The Benefits of Referencing Your Mix

Time to think about referencing your tunes. Ever find that when you're getting your own tracks in the mix, or playing them out in a club, somehow they just don't sound quite right when you put them up against released tracks? Even though they sounded fine back at home? You're not alone! Let's dive in and look at how you can make sure you're getting the right balance...

When I say 'referencing', I'm going to be talking about two different things; there's listening to your track on different speakers and in different environments, and then there's comparing your track with others.

First though, before you even get to that stage, you should take a break. If you've been mixing down all evening, your ears will have gotten used to the track as it stands; anything you do will likely just make it sound 'wrong'. So go for a walk, listen to some completely different music, watch a bit of TV. Better still, leave it and come back tomorrow. Then, load a bounce of the track into iTunes or Winamp, and sit back. You'll be better able to appreciate what the track is actually doing if you can't see the mixer or the arrange window of your DAW; the brain has a funny way of rationalising everything, and it really helps just to listen to the file in a different program than usual.

Once you're happy with your mixdown so far, then you need to fire up some tunes that you think your track sounds similar to - or that you want it to sound similar to! Make sure you've got the volumes matched up so that they all sound the same level, and flick back and forth to compare the differences in the mix (you might find it's easiest to do this in your DAW so you can mute and unmute channels). There are some obvious things to listen out for, like the basic issues of a mixdown; is your snare much louder or quieter than another track? The vocals? On a more subtle note, you should listen out for the overall balance of the track. It could be that although everything sounds good individually, the higher frequency elements of your track are quieter, relative to the bass - which might mean they don't come through so well in a club. Or vice versa, of course.

If yours sounds somehow 'harsher' perhaps, but you can't identify which element is causing it, then it could be that you've been boosting high frequencies on several channels (again, even if they sound fine on their own), and would be well advised to go back in and tweak them.

Pay attention also to whether the other tracks use any cunning techniques with the arrangement - often you'll notice that a track may create space for a vocal by dropping out some lead lines or high frequency percussion; or will program the bassline so that it's not playing at the same time as the kick. This can be a useful way to avoid cluttering the mix, or avoid it sounding 'top heavy' for instance.

Many people find it helpful to use some kind of graphical frequency analyser when mixing down and referencing, and it can certainly help - if you look at one track which seems pretty flat, and yours has a strange spike at a certain frequency, then you may need to consider what is causing it. But equally, you don't necessarily have to go after every little peak in the spectrum - your track has to have some kind of sonic focus after all! You don't want to be mixing all the character out of your beats. And you should always try to trust your ears, rather than what you can see on the screen.

Once you're confident that you've got a balanced and comparable sound, you then need to go and take your new beat, and your reference tracks, and listen to them on other speakers. This is vitally important, as so far you're going to be working around the imperfections of your room and speaker set up. So there could be some issues you've not spotted yet.

If you can, try and listen on a small setup which doesn't have much bass, a bigger system which has plenty, and maybe in the car - car stereos can vary enormously. Some common things to look out for would be the low end - especially on the small system. Can you still hear the presence of the kick or sub on some tiny speakers? At the top end, does your lead or vocal still stand up clearly amongst the tinny rattle of the rest of the track? Is it the same with the released tracks? Similarly, on some boomy speakers, you want to make sure that the low end still has clarity, and doesn't drown out everything around it.

It's a bit of a long and often quite boring process, and one that will mean you get through plenty of blank CDs. But it's necessary if you want your tracks to hold up well against the best out there, so get a notepad and pen, and start listening closely. You may find your mixes start to improve quite quickly!

Top 5 Reasons to use a MIDI Controller

For those of you brought up on a strict diet of mice and keyboards, the allure of a MIDI controller may not have entered your thoughts just yet. But watch out - this blog is here to entice you into the joys of hardware manipulation, without losing the convenience of software.

Cue the over-dramatic music to accompany the upcoming over-dramatic sentence: Here are 5 reasons why MIDI controllers could be exactly what you've been searching for your entire lifetime...

1. Speed up musical note input

Still typing in your notes like a sucker? Still clicking in every kick and clap? A MIDI keyboard or Pad-based input device could be exactly what you've been looking for.

Even if you aren't amazing on the keys or a pro on the pads, taking the time to watch a few free tutorials to get yourself up to a reasonable standard could pay itself back in kind over the rest of your lifetime in the amount of time saved putting in melodies and beats. You don't have to be a maestro - that's what "quantizing" is for! It puts all your midi inputted data in perfect time with the music.

2. More natural sounding instruments

Do you find your pianos end up too plinky-plonky, like an over-enthusiastic pre-schooler keyed them in? Rediscover the beauty of manual velocity control - if you play your notes in, you'll get a more human, natural sound since the velocities of each note will vary minutely.

This, combined with tiny variations in note triggering times, can sometimes be a positive thing when you're trying to make music that doesn't sound like it was made on an electronic device!

3. Improve your skills for live performance

If you push yourself to play in the more difficult phrases in your music, you can transpose those skills to the stage! More and more DJs are finding themselves dissatisfied with simply triggering their tracks - MIDI devices are the way to go to bring some talent back into the live music arena where electronic music is concerned!

Just think - would you rather watch your favourite artist stand in front of some spinning decks or see them play aspects of their tunes live?

4. Manipulate other parameters

Not only can you get control of the notes, but things like filter sweeps, envelope manipulation and wobble control become so much easier when you have some knobs to tweak!

Your sounds are infinitely more malleable when you have a hands on approach, and after some simple routing you can make your warm synth pads evolve over time, your lead synths modulate in or your basses wobble at different rates, all at the touch of a button, turn of a knob or twist of a dial.

5. Speed up your workflow

It's not just the note input it speeds up. Mixing with a MIDI controller could save you hours of time as you dont have to keep switching focus between the virtual mixer and the sequencer to adjust your levels. You can be applying an effect and EQing an audio track at the same time.

So if you're serious about music production, it's vital to make sure you are getting your ideas down as fast as possible so you can maintain that glorious creative flow. It's so hard to keep that up when you're too busy worrying about your virtual interface to think about that perfect rhythm or change those synth parameters just right. So streamline yourself - investing in MIDI controllers might be the best decision you made since deciding to make computer-based music in the first place.

The Science of Beatmaking - Part 3

In part three of our short series on building a quality drum break, we'll be considering what to do once you get to the latter stages of the writing process - mixing down, editing and adding the final touches to your drum track.

First, to make things easy in the mixdown process, you should consider bussing your drum sounds. If you're using a lot of different elements - like with layered hits, or different types of percussion, this will help you control the overall level a lot more easily. It is often useful also, to have several 'pre' drum busses; perhaps one each for your kicks, the snares, the high end, and 'other' (bongos maybe) - which then feed into one 'main' drum buss. This will mean it's easier to change the level of the entire drum track when mixing, or quickly apply effects to the whole group.

So, once you've bussed your drums together, what to do? Oftentimes people talk about compressing everything together to help things 'gel'. The reason for this is because a busy drum beat will have to interact with the compressor - a hihat on it's own will sound loud; a hihat playing at the same time as a kick will be reduced in volume, as the compressor turns down the gain. So the various sounds in your beat will shift about in the mix, giving a movement that wasn't previously there.

Compression should be applied sparingly though; it is the quickest way to make a punchy drum track sound flat and lifeless. A fast attack and low threshold will smear all the transients from your beat, and lose all that funky feel. An envelope shaper or transient designer, placed on the buss, can help add in a little 'snap' back to your beat, but it shouldn't be used to make up for a badly used compressor. Keep that gain reduction down!

Reverb is another tool to help things sound 'together'. The point of reverb is to make something sound like it's 'in a space' and so by putting everything in the same space, it can sounds more coherent. Try applying a touch of reverb across your whole drum buss; something small, a reverb time of around 0.3s, mixed very quietly. It shouldn't really be very noticeable as reverb except when you mute and unmute it, but it will help give a cohesive sound.

Reverb can also be a creative tool - consider the huge dubstep snare sounds (long reverb, large pre-delay, just on the snare channel), or you could try experimenting with the pre-delay setting on your reverb plug to give a rhythmic effect (set it to equal one quaver, to give a pumping, off-beat sound, for instance). Remember to EQ your reverb returns though; nobody needs to hear 100Hz in a reverb tail, it doesn't add anything to the effect, but it can add muddiness. So cut things down to only that which is necessary for your track!

We did a whole article on parallel processing recently, so look out for that, but it can be most useful with drums - you can solve the issue of losing your transients through compression by sending your buss to another buss with a compressor (or limiter, tape saturator or distortion) and mixing that in quietly with your original signal. This way you can compress as hard as you like to get that smack from the drums, without losing the dynamics of your main drum track. It's an excellent tactic, when used carefully, to get more power and volume from your beats. Remember also, when parallel processing, that if you're going to EQ the new channel, you should use a linear phase EQ. The science is too complex for a short article like this, but basically, EQ's change the phase of a signal, and if you're having two drum channels playing at the same time, you could end up with phasing problems. A linear phase EQ, while not being a perfect solution, leaves the phase intact - so use these in preference on parallel processing.

Once you've got your beat sounding pretty crisp, you may even want to do a spot of resampling. This is more of a creative process, but can add interest to your overall track; bounce the drums down, and reintroduce them to your arrangement. Then you can chop things up for short fills, or go crazy with the FX, reverse a whole bar, and so on. IDM fans may want to get busy with a glitch plugin - dBlue's cunningly titled 'Glitch' is one of the industry standards - just set it up on your newly imported file, bounce the whole drum track with the plugin on it so you get 5 minutes of solid glitching, then chop that up and pick out the best bits. Easy!

Finally, then, how to mix? Well, this can't be answered from here - it depends on the kind of track you're writing. If it's a jungle track, then you want the drums to be centre stage, right up front. If you've got a vocal, poppy track on the go, then you need the drums to sit behind the vocal, while still having enough clout at the low end. So, it's hard to advise, but the main issue is that you need to consider the desired effect of the track, and mix accordingly.

As mentioned in part one, we could write for weeks on this subject and still not cover every angle. But hopefully this three-part overview has given you some inspiration to start firing up the sampler and getting busy with the beats. May the funk be with you...

Big Up Your Mix - With Fills & FX

You've got your hook, your catchy eight bar loop, and your drums are sounding big. You've laid out the arrangement of your track, and all you need now is a few fills to keep things interesting. Let's take a look at some options...

Before we get stuck into that, though, let's just consider what a fill is for. It's usually something you'd have at the end of an 8 or 16 bar phrase, maybe to lead into the next section, or perhaps just to add variety as your track rolls through. In either case, though, it's something that adds a nice little detail or element of anticipation to an existing idea. What it shouldn't need to do, is add life to a boring track. If your track isn't much good without fills, then adding a crash every 8 bars won't make the difference. You'd be better off re-visiting the arrangement, and possibly getting a couple more musical ideas in there. For this reason, it's usually best to add your fills at the end of the writing process; so you can be sure that you're not just compensating for a less-than-fully-featured tune.

So, what can we add in? Well, the word 'fill' is most commonly applied to drums, so let us start there. At the end of an eight bar phrase, you can add in some drum variation in a number of ways. House and techno fans may wish to go for something as simple as a kick roll or a snare roll. Even claps! A gradual fade-in, on 8th or 16th notes will do the trick. It's a straightfoward manoeuvre, but classic, and with good reason; it certainly builds up anticipation for the next section.

Anyone writing more natural sounding beats could re-arrange their drum hits to suit; if you're layering several hits to make a snare, then taking some of these sounds and using them in a fill will enable you to write something that keeps the character of your snare, but has less weight, so you can be a little more dextrous with your programming. Bear in mind at these points to think like a drummer; a real drummer can't hit three drums at once, for instance, so if you want a natural sound then try to imagine how it might be played. Of course, if you don't want a natural sound, then let rip...

Alternatively, you can bring in a completely new drum loop for one bar; a big, bashy funk loop, or a sharp, clipped electro loop, something that will contrast with your drum track. Drop it in for one bar and cut out your old track; it will seize the listener's attention at the same time as creating tension while they wait for the beat to resolve back to the original sound.

Don't forget about resampling your drums. We'll touch on this again, but by bouncing down your entire drum track, you can load up a bar as audio and then chop it around in the arrange window of your DAW. It's a quick and easy way of reprogramming your beat, keeping the feel of your main drum track but allowing you to chop things around like you might with
a classic break. This is something that's best done pretty late in the
production process though – if you resample and then completely change the sound of your drums in mixdown, it won't sound too consistent.

There are plenty of other ways of generating interest, though. One of the most popular is to get a 'riser' into your track. This could be something as simple as a rising tone (just pitchbend a sustained synth up for a few octaves over the space of a bar or two) or the classic white noise – get some white noise, low pass filter it, and open the filter as you come to the end of your phrase. Similarly, you could take an interesting droney FX sound and just fade it in.

While we're on the subject of effects, lets not forget the classic dub styles of temporarily sending things to an effects channel. You'll need some automation for this, but you could consider sending your snare sound to a big delay for a couple of beats, or possibly grouping a few things together, and automating a send to a tight reverb, to make everything sound a bit loose and spacious. Then, at the start of your next phrase, everything slams back into focus.

At the start of a phrase, many people like to use a crash cymbal to signify that we're moving to another section. This works, and it's a classic option, but it can be dull to hear every 8 or 16 bars. So why not try to vary it up a bit? A big noisy FX sound with some reverb and delay can have more impact, or some sharp filtered bleeps and bloops from an analogue-sounding synth can be much more interesting. It's also good to remember that you don't always need to emphasise beat one; try putting your crash on beat two or three of the bar, to catch listeners off-guard. Often, you can leave the drums out for the first half-bar or so of your new phrase, to give it more energy when it kicks back in.

One trick for the IDM-influenced heads out there is to return to our question of resampling. Why not resample the entire track? Get it back in as audio, and you can chop it down as crazily as you like. Or, fire up a plugin like dBlue's legendary 'Glitch' and let it rip. Loop the track for 10 minutes, bounce it down again, and you've got yourself 10 minutes worth of clever 'stutter' edits that you can drop into your track at will. Resample these, vocode them, reverb them, do whatever, and you're now halfway to writing an Aphex Twin tune. But remember – it is possible to have too much of a good thing! If you go too complex, people can start to lose the groove. And that's not cool.

These are all production tips - it's a production blog after all - but there are, of course, plenty of more musically oriented options too. You could go for a quick chord change - try moving to the 4th or 5th of the scale for a bar, or maybe an inversion; make your lead melody go up for a bar instead of down.

So, we trust this has given you a useful overview of some of the options out there for you; now get working on that track and give it that last few percent of detail that will lift it above all the others out there!

Hardware v Software - the View From 2011

Back in the old days, when the internet was still in black and white, a debate used to rage. Hardware or software? Which is better? Well, now it's 2011, software is amazing these days, and we can all put that particular argument to bed. Right? Let's just take it back a little bit - maybe a decade, to 2001.

Let's take it back and marvel. At this time, hardware music equipment,

and here we're talking about samplers, synthesizers, compressors and so on, were undoubtedly better than their software equivalents. Software was still kind of primitive. They were also very expensive; a decent sampler could cost you thousands (and would have memory measured in MB) and you'd still need a computer to control them all.

The upshot of all this was that even a simple bedroom setup would cost an awful lot of money to assemble, and it was actually pretty tricky to get everything working. MIDI was (and still is) unreliable and complicated, using your one compressor on more than a single track would require tedious multi-tracking... and then you have to try and squeeze a decent mixdown out of this budget equipment. Yep, it was hard work.

So there's a clear argument for software, right there. Load up a DAW today on your budget laptop and you can have compressors and reverbs coming out of your ears. You can have a dozen samplers running, each ten times more powerful than something that a decade ago required a fan to cool the CPU. What's more - they all sound great! No hiss, no earth hum, quality processing on every channel.

This, then, makes software a brilliant starting point, and a great way to learn the tricks of the trade. It's cheap, easy to set up, and

you can get good results straight out of the box. So where's the problem?

Well, the flipside to this, is that because it's so easy to create a clear, crisp and straightforward mixdown, everyone does just that. With only a handful of DAWs out there, and a huge number of bedroom producers, we're getting to the situation where everyone has pretty much the same tools, that are all equally capable of creating the same clear, crisp and straightforward mixdowns. And what that can lead to, if we're not careful, is a lot of samey, bland sounding recordings. Anyone who's on a few promo lists can testify to that.

So maybe we should look at using hardware in a different light? Of course, as a pro engineer will tell you, the best hardware will still outperform the best software. They'll show you a valve EQ that costs more than your house and can make a grown man cry tears of joy. They'll point to a dull looking box that only has one dial, costs more than the GDP of Venezuela and sounds like heaven itself. But this is beyond the reach of mere mortals like us, and we should be looking to more accessible means.

What hardware can offer though, and what it's important to consider now, is a difference in sound, a character, a combination of equipment that you don't get from staying 'in the box'. And this is starting to become a real factor in acquiring a distinctive sonic signature, now that we're all starting out from the same point.

It's all about the flaws, the quirks, and the mistakes you make along the way. For instance, you might have an old synth with an input - you could run your drum track through it, overdriven, to get that crunchy distortion sound without resorting to the same old vintage warmer plugs everyone else uses. Or, instead of overdriving, have the gain super-low so you get noise and hiss for a lo-fi, retro feel. Indeed, just play the thing in, without quantising, chop up the audio and build an idea around the groove that results.

Once you start thinking like this, anything is fair game, and it opens up a whole new world of production possibilities. Borrow a guitar pedal off a friend and run your bassline through it for some fiendish distortion. Even better, get an amplifier, mic it up, and put your drums or lead line through it. It doesn't need to be expensive, classy kit - because to get your productions to stand out, you want weird, quirky, interesting. If it makes a noise, use it. Just got a mic? Record some tambourine loops, or whack some cardboard boxes, or just get out on the street and see what you can find. It's not all just about sounding 'interesting' either - when you start to produce like this, you'll get a whole new set of ideas that wouldn't occur from sitting down at the controller keyboard and firing up the same old synths in the same old DAW, and you can really spark some new inspiration.

Having said all that, you can of course use hardware to beef up your mixdowns too, without breaking the bank. If you have the funds to step up from the 'garden shed' vibes mentioned above, then splashing some cash on just a single good quality piece ofkit, like an outboard compressor or EQ will give you the chance to make your tracks shine like little else. The current generation of DAWs now have superb latency compensation qualities, which make it a piece of cake to run an audio track out through some gear and take it back in the box for final tweaking; in short, to incorporate hardware into your existing setup.

All in all, then, can we really say that the hardware vs software debate was ever really 'won'? Well, no. It looks like a careful balance of both is what really wins in a good, creative setup. So, what have you got lying around and how can you make music with it? Get stuck in!

How to Make a Killer Mix - On Headphones!

Have you been getting complaints from the neighbours about blaring your tunes at all hours? Or perhaps you've got a smaller setup where a decent-sized pair of monitors just isn't feasible? Maybe it's time to think about working on headphones a little bit more. It's possible, but there are a few things to consider first. So read on...

First of all, it may seem obvious, but of course you'll need an appropriate pair of headphones. Fortunately, in terms of quality and accuracy of sound, cans are cheaper than a corresponding pair of speakers - for the price of some pretty budget studio monitors you can get a very high quality pair of headphones.

When looking for headphones, it's important to think how you're going to work on them - are you going to write and lay out tracks, or will you also be wanting to mix down? Mixdowns will require a substantially better headphone, and will also want to be open-backed for a more natural sound. If you're just writing, you'll be able to get away with a cheaper, and perhaps more coloured pair. DJ headphones, for instance, often have big bass, a closed-in sound, and detail sacrificed in the name of impact that will punch through a club soundsystem. If you're writing a house track, they'll probably be a lot of fun to write with; but your mixdowns would soon become very difficult!

While we're on the subject of choosing headphones, you should also consider researching the frequency response. The following link allows you to compare graphs for different sets of cans (remember, a flatter line is better) and shows some interesting results. You can see for example that although Sennheiser HD25's are something of an industry standard for DJs, they have a big hole around 4kHz which may result in overcompensating with some very 'toppy' mixes.

http://www.headphone.com/learning-center/build-a-graph.php

When you come to the actual writing process, it's important to take into account the differences between headphones and speakers. Headphones offer you a very 'spacious' soundscape, where every detail can be heard, every reverb tail can be followed through to its conclusion, every delay can be panned and placed exactly. Which is great, but it can very easily lead you to over-do it on the effects; an intricate soundscape may be beautiful to listen to on the right cans, but when you play it on a club system, the detail can lead to a muddied and confusing mixdown. So, it's important to reference your tracks on other speakers as often as you can.

Another factor that is extremely important to bear in mind is to look after your ears! This is something you should be doing at all times, of course, but it's particularly easy to go mad when you've got the headphones on. You want to write a club banger, you crank up the volume to get the vibes flowing a bit more, and the next thing you know, you're battering your poor eardrums with pressure levels you'd never be able to get out of a pair of studio monitors.

This is bad for lots of reasons - first and foremost, you're damaging your ears. But on top of that, you'll be making it harder to judge what you're doing with the mix, since you'll desensitize yourself to certain frequencies (so take regular breaks), and you'll also bring the scary sounding Fletcher-Munson curves into effect. You can look these up if you like, but in layman's terms it means that different frequencies can dominate (or not) depending on what volume you're listening at. All the more reason to keep everything at a nice, balanced level. If you're going to be doing a lot of headphone writing, it may be worth getting a cheap decibel meter from an electronics shop and testing your listening levels to make sure you won't be doing any damage.

Last of all, we should talk hardware. Headphone choice is personal preference, but some of the most popular for writing and mixing down are AKG702, Sennheiser HD650, or Beyerdynamic DT990 - all of which will give you excellent results for the money. You'll need a good amplifier too - there's no point spending that kind of money on cans if you're just going to run them off the socket on your laptop (which will have to be cranked to power a big set like the AKGs). Finally, you'll need some sort of crossfeed box, which will feed a little bit of the right signal into the left channel, and vice-versa. This is because when you're listening on speakers, room reflections mean you'll still hear some of the right signal in your left ear - so a crossfeed unit will make things sound that bit more natural.

So, that's a brief summary of how to approach the writing process on headphones. It's not as scary as it might sound, and with some brief consideration you should be able to produce quality mixes as easily as you could with speakers. And your neighbours will love you for it!

In the Studio with Magnetic Man

You've got to respect anyone who manages to bag credible Top 10 hits while continuing to churn out resolutely underground bangers, and full-length albums to boot. Skream & Benga's continually prolific output and ongoing contribution to the dubstep scene has never been in doubt, and now their Magnetic Man project with one of the scene's godfathers, Artwork, is taking on a life of its own - showing the dancemusic world at large that it is possible to have your cake and eat it too. 


Dubstep has grown so big that a dubstep act can now get in the Top 10 without compromising their style. OK, so we've not had a dubstep track in the charts without a vocal, but who cares when the vocals they're using are top-notch?

I digress. I Feel Air might be a bit too poppy for some, but after a listen to the debut Magnetic Man album, it's clear that this is no throwaway, cash-grabbing exercise. They've found themselves a label who are willing to back them withou

t making them water things down, and we're all the better for it. If you've heard Mad, you'll know the raw power they're capable of; if you've heard next single Perfect Stranger, you'll know they can do the anthem thing no problem. We caught up with them at London's Shoreditch House to discuss studio business, production tips, and their attitudes towards making music. . .

OK, first question - for people who are just getting started or on a budget, what should be your first purchases? What are the best things to spend your hard-earned cash on?

Benga: Erm, what did I get first? FL Studio?

Skream: I'd say a good soundcard, you can record in and get outs out of. . .

Benga: . . .'cos whatever sounds you can't make inside your computer you can make with your mouth. It's a good one I guess. What else do you need? You just need a program, you need a sequencer so you need FL Studio which is just massive and you can do so much stuff with it.

Do you all use FL Studio?

Skream: No I use it. But if you're on a tight budget then for me it's the best. I'm gonna say it 'cos I use it but it's the easiest to actually understand how to work a DAW.

Benga: No but I think it's actually the best program like for drum programming and stuff and getting in like. You don't wanna use Logic for your first go, let's put it that way.

Artwork: I would say the most important thing to buy is music, 'cos you need to be listening to so much stuff. If you're starting out making music you need to be listening to music 24 hours a day.

I was going to say, for inspiration is that all you guys do - just constantly listen to new stuff - or is it like "we need some ideas let's sit here and listen to a few new things"?

Artwork: You should just always be listening to good music, do you know what I mean? It's so important to keep listening, not just listening to your own stuff all the time.

But there's definitely been a lot of the kind of most legendary producers have been people who made music in a bubble and they don't listen to...they ignore everything else...

Benga: But they wear themselves out.

Skream: Yeah, but that's like a select few over god knows how long.

Artwork: I mean for a period if you're gonna go in and write something yeah fine, but most of the time when you're driving home or whatever or if you're sitting around at home, don't watch the telly - listen to music? You should be listening all the time.

Skream: 'Cos then the thing is, like what happened with me and Benny, you listen to stuff and you actually try and make it but you're not... you can't, and then you sort of end up with your own thing from it.

Was that the same experience for all three of you when you started making music? Were you trying to emulate something?

Artwork: Yeah definitely. When I first started out one of the most important things was I'd get a track that I loved and I'd try and recreate it. And in the process you learn so much 'cos you're listening to how he's done that and how he's done this, and you just try and copy it exactly, and in that process you'll learn so much, and you'll find your own way of getting that sorta sound - and then you just build your own sorta sound.

Following on from that, do you think when you sit down and start making tunes you should concentrate on trying to get your own sound, your own style or should you just make whatever kinda comes out naturally?

Skream: You can't get your own style or sound until you've learnt the basics, until you've built your way up 'cos you don't know what you're looking for until you find it - if that makes sense. If you try and start by looking for your own . . . I don't think it works, you need to...

I've phrased that badly, more once you've done that should you focus on, "OK I'm just going to make quite a narrow style so I kinda get my name known and my sound known" or do you think it's not so important, is it more important just to make whatever you want?

Skream: See what you're more comfortable making.

Artwork: If you're gonna be really successful you have to come up with something new. You have to come with a different sound. You do see these people that kinda do well because they sound like someone else, but then everybody knows they sound like that person.

Benga: But then you can never be as big as the person that you sound like.

Artwork: No, so you really should just try and make something different. Listen to everything else... but, yeah make something different.

Alright then let's get down to the nitty gritty, kicks and snares, talk to me. . .

Benga: Kicks and snares...I guess you've just got to find the best packs you can, because when it comes to kicks and snares there can be so much processing that you'll go round, and I guess if you just find the best recorded kicks and snares it'll help you out so much.

Skream: It'll save so much time.

Artwork: Yeah if you can get something, if you can get like a kick that sounds amazing without any EQ on it then you know you're on a winner? Rather than getting one and thinking ah well I'm guna boost the bottom end, I'm guna cut that very low end off and try and find it in and so and so. . .

. . . you're wasting more time. . .

Artwork: You waste a lot of time, yeah

Benga: And then again, sorry to cut you out, when you do EQ stuff, once you do find your way around EQ and stuff you have a sound, that's how you get your sound, mix-wise...processing.

Do you guys kinda stick to a certain number of kicks and snares do you just always go back to (what you did) or do you look at new ones all the time?

Skream: I don't I. it's whatever mood I'm in really. If I'm in a tinny mood, if I'm in a 909 mood. I think it just comes down to what you want. Like you sort of know an area in the packs that I think you know you tend to work from a bit more than others.

Moving onto bass that's something that people often say is the hardest kinda thing to master so what are your biggest challenges in that area?

Skream: Mine's still the same as level erm with levelling it out with the kick, that's always been my one. 'Cos I like a bass-heavy kick and a bass-heavy sub. So...

Benga: Get your side-chaining out!

Skream: Yeah.

So you can have a nice lot of low end in both of them?

Artwork: Yep.

When you're making you know music that does really focus onto your dance music (focusing days) specifically that's one of the lead things, is it essential to have some subs on your set up?

Artwork: Yes.

Benga: Yeah.

Skream: Oh no, oh no no no no... subs in the room? I haven't got no subs in the room - I can't work with them. I find it really hard working with them but I guess that's me, 'cos these two both do.

Benga: Yeah we're different.

Artwork: Yeah I use them.

What monitors do you all use?

Skream: I've got Dynaudios. BM1. . .

Benga/Artwork: BM6As

Artwork: Yeah I've got the same as that and some Genelec 1032As as well.

Benga: I got the same as them. . .

When you hear other people's productions and what other people... what's the most common mistakes or kinda shortcomings that you hear?

Skream: Mastering tracks themselves and limiting the fucking life out of it so when you open it up on a screen there's a block, with no peaks.

Artwork: And no dynamics. . .

Benga: It's really hard to master again after that, you can't get in. . .

Artwork: You can't master (it again).

Skream: I've had stuff I've been mastering for my label and it's been sent back and stuff gets sent back because he [the mastering engineer] knows exactly what you've used: he's like you've ultra maximised it, you've put a multiband compressor on it duh duh duh - and they know. And it's like, cool, but if it' . . .they can make it sound dynamically so much better for press. . . .

Benga: Just don't start your tune with anything on a master.

Favourite bits of kit and software please?

Benga: Ooh well to be fair I'm not telling anyone anything anymore. Nah only joking. I use, my favourite bit of kit at the moment. . .nah I can't say that. I just gotta give you an EQ. Er my favourite EQ at the moment is the Neve on my UAD card. It's one of the best things I've ever purchased, ever.

Artwork: One thing I've learnt is that the EQs on Logic are - when you get a lot of them - if you've got like 24 tracks and you've got Logic EQ's, on all of them, the bottom end is really really funny in the mix and you'll find it really hard to control what's going on. They do something down the bottom end so just switch it up, just try another one, try some different EQ's you don't have to go for. . .

Benga: It's lighter as well innit.

Artwork: Yeah you don't have to go for like the really high high, you know thousand quid EQs but if you just...

Skream: Find one you can run with well. . .

Artwork: Find one you can control easily and then use that instead, 'cos the bottom end of your mix will be a lot cleaner.

Skream: My favourite bit of kit at the moment. . .

Artwork: Kettle?

Skream: Is. . .

Benga: Oooh. . .

Skream: It's the Moog Little Phatty at the moment. I've been using it a lot at the moment as well for my bass. It's nice.

Do you guys use a lot of outboard stuff?

Skream: I've just got a couple of synths. To be honest,, I use different things for different style of tunes. I generally use the Moog when I'm going for something with a deeper sound, rather than if I'm going to do something mental I'll use a plugin, just for the different shapes/waveforms.

Again, you might not want to give too much away here but your favourite recently learned little tricks, or something that you would share?

Benga: Wow something that I'd share with the world. Erm, what would I share? 'Cos I know sharing's caring and all that. . .

Skream: Not in this game haha!

Benga: Yeah not in this game. Er, do I wanna give anything away? Does anyone else wanna give anything away?

Artwork: I'm trying to think of something useful.

The thing is at the end of the day you can give loads of stuff away but if you haven't got the tunes or haven't got the ideas. . .

Benga: I guess the biggest thing is right - and this might sound like the dumbest thing - but it's like. . .

Skream: Sorry that's censored haha!

Benga: Hah . . .get the arrangement up right. Get everything you need up and then actually start to filter what's not really necessary. . .

Skream: Just take it out like. . .

Benga: Yeah 'cos there's too much things going on in the mix. Use the most rhythmic things, and the things that add so much to like the power of the song, and the rest of it, just get rid of it.

Artwork: The most important thing is that kick and bass. Give it it's own space, d'you know what I mean? It sounds obvious but to people that probably, you know, are just getting into mixing or whatever the most important thing is finding a place. Look at it like a picture - you can see that the bass is gonna sit down there and you're gonna have your kick up there or your gonna have your kick down there and your bass a bit higher, but give them their own place to live or whatever

Benga: Mask as they call it

Artwork: Yeah yeah, exactly.

When you started collaborating or rather when you collaborate now, how does it work? Does it get crowded sometimes or is there always a specific role, how does it work?

Artwork: It's different for every record I think. It's like, you know, it's starting things together and then splitting off then someone will take it, do a bit more to it, you know move around - it doesn't matter. But one thing we kinda worked out from the start was that if one person doesn't like it, it doesn't go in. Rather than "oh well, two people like it and one person don't so that's that you know it's going to go in" - that can't happen. If one person doesn't like it, that's it.

That's when you get the split of creative differences. . .

Artwork: It's out..

Benga: Ha ha. . .

Artwork: But it's quite good, it's really good because you not only do you not have any arguments, you get a better product' 'cos you got three people that like that thing. So if you are gonna work in a group I would say that's a good way of doing it.

Quality control. . .

Artwork: Yeah.

When you made I Need Air did you have radio in mind and different dynamics to the usual club records, cos it's kinda less focused on the bottom end a bit. . .

Artwork: No not at all.

Skream: If you think about it – she [Angela Hunte] picked the tune. . .

Artwork: Yeah I mean the thing is when you've got a vocal that's as big as that is, it would have been difficult to put a massive top, mid-rangey bassline in there as well and hear all the words quite as clearly as it is, and it's a song. It is a song, it's not a. . .

That's a key element. . .

Artwork: Yeah, the key element of that record is that vocal. And you have to respect that, you know you have to with all these things and if you was making a track that was just about baselines then you wouldn't try and put a vocal in there. And it's the same. . .

Benga: How you mix, when you leave things out 'cos you know it's gonna clog up the space. . .

You've got to let it breath. . .

Benga: Yeah.

Artwork: You've gotta look at every record separately and say: "what is it in this record that is 'the thing?'" And in that thing it was the vocal.

And last thing who did the vocal on The Bug?

All: Sam Frank.

OK 'cos it didn't say on the promo version and I thought it may have been one of you guys or something. . .

Skream: No there was a rumour going out there that it was me or Benny... we started off saying it was Barry White and then I think Benny said it was me, and I think 'cos I didn't clarify and say it wasn't me it got out that everyone was saying it was me, but no it's Sam Frank.

I'll make sure people know. . .

Interview by Ben Gomori

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?