I was listening to Zedd’s “Straight into the Fire” and at the 3:07 mark I heard him do something that stopped me in my tracks.
“What was that!!??” …. i was mesmerized, perplexed, intrigued. And I had to make that sound my own. I had to learn how to do it!
After thinking about it for a while, I had an idea of how to do it. Then, the other day I was producing a song and thought I saw an opportunity to give it a try. I was very happy with the results and thought I would share.
You’ll need a granular synth that allows you to import your own audio, I used Omnisphere, but here’s a thread discussions that lists other options.
Have you ever wanted to have both Shuffle Mode and Grid Mode active at the same time? Well you can!
All you have to do is select one of the two, (it doesn’t matter which one you choose first). Then you will need to use a modifier in order to get the second mode active at the same time. So hold SHIFT and mouse click on the second one.
Happy grid shuffling!!
Here’s a short screen movie of the mode in action.
Pro Tools (mac) and Logic Users. Looking for time savers?
Imagine selecting a single button on your iPhone or iPad (you can have multiple iOS devices connected at the same time!) and the computer automatically executes a series of mouse clicks and keyboard shortcuts. Amazing!
Add plugins for ALL of your backing vocal tracks, or ALL your favorite drum plugins and settings with a single click.
From what I’ve seen Remote (iOS 7+) can help two types of people.
1. If you record yourself frequently and want to avoid taking off the headphones, walking back to the computer to perform tasks on the computer with mouse/keyboard. (See video 1)
2. If you are a mixing engineer and have established standard sequences of plugins, and signal flow that you use as a starting point for many mixes. (See video 2)
Take your music technology game up a notch this summer (or anytime). For just $200 you can purchase Logic Pro X software for your Mac computer, and then participate in this free course of instruction. For what you get in the software, the price tag is a steal of a deal! Not too long ago Logic Pro would cost a person $1,000!
This series of classes is designed to equip music producers, songwriters, and composers. As a producer of pop and electronic music, so I’ll also be sharing some tips and tricks to help people in that direction.
For people wanting some help learning Logic Pro X. I created this series of videos to help you get started, or to help more experienced Logic users to work more efficiently …. or your money back.
I will be adding more content throughout the summer (mastering, mixing, free third party synthesizers, and more), so make sure to subscribe to me on YouTube so you can get the new videos when they come out.
This will work for anything listed in the menu area of Pro Tools. Even if there is already a keyboard shortcut assigned! This works in all Mac OS and Pro Tools systems slightly differently. But the steps are all pretty similar. For Windows systems I believe the process would be very similar. See Sound on Sound article here.
Here in a forty second video, I demonstrate the process.
STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS
Before After
1. Identify the menu item needing a custom shortcut. Make note of the EXACT wording, spelling, capitalization, and spaces.
2. Mac/System Preferences.
3. Select KEYBOARD preferences.
4. App Shortcuts in the left column.
5. Select the + button.
6. If the Application is not in the drop down menu at the top, go to the bottom of the list to “Other…” and you can add Pro Tools.
7. Type in the exact name of the menu command for the Menu Title. Choose a new (unused) shortcut.
8. Go to Pro Tools. Behold, and experience the magic.
On a similar note, there are companies and individuals that create software for macro commands. Meaning that you hit one key, and in the software it can do a series of things. For example, you could hit Option-1 and the software would run a script of actions: create eight stereo aux tracks, inputs sequential, four different compressors on each, with custom settings, a reverb send, with custom setting, set up a parallel compressor for one of them, create custom track colors and names for them.
One (of many) ways to accomplish this is with Slate Batch Commander.
There are other options that run keyboard scripts. So if it’s a series of keyboard shortcuts that you can program in, that series can be reduced to a single hotkey! Keyboard Maestro ($35 US) is one that seems to be highly recommended.
There is a current movement among audio producers, electronic musicians, and the like. People are finding ways to blend organic audio matter with digital trickery, and the results are often very interesting. In this episode (and the next) we will look at a few ways that electronic musicians are going organic.
Pretty Lights recently has been booking studio time, bringing in musicians (horn sections, guitar, etc) treating them like a virtual instrument by asking them to play certain phrases. This while recording them to analog tape, then onto acetate (vinyl), and finally he transfers the samples into his Ableton environment. (http://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/pretty-lights-gets-deep-on-all-original-new-album/).
But this new practice of Found Sounds takes it a step further. Imagine stepping out into the world, in the city, suburbs, on a goat farm, etc. and recording with your handheld recorder sounds gathered from the physical world. You can bang on a dumpster, you can crush a discarded Dr. Pepper can, throw a rock into a pond, close the tailgate of an old pickup…. record these and more sound sources and import them into your computer editing/production software and try to make something rhythmic and musical out of it.
Ordinary objects can sometimes sound extraordinary! For fun, I took some samples of a bike, and created a couple of simple one bar drum patterns.
Here are some kitchen sounds, made in to a beat.
Diego Stocco, a hero of ours, has been known to record very cool beats using only what he could find at place like a dry cleaners. More on Diego next time! https://vimeo.com/29273575 So, for EPISODE SEVEN of Creative Audio Production
Want to try using found sounds, but feeling a little to comfy in your chair? http://www.FreeSound.org is a wonderful online community where you can download recorded sounds for music, video production, etc. I’ve downloaded a few in the past, and I try to give back to the community by posting odds and ends.
I encourage you to give Found Sounds a try! Go out, record weird and commonplace things, import them into your audio production environment and tweak away! Let us know what you come up with!
For those of you who have enjoyed Omnisphere, your enjoyment is about to get an upgrade.
Here’s the skinny:
3,000 new preset patches.Synthesis functionality expanded significantly;from 7 oscillators to 10, new drag and drop audio files in for granular synthesis fun, and more.
New sampled sounds include stalactites in a cave (!!)circuit bending, old cheap synths, and other interesting acoustic sources.
Waveform library expanded from 4 to 400+.
Analog drift function makes synths sound huge.
NEW EDM patch library.
Arpeggiator functionality increased. More effects available.
Improved browser organization. Including Sound Match, which locates similar patches, so if you found a sound that is close to what you want, but not quite, it will pull up similar patches for you to try. Makes finding the needle in the haystack a lot easier.
Even Spectrasonics founder Eric seems to have gotten an upgrade, he’s lost some weight or been working out. Lookin good Eric!
Also included is some convolution creativity with the Innerspace effect rack.Tic Tacs on Glass, for example.If you are familiar with the creative work of Diego Stocco, the sonic results are similar to his. In fact, Diego seems to be a contributor to the upgrades of Omni 2!
COST – $499 US
UPGRADE COSTS
Standard Upgrade: $249 *
For all Omnisphere 1 customers
(Standard and Transfer Licenses)
VIP Upgrade: $199 *
For customers who own Omnisphere, Trilian and Stylus RMX
(Standard Licenses)
Grace Period Upgrade: FREE
For new Omnisphere customers from October 2014 thru May 2015
(Standard Licenses)
So you’re interested in buying a talkbox? Or perhaps you own one, but are not satisfied with the results you are getting, and you’re left wondering if you can do better?
Maybe you’re a fan of Daft Punk, and you’re wondering how they get their melodic robotic vocal sounds?
Well, in any case, you have come to the right place.
As far as I know, this is the first and only talkbox shootout on the internet.
{patting myself on the back}
Here you go:
Three of the most popular talkboxes, in the same place, used by the same performer for the same lyric and melody. I was striving for clarity of lyric, adjusting settings for each device for maximum clarity.
Here is the uncompressed audio file of the blindfold shootout.
This producer duo DaDa Life explain their techniques for using and recording with a (Banshee) talkbox. Fast forward to the 20 or 24 minute mark, and you’ll see/hear them demonstrating how they use and record the talkbox. This was one of the most helpful bits of information that I found in my research. Thank you DaDa Life and Future Music Magazine!
Make sure to check out Future Music Magazine’s – YouTube channel. Get a cup of coffee, kick back, and watch as an electronic producer walks you through their production process, with tips, plugins, tricks, techniques ….. you gotta love the internet!
Creative Audio Production on iTunes (free episodes of the podcast). The podcasts are a few years old now, but the creative ideas, tips and tricks are timeless.
Creative-Audio-Production.com 