tripleheadedmonkey-blog

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

Phone (sort of) fixed:

So things have taken a turn for the better not so long after I posted the last update.

While the power button is still completely busted, I managed to somehow gain one last burst of button activation power and amazingly got the phone back on.

As soon as I did so I took measures to make sure that the lack of manual control over its power state wouldn’t be an issue.

After delving into the settings I found an option for scheduling automatic power on/off and set the device to automatically power itself off at approximately 8am and then power itself back on 1 minute afterwards every day.

Now, as long as it is charged, it will always be on.

Another helpful feature I made use of was the android developer options. Though this was something I’d already activated for use with certain apps on my phone which would stop working when the screen goes black, the hidden android developer options were used to force the screen to remain active and never turn off whilst it is on charge.

This also means that even if the screen is black, while it is on, it can be awoken again simply by plugging in the charger.

I then remembered that I have a heavy duty portable phone charger. So theoretically I could still get by using this current phone, despite the numerous cracks, bugs and chinese adverts it is riddled with. Just need to use a portable charger like it is the waking switch for it from now on.

Though ideally a new phone, at least compatible with the Amuse App, would be the best option. One with a decent camera would be nice as well because, before I cracked the lense, this one was a 21 megapixel and I liked taking decent pictures while I was out and about. At least now I can put out more content!

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

Realization:

One realization I have confirmed throughout this project is that, when you know what you are doing, being flexible and able to navigate reasonable compromise helps to achieve results within rigid timeframes.

Sometimes we set out with goals of perfection. Sometimes we try to do more than we can handle at once. We’re only human. We make mistakes.

The most important thing as an artist and a human being is to never stop. You can take a break, sure. You can go on holiday for a month and put your feet up, if you have the potential for that luxury, but never ever stop doing what makes you happy. Never give up. Give yourself time to recover when you fall down. Take that moment, lying down there in the dirt, to take a deep breath and remember who you are again and how it feels to be alive. Make an effort to believe in yourself, even if nobody else does. Everybody doubts themselves and those around them, from time to time but you should always try not to let that doubt turn into inaction and form a regret. Perceptions of the way we feel are more important than the emotions themselves. How is it that adrenaline can create excitement, thrill and traumatic paralyzing fear all from the same shape when received in different circumstances? Why is content that evokes sadness sought out as entertainment, when so much sadness surrounds us, unwanted? Is it not our internal perception of events that dictate our physical reactions?

Numerous studies conducted over the last century would seem to support that being the case.

Cognitive behavioural techniques, for example, seem to have noticeable effects on perception and reactions to external stimuli.

Even just understanding how Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) works can dramatically change the way the world around you feels to live in and the way you conduct yourself accordingly.

If I were to give in to my fear of failure and refuse to commit myself fully to being the professional music producer I know have now become then I would never have begun learning any of this in the first place.

Probably because I operate most of my life sleep deprived, have an overactive imagination and watch way too much fiction, my grasp of reality can sometimes slip a little.

Occasionally I find myself slipping into another reality in which Stargate command really is under cheyenne mountain and I’m on stage performing in front of thousands of people. Not at stargate command of course, that would be silly, seeing as it is a top secret installation and all.

I’m at a festival somewhere, probably on earth.

Though it is becoming increasingly less insane to consider the logistics of a festival occuring outside of our atmosphere in my lifetime.

I’m kind of 50/50 on whether or not more people will experience the effects of space travel through a simulation in a matrix like future VR system, before anyone really gets to try actual space travel in my lifetime. Though there is an unmentioned 5% margin in there as well for the possibility that neither becomes a thing before I die.

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

In hindsight the aforementioned email did not specifically mention there was an issue with the length of the 6th, dropped, track. It had only mentioned the other track but I simply did not want to take the risk that I would have to resubmit the entire EP a 5th time with the schedule, I’d decided upon, in mind.

With just over a week before the deadline I had decided upon and a potential 2 week waiting time for Amuse to release submitted content, I’ve become rather willing to consider compromise in order to make sure things would go smoothly. Now all I can do is wait and find out whether things work out and hope I still have time to make any changes if needed.

Seeing as it is no longer a part of the release, I thought I’d share a little procrastination with you before I develop it into my next release.

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

EP approved! Phone Broken..:

Seeing as not many people read this, I may as well go off on a little tangent about my phone troubles this week.

Though this doesn’t seem relevant at first glance, the AMUSE app is only available on android/IOS devices. This means that whether I’ll be able to upload new content in the near future currently depends entirely on the whims of the universe.

It’s been acting up for a while now and refusing to switch the screen on and off, at random, when pressing the relevant button. Recently, however, this has become a permanent and unavoidable issue that has resulted in the phone being reduced to an utterly useless battery that powers nothing.

It still takes in charge, but while it is off and without a working power button it seems impossible to resolve this problem.

On a side note I did receive an email from Amuse informing me that my EP is approved for release in stores worldwide! So there is that.

Would have been an unfortunate turn of events had my release not been approved now that I don’t have access to their app.

So I created this short preview of my EP to showcase what to expect!

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

Another attempt:

This last time I instead uploaded my content to DropBox for submission and it seems to have kicked the system into giving a proper response over the issue, rather than simply assuming that the file was incorrectly transmitted and declining its release without explanation.

It turned out that I was entirely at fault for not properly matching my content to their upload criteria.

I identified 2 possible problems from the automated response and made changes to the EP accordingly. First of all there was an issue with one of my tracks having too large a period of silence after the fade out. This was originally a conscious creative decision to create more suspense for the final track. Upon inspection however I realized that a 25 second silence was perhaps more than I had intended and was something that I should have already fixed. I shortened the silence to less than 8 seconds as per the requirements stated in the automated email from Amuse and bounced a new, shorter, final version once again. The second potential issue was that my final track “Procrastination” was only about a minute long. This could have made it count, at least in the eyes of the automated upload algorithms, as a “preview” or a “snippet.” I decided that I would be best served dropping that last track and developing it further in future, because I want to have my EP available for release by the 1st of may.

In order to tide you along till then here is a link to my friend and colleague Slim Fitz’s track “Dangerous” which I did the hook for last year:

https://soundcloud.com/slimfitzmusic/dangerous

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

Amuse is more difficult to use than first anticipated:

I’ve been trying to upload my EP for about a week and a half. Perhaps because of a lack of clear communicated criteria laid out in an easy to find manner, it would appear that I am going to have to re upload this EP a 4th time. Hopefully it will be in time for the presentation on the 1st, but after this 3rd attempt the window of opportunity is shrinking quite quickly.

Annoyingly it seems that I will have to edit my tracks in some way perhaps taking another day or so of work.

The email responses I have gotten back from them have suggested that my content is being lost in translation somehow and that they are ultimately not, or at least they seem to believe they are not, receiving the correct content.

Furthermore I’ve learned that if an EP/album contains one or more explicit tracks, other tracks within the collection seem to get labelled as explicit as well.

Perhaps I just have a rather loose definition of what explicit is and I’m wrong in believing that my content was safe for work (SFW).

It’s slightly confusing at the moment because when I am in the submission stages there are suggestions of the possibility of being able to edit a pending release and fix it once a problem has been identified, but in practice forces you to delete the previous attempt and start the entire process from scratch instead.

The first couple of times that they declined my content they didn’t give a proper reason. Though I assumed it was because I chose to use Google Drive instead of their preferred method DropBox. The emails they sent me told me that the files hadn’t been uploaded properly and that I should try again and that it would be best to use DropBox.

The only saving grace of this ordeal is that it only takes 10-15 minutes of my time to do it. It’s just a little frustrating that I’m forced to operate it entirely on my phone, because honestly I dislike touchscreen interfaces with a passion.

So I’m going to go through that process right now and get back to you all later with the results.

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

Mastering done:

I’ve now completed the mastering process on my EP “The Following Riddle.” It is named as such because it signifies a state of confusion amongst the feelings of those who are depressed. It’s also based upon the opening lines to the book, one of my favourites I might add, “John Dies At The End” by David Wong.

As I said twice before I went with -9lufs this time and have my content averaging between -9 and -11 overall. The direct listening experience seems much more close to existing professional content and hopefully this will translate as such when I upload it to official streaming platforms.

This will also mean that I can release it on CD in future. I’ve tried to keep the low end of all my tracks as close to mono as possible in order to facilitate a possible Vinyl release as well. Though as of yet I’ve not done detailed research into what the best mixing and mastering practices for vinyl are beyond that. Perhaps I will put something out again on Bandcamp at some point and purchase a vinyl copy and test it somewhere in order to compare my current techniques results on that medium.

Check out the online version of John Dies At The End here: https://novels77.com/john-dies-at-the-end/page-1-93072.html

Or support the author and buy the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Book-Full-Spiders-Seriously/dp/178116455X/

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

Changes to the project:

So A few things have changed in recent weeks in order to facilitate my personal release schedule. I’ve decided to do the mastering “in house” so to speak. That is to say that I’ve now done my finalizing work on ableton instead.

As I mentioned in my blog post before, I came to some realizations about what I should be trying to achieve in my mixing and mastering stages. My test release, though my first spotify release, is to be one of the last artefact's that I specifically mastered with Spotify in mind. Though I’ve been aiming at -14lufs on soundcloud for a few months now, knowing that -9lufs is about the standard for CD has made my mastering process shift quite considerably.

Hopefully I’ll see a noticeable improvement in both loudness and clarity even after it is exposed to loudness normalization and I’ll be able to compare the results.

Here is a link to my test release “Drumstep 101”: https://open.spotify.com/album/3O0hhdC8BX0m71HVUKzEG8

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

Test Release:

So obviously, when there are strict deadlines for the contents release, one must make sure to cover as many potential risks as possible. In the spirit of this I decided to create a quick test track unambiguously named “Drumstep 101.” I then attempted to release it via the aggregator I spoke about in one of my last blog posts “Amuse.”

As the name suggested it was created to be a combination of Drum ‘n’ Bass as well as dubstep. Though it was only a test release I did make sure I was happy with the quality before I released because I don’t believe in removing content from the internet unless it is absolutely necessary. If I were to make a mistake or release something in such a way that it defied expectations in a negative fashion then I would most definitely attempt to remove and replace said artefact's.

I do, of course, seek feedback from close friends and colleagues, in most cases, before I make any removal decisions though. Sometimes an unintentional and unwanted error can become the most memorable and relatable moment, even if it only seems like a mistake when you hear it back.

It was never my intention to advertise the release but it still seemed to get an initial burst of listens ~200 or so on spotify alone.

I assume that it is natural for a couple of hundred listens to accrue for any new content on the day of its release. Perhaps because of a “New Releases” section. As I’m not a frequent listener on spotify I don’t have that knowledge as of yet.

Furthermore, not being able to see the view counts of tracks released by others, like you can on sites like Soundcloud and Youtube, means that one must rely on one’s own experience as well as external research that others publish on the subject from their own experience.

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

Progress:

Things have changed considerably in the last few years to the degree that us students on my course are now actually informing the lecturers of the multitude of aggregation and distribution options available.

It began initially with almost all of us, at university, barely understanding what it was we were even looking for. As time has gone on, with the lecturers guidance we’ve all reached a point where we’ve set out on our own individual paths. Paths that flow at our own pace. A couple of my colleagues have been scouted because of their efforts and are already signed to smaller record labels.

One is even in talks with Polydor for a potential release of a Who remix referred by Pete Townsend himself and another is potentially going to be popping up on a major D’n’B label within the year. https://open.spotify.com/artist/3YOpUEKd7XIQtvpPplWqBn https://open.spotify.com/artist/24RcqHfOf6flYt07LJEBi0

So far my own momentum has been slow to build, to put it mildly. This is due to a number of reasons. First and foremost being that I have yet to find my niche.

The second and probably secretly the most important factor has been my own mental health and the confidence I have in myself. Until recently I had very little confidence in my skills as a professional and was hoping I could perhaps totally improvise as I went along and nobody would notice.

Because of a number of external factors including issues with family and friends it has been difficult to maintain a stable and positive outlook on the things I have done in recent weeks. I shouldn't have let these things detract from my own academic achievements, but the sheer amount of stress that has been surrounding my day to day life along with my own temporarily negative perspective on those feelings led me to be unable to cope with the sheer breadth of work I had set for myself. I’ve since got on top of said issues and am now well on the way to getting things done.

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

What streaming platforms I’ve used so far:

I thought I’d talk a little about what I’ve been doing up till now and how you can find it.

Youtube

I’ve been using youtube as an amateur creator since I was about 12 years old though I didn’t get into it properly till I was around 16/17 when I started uploading low quality webcam karaoke videos from my bedroom. As well as a couple of extremely bad and rather distasteful parody tracks and a few badly recorded improvised redubs too.

Here is a link to my original inactive youtube account: https://www.youtube.com/user/SonAmyGuy

I lost access to my original youtube account when an old email account was compromised and now use this one: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZZlgcmg2bL3okTeKC2rBkg

Soundcloud

I began using soundcloud as a content creator around 5 years ago and have since uploaded around 200 tracks over 2 accounts. Though many tracks have been deleted in order to make room for newer more polished tracks and I have recently not renewed my Soundcloud Pro so my visible track count has been halved. Pretty much all of my content on soundcloud is available for free download and always will be as long as it is still held on their servers.

Here is my original soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/thecrimsun

I made my second Soundcloud page when I had properly decided upon my artist name and had already completely filled up the first one too: https://soundcloud.com/tripleheadedmonkey

Bandcamp

In 2018 I decided that, as I had to release an album for my academic work, I would use BandCamp to publish my music. I’d heard a number of good things about it, but I didn’t have the knowledge that I do now and released an album of much lower standards than I believe I was actually and am now capable of.

Here is a link to my Bandcamp album page: https://tripleheadedmonkey.bandcamp.com/album/look-behind-you

From now on I’m going to go for the more officially perceived avenues rather than try and self publish on my own channels/pages.

Having done some research, I’ve found that the aggregation app “Amuse” for android and IOS allows you to release your music worldwide on multiple different platforms simultaneously, without having to pay any fees or sign away even 1% of your royalties.

I’m not holding out any hopes on fulfilling the criteria for their official record deals any time soon of course, but with this small step I should be able to put forwards a much more professional looking brand than any regular soundcloud exclusive producer.

In many cases the context that the content is in can be more important than the content itself. Especially when trying to create a professional image. Having content released on reputable streaming platforms and stores, despite being a relatively simple process, gives off the perception that you yourself by extension are also reputable.

Perhaps off of the back of this I can find a more focused niche label which can help spread some of my intellectual property for mine and their own benefits.

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

Physical, mental Health and perceived limitations:

I’ve been ignoring my own limitations for a while now. Much like anything in this world they are an invention solely of my perception and exist only within my own definitions.

As I learn and develop new and existing skills the perceived limit of what I am capable of expands and the complexity of what I will allow myself to undertake increases.

I would never have considered being able to make professional quality audio and video without having considerable luck, help and investment, before beginning my academic journey in electronic music production. That is, of course, not to say that I have not been given help or that I’ve been entirely unlucky. Nor is it to say that those at dBs Music have not invested in me.

Far from it. I would say that dBs and its staff, especially the lecturers for the university degree, have gone above and beyond the call of educational duty. There have been few places I felt I belonged, but this has become one of them. I have no end of praise for the institution in all honesty. If I had taken full advantage of what resources they’ve made available to me I would, hands down, be the best music producer and perhaps even the best studio engineer on the face of the planet.

In reality, my idea of what it takes to be successful in the music industry was completely outdated and based upon media presented stereotypes of being “discovered” and then developed and trained by a record company.

My main problem at them moment is that I want to dive more fully into perfecting my vocals so I can perform live, but my right tonsil decided to expand last year and has now permanently taken up residence in the way of a large portion of my vocal chords.

So while you may notice that my vocals have improved immensely in recent months, especially compared to my older soundcloud content, I have actually been struggling in order to achieve things which used to be rather simple.

As a consequence of this I have simplified and streamlined my vocal technique, in order to avoid straining the issue, as much as possible.

As soon as these deadlines are over I’ll be getting them checked out again. Maybe get my tonsils removed or something. Watch this space!

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

Mastering Decisions

With so much going on at the moment I haven’t had time to update the status of my works.

Project wise, things are somewhat behind with my Final Major Project for university. A conglomeration of procrastination and personal issues have made events more difficult to complete within the time frame I had previously mentioned.

I have had some time in the studio, but I spent most of the time familiarising myself with that specific setup and relearning the basics of Logic.

Usually I use Ableton’s Live 10 for sound design and mixing. For this mastering session I've been using Logic Pro X through an HD mixing desk.

My project has taken a slight change in focus, in that I have decided to change the level at which I am mastering my content, once again.

Up till this point I had been mastering with the intention of getting the cleanest and loudest results from Spotify specifically, because it was and still is, the most popular streaming platform available. This has meant that most of my work is being put out peaking -14 lufs.

Through my experimentation and research over the last few months I've found that the majority of professional artists, with music distributed on such platforms, don’t master their music specifically for streaming sites like Spotify and Itunes.

It’s taken me awhile to figure out why, when most guides say you don’t need to master louder than -14 at the loudest for spotify, most artists masters seem to peak around -9 lufs without Spotify’s Loudness normalisation.

During a discussion, last week with Pete Day, I came to the realization that most artists and mastering engineers intend on mastering for CD and their decisions reflect this.

In general, whilst it is true that there is no logical point mastering at a louder level than the platform can handle, it is more transparent an effect when the music is turned down because it is louder than necessary than the opposite, when it is turned up because it is too quiet.

Most mastering guides for online streaming platforms neglect to mention that most CD masters, which mainstream artists would be uploading to streaming sites, are nearly double the perceived loudness of some streaming platforms.

Till this point in time I had assumed that the best results from mastering would be from specifically creating one master for each significantly different platform.

Because my main platform up until this point, SoundCloud, has no built in loudness normalization I found it rather difficult to come to grips with the idea that somebody/something else is in charge of how my audio ultimately sounds.

I initially felt like I was battling against varying degrees of loudness normalization and trying to create masters which would be mostly left alone by their algorithms.

In hindsight, now I know much more about said algorithms, I should have been utilizing them to my advantage.

Assuming that the loudness normalization algorithms on spotify are based on the same kinds of data that we see represented as lufs, there are a couple of things you can do to maximise your impact in comparison to other contents.

For example: When monitoring your audio, during mastering, using an audio monitoring device or plugin which uses Lufs, you may notice that the results shown are based on an averaging of the audio. This means that you could very easily let some large loudness peaks through without visually ever having gone over your intended lufs limit. By reversing this same logic, you can use periods of silence in order to decrease the average perceived loudness of the whole piece and somewhat force the algorithm to keep your content at a louder level.

How effective this particular technique is depends entirely upon the specifics of the platforms algorithm, which are kept under wraps specifically to avoid these forms of optimizations been taken to extremes. Simply put, depending on whether the algorithm monitors and averages the entire track from start to finish or just the loudest section(s) of the track, the results that you get back could be the opposite of what you’d expect.

I'm now working on a short video to go alongside this post. It will explain a little more visually. I will have it up in a few days. Keep watching this space!

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

What’s going on?

So I thought I’d write a little about what I’ve been doing over the last week.

My EP is currently 75% completed. I’ve spent the last few weeks gathering and creating content for it and this last week has been a case of taking this content and compiling it in a structured and coherent manner. 

I had intended on having this done within a few days, however the process of compiling itself is a source of new inspiration and ended up taking the EP in a new direction entirely. Originally it was to be a combination of instrumental electronic music as well as non-instrumental tracks containing my own vocals. However things have quite quickly shifted in theme towards a much more specific genre choice.

Though there will still be elements of audio/music for video games, this will be mostly because that is the music I grew up listening to. I have now chosen to focus on producing a fully Hip Hop EP which will no longer contain any instrumentals. 

It will be somewhat experimental in nature. If only because I’ve just recently learned to apply the techniques I’m implementing for this EP.

You can check out my previous post in which I uploaded a video of my “new” vocal processing method. It’s nothing ground breaking but, if you have been struggling to make your vocals stand out in a mix without covering them with inordinate amounts of distortion, it should be helpful to follow.

.I’ve been assessing the current length of what I have compiled and considering whether or not to extend it further so as to fill the full 30 minutes an EP is allowed.  Life notwithstanding, I should be getting into the mastering studio by Friday of next week. At which point I will update you all, on here, with how things are proceeding. Edit: I have postponed things for a couple of days because of personal issues. That and I keep messing with my tracks last minute and just haven’t been satisfied yet.

So tune in again soon for that!

Bonus plugin:

https://acondigital.com/products/multiply/

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

The importance of Mono Mixing in a stereo world: How to approach stereo width enhancement decisions.

Hey all! Thought for this 3rd feature I would follow on from one of my previous posts. Specifically the one about expanding the stereo field using differing left and right EQ's. The first piece of advice I have for you is probably the most important, but one of the least mentioned facts of mixing, mastering.

If you don't start with good, clean samples and sounds then there is absolutely no way to end up with a good quality result. unless you are doing extreme subtractive synthesis using EQ's/Filters to carve these into new, clean samples of course. But this then becomes resampling and goes back to sound design, rather than mixing/mastering. Your mixing and mastering process, in general, should be put on hold until after your design stage is complete at the very least.

There is very little point trying to mix/master a project, unless you are bouncing a demo/preview, if you aren't finished building upon it. It only creates unpredictable gain staging in your sets trying to mix through Expanders/compressors/limiters, which although sometimes creatively useful, is usually only going to cause you to have to expend more effort than otherwise necessary trying to clean it up later. There are a number of techniques and plugins available out there for increasing width of the stereo field of your projects quickly and efficiently. However without proper understanding, of how these plugins and techniques work theoretically and of the results that they achieve in both mid and side ranges, it is difficult to apply these effects without accidentally creating some noticeable problem areas in your mix.

For example using effects like  the "Haas" effect, which relies on multiple identical audio channels each being slightly delayed from the original by a few ms, whilst definitely increasing the stereo field, can cause the entire mix to be a garbled, unintelligible mess when played through a mono speaker system, like those in many clubs. Worse still, the effect can occur simply based on the positioning of the listener in a room relative to the speakers/monitors. So even when played out of a stereo sound system it requires a listeners full attention and that they not move for the duration, to appreciate the piece as it was intended. That isn't to say that you should never use the Haas effect because of this. Just that its not intended for use in that way. Rather it's been misinterpreted as a form of stereo widening, when in reality it is more of a spatial positioning technique. It's probably more accurate to say that the haas effect, by giving sounds a spatial position in the mix, has the unintended consequence of increasing stereo width.

If you are using this technique, specifically to widen your mix, you are unintentionally shrinking, adding phase and completely unbalancing your mixes mono frequencies whilst doing so, in the majority of cases.

This brings me back to the title of this post. The importance of mixing in mono. Obviously one wishes to achieve as wide a mix as possible without losing clarity in the middle. So why would somebody choose to mix in mono? That is because the better the mix is in mono, the better it will sound in stereo as a side, pardon the pun, effect. The same can't be said in reverse however. If a mix sounds good in stereo it may not sound good in mono. Basically, mixing in mono guarantees that your project will be as clear as possible on both stereo and mono equipment. If you hadn't mixed in mono and tried to play it out through a mono speaker system like, as I mentioned previously, in many clubs then you are relying on pure luck as to whether the results will be accurate to what you intended.

So make sure that you are, at the very least, checking your mixes in mono if not mixing in mono for best results on all sound systems. Every time you make an adjustment to the stereo width/field of your audio make sure it hasn't adjusted other elements unintentionally. You can do this quite easily in my DAW of choice Ableton’s Live 10 using the utility plugin in order to force it into mono.

In one of my next posts, after I do some more focused research myself, I shall go over some more techniques for increasing stereo width without creating phase issues. I will also seek out a free plugin capable of forcing a track to be in mono which can be used on other DAWs.  Hope you enjoyed reading! Check out the 2nd feature of this week on my youtube page and get a couple of free plugins a long the way too: How to increase clarity and width of vocals quickly in Ableton's Live 10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW8L9GelYjY& And here is a quick and easy to use plugin for creating and manipulating the Haas effect: https://www.vennaudio.com/quick-haas/

[tripleheadedmonkey-blog]

Great, to the point, tutorial for those Ableton Live users that know what they are doing somewhat already! Also I may have had that little sample clip on repeat for a good 15 minutes. Nice stuff!

More Audio:

Once again, talking about some more audio processing - this time, using reverb to help fade in the vocal section.

It’s a pretty simple process, and one that I would never have thought to do - simply, you take an empty audio channel, and copy the first line of audio into it. Reverse the sample, and add reverb.

Then, freeze the channel - you will have your audio sample, as well as another split sample, which is the reverb tail. Drag this onto another empty channel, reverse again so it’s playing forwards, then place where you feel it fits. I’ve included an example that should allow you to hear what I’ve tried to capture, which can be heard just after the buildup to the prechorus - it is a very subtle effect that can add depth, variety, and flavour to a mix when used properly! I’ve been using this to create a whole load of tonal risers for my own use, as well as some impacts - if you apply this to a kick drunk, you get a smooth rise into a kick (I prefer to use this at the end of every 4-8 bars, in conjunction with some other rise-type fillers, such as hats).

Another thing I wanted to do was to discuss the re-pitching of the vocals. As the singer has a much higher range than the first, this allowed for some very easy audio manipulation - I transposed the samples by 1 octave, which created this very nice deep vocal effect I was going for, and then set the warp mode for the samples to ‘Complex’ which helped to tidy up the sample, and remove any unwanted glitchiness/artefacts that may have shown up in the audio. Then I applied an EQ, removing the mud from the lows, and boosting the upper frequencies around 5k to give it some presence that cut through, only slightly, the original vocals. Then I added a Saturator and Vocoder, to help warm up and tighten the sound (I actually used the Vocoders ‘External’ modulation parameter, and selected the channel - personal creative preference in this instance, but you can use the ‘Modulator’ parameter for a similar effect), as well as a Reverb, just to help give it some space and to sit within the mix more comfortably.

Hope you guys have enjoyed this short but sweet blog post and example, I’ll be posting more frequently from now on, but feel free to follow my Soundcloud (/akua_music) and Instagram (@akua_music), and stay tuned for more. Peace! ✌️

———————————————————————

References:

Lessons of KSHMR: Secret Reverb Tips

https://youtu.be/ZcICh7UsPuU