AUDIOTUTS Updates |  |
- 7 Quick Tips on Drum Loops
- Imitate Guitar Techniques With MIDI Part 3 – Glissando (1 Octave)
- Workshop #115: Blueberry Haze by Sound Scientists
| Posted: 02 Sep 2010 04:40 PM PDT Benjamin Coutts shares seven quick tips about how to get more from your drum loops. He is an Ableton Live user, but the techniques can be used with any DAW. And his tips don’t just apply to drum loops – they can be done on any kind of loop. Enjoy! Tip 1Everyone loves to use loops, and I am no exception to that group. So why not try to chop up the loop and rearrange the position of each hit. This can be very useful for creating your own loops with a library drums, and can lead to very exciting things. Tip 2After rearranging your drum loop, start thinking about taking your chopped slices and place them into individual audio channels. This will allow you to add effects to your different drum parts without affecting the other drum hits. The problem with drum loops is that if you want to add an effect to, say the snare, you will also be affecting the kick, hi‐hats and what ever else is in the loop, and this can cause problems with your sound overall. Tip 3Instead of loading your audio channels with a host of different effects, try to put all your effects into the return channels. The really handy thing about this is that you will be saving a lot of CPU, which allows you to add more effects to certain instruments you are using. I'm an Ableton Live user and I find that using the returns for effects for your drums can help master the audio of the drums. With Ableton Live I send all my drum hits to different returns, which have effects for each drum, hit. So, in one return I will have all my effects for the snare in one channel as opposed to having loads of effects on each layered snare hit. Tip 4Don't just rest with the one kick, or snare hit. Double or triple up the drum hits. The more layering you have the bigger the sound your going to get, which is what most people look for in genres like drum and bass and dubstep. You might be able to get away with having one layer in minimalism, but most of the time is best to layer up everything. Tip 5Don't be afraid of adding a different drum pattern to your songs. The band/DJ the Prodigy have underlining drum patterns, which give a little more complexity to their drums. For example, "Fire Starter" has its main drum beat, but it also has a break beat drum loop in the background. This is very common in Break Beat and Glitch. Tip 6With your chopped up drum hits you can now add a simple glitch effect with transposition. With Ableton Live you can transpose each drum hit, but remember that each transposition needs to be a multiple of the one before to make it sound in sync. Say you transpose a drum hit down three semitones, the next one would be ‐6, or ‐9, or +6, or +9. Now this isn't a set in stone rule, it's just a good guideline to start off with. Tip 7One thing that is unique to Ableton Live is the ability to take your audio sample and slice it to a new MIDI track. By doing so you can change the arrangement of the drum loop and come up with your own loop. When slicing the audio loop your not just confined to changing the arrangement but you can also change the way the drum hits sound. You can alter the envelope and add sustain, attack, decay and the release. ConclusionWell, that concludes my tips on the many different ways you can look at drum loops. Now some of the tips I have explained with the idea of people using Ableton Live, but of course you can use any DAW with these tips. I hope you have enjoyed reading through and get inspired to do some awesome things with your loops. Bye everyone, until next time.
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| Imitate Guitar Techniques With MIDI Part 3 – Glissando (1 Octave) Posted: 02 Sep 2010 04:49 AM PDT In this tutorial Oleg Berg concludes his series on achieving realistic guitar sliding sounds with a MIDI keyboard. Like the previous two parts, this tut is very detailed, and gets technical in places, but is a very worthwhile read if you’re aiming to get the ultimate realism out of your MIDI setup. Achieving a realistic whole-octave guitar slide requires different techniques to shorter slides. This tutorial will explain how step by step.
Step 1The most interesting fact about this glissando range is that, unlike the shorter ranges we discussed in Parts 1 and 2, there is no initial music fragment needed here. We only have to play one single note. However, the listener will hear 13 notes – 12 semitones plus initial note. This job will be done by our good old friend, the pitch bend controller. Step 2In this case pitch wheel range of 2 is not enough. In Step 4 of Part 1 of this tutorial I described how to set a needed value to pitch wheel range (in this case 12). Keep in mind that any changes to this parameter will change the scale interval of the pitchbend graph (the difference between two pitch values). It is not hard to calculate the value corresponding one semitone changing. The entire pitchbend range from the bottom (minimum) to middle (zero value) always equals 8192. This number corresponds 2 semitones when the pitch wheel range is 2. One semitone is 4096. When pitch wheel is set to 12, then the whole range (8192) will represent 12 semitones. Therefore, one semitone will be 8192/12 ≈ 682.7. As you see, the number we get for one semitone is not exact, and we’ll have to round it, but this can lead to accumulation of round-off error as a result. To avoid it, we can first draw the points where there are integer numbers. For example, we can obtain some integer values by calculating:
Therefore, we can set several points first (3, 6, 9, and 12 semitones) and then proceed with other in between points considering the interval we found (≈ 682,7).
 Step 3Drawing all the precise values manually is difficult. So we’ll use one of methods we discussed before (in Step 9 of Part 1). One way is editing the values of selected event parameters in the MIDI Inspector window. The other method is selecting the note we need in the Piano Roll window and open List Editor – here in the next “Pitchbend” line enter the correct value. To set the actual time intervals between the points of changing pitch, we should imagine how the guitarist finger moves during a long slide. It gradually accelerates, speeding up at the end. So the time intervals between the points must gradually decrease.
 A similar principle is used to play sliding down.
 Step 4You may have noticed in the example images above that the main note is the last one. We first altered the Pitchbend value, changing the pitch up or down for an octave. Then using small semitone portions we adjusted the Pitchbend to zero. We can conversely choose the first note to be the main one. In this case, take a note with Pitchbend value = 0, and then using the methods described here move down or up an octave with semitone portions.
 It’s up to you what option to choose between these two. Here’s a third option. Step 5Instead of choosing the first or last note as the main one, I advise you to pick a note from the middle of range instead. Changing a sample’s pitch up or down an entire octave will sound less realistic than playing it at the original pitch. We can minimize this problem by choosing a note in the middle of the range, that will be changed up or down by only half an octave. For example, sliding down an octave from G3-G2. Make D-flat (C#3) the main note, and the Pitchbend parameter will range from +4096 to -4096, with a scale interval ≈ 682.7.
 Another example – sliding up an octave from F2 to F3. Here the best main note will be B2. The range of changing the Pitchbend parameter here will be from -4096 to +4096, with scale interval ≈ 682.7.
 Step 6This technique will be less effective if the sound you are using has a limited pitch range. For example, if the manufacturer supplied a set of samples with G4 at the top of the range, then you will not be able to slide from E4-E5 using a note in the middle as a main one. For instance, A#4 – the middle note in this range – will simply not sound in this case, as it is outside the instrument’s range. It is better to choose a main note closest to maximum possible one – G4. Interestingly, the value of Pitch Wheel range = 12 is rather universal number, as using this value it is possible to imitate both long and short sliding. Keep in mind that when sliding for two semitones with PW = 12, the numbers we set for Pitchbend (unlike ±8192 and ±4096 we used in Part 1) should be accordingly ±682 (683) and ±1365 (1366). I hope you understand where we got these numbers: the entire range is divided to number of semitones to get the needed value. For a 3-4 semitone glissando you can also use this pitch wheel range, and calculate Pitchbend values relatively. If in your music you like to combine both long, short, and medium glissando, it is up to you which pitch wheel range to use. You can leave PW = 12 for all ranges, or you may want to use PW = 2 for short glissando for more flexible manual work. In this case for long glissando you could simply change the pitch wheel range from 2 to 12 either in List Editor window, or working with automation (if you find the needed parameter on your instrument and if it is possible technically).
 ConclusionYou’ve made it to the end of the series! You learned how to imitate a realistic guitar sliding technique with a MIDI keyboard in any MIDI editor. We dissused several glissando ranges: from 2 semitones, to 3-4 semitones, to entire octave (12 semitones). The tutorial was long and detailed with many graphs and calculations, but I hope it gave you some useful tips and you’ve enjoyed it. Use it to create your own live guitar tracks with MIDI editor. Using these techniques allows you to achieve unbelievably realistic guitar tracks – with slides, bends and whammy bar. Let’s finish by listening to our example tracks one last time. Download audio file (example-1.mp3) Download audio file (example-2.mp3)
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| Workshop #115: Blueberry Haze by Sound Scientists Posted: 01 Sep 2010 05:52 PM PDT At Audiotuts+ we regularly put up a reader track for workshopping and critique (find out how to submit a track). This is how it works: you upload your song, and every week or so we’ll publish one here and step away from the podium. The floor is yours to talk about the track and how the artist can fix problems in and improve upon the mix and the song.
This track has been submitted for your friendly, constructive criticism. They have put their track (and their heart and soul) in your hands to learn and get useful feedback.
Blueberry Haze by Sound ScientistsArtist’s website: HipHopProduction.com Description of the track:
Download audio file (02BlueberryHaze.mp3) Terms of Use: Users may download track, and may even redistribute it, so long as original credit is given to Sound Scientists. Have a listen to the track and offer your constructive criticism for this Workshop in the comments section. Submit Your Tracks for WorkshoppingNeed constructive criticism on your own tracks? Submit them using this form.
     This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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