Panning When mixing, many elements tend to fight for centre. In most cases EQ can help make space however this may only take you so far. Try panning your elements towards the left or right and you may find that you use less processing to hep elements have their own space in the mix. This works especially well with mid to top range mono sounds which have a simular tone, such as two hi hats. You should get great results: just watch out for tipping the tonal balance too far one side.
Phase start Change the tone of your synth patches or samples by adjusting the start time (phase) of the oscillators or audio. With this technique you can get the sound more snappy (if at a peak, for example) or smooth (if at a zero crossing, for example). This particularly works well to get tight bass lines or when you want to align percussion. By contrast, on some instruments you can also randomise start time with modulation to get different accents: this is particularly useful to make drum samples such as hi hats, to sound more humanised.
Plugin output level When processing sounds with plugins it can be easy to end up with long plugin chains with levels all over the place. In some scenarios you can get some great sounding tones this way, however in a lot of cases you may actually be degrading the quality of the source sound or introducing artefacts such as clipping. When processing make sure you adjust the output level of the plugin so that it matches the bypassed level. This way you can A/B to hear if the plugin is actually making an improvement rather than just making…
Remixing loops Get the most out of your loop samples by remixing the elements. Take your time splicing the separate hits, place them on individual channels such as kick, snare, hats and percussion and process them to taste. Lastly re arrange, layer and/or switch out the newly processed sounds to give your own signature vibe and groove.
Reverb tone When setting up a reverb send it can be tricky to find a vibe that suits the source material. Use the inbuilt tone controls on the reverb to tailer the ambience or if this still isn’t sufficient add a dedicated equaliser to shape the reverb channel. This can be particularly useful to cut any unwanted rumble or clashing tones. Sometimes a subtle boost in the mids or tops can also help the reverb cut through the mix if you want it very present.
Sampling virtual instruments Sampling isn’t just limited to hardware. Why not record your virtual instruments and import the waveforms into a sampler. I like to sample the oscillator of a synth and put the waveform in a sampler for example: by adding filters and envelopes you can create a new instrument. Apart from new filter types and envelope shapes being available, another added bonus may be precision. A sampler tends to have better timing than a synth for when you want snappy percussive sounds.
Snare noise layer Recording or selecting a snare sample that you like the character of can be fairly straight forward however getting it to cut through the mix can be really challenging. I find that if you layer it with white noise it can really help it stand out. The trick is to shape the white noise amp envelope to suit the transient of the original snare and then balance the level to sit just under and fill in the frequencies. Later you can always add further processing such as EQ but by this point you should find…
Mono to stereo with delay You can use a delay plugin to widen a sound. Find a stereo delay where you can adjust both left and right sides, increase wet amount by 100%, disengage any filters, set no feedback and lastly shift the timing of one side out by a few milliseconds. This technique works similarly to double tracking and you should notice the sound spread.
Tuning Getting samples in tune can be a tricky task, especially when it comes to non melodic samples such as drum hits or sound effects. If you find it difficult to hear the key pick a direction to transpose, and move in increments of one semitone at a time. Eventually you will land on a key that works. You can also use a frequency analyser and use one of the lower harmonics as a guide: take a note of the frequency and see which note it corresponds to. Some EQ’s such as FabFilter Pro Q has an inbuilt…
Creating sample variations Create better grooves by creating new versions of your key samples for some variation. A great example of this is in Dub where the snare will never quite hit the same: sometimes with reverb and other times dry with a short decay for example. You can do this by tweaking volume envelopes, pitch and sample start for examples. Sometimes I’ll even modulate effects such as distortion to get some movement. You can also program a repeated pattern of the sample, place an extreme effect on it and export as audio. With this audio you can…