Maybe i should use this to speed things up a bit ?

www.theinternetnowinhandybookform.com/schmapple/dreamonpro.html

Are some of you old enough to recognize this kind of arpeggiating sound ?

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It reminds me of the good old assembler days - and unfinished homework by the way…

just for educational purposes no, it wont be the first single release of the upcoming album…

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the finger cymbal is my favourite in this selection…

The postman today was quite generous to me…

You mean looking at a box is not very interesting ? Wanna hear ? 

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That snippet is just Stormdrum 1+2 plus some strings… This library seems to be a nice playground for the weekend And if anyone from East West / Quantum Leap want to pay me for all that advertising - just mail me…

…and a snippet from something else i am working on these days…

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Today i was sitting on my balkony, looking at an empty flowerpot as i wondered what it would sound like if i ´d insert a recording of thumping that flowerpot into a drum ´n bass track i was working on.

So i did.

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and this is how the beginning of the track now sounds… 

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Yesterday, with the comments about fast tempo in mind, i programmed a little beat with the ezDrummer plug in with several variations. The tempo is 148 bpm

 

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Nice, but not too interesting… so i put my favourite drum-smash-compressor on it (an 1176 clone with “all buttons in mode”) cut the deep bass, added a 909 kick and some other sounds and that is the result

 

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Listen to what the 1176 clone compressor does to the drums and the reverb of the drum-room and you might understand why compressors are amongst my favourite tools. I always liked this smashed drumsound which reminds of led zepplin and is used in small doses in most harder rock mixes. You might notice a similarity concerning the drumsound to a track in the 90s with a sample about “women and kids” but in those days i only used sample-loops which already were slammed. I didnt know about the right tools to make such a sound by myself. Today with a 1176 clone and a great drumsampler like ezDrummer i make my own loops

BTW: I am really looking forward for toontrack to release Superior 2.0 this june - its the BIG version of ezDrummer and will shure make me programming drums for days

 

 

On my desk lie a pair of Sennheiser headphones. That is reason enough to briefly write what “cans” can do and what they cannot.

I use headphones regularly for two things. First for focusing on acoustic details as if i look for noises or if i try to find the perfect amount of attack to set on a compressor (it determines how much the transients of the signal get through and generally sound good if set for “long” but to keep signals “hot” i often try to reduce the attack as much as possible without killing the transients). The second use of headphones in my working room is to judge the bass - that is the amount of bass in a track. Mainly because the bass response in my working room ist not perfect as in 99% of all rooms.

Headphones work like magnifying glasses and therefore you can work on details or an single sources and they dont interfere with your room so good headphones have a very linear frequency response.

Sounds like you can sell your speakers and spend everything for great headphones for mixing ? No ! First the stereo-response is bi-aural and hence a mix dont translate the same when heared on speakers. But even more important is that you cant see the whole picture with magnifying glasses. A great tip for mixing is to judge a mix played from good speakers just above the hearing threshold (very soft that is) - and that is the absolute opposite of the hearing experience with headphones. In the “cans” you still can hear most of the details of a bad mix which will get lost if played on speakers. So, dont mix with headphones on. 

Oh, but there is another great use of good headphones - listen to well recorded music on them with your eyes closed… you will hear details you never heard on speakers and the intimate listening experience is really cool for many styles of music. For “ambient” electronic music for example

Lastly i will just add that i seem to be a serious Sennheiser fan… the last years my main headphones included HD580, HD600 and now HD650 and i two times did listening tests comparing them to other brands (didnt like AKG at all, but the high-end Beyerdynamic came close)

…or family… or friends… or a walk in the park

but not for writing posts

There lately was a post in the “RMB Forum” about the Loudness War in recent pop productions (The link had a lot of faulty details and descriptions in it… better google “Loudness War” or buy the Book “Mastering Audio” by Bob Katz)

Of course i generally agree with all that but then someone named a culprit: THE COMPRESSOR !

And now you see so many compressors in my rack and even more in my plug-in list - am i participating in the loudness war and trying to kill all dynamics in my songs ? No, because there is a misunderstanding…

A compressor is a tool. 

Its like a knife. You can cut nice figures out of the tablecloth for your girlfriend or you can stab your own grandma. The same with compressors. And to bring evidence i give you a snippet of a tune with my typical use of compression for this style of music (its most obvious sounding in this style).

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And now you can hear what happens if i switch off all compressors in this mix (and try to restore the levels a bit) Especially listen to how the bassline doesnt work with the groove anymore. The kick also doesnt “cut through” anymore and the claps have become washy.

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And here is an example of OVERCOMPRESSION… its loud but its flat sounding… if you listened to the other recordings before you have to reduce the volume…

 

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A compressor makes loud audio softer. It reduces the level in loud passages. And when it does there is a time factor involved. The compressor needs a bit of time to reduce the level and a bit of time to return to full level. And by changing these times you can make a compressor “groove” or even “pump”. The Magic is in the knobs labelled “Attack” and “Release”.

Many producers and engineers use compressors as a dynamic-tool, to give instruments or group of instruments a distinct loudness envelope - a groove. And some of them use compressors (or even worse -brickwall limiter) for killing all dynamics in order to get a higher perceived loudness which often results in harsh sounding recordings that are fatiguing to your ears and cant be heard loud anymore without physical pain. Both are using the same (or similar) tools… 

For example put the album “californication” on good speakers with high volume… i couldnt stand it… and worst of all this now is kind of an industry standard and expected by major labels. (If you didnt yet, google “Loudness War”)

Good that i dont have a major deal anymore