Seeking the Sample!

Electronic music has been showing us for years that a good sample, used in the right way, can make the difference between a good track and a great track. From the likes of Afrika Bambaata sampling Kraftwerk way back in the 80's, to Fatboy Slim's sample collages of the 90's and today's Future Garage stars pillaging the RnB canon for vocals to chop up, it's obvious that if you can find a good sample for your beats, it can evelate them above the ordinary. But how do you actually find them? And what should you be looking for when you get there? Read on, as we explore the avenues...

Good samples can really come from everywhere. That's the first thing to get out of the way - if you've got a keen ear you can make a track from the sound of your kitchen blender (and there's a youtube video of D'n'B producer Wilkinson doing exactly that). But that's not a lot of help. So let's delve deeper - where do the classic samples come from?

The traditional example is old funk tracks, and they're rich in potential. From the Amen break to artists like Bob James who supplied half of the hip hop world in the 80s and 90s, you can find some great source material in here - the only problem is, that plenty of people have already done just that! So by all means delve into the archives, but you need to dig deep – find the B-sides, the charity shop obscurities, the tracks that no-one liked at the time.

Better yet, is to go off the beaten track somewhat. Funk and soul records are great, but there were some amazing spin-offs that can be even more exciting. Nigeria in the 1970's, for instance, saw a hotbed of artists combining African rhythms with funk influences - and similar scenes existed in Rio, Puerto Rico and even in Asia. Sift through some of these and you can find some crazy sounds. You don't always need to hit the vinyl shops, either (although that's a lot more fun) - get online and hunt down some crazy blogs. There are always sites dedicated to things like Indonesian psychedelic rock. It's maybe not as 'worthy' as putting in the effort digging through the crates, but no-one's going to worry about that when they hear your track in the club!

But hang on, once you find a source of cool untapped material, how to actually pick a sample? A two second loop out of all those hours of audio? This is a tricky one, and it's hard to define. But there are a few things you need to be looking for.

First, you need a decent length of sampleable stuff. A single hit might be useful, but it's not really enough to start off making a track with. A whole bar is better, even two or four - but much more than that and you may start to blur the lines between 'sampling' and 'copying'. Next, you need to focus in on what you actually want from the sample, and how you could use it. For instance, a beautiful string line maybe quite useless if it's all covered up with vocals or guitar - but remember that old recordings were pretty haphazard with their stereo imaging. That guitar might only be on the left channel, in which case you might be able to grab the right channel, whack it into mono and be good to go!

You'll also find that samples that are in a certain key may force your hand as to what you can build around them - in terms of pitch, harmony, and instrumentation. The things that make old vinyl samples so interesting, are also the things that can make them harder to work around. So to this end, the best option is to really build up a library of samples. Sit down and listen to some tracks fully, and just grab anything that sounds useful - a drum fill, some vinyl crackle, a few seconds of vocal acapella, a little breakdown to just the bassline. Then fire all these into a project in your DAW that you can come back to and grab things out of later. This will give you a number of options at different tempos, styles and vibes, and save you time in future when you're looking for something useful. And don't forget good old trial and error! When we hear a perfectly chosen sample in a track, it's rare that the producer just heard a 60 minute album, said "that's the one" and made a hit. They tried plenty other samples first, and they'll probably try plenty more for their next hit. So make sure you've got a good set to work with, and keep coming back to it with inspiration.

If you need practise, you can of course start with good old Sample CDs. Packed with clean samples, designed especially for the use of producers (and with no copyright issues) you can get practising with these while you get around to digging in the crates - if it works for Steve Angello and Afrojack, then you can make a hit with them too!

Mixes in Motion!

Getting a good, detailed mixdown is a tough proposition at the best of times - and balancing your bass, drums and melodies is certainly the essential part. But once you're past that hurdle, there are a few subtle tricks you can do to add movement, detail and interest to your mixes that will really give it that extra ten percent to catch the listener's ear.

What we're really talking about here is "ear candy" - things that aren't necessary to the overall message of the track but can help to keep the interest, and build up an overall sense of detail and atmosphere.

The most obvious option is simply to layer in some incidental effects, fairly quietly, at appropriate moments in the track. Use them subtly, and maybe panned quite hard off to one side, so as not to clash with other key elements in your tune, and they will help build up the soundscape, giving you a fuller and more interesting mix. Suggestions for such things coud be some analogue squeaks and bleeps, bounced, timestretched and effected. Or some random sounds you recorded with a microphone. But it doesn't even need to be that complicated - something as simple as a hihat, reversed and pitched down a couple of octaves, will still sound interesting and completely unlike a percussion instrument.

But these are all extra sounds; and if you make a mix stuffed full of sounds and effects, the overall impression can become cluttered, busy and confusing - and end up taking the listener's attention away from the main act. So instead, it can be useful to consider some more subtle options.

Delay is a very popular option which this author uses frequently; a simple "slapback" preset can really thicken up a sound without having to make things overly loud. Just use an auxilliary send to route some of your sound to a buss, with a very short delay on it - in the region of 50ms or below. Filter off the extreme highs and lows, and make sure the feedback is very low - then turn the delay channel down somewhat. You can then put a chorus or stereo widener on, after the delay, to make the thickening effect even more pronounced - and try tweaking the panning too, to see what sort of effects you can create. Long delays may clutter your mix, so think carefully before reaching for the 'mega-dub' preset!

On the subject of panning; don't forget the wonders of autopan. As befits the theme of this article, extreme use is discouraged - you don't want your vocal track flying from speaker to speaker. But a subtle shift around the stereo image can work wonders for a pad sound or synth line.

Autofilters are similarly useful - again, we're not talking about a major LFO wobble on your bassline. But for background harmonies and pads, a slight change in (say) a high-pass filter, over a period of several bars, can help give the extra interest you need.

Phasers can also provide the impression of detail and movement - and many's the time we've all heard tracks with a dry, upfront hi-hat line which seems to just drill a hole in the forehead. At times like this, a phaser on a buss channel (make sure it's in stereo) cycling gently out of sync with the track, would take the edge off the sharpness, and suddenly make that simple channel a whole lot more listenable.

We went into some detail on reverb not long ago - but it's such a useful tool that it bears mentioning again! Aside from big, atmospheric sci-fi reverb sounds, you can also create very short, quiet reverbs that don't place your sounds in a cathedral hall, but rather thicken it and add some warmth (try filtering off the top and bottom again).

Another simple trick is the classic "dub send". Set up a big effect on a buss, and then occasionally during the track, send a channel to it for a beat or a bar, before pulling the send pot back to zero. The effect jumps forward into the mix, grabs the listener's attention, and just as quickly recedes into the background, before it has a chance to get boring or clash with some of the more important aspects of your track.

These are just a few options open to the mix engineer - but hopefully they've given you some food for thought. The important thing to remember is just the classic maxim of Less Is More - a little effecting on a lot of channels will be much more useful and interesting than a couple of huge effects on one or two channels! So fire up that mixdown, listen closely, and get filling out that soundscape...

Know the Business!

The world of the music industry - the numbers game, who gets what and why - can be pretty complex, not to mention boring! Nobody wants to deal with The Man - it's all about sitting in the cave, writing beats, right? But if you're going to get your tunes out there, maybe a proper release, and want to make any money from them, it's worth having a rough idea of the basic principles that you'll need to get your head around. So join us for a quick tour of some of the most common, and frequently misunderstood aspects...

The Contract. This is often pretty straightforward, and since the advent of the underground indie labels, it's even moreso: you'll probably get a straight split of the profits, usally 50/50 with the label. It's not a certain amount per unit sold (that's for the major labels and the old days) - but make sure the contract confirms that any expenses (mastering, artwork, PR) come out before you split the cash. Some labels try to take all this out of the artist's share. Naughty

Remixes are another major way of getting your name around, and for many people it's one of the first ways to get their work released. Let's assume that you are the remixer here - what are your rights? What do you get? Sadly, remixing is a bit of a thankless task these days. You won't see a contract unless you're remixing for a huge label, and in 99% of cases you're not really entitled to anything beyond what you initially agree. The label own all the rights to the original track, even if you've completely rewritten the whole thing, so they're not obliged to give you a cut of sales (and it would be incredibly unusual if they did). So beware of remix competitions - while many of these are very good and have great prizes, for some unscrupulous labels they can just be a cheap way to get PR and a free track to sell. Read the small print!

Traditionally, you'd get a remix fee upfront, but in 2011 most releases make such little money that most remixes don't come with a fee any more. A better and fairer option nowadays is to just do a 'swap' - you remix another artist's track, they remix yours, and you don't sweat about the cash.

So far, we've just talked about sales money - but there's a whole other side to the equation. You'll often hear talk of 'royalties' but this can mean two things; money made when someone buys your track, and money from when your track gets played on the radio or TV (or even Spotify or Youtube!). This is 'publishing' royalties, and if your track does well it can add up to a tidy amount - in the UK at least, a single play on one of the BBC national radio stations can bring in more money than you'd get from scores of sales on iTunes.

How do you collect this money? There are two ways. The first is to have a publisher - but that's maybe something for a bit further down the line when you have a few releases under your belt. Your publisher will collect all this money and pass it on to you. In the meantime, you'd be well advised to register with your local collection agency. These are different for each country - in the UK we have the PRS, in the US it's ASCAP and BMI - and while there is sometimes a joining fee, it's usually something you'd make back with your first release. You register with the appropriate society, then when you have a track out, you register it on their database. They'll then look out for money owed to you.

It's important to remember that publishing money goes to the songwriter, not the label. So this means you need to split the writing credits for any collaborations, so that your colleague gets their fair share, but it also has a ramification for remixes - that's right, the original producer gets all the cash! To be fair, these days this is something you can negotiate. If your remix is vastly different to the original, it may be worth contacting the original producer, and seeing if they're willing to register an alternate version in which you are assigned a percentage of the publishing rights. This also means that the likes of the PRS, ASCAP and BMI are actually acting in the interests of the artists, unlike the internet's favourite enemies and major label attack dogs the RIAA (and their UK equivalent, the BPI).

So, before you dip a toe in the world of releasing music, it's worth getting a little familiar with some of these concepts, so at least you can go in armed with knowledge! Now, get sending out those demos...

Return to Reverb!

Reverb is one of the oldest and most common effects available to the modern producer. Almost every track you listen to will have some kind of reverb effects going on somewhere - whether subtly to give life to a part, or dramatically for a big atmospheric effect. But when should you be using it in your tracks? And how? Read on for the lowdown...

Reverb is such a common digital effect in 2011 that almost everyone has access to a good quality reverb plugin - the Space Designer that comes free with Logic is one such example – and these offer a wide range of effects, from room and hall reverbs to plate and spring sounds. You can even load your own new presets in, by creating or downloading impulse responses. It's often worth looking around online for these, as you can find emulations of classic effects units available (sometimes for free!).

So, what is reverb actually for? Well, ultimately, it is designed to do one thing - to make something sound like it's in a particular space. It is to make the ear think that this vocal or that snare drum was recorded in a cathedral or bathroom. This might sound obvious, but it's important to remember as you go forward - to use reverb as an effect in this way, you should always be thinking of what space you're putting things in.

When putting reverb on your drums for instance, it's a good idea to put the plugin on a buss and send various channels to it. This is useful for two reasons; first, you're guaranteeing that all your drums will be in a similar space, and that gives a coherent feel to the mixdown. Second, if you have a reverb on a buss then you can put effects on the reverb tail without affecting the original signal (not to mention that it's a lot more CPU-efficient to have one reverb on a buss rather than several across your drum channels).

Why would you want to put reverb on your drums? It's usually to do with giving a natural effect. If you program a set of individual hits, they can sound very dry, and like they don't exactly belong together. By putting a subtle reverb on them - for instance, a short room reverb, with a reverb time of 0.5 seconds or so, you can make them feel much more 'live' and more natural. It can also help gel together a set of disparate samples that might all be taken from different loops and drum machines. Try a simple, small room reverb (mixed quietly), and turn the effect on and off - you'll be surprised how much depth even a slight effect can bring.

Effecting the reverb return can be important too - most notably in the form of EQ. You don't need bassy reverb, as it can clutter up a mix but adds little in the way of spatial information. So put an EQ after your reverb and cut any frequencies you don't need, including any unpleasant top end hiss.

With the current surge in interest in the 80s, another trick you might have heard of is the gated snare reverb. It's not subtle and it's not clever, but if you really want the biggest snare in the world then send your snare to a reverb buss with a huge, bright, toppy hall reverb on it. Then put a noise gate after the reverb, that cuts out the reverb tail at about 0.3s. Then compress heavily to make sure there's no shape, and finally EQ to taste (you can leave in plenty of low mids this time, to give more weight to the snare). Voila - instant Phil Collins. But use sparingly!

There are, in fact, several ways of using reverb to evoke an era, rather than a location. You can figure these out by listening to what characterises certain sounds, but for instance you may wish to use a big splashy plate reverb setting to get the sound of those old dub studios of the 1970s, or go back even further and use a spring reverb to mimic the sound of old blues and rock n' roll guitar amp sounds from the 60s.

Other suggestions for effects could be setting the pre-delay of your reverb in time with the track (maybe a half-beat) to give a percussive effect, or the old techno trick of using a big heavy reverb, low-pass filtered, to create a rumbling bass sound, and then side-chaining it off your kick. Or make your epic build-ups even bigger by gradually turning up a send from your synth part to a reverb channel as the build progresses. Or the old classic of putting a long reverb on your synth part, bouncing it, importing the file, and reversing it to create a fade-in/woosh effect. And that's not to mention our classic effect of simply getting a great big reverb and putting a couple of percussion sounds through it, just for a big sci-fi atmosphere, with maybe a phaser after the reverb effect. There really are all sorts of possibilities.

One tip for mixing? Besides EQing out the frequencies that you don't need, that is - turn it down! You always need less reverb than you think you do. And if you're working on headphones, turn it down even further. Headphones usually reveal so much detail that you can really focus in on the interesting depth to your verbs - which is then completely lost when you get the track onto speakers. So be careful not to overdo it.

This should give you a useful overview of what reverb is all about, and how to go about using it to boost your tracks - it's not all about just making a spacey synth part; it can really help you shape your mixdowns. So fire up that plugin and get reverberating!

Remix Revisited!

Remixing can be one of the best ways of getting your name out there - you're presented with a selection of samples and loops, you don't need to worry about getting the track signed, and if the release does well it can put your name out there very effectively, for a comparatively small outlay of effort. The downsides, though, include the fact that there are so many different ways of going about the process. So let's take a look at some of the options!

Any remix will, of course, depend on the parts that you are sent by the original artist. Some are better than others, and sometimes they'll be so good you can just drop them straight in. Alternatively, you may just be given a few samples, and increasingly often in this author's experience, producers don't send you their drums! Perhaps this is because they want to hold on to their secret samples, but it often pays to email back and ask for the drums. After all, they can be crucial to retaining or working the groove of the track.

With regard to actually sitting down to do the remix, then, the first and simplest option is just to keep as much of the original track as you possibly can, adding your own signature with the drums, groove, or production style. And this is quite possibly what the label or artist will have wanted when they came to you for a remix; if it's a good track, then sometimes staying true to the original will give good results. If you have a strong idea of what you want to do with the track - for instance, to dispense with some of the melodies and roll out a dubbier mix, or emphasise certain aspects and lose others, then you may be able to use some of the original stems and get moving on your mix quickly.

Another way of staying relatively true to the original is to copy it with different instruments. You may find that a bass guitar line sounds good melodically, but doesn't really have the impact that you're looking for - so you can load up a soft-synth below it, loop up the melody and copy it with a MIDI part. The same applies for melodies, harmonies, strings and anything else - you can keep the melodies and structures of the original track but change the vibe from a guitar pop tune to a pumping house track or downbeat hip hop effort. Using MIDI in this way will also afford you a much greater flexibility with regards to tempo - you'll be able to increase or decrease the pace by a substantial margin, without having to worry about aliasing and audible timestretch artifacts. The more musically literate will also be able to make other changes like switching the track from major to minor, for instance.

The next step down in 'staying true' and possibly the most common way for most people to remix, is to take a small part of the original - a vocal loop, maybe a short melody of a few bars, and build a new track around it. This allows you to keep your favourite part of the original but write what is substantially a new track, or re-envisage it in your own style. The remix will thus keep a flavour of the original, but you get the fun of playing with that sample that you wish you'd found for yourself!

One way that a lot of remixes are done, unfortunately, is to completely ignore the original track and just write a new one - then, somewhere near the end of the writing process, attempt to crowbar a couple of samples out of the original track in there, so that it is at least recogniseable as a remix. This is a frustrating approach for all concerned - the remixer, who is basically writing an original track but not getting any publishing or royalties, and the remixee, who won't hear a new and interesting take on their music. The way to avoid this is to only remix tracks that you like, or that you can imagine what you want to do with the stems. Sadly, many people go ahead anyway (and your author has been guilty of this in the past) - sometimes producers just need the cash, and can't really afford to turn down offers of paid work!

Remixing has become a key part of the electronic music world, and it's here to stay. But hopefully some of these tips will give you a few ideas for when you next get stuck in to do your own remix. So sit down with the original track for a little while, grab a drink, let some vibes marinate, and then get remixing!