Beat the Block!

It happens to the best of us - you're looking forward to working on a track or writing a new beat, you get yourself into the studio, and... nothing. No, you're just not feeling creative today. Whether from a tiring day at work or just a lack of inspiration, writer's block can hit us all. So what do you do while you're waiting for the creative juices to start flowing again? Let's look a some options...

Dig in the crates. This one's easy, and fun - listen to some of your old records and start looking for samples. Anything that sounds like it might be useful, just record it in - it doesn't matter if it turns out to be unusuable, but for future use you'll have a palette of sounds and starting points to get busy with when the mood strikes. Drums, loops, vocal hits, chords, even hiss and crackle - get it recorded and saved; it'll save you time later!

Make some sounds. Get a synth loaded up and start messing with plugins, effects, filters and so on. Don't worry about writing anything with it, just make some good sounds, and save the presets, or channel strips - or even resample them and mess about with the audio. Again, some sounds might turn out to be useless; or they could be exactly what you need the next time you're really writing.

Backups. This might sound like a parent telling you to change your underwear regularly, but do you backup your hard disk often? Really? Mac users can have the benefit of using Time Machine to do it automatically, but if backing up is something you've always meant to arrange, but never seem to get around to (like it is for most of us) then now's the time to sort it out. Think about how much you'd lose if your hard disk crashed today. Then get copying - or go online and buy a cheap external hard disk for the purpose!

Self-promotion. It always needs to be done, and maybe there's a few bits you could catch up on now. Is your website up to date with gigs and new tracks? Did you send your latest track to plenty of DJ's to get their opinions? You could also fire off a bunch of emails to club promoters, telling them what you do and why they should book you for a show. Don't know any club promoters? Well, get on some local music forums, look at the events page, and hunt down email addresses or facebook pages for people putting on events in your area. Throw them all into a spreadsheet so that you've got them for future use, and start hustling.

Mixes. We all commit ourselves to do a DJ mix for a blog or an internet radio show, and then take forever to actually get around to it. Well, instead of forcing yourself to write music when you're not in the mood, maybe this is the time to pitch in and get it done. Listening to the tracks you use could even give you inspiration for your own work!

Analyse a track. This can really help you gain a new perspective on your own work. We often hear tracks as a whole and don't really think about what they're doing, so it's useful to pull things apart once in a while to see how they work. Listen to a track you really rate and start making notes - how long is the intro and drop, when do certain elements come in and out, how many parts are in a track, what does the mixdown do. If you're musically trained, have a look at the chord progressions and such too. You'll often find that tracks are much more simple than they initially appear, and this can give you some great ideas on how to work with your own beats!

Software updates. Have you been clicking the "remind me later" button on those software updates for the last however many months? You'll have to let it update sometime, and who knows, it might even fix a bug or two. Check for updates on all your latest software, put the kettle on, and let it get on with it.

There's enough here to keep you busy for a good two or three dead evenings in the studio - and you haven't even tidied up the room or defragged your hard disk yet! So work through a few of these dull-but-productive ideas and you should find that once you emerge from your creative slumber, you're firing on all cylinders once more and ready to lay down some beats with no distractions!

Lively Up Yourself!

We all know that the music industry is changing faster than most people can keep up these days, and that if you're going to make any money right now, it's often from live appearances rather than music sales. But for dance music producers, when everyone and their dog is a DJ, how do you make your club sets more unique and appealing than the next hopeful? Why not try incorporating some elements of live technology into your setup? Read on for a brief lowdown on some of the options...

Not so long ago, it was commonplace for most producers to tour as a DJ to make their living. It was straightforward enough - vinyl or CD, a mixer, and maybe (for the very adventurous) an add-on such as an effects box. If anyone took it further - such as Richie Hawtin with his 909 - it was such a momentous event that it warranted a globally released mix CD. But now, as the cost of music tends to zero, everyone can DJ. So if the guy up the road is willing to play your local club for the price of a few beers, you need to offer something extra to stand out and get the set ahead of him.

The first thing that will come to mind for most people when they think of a live set is Ableton. And there's a good reason for this - it's designed especially with live performance in mind. All you need is a laptop and you're good to go. But you'll find that plenty of people turn their noses up at straight laptop sets - claiming that it's boring to watch, it could all be pre-recorded, and the DJ might as well be checking their email. It's a dull debate, but they might have a point!

Many people, therefore, look to a USB controller. Akai and Novation both offer excellent options, and these give you all kinds of benefits right off the bat. You can alter several different parameters at once, and they can let you control things without looking so much at the screen - to avoid those email accusations!

By incorporating Ableton and a simple controller, you'll then be able to add all sorts of effects to your sounds (try a Google search for 'dummy clips' to see how you can manipulate effects) or even break down your tracks to their component parts and re-edit them on the fly. This might sound like quite an undertaking, but it doesn't need to be - even stepping a track down to four or five loops will give you scope to change it in the mix, making it more fun for you to play in the club. Remember that 'live' doesn't necessarily mean you're EQ'ing your hi-hats in the mix every time - it could be something as simple as dropping out the lead line to let the groove roll out, or losing the kick for an instant breakdown.

A step up from this, in terms of complexity, is to bring in a drum machine or synth. This is a common option and it's one that gives you more chance to get away from the screen, as you program or tweak the hardware. Use the MIDI output of your sequencer to synchronise the hardware, and then you can run a track whilst jamming along over the top of it - techno legend Redshape does this to great effect.

One trick that many pro's use is to use full tracks, in their original state, to help bridge gaps in the live setup. This could be seen as cheating, but it's really not - after you've been jamming a 'live' track, you mix into a normal, full track. While this is playing, you can change the patches on your synth, program a new beat with the step sequencer of your hardware drum machine, and when you're ready to go, mix out of the track and back into your live set. Remember though, that if you're going to start bringing noise-making devices as part of your setup (including effects boxes with their return channels) you'll need to bring your own line mixer too! Clubs won't be too happy if you start trying to rewire their DJ mixer at 2am.

There are other options that enable you to get a bit live, too - Traktor gives you the option to line up several tracks at once, and you can use this to live-mix stems of a track. It also has a good set of customisable options to let you play with the structure of any track - if a section is dragging, you can jump forwards 16 bars to the breakdown, or alternatively, loop a part that is going well.

Serato offers similar scope, and have recently released 'The Bridge' - a free piece of software for anyone that already has Serato and Ableton, which lets you synchronise the two. Showing impressive co-operation by these technology companies, you can use this to control Ableton from a turntable, or record live sets complete with fader movements, and lots more - enabling you to swtch seamlessly from playing vinyl, to dropping digital files, to jamming out a proper live set. The boundaries are starting to look very blurred indeed.

If you're a live electronics purist, of course, you may want to avoid laptops altogether - and this is where classics like the Akai MPC series can really come into their own. With their solid rubber pads that can be used both to jam out drum solos, drop one-shot samples, or control MIDI sequences, you can run a full set-up from one of these things without needing to use a computer at all. You'll definitely need a line mixer, some effects, and a good few noise-making boxes to boot - which means you'll be needing to arrive early to set up and soundcheck. But it's guaranteed that there won't be too many people in your neighbourhood who can offer the same live show!

So, 'live sets' can come in all shapes and sizes, from complementing a DJ set to rebuilding a studio on stage. But if you're a producer, you already have something that other DJ's don't - you have the raw materials to your tracks. So make use of this when you're putting together a club set, and try using some of the tools above to create something completely unique!

Automation for the People!

In a modern DAW you can automate just about anything - from volume to the cutoff of a synth, to compression ratios and axillary sends. But why would you want to? And what are the clever techniques you need to know? Sit back, as we take you through some of the options...

Automation really has opened up a potential world of creativity that simply wasn't available to producers only a few years back. You'd hear about 'riding the fader' - where the engineer would manually move a fader up and down as the recording was going to tape. No need for that now, when you can program exactly what you want to happen. And on top of that, you can have a dozen other things happening at the same time.

Volume is perhaps the simplest and most obvious thing to automate; bringing something into the mix gradually, track fadeouts, and also taming peaks without resorting to a compressor. If you have an audio part that occasionally gets a little loud, then automating the volume for just those sections is usually a whole lot quicker than setting up a compressor, and will only affect the parts you actually want.

Alternatively, you can boost parts of a track for short sections to make them jump out of the mix, for instance when your synth crescendos at the end of a build, or if an instrument player drops in a little flourish. It's not a good idea to automate the actual fader level, however - as this means you can't use the faders to set levels in your mixdown later (as they'll change with the automation!). Instead, try putting a 'gain' plugin at the end of your signal chain and automating that. This way you can automate the level of a part without affecting the overall mix.

While we're on the subject of boosting things, one useful trick to emphasise parts of a track is to use auxiliary sends. Imagine you have a big build-up with plenty of synths and sound effects. You can increase the effect of the build by having a big reverb on a buss, and gradually turning up the sends from your synths to that buss, so that the track becomes drenched in a huge reverb space. Then, when the track kicks back in, you snap the sends back to zero and mute the reverbs to create a strong contrast with the spacious build. Or you can use a send to a reverb for just a short fill - use a small 'room' preset, and send your drums or vocal to that for one bar at the end of a phrase, for a distinctive but unobtrusive effect.

To expand on the previous tip regarding builds, why not take it a stage further? Set up an auxiliary channel in your DAW so you can automate the buss that you're sending your synths to. Now you can automatically change the parameters of your reverb, or even - send that buss to another buss with more plugins on it! The potential for creating a huge mess of your mixdown is undeniable, but the capacity for sonic experiments and transforming a sound mid-song is very exciting.

This leads neatly onto dub mixing. Once upon a time, good dub mixing required a large desk and an engineer who knew it inside out. Again, software has brought this capability to us all. A great way of introducing variety and detail to tracks is to automate a number of auxiliary sends. Create several busses, each with different effects; some with delays (all with different delay times and feedbacks), some with phasers, reverbs and so on. Then whenever you want to add some sonic interest, briefly send your drums, vocal, or other key element to one of the busses. Remember that you can automate everything else at the same time; for instance you may wish to turn down your main drum track while a crazy delayed version plays over the top for a bar or so.

Dubstep fans will no doubt be aware of the possibilities for assigning the cutoff on the filter of their bass sound to an LFO to make 'wobbles'. Automation can dramatically increase the creative possibilities here - most notably by changing the LFO rate to alter the speed of the wobble, but also by changing the depth of the modulation (for switching from deep throbs to high squeals) and on some synths, even changing the waveform of the oscillator.

There is more than one way of recording automation, of course. The most immediate is usually to open up the appropriate lane in your DAW and just draw it in. This works well but it is not always the most intuitive method. Instead, it's often useful to record your movements via MIDI (assign the thing you want to automate to a fader or knob on your controller keyboard) and 'play' the controller movements in as you feel they the fit to the track. This should give a more natural feel, while still giving you the potential to go back in later and edit the data.

Used well, automation can really bring your mixes to life. It can help you correct problems, bring new sounds and elements into play, and introduce new creative avenues that were unknown just a few years ago. So maybe it's time to fire up that sequencer, and see how far you can push those sounds!

Work That Sample!

Naturally we're big fans of working with samples here, so this week we're going to take a deeper look into the process of how you'd actually go about it. You've been digging in the crates and found a great loop that would really work as the basis for a track. But now what? How do you turn that into a full track? Join us as we sketch out some of the essentials when working with a sample, loop, or clip.

We'll assume that you've found your sample and you're set on it; it's not for us to say what type of sample you should be using - but for the moment, imagine that it's something substantial, like a one bar loop. The first step, therefore, is to figure out what tempo the sample is. Once you've done this, think what tempo your track will be - but it's often good to let the sample dictate the tempo of the track somewhat. Obviously you can timestretch a sample, but in general going more than 5 - 10BPM away from the original can result in some pretty unpleasant audio artifacts - even though timestretching algorithms are getting better all the time. So consider using the sample somewhere near its original speed - this has the added bonus that if you're a little out of your tempo comfort zone, it can give you new ideas and perspectives that you wouldn't ordinarily see.

On the subject of timestretching, many people like to use something like Recycle or Flextime to quantise the audio. This can be useful if the timing is very sloppy, but in general it's good to leave a bit of a human feel in there - it sounds more natural, and half the point of using a sample is to get something that you can't achieve by programming alone!

The next thing is to work out what key the sample is in (if appropriate). If you're not sure how to do this (a brief introduction to music theory would be an article in itself) then see if you can't just replicate the melody or chords in the sample, by lining up a soft synth and copying them (by trial and error if necessary). This will then show you which are the main notes used, and give you a rough basis to write around later on.

You'll then have a lot of audio processing to get on with, to make it sit nicely with the other elements in the track. EQ is your main tool here; for instance did you take the sample from an old vinyl? If so, it may be a little lacking in top end, and a lift at around 8KHz might help bring some of that back. If, however, that boost just emphasises the noise and hiss on the recording, then you may find it more effective to very subtly layer in some toppy hi-hats (like those on an 808) to give the top end clarity without increasing hiss.

Similarly, you'll need to treat the low end - most commonly by getting rid of it! A high-pass filter set to around 150Hz will help you remove any rumble from a turntable, will give you room to add your own sub-bass in, and should stop any kick drums from clashing too badly, whilst still retaining the character of the kicks from your sample. Going even higher - say to 300Hz - will give you even more space (an excess of frequencies in the 150-300Hz range is one of the most common causes of muddy mixdowns) although this can sometimes be at the expense of character in the sample. If you really don't want to lose the low end, you can even try automating a filter (or using a side-chain input) so that it only high-passes the signal when there's something else playing in the track that you want to come through.

So, that's the top and bottom treated. It's not over though - you need to listen carefully to make sure that there's nothing else that can cause a problem. Some of the most common problems are resonant bongos down around the 300Hz range (very common on old funk loops) or ringing crash and ride cymbals further up the spectrum (common when the drummer is giving it some!). These can be filtered out with a notch EQ, but it's important to be careful, as overly heavy cuts will give an unnatural sound.

We touched on the idea of using your own sounds to discreetly boost certain elements of the sample, and it's something you can use to flesh out the mix, too. For instance, if you want to emphasise a brass section, then you can load up a preset brass instrument or two in a sampler, and spend a little while copying exactly the pattern in your loop. Now turn your sampler right down, and the overall effect should be that the brass sounds just a touch louder, without people being able to tell you've used a preset in there!

As your track progresses, you'll want some way of developing the sample. The most obvious is to layer new elements onto it - more percussion, perhaps, or using a synth to provide harmonies to the ones in the sample. You may even feel it appropriate to add an entire lead line onto the track, or have a bassline that moves around under a static sample. You could also filter the sample down for that classic French House sound, or consider cutting it down in time; for instance if you start the track by looping up just the first half of your sample, then later, when you let the whole sample play out, it can really give the track a lift.

Don't forget also to watch out for any stereo issues - on old recordings it was quite common to use some fairly extreme stereo, which can mean you have the bass on one speaker and a guitar on the other. If this is the case, try using a stereo imaging plugin to narrow the stereo field and give a slightly more coherent vibe to things.

It may now become apparent that when you're using a sample as the basis of your track, it's not going to be the sole element. Rather, it will be a cornerstone, with supporting sounds helping to reinforce the good parts, and clever processing to eliminate any unwanted effects. It's a tough area to master, but if you need any inspiration just take a look at the likes of Daft Punk and The Prodigy - two masters of the art of taking someone else's recording, and making something completely new from it. Then get sampling, and make a hit of your own!