Dubstep - "Bass Blaze"

[pboss]

Kyle, I guess I should call you, "Charles".

[Len911]

Well Patty, I am not familiar with dub step at all, it sounds like a nice reggae influenced synth piece. The very beginning was a little unsettling or confusing,lol, because I am so unaccustomed perhaps.

[feaker66]

This is very cool and if it doesn't fit perfectly to this listing, it WILL find a home somewhere.

Love when the vox comes in.

Congrats, great work

sincerely

Paul

[LittleRedChurch]

It's great.

Great idea using the reggae feel. VERY effective and fresh.

Can I ask, how do you record dubstep? What is your feeding instrument? I understand how to make wobbles and can get the drums etc, with various ni synths and drums BUT so many of those sounds are kinda familiar yet unattainable... Making sense? Is it possible to download dubstep wobbles and effects? Premade? Or is this a garageband thing? Or did you construct each of those sounds? lol Lots of questions... sorry. If you find the time... How how how!!!

thanks

Graham

[pboss]

Thanks for listening, Graham. I'll try to recount some details.

I use Logic for recording, and Pro Tools for mastering. There's really not much different regarding mastering, but I can work more clearly in PT for mastering -- I could theoretically use the same Waves plugins for it in Logic. I played those melodic lines with OS2, which comes free with Logic, where an existing patch is tweaked and saved it under a new name. You can purchase presets by different producers for some of these plugin instruments. The drum kit are EXS instruments, but you can also purchase loops for drums. Luckily the signature drum part with kick and snare for dubstep is not that hard to record, you just need good kicks and snares, and a lot of producers are layering these to get one good sample. You want a very short attack on the drums samples. You can load samples into EXS and assign to keys, too. The drop part is mostly Massive (a plugin you have to buy).

I played the reggae keys on an EXS patch - and copied to 3 other tracks for thickness, some were native Logic patches and one was an old .. Wurlitzer I have from my older Logic sample packs, (would have to look that one up), and just played with volumes, and muting parts through the song for arrangements. You can use pitch eq automation for risers; There's a few SFX samples in there. I'm not looking at the project, but that's some info. for the melody, I played a ton of different improvised melodies (jamming, really) and then tried to go back and delete all but whatever I thought was an acceptable melody or part, and go from there.

I think that I agree that a lot of what we hear is accessible but not accessible. I'm finding that some of the great synth sounds we hear on other tracks are really combining higher frequency and lower frequency sounds, because they seem to have a full spectrum. AND the screamers, going up at the end are done thru tweaking OS2 or Massive sounds, and depending on the envelopes you can tell it how fast to rise, how much to rise or wobble OR.. draw pitch curves into the note in Logic. I am still trying to decide how to manage the elements.

There are things you can do like take a midi part and bake it into an audio wave file, right there on the spot. The thing I'm going to do more of, is to take different sounds - and to convert to audio and to assign to the keyboard via EXS, because without 'playing' some of these parts, it's hard to get the emotion or the interest out of it. I am referring to the drop, where different bass parts are used every few beats. And this might be after you already decided on your melody, so you are just putting 5 or 10 samples onto an EXS sampler. You could do the same thing probably with the other sample players like Kontact (which I don't use, yet). I am experimenting with different approaches and tools. Ideally I want to use keys, knobs and faders on the fly to play the variations on the drop. I did buy a Novation external controller, and that takes the place of the mouse for altering effects parameters, but you can also just draw those in.

It's all about automating efx on the tracks, more than the generic volume, and panning; A YouTube vid turned me onto this concept. I have five previously produced CD's with electronic world / lounge / chill / ambient types of tracks, and have done sound design, so that definitely informs this process.

Most of the tutorials I watched on this seemed to be using FL Studio (Fruity Loops) which is unfamiliar to me.

I'm noticing that if you just use one wobble or screamer or synth patch for more than just a few beats, it can start to sound monotonous. It seems to be advised to not use automation to transform but copy the part, and put on a different track, then set the wobble rate to a different setting (in massive, you can do this). For example, in one measure, the first two beats are one Massive patch at wobble rate of 8 then on a new track, the last two beats are set to a frequency of 12 or whatever changes. I personally would rather assign these variations of sounds to keys and play them live. Here's a good example of that using the OS2 synth and Ultrabeat, which both come with Logic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3bH5o7mDg8

But please know, there are a lot of 16 year olds out there that are on Youtube going, "dude how did you get that synth sound or wobble or drop" or whatever, and so don't feel bad if you are asking similar questions. The other side of the coin is to get a bunch of dubstep tracks and immerse yourself in the sound, like liquid. And lastly, just take it one step at a time. My first track kinda sucked, and was not forwarded and each track I make is just an exercise in becoming more familiar with specific elements, like the drop or the dynamics or the bass or the synth.

Just pick one aspect and dissect it as a study. Then take your Swiss Army knife and cut the guts out, and smear them on you desk, like Peter did in Office Space, the movie.

[LittleRedChurch]

That was super good of you. Will read in detail when i get home. I'm amazed at some peoples generosity!! Thanks!!!!!

Graham

[LittleRedChurch]

So, if I want to alter a wobble rate, are you saying I use automation? I've wrestled with that. I should say, I know how to alter the rate but not record that change.

[pboss]

So, if I want to alter a wobble rate, are you saying I use automation?

Hi, I'll answer here, so others might try it, too. In Logic at least, you can take any parameter pretty much (including the 'wobble' rate on a synth sound, usually) and yes, automate what would normally be mouse movements to change a parameter. For example, without any external controllers, you can tell the channel strip to record virtual knob movements on a synth, and then when viewing 'automation' for that track, the result is that you see a similar type of line like you would with volume or panning, but depending upon what you moved during playback or recording, you would see lines drawn in automatically for the evolving parameter values for the particular parameter. That will bring up questions on your part, and I won't get into that now, but it's an awesome capability.

Before you go doing that, a quicker way to accomplish the change in wobble rate you're asking about could be to simply copy your track with all of it's plugin settings, and then copy the midi data to the new track. Then you would take that same plugin synth you're using (Massive, for example, or the OS2) and adjust the synth parms inside the popup window for that synth. You are not recording data here like the automation above, You are just setting the wobble rate to be a different setting. After you done that, you delete the portion of the first track that you don't need, and also delete first part in the second track that you don't need, essentially sharing the one midi data region between two tracks. (so part is performed on the first track, and the rest is performed on the new track, for a simple example). The wobble rates are different and during playback, all other factors being equal, it appears to the ear, that it's one track evolving over time. As you can hear on recordings, there can be a lot of parts simultaneously, and often they are just a few beats each. This is just an example of something you can do. You can do lots of things in addition, I'm sure. (record barking dogs and put thru a vocoder).


A few basic videos to get you started on the automation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENHJNTsCFG0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EkKL6xqJjY

I highly recommend that when you view these YT vids to click on the sprocket-type icon and make the resolution the highest number you can, even if it takes longer to load. Then, expand the view so it's screen-wide.

Once you start finding a few good tutorials, they'll lead you to the others. Just pick one topic, stop the vid, try it yourself. It may take you a few days or longer just to get a handle on how to automate one parameter to your liking. If you don't use Logic, just find ones for FL Studio, etc. Concepts are all very similar.

Have fun!

pboss

[2lane]

Wow Miss Patty.......YOU GOT SKILLS GOIL! What a production....sounds great! REALLY REALLY glad I pushed the little play button on this one.
I'm a new fan.......can I get a free ticket now
AWESOME!

Cheers
Steve

[pboss]

glad I pushed the little play button on this one

What would we do without the little buttons? And yes, free tix for all early adopters. Thanks for checking it out.

... I'm STILL trying to figure out how I want to do the drop / bass portions, in terms of process. You can geek with the software, but playing it on a keyboard (or pads) is where it's at for expression, I think, and that may mean a lot of work finding sounds you like, playing short bits, recording that MIDI, converting said MIDI to audio; editing that audio into slices or loops that you then assign to keys within a new EXS instrument that you create. I can do that, but geeze, that's labor intensive. Plus you need to think ahead about the key you want a song to be in. **Anyone else have any fast way to do this? I'm sure with some experimentation I can get it. That Chicken Systems converter and EXS instrument builder is pretty handy, but a pain in the ars to use (I posted another topic on this a while back).