Production and Recording: Task 5
Production and Recording: Task 5
I decided to base this task around some one shot drum hits I had recorded at the end of one of the band recording sessions. I loaded these 7 samples (kick, snare, open hi-hat, closed hi-hat, ride, ride bell and crash) into a drum machine as I thought this would be the best way to trigger and process these sounds. I wanted to use minimal processing on the kick drum so I ran it through a saturator to ‘beef’ up the sound, a hi pass filter to avoid making the overall mix of the song muddy in the low end and a little compression to give it some punch. For the snare I only added a saturator and compression for the same reasons. I added a random modulator on all the hi-hats and cymbals controlling their pitch, this gives a really interesting effect in the piece and avoids the problem of programmed hi hats sounding boring and mechanical. I then copied this setup and added a bit crusher to it to give a larger range of timbres to use. I copied the setup again and granulated the samples to give a glitch effect that is popular in many modern dance music styles. I then put a very subtle limiter on over all the drum tracks to tighten their sound.
The piece mostly features pads and plucked sounds based upon classical string sections. I added auto filters to a lot of these sounds, which gave them a really convincing morphing effect. The more pad based sounds pan slowly between left and right and the plucked sounds move faster between left and right, I found automating the panning like this really suited the particular sounds. In addition to string section based synthesized sounds I have also included natural string sounds, these did not suit the auto filter morphing effect. Instead I used a suitably natural sounding concert hall reverb that I found in the Space Designer plug-in, this provided a nice contrast later on in the piece.
I created the bass sound from scratch using a software synthesizer using two saw waves which I detuned slightly against each other to give a nice phasing effect. I ran these through a Comb and Band pass filters in series. I then modulated the filter cutoffs and oscillator amplitudes using LFOs to give the sound more movement. This sound was then run through a tube amp emulator and reverb unit. Finally I duplicated this sound and put an auto filter on each, one with low pass and the other hi pass to tighten the sound and give it yet more movement. Once I got each of these at a level where they sounded balanced I grouped these two tracks to make it easier when mixing the whole piece.
Finally I wanted to add an extra emphasis when the bass comes in so I bounced a single hit from the kick drum with a long reverb on it. I then imported it back into the project, reversed it and placed it just before the bass line kicks in both times. This sounded ok but it was too muddy and I didn’t feel it stood out as much as it should. I added a high pass filter to remove most of the low end to clear up the sound. I then added a sharp EQ spike just above 1K to pick out some higher frequencies; this gave it a sound I was happy with.
I added a Match eq and adaptive limiter on the master out to tighten the overall sound and to catch any peaks that may distort.
