so i was thinking we could get a thread going about documented production effect techniques and tricks and briefly describe them.

examples:

Ghostly Vocals: reverse sample, resample with long reverb, then reverse sample again and play. Gives it that incoming ghost voice kind of sound you hear in music. i think the guy from led zeppelin made it up. not sure though.

Adding artifacts to sound: Record samples in at a high pitch and then pitch them down to get some crispy dirty artifacts in the audio. Basically gives it a lo-fi character.

Compressor Ducking: With heavy compression on master track, experiment with adjusting the volumes of specific samples to make certain sounds duck out when other more dominant sounds come in.

Parallel/NY compression(correct me if im wrong on this one): Take 2 copies of the same sample. Say a kick drum or bassline. Compress one of them heavily and then layer the two together for a fatter sound.


i want to learn more techniques like this. stuff thats on the technical side of things.

I'd like the mention that you probably have to lower the volume of the heavily compressed sample (At least, that what's I do when I use that technique). Or the other one, never tried that.

If I can come up with techniques I'll edit this post.

Kind of cool trick with arpeggios; Sample your arpeggios for a long time, not only 1 up/down or whatever. Apply minimal delay, resample. Apply different style of delay/time echo on orginal one, resample. Resample yourself playing the original one, the minimal delay, and all the other variation starting them at different time, with different volume, overlapping them and such. It usually create a big ass wall of arp with, imo, usually sound cool.

You can also do that with various piano melody or whatever... time streching them slightly to have some kind of wierd swing is also fun.

Bassline from drum beat

1. Take a break, or a 4 bar resample drum loop whatever
2. Turn on subsonic , but dial the threshold to only bring the bass out at top of each bar (or whatever sounds cool)
3. Resample that to a new pad, possibly twist the pitch of the subsonic as it goes for variety.
4. Now you have a bassline that is perfectly synced to rhythm of drum beat....now try adding fuzz, lofi, reverb etc to change up the sine wave tone of subsonic and make it sound cool. Try filter or wah to get a dubby sound.

there should be an MFX bible.... These are good tips...

there is a thread somewhere in the depths of this sections (or freedom of speech, think its in here though) that is 3 or 4 pages of stuff like this, was thinking about it the other day cause i had a fresh post for that thread, so i'll just toss it in here

everybody is aware of using the DJFX looper to pitch sounds, but it usually seems to work best with single hit stuff because it usually 'resets' for lack of a better term after a very short amount of time (knob 1 all the way down is the maximum amount of time before this 'reset'), but i was playin with it to try and pitch down some break that was too fast (110-120 BPM) and realized that if you twist knob 2 down just a little bit so that it still reads 1.0, but the sound is audibly slightly pitched down, that the 'reset' time is much longer, long enough that i've been able to get in a couple bars at around 105 BPM before it 'resets', so what i do is i find that sweet spot for knob 2, resample a chunk of music, usually a bar or 2 (or 3) of a fast break or percussion break, and then immediately apply the effect using remain to the new resample so i don't lose my DJFX settings, and then i resample that take (if the sample 'resets' in the middle of the phrase while resampling, be right on top of it and retrigger the pad right after the 'reset' happens so you get the maximum amount of time til the next 'reset'), and i just repeat this a few times til my break is down in the 90-100 BPM range

there seems to be 3 different speeds contained for the 1.0 setting for knob 2, one being all the way up which is normal speed, then two beneath it that are only very subtly different, both makes the 'reset' time longer, but the slightly faster of the two has a longer reset time and is usually the one i use unless the phrase i wanna pitch down is short enough, i'd apply the effect to a melodic sample first to find the sweet spot because i think its easier to hear the subtle changes in pitch with something that has a distinct melody

this isn't the end all problem for pitching things in the sp, obviously you still can't pitch things up, and there is some sound minimal degradation, its really not that bad, this method is really ideal for pitching down breaks that are too fast to use, although i have used it to pitch down a straight loop and the bassline retained its fullness and it still sounded dope

i think the easiest way to get about using it is to pitch down the thing you want to pitch down first, because you can't be totally precise with the pitching, then pitch the other samples with your turntable because you have more control with that

hopefully that makes sense

ghetto phasing ingredients (on software or on sampler):
-take 1 mono track (or a sample), not particularly well sounding* or by the way not cool for your taste.
-make a duplicate of this track (or this sample).
-now you have sort of stereo track (sample).
-take one of the two tracks (samples) beginning and move it just a very little bit (on sampler: let one begin just 0,005** sec after the other)
-d/d/o/o/n/n/e/e

ps
this techinque is derived from the pioneers of dub (king tubby/lee perry), brian wilson crazy ideas, stockhausen great intuition,e varese brilliant ideals, joe meek productions, afrika bambaata/GM Flash records experimenting and brian eno...why brian eno? well, brian eno is cited everytime, so...

*
very subjective, i know.
**
very approssimatively; in reality is 0,00000005 periodic

^^

GREAT find with the reset thing . I'd like to add that you can control the start point of the 'reset' with knob 1 by swinging it left, right, left..... If for example you resample yourself playing a drum pattern, you can make sure that the reset point starts right before the kick or snare (so it doesn't cut off the attack) by putting knob 1 at hard left immediately before it hits. try to keep it at left most of the time and swing it quickly right and then left again to the tempo of the sample. You can even pitch it way down (w/DJFX) and it'll work. If you resample your drum pattern in 3/4 time signature, setting DJFX knob 2 to around 7.0 will put it back in 4/4, and adds some very nice swing!


Also, MFX2 (tape echo) can pitch samples up or down turntable style! It's a bit jittery though. really good for giving a short break a quick drastic pitch change. Put knobs 1 and 2 at left and knob 3 at right. while playing back the sample, turn knob 1 from left to right to pitch down, and from right to left to pitch up. The faster you move it, the more drastic effect, and the more "linearly" (for lack of a better word) you move it, the more "consistent" (for another lack of another better word) the pitch.

Probably everybody know this but you can make start/end points to samples while in reverse mode. Very helpful for long-ass samples that need to be looped, when otherwise it would take forever with trial and error.

MFX21 will give you a bad-ass low pass filter that sounds WAY better than the isolator (IMO). Put knobs 1 and 3 left and knob 2 at right, and resample to mono.

And resampling in LOFI with MFX16 on and all knobs at hard left will give you some yummy crispiness...

damn, using knob 1 to reset the 'reset' time, fuckin smart kel

i tried searching for that thread quick but couldn't find it, i'll try later and if i find it i'll link it up

Some of these may be 555 specific:

1. Make 1 - 4 bar pattern; could be build up /break/full part.
Tweak and twist some MFX on it as you loop capture it. Now assign that resampled pattern to 1 pad. Rinse and repeat to make different versions, mix up the effects on your parts...example HPF drums, triplet delay on snare roll.

2. take 3 hi-hats/perc sounds, pan hard left, middle, hard right (use pan/trem effect). play creatively , gives a cool stereo image and bounce.

3. Use loop capture to layer sounds: snares/claps/Bass on top of sample whatever. Take advantage of the fact each time you layer, use a new effect....filter/isolater/EQ/chorus can help when layering to not just get a muddy wall of shit.

4. Take a chop, lets say 4 parts of 1 bar. Take a tiny portion of the end of each, and assign to a new pad....now reverse those, maybe add a little effect. Use these partial reverse parts to "smooth" the transitions between the chops or add interest/dimension (the RS7000 had a cool reverse-a-bit-of-the-tail trick on autochop to make it sounds smoother)

Man, Im gonna have to read this 3 more time before i power up my sp tonight. Thanks guys.

.

I doubt I can even really consider this a trick but I just started doing this in my newest beats and I feel like it is fairly important.

Just adding basic reverb (MFX 1)

Just set apply the effect to an entire beat and turn the first knob somewhere fairly low, so it fades out pretty quickly, then mess around with the third knob, just try to make it subtle I guess, the fewer instruments in the beat, or the more spaced out things are (slower pace) may make things sound a lot better with it turned up a bit, and maybe make the decay a little longer too.

I think this makes drums sound really nice, especially if they sound sterile or dry at all. You could just do this on the drum track if you want. I think it also makes mono songs sound better.

^Was thinking about this today and gonna try it when I get home. Debating on reverb on each hit or done on the whole dry loop.