3
3. Advanced
I know everything :v) - what next?
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The essential thing to remember when you're at this stage is that
everything must be professionally done, whether it's sampling, tracking, and
use of effects, absolutely everything must be at top quality. Take your time
over your tracks, and make sure that they are as perfect as you can get them.
Vocals
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Chances are that some time or other you are going to want to incorporate
some sort of vocals into your music. This can be very hard, and there are
two important things to remember: the vocalist, and the words. Both should
be of equal importance in your mind. A good vocalist singing crap words
sounds unprofessional, the same goes for a crap vocalist singing great words.
Few people can sing well, and even fewer can write respectable songs.
Your best chance of getting good vocals is to find someone who is willing
and able to write some lyrics for you, and then hire a studio and a vocalist
for a couple of hours. The main reason for hiring a studio is that it'll
probably have VERY expensive and VERY nice microphones. They'll know all
about using them and have the best environment to record in. Remember that
you'll probably want to take a recording of your tune with you so the
vocalist will have something to sing to! You can then sample the vocals and
incorporate them into your tune. Obviously you'll have to check that the
studio has a sampler that can save onto disks that you can use. The actual
sample format isn't too important as there are plenty of converters around.
An alternative method would be to find out if the studio has a CD-
Recorder. You can then record the vocals direct to CD and rip or sample them
at your leisure. The same goes if you have a DAT machine, you could record
to DAT in the studio and then sample the vocals when you want.
Using vocal samples does have a number of drawbacks. One, your modules
will instantly increase in size. We’re not talking a few hundred KB here,
more like a good few megabytes, depending on the amount of vocals used.
Another problem is one of performance. Although this may not bother you.
If you’re playing a song to an audience and there’s no-one singing it, the
performance will look quite strange!
Effects
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EQ
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Get Your Frequencies Sorted Out - by XRQ
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Imagine the following: you are listening to some music, every instrument
has the same volume throughout the frequencies (from 50Hz up to 20kHz). The
result would be a noise that one could hardly call "music", and, on the other
hand, it wouldn't be possible to differ the instruments, all melodies would
be melted into "peeping, shouting, roaring mass". Therefore, the instruments
should be separated by frequencies. I'll make an example.
Let's say that we're planning to have some vocals and let's say that that
particular vocal sounds best if we let all frequencies near 8kHz out on a
speaker and suppress all other frequencies a bit. So, we've situated vocals
on 8kHz. If we wanted to put a guitar next to the vocals we should force some
other frequency for it - 6kHz e.g., and so on.
Every instrument will have its own "major" ("capital") frequency, they
will all be "frequent neighbours" ("neighbours by frequency"), there must be
no frequency occupied by two instruments.
Even if a situation occurs where two of them MUST be on same frequency,
make a compromise,
put one a bit higher than the other and kick them apart in panorama (left and
right instruments) or make one of them more leading and push the other on
some insane frequency (very low or very high or which would be an
"uninhabited" one). This is extremely important. It'll sound better. You'll
experience a difference which you will not believe.
This is to be done in some sample editor by EQ settings or Parametric EQ's
or...
You know what I mean, I've given you the goal, but the choice of a tool is
yours.
EQ - in Theory and in Practice - by DNATrance
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EQ is very important to make individual sounds in a mix fit together like
one big happy family. Usually you have EQ on each channel of a professional
mixer or you can use your favourite sample editor to EQ your samples to go
into a tracker or sampler.
Basically, an EQ is a filter which has the following characteristics:
Frequency : Low frequencies are bass, high are treble.
Gain : The amount of volume you wish to cut or boost the frequency
by.
Q(Resonance) : The bandwidth (amount the filter spreads out from the centre
frequency both up and down equally)
A low or high pass filter is the same, only the frequencies above or below
the frequency of cut or boost are lost as well.
There are usually the following on an EQ:
Low cut off The lowest frequency of your sound which gets past.
Low gain How much you want to cut or boost your bass frequencies.
Low frequency At which frequency you wish to boost your lows.
Mid gain The amount you want to cut or boost your mid frequencies.
Mid frequency At which frequency you wish to boost your mid frequencies.
Mid Q The bandwidth at which you wish to boost your mid frequencies
(can also be called resonance).
High gain How much you wish to cut or boost your highs.
High frequency At which frequency you wish to boost your highs.
High cut off The highest frequency of your sound which gets past.
Depending on the EQ, you may not get all of these features. For example,
the low frequency may be pre-set, or you may not have a mid control at all,
like a conventional hi-fi with only pre-set frequency on bass and treble
(high) with only gain controls.
Possibly the best is a parametric equaliser which has many filters to
alter the characteristics of the sound.
Anyway, what you have to do to get your mix sounding professional is to EQ
sounds as a mix. So if you have a bass and a kick drum, boost them at
separate frequencies to make them fit together. You may wish (and is
advisable) to lower the volume (gain) before EQing.
A bad habit of trackers is sometimes to make the kick drum too loud. This
is because the other sounds in the mix have far too much bass in them, and
all the sounds except the actual bass and kick drum, should not have a lot of
bass in them. It might sound like nothing. Just one instrument with bass in
it, but when you add the rest of the mix with toms, etc. it can add up to
make a 'mushy' mix.
If you don't have a mixing desk, don't worry. If you use hard disk
recording, you may be at an advantage, because when you apply EQ to a section
of a sequence, you can usually 'see' which parts the EQ is effecting.
Although, your ears are the final judges - the most important tip I can give
you.
You may like to turn the gain up full and play with the frequency to hear
or 'feel' where the resonance of the sound is more easily, then turn down the
gain to a lower setting. Remember that 3dB doubles the gain, and 6dB is much
louder, because it works on a logarithmic scale, depending on the type of
scale on your EQ (it may be linear which has much less of a steep curve)
EQing the high hats so that it's only the high you can hear might sound
like a good idea, but try moving the frequency down a little and you might be
surprised at how much less tinnier they sound, and have more of a tuned
sound.
Going commercial
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Releasing commercially when you use a tracker is nigh on impossible, due
to the lack of respect trackers have from 'proper' musicians. There have
been, and will be, a lucky few who have done it. Names that I know of are
Bjorn Lynne (Dr. Awesome), Dex + Jonesey, Eric Giesen (Sidewinder), Vivid,
Ganja Man, Holy Ghost, Oona, Assign, Blue Adonis, Purple Motion, Mark Knight
(The Dark Knight), Allister Brimble.
There are two ways of getting paid for your music. Selling it
commercially, and/or getting it used in computer games. Tracked music still
plays an important role in games, as unlike CD Audio it can be altered while
it is being played. This allows for context sensitive music, where the music
changes to suit the action on screen. Even MIDI files cannot easily be used
in this way.
The main problem with getting your music released is the output format.
Here's a short table to determine whether or not you'll have this problem.
Soundcard quality DAT machine CD-Writer Problem?
----------------- ----------- --------- --------
Good, with digital Yes Yes No
output
Good, with digital Yes No No
output
Good, with digital No Yes No
output
Good, with digital No No Yes
output
Bad, no digital Yes Yes No
output
Bad, no digital Yes No Yes
output
Bad, no digital No Yes No
output
Bad, no digital No No Yes
output
Basically, as long as you have a CD-Writer or a good quality digital
output and DAT machine, you won't have a problem getting a good quality
recording. Which means you'll be able to produce good quality demos without
the need to hire a professional (!) studio or mastering company.
Something else to consider when you're going professional is the quality
of your samples. The number of times I've heard a tune good enough to be
released that has been spoiled by bad samples is ridiculous. Drums are
generally the culprits, especially those with high frequencies in them.
Synthetic hi-hats and cymbals pitched up too far lose their distinctive
sound, and get changed back into what they really are – noise. Don't settle
for anything less than CD-Quality, unless you specifically want that "lo-fi"
sound.
Try not to overdrive samples simply to increase their volume. This can
result in a loss in quality as the sample loses definition. Instead, reduce
the volume of the rest of the samples being used, and up the playback volume
on your sound system.
Production of Audio CDs
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Audio CDs are one of the most popular formats for the production of high-
quality demos. Although the initial outlay for a CD-Recorder is quite a
large amount, one should last for a good number of years if it's only used
for the production of CDs - and not for general use as a CD-ROM drive.
Sampling
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