Transition Techniques

hubiedubie

Just wondering what if anybody has any useful tips for transitions between parts of a track (e.g. before the kick is dropped / re-introduced or before a new section / instrument comes in).
Obviously the snare- and reverse cymbal have been done to death in many genres so I'm looking for different things.

Personally at the moment I've got a reverb on my send with a very long tail and I usually send one of my tracks to that to introduce a new section of the track. Works great on high pitched notes and hats in particular. I have ableton's grain delay on another send which can do some fairly wacky stuff. Also bog standard delay can be great and reverse reverb too.

Any other ideas?

jtsuited

hipass the kick and bass (or even the whole track) for the bar coming into the break.

or the current flavour of the month trick : turn up your aux sends to the reverb, so it hangs.

Neurojazz

Large subject.

Apart from the usual reverse fades and genre specific (like the spring reverb elongated tails) you'd be looking and mad syncopated rhythms / breaks and layered SFX.

I'm speaking in electronica terms generally, as you have more room to play around, so here are a few methods i've seen or done myself.

The usual reverse crashes get layered up with white noise or rising tones (search Shepard tone) - sometimes getting the lows eq'd out as they rise up to make space underneath for other sounds to shine out.

'Endless Flangers/phasers' - plugins that help that lift.

White / pink noise under anything that needs building - lowpass filters opening slowly to add to the build.

Reverse dynamics - as in snare fills that start louder and decay to inject some tingles.

Funky breaks just before it kicks off.

Dropping the last beat of the bassdrum (easy mode

Dropping 4 beats before the break.

Keeping instruments 'mono/root' (as in no progression) during the breakdowns - then drop the bass drum and let the progression happen and it excites the ears.

Drop all the sounds or bass drum and have a vocal shout / then kick back in.

Timbale breaks

In essence, you can get away with many things - it's down to messing around a lot to find something unique that drives your listener and you wild/happy/whatever.

Layering of these techniques enables you to drag the listeners ears through a flowing experience that is awesome - you need to keep listening the the break over and over to make sure it passes smoothly - good programming and knowledge of your hosts/hardware controllers is a must! - as jtsuited pointed out you'd be playing around with controller curves in your DAW, and you need to be able to manipulate everything to be able to get it to happen the way you want.

Tip of the iceberg - i think i spend more time on breaks that anything else

hubiedubie

Thanks,
Some great tips there. I definitely find I'm spending most of my time on these sections too. Also finding them hard to get 'right'. I think that's definitely an experience thing and the only way to improve it is to write more and more tracks.

I think the mastering these techniques is definitely a mark of a good producer and ultimately one of the ingredients that makes a track sound professional as opposed to amateur.

Interestingly I notice nowadays with alot of producers (especially minimal and techno) these sections are very subtle and becoming more and more abstract. There's very little fanfare: They're more random soundscapes than a melodic / rhythmic effect. Check out Magnit Express feat Speedy J and Chris Liebing as an example of this.

From my understanding the main things that separates the professionals from the amateurs(ie me) are the following:

1. Seamless transitions between different track sections.
2. Sound design: Interesting, original sounds.
3. Little random punctuations throughout the track to keep the listener's interest piqued.
4. Attention to detail.
5. The unexpected: leading the listener down a road and then throwing something completely unanticipated at them (obviously something that fits though) - this is where the real magic is.

Neurojazz

Yeah, Speedy J - 'Patterns' The Remix - O M G - best listened to very, very loud

thebookofbob

There's also the stuff borrowed from "Real" Drumming.. "Tom Rundowns" , "Funky snare fills" and the like. Can give a breath of fresh air to the usual "everybody's doing it Stuff"