Music Making tips #1

I’m sometimes asked for advice or opinions on music production. This covers everything from workflow advice to odd tips and tricks or even just questions about synths and sequencers. I’m not claiming to be some form of music guru but if I can help you out just send me a message or an email. I’d be happy to receive any questions, queries or even just feedback from the blog. If anything comes up that I feel that could make it to the blog I’ll make a post.

From time to time going to post a few things that I think could be useful to people that are interested in making music. I’m going to be aiming the posts at producers that are just starting out but even some of the more experienced music makers out there might find some things useful (you never know). Below are the first three tips, I hope you find these posts useful.

Make a template

This might seem obvious but when you load up Your DAW it’s nice to get started straight away. Make a custom template that has all of the effects and settings that you most commonly use already pre-loaded. Do you use the same synth or drum sampler for all of your tracks? Stick them in your template too; you’re going to load them up every time anyway. It may seem like a sensible thing to do but most of the time produces forget about this and find themselves loading up the same things every time that they start a fresh track. Don’t waste any time setting up when you could be making music.

Keep Things Simple

When you first start on a new track it’s often tempting to cram the track with as many cool sounds as possible. You’ll end up with a cool loop but more often than not you’ll probably hit the wall and scrap what you’ve come up with because you run out of ideas. A basic drum track and synth sounds are sometimes all you need to get the track flowing. When you’ve got the Basics down then it’s time to add your little extras. Sometimes the best ideas come to you when you have a basic stripped-down arrangement. Keep it simple! Don’t kill your track before it reaches its full potential.

A day of sampling

When writing a new track I often spend a lot of time trying to make a cool synth sound or trying to find that perfect kick. A fresh set of sounds can give you that little bit of inspiration that will get your tracks off to a flying start. It’s even more satisfying knowing that you made the samples yourself. Often I’ll spend a day away from the computer creating fresh samples that I can use in my next production. You can sample anything; Old keyboards, guitars, hand claps or even household objects such as pots and pans can provide you with that little bit of inspiration. If you don’t have the resources to record the samples yourself you could also try checking websites such as the freesound project or even downloading some of the free sample packs available on this blog. Remember when taking samples from websites make sure that you check the copyright on the sounds. (N.B. All the samples from this blog are completely free of copyright).

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Korg Nanopad

My Korg Nanopad came in the post today.
This device is an outstanding piece of kit and for just £30 It's well worth it.
The Korg Kontrol editor (Download from the Korg site) is simple and straightforward to use.
The pads are really responsive and the unit itself is rugged and seems like it's built well.
Anyway, here's a video I made with it. =]

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Random Synth Art

Random Synth art by me!

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The Korg Monotron is a very basic but powerful palm sized monosynth.

The Korg Monotron is a very basic but powerful palm sized monosynth.

I've been messing around with my new Korg Monotron for a few days now and I have to say that it’s definitely worth the £50 price tag. The Monotron is the first analogue product from Korg in nearly 30 years.

The first thing that struck me when I unboxed the Monotron was the size of it. Pictures and videos on the net can be a bit misleading and it’s hard not to be surprised of how tiny it actually is (It’s only just slightly bigger than my iPhone 4).

The little palm sized wonder is made up of three simple elements. A sawtooth wave, a low pass filter and a LFO. It may not seem like much but I can assure you it's all that this little beast needs.

The fact that it has the VCO and VCF have the same circuitry as the legendary Korg MS-20 makes the Korg Monotron extremely desirable, the sounds that it produces scream pure analogue.

The filter is phenomenal and the option to process external audio via the aux in is a godsend.

As well as the analogue filter the monotron also boasts a very nice saw wave oscillator, it too from the MS20.

You can get a wide range of sounds out of this little monster such as deep bass sounds, High-pitched squeals and even some nice little analogue percussion hits. But it really starts getting interesting when you start messing around with the LFO.

The Filter and the oscillator may give the little synth its huge voice but the LFO is at the heart of the device. The LFO is capable of controlling ether the pitch of the oscillator or the cut off frequency of the low pass filter.

The sounds that you can get from the monotron are truly unbelievable for the price.

Below there are two audio demos; The first one is of the monotron with just a little bit of delay from the Korg Mini Kaoss pad and the second one is a drum loop from the iPhone FunkBox app running throiugh the filter section of the Monotron.

Monotron by synthersizer-sounds

Drums Processed with Monoton Filter by synthersizer-sounds

Keep a look out for more on the Monotron in the future including a free sample library.

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New Gear! Korg Monotron.

My Korg Monotron came through the post earlier! I’ve been messing around with it for hours now, it couples up nicely with my Microkorg and mini KP. I haven't got around to hooking it up with anything else yet but it is a completely amazing little bit of kit.

Add a little bit of delay and this thing sings! It’s good for dub sirens, beeps, bleeps and making tones of noise. It also has a very powerful analog low pass filter (12 dB/oct) which is brilliant for processing external audio.

It’s fully analog too! The oscillator and the filter are based on the legendary korg MS20 synthesizer. For such a little box (It's just a little bit bigger than my iPhone) It has an amazingly aggressive sound. Crank up the peak control and the filter screams (Just like the MS20) and the oscillator itself has quite a big range.

The only thing that I can see it lacks is MIDI support. The ribbon control is frustrating to use but I suppose I can't complain because at £50 this is an awesome piece of gear.

I’ll be recording some demo tracks with the monotron and hopefully a huge sample pack for all of you music tech people out there.

I'll post more on the monotron soon.

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Moog Filtatron (Second look)

Ok, I’ve been messing around with the Moog Filtatron app again. My first post on the filtatron app was really more of a mess around to see what it can do on its own. This time I set out to take samples the VCO so that I can use it in some of my own music and productions.

Since my first post Moog have updated the app to include a few new features. The main feature was the ability to lock the VCO on the pad page so that it can be played like a keyboard (sort of).This helps a little and gives the app a lot more potential than just a sound processor but the keyboard on the pad is very small and hard to use (I’m using an iPhone 4).

I’ve also noticed a few other problems as well. The first Problem that I found was very annoying; you have to make sure that before locking the VCO that you have to get the pitch exactly on C. If you don’t do this the keyboard will play in the wrong key. It sounds obvious but I would have thought that moog would have put a keyboard in the app that was always in tune so that you don’t have to mess around with tuning it every time you want to use it.

Other problems I’ve found are: the audio from the VCO dropping out completely, a small amount of latency when using an external audio signal and various crashes. These can be fixed quite easily by restarting the app.

However despite the various minor flaws that the app has the Moog Filtatron is one of my favourites. The VCO has a nice rich sound to it and the VCF is really useful when recording external audio.

I’m hoping that Moog will look at some of these issues and sort them out in a future update. A full sized keyboard would be nice and the addition of a modular style sequencer would be an awesome addition.

Let’s get back to the samples.

I recorded a few samples from the VCO in the app and loaded them into the NNXT sampler in Propellerheads Reason 5. I then sequenced a few simple bass lines and added a small amount of compression to the sound.

I also decided to beef the sound up a little with a second oscilator from the Thor synth in Reason.

Below you will find all the samples available to download and an audio demo.

Filtatron Bass samples demo by synthersizer-sounds

The audio demo also contains drums from the Synthetic Bits Funkbox drum machine (another awesome app) and a bit of synth/percussion from Reason.

I’ve uploaded the samples for you to download. As always the samples are royalty free so you can use them for whatever project or track you like and not worry about copyright.

Download the samples Here (.RAR)

In the sample pack you will find:

· 12 individual note hits (Moog)

· 6 Clean Moog bass loops

· 6 Moog+ Thor Bass Loops

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