How do *you* roll brother?

jimi_t

What with all the high drama (on both sides of the fence) I thought it would be nice to have a kind of collobarative post type thing where everyone would throw up a bit about themselves, their workflow, their set up, their music and any releases/performances - at the end of the day the music production forum is about producing music - something that can be done with a cheap mic and a hammer when you get down to it, and there seems to be very little by way of that going on - so prove me wrong!

mike65

If I had anything so organised as a workflow I'd write it out, as it is the start to finish goes roughly like this -

Open up EnergyXt, load vst synth, load patch bank, flick through bank until find sound I like, fiddle with the parameters, add another synth I already know the sounds of and layer, route one sound through long deep reverb to add seperation between the sounds, give one sound a short attack one a long attack/release - this way I get to creat a background wash and individual notes with the same key action. (hey I'm lazy).

Start to "compose" if I hit on something I like press record and twiddle away for 5 mins or so and see what develops. Listen back. If its half decent save it, come back later listen again. Edit as required. Maybe add some more elements. Mix audio and export.

Make mp3.

Upload to artistserver

Go to sleep cos its probably 1 am by now.

Mike.

jimi_t

Cheers for getting the ball rolling mike65.

Have just found a semi-permanent location for my gear - hopefully now that trying to knock out an idea doesn't take half an hour of chasing around looking for various PSU's and leads I'll get a bit more done. The most important weapon in the aspiring electronic producer's arsenal is undeniably your own table in a quiet room



This is my current setup. I sold off most of my hardware synths et al to try and. promote a computer centric layout.

Tascam US428 (blue yoke) - Soundcard and control surface. 8 faders, 3 pots and a plethora of membrane buttons isn't ideal but a BCR2000 or BCF2000 is on its way in the next month.

Laptop P4 2.66ghz - Fairly hefty yoke for a laptop, but its my old machine (got a HP 6710b centrino duo job for christmas) and does the job grand. Running Live 5, Audacity and a plethora of freeware softsynths. The next two weeks will see me installing a cheap copy of NI's massive I picked up and Reaktor.

Electribe ER-1 - Standalone drum machine with the best and most intuitive step sequencer on the market since the 909. Onboard sound synthesis and such is grand for a laugh but its real strength lies in sequencing outboard gear (in this case Ableton's drum rack 'Impulse').

M-Audio Studiophile DX4 - My monitors, picked them up off adverts for 60. Damn nice for the price, bass response is a bit artificial but they knock chunks off the 5.1 system I was using before.
http://www.thomann.de/ie/maudio_dx4_studiophile.htm

Numark Axis 9 - CD Deck. Fairly self explanatory. Think of it as the student version of the CDJ-800.

Roland EM-20 - Crap keybase, great soundset. Midi IN/OUT/THRU and a ribbon controller (plus poverty) makes this my current controller.

Korg Toneworks AX1500g - Guitar multi-fx (on floor). Much better version of the Korg GT-6 from my experience. Plays much nicer with synths and that too.

Squier 20th Anniversary Double Fat Strat - Not a big guitar player, but always handy to have it on hand.

(on the chair in the background - Zoom 1201 lo-fi FX rack, E-mu ESI-32 Turbo Sampler, Gemini PS-676 sampling DJ mixer)



Not madly exciting or anything, but I'm a student - shoot me.

Royale with Cheese

Guitar/bass plugged into some sort of usb mixing desk, record on cubase with Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3.

Add drums using electric drum kit as a midi controller for toontrack ezdrummer (really love that software).

Vocals just done through the desk with either an sm58 or an akg condenser. Not exactly high tech, doesn't produce amazing recordings... but we're lazy and none of us know anything about recording.

Hasn't been needed yet but there's steinberg the grand for piano, using a yamaha stage piano as a midi controller. Got some synth and organ vsti's too.

judas101

seems like the start of a good thread. I'll bite!!!

for me, the workflow starts with a guitar riff/chord sequence i'd stumble upon when messing around.

i use ableton 6 and starrt with the drum patter for the whole song (note: i dont know the structure of the song at this point so this more often than not a bad strategy. i;m working on a revised approach.

from there i lay down synth, bass and guitar in that order.

the results i get are ok considering my modest setup. im in the process of putting together a better setup. also getting into using reason.

the ammount of tinkering i can do with the sound is limited by the processor power of my computer so often i cant get the exact sound i want.

you can check out a few samples up here: www.myspace.com/spartaksound

oh, by the by, i'm looking for musicians to start an interesting setup with so drop me a pm if it tickles your fancy.

the lack of vocals are due to the lack of a vocal mic but i've recently aquired a nice one.

thats all.

kev

PaulBrewer

jimi_t!

Get those speakers away from your wall and they'll perform much better for you, especially down the low end...
When monitors are close to a wall they 'couple', sort of become part of the speaker. This has the effect of boosting the low end, but not in a controlled or predictable way..... hence very difficult to mix on.

Even if you dragged out your table .5 of a meter while you were mixing, it should be a big improvement.

Timans

Royale with Cheese wrote: »

Guitar/bass plugged into some sort of usb mixing desk, record on cubase with Native Instruments Guitar Rig 3.

Add drums using electric drum kit as a midi controller for toontrack ezdrummer (really love that software).

Vocals just done through the desk with either an sm58 or an akg condenser. Not exactly high tech, doesn't produce amazing recordings... but we're lazy and none of us know anything about recording.

Hasn't been needed yet but there's steinberg the grand for piano, using a yamaha stage piano as a midi controller. Got some synth and organ vsti's too.

Ever try Addictive Drums? It's actually better than ezdrummer in my opinion.

dav nagle

Timans wrote: »

Ever try Addictive Drums? It's actually better than ezdrummer in my opinion.

Check out BFD 2, 55 gigs of real drums recorded by real players in the U.K. You can change the tempo in real time with any beat and it comes with over 5000 pre made grooves in every style. It is 400 which is cheap compared some of the over priced plugins that are out there anyway sorry for interrupting your discussion but check out http://www.fxpansion.com/index.php?page=53&tab=148 online for a demo.

cornbb

My workflow centres mostly around energyXT, and all the free plugins and tools I can get my hands on. I am slowly getting back into making tunes having replaced my monitors and interface after they were stolen from my car in october. I usually start off with a melody, rhythm or weird noise in my head, then sit down and try to make a tune around it. Everything centres around electronic music but I still pick up my guitar or bass from time to time, and I have some cheap mics at hand in case I need to make samples or record found sounds. I'm shockingly lethargic about making music these days but I do try! I'm currently sourcing the materials to make one of these and am looking forward to playing with it, if it ever works.

For my day job, I'm a programmer, and happily there's a strong audio element. I'm currently working on converting the AU hosting funtionality of the Mac version of our product to a VST hosting functionality for the PC version. Switching between Windows and Mac OS on the same machine every few minutes is a royal pain in the hole!

studiorat

Well when I'm mixing, I just push all the faders up and start listening to the music, try set up a balance where all the parts are working together and maybe then start sticking EQ and Dynamics to things that I think need it.
I nearly always adjust EQ etc. in place rather than using the solo function. And always check bypass on the effect to make sure I'm not making it sound worse!

I don't use templates etc. I just call up F/X as I need them.

Oh! And I've been having great fun recently keying a compressor across a delay return with the vocal, so the delay gets louder in the gaps in the vocal.
I like to do similar with the overheads and the kik or snare.

frobisher

Here's how I've been rolling of late....

I've been purposefuly been avoiding the studio for quite a few months now. Last year I decided to get to back to making music in earnest after quite a hiatus but realised my writing AND my recording were suffering by trying to do both at the same time. So I decided to spend a few months concentrating on writing everyday and gigging songs before putting them to tape. Which will start now in the next few weeks.

My workflow usually starts with me writing a song on my acoustic guitar. Often in the kitchen (as mentioned in another thread this part of the process can be seen on my blog here. I'll be video'ing the other parts as the song develops through the recordng stage too)
From there I record a live acoustic/vocal take to a basic back beat. I listen to that for a few days on my walkman until I start getting an idea of how I want it to go. Then it's hit the studio time. I find I get my best results by working in short bursts and will often do 3 x 3 hour sessions in a day. I don't really use instrument loops and think of myself as a songwriter and producer'er before musician so playing all the instruments isn't always a walk in the park but I always get it where I want it to go. I've decided though that I really, really, really need to play and record the songs with a band, not just me layering. It's not sounding loose and fun enough when I do it all. A bit stiff or something. But you learn as you go.

I really love doing vocal harmonies and can easily have 25 tracks of vocals going on. My productions on my own songs are very straight forward sounding, I want them like that. But sounding simple and being simple are two different things and there can be up to 70 tracks without problem.

Here's a couple of pics of my set-up at the moment:

studiorat

wow! is that a bud?

frobisher

studiorat wrote: »

wow! is that a bud?

Not only is that a bud. That is a cool, crips refreshing bud.

jimi_t

frobisher wrote: »

Not only is that a bud. That is a cool, crips refreshing bud.

Any chance you'd edit your original post to list your equipment? Savage home set-up you have going there, especially liking the beatbass

frobisher

jimi_t wrote: »

Any chance you'd edit your original post to list your equipment? Savage home set-up you have going there, especially liking the beatbass

It's all here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=52399120&postcount=6