Lessons

Lesson Info

Adding 'Jungle' Type Effects

Here's a little beat that I've made just to demonstrate some different approaches you can take to effect. And it has a break beat in it and a kick drum and some other kind of drum machine components So you can use, you know, in addition, to eat queuing. I like to use panning a lot. So here's like a you know, you can pan different instruments to kind of be in different parts of the stereo field, but also, you can kind of use panning as an effect. Um, so here, I'm gonna draw in some automated panning on this and you can just see I'm having it go kind of move from the left to the right of the field here. So it just kind of if you're listening and headphones, it just kind of moves around in your head space, you know, also, if you're listening on big speakers in the club, it feels like it's like the noises kind of fluttering around the room. Um, and if you have something like that kind of like real low in the mix with backgrounds big, that can really add some interesting richness and depth ...

to your your sound there's actually a plug in that waves. Makes called. Let's find it, um, commando mod. That kind of does that for you. Lets you select. Um, I'll delete this automated pan out of here to show you It lets you select kind of, um, modulation for the volume and for pan and for frequency. So basically, it's, you know, a guy turning the volume up and down and turning the pan left and right and turning the pitch up and down a little bit. And I like to kind of just set the depth on the on the volume in the pitch to zero and just have the pan running you can set, you know, I want it to be maybe go to 1 30 left of 30 right? And, uh, have it be a little faster than this so you can set a tempo. You can set a tempo here, and then you can set How many kind of what the r. P m is within that tempo. How maney swings per beat, it goes back and forth. And so that's a way to kind of automate your panning left and right, or, you know, volume up and down If you don't want Teoh, go and draw it in for like, you know, 150 measures of a song. Another thing that, like really comes in handy with drum programming is reverb. River really is one of your best friends along with you Q. And you can do so much, um, kind of shaping. Sounds, um, so I'll just put some reverb on this clap to show you that's dry. And here we are with some reverb on it. And you know, these big amounts of river could give it that, like, washed out like like that big, cavernous underwater like, you know, Berlin Warehouse techno sound or that kind of like burial. Early dub step, you know, really spacious noise to it and then in smaller quantities, reverb like Maybe you don't even really know it's there. But it just helps noises toe fit better. It helps them toe blend into the track a little better. So so it's like almost not there right now, but just enough to kind of soft in the edges on that sound so it doesn't just a wash it into the to the rest of the track a little bit more, which, you know you don't want for a noise that's supposed to be really punching in your face. But for the other percussion instruments could be really helpful in kind of fine tuning and blending your mix. Um, delay is a thing that I love to death and use all the time. Maybe I overuse it a little bit if I'm being, like, totally honest with myself. Um and that's, you know, um, basically, just an effect that repeats the sound to a tempo. So here, I'll show you, Um, I'll show you with a with a simple delay and then with something that's a little more fun. Um, I really like the h delay that waves makes. So the simple delay here we turn our This is the actual sound coming through. And then this is the effect coming through. And then we said it to sink to our tempo, um, and to keep So I'm gonna say Let's have it sink at a dotted eighth note. So it'll repeat every noise that comes through on that snare channel. I will repeat at a dotted eighth note. So here's our snare right now in here. There's with that delay on it. That kind of gives it like more of a doubIe feel right. And you can turn up and really just play with automation on that to kind of get that. Like Lee Scratch, Perry really dubbed out sound. What's even better for that? There's, um, because the units, you know, on all those old dub records and old, like disco records you know, Larry Le Van Productions and stuff like that. The delay effects that they were using were literally a tape that was just a tape loop. And there was a tape head and it would just run around, you know, it would record the sound, and then another head would read it off of the same tape. And so literally, you were just listening to a constant tape loop and the length of the tape in the speed of the motor determined the time of the delay. So they're Cem plug ins that simulate that tape delay. So you get a little more of that, like gritty tape e sound. Um, H delay is good for that. I think so. I'm gonna have the exact same effect setting where I have a dry, wet balance of the dry sound being louder than what sound? It's 127 beep, beep dotted. Eighth note. Um, and I think it sounds a little nicer this away. Um, you can turn up the feedback, which is how long that DeLay laughs. Um, it's called Feed that because if you put it over 100 you'll get actual feedback. Uh, you can you can modulate. How much of that tape sound you want? There's this little button lo fi that makes it a little more grimy. And then this knob right here also controls Kind of How much of that tape sale do you get? Um, and then you have a low pass in a high pass filter so you can turn this up to cut out base, and you can turn this down to cut out trouble. And that can give you even mawr of a kind of, you know, like old doubIe grit to your to your sound. Now, another thing I like on this delay and a lot of these similar delays is this ping pong button here, which makes it so that each hit of the delay is either panned hard. Laughter panned hard right. So it's kind of like combining the pan stuff we were talking about built in as a future of this of this delay. And you hear that a lot in, like, old disco records, Early house records, old dub records. So, um, yeah, I I really like kind of all of those different things. Uh, so you can incorporate that into your overall track. Another thing you can dio is you can set up. And this was how all these old dub records did it. Um, you'd set up a bus in your master effect myth mixer. Um, that's just here. Did that wrong. So you set up on an effects, send bus on and you plop a delay into that bus and so I can send everything, all of my instruments, or whichever instruments I want. So let's say I'm gonna send everything except for the kick on the break beat sample. To go into that effects bus as well is going to the master out. I'm gonna set the effect on the effects bus to be roughly like the other one. Only I'll set it to 100% wet. So the effects bus is on. Lee gonna be the delay portion of that delay Plug in without the original sound coming through. So one second turn off the delay on this snare. So I have my my unaffected track here on then I have another track that is so that delay bus here is just the delay on all of those instruments, and I can turn it up, Turn it down as I please to kind of bring in that big wash of just like doubIe noise over my record. Um, and I can select which instruments are gonna go to that right here and, you know, fiddle with that as the track progresses and a lot of those old dub reggae records if you if you look at how those producers were making them, they just had one big knob that was like, Here's the delay for all these tracks and I'm just gonna bring it up toe, you know, bring again, like that kind of drama into the record. You know, that was their version of having some big breakdown was toe. Just have everything. Just wash out on this just wave of, like, w delayed noise and then bring stuff back in element by element. So that's a really cool way to kind of build tracks I think works really well for, you know, not just regular records, but for techno, for, you know, any sort of like disco a house record. Um, let's see, what else do we have here? Noise gating, which can work really well for a break beat sample. I'm gonna go back to just the kick drums on the brakes. So you put a noise gate on this break beat, which is an effect, basically, All it says is I'm gonna cut the volume on everything in this sample unless a part comes through that's louder than X. And so you tell it what X is, and it's gonna mute anything that's quieter than that, so you can use it. So you see, the threshold is set low here on the whole sample comes through, you turn the threshold up, and it starts cutting out this quieter parts on it gives it that kind of like chopped up feel without you actually having to do anything to it. You can again, just like on a synth, you increase the release time. And that brings more of a tale to it. You increase the attack time, and that brings more of, like a slowly the sound. And here's a little more slowly fades in which I don't think is very useful for a drum brake, but could be useful for, like, a pad or a synth sound. So anyway, you can have this. So let's say you have your break beat, right? And then you want to have a break down where it just, like, strips away some but not all of that. You can turn this noise gate on the kind of you build a different texture within your track. You could use it for the whole track, but I think it's really effective toe have your break beat and then, like, maybe noise gate it for, like the part that you want to be like this, like raw, stripped down, breakdown kind of thing. Um, another similar thing, too, that is transient shaping. Um, let me find. Here we go. So when I was talking about wanting to make a sample more punchy and, you know, adding, like a kick drum or adding clicks to it or something, Teoh give it a little more oomph. Another way you can do that is here we go. That's what I wanted, um, with a transient shaper. And it works kind of on a similar principle as a noise gate. Um, it basically says any noise that is over a certain level, Um, instead of muting everything below that, I'm gonna turn down everything below that, or I'm gonna turn up everything below that. And so if you have something where you want the snare I mean, the snare is the loudest part of your thing. But you wanted to pop a little more. You can have this transient shaper. Just turn up the volume on the very beginning of the snare just for a tiny bit. And that'll give it more that pop. Alternatively, if you have something where, um, you have, like, a triangle in a record, and it's way too poppy like it just punches too much and sticks out of the mix like a sore thumb. You can tell the transient shaper like turn down the beginning of that triangle a little bit. Leave the rest of sound untouched and you'll still have that same sound. But it won't stick out of your track so much. so I'll show you. Um, so you set your range, which is how much you want it to turn up part that you wanted to turn up. The sensitivity determines how loud a thing has to be to be turned up to that range. So sensitivity really like determines where your volume range that you're looking at your transient shaper is on them. The duration and release work the same way again on the seventh. The duration is basically how long you want it turned up for, and the releases how slow the fade out is after it stops turning it up. So that could be really useful for kind of adding or removing kind of punch or clicking this from any sort of drum sample, break, beat sample or any other instrument. You can use it on a piano that you want to really pop through. The Mex um, flans and chorus is another thing that comes really, really in handy with drum programming. Um, so we've got this symbol right here waken put like a little Flander on it to kind of give it some some depth and some interest. So it's not just one note. I really like waves. Meta Flander. Um, you can get some really interesting sounds out of that. Um, and basically, this is just yeah, phasing it, um, a ticket, some interesting sounds out of it. So to hear that, here's the unaffected sound. And then there's the sound with the effect on it, and you can hear that kind of up and down almost sounds like you're listening to it in a seashell or something. Um and I think, yeah, that works really well on, like crash Cymbals, your high hats. Any sort of thing that lives in that higher frequency range takes really well, Teoh, those kind of sounds and, uh, let's see you've got Oh, yeah. Another thing that's great is to have some sort of, like, resonant filter on your instruments in your track. Um, let me pull that out. Basically, that's similar to the frequency and the residents on a cent. And it's kind of like those sweeps you here in, like, you know, um, like disco house records, daft punk kind of stuff only, you know, you can use it on individual instruments to kind of bill breakdowns have, like, you know, some sort of sound that fades in with a with a filter or fades out to kind of make smooth transitions. Um, and yeah, this frequency is basically going to control what parts of the sound get cut out by that filter. And then the residents kind of controls how, like harsh And how much of that, like sweeping sound You get out of it. Um, yeah. So these air kind of different effects that I really like to use and I go back to over and over and over again, another one for kind of drum mixing and mastering And these these aren't is, like, obvious of, hey, guys, I'm using, in effect kind of effects. But waves has some plug ins that I really like for drum mixing and mastering. There is they have a bunch of ones from, like, different producers and stuff. There's this Maserati, DRM, um, which is basically like e que and compression for drums. And they have some different presets here, which I don't think our ever a good thing to just, like click the preset and go with. But the presets could be a good starting point to kind of get a sound you want, So I'm gonna play this kick drum without it, and then I'm gonna bring that on so you can hear how you can add a lot more of that. Snap to it to get it really punchy. You can add a lot more thump to get, like, a kind of more booming thing out of, you know, more booming sound. And you can also add treble separate from adding, like the punch to it to get a little more high end on your thing. Yeah, I really like this plug in, um, and then for your master bus, they make another syriza plug ins. Um, the C l a plug ins. They do like a vocal one. Ah, base and effect. You know, a guitar version. Um, and it's another one where, you know, they have these producers that kind of make these presets for him, and I think you can get some good results out of this again. It's kind of like preset E, and you want toe definitely fiddle with it and get your own sound out of it. But you can really play around with a lot of different, like compression and e que that these things kind offer is is almost like a preset package. Um, yeah. Any questions about this way have questions that we've sort of collected over the course of the hit me. All right, let's do it. D 12 wants to know what's a good technique to choose the samples that you're layering. Um, what's that? Evaluation process. Trial and error. Really? I mean, the way I do it is like, build up a library, have a lot of stuff to pick from. Maybe you have an idea of what you want and you go through and kind of fine. You know, listen through what samples you have until you find something fits. Maybe you have no idea what you want and you're listening through until you find something that inspires you. If you're mix isn't working, never be afraid, Toe Say, I mean, you can try and fix your mix with a bunch of like, e que and, you know, effects. Or you could be like that's the wrong clap for this song. I'm gonna try 10 other collapse until I find something that sounds better and fits better in the mix on but might be amore effective way toe solve a problem in a mix so awesome Grifter wants to know. What do you think about flattening out the acu on the the e que on the break beats and then just boost the hits that you want? Does that also makes sense for you? Would you that Yeah, you can, you can do I mean, that's kind of similar to a noise gate, but doing it with any cute where you're really saying I want the overall tambor of this sound to come through, but I really only want, like, I want the break beat to be wallpaper and not my actual drum. But I want the snare from the baked break beat to come through and so you would e que it the only have the snare really poke out and kind of downplay the bass drum because you've got another bass drum from a drum machine that you're going to use. Yeah, that's that's a great technique that I think can work for a lot of different applications. Okay, here's a little more technical question. I want to modulate contact mod knobs. Can it be can only be done. And contactar Can I make an automation lane for the bond sources. I think it depends on your doll. Okay, Um, in acid. I don't believe you can do that. Able to I'm not sure about I think in in logic and pro tools. You can do that, but it is a huge pain in the neck to kind of like you have to, like, set a mini control number for the knob and then route it through USB controller and then recorded as a zey USB, like as a midi channel in your dollar. It's It's no fun. Um, I have some samples that came with my dog, but they're only so so And I like to expand. What's the best way to get new samples for your library? Um, I think that going you can go online. You can buy sample. See these. You can go and try and download. You know, like free kits of things. Um, also, you can go through your record collection or go through all your CDs and say, you know, I have this song that starts with just a plain beat, and I'm gonna pluck the bass drum out of that record I'm gonna pluck. Actually, let's pull up an example Real quick of that. I'm gonna open my audio editor. Um, and, um, here we are. This is actually a song that I was gonna use later and still am going to use, but just to show you an example. So here's the beat from that. It just kind of opens with a plane beat. Let's say I really loved that kick. You could. I mean, this one doesn't really have it isolated, but you could go in and say, Well, I'm just gonna take this sample right here. Copy it, fade out this end a little bit and just use that part where the kick in the clapper overlay aids as my own drum sample. You know, um, so, yeah, that's a pretty easy way to pluck things out of records already.