for the feedback obviously my compression skills suck and I still may not be fully understanding it so if you could talk about that I would definitely love that. I'm kinda confused as to what aspect of bass were you talkin about when you mentioned the layering with a "click" bass track. Did you mean the kick drum or the bass instrument or both? And I'm absolutely lost on how to get that plugin you recommended xD.