Instrumentation sound dated

[andygabrys]

Hard to say about the sounds because there are wizards who can use dated stuff and make it sound current, but from the listing:

If it doesn't have a banging beat, its not really hip hop. You can hear that much from the samples even though they are ducked under the dialogue.

For bass the current flavor is usually an 808 style.

[PGRated]

I think 5 days is too long personally. You can only make 4 or 5 cues per month ..I'm trying to make 100 per year which is still not that high compared to some but I'm doing it part time in the evenings so I can live with that.

Mark

That means I'm taking too much time to make music....! Any suggestion on how I can speed up this process?

[cosmicdolphin]

[/quote]That means I'm taking too much time to make music....! Any suggestion on how I can speed up this process?[/quote]

Some folks like templates..so they have a DAW template ready to go laid out how they like it for a particular music style. I.e. each VSTi , your sampler , drum machine etc. with your go to plugins already instantiated.

I like to structure the whole track first so I have chords, tempo, A & B sections all in place and arranged in the DAW session... I can do this in about half an hour for a genre I know well enough ..then it's just a case of hanging things off this structure in sections

I tend to use presets but I know I can tweak them and I know which synths I tend like for certain types of sounds.

I don't personally use templates but I know pretty much which plugins I'll go to first for various things..so lead I'll reach for OTT first ..bass I like Waves CLA Bass....2 buss I like my Elysia compressor...these can evolve over time but I tend to gravitate towards the ones I know which speeds things up.

That's my 2c worth...I'm sure some of the other guys have other methods that help them.

Mark

[jaymz]

Seems like the future pop folks are pretty stuck on simple is better when dealing with sound design. Lots of filterable elements and being creative with multi band eq and compressors, not to mention those offset sidechain gates (LFOTool seems to be a favorite of every EDM artist right now). Vocals seem to be sliced, cut and resampled ad nasuem. I hear Nexus, Sylenth, Serum and Spire are the softsynths of choice for all the cool kids.

[PGRated]

Thanks Mark for mentioning your workflow! That's gonna be helpful in my workflow.

That leads me to another curiosity,,,,
Do you make a template and use it for future project and start from there instead of starting from scratch?

[andygabrys]

Templates - absolutely.

But mostly for setting up audio and software instruments routed into sub busses.

So I have lots of drum VIs instantiated, guitar tracks ready (but no amp sims plugged in by default), virtual orchestral stuff routed into sub-mix busses and plugins instantiated and ready to go for the typical stuff. If I don’t use this in a particular song Logic has a one step “delete all unused” command which can remove all this in a heartbeat. This removes a lot of clutter and lightens load on my CPU (i have a 12 core mac pro so its not a big deal really but still...)

The main processing is a variety of aux sends to busses with a variety of reverbs (short med long), tempo synced delays of various beat subdivisions both ping pong and center panned, special fx, distortion, parallel compression for drums, parallel distortion for bass, sidechain trigger for bass from kick, sidechain trigger for waves vocal rider from all instruments, various “go to” keyboard processing LFO fx instantiated but bypassed, typical master chain instantiated but bypassed, and Slate VCC instantiated and running on everything.

This is what I have built up over the years of keeping track of the the things I am always reaching for. Way better than having to do this from scratch on every project.

[andygabrys]

I don’t typically use a project with everything already plugged in as a template unless that track was pointed out to me by my publisher as being “the exact sonic thing they are looking for” and then I will use that as a basis and still usually change a few things for every new piece.

[cosmicdolphin]

Thanks Mark for mentioning your workflow! That's gonna be helpful in my workflow.

That leads me to another curiosity,,,,
Do you make a template and use it for future project and start from there instead of starting from scratch?

I've tried but it doesn't see to work for me. So I start each track with a blank DAW project

But I know my stuff well enough now that I probably have the 'template' hardwired into my memory . And it's honestly a 3 min job to call up the stuff I want.

Keyboard shortcuts are a big workflow enhancer I find

[PGRated]

Thanks! Well I don't have templates, instead, I open the previous project and work from there if required.
But I usually work from scratch.

BTW, Andy's info on workflow is a guideline on how to or what to create in a template. I think its useful for every one of us.

[mojobone]

I think 5 days is too long personally. You can only make 4 or 5 cues per month ..I'm trying to make 100 per year which is still not that high compared to some but I'm doing it part time in the evenings so I can live with that.

Mark

That means I'm taking too much time to make music....! Any suggestion on how I can speed up this process?

Matt Hirt told me, 'focus on speed and the quality will catch up'. Slaving over mix details is wholly appropriate for a three-minute pop vocal, but for instrumental tracks/cues, it's about volume.