Repetition the key to sucess

what is it. the arrangement, the melody, the samples, the mixing, the mastering, that makes a track sucessful.?

it is repetition. repetition and repetition that makes a track stand out.
just listen to the most popular tracks such as.
freestyler, or freefall by jecky and hyde. and others. the melodies are very repetitive

Advanced Snare Roll Tutorial

Just very briefly. Here are some cool snare roll variants that i build and use in my productions. Some of them are very, very advanced, and some snare rolls are very special.. I am talking about nine bar rolls and fill-ins.  Actually most if it is done in the piano grid.

stay tuned ..

Spectral Representation

Spectrogram is a very powerful tool. Well it is possible to see the sound..differently. And not only possible but it tells us alot of stuff we simply do not know about.

What you see here is the song by Lady Gaga - Judas. What we actually see here is the vocals singing Judas.

This is a screenshot taken from a spectrum analyzer with 20 DB audio gain and 23 ms Resolution.

The Yellow is the hotter areas while blue and green indicate more colder areas. If we look closely at the display of the spectrogram we can see the colors are telling us everything. Horizontal axis representing time and vertical axis frequencies. The third dimension is the amplitude of a particular frequency at a particular time is represented by the intensity of color. The frequency axis can be either linear or logarithmic, depending on what you want to use the graph for.

Here we can not only see the area where the vocals have been cut but also see where they have been boosted making it very easy to find out how the professionals have equalized the vocals. And It doesn't matter really the colors are showing the hot areas in red. Most of the spectrum can be read and see exactly in what frequency are the cut or boost have been applied. So for example if you wonder where to boost or cut your vocals you can just load a song thru the advanced spectrum analyzer and it will reveal some pretty interesting stuff. Not only can vocals bee seen, completely everything from instruments, to kicks, claps patterns, snare rolls, layers and melodies can be. Not only that, the spectrum can also be manipulated by switching models in different ways but that is not the point of this article right now.

The Scope

How often do you see something like this? The phase scope display is more useful then you think.

Here you  can see the phase scope patterns.. The Normal phase scope pattern is shown on the left. However I am trying always to fit in as much as possible into the stereo image. On the left picture you can see how the signals are shifting, and is not so extreme. On the right you see one of my mastered tracks where basically the whole stereo field is completely filled. The Diamond Shape. Due to reverb, time length and limiting.  The below picture shows a track completely in mono on a phase scope.

 

And then we have the following scope patterns. 

 

The last one is taken from a dance song . Here we see different shapes.

Note.. On many commercial tracks the small little indicator at the bottom *green of the phase scope that skips around between -1 and +1 stays closer to 0 than with the other poor mastered songs. It’s pretty interesting to watch the spectrum meter and the phase scope while listening to many tracks. 

5 Digital Audio Workstations To Look For

With hundred of Audio workstations out there people often ask what workstation is the best and there is so much discussion, usually talking about the quality of the sound coming out of the workstations. Some people even claim one workstation is sounding better then the other and so on. Trying all the time to proof which one is the most superior.Here is a list of possible the best workstations ever made. 

1. Pro Tools

Avid Professional tools HD, Le is used worldwide. Its advanced and includes allot of great plugins emulating that analog sound. It is also very good for recording, mixing and mastering. Its a industry standard used by most studios and it is a very stable platform that can you from creation to production to final mix. It supports 24-bit audio at sample rates of up to 192 kHz, and can handle Wave, Aif, mp3, QuickTime video . Featuring time code. Automation and surround sound possibilities. Midi can be manipulated. Also it relies on a dedicated DSP card to handle the most audio processing, due to at the time it was first developed computers at that time was not powerful enough to process high end digital audio.

2. Logic Pro

Apple Logic professional is like Fruity Loops on a Mac. Logic Pro is the only one daw that is working only for Macintosh. It is a audio workstation and midi sequencer. Rich in features and good for mixing, arranging it still lacks some functions from cubase or notator. It comes shipped with great processing plugins offering allot of effects and tools, supporting apple loops. Logic Pro can also work with midi keyboards and control surfaces. It is one very good daw. It comes with a streamlined interface. Write, record, mix and perform.

3. Cubase

Steinberg Cubase is the most used. No doubt. This daw has been around for a long time in the market. The workstation is full of instruments, effects, very good for mixing and mastering and have a great sounding engine. Its equipped with racks, master section. and supports many third party instruments. The downside about this thing is that it is still buggy, and slow to work on. The workflow is not the strength of cubase. If you are serious about producing this one is for you however you will spend lot of time routing, clicking and browsing in the program. There is also a program similar to cubase called Nuendo more suitable for post production. It is also very, very good

4. FL Studio

Image Line Fruity Loops has also been around for a long time. It is constantly updated each year or so into a newer versions like cubase and the best about this digital workstations is that it is one of the fastest, or maybe the fastest ever workstations to work in. It comes with a lot of plugins, supporting ASIO or WDM drivers. However FL studio has some disadvantages, the sound is not so good, the mixer is very basic and the plugins included are not giving the quality to produce on a professional level. With the help of third party plugins this digital workstation becomes really good. FL studio is good for arranging, editing, composing, audio manipulation, layering, automation. FL studio is very good when used correctly.

5. Reason

Propellerhead Reason is a very different workstation. It comes with some really good plugins, it is basic to use and is good for everything. It emulates a rack of hardware, so it can be used as a collection of virtual instruments or as a studio for music production. The sound quality reason offers is very very good. The downside is the interface in reason. Reason cannot record audio and does not support plugins, and hence it is not a full audio workstation. Reason can be used as a EXTRA program for creating those fat basses, or leads, or layering vocals or programming synthesis. Reason is good but it should not be viewed as complete workstation.

In the future we will see workstations completely running on the web, without the need to have all the materials loaded from  our computers, with the possibility to work on a single project from many users at a time on the web.

Top 5 Soft Synths

During the years I have made a top list of the best possible VST-plugin synths there is. Nothing comes closer or better. Here is my top 5.

1. RefX Nexus

Altho it may be lacking in synth design possibilities and other areas, this plugin is outstanding in one word. And even tho it is the most critizised synth, i havent seen anything better yet. It offers allot of sounds with a complete sample library, and you just have to tweak the patches until they are beyond recognition if you want to get that sound.

2. Novation V-Station

he sound that will cut thru the mix. When it comes to this , it can create everything. And it never fails. The programming on this synth is very hard but the results are outstanding. It has many inbuilt effects making it a very powerful synthesizer all in one including reverb, chorus, phaser, delay, panning, distortion and EQ. Powerful filters, 8-voice polyphony.

3. Disco Discovery Pro

A very special sound. Discovery Pro has been one of the good synths. It offers the possibilities to import Nord Lead 2 sysex data patches into the module making this interesting, having Thousands of presets and even more thousand of presets.. featuring 4 layers, WAV and SoundFont (SF2) support, PADSynth, 2X oversampling and undersampling.

4. Softplug Adventus

Adventus is all about fat analog sounds, Its very good for dance and trance music. One. You can do everything with it. It has some impressive filters built into and it sound really big, wide stereo sound.

5.  Refx Vanguard

It got everything. Basses, pads, leads, sequences. This synth is powerful. Very good for tweaking until it sounds just right. It offers some good LFO layering and you can really create this special sound. With the expansions available for this synth, its one of the best !

Well with that being said, if you combine all of these VST plguins correctly you will get some great results. Do not forget that many of the synths have been released from 2006. And there was truly at that time nothing sounding better. Now there is thousands of instruments and emulations of hardware synthesizer devices and samplers.. But most of them are not bringing anything new...

Omnisphere Is not what it is

So today I got my hands on omnisphere. Damn this synth, so much expectation, seen so many videos about it. Many music magazines writing about, people writing so much about it.. Took me about 1 hour to get all the 6 DVDs installed with the 40 gigabyte library. So when I finally run this synth module . I got disappointed.

Comparing refx Nexus to Omnisphere was interesting. Actually this ROMPLER was sounding way better then omnisphere! Now dont forget that Nexus is ranking Nr.1 on the KVR Audio Plugin Resources plug-in and plug-in host database, and omnisphere ranking at 14.

Omnisphere seems to be good for the following

Layering it with other synths
Tweaking it until it sounds right. Takes lots of time and skills of course.
Layering it with other patches in omnisphere
Making  film music or other effects
Atmospheres
Meditation music

I was looking forward to this synth. I even heard so much talk about it back in 2007, Omnisphere. I got told that you gotta get it its so fat, Analog and Warm. The problem with this i think is that it lacks a good interface, it looks really boring. No Seriously, much of it is blue and doesn't make sense. This is my first time using this synth... but as I mentioned. I am dissapointed, the quality is lacking. This VST-plugin was actually made of alot of hardware gear and synthesizers like oberheim, juno, alesis, access virus keyboards . etc etc

There is some cool features like some filters, and unison settings but its not MIND BLOWING. Not.

Honestly, Omnisphere needs to be more explored before i make a final conclusion. But the first impression is important.

I would rate it 6 out of 10. Because of this plastic, wooden sounds.

And then we have Stylus R M X advanced drum synthesizer and sampler, And Trillian total bass module from Spectrasonics.. are they better or worse. That is the question. They are great sound modules without doubt and with some

serious tweaking it can produce impressive sounds. Especially one of the coolest features is the orb, a moving orb changing the character of the sounds.

Note ..I will be reviewing more plugins here, hardware, Effects, programs, Digital Audio Workstations, writing tips and tricks about mixing... mastering..and anything possible.