Tape & Valve Emulation Via Plugins

We hear a lot about valve emulators, tape saturation plugins, and vintage warming effects for use in the digital audio world these days. But what are they and how should you u se them? And will they give you that "punchy", yet "warm" sound that everyone talks about?

A quick overview. Valve and tape machines are, of course, analogue equipment. They change the sound when you run a signal through them, even if you're not trying to treat it; in a similar way that a vinyl record player might. This is something that's not an issue in a DAW - there are no converters, and everything can be clinically clean and precise.

But this isn't always a good thing. As with vinyl, many consider this analogue sound to be desirable, and so we have plenty of plugins on the market that emulate that subtle shift in timbre. You'll see how they claim to add 'warmth', or 'punch' or even 'grit'.

Ultimately, the analogue sound is caused by distortion. Typically, the main characteristics of that distortion are a 'warmer' EQ sound - in other words you lose some of the top end, and perhaps gain a boost down in the low mids or bass, a 'saturation' of the transient (or a reduction - rather like limiting), and, if driven at all hard, you'll find harmonics introduced that were not in the original sound, like overdrive.

So when should you be using these plugs? And how? Well, there are basically

two ways to look at it. Firstly, as a creative effect, and second as a mix tool. As an effect, you can use them somewhat like a straight-up distortion unit - send your bassline or kick through a tapehead plug, ramp up the gain and see what happens. Anything is possible here - try running a sub-bass quite hard through a vintage warmer (or three), and you'll soon hear a vicious snarl of a bassline that suddenly dominates the track. Or you could push a lead synth through one and gain some buzz at the higher end.

The more common option for use though, is at the mixdown stage, and here analogue warmers can have a range of uses. Put a valve emulator on your bass sound, and it will introduce higher frequencies to the sound, that will help the subs come through more clearly on smaller speakers. Try one on your strings or pads, and it will help to thicken up the sound and give it a touch more weight or presence. Alternatively, you can run a tape saturator over your drum buss to bring in a bit more power or crunch, whilst reducing the dynamic range - subtle compression, EQ and distortion all in one. It's results like this that make

people talk about 'grit' or 'punch' and they can be very welcome.

There is an important caveat though - use sparingly! It's easy to lash a valve plugin across your drum

s, crank it up under the impression that more warmth is better, and unwittingly squash all the life out of your track.

Likewise, it's important to remember that while these plugs add, they also take away. So remember to check that you haven't just removed the sparkle from your hihats, or if you've warmed up your sub with

some low-mids, make sure you haven't inadvertantly cut some of the low end that was there in the first place! For this reason, it's often worth using parallel processing - (see our previous blog on this subject) - so that you can bring in the effected signal without compromising the original; especially for sounds with important dynamics, like drums or percussive lead lines. Subtlety is key. These tools are not magic fixers and won't make a dull sound into a great one. But they can add an extra few percent to a good sound.

Some of the popular options are:

PSP Vintage Warmer - one of the originals. Now up to version 2.5, this is probably the most popular analogue emulators on the market, and for good reason.

112dB Redline Preamp - only released this year, but rapidly becoming very popular for its low CPU use, configurability, and quality of sound.

Massey Tapehead - one of the best-kept secrets out there. Sounds great and is widely used. The only difference between the free demo and the full version is the lack of a bypass option. Highly recommended.

So, with some of these tips, we hope you'll be able to get things sparkling with just your DAW. Are you ready to bring that classic vintage sound to your mixes?

Mixing with Parallel Compression

Let's take a look at a bit of a sneaky tip in the mixing world - that of parallel compression. Why should you care, what can it do, and what is it anyway?

Well, the clue is in the word 'parallel': basically you're taking a processed signal, along with the unprocessed original, and mixing them together. In this way, hopefully, you can combine the best of both worlds. It's generally applied to compression, because for most other types of processing it's not really needed; there's no point mixing a clean signal with something that has a large EQ boost - you might as well just have a small EQ boost in the first place. With compression, however, your signal is generally so radically altered, that there's not (always) a simple way to rein it in. Parallel compression is also sometimes known as New York compression.

The Basics

So, practically speaking, what is the point of parallel compression? Why would you want to bother yourself with such a thing? When we consider a compressor, and what it does to a signal, there are basically two parts; the attack and the release. For a drum hit, let's call these the transient and the body. If you have a fast attack, then you lose transient, but the body will be relatively more loud. If you have a slow attack, then you can keep the transient and reduce the volume of the body. But what if you want both? Turn up the body, the weight of your sound, and retain the snap of the transient? Ah. That's where we need to get creative. You can probably see where this is going, then; the idea behind parallel compression is that you can take your original, clean signal, and blend it with a compressed one. The compressed signal will therefore want to have a fairly fast attack - you don't need to worry about saving transients, as they'll be there from your original signal, and likewise you can dial in a fairly hefty ratio too - use the clean sound for fidelity, and back it up with the weight from your squashed alternative.

Techniques

So, that's the thinking behind it - let's have a look at how to set something up. For the sake of simplicity, I'll suggest that you take a full drum loop sample; maybe some live-sounding drums so that you'll be able to hear the effect most clearly (you could, of course, use your drum buss). Take a 'send' from this channel, send it to a buss, and put a compressor on it. Then go for some fairly vigorous processing; set your attack to 0ms, release something like 500ms, give it a ratio of 10:1 or more, and a low threshold. In other words, crush the life out of it - make sure to solo it, and you'll find it sounds horrible. Now, pull this fader all the way down (so you're hearing only the original), and then slowly bring it back up. What you should hear is that the drums sound beefier, with more weight, but without losing too much in the way of transient punch. At some point the compressed signal will start to overwhelm the clean - this is where you should back it off. Remember, if you can hear what's been done, then it's probably too much.

A magic bullet, then? Well, not quite. It can still be a heavy-handed technique and is suitable for certain types of music more than others. If you fancy yourself as the next Steve Angello then go right ahead - slam that compressed signal into the mix. And then compress it again just to be sure. But for other sounds, where a degree of subtlety is required, you'll need to be careful that you don't lose what was good in the first place. Parallel compression is sometimes even referred to as 'upwards compression' - because instead of turning down the loud bits, the end result is that you turn up the quiet bits. Either way, you reduce the dynamic range, so bear it in mind.

Pitfalls

I've assumed, here, that you'll be mixing in the box. This removes certain potential pitfalls; if you're rocking the hardware look then you'll know that by sending a signal out to a compressor, a delay is introduced, so mixing this back in may induce phase issues. Fortunately, for computer-based heads, any recent DAW - Logic 7 onwards, for instance - will have delay compensation built in; so just going through the basic parallel compression

process won't introduce phasing, in itself. There are still plenty of ways to do so though, so be careful. If you EQ your compressed signal, then an EQ can alter the phase of a signal, relative to itself. You can use a linear phase EQ, which should sort the issue - but really, it's best to get all that stuff out of the way before you get a compressor in there.

Keep it simple!

It's also easy to overdo any technique in the quest for more punch and louder mixdowns - so remember to check yourself as you go along.

This was a pretty technical article, but try it a couple of times and you'll find it all makes sense pretty quickly - you'll be giving your precious mixes more weight and clarity in no time. So - are you ready to bring the New York approach to your mixes?

How to make the most of your arrangement

This week it's time to take a step back through the writing process, and look at putting together song structures and arrangements. Do you struggle to take your exciting eight-bar loops and make them into a fully-featured song? Or do you wonder about how to keep your arrangements interesting? Then read on...

The first issue, and it's an important but not really an obvious one, is that you have to change your thinking about the tune - change your perspective. It's the cue to start thinking much more analytically about your track. Rather than just considering "Do I like it?", you want to be thinking more along the lines of - "What does it actually need to do? What functions does it have to fulfil?"

This might sound a little bit calculating, but it's necessary. There are certain fundamental things your tune will need to do, and understanding that will help things take shape. For example, if you're writing for a rapper, you'll need a verse / chorus structure, and most rappers like to work with sections of 8 or 16 bars. Likewise, if you're writing a track for the DJs and the dancefloor, then you'll need to give them an intro and outro to mix with, or a trance tune may need an epic breakdown. Beyond this, of course, your tune will need to develop or change to hold the listeners interest, it could use a sense of tension and resolution - for instance a build up followed by a full-on section, or a discordant key change that then resolves back to the original key.

So, those are the basic ideas. But we could be getting ahead of ourselves. First, a good thing to do is get a reference track. Find a track you like, in your style, sit down with a pen and do some counting. How long is the intro? Is there a breakdown? How long are the sections in between the breaks? Don't worry, this isn't cheating - it's more like referencing your mixdown against a well produced track to make sure the hihats sound OK.

Once you've got an idea of the shape of the track, start sketching yours out in roughly the same way. Again, don't worry about copying it - no-one ever dislikes a good track on the grounds that it has a 64-bar main section, just like that other track.

That's the easy part, then. From here it's a case of making sure that the track stays interesting enough as it progresses, and once again it may be worth looking to your reference track, to see how things develop. You'll likely be working in sections of 4, 8, or 16 bars, and these are useful signposts to where new ideas could come in, or existing ones could drop out. But don't just get into the rut of bringing in a new idea every eight bars - predictability in the arrangement can be as boring as no changes at all!

So what kind of things can you do to keep your track rolling? Well, here are some suggestions:

Percussion


Add something, or remove something - building up your percussion lines can add a sense of energy. If you're writing a progressive genre like tech-house or minimal, then something as simple as adding a hihat can really give the track a lift. If you're in a more energetic genre, then consider adding a bongo loop, tambourines, ride cymbals and shakers. Remember that dropping percussion out requires a much bigger change to have impact - try taking everything down to just the kick, for example. Or, you could get more creative - try changing the pitch of some of your loops for a few bars, send them to FX channels occasionally for that dubby vibe, or drop in some fills.

Beef up your riffs


This is a simple idea, but often works well - simply duplicate the melody of your main lead lines or bass lines, but with a different synth; and maybe an octave or two up or down. It will give the track extra hype, the sound some more 'oomph', and won't clutter your arrangement.

Melody and harmony


Now, this is a subject which could get very complex, but there are a few simple ideas that you could try which shouldn't be too taxing. For instance, a key change can give a real shift. The most common movements are around 1, 4 and 5 in your scale; so if you're in C, try going up to F, or down to G. Or you could add a high string line - or try the classic electro house trick of doubling your lead riff with something a third (four semitones) higher. On the melody side, you can use some old composition tricks to keep your riff interesting, like 'inversion' - where you swap the notes around vertically, so a rising line would become a falling line, or 'retrograde' - where a melody line is played in reverse.

Another option with plenty of potential is to have contrasting sections - say, two full loops, each with a different bassline and leadline - that you can switch between. Then you don't just have to develop one idea, and the alternation brings interest of its own.

Ultimately, it's a case of combining both sides of the equation - have a coherent structure (intro, breakdowns, etc) and then make each section keep the listener's interest by using techniques like those above.

So, there's a few suggestions for keeping your tracks rolling without getting boring. There are plenty more of course, but hopefully this will have planted a few seeds on how you can set out your tunes. So, are you ready to take your fledgling 8-bar loop out into the world of the 5 minute track?

5 MIDI controllers you probably didn't know existed

Okay, so if you're familiar with MIDI controllers, you'll know that MIDI keyboards are used by producers the world over, MIDI mixers allow for easier level alteration and you might have even come across the odd MIDI guitar... but have you come across these before?

1. MIDI Saxophone

Think brass instruments have been underrepresented in newer musical genres? Take a blast from the past and tie it in with a blast from the future on the Akai EWI 4000 MIDI Saxophone!

This device is seriously expressive, with touch sensitive keys, breath sensor for dynamics and wireless MIDI connectivity.

...And most importantly, how could you possibly look cooler than donning a jazzy hat, wearing your favourite blacked out shades and playing some smooth jazz on this baby? Or perhaps some hardcore gabber. As always with MIDI, there's no limitation to what you can play!

2. Otamatone

Think that conventional instruments are too boring? How about this fantastic device that pretty much exemplifies the phrase "only in Japan".

With a ribbon controller for pitch and squeezing the little guy's face for velocity, this really is one of the more unusual devices out there.

3. GypsyMIDI

The name is horrendously deceptive - I don't think any old gypsy could easily afford one of Sonalog's MIDI controllers at £480 a piece, but with the device actually attatching to your body to trigger the music in an exoskeletal musical combination, this is certainly one of the more impressive looking devices.

However, if you want to complete your raving terminator look, then how about...

4. MIDIGun

With a distance sensor coming out of the barrel, a crossfader, several knobs, a scratch wheel, accellerometer for motion-based alteration of parameters and far too many other cool things to think about, this device is pretty much the ultimate MIDI toy. Particularly if you're making gangsta rap - I can think of no more appropriate live instrument.

5. Misa Digital Guitar

No ordinary MIDI guitar, this one combines a multi touch, pressure sensitive pad with 24 frets of note choice on the 6 rows available, giving you the conventional guitar playing experience minus the... uh... strings. This does give you the ability to vastly change the sound in ways you never could on a guitar, however - it doesn't appear to be for sale just yet. So I guess you could either make your own, or ask the owner nicely to hurry up and market it already!

Psytrance - What is it?

There are some electronic music genres that jump out at you and smack you right in the face. Ones that are so unignorable that they simply force you to pay attention. Psytrance is not one of them.

What is it then? Why has this genre survived for so long with attention spans getting shorter and other, more obvious genres standing out so much more clearly? Let's ask some questions...

What's it about?

Psytrance takes the "trance" part of its name very seriously. Whereas regular old trance tends to over-exaggeratedly build you up and break you down, adding the "Psy" to the front of it changes the sound considerably.

Your average Psytrance song will pound a repetitive arpeggiated bassline over a 4-on-the-floor beat for a goot 7-10 minutes, with repetitive lead synths steadily building and dropping throughout. It's the reduced focus on structure and increased focus on repetition that makes it so entrancing.

As with pretty much any music, there are other aspects to the culture that accompany the audible side of things. In this case, it tends to be something to do with illicit substance abuse and hippie-esque kaleidoscopic imagery. Tie-Dye and Psytrance go together like peas in a drug-filled pod.

When did it start?

In the mid '80s in Goa, India, the DJs that had thoroughly rinsed their Pink Floyd Vinyls decided to move towards electronic experimentation, remixing artists like Frontline Assembly and Front 242 into looped, danceable forms.

Clubs and Festivals adapted from the old psychadelic rock style to the new electronic style, fusing the European culture with the already established hippie culture to bring about the birth of the new wave of music.

How did it start to get popular?

For many years it was purely kept to the clubs, being difficult to get hold of albums of psytrance. However, in the early '90s, the first Psytrance album was released, though at the time it was known as "Goa Trance".

The term "Psytrance" didn't come into general useage until the mid '90s, when the music had evolved into a more refined concept. By this time, many mainstream DJs had picked up on the style, playing it to its commercial death a few years later, as it faded back into relative obscurity.

Why is Psytrance still so popular?

It does what it's supposed to do really well - hypnotise. Listening to the stuff induces a sense of intense relaxation so effectively that people have continued making it for decades. That combination of resonance-happy filter modulation, repetitive beats and unusual lead synths has, with no small amount of assistance from illegal substances, proven a solid means of tapping into that darker side of music, without losing the intensity of danceable electronica.

Where can I get samples for it?

Primeloops samples such as "Club Bizarre" or other similar progressive house packs provide a good starting point - just remember to be a bit more repetitive with the synths! Couple that with some ambient samples such as "Ambient Illusions" and you're well on your way to becoming a Psytrance master!

7 Tips for Creating Big Drums in Your Mix

Ever wonder how to get those tight, slammin' drum tracks that you hear in dance music? There are many methods to achieve these sounds, but here are a few techniques, ranging from beginning to more advanced to help you get the biggest boom for your drum tracks.

Tune Your Drums - When working with sampled drums, drum machines, or drum machine emulators, make sure to tune your kick to the fundamental frequency of the song. This will allow the kick to sit in a comfortable space that is pleasing to the ear. Also, for most dance music you would want to use more than one kick. I usually use a series of 3 kicks together in the following manner:

1. Sub-bass kick - you can create this with a virtual drum machine such as D-16's Drumazon, where you can emulate the classic sound of a 909, a preset in a soft synth like Rob Papen's Predator, or of course, if you have an analog synth or drum machine you can get your sub sounds from there. Use caution when adjusting the ASDR settings for the sub bass because it can become fatiguing if there's to much sustain on the kick, as it can also be difficult to tame in your mix - A little goes a long way in this frequency spectrum. This usually lies in the 30Hz to 70Hz range.


2. Main kick - this is where you have more power. You can get these sounds from a sample library, using electronic or acoustic drum sounds. Again, if you're using a software sampler like Native Instruments Battery, you can tune the sample up or down about 5 steps without it loosing too much of its original sound. After tuned, this kick will be an octave about your sub-bass kick which again, will add to the harmonic richness of the overall song, not just your drums. The frequency of this kick should be around 80Hz to 150 Hz.

3. Click - the third component to add can be a click or pop. This doesn't necessarily have to be tuned like the others. This adds a snap to the kick, filling out the sound so that the ear hears an attack on top of the full sound of the kick. This frequency range may be much higher - anywhere from 3k to 8k.

Phase Align - After exporting your drum tracks, make sure that they are in proper phase relation. Even if they sound close, they may have subtle attack differences that could contribute to phasing. You may either zoom in and align the samples by hand in your DAW, or you can use a function like Logic Studio's flex time to create a groove template from your main kick, then synchronize the other two kicks to it. I am a huge fan of flex time in Logic, and use it frequently for drums and percussion. This tool is invaluable for aligning loops to the proper quantization that you have in your track, and can be a life-saver when you have a great loop you'd love to use, but it swings differently than your track. We'll talk much more in the future about flex time in Logic!

Groups - Create a drum group in which to process all your drum tracks. I sometimes like to make two groups, one for drums and another for loops. This way you can process the elements individually, then mold the sounds together. This also helps if you
are adding filter sweeps or low cut effects on the drum tracks - you can easily automate these effects to the whole drum bus while keeping the individual instruments in balance. Generally a compressor with some gain reduction and a moderate ratio (no more than 4:1) on the drum group works to glue the sounds together.

EQ - I usually put an EQ insert on each track and sweep upwards to the fundamental tone of the kicks and snare to clean out any low end frequencies not needed in the mix. Sometimes EQ can be used to also clean out any high-end overtones present in any of the drum parts, especially if you're using some of the more tuned percussion parts that have higher frequencies that may cloud the mix if they're in the same register as a vocal or other instrumental part. Like usual, try not to use additive EQ when possible, it's always better to cut than to add.

Dynamics - When using compression or limiters on your individual drum tracks, pay careful attention to the attack and release times. This is what can make the drums sound muffled and lifeless if overused. I don't usually advise mixing with tracks soloed, however sometimes I will solo the snare drum track or tracks to hear the exact amount of compression and how the attack and release times effect the transients and fullness of the drums. Gating can also be very useful when your snare sources have extra reverb or long decays. You can either side-chain the gate to the fundamental frequency of the snare or just use it to cut off the tails to allow more room in the mix in more of a linear aspect.

Effects - If you want to add a small amount of reverb, try to do it on select instruments within your drum group. Delay can be added slightly to either high-hats or shakers, but make sure that the delay setting is not too active or long (try 1/8 or 1/16 notes - not dotted). If the delay times are too long or active, the sounds can loose definition and the mix can become washy. When adding any types of effects that can effect the stereo image, make sure to periodically check you mix in mono to ensure that phasing is not occurring.

Parallel Compression - I am a huge fan of parallel compression, and I think it is the best way to increase your "loudness" or RMS levels within your mix without loosing the original sound of the samples being used. This can be used on the individual tracks as well as the drum group. I like to use a big compressor like Wave H-Comp with a really high setting (from 20:1 up to 50:1) to really fatten the sound without running out of headroom or over-compressing on the insert.

If you start your mix by laying a solid, harmonic drum foundation prior filling in the instruments in the rest of the frequency spectrum, you will immediately notice your tracks getting tighter and sounding more full, allowing you to achieve big drums capable of droppin' the boom!

5 simple ways to improve your track

When you're starting with production, it can be easy to think that more is more.

Well I'm going to explain why less is indeed more as per the cliche, with 5 tips to improve your track - by lessening what's in it...

1. Removing Percussion for fills

Listen to any decent Hip Hop song and you'll find that the beat compliments the vocals on occasion by dropping out so the listener can focus on those all-important punchlines.

This applies to all genres - by removing small parts of the percussion, it can completely change the feel of the beat, giving more variety with nothing actually added to the track!

2. Remove frequencies

De-muddify your track by removing overlapping frequencies between different instruments, high pass a low pitched synth to get some cool fx as the note becomes difficult to distinguish and the tone takes over, remove notches of a sound to completely change where the focus lies within it.   Frequencies are there for the taking... so take them!


3. Cutting elements for extra coolness

There's nothing like a cool little stutter in a vocal part or lead.   Make hooks catchier with a repeating stutter and make a synth more interesting by giving it that gated effect.


4. Soloing elements to draw attention to them

Remove the wall of sound for a second and focus on an element that's really buried in the mix, then bring it all back in.   It's such a cool effect and makes for a strong fill within your track!

5. Turn it down!

Perhaps the most important thing people leave too much of in their tracks is volume!   Take it away from the vast majority of things, remember - the bigger the volume difference between the instrumentation and the percussion, the harder your beats will hit, since the listener will just turn up their speakers to compensate for the quietness!

Although for dance music producers you might be fighting the loudness war to make your tunes stand out, maybe they'd stand out more with some of the above techniques and you can still retain clarity in your mix.

So stop thinking about what you can give your track and start working with what you already have - you've been far too generous lately! ;)

How to prepare for a studio session

So you've booked yourself into a pro studio to record those songs you've been perfecting over the months - hold up!

It's very easy to let yourself slip into laziness and just wait for that day that you'll drive down, but to make sure you waste no time when you're in there, here are a few tips to remember to maximize that expensive time slot!

Rip it!

Rip down all demo audio tracks you have to stems that are all the same length so you can chuck them straight into your projects. That way no matter what software they use, you can quickly set up an initial track.

This way it's also easier to get a feel for the song - you can re-record any tracks that feel they are lacking and leave the ones that are a good enough quality already (synth and sample tracks for example tend to be fine and just benefit from a little studio polish!)

Get MIDI ready!

As I said, synths don't usually need re-doing, but you might find that a change in the song requires a new sound on an old part.

Having those MIDI tracks nicely organised speeds the process up considerably - especially if you can just boot up your laptop, change the synth patch or sample rhythm a bit, then quickly send it back to the master studio computer.

Practice 'til you bleed!

Well, maybe not that much, but if there's any live instrumentation it's VITAL that you can play it perfectly in time first try.

Practicing along to a click track and recording yourself is a great way to see where you're a bit sloppy - zoom right in on the wave form and see if you're coming in too fast or too slow, notice anywhere you struggle to nail those more difficult parts and find out exactly what you're doing wrong.

Have all samples easily accessible!

Make sure you bring a laptop or external hard drive with your entire sample library, nicely organised, into the studio.

If you need new samples, it's a massive time saver to be able to pick out what you want in a matter of minutes rather than searching through folder after folder of unsorted sounds.

Videography!

Get a film-inclied friend to accompany you and make a video diary for your fans! YouTube is ideal for showing an insight behind the music, so don't waste the opportunity

Boast about it to your friends!

You're going into a pro studio, you've got to milk it!

5 ways to make a good track great

Have you ever been in the position where you've got a good tune and you're happy with it, but think it needs that extra something to make it stand out?

Well here are 5 tips for turning that good tune into a great one.

1. Add in FX

Make sure you've got enough distance from the track (I like to leave it a day or so before adding the FX on) so you're not already exhausted from creating the track, then get to work adding in some reverses, sweeps, hits and other one-shots.

They can make dull phrases more interesting, builds more powerful and fans think you're more awesome. FX are vital for a full, professional sound.

2. Go through inserting fills

When you need something more interesting to make a repetitive section maintain the listener's attention, fills are the way to go! Drum fills, little melody quirks and the ever-useful "throw a random sample in there and hope for the best" technique all apply; just be sure to make your track fun to listen to!

Don't be inappropriate though - this goes for public nudity as well as maintaining musical integrity, but if you have a trance song, sometimes it's good to have a lot of repetition, for example, in order to entrance your listener. Find that balance that suits the style of music you want to make!

3. Remove unnecessary layers

Have you ever found your tracks swimming in pads, arps and keys? I know I've been guilty of it in the past - sometimes you need to remove a few layers, no matter how attached you are to them, in order for the remaining layers to shine.

This can result in the wonderful side effect of having a starting point for another song; if a part you really like is removed, take it into a new project and push it in its own direction!

4. Add extra layers of vocals

For those of you playing with words as well as sounds, it's always adviseable to back up your vocals with double tracks and, more importantly, harmonies. Software like Melodyne Editor is great for this if you're using vocal samples, since then you don't need to get the vocalist in to record again!

5. Get some more opinions

There's nothing like communal music making! Show your tune to a mate, musically inclined or not, and ask them if they thought anything might be an interesting change, or if any sections should be more prominent!

Just make sure they don't ask for co-writing credits!

What is Dance-Hop?

It's time to realise that the charts have been crossing over two of the most club-friendly genres for some time now. It's time to pay attention to one of the biggest new sounds of the new millenium. It's time to ask some questions...

What's it about?

Dance-Hop is about merging together offbeat rhythms with constant, 4-on-the-floor ones. The funkiness of hip hop with the driving beats of club music, merging with some of the most uplifting and sexy synths to make a genre so danceable that it could turn a school disco into an underground exclusive clubnight!

When did it start?

It's not a new idea to merge hip hop and dance, but it's never really hit the charts with any weight in the past - the Hip House fad in the 80s briefly combined rap with dance beats, but it's taken a while for the crossover to really find its feet and become accepted in its own right as a chartworthy genre.

How did it start to get popular?

When hip hop and R&B artists such as Flo Rida, Taio Cruz, Will.i.am, Usher, and Akon all followed suit in adding dance and euro pop elements to their songs, the style was cemented into the minds of the masses. Massive hits like "sexy bitch", "dynamite" and "OMG" have really pushed the synth heavy sound to the fore of pop music.

Why is Dance Hop so club-friendly?

The undeniably danceable 4 on the floor kick drum beat that carries the song has been proven again and again to be a success in the club atmosphere, combining that with electro house synths associated so strongly with summer parties and the vocals from rap and R&B give the clubgoers hooks to sing along with. It has it all.

How can I make it?

Get yourself over to primeloops to grab "Da Sound of Bounce" for a start - that pack pretty much sums the genre up perfectly. Experimenting with conventionally dance-y sample packs in a hip hop context (try alternating between a dance beat and a hip hop one) can be a sure-fire success too!

Give square wave synths a chance and be generous with the glistening top end to get that uplifting feel. Most importantly, when writing it, make sure you can't resist dancing to it as you're laying those synthlines down!

5 Promo Tips for Big Shows

Wow! Good news; You landed that big show! Whether it's a support slot or a packed night, when a gig comes up that you just know is going to be brilliant, you need to make the most of it.

Here are 5 ways to do so!

1. Have too many CDs

Both to sell and to give out - especially if you know there will be influential people there. Getting your music out to people is a lot easier if you actually have your music to give out in the first place. A 3 track CD, preferably with a nicely printed design on it (something informative and relevant to your style - make sure contact details are on there!) should do the trick.

2. Promote it yourself

If you can get people there to see you, they can help to intice the crowd into moving. It's a chain reaction situation - get the front rows moving and it'll slowly echo out further back! So get your mates there, do some flyering and even try and get on local radio to encourage people that are going to help out a local act by going suitably mental on the dancefloor.

3. Find excuses to talk to the bigger acts and promoters

Don't pass up the chance to thank them for putting on the show / allowing you to play with them! While you're at it, you may as well give them a free CD as a token of your appreciation. If you can get chatting and make friends with bigger acts and more successful promoters, that's what's going to help you secure more big shows in future!

4. Mean Business

Get a tonne of business cards printed. This can be a brilliant technique - get some carefully selected fans to hand them out, or be more personal and do it yourself, chatting to as many people who saw you as possible. A business card can be tucked in a pocket rather than being dropped on the floor, making it more likely that the punter will check you out!

5. Jump off something

Well, I suppose "Stand Out" might be better, but I find leaping off PA systems works reasonably well to do just that. If you are a fan of maintaining the integrity of your spine, however, hiring some impressive lights, doing a cool cover or donning some attention grabbing garb may be similarly effective and more pleasing to the venue's health and safety manager.

So get preparing for how you're going to make the most of the opportunity - don't just let it slip!

To break or not to break

When writing electronic music, there are several schools of thought when deciding how to write the percussive side of things.

But which one suits you? It's time to take a look at what's available for the aspiring beat makers out there...


BYOB (Build your own Beat)

Get yourself a nice drum sequencer and stick some samples in, then build your beat from scratch. This one is for the control freaks out there who want absolutely every part of the beat to be as they envision it.

The advantages of this method are that you get exactly the rhythm you want, with no compromises. It'll also be much more unique to you, and you'll walk away with the smug satisfaction of being the creator of the loop.

The disadvantages include that it can take a while to get it how you want, it can sometimes feel lacking if you can't find punchy / airy enough samples and if you're not feeling inspired, you might get frustrated before you even get to the rest of the sounds in your song!


Loops

Do you despair at making beats from scratch? Find yourself frustrated that you can't just get straight to work on something? It's time to get loopy with some pre-programmed percussion!

Find a rex loop player or something similar (most sequencers natively support .wav file looping) and you can jump in at the deep end by chucking a percussive loop right into the mix, making it sound awesome straight away and giving you a cool starting point.

The advantage here is obviously the speed of access; the workflow with loops allows you to quickly fill up your track with a beat so you can concentrate on the melodies - if you are more of a melody person than a passionate percussionist, perhaps this is the preferred paradigm for you!

The disadvantages are that it might not be unique, particularly if you use a loop that is overused (Amen breaks, I'm looking at you!) - However, by slicing the loop into sections and re-arranging it, you can get something more tailored to your needs. You still won't be able to take individual soloed hits to make cool fills unless you have them separately, though.

So each method has their advantages and disadvantages, but perhaps the way forward lies in another method...


Use Both!

Chucking a loop in and backing it up with some punchy one-shots, or filling out a minimalist beat with an airy, interesting loop means you can get something more unique and not lose your mind trying to perfect that break without any external elements!

While this may still take a while, one way around the aformentioned problem of losing your spark before you can get to the melody-making is to set aside a day for making beats. Build a bunch of breaks, then when you want to make a song, you'll have your own pack of custom loops ready and waiting for you to utilize them in your next smash hit.

Otherwise, use the loop to build the song, then go back at the end and re-build it as you please with your own one-shot beats, so you don't lose that valuable inspiration.


So try some new methods, find the break-making workflow that works for you and get to... uh... work!

Synthesix - 6 different methods of making synth sounds

Do you feel you're in a rut with your productions?   Struggling to create new sounds?   Or simply on the lookout to expand your synthesized horizons?

Well here are the synthesix - 6 different methods of synthesizing sounds...

1. Additive

By giving complete control over every harmonic or partial in the sound, additive is one of the most versatile, but also difficult synthesis methods to get to grips with.
However, it's a simple concept - reconstructing complex sounds out of really simple ones.   A collection of sine waves all played at different frequencies to create the sound.

Generally, additive synths will give control over just a few groups of partials, just to simplify things, so it's a little more user-friendly.


2. Subtractive

Far less computationally expensive than additive and very commonly used, subtractive synthesis begins with an oscillator that generates a waveform such as a sawtooth or square wave, then uses filters and the like to remove harmonics from the tone, altering it - kind of like when you say "ahhh" and slowly close your mouth until it becomes an "oooh" (if you can resist actually doing that now, you have an inconceivably strong will!)


3. FM

Frequency Modulation or FM synthesis is a fast-track to interesting and obscure tones.   Perhaps this is why they are so popular with Dubstep producers, who frequently employ FM synthesis to make increasingly more disgusting bass synths.

This is done by frequency modulating a waveform (when the amplitude stays the same, but the frequency is modulated) with another waveform.    This distorts the tone and gives all kinds of unexpected and fun sounds!

If you modulate a wave with another wave that's frequency isn't an integer multiple of the original wave (I'll give you a moment to wrap your head around that one, it took me a while) then you can get dissonant and even percussive sounds from it!


4. PM

Phase Modulation or PM is what you get when some Japanese synth manufacturers decide to prove just how smart they are.   While the rest of the world's computers were struggling under the strain of subtractive synthesis, Casio's researchers let their processors have a holiday with PM.

PM simply processed the samples of each wave at a varying speed.   By reading out the first part of the wave really fast, then holding the loudest point of each high and low point of the wave for longer than normal, it created a really interesting tone with a tiny computational cost.

The most brilliant part however (and much simpler to understand as well) comes when you add in the second wave in the PM synth.   For example - if you have a square wave in slot 1 and a saw wave in slot 2, it would play a square followed by a saw over and over again in quick succession, making a completely new tone.

These are great for making unusual resonant tones.


5. Granular

A close relative of sampling, Granular synthesis involves cutting samples up into really tiny segments of only a few milliseconds long called "grains", then playing them back at different speeds, phases, volumes and pitches to create all kinds of intriguing timbres!

You'll probably know the sound as the one from the film The Matrix, where neo has the silver goo going down his throat after taking the red pill.

It's great for that time-stretchy sound and more for ambient soundscapes and effects than lead synths or basses.

6. Wavetable

Wavetable synths are basically modified additive synths.   They have tables of different waves made up from additive synthesis, saving the user from having to make each individual wave.

Then, they allow the producer to play back the waves looped in quick succession, also allowing them to determine how far through the wave the loop should begin, resulting in some very unusual harmonic sounds!