And especially not analogue-only-fiends
Producer Talk
- Thread starter barry_abs
- Start date
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Ha ha... people who ascribe magic powers to bits of vintage hardware really really wind me up. Like the 'warmth and humanity' of music comes from the fact that the oscillators on the vintage synth go slightly out of tune. And there's no point trying to make music using software because it can't get exactly the same sort of hiss as a real space echo. And now you get the same thing about the crummy converters, shit interface and limited sample menu of old akai samplers being the reason old jungle sounds so ruff and exciting, despite that fact that at the time everyone else was chucking them out because they were flat and soulless compared to 'real' analogue stuff.
It always seems like people are obsessed with trying to capture the sound of the magic equipment that was used by the people who ten years ago were making do with what they could get hold of and actually writing some tunes...
It always seems like people are obsessed with trying to capture the sound of the magic equipment that was used by the people who ten years ago were making do with what they could get hold of and actually writing some tunes...
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
yeah i imagine copy and paste is the only way. man, i really wish i could see someone working this way. i wonder how much forward planning goes into laying out the track. like, does burial make a bunch of seperate 4 bar loop sections and then sequence them after hes got enough to work with? this is pretty much the only way i can imagine doing it without it being a complete ball ache.
i've pretty much used only midi up until recently so this way of working is so alien to me. lately i've been wanting to move toward sequencing audio more so you can see whats happening better but being limited to a single track really messes with my brain.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
hardware is a nice luxury, there is something to be said for having a knob to tweak instead of a mouse. it goes without saying though that if someone is good then they will use whatever they can and make it sound good.
@Slothrop
there is something to be said for the old akai/emu samplers.
some of them were flagship products and quite well made and sold for a lot at the time, so the connectors are good.
The filters also were very good and often suited to the amount of bit reduction that would be done to the sample going down to 8 or 12 kb because of the limited storage. They are so cheap to buy now, like 30-60 bucks that they are worth experimenting with.
but maybe its more a preference thing, cause I really like the sound of the 707, and i think the samples on that are a highly compressed 8kb, which should, maybe do, sound like shit, but its got that chicago house sound and if used correctly records really well.
cheap old hardware can be great.
there is something to be said for the old akai/emu samplers.
some of them were flagship products and quite well made and sold for a lot at the time, so the connectors are good.
The filters also were very good and often suited to the amount of bit reduction that would be done to the sample going down to 8 or 12 kb because of the limited storage. They are so cheap to buy now, like 30-60 bucks that they are worth experimenting with.
but maybe its more a preference thing, cause I really like the sound of the 707, and i think the samples on that are a highly compressed 8kb, which should, maybe do, sound like shit, but its got that chicago house sound and if used correctly records really well.
cheap old hardware can be great.
Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
you occasionally see Emu 5000 Ultra's going for ridiculously cheap and i'm always tempted...my mate has one, such a cumbersome thing and they always go wrong and the midi is volatile, but when you've got it up and running it sounds soooo good.. the filters and sync fx are deep too.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Oh yeah, I mean things have a unique sound and a unique workflow and so on, and can be interesting to experiment with. What I get annoyed about is the vaguely deterministic idea that eg the main reason that classic jungle is ruff and exciting while modern dnb is slick and boring is that oldskool jungle was produced using grimey hardware samplers and modern dnb is produced using plugins.
When in fact it'd be entirely possible to do something grimey and ruff and minimal entirely in the box (cf Wiley passim), but modern dnb producers generally don't do that because they've got more mixing tutorials than ideas and they're worried that if they don't polish the life out of everything it'll sound weak and unprofessional compared to the next guy, and generally because most of the momentum and freedom has gone from the scene.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
you don't think there is any truth to this at all?
Pretty much agreed here.
Jeez, use whatever you can get your hands on- find what you like and use it.
I was a bit shocked when a few people were saying to the reformed Ike Yard last year that well, because we weren't using the same (old , analog ) gear as we did in '82 it just wasn't as good now.
Of course, the artist say " *uck you" to that.
All kinds of gear -new or old - has their niche, just depends on what you need it for.
IY had a lot of fun when we reformed in 2007 because once we got together in one room and saw what gear we had at the time, it sounded very nice together as we always had a somewhat 'ad hoc' sonic anyway.
A combination of Roland synths, a Groove Box, Reason drum machines + granular soft synths and sound fx for movie scores software running off an old Apple laptop plus guitars and bass sounded just fine, to us.
Our new group uses an old Akai recording deck to tape our rehearsals and that was a total step up to have multitracks of our live jams- the deck was just sitting there, in storage unused.
I just took tracks from another old Akai ( the 12 trk recorder, with 8mm video tape -like storage ) for the Voodooists rerelease and those tracks sounded great too.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
@pattycakes: I think if modern dnb producers wanted to sound ruff and minimal, they'd have no problem at all doing it using plugins. Maybe the software opens up the possibility of sounding slick and lifeless and overproduced and boring, but it's the who have to use it that way.
For comparison, lots of early grime and dubstep was produced using all software and sounds as ruff and edgy as you like.
For comparison, lots of early grime and dubstep was produced using all software and sounds as ruff and edgy as you like.
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ah yeah, i see where your coming from.
yeah, i think people hear certain things about old bits of gear and then they kind of pass them into mythology without really fully understanding them. i'm probably guilty of it sometimes.
but stuff like heavily compressed samples, less exact pitching algorithims for the samples, noising gear, less knowledge of mixing/mastering in somecases, meant that the ruffness wasn't only an aesthetic choice but also almost an unavoidable one.
what i would say about modern ruffness, if you push a DAW into the red the digital distortion isn't generally pleasing in the same ways as pushing an analogue or tape mixing desk into the red. this is pretty well documented stuff. but a mastering engineer could easily do that for a record if it was mixed well.
but no excuses really, people should be able to do more with software than people could 10-20 years ago. end of story for me.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
gotta laugh at good ol' villalobos' constant banging on about analogue gear and "using all frequencies available"
http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1128
http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1128
the most frustrating trend at the moment is all this 'analogue modeling' marketing bullshit.
I love the analogue sound but that's all it is, a sound. Its not better or worse than digital and companies are wasting so much money and time trying to (unsuccessfully imo) replicate analogue gear and selling people the ideas of analog as 'better' where the programmers/designers should be going in the direction of the virtually limitless possibilities of digital.
I think the reason alot of great stuff has been made with minimal and 'lo-fi' gear is because generally people are more creative when there are some kind of constraints.
I love the analogue sound but that's all it is, a sound. Its not better or worse than digital and companies are wasting so much money and time trying to (unsuccessfully imo) replicate analogue gear and selling people the ideas of analog as 'better' where the programmers/designers should be going in the direction of the virtually limitless possibilities of digital.
I think the reason alot of great stuff has been made with minimal and 'lo-fi' gear is because generally people are more creative when there are some kind of constraints.
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It's not that's it's better, it's that people are going for a particular sound for whatever reason. Same reason people still use Stratocasters and Les Pauls.
yeah, its so stupid trying to recreate analogue in a digital environment. the trading standards people should be called.
theres a softsynth, olga i think its called, that does try and reproduce the inconsistencies and analogue slip and tuning that analogue oscillators have. and tries to make it so you can overdrive it is a satisfactory way. i used the demo and it was ok, but a bit plasticy. give me an fm synth on a computer anyday. i think the fm8 sounds as good as a dx7 and its so much easier to program. i think its that sort of thing they should be try to emulate.
also one other analogue versus digital thing i do believe is the sequencing. like the 808 doesnt have a swing/shuffle slider but it does swing because of the analogue drift and inperfect timing. its kind of hard to replicate that for, but not impossible.
theres a softsynth, olga i think its called, that does try and reproduce the inconsistencies and analogue slip and tuning that analogue oscillators have. and tries to make it so you can overdrive it is a satisfactory way. i used the demo and it was ok, but a bit plasticy. give me an fm synth on a computer anyday. i think the fm8 sounds as good as a dx7 and its so much easier to program. i think its that sort of thing they should be try to emulate.
also one other analogue versus digital thing i do believe is the sequencing. like the 808 doesnt have a swing/shuffle slider but it does swing because of the analogue drift and inperfect timing. its kind of hard to replicate that for, but not impossible.
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
the new fxpansion dcam synth squad is pretty good for analog modelling, it's the best thing i've heard so far.
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
People might end up with better music when aesthetically pleasing outcomes make up a higher proportion of all possible outcomes. Much modern production equipment offers an enormous amount of possible outcomes, but most will sound terrible - it takes mental effort to anticipate, test and reject these unfavourable outcomes.
I think he means they focus on different thing, when you're not worrying about how synths sound or the exact frequency of your snare drum you're focusing on the tune which in the produces better music, hopefully anyway.
bob effect
somnambulist
If you can sequence your sampled 808 drums in the same way an 808 would play the same sounds then it automatically sounds more "authentic" than if you start adding shuffle to the hi hats or have more than one velocity setting for a particular sound to think of a couple of examples.