Getting into making electronic music

frobisher

Advice please!
I've started making electronic music and I'm really enjoying it and want to get into it a little more seriously. I play and write alot and for a while made a living as a recording engineer and aspiring producer so I've got a decent understanding of putting music together, although I haven't worked with much electronic stuff. I'd love some advice on what I should do or where I should look to learn about the techniques and gear behind electronic and dance music (Not DnB or trance or banging stuff, more stuff that grooves, has synths/loops/samples mixed with live instruments and lots melodic vocals).

My set up is a PC running Cubase and Reason with a few guitars, basses, POD XT's (1 for bass, 1 for guitar), Korg PadKontrol, old 70's GEM solid state organ, Yamaha CS01 mono synth, Axiom 85 key midi keyboard, lots of percussion, various toys and good mics.

Any pointers on where I should be looking to learn more?

cornbb

I take it you read my spiel in that sticky already? Given the style of electronic music you want to make and given the fact that you probably want to mix it in with a bit of acoustic stuff, I'd lean towards using Cubase more than Reason. You've got all the hardware you need. Just download and try out a ton of free VSTs, learn the ins and outs of MIDI in Cubase and you'll be good to go. Try Dr. Fusion 2 as a drum machine and Oatmeal and Triangle II as synths.

As for techniques, thats a tricky one. There are tons of tricks out there. Could you give an example of some tunes that would indicate the styles you want to make? I dunno. Its as easy or as tricky as you want to make it!

Neurojazz

Get some basic drum loops (as the recording click will drive you mad)

Programming good rhythms is essential. I would recommend learning to input live mono 1 note patterns into your sequencer (at a slow tempo) with a simple drum loop to give you the sense of rhythm - you can use a snare sound or a bass noise - keep it clean and simple. I usually run a 16 bar loop and use cubases stacked recording mode so that i can capture all the separate takes to find the best one i want. Lots of people forget to slow the tempo down! - this makes life easy for programming cool effects and pitch bends to create subtle nuances.

Another way is to create a smaller 4 bar loop and throw in some notes in (all in middle C for ease) and start moving the notes to where you think they sound best, or use one of the previous parts that you like the most and duplicate it 4 times in a row and vary slightly.

The purpose of this? - well you now have a pattern that you can use as a bassline, leadline or chord positions...

Lets say i have our funky little 'C' pattern - i'll start to make 2 note harmonies in those rhythmic positions and try to create a basic progression... all this messing around should get you closer to creating enough parts and ideas to create a basis of an electronic track.

The sounds you use for each part should be developed as you go along - tweaked so that they fit in the mix - (sometimes best to drop it to 0db low volume and fade back up slowly until it sounds right in the mix)

You mentioned that you want funky... The drum programming and the bass would be worth sitting down and really spending time over to give it bucket loads of feel. A good use of velocity programming on snares and hats is a must and i beleive that 'groove2' quantize (if cubase still has it) - is great on hats - it gives it a little bit of swing.

Now that you have some basic patterns the sounds would be experiemented with until your'e happy, but there are some fundamentals to note.

Bass sounds:
Whack a Lowpass filter onto a simple saw wave for bass - leave resonance off as this will remove the all important 'bassiness'.
Square waves also make great basses, but you need to change the phase to find the right one to fit the music your making, sometimes if the sound is right and it lacks warmth i would add a low sine wave underneath to make it work better as a bass. If the bassline is progressive you'll find some tones louder than others - compress it!

As an engineer you'll know about shelving the bass and bassdrums so that the frequencies don't overlap causing mudiness!

In regards to the other sounds used in electronic music, the world is at your feet - but simplicity helps, just apply taste

The percussion:
I recommend tuning and matching the drums so that they compliment the root of the peice that your'e writing. Once you have your bassdrum working, get a compressor on that and the bassline (some people even sidechain the bassdrum pushing the bassline out) - this saves on your ears getting tired and stop them drifting up in the mix as the repitition makes them appear quieter over time.

The pads and leads:
The basic sounds are usually saw wave based.

If your funk music is aimed at people dancing - always stand up when you listen to mixes - if it gets you moving, your'e onto a winner

That's brief and basic electronic / dance music - there are obvious exceptions, but how long do you want me to waffle?

Neurojazz

FILTERS

Filters give you the power to drastically adjust the sound.

Depending of what filter you use, and the sound beneath it, you can discover many strange acoustic qualities.

A lot of older instruments have either NO filters or just LP (Low Pass) - The earliest instruments used in dance music had just the one lowpass filter.

There are a number of filters now available on modern synths and analogues - in fact, due to their popularity, there are shed loads.

This helps your sound creation immensely, and give you a very, very powerful tool.

Low pass filters essentially keep the low frequency, and 'shelve' to the top off as you turn it 'down' - eventually, at zero, it will be almost muted and a very dark muffled effect. (a bit like putting your hands over your ears.

High pass filters do the opposite to low pass - they keep the top end of sound, and shelve the bottom off until the sound is the just left with a few high frequencies.

Band pass depends on what frequency YOU pick, then the frequencies above & below that are BOTH shelved - leaving a small band of frequencies.

Those are the 3 basic filters, and there are numerous others.

On nearly every sound i ever made, i had tried ALL the filters available that can be used. This means that you hear what effect each filter has on a certain timbre - and what filters work in the musical piece you are making.

* a saw sound may not sound great through a High pass filter, but you may find that it does when used in a certain way

Look at these examples:-

* Yamaha synths supply 50 variations of flat & shaped filters using 3 or 4 filter types.
* Roland TB-303 has just a Lowpass filter.
* The software synth Reaktor has more than 10 filter types.

Which is the best? - they all are - because each one needs the filters to work in that way. The roland needs just that one lowpass to sound great, yamaha has supplied what it thinks are a decent range of filters to enable you to make loads of unique noises. and reaktor needs loads of filters to give maximum adjustment to the sound creator.

Now look at the same items in a different way:-

* the Yamaha is a workstation.
* the Roland is a lead synth
* Reaktor is sound creation software.

So, depending on what you buy, will give you a different quality & amount of filters.

Because of all the differences between equipment, it can be tempting to buy a broad range of equipment to get a big selection of noises and functions.

Your purchase will depend on your greatest need.


Some sounds don't need filters, some get filtered at some point and others need filtering all the time.

If you find an example of a saw and square and apply a standard lowpass filter, you will hear that both benefit from it.

Take an 808 snare drum sound and apply a high pass filter, and you get a different but subtle change.

If you were to take a Sine wave, and apply a low pass filter, you will find very little changes.

Once you know your equipments filtering options, you must methodically try as many filters over as many sounds. Eventually you will routinely know when to apply certain filters.

Filters can be controlled through MIDI, and recorded.

NEVER quantize filter movements unless you want to find out what happens, I say this becuase usually you want to record the filter movements smoothly from a remote control of some sort through midi - if quantize is applied on the record 'in' then the quantize effects each level on the steps the quantize follows and creates 'steps', which can be used creatively - but also can destroy the fluid movement.

RESONANCE can be applied to the sound in the filter stage - this has to be used with care, and only works well with certain sounds. If you could view resonance as you turn it up on an oscilliscope you would see that the wave becomes divided by more oscilations creating that 'high' squealing sound. Analogues (as in the synths) do this really well and digital has only just caught up to be able to replicate that effect. In modern dance music resonance is used to create 'the high' or rises in lead synths (see josh winks higher states of conciousness for a tb-303 that gets resonated fully) - It must be used with great care as it can make bad ass uncontrollable sounds.

If a sound is 'full' like a pad, then resonance tends to weaken the sound and then turn into a whistling. Lots of equipment does this - it is not a bug, but will sound different inbetween digital and analogue synths.

The clever use of filters can result in many unique sensations for the listener - i have heard some 'excellent' & 'awe inspiring' effects from good filter work. One friend had made a sound that appeared to come out of the speakers and disappear back into them. He had used a bandpass filter with a little resonance to make certain parts of the sound appear 'harder' than others.

With correct use of filters and LFO you can create stunning sounds and actually mess with peoples brains. The single most important factor is to listen to what you are making and see how it makes you feel (Again, if you are making dance music make sure you stand up - If you make chillout then dump your matress and kit on the floor


Most dance music lead lines use filters to create the tension and builds. Many trance tracks have lowpass filters on the lead lines Drum & bass use lowpass on the bass. In jungle, some of the drums may have filters on the drums themselves. You may decide to use filters on everything! - Some house music filters the whole track in and out.

If you used a low pass filter on natural sound, you will soon hear that filters may not be needed for certain sounds and that you want to retain the clarity.

Vocals are rarely filtered, but can be - or you may 'vocode' the vocals first, then put a band pass filter on afterwards, and then mix the original signal back in! - it will depend on your knowledge of what works and what doesn't to determine the success of the combination.

There are even external filters available, if you wanted to filter mikes or guitars.

Most music software will let you filter something after is has been recorded.

If you apply filters as you record something, you will NOT be able to recover the original sound.

EQing is similar to filtering, and deserves constant experimentation to discern the pros and cons.

You can use EQ and filters together to bring out a specific part of the sound you are filtering.

Some sounds can tend to get weaker as the filter opens up, and EQ can help compensate - but it comes with a lot of problems. Always trust your ears and concentrate!

Please PM me if your reading this and finding useful - i need to know who is out there! - feel free to let me know if it's helping and how deep you want to go

Anima

Learn to layer different sounds on top of each other to fatten them up. Same with drums. For example in DnB, you can take 2 different snare samples filter the bits you don't want out of both then combine them to create a new snare sound with just the freq.s you want. Awesome

Neurojazz

EFFECTS, EFX or FX

This is a huge subject - I have spent 15 years messing around with effects, and made more mistakes with them than i can imagine to find out what they can do to different sounds.

The list of effects that are available to use keeps growing. A simple question needs to be answered - Do you want 'outboard' or do you want 'plug-in', with the cheapness of computers the plug-in route is nice, but outboard effects are also great for certain situations.

Outboard is mainly for mixers and effecting sounds outside of a computer, live applications where computers can't be used and recording techniques that need valve processing or effects that computers cannot emulate yet.

Plug-ins are mainly for computer use only (due to latency issues).

Nearly every studio you can get into will have different 'outboard' effects - they can send whatever signal they want, to any of the effects - making the 'outboard' very useful for adding effects that can be 'bypassed' later.

You can do the same with plugins, but that use processor power.

Some common effects include these:-

* reverb
* delay or echo
* phaser
* chorus
* flanger
* time stretch
* distortion
* symmetry
* QSound or RSS
* speaker emulation
* pitch shifter

In reverbs, there can anything around 20 or more variations, including these:-

* plate
* room
* hall
* stage
* marbles
* spring
* arena
* car
* closet
* canyon

Reverb is one of the more commonly available effects - and even comes free with some sequencer software. (cakewalk/cubase will give you delays, eq's, reverbs and other efx bundled with their software)

Outboard can be very expensive, and you have to consider inputs/outputs that you will need.

For the cost of one piece of industry standard outboard will set you back... are you ready for this? - are you really sure you want to know? - ok - SONY charge over £5000 for a nice reverb box.

mmm.

I can remember selling cheapo FX made by a company called ZOOM, and they sounded OK - but had a faint background noise, and they cost £99 - mmm.

PC based plugins rarely have any noise, but can cost lots of money for a cd rom with a minuscule amount of information on.

You could get charged £700 for a 'virtual' valve compressor - but does it make you feel like you have spent £700 when you receive it on a .75p CDROM ???

There are lots of 'tarty' latest effects, that you can end up buying and feeling 'gutted' - so always check demo versions and music forums on the net for compatibility and quality of results.

You may only really need a few fundamental effects to get you going.

delays, reverbs, chorus, flanger and phaser will create enough to keep your busy for the first year or two.

each one has it's strengths and weaknesses.

reverbs can get lost as soon as anything else plays over the top - I've heard dance music i've made played out through a 60k turbo sound rig and was shocked that the 'light reverb' i had applied to certain sounds was lost, so i went back to the drawing board - all the delicate work was great at home but crappy in a club environment or outdoors.

delays can cause confusion if not timed to the tempo of the track (or a musical division like an 8th note) and an unwanted 'phasing' caused by duplicate notes overlapping (the phasing is caused by the same sound overlapping the original signal).

flangers & chorus sound great on basses and pads, but if you use it on too many sounds, they cease to stand out.

phasers again have to be used cautiously, because to many just negate the 'originality' of one being in the mix.

Imagine if you put reverb on every sound in a mix - it will sound flat, and like all the instruments are in one 'area' - but if you put just one sound through on type of reverb, then the perception is very different, and can catch the listeners attention.


Some effects bring out qualities that were not significant. Distortion (essentially a square wave) can make sounds incredibly dynamic, and sometimes that sequence may have to be adjust to compensate for the massive difference.

Subtle distortion, or overdrive can be used to bring dynamics. Heavy use can make sounds become unstable and erratic. If used on a bassdrum (909/808 style) a tiny amount of overdrive can make it really stand out and proud (the same on the bassline)

Heavy use of distortion will 'compress' a sound - this takes nearly all the dynamics away.

If you are going to make music that is going to played at large venues, then try to visualize what your effects need to do.

I would even say that they may need to 'wetter', but don't swamp the music with reverb on everything.

If you spend time listening to other tracks that have been made, you will be able to distinguish between what works and what doesn't, and by experimenting, you will find out how.

Chorus is a little different as this is 'on' the sound, and not 'after' it. This can be used a few different ways, and the basic controls are these:-

*
speed
*
mod or width
*
mix

If you use a slow moving chorus on a bass sound, it can appear to sound louder and richer. If you use a fast moving lightly mixed chorus on a pad sound, it will give it more depth.

*
If you use two chorused sounds at the same time, you lose impact.

Flangers behave in the same way, and offer additional controls.

**I personally love making the flanger move as slow as possible, moving the mod width to 2.8-6ms and sticking that on a nice layered snare - very depeche mode like

Some of these LFO orientated effects can offer a 'sync' option, so that you can time the effect how you want.

Delays need to be in time with your music, or all hell breaks loose, and some delays do not have the option for tempo sync - so always check.

Tempo delays can add a pace to music by doubling up notes played, and bouncing them around to fool the listener into believing there is more going on. A lot of dance music 'leadlines' use tempo delays to make them sound great - pretty much the lifeblood of trance, goa and techno.

When you have command of what they do, you can use more than one delay to create melodies that will stop people in their tracks, and make them run onto the dance floor.

There is a parameter with delays called 'feedback' - if this is turned up to high, then notes will start to overlap, and cause 'phasing' (phasing is when a sound has a nearly identical sound placed over the top - an easy experiment to perform)

With all these effects, you can mix more than one type of effect on each sound.

*
There are millions of ways of experimenting with effects - and i hope that you make many mistakes that lead to finding new techniques

Compression makes no sounds, but is very crucial to music. It 'squeezes' the peaks of a sound down, it is useful for reducing listening fatigue in studios, but is mainly for dynamic control of sounds that are simply 'too loud','too harsh' or unpredictably loud/quiet.

Compression on vocals stops the 'popping' and brings whispers right up in the mix.

Compression on basses & bass drums can give you more dynamic space for the rest of your music, because these sounds can dominate a mix if they are not compressed.

Very expensive studios have mixing desks with compressors on every channel, and they make music sound VERY expensive - the difference is stunning, but you do not need to own a desk like that to get the effect - you just have to plan your current setup around the fact that you may end up recording your music into a desk like that.

That's a brief on EFX, it's really down to mucking about for years with different effects over different sounds - Good Luck!

ogy

i think for this kind of music ableton live is really worth learning. all other sequencers model themselves on hardware but ableton is a total rethink of the whole thing. it has some new conventions that take a while to get used to but in the long run its way more intuitive, especially for automating stuff and arranging tracks.

Neurojazz

Abelton is ok - but depends on what your'e doing! - look at the guys list of equipment - Abelton doesn't suit the setup without the person changing their method without a lot of serious changes.

Programs like cubase for a start would help as the user can use most of his existing equipment and expand *cheaply*

Abelton is great for remixing and live applications and great if you have dx/vst plugins.

This person is 'getting into' writing electronic dance music -not remixing and playing it live.

If Abelton is your main sequencer then i recommend trying cubase to see the editing of your parts that you have written and the difference between the 2 applications - cubase/nuendo is a great standard (with cakewalk Sonar a little more fiddly but aimed at guitarists)

I would advise people to try all the apps to see what the differences are and many have demo software!

ogy

im far more familiar with cubase then i am with ableton, just started using it over the last few months. i think that doing a guitar/rock/pop type tune in cubase is great but i think for more electronic style ableton is just way better for experimenting, finding what works with what, switching loops around, changing the layout of the song. its midi setup is far easier to understand, its very easy to record live audio sources in with the mix and arrange them whatever way you like. automation is such a big deal in electronic music as you discussed in relation to filters and effects etc, automation in cubase is a pain in the ass, very awkward, once you get your head around ableton its a lot easier to do what you wanna do quicker, especially with that korg microkontrol. don't get me wrong cubase is brilliant but i think ableton has a serious upperhand for electronic music

frobisher

Thanks for the great replies.
Cornbb: Of course I read your tutourial!!

Neurojazz: Some pretty comprehensive answers there. Nice one! Over on the music production forum we've a thread where we wanty contributers to post up their ideas, tips and tutorials. Any chance you could cut and paste your above responses and include them? The thread is here.

Neurojazz

If your'e having a mare with cubase - take the manual to bed with you! - after a few weeks you'll be turning it inside out - 1 other point about all this, *cost* - I can think of hundreds of things that would get more creative output than abelton - I'm not anti abelton (as there are photos of Binary using abelton in malta - we use this app live!) - just that there are better ways to spend that very precious cash!

Frob - I have pages of this stuff and i will error check and edit it for the current equipment around on the market and post them all up during this coming week

frobisher

Neurojazz wrote:

Frob - I have pages of this stuff and i will error check and edit it for the current equipment around on the market and post them all up during this coming week

That would be brilliant!!

cornbb

Just to give my 2 cents on the whole Live vs. Cubase thing... I've been using Cubase for years, its a MONSTER of a program - you can do absolutely anything with it, as long as you're willing to put a lot of time into learning the ropes. So if I could pick one sequencer to work with forever it'd be Cubase.

For a year or so I've been dabbling with Ableton Live. Live is a very slick and clever piece of work... its got a very different and innovative way of doing things which is conducive to loop-based and live music. For a lot of electronic music, anything which is heavily repetitive or loop-based, Live would be my instrument of choice. But I find its post-production and routing abilities a bit finicky and its a little more difficult to edit and arrange stuff. But maybe thats cause I'm used to Cubase. But I'd definitely recommend Live to anyone wanting to get started with making electronic/dance music.

Neurojazz

Precious cash..... Abelton would suit someone *after* they know the ropes - it is great, but would divorce the user from the music and the nuts and bolts (that hard earned knowledge that you have form cubase) - put yourself in the shoes of the learner and how all this stuff is....

If you want, i could take the angle of what is cool and fry all your minds - you seriously do not want to get involved in this 'gadgets' market until you know what the rudiments are electronic music or your just playing with stuff that sounds cool and not really grounding any knowledge - (i take this standpoint only because i'm a teacher).

To give you a brief example - Sculptura - An absolutely must have EQ plugin for VST / Daw orientated setups.... absolutely mental control over your mixes (whoops there goes 250 euros) - this goes on ad-infinitum until your'e puking on plugins and can perform magic just by farting into a mike - *amazing*

I haven't even brought Reason into the discussion because Frobisher already has that - An enviroment that lets you drag and drop / write tunes live (even cubase balks when pushed this way sometimes) - Reason is bombproof (but obviously has limitations) - The point is? - Your'e recommeding something that would waste this users time, they already have sooooo much power at their finger tips that they might forget what they can already do.

If Frobisher put a budget for say 3-4000 and said that he wanted to also do remixes and / or jam live then Abelton would make it into the list, but if the specification of the situation is home recording then i doubt abelton would bring anything to Frobishers experience of music making.

IT's down to frobisher to point out what he'd actually like to do / needs or feels he is missing to actaully get a better idea of what he does and *then advise* on equipment. (I have years of working in shops, you have to be careful with peoples money!)

Frobisher - Give us some input