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Mike Foyle's Production tips - June 2010

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Struggling with something?

I'll be posting a few little tips each month, mostly in response to frequently asked questions. So if you want to know how to do something, then post a question in the comments box, or email me at mike@mikefoyle.com and I'll do my best to publish some tips for next month which might help you!

Q: "If I use too much reverb in my productions, my mixdown sounds messy, but if I don't use enough, my tracks sound boring and empty. How do you get around this problem?

Reverb isn't the only way to add depth to the sounds in your track. It's often over used or mis-used.
One problem with using reverb to add depth to your sounds is that they often have long, ugly tails which clash with other sounds in your mix. Most of what we interpret as ugly clashing goes on in the lower frequencies in the reverb tails. Most good reverb modules or plugins will have an option which allows you to filter the reverb tails. Try filtering out some of the nasty low frequencies by using the high pass filter on your plugin.
You can also try using a gate to cut off the majority of the reverb tails. This might sound a little strange but you can actually create some awesome effects using gated reverb. Imagine you have a kind of percussive synth sound and its quite bland and basic. You want to add some real texture to it while preserving it's stacato, precussive qualities. A bit of reverb with a gated tail could work wonders. If you're reverb module doesn't have a built in gate, use a standard noise gate in the effect chain after the reverb and play around with the threshold for some interesting results.
Maybe reverb is not the best way of achieving the effect you're after. Vocals for example can often loose a lot of clarity when they are drenched in reverb. To add depth to your vocal sounds try this: Duplicate your vocal track in your audio sequencer so that you have 2 identical copies. Pan one copy to the left and one to the right. Now offset one of the channels by about 20 miliseconds. You can do this by either using your offset tool on your sequencer or simply by dragging the audio file to the left or right very slightly (make sure quantise snap is turned off!) Too much of an offset will sound messy, but try anything between about 10 and 30 ms and you'll get some really cool effects. This can be applied to any sound really, but I find that it works particularly well with vocals.

Q: "How do you get your kicks to sound so crisp and punchy?"

In trance and house and many other styles of music, the kick is quite an important thing to get right. It can make a big difference to the over all sound of the production. There are many factors which contribute to making up a good kick sound. Here are a few:
The transient - The word transient refers to the non-harmonic "attack" phase of musical sound. It is only a few ms long but is responsible for delivering the initial punch in the kick drum. Chopping off a few ms from the kicks transient can totally change the sound of the kick. Try zooming into the transient on your audio editor or sequencer. The first thing to check is that there is no gap at the begining of the file before the transient. If there is, remove it. Sometimes the kick will sound sloppy and slightly out of time and this is often as a result of a few ms of silence before the kicks transient. Next, look for clipping in the transient. Sometimes, clipped transients can give a cool effect, but most of the time its probably beneficial to delete the small section that clips as it might cause the kick sample to sound flappy or crackly.
The tail - Sometimes you might come accross a kick sample which cuts off before the tail has faded to silence. If you hear a small click after each kick, this is most likely why. It is good practice to add a short (10ms or more) fade to the end of your kick sample. This will prevent any unwanted extra clicking sounds in your production. Another definitive characteristic of a good kick, is it's dominant sub frequency. Try altering the pitch of your kick until you find a desireable sound. You'll notice that the pitch of the kick can really change the impact that it can have. If a kick is too low, you will loose the sub bass frequencies (we cannot hear frequencies bellow 20hz). But if it is too high, it will ascend out of the sub frequency range, which might not give us the body that we want. You also need to consider the key that the rest of the track is in when altering the pitch of the kick. If the kick has an obvious "note" then either tune it suit the rest of the track or use a pitch bend envelope on the tail to stop it from clashing with your basslines.
Compressor - You can use a compressor to enhance certain parts of the kick. A compressor with a short attack will cause the transient to click. The longer the attack on the compressor, the more body the transient will have.
Limiter - You can use a limiter on a compressed kick to keep some of the bite created by the compressor, without sacrificing the volume of the kicks tail. To avoid destroying the bite created by the compressor, fine tune the release time on the limiter. If the release time is too short, it will conflict with the effect of the compressor. By making it slightly longer you are allowing the compressor to do it's job first, then the limiter will kick in a split second later, to maximise the volume of the rest of the kick.
EQ - If you're kick is still lacking some body, try adding some sub bass around the 80 hz range (seems to be a magic frequency when working with kicks!)