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This next lesson is on music production. It will help you record
your own sounds and give you an insight into modern music-making software.
This module is intended to give you a great grounding for recording your musical ideas and developing
them using professional production techniques. Whether you just want to build samples
for your live performance or write a complete song from scratch,
these lessons will take you through the necessary skills needed.
Alongside the lessons there's a glossary to help you with some of the unknown jargon you'll hear and
some useful info to refer to when recording and mixing.
When picking a space, you can sometimes be limited to a room in your house,
so padding and sound deflectors are needed to flatten the room.
Especially, if it's a very square room with flat hard walls.
If you are lucky enough to have an irregular shaped room with soft furnishings about the place
with plenty of wood in the structure then minimum proofing is needed.
Do experiment with recording in all of the rooms of the building you are in,
as you can get great natural reverb effects, i.e. the bathroom for vocals,
to give them a resonating sound and hallways to get slap-back effects.
It goes without saying that a desk and a comfy chair is a must.
You need a hardware interface with mic line inputs and outputs.
The number of inputs is up to you. How many instruments do you want to record at one time?
You should have MIDI in and outs, phantom power capabilities and sample rates
from 44.1 kHz to 96 kHz and 24 bit processing.
Monitors or speakers that can either be active or passive.
There is little differences in sound when you invest good money into the speakers,
but the budget end of the market can mean going for a second-hand pair of passive speakers
and an amp, as the fashionable active variety can have poor amp-drivers at low prices.
You need microphones, which are covered in the next lesson,
with XLR leads and mike stands, a pop shield is useful too for vocalists.
Headphones are needed for yourself, but if you are recording more than one performer at one time,
then you are going to need more headphones and a headphone-distribution amp with multi outs.
A MIDI keyboard and MIDI lead useful for playing in lines and triggering samples.
A DI box is useful, these are generally used on stage to lift the signal of an instrument,
but are also useful in the studio to lift the grounding
of an instrument that has a buzzing or has an unwanted hum.
A portable hard-disc recorder with mike can be useful for field recordings.
And a producer's best friend - fabric tape, also known as gaffer tape, or duck tape,
great for taping down cables and for strapping microphones in difficult places.
You can keep expanding on these with more equipment like vintage analog hardware,
new-age MIDI controllers and output compressors, but the forementioned
is all you really need to start recording your own sounds.
Something I didn't account for when I first started building my studio was the amount of cables I needed.
Here are the most common for audio-connectivity:
the MIDI is used for in and out connections between your hardware interface and your MIDI instruments.
Mono-jack is just a tip and a sleeve for mono signal,
which is used for speaker-cables and countless instruments, such as electric guitar,
electric bass, electric keyboard and violins with pick-ups.
Stereo-jack has a tip, ring and sleeve and is used in things like headphones
and some instruments and effects pedals that have stereo outs.
XLRs are also used for loud speakers, and they are better then jacks, because
they balance the signal sent to the speakers, giving you truer sonic image.
They are also used for most microphones as they can carry phantom power
to power the active circuit and also click into the socket, so they can't be yanked out.
Audio phono cables are used for most old school equipment,
like turntables, Hi-Fi's and tape decks and are still used today for TV-consoles and portable recorders.
If you can use a separate room for your recording and set up your recording equipment in another room,
then that will be useful for the less unwanted noise on your recording,
but you can record in the same room with as your computer,
but try to shield off the players with acoustic shields,
things like sofas, mattresses and duvets to minimize the noise.
When setting up your monitors, keep them away from the corners of the room,
as the reflection will distort the stereo effect.
There are all sorts of microphones out there, and they each have a different purpose.
They all have their own polar pattern, which is due to the shape of the capsule,
the kind of transducer sensor has, and to some extent the external casing.
This means that microphones have different directional responses from its centre axis.
There are two types of microphone placement: close miking and ambient miking, also known as distance miking.
If you want an intimate sound, where you can hear every detail of the instrument, you need to close mike it.
But if you are looking to pick up the sound of the room and many instruments
with one microphone, then you need to set up an ambient mike.
Using the right mike for the job is important. When miking up a guitar,
there's different options you have to get different colours and tones.
With a neck placement you get a clear and bright sound of the strings,
but you do lose some of the warmth in the body of the guitar.
Some engineers favor placing the mike directly over the hole,
as you do get the sound of the fingers hitting the strings and get all the punch from the sound hole.
That's good for rhythm guitar, but for lead guitar the body gives off a lot more resonance
and this can be picked up by placing the mike at the rear, just off of the
face of the body. Also using a combination of these can get great effects.
It’s good to use two mikes for this instrument: a large diaphragm-condenser mike just off at the bridge
to pick up the low frequencies and a pencil-condenser mike placed
by the fretboard to get the higher percussive sounds.
Vocals need a microphone with a large diaphragm. Ribbon microphones are favored by many producers,
as they are powered by a valve, which adds warmth to the sound, but good condenser mike can also get good results.
A pop shield is handy to stop the breath popping in the mike
but a good alternative is some thin foam strapped to the microphone.
When miking an amp you can use either a condenser microphone
for getting a good low frequency response, or a dynamic cardioid mike to get a strong mid-to-high response.
Placement can make a big difference - directly in front of the cone will give
more punch and of an angle we give a thin and less attacking sound.
Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page was famous for distance-recording
his guitar amps in a corridor, giving them a more epic resonant sound.
A drum can be recorded in many ways and experimentation is good when trying to capture the skin sound.
It's good to place the condenser just off the rim at an angle,
but when miking a drum-kit you will need specialized mikes for the kick, snare, high-hat and cymbals.
And information on placement can be found on many web sites.
I'm planning to make a song using my own sounds,
so my first task will be to gather the samples I'm going to use for my
drum-machines and sampler. You can start composing your tune any way you want.
Some people start with drums, some with vocal samples,
but for this example I'm going to build my track around a guitar riff.
Once you set your microphones in position and plug them into your hardware interface using the appropriate lead,
you need to check if the mike needs phantom power. Some microphones won't need phantom power;
my condenser mike on the other hand does, so I'm switching it on with the volume down.
Create an audio channel and name it, in this case I'm starting with a guitar riff,
so I'm going to name it "Guitar". Open preferences to make sure your software is picking up your hardware.
A good standard sample rate is 48 000, and we are going to set
the buffer speed quite low, as I want minimum latency - 256 should do.
On the newly made channel make sure the input and output is set correctly.
You'll need to check the level. Some hardware interfaces have a level monitor,
but otherwise you can switch on the monitor button in Ableton,
making sure the volume is down to avoid feedback. And use the level-meter to check the level.
For close-up miking you are looking for the largest signal without it going into the red, or it will distort.
Some recording artists like to use this distortion to their advantage,
but to gain the largest amount of control it's good to apply the distortion afterwards.
Otherwise there is no going back if it's on the original recording.
The same applies to distance recording, but it doesn't need to be as close to the peak as close up recording.
It's good to do a test recording before you do it for real, to check that things sound how you want.
There might be a buzzing lead or a hum from somewhere, believe me,
it's very annoying to discover this after you've done the best take ever.
I'm going to be playing along with the click track for my guitar sample, so as in time.
I'm using the headphones to listen to the click so it doesn't bleed
on to the recording. I've set the tempo now; it's time to record.
Once you are happy with it, save your work. I generally build my song in the same session
as I've gathered my samples, but you can do it in two separate sessions to keep it tidy.
Now I'm going to sample some drum hits for my drum-machine.
Same process as before, but this time we don't have to worry about playing in time,
as these are individual hits that are going to be loaded into the drum machine later.
You can use any objects to make a sound; I'm going to use
a selection of cardboard boxes and paper to make my drum-hits.
Once you've finished recording you need to edit them.
Trim them at the beginning and the end and normalizing them.
Make sure that you label clearly so you can find them later.
There are many good presets to most synths, but to have some control over your synths,
some knowledge of its working is essential to make it interesting and original.
I'm using Reason's Subtractor to show you the controls of a basic subtractive synthesizer,
but the lessons can be applied to any subtractive synth on the market.
The sound is generated on the subtractive synth by the oscillator.
It generates one of many waveforms with different timbres.
Check useful info for the different kinds.
I've written a few notes and I'm going to choose a saw-tooth way to take you through the workings.
Here you can adjust the phase, tuning and switch between the octaves.
The phase control can give a different timbre to the sound.
Clicking here multiplies the wave and offsets it with the original to create a new wave.
Clicking here subtracts the wave from itself and offsets it to creates
another new sound. You also see there is a second oscillator underneath.
Adding another waveform to the mix means the FM and ring modulation controls come into play.
Adding frequency modulation means that the second oscillator
modulates the first oscillator giving it more movement.
The ring modulator adds the two waves together, creating again another new sound.
Turning the mix control will bring in a new modulated sound which can vary
from a smooth to a jarring dissonant sound. You can also add noise to the mix,
which adds grit, and distortion-like quality to the sound.
Looking at the filter - it has a frequency control and a resonance control.
Switching between these different types: notch, high pass, band pass and low pass.
You can hear it can cut and boost specific frequency ranges in a smooth and dramatic way.
A KBD ***, if turned up, makes the filter frequency open the higher the notes you can play on the keyboard.
The filter envelope controls the ADSR of the filter and it's great to
slow down the impact of the filter and create some really squelchy effects.
The button above the amount control is used to invert the ADSR envelope
that you've set to give the reverse of the shape instantly. The amp envelope
works the same way as the filter, but affects the amplitude of the notes.
To give even more movement to the sound, there is an LFO,
which uses its own wave shapes which can fluctuate the pitch,
frequency filter, frequency modulation, phase and the mix between the two generated sounds.
This can sync with the tempo or run free in its own time.
There are some expression tools too, which you can find on the right of the device.
You can change the way the filter frequency and the resonance
reacts to how hard you play the note by turning these knobs down.
You can also change the polyphonic value here to set how many notes can be played at one time.
The portamento *** makes the note slide into the next, like this.
Drum machines can produce beats using different sound sources.
Some use oscillators to create a sine wave for the kick and white noise for the snare.
And some use audio samples to resemble the sound of a drum kit.
In Ableton's Live there is a device called impulse which
emulates the old 808 and 909 drum machines among many others.
To show you the workings though I'm going to use
Reason's Kong drum machine as it shows the workings much more clearly.
For electronic kits it uses an analog-modeling module
and you can add effects to each hit to create texture and space.
As with synths you can control the ADSR for a sound,
and as with the original drum machines from 30 years ago
you can change the pitch and tone to give more authenticity.
Looking at sample-based drum machines, I'm going to load in samples of the
recorded earlier cardboard boxes and paper,
and the options you have to control each hit are similar to the synth-based drum machines,
but you are also able to layer up the sounds on one hit, and assign velocity parameters.
So, a gentle hit can have one texture and a louder hit will trigger a different sound and texture.
There are many uses for a sampler: as a drum machine, a lead instrument or just as a looper.
You can use tones from likely sources such as a voice, wind instrument, organs,
but also unlikely sources, such as washing machines, creaky doors and industrial sounds.
What's great is that you can layer all these sounds to create a whole
new instrument. I'm using Reason's NN-XT sampler for this example.
The first step is to load your chosen samples into the sampler.
I'm going to use some sounds that I have prepared earlier.
Some samplers will automatically assign the sounds across the keyboard,
but generally you need to set it by hand.
Moving the play mode you can set it to play just once, or loop when the *** is depressed.
You can also reverse the sample and have it played forwards into reverse and back again continuously.
Like the synth, you have control over the amp and filter
and the ADSR envelopes, as well as two LFOs and the expression of each note.
The advantage of a sampler is you can easily change the pitch
of the sample as you go, and layer out the same sample at different speeds on top of itself. played forwards into reverse and back again continuously.
Like the synth, you have control over the amp and filter
and the ADSR envelopes, as well as two LFOs and the expression of each note.
The advantage of a sampler is you can easily change the pitch
of the sample as you go, an