Slightly Unusual Techniques

ogy

This thread is inspired by TelePauls question about using guitar pedals as inserts/auxiliaries. I'm sure there are lots of fun ways you can use a mixing desk to do things its not supposed to do for nice sonic effects so why don't we try and get a few on this thread? i guess don't limit it to just mixer techniques too, any unusual applications of gear for strange sound effects. The few I can think of off hand are:

- taking an auxiliary send off one track and plugging it into another track. Whack the gain up completely on the second track and bring the fader up just a little (be careful not to blow your head off). then send a little of the first track to the second track to get a nice bit of lofi dirty distortion under the clean signal

- if a reverb or delay effect is hooked up to auxiliary sends and returning on a track or 2 tracks, sending the return to the delay produces some brilliant dubby insanity. if you leave it up full it will quickly turn into a mess of extremely noise (not desirable), but, to borrow pauls term, if you "play" the aux send you can get nice swells of noise. if you try this in reason it goes completely demented

- riding the fader/aux pot to get rid of the attack part of a long guitar/piano/whatever note combined with a nicely timed delay creates brilliant drones, if you do it right the fade in will overlap with the sustained part of the note creating an infinite sustain drone.

any other crafty ways of abusing equipment?

Disclaimer: be gentle when trying out these effects, as you could quite easily blow your speakers/ears.

ogy

just thought of another:

- sending some kind of constant noise through a channel e.g. white noise or pink noise or random old recordings or whatever. Gate the channel but side chain the gate to a drum machine/sampler/real percussion instrument. Punch a rhythm in the drum machine or sampler or bang the drum or whatever. Don't route the drum machine to the master bus, just the sidechain, and the noise will be gated on and off creating an inverse of the rhythm you play/program. Messing with attack and release times creates cool different effects.

you could do this one and the droney one with software too obviously, but the other too would be a bit dodgy in the digital realm i think.

DamagedTrax

one i learned of recently for a fuller bass sound.

take a bass track and duplicate it. flip copy out of phase. bring faders together till they totally cancel and then start backing off on one fader. you'll hear the sweet spot.

PaulBrewer

I remember when Sampling was getting common the old trick for a hi hat was Sample an Aerosol can !

Seziertisch

A variation on the snare reamping trick, where you place some other percussion instruments (shakers etc.) on the snare to get them mixed in with the sound as well.

ogy

ha that aerosol thing is funny. must give it a go:)

the bass trick i similar to the "magic send" trick. basically a cod mid-side effect. Take a track panned to the centre, duplicate it and pan left. Duplicate again and pan right. Flip the phase and apply slight delay modulation or other subtle time based effect. Link the right and left faders and find a nice balance between them and the centre panned original track.

ogy

whats the snare reamping trick?

PaulBrewer

Speaking of Snares-


After the drum take is done run the snare recording (possibly gated) back out to a small speaker that can sit on top of the snare.

Then re record the snare rattle alone.

No kick, hi hat or cymbal bleed and no phase issues as you're only using the prerecorded snare to trigger the rattle.

An oldie but well worth the 10 mins it takes.

ogy

cool thats definitely one i'll try soon. is that a regularly done thing, is it to rescue tracks with unsnarey sounding snares or does it achieve a specific sound?

Seziertisch

Snare reamping. You put a guitar speaker on top of the snare and play a prerecorded snare track through it. You then mic up the snare (usually from the bottom) and voila, a new snare track. It gets used a lot in mixing to replace crappy snare sounds. The variation with the other percussion instruments allows you to get a single multi-layered percussion sound happening. More distanced miking can also produce interesting results in such cases.

PaulBrewer

Seziertisch wrote: »

Snare reamping. You put a guitar speaker on top of the snare and play a prerecorded snare track through it. You then mic up the snare (usually from the bottom) and voila, a new snare track. It gets used a lot in mixing to replace crappy snare sounds. The variation with the other percussion instruments allows you to get a single multi-layered percussion sound happening.

Betcha' Punk !

Another variation and probably of more use in the search for clean as opposed to dirty drums, is duplicate your snare track and use it to trigger drumagog or similar but instead of that being added to the mix it's sent to FX, much cleaner than sending a hihat/cymbal soaked version whilst maintaining the 'real' drum sound and dynamics.

PaulBrewer

ogy wrote: »

cool thats definitely one i'll try soon. is that a regularly done thing, is it to rescue tracks with unsnarey sounding snares or does it achieve a specific sound?

No, it's primarily for control. It can make a good snare sound better, or be used remedially .

If in the mix you find you needed you snare to be longer with more 'white noise' or top end you might pull up your bottom snare mic. However with that comes kick beater and hat, both close to it.

Doing it this way means you have complete control.

We often do it during the mix so you can tighten or loosen the wires to taste.

It's an old old trick, but brilliant.

PaulBrewer

ogy wrote: »

ha that aerosol thing is funny. must give it a go:)

the bass trick i similar to the "magic send" trick. basically a cod mid-side effect. Take a track panned to the centre, duplicate it and pan left. Duplicate again and pan right. Flip the phase and apply slight delay modulation or other subtle time based effect. Link the right and left faders and find a nice balance between them and the centre panned original track.

Sort of mock stereo?

DamagedTrax

heres another cool one for drums if you have a piano in the room.

set-up a room mic on a piano when doing drum takes. get someone to sit at the piano with the sustain pedal on while they hold the root note of the song. the strings resonate in sympathy with the kick and the sound can be fairly impressive.

11811

PaulBrewer wrote: »

I remember when Sampling was getting common the old trick for a hi hat was Sample an Aerosol can !

As heard in Joy Divisions "shes lost control"!

PaulBrewer

11811 wrote: »

As heard in Joy Divisions "shes lost control"!

Is that so? I didn't know that.

jimi_t

11811 wrote: »

As heard in Joy Divisions "shes lost control"!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGA6rmsnDkQ

Essential viewing (24 Hour Party People)

11811

Ah yeah - listen to the start of the track and you'll hear it!
There is also a breaking mug and the sound of a lift door opening amongst other strange sounds in Unknown Pleasures.