Lessons

Lesson Info

Adding Nuances and Automation to Bass

I'm going to do baseline automation and I'm going to tie it and keep it next to the baseline channel right nfl studio being everything is sort of events of I'm going to create a new event that is basically like um on an automation like they called on automation object basically or been on automation pattern so I'm going to create a new pattern here I'm gonna call it they sense not modern sure so all the automation is that going that monarch base and sit right next the baseline on this tracker here on a throw it right there at the top and the reason why I save this automation for later is because I don't want I kind of felt like it would make most sense writing in all of the notes first and then and then adjusting the automation based on what the notes were doing rather than writing the notes based on with the automation is doing or, you know, doing like you know, a bar chunks and then writing the automation for that eight part chunk seems a little you know, jumping around too much so u...

m but to do that like you just created this new pattern and I'm going to go into monarch if I wanted tio aiken mapping ah knob here tio one of these or I could just do it with the mouse, which is what I usually d'oh and I had record play so that's the end of what I selected some night as you can see right here I've got all that automation data recorded in there and if I double click into that I'll actually be able to go in there and I can manually adjust its or there's a bunch of different options actually I could you can see the different um automation is that have been recorded by clicking on this drop down right now we've got cut off in contour right? So you can choose which one you want to see and um if I wanted teo I can go in and actually with the malice just rewrites the automation which is useful as well or say I got a little too crazy and I was like, you know, giving it a little too much distortion I could use some of the tools and maybe say scale the levels or control x which is my go to but if I hit scale levels than I have options to bring them up or bring them down or intensify or de intensify the automation that I recorded aiken aiken place that however it warrant and um it's pretty nice especially when you're really into it and years wanna go way overboard with the distortion and then you listen back here like I went a little too crazy but you could just tame it down using the scale levels tool so it's super useful um in auto I'm going to go over some automation stuff actually nfl studio because there's a lot more to this than just you know hitting record in tweaking knobs if you want to nfl studio let me just delete everything here on dh I'm gonna go on scrap what I did earlier too on dh basically um there's another tool in here called lfo and uh if I select that than basically it gives you an automation lfo which can it's it's pretty sweet like you got your value right here the start value and then you hate your end value right um and then you have your speed your your range right you could arrange so that's how much l a foe is happening here all right beginning and ending I can have an also that start small ones big super useful I could have it so that there is no end if I could just turn this off it's just the same straight through but aiken in this way I can create an l a foe that gets faster and faster overtime or slower and slower overtime working make it really slow um we could um and to change the speed we can adjust it manually or if we right click on any a speed thing nfl enough l studio it shows you some basic steps that you can choose from so I can I think eight steps is like a beat if I choose except if I were tio um select this whole range right if I hit play and then I choose theo lfo then I can edit it while it's playing and like here it well, I'm working on it way also have control of the um of the shape of the l a foe so if I clicked here it would be more of a sol wave um and the phase would slide the position of the l a faux up and down where the seats are you could do square is not the you know, the most complex lfo but what makes it cool is that it's happening inside the automation it's not just a free floating although um so pretty cool stuff. Um all right, so I'm going to open up uh what I ended up doing here with this basically, um pardon? Wait takes a minute for this stuff to learn up. All right? It looks like actually I did record the automation before, huh? I went through and recorded the automation before chopping up the baseline. I think I think at this point last part so I'm gonna open up the next step this part of the song writing process like of this particular mix going in and editing little nuances on this baseline, recording the automation all this was an entire day's worth of work like all day long I just I let myself take a cz much time as I needed to and worked really really hard on this because I figured that this baseline here was going to be the thing that like the I don't know the point of this song you know every song has to have a point it has to have like the thing that makes that song its own things separate from everything else and um this is what giving it so much that the motions to travel that is just the start of it fell into an open cave I'm going why don't you say hey just for radio just so wait weii goodbody teo teo so let's get a little bit further ahead so I can show you what sort of the closer to what the end result of this baseline wass anybody have any questions at this point anybody like you were talking about how you yeah that whole day's work put into just working on the baseline how did you know when you were done after putting like how did you know at that point like this this is right like this is the thing yeah so I mean like this is actually really really good question so like I when it when I first so like I get thiss baseline is just looping here and then just leaps here and then jobs just lips here what I wanted to do was for it to be completely sort of fluid income end and inconsistent straight through from beginning to end so the first thing looks like the first thing I did was I well laid out some automation that's sort of like perhaps um you know crescendoed it's to certain points you know and then dropped down and then I went through and then added all these like little nuances once I got to the very end kind of listened to it and it once it felt right that's that's about where I stopped I think um the next thing I did hear was I added some kind of reverb automation which I'll show you guys in the second but once I was done with it was like, ok, once it felt interesting to me straight through I think that's where I stopped it's like where it I didn't really need to do much more after that um there's a lot more that you could do that's for sure but um yeah and I believe that even even after this like I did a whole bunch of other things once they started hashing out the arrangement more took it home listen to it my car you know, played in the background like realize ok, this is like getting a really squeal e so back in the studio and adjusted fine tuned things a little bit more but yeah wait, wait, yeah um one final layer of nuance that I did in this was I added, I did some automation too the reverb that the base is going through so I'm going to change this too on dh um the reverb check is right here you know, I could write an entire song using one loop and just a bunch of automation tze and keep it pretty interesting for a while I believe that automation zehr sort of the bread and butter for electronic music, you know? But so I'm inside the base and moderate that's one selected collect bringing up the bringing up this reverb and I'm going to do exactly what I showed you with the automation on the center perimeters I'm going to come play around with the river perimeters a little bit so I can record giving it so much that the emotions didn't drive me oh, and that is just the start of it fell into nothing came following why don't you say me just for radio? You wait, okay um one thing that you might know this is that anything that kind of saturates the background, I kind of don't do that while the vocals were happening that's just my own preference so that it doesn't distract you from when you're hearing the vocals, you know I'll move it away, I'll team things down whenever there's anything that I want your brain to focus on you know so like for instance, while the flutes happening I sort of naturally pull things, pull things down like filter things down or bring lee river bs make them a little bit shorter kind of clean things up so that your brain focuses on the is like solo whatever it is that you want to sew like you're someone to focus on don't have too many thing other things going on during that part you know otherwise it's just like over a killing you're not paying attention to the thing so um yeah um so there was one thing that I that I did at this point that I should show you um so I'm actually gonna undo that automation that I put in there that was just to show you what I put in there but the flute sound e I felt like it's cool you know, it's a it's a cool nuance but when I want to keep listening to it it really didn't feel like it was sitting in same spaces everything I didn't feel like it's like it's onlycause sitting over it not in it you know what I mean? And so one thing that I did to sort of combat that right now the flute is just sitting on its own in the mixer, its routing directly from this channel with just a e q on it going right out to the master what I decided to do I was actually take that element and put it into this movie thing that I have here actually run that flute through the guitar amps with the baseline and I had some favorable results doing that so routing tracks in nfl studio um you khun route any channel nfl studio to any channel or any number of channels even break it out to a bunch of channels on dh to do that you'd have the channel that you they have selected and um down here is sort of year your send um input and if I click on it and enables this send input so now um anything that has this if I selected here the flute anything that has this thing um selected is where it's being sent to so right now the flute is also being sent to these force ends naturally there turned down but they're simpler the flute is also sent to the master if I click that you can hear it is not sending the master anymore so I don't want it to go to the master I'm going tio send it directly into this move thing and it's going to come out of the mood thing to the master along with the guitars I'm gonna right click here on one thing and say route to this track on lee and now the flute is just a little bit it's a very subtle thing it's a very subtle thing but to me after I did that, I felt like the flute really just kind of sounded a little bit more like it was part of the song that is really just a matter of personal preference but you know, I've heard people say like all use maybe a couple of different river bs, you know, you really want to find one space for year track and I don't really fault adhere to those rules a lot, but I do think that in this particular instance for these couple, like in your face themes, I wanted them to be in the same in the same spot. So that's that's what I did, um to external gear, you're dana remixes, so not only have any external gear, okay? Yeah. Is that something that people do wondering maxine that like you're aware of or um yeah, you know, my studio made has some really awesome compressors and, uh, he does do some routing outside he's got some affects processors and, um, I think that sometimes when when you do that it does create some bit of a delay issue depending on what your sound card is. So you know, you have to sort of compensate for the delay by adjusting most dea w's have a bit of a track delay that allows you to compensate for that nfl studio that track delay is located right here track late and see competence compensation you go set in milliseconds or samples or beats or however you want that compensation to be and then it'll it'll adjust accordingly so like if you have you're you're creating a ten millisecond delay by routing audio out of your focus right controller and then into you know you're river your lexicon river but whatever then what you're going to need to do is is compensate by uh best selling by adjusting the settings in india w I don't I just don't have any board here so yeah totally um so ok I have um here's something that was really annoying me when I was working on this this vocal right here giving it so much that I have the emotions tio it sounded to me like it was it sounds really squashed and compressed it sounds like it's um I and I think that just came from the processing that um uh derek did inside his studio to get the vocals toe work right? He sent me post processed samples which is fine but there's it sounds weird in my mex and it also um it's pretty separate from the way it sounds when the course is hitting earth what I did I was ultimately ended up taking it out but for the sake of showing you this because it's actually a really cool use of the peak controller it's so much that probably emotions didn't drive and that is just the start of a felon into I took this particular uh, piece of vocal track and I put it on on its own channel but on track twenty five on dh I think I called it something my verse vocals and even it's so much that ugly motions didn't try me while I put in a picc controller forty peak controller right here I'm meeting because it's always made it you know so much that leader basically gave it giving it so much that ugly emotions didn't drop it increase the dynamic so this this little bit right here in the peak controllers something I didn't show you earlier this is sort of a knee and just adjustment um and it sort of um accelerates and decelerates the audio the response to the audio coming into it so it could be a little quicker response or a little bit of a slow response to the audio coming in so much that I basically took this peak controller and then I put in a parametric e q after it and where I'm hearing that there's too much like saturation is up in the high end it sounds just like really hissy so what I did is I created what I ended up calling a poor man's di essere you can even see looking at the parametric cumin is really rich and the very much that the motions didn't so, um, I linked this game right here linked it to this pete controller that's on the verse vocal track except and I'm gonna put this right here on open this up so you can see them both hips, sequencing and both right next to each other. Um when I adjust the base it's going to go it's going to decrease the q on the high end, and I'm going to bring just kind of bring it up, tio normal level, like giving it so much that probably eight emotions didn't drop it, and that is just the start of a felon into and thinking I'm going, why don't you say me? Not just for ready day, even it's so much that obviate emotions tend to driving while and my theory was that in in doing this, I'm sort of adding to the dynamics of just the high end of that vocal and making it less like harsh on your ears when you're hearing it. And it did sit in the mix for a while ultimately, ultimately, at the end of the day, I just removed this whole thing altogether because it was I felt like I was trying too hard to make it work when ultimately, I could just do something else in that part.