Category Archives: production

>taken from http://primeloops.com/

10 Plug-ins to Improve Your Synths
Wondering how to make your synths more professional and interesting? Here are 10 suggestions for things to do to your sounds, from pretty conventional ones to downright destructive ones!

Here are 10 plug-ins to improve your synths…

1. Chorus

A brilliant way to simply widen your synth or to turn it into something reminiscent of an epileptic Dalek. Chorus is great for some mental modulations!

2. Dynamic EQ

A plug in I’ve found much more useful than conventional EQ when it comes to playing with sounds, you can actually carve out the frequency spectrum you want rather than simply boosting certain frequencies! Brilliant for emphasizing those important parts of the sound that are a bit too quiet.

3. Bit Crusher

Need a bit more of an edge to your synth? Bit Crushers can turn your synth into a lo-fi sledgehammer when used correctly!

4. Enhancer

These are nice plug ins that combine a few things – they can widen, do rudimentary EQing and limiting or compression depending on the plug-in you get. Great for doing a lot with a small amount of processer overhead (as opposed to using loads of separate plug-ins!)

5. Harmonic Exciter

Sometimes also called enhancers (can get pretty confusing with the above plug-in!), harmonic exciters deliberately distort the high end of the spectrum to bring back some of the brightness lost in the recording process. This can really lift a synth up in the mix!

6. Stereo Imager

These are absolute gold when making immense synths or epic soundscapes. They push the synths to the far left and right in the stereo spectrum, widening it and making it feel bigger.

7. Limiter

Makes the synth effect as loud as possible while stopping the synth from peaking – really useful on crazier, unpredictable synth effects!

8. Multi-Band Compression

Limiting not making your synth loud enough? Try Multi-Band Compression – it separates the sound into several different frequencies, boosts each filtered section, then puts it back together, making the apparent volume much louder without affecting the overall volume! Ridiculously useful.

9. Filter

Filters are great for making synths sound completely different – just isolate a certain section of the frequencies with a band pass filter and listen to the difference!

10. Delay

Instant talent – Delay makes everything sounds so much bigger and better… just be careful that you’re not totally drowning your synth in the stuff!

>taken form http://primeloops.com/news/ get on there site, check the samples out to there pretty good.

Top 10 Glitch House production techniques
Looking for some assistance with producing Glitch House, Deep House, Minimal or Tech House? Look no further!

Here are 10 top techniques to transform your tracks into professional sounding pieces of art!

1. Heavy on the Reverb

With minimalistic Electronica, you need something to fill out the sound – reverb will help you to do just this. Be careful, applying horrendous amounts of reverb to everything will just drown it and make it sound muddy, but a long decay tail on the high end frequencies of a sound will just make it fill out the track nicely.

2. Filtering

This is a staple technique in a lot of Glitch music, band pass on different percussive elements of the track to make them even more processed and artificial sounding, but also to give room for the more prominent parts of the track like some big atmospheric pads or a squelchy lead!

3. Gentle EQing

Gently boosting the low end around 80hz (Though this value obviously depends on your kick drum – search for a sweet spot that adds that punch!) can drive the track better, but don’t overproduce it – this genre isn’t about pounding bass drums!

4. Panning for effect

Drawing from its association with ambient music, a nice technique for glitch producers is to pan things hard left or right to make them more interesting – especially useful for some glitchy, stuttery hats or blips!

5. It’s called “Minimal” for a reason

Don’t overdo it! You might feel the need to layer many synths on top of each other if you’ve come from a trance or conventional house background, but you just have to make a few synths count in this genre.

6. Be imaginative with your percussion

The beauty of Glitch House is that you can use anything. I’ve heard anything from mouse clicks to human breaths to drowned cats (Well, it sounded like that…) in these tracks, so I’m sure you can use your imagination (And not offend the RSPCA) to come up with some intriguing beats!

7. Reverse Reverb

Always a nice effect for atmospheric tracks – freeze a sound that has reverb on it, copy and reverse it and make it lead up to the initial hit. It’ll add tension to the sound and build up a bit more to those bigger, more lush sections.

8. Wide Load

Width is vital in this type of music – use a stereo imager to widen up the high end. Keep the low end tight though, or you’ll end up with a muddy mess!

9. Clever syncopation

With a small amount of percussion you have to be creative to make things interesting – put things on the offbeat, use triplets, try some polyrhythms… hell, try some different time signatures if you dare to be different. If you use the same percussion all the way through, your track will be lacking. Some unusual fills and loops will keep your listener engaged.

10. Make the synths matter

As with the percussion, you’ve got to make the melodic elements matter. Make sure your pads are doing their job and are as lush as possible by giving them a several octave spread to cover the bass and high end – if there’s only one or two synth sounds, they’ll need to cover for all the other sounds you’re missing! (Unless you’re going seriously minimalistic, in which case filter away to your heart’s content!)

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greatings guys read this interesting little nugget of joy on http://primeloops.com/news/ great little blog so check it out also they have some pretty good samples so check them out too.

5 Ways to make your Synths more interesting

Tired of the same tired, old synth sounds? In need of some inspiration to make something a little less conventional? Here are 5 suggestions to bring your patch making skills up to the next level of creative experimentation!

1. Use some LFOs!
LFOs are fantastic for making simple sounds sound less stereotypical! Route an LFO to your cut-off on a filter for a quick fix to make a synth more interesting… Or you can go all out and try routing an LFO to pitch, then run the LFO so fast that it creates another overtone! The beauty of LFOs is when pushed to the extreme on certain parameters; they can make sounds you didn’t even know were possible…

2. Band Pass Filtering
Not only does this technique usually have a nice side effect of making your synths sit in the mix better because of the specific frequency range, but it can also highlight a part of the sound that isn’t normally the focus – try a band pass between about 300 and 700hz on a dirty multi-oscillator saw wave to get a sound more suited to a pad than a lead!

3. Overdrive it!
Get some distortion on the go – Add enough of this and you could turn the above pad into a convincing guitar emulation! Or try it on the high end for some piercing leads! Or use it on a bass effect to make a more interesting low end synth sound – distortion I’d say is the most useful tool for making some interesting powerful synth sounds.

4. Resonance = full!
If you’ve got some more interesting filters like a comb filter, turn the resonance to full and watch the synth turn into something COMPLETELY different. You’re entering circuit bending territory now! The feedback loop creates some amazing sounds useable for cool FX, ambient pads or, when coupled with some creative EQ-ing and distortion, some awesome leads!

5. Oscillator Sync
Lady Gaga will tell you that some of the best synth effects come from oscillator sync – using one synth to cut off the other synth mid oscillation every time it oscillates, making a hollow sounding effect when the octave is lower on the slave than the master oscillator! Sounds complicated, but have a play around and you’ll soon see what I’m on about!