DV Low Budget & Lofi production techniques thread

[Guest petesasqwax]

Interesting. I can't say that I've ever gated or shaped my drums. I literally run all mine through a simple process of: "sampler colouration" (I have no idea how to describe it other than maybe a semi-bitcrushing shitifier) -> tape sim (for a mixture of compression, flux, delay/slapback/feedback) -> reverb (if I feel it needs it)

[DJ Rock Well]

With transient shaping I very rarely ever increase the attack and if I do, I do so in extreme moderation. Go crazy with it and and it can make some weedy drums really aggressive, but it's almost like a novelty that wears out quickly. It's also possible to spike the levels so hard it's unmixable.

 

For me the best thing about transient shaping is just killing the sustain a little. Particularly as other processing can really drag up the room noise and muddy the mix too much. I also find that the process of reducing the sustain a little can make drum sounds more punchy so they cut through the mix better - even though you're reducing the tail not boosting the attack, I find tricks the ear to get a harder drum sound even though you've not boosted or compressed nothing.

 

The one other was I use it to improve mixes is to leave the drums as they are with their full natural attack (or occasionally a minute increase). Then I reduce the attack on the bass line and any other sounds of a frequency that's getting in the way of the drum. It not like this is immediately obvious when soloing tracks (like reducing sustain on a sound can be), but when playing it all together lets the drums (especially kicks) stand out more in the mix without resorting to extreme EQing or sidechaining, etc.

 

In many ways it's just like sliding tracks forwards and back to help the mix, or when you lay down hard quantised snares and overlay them with unquantized claps and the timing determines how loud the claps sound, regardless of their individual volume.

[Guest petesasqwax]

I never sidechain. I experimented with it a load years back, but I ultimately decided that I simply don't like the feel it gives the tracks, especially when I'm producing in headphones (i.e. always).

I can absolutely see the logic on gating or shaping the drums to remove the sustain of a particularly ringing snare or something like that, but I just tend to skip those samples and use something else. I figure the world is filled with drums - I'll just grab others. Also I'm more likely to put more noise in rather than take noise away

This whole conversation makes me think about something else I came across whilst searching for some old articles that are apparently no longer on the net (I'm scouring the wayback machine currently...)

This is not completely on topic, but it's connected.

One of the golden rules of hip-hop is: don't bite. One of the other golden rules of hip-hop is: learn by biting.

 

the first beat you ever made was someone else's beat. no lie. i feel like the ONLY way to be a better beat maker is to master someone else's beat. figure how they did some shit. and if you REALLY in love with your new found craft (see Dilla) you will find ways to improve on it....and THEN you can call it your own.

i did it. everyone from that era did it. first time i made a beat on someone else's machine i practiced and remade "welcome to the terrordome" because my dad had all the ingredients in his record collection and i practiced on my toy casio sk-1 before i went to bill jolly's crib to mess around with his equipment.

- Questlove

The way I learned how to make beats was pretty much:

1. Recognise samples from hip-hop tracks in the tracks they'd sampled (hello, Blue Note records)
2. Listen to the hip-hop productions and work out what the producers had done
3. Attempt to identify & collect the samples used in a hip-hop beat, then attempt to remake it.

[Guest petesasqwax]

as a continuation of what Questlove was saying, he spoke about Dilla on there too.

 

dilla was ALWAYS making these ill ass beats that pete rock already made.

like his version of "for pete sake" with the "substitution" drums all demented like he did for Common.

or him flipping "Bam Bam" from Sister Nancy like Pete did on the basement.

shit that regular ears would never hear....he'd pick me up from the airport and on the floor would be a cassette and it would say "pete" or "primo" or "dre" and it was just him doing some homework trying to up his game with different challenges.---

i mean mastering primo means getting your scratch game and your accapella knowledge up and working with big meaty drums as opposed to the small crispy kit you used for your own project.

but if you wanna be the illest you gotta master it.

one of his "primo" beats he felt was good enough to get out without cats getting "the joke"/ or labeling him a biter was phat kat's "dedication to the suckers" in which he used primo's "blues formula" theory (deep drums and a shrill noise on the 3. repeat 3 times. bar four change the shrill noise to a louder shrill noise used the first three times. repeat til fade. add scratches in for chorus. bonus points if the words "industry" or "the business of..." in the chorus--and where does primo find them sound bites?!?! lol---jokes..)

(there's more of this stuff here )

I'd be prepared to go out on a limb and say that EVERYONE you know and rate as a producer did this - and it seems like a lot of people never stopped, too.

[DJ Rock Well]

I know you use a lot of one shot drums and play them yourself Pete - in this case shaping would be less important. For me, I'm more often than not slicing a whole break and rearranging the slices and it becomes more relevant then.

 

When I get a chance I'll post some audio examples of where I've more obviously used transient shaping wen u get a chance. I swore to my self years ago that I had no interest in such things, especially when I saw some of the transient shaping plugins with about 10 different controls on them (or 10 different ways to ruin what you're doing). But then an old Madchine update added a built in simplified version with just input volume, attack, sustain and a limiter for reigning in any clumsy attack boosting (which I rarely use). Since getting this update I've probably used in one way or another on every beat I've made. It's definitely opened up some samples to be used that I simply couldn't have used otherwise and a lot more often it's just made a mix a bit better than it would have been relying on my hand fisted EQing skills.

[joeClockwork]

That's all well and good but you're never likely to get near Welcome to the Terrordome in your bedroom! Until you run all your beats through all that lovely, expensive analogue kit that Primo et al have access to, of course.

 

Also, a quote I hear often in these discussions is "Behind every dope producer is a dope engineer". Apparently the guy who engineered Madvillainy had a nightmare trying to get the sound we all get to hear out of the muddy mono recordings he was given. All of these golden age legend producers have a genius on hand, polishing all their turds.

[Guest petesasqwax]

To be honest, mate, I have 2 distinct approaches. One of them is one shots which are sampled from some friends of mine which I play through Battery using the PadKontrol. I love that stuff, but that's if I want to make a "real drummer" sort of approach. If I'm wanting a "band" type of sound where I'm going absolutely sample-free from the outset, that's my go-to, but lately I've gone back almost 100% to my original style, which is: get a tempo I like, find a drum loop that's too fast for the tempo & pitch it down so that it fits. Chop the shit out of it over 2 or 3 channels, then mix it down to a loop and chop again for drop outs etc.

Really ineresting shit, man. I'm looking forward to hearing the audio examples whenever you get the time.

[joeClockwork]

Having said that, I have a few of the ingredients for some of my favourite classics so I make try and remake a few.

 

Apparently Q-Tip jumped in when Havoc was mixing down The Infamous and 'did a few things', which helped him to make that LP sound as heavy as it does. But he never said what he did! Frustrating git.

[DJ Rock Well]

A very good point Joe!

 

So many beat makers now, particularly boom bap ones go on about how they "just sample off vinyl into the MP" like their golden era heroes, completely overlooking that those beats were all tracked out and mixed in a professional analogue studio by excellent engineers.

[Guest petesasqwax]

That's all well and good but you're never likely to get near Welcome to the Terrordome in your bedroom! Until you run all your beats through all that lovely, expensive analogue kit that Primo et al have access to, of course.

 

Also, a quote I hear often in these discussions is "Behind every dope producer is a dope engineer". Apparently the guy who engineered Madvillainy had a nightmare trying to get the sound we all get to hear out of the muddy mono recordings he was given. All of these golden age legend producers have a genius on hand, polishing all their turds.

Yes and no, man. That's half the beauty of it. You might theoretically not get close to Welcome to the Terrordome in your bedroom in terms of the mix, but that's not the initial point. The point is to understand how people created the beat, not engineered the sound. Also it gives you an added insight into how important the process of adding effects and mixing your tracks actually is. Whilst we could kick off the "digital will never sound like analogue" debate and make this into a 10 pager almost instantly, the fact is that you can get incredibly close to an analogue sound simply using digital plugins and gaining an appreciation of the engineering process.

[Guest petesasqwax]

Madlib is a great example because he uses the GOD Dave Cooley, which reminds me to post this stuff:

 

Someone was asking about the Dilla/ Madlib/ Doom sound... I've posted here before about it but it's not really "analog" per se. More like great samples off of vinyl through cool samplers and then mixed ITB/ hybrid with some tape emulation, not too many low-mids cut out. Like a lofi digital, thick midrange thing. Maybe some multiband on the entire mix to make it pump in a very "wrong" way. Or sidechain mixbus compression to make the kick suck the music down a la Daft Punk, etc. Especially Madlib. My partner Kelly Hibbert has been doing all of the Stones Throw stuff lately but he's coming from the same perspective to do Guilty Simpson, etc. Stones Throw is an incredible label.... great people, a definite "brand", and able to re-invent itself when needed; they're the last man standing in independent hip hop for the most part.

...

I used the waves C4 mulitband on the mix (!) for alot of the madlib stuff. Heresy. As for the kick pumping effect, I'd recommend the Cranesong STC8 with a sidechain eq. There's rumors that Daft Punk used to do it with a Behringer composer or an Alesis 3630 which are definitely cheap but yeah, the mix may start to sound pretty small running through one of those. Never tried it.

...

(Re: Dilla's 'The Shining' drums/mix bus)
Would have been a Cranesong STC8 on the mixbus for the most part, slowish attack fast-ish release. Or it could have been a Smart C1 on some of the material... again slow attack (30) fastest release. GML 8200 on the bus to add a bit of top. If the C1 wasn't being used for mixbus duties then it might have been on the drums on some songs. There was also a Neve 5042 tape emulator on the bus for quite few of the songs.

Another part of that sound was sidechaining some of the keyboard sounds, high hats, and percussion to the kick back then, like ducking them everytime the kick would hit. I think I was using the old bombfactory 1176 emulation for this.

Left in some of the "crusty" low mids that lots of folks would cut, and that's sort of that sound... Dilla at that point was real specific that he wanted it "raw" sounding, not to clean it up too much.

[assemblyworker]

Just going back a littleton the originality comments, I really like this interview with Goldie on the subject...

 

 

Also, a note on transient shaping, swell as tweaking the drums, one of the most useful things I've found with mixing in general is using transient shapers to create a sense of depth to a mix.

 

Our hearing perceives sounds with sharp transient elements to be closer than those with softer transients. This can be manipulated in the mix to create a 'front and back'. For example, you had an acoustic guitar sound and were happy with the volume, you could soften the transient to make it appear further away then enhance the attack thespian to bring it closer.

 

The sampan be achieved with microphone choice if you're recording.

 

This thread is cool

 

Can't think of anything specifically lofi to add, also I did do a session a while back where we ran the lead vocal through a domestic tape deck and sent it back in the computer.... Although it was then quite an edit to restore the timing where the tape seen had fluctuated.

[joeClockwork]

 

That's all well and good but you're never likely to get near Welcome to the Terrordome in your bedroom! Until you run all your beats through all that lovely, expensive analogue kit that Primo et al have access to, of course.

 

Also, a quote I hear often in these discussions is "Behind every dope producer is a dope engineer". Apparently the guy who engineered Madvillainy had a nightmare trying to get the sound we all get to hear out of the muddy mono recordings he was given. All of these golden age legend producers have a genius on hand, polishing all their turds.

Yes and no, man. That's half the beauty of it. You might theoretically not get close to Welcome to the Terrordome in your bedroom in terms of the mix, but that's not the initial point. The point is to understand how people created the beat, not engineered the sound. Also it gives you an added insight into how important the process of adding effects and mixing your tracks actually is. Whilst we could kick off the "digital will never sound like analogue" debate and make this into a 10 pager almost instantly, the fact is that you can get incredibly close to an analogue sound simply using digital plugins and gaining an appreciation of the engineering process.

 

 

Yeah, that makes sense. I suppose it's easier to A/B your work with something you aspire to if you make the same track!

[Guest petesasqwax]

Yeah man, that's it exactly.

[Guest petesasqwax]

Happened upon this article linked on Gearslutz and thought people might dig it.

 

Tell me about your studio! How is it equipped?

Madlib: The studio’s very basic; mad records. I don’t have no computers, I don’t have any big setups people have. I just have my 303 sampler, or SP 12, or whatever I use and just records. And a little eight digital board. That’s all I need. That’s how I did all my records: Madvillain, Jaylib and all of that.

Doesn’t that limit your possibilities?

Madlib: It doesn’t limit my possibilities. People just think they need computers and things to do the work for them, but I do my stuff the old school way, the hard way, you know what I’m sayin?

 

[joeClockwork]

Yeah, exactly. No sidechaining, no transient shaping, no gating. Just knock up some beats and get some poor bast to make 'em sound good

 

That Hank Shocklee quote is cool. He's the man.

[Guest petesasqwax]

Agreed, Hank Shocklee is/was and always will be the man. I read a piece in Check The Technique 2 where Ice Cube got met at the airport in NYC by Hank and he had no clue who he was - he thought the Bomb Squad was just Chuck D & Flava Flav!

[joeClockwork]

Haha, damn. I need to read both of those.

[DJ Rock Well]

Agreed, Hank Shocklee is/was and always will be the man. I read a piece in Check The Technique 2 where Ice Cube got met at the airport in NYC by Hank and he had no clue who he was - he thought the Bomb Squad was just Chuck D & Flava Flav!

Yet another fact omitted from the 3 hour long Straight Outta Compton!

[Guest petesasqwax]

Honestly, I find it incredibly difficult to muster any kind of interest in that film whatsoever

[DJ Rock Well]

Was my review off putting you off? Or do you not have three hours of your life you care to risk losing?

 

Some people think this film wasn't nominated for lots of oscars because the the oscars are racist. I don't doubt racism within that institution one bit, but people thinking its stopping this film from cleaning up are to be taken as seriously as Will Smith's wife when she tells you that's why Big Willie hasn't won one either.

[Guest petesasqwax]

Ha - you mean Fish Mooney?

No, I didn't need your review to put me off - hearing that they'd fictionalised a massive portion of it and completely glossed over Dre's penchant for battering women was sufficient, to be honest.

[DJ Rock Well]

So you don't want to hear about how about 1 1/2 hrs of content was stretched to 3 hrs, the men paying for the film came out looking like heroes, the best 'acting' was done by Cube's son's genes and all the period songs used were harshly juxtaposed by modern trap with a small 'c' scoring the other scenes?

 

Ok, fair enough, I won't mention it.

[Guest petesasqwax]

I'm feeling a bit stabby right about now...

[Guest petesasqwax]

Gino recently published another interview that is definitely relevant to this discussion. His music might not be to all tastes (although I'm sure there are dudes on here that love it) but the methods are really interesting regardless. Dibiase:

 

https://medium.com/@ginosorcinelli/dibia-e-discusses-303s-404s-mpcs-and-tape-hiss-48a2f26a5bb1#.ky1jccgkf