I think the most sought after goal of any producer/artist is getting their music to sound like a major label release. Most demos don’t come close to sounding radio ready and super polished partly because of the inexperience of the engineer or person mixing/mastering the music. Also, most artists fail to recognize the importance of professionally mastering their music. You can come close to getting that professional sound at home but takes a lot of time and experience crafting it without the use of really top notch gear. Most commercial radio released music is very carved out, meaning there are a lot of frequencies that have been eq’d out or cut. This allows for the music to be very compressed/limited to be perceived as loud when bumpin on the radio.
Here’s a few tips to make your demo’s sound close to radio ready
1. Use eq correctly. One of the biggest mistakes is when you have a bad sound and try to fix it with eq. If an instrument sounds a little off, try a different one. When in doubt, look to cut frequencies rather than boost. You can do wonders using low cuts and high cuts on beats, especially snares. Eq acts like a chisel to cut away at bad frequencies that cloud up a mix. When an artist is sculpting something from stone, he cuts away, he doesn’t add stone to make his piece of art. Think of eq the same way. Every instrument has it’s own frequency spectrum it lives in, it’s your job to make sure other instruments don’t take up that same frequency
2. Easy on Compression. Another very misused tool. A compressors job is to squash the dynamic range of a signal. Dynamic range is the lowest to highest level in one particular signal. This helps with instruments that are very bass heavy and tend to eat space in your mix. Always look to go easy on the compression ratio at first and use your ears to judge.
3. Balance your levels. Many people mix, but they don’t really MIX. Mixing is more than just being creative and placing sounds from left to right. You need to achieve a good balance of all tracks in relationship to each other. Vocals should always be the loudest track in the mix, but you should be able to clearly pick out each other track in the mix. Eq really plays a big part here also, if the eq on your tracks are off, your levels will never sit right and you will never have a clear mix.
4. Reverb/Space Dimension to your mix. Most Rap music is very dry, which means there is not much reverb treatment on tracks besides vocals and even so, it’s used minimally. One trick to achieve a radio ready sound is to give your mix medium to large room reverb on the master bus of your mix. Make sure to use a very very small wet/dry ratio. I usually use 5-8% and also make sure to reduce the high frequency content which most reverb plugins have setting for. When used properly and sparingly, this glues your mix together giving it a filled out sound.
5. Mastering. Mastering is the very last step in the recording process. This is usually done by a separate engineer and studio then where the music was tracked. A good mastering job will take your mix to another level. It will make it sound consistent on many different speakers and systems and will give a very well rounded balance to all the tracks start to finish. Mastering is also expensive if done in a professional studio which is why alot of unsigned artists skip this step. One plugin that has really helped in making my music stand out is Ozone by the company Izotope. Ozone includes a parametric eq, multiband compressor, reverb, exciter, and stereo widener. When used properly, Ozone can really make a difference on your tracks. Just Blaze has even used it on some of Jay-Z’s Kingdome Come record. Check out the link: http://www.izotope.com/artists/just_blaze.asp
Ok, I’ve been through some creative block and some hard times. I’ll be posting a few more this week. Then I’ll go back into hibernation. The track playing is a Diana Ross Sample with a classic drum break layered with some other drum kit I made. This is a really rough mix, but you get the idea.
It’s been a few days, yeah I know. Been busy with alot of ish. Here’s when I tell you I’ve been working on some music. I’VE BEEN WORKING ON SOME MUSIC. I don’t bang out tracks everyday. I have to be in the right mood. If not, I don’t believe in it or feel it. I’ve been listening to alot of new artists that I never thought I’d like that much considering the commercialism of hip hop. One artist I have’nt been able to stop listening to is Papoose. I have a feeling this dude is gonna break into the mainstream in a firery storm. He credits his influences as Big Daddy Kane and Rakim. You know he’s the real ish if he’s giving those cats as his influences. Stylin on Ya is such a hard track. I listen to it daily now. Even though he’s representing the new school of hip hop, you can tell his roots are in the classics.
So with that being said, I have some new inspiration in my heart. I will finish two tracks this weekend and post them.
Every video Boon Doc has on YouTube is golden. I can’t believe he’s not fully blown up yet. The most minimal setup produces some of the best sample based hip hop beats. He’s really inspired me when I’ve had creative blocks. I suggest you watch the whole thing.
Oh remember to stop the track in the right nav bar or the sound will clash with the video.
I can’t stress how important layering your drum samples when building your tracks. Some tracks I produce have three kicks, three snares and maybe two hats going on. The reason for this? Some drums lack certain frequencies and can be filled out with other samples that support those lacking freqeuncies. Beat making starts with your drums, so you have to make sure they’re tight before building on top of them.
First make sure not to have all your samples at full volume. There’s a fine balance to mixing them. A good blend of kicks that works well for me is to have an 808 kick on one pad with a low pass filter on it. This gives you a really smooth bottom. Then on another pad I’ll have two kicks, one that has good bottom/midrange balance, and one that has a snappy top end and some air in it. Tweak the volume and eq’s to your taste. Now you might think, why does my kick need high end? This helps it become more pronounced and cut through the mix. You’d be suprised how much this helps your kick sit in the mix.
For snares I’ll do the same thing. I’ll find a few that compliment each other and them mix until they sound right to me. This is a very common technique, but I think few producers fully utilize this. I love breaks to death, but I always have to layer some drums on top to get the track pounding.
Now don’t get crazy with EQ, remember, always look to cut freqeuncies than boost them. You should have a full sounding drum track with each drum being clear and defined, not muddy or muffled.
I know many of you only chop your samples inside your MPC. I’ve done this for a while and I’ve never been completely happy with the results. The samples never seem as clean on the tail end as they do when chopping in Recycle. I’ve started using Recycle more and transferring back and fourth the MPC via the usb connection.
For those of you that have never used Recycle, it’s a stand alone program from Propellerheads (makers of Reason and other great software) that allows you to chop or slice your samples in a way that retains the original pitch while being able to change tempo. This takes some processing power to stretch the sample out while maintaining the quality of the sound. This is where I think the MPC falls short. I’ve taken up tempo drum breaks and slowed them down almost to a half time tempo while retaining a clean sounding loop. Recycle does this by adding a slight amount of reversed delay on the very end of each slice which fills in the gaps that normally would be present when chopping on the MPC. To get the same result in the MPC, you’d have to chop and then time stretch which takes several times to get it right.
From a workflow point of view, I like getting things done quick to keep the creative process flowing. I don’t like to be hung up on tweaking. There are a lot of other features in Recycle I haven’t even begun to use yet, but for beat making and chopping, this had made my life a lot easier.
Producers are always on the look out to add some new sounds to their drum libraries. Here’s a little project that is pretty easy to do and you can get new and original samples from. This works best if you have a buddy who plays the drums, but even doing this solo with no drumming experience can give decent results.
Find an affordable studio or rehearsal space with a decent sound room and drum kit (in nyc where I live they’re a dime a dozen). Book a few hours. Bring your laptop if you have one, or have the studio set you up to record on their gear. Experiment with tuning and placement, have your mics on the kick snare and hi hat. Start recording and play each drum one by one at different velocities. Play until you think you have what you need.
There you go. If you have some experience under your belt, you can try different mic’ing techniques, turning some gain up on the mic pre’s and compressing a little to get a grittier sound.
Layer the sound under some of your favorite drum kits to add some flavor, or… let them sit on their own for your own personalized kit.
I’m starting to regularly put up some free drum breaks and drum samples I’ve collected. I made a new section called Free Breaks. I’m not sure If I’ll do this once a week or more often than that. This break has a decent drum sound and has some piano in it. I suggest tuning it down in your sampler to lengthen it since it is uptempo. All I ask for in return is for some comments on the site and suggestions on how to improve it.
Here’s a good debate, should drum samples be in Stereo or Mono?
Coming from an engineering background, live drums are 99% of the time recorded mono. Yes they may be multitracked (microphones on the top, bottom snare and snare overhead) but these are panned dead center except for paired cymbals and toms. The reason why overhead and room mics are usually tracked in stereo pairs is because of the left to right detail that is being captured. The engineer is trying to give the full stereo perception of the kit. There is no stereo detail when a snare is hit by itself in the middle of the room, but if a drummer is playing a full kit and does a tom roll with cymbal crashes, you hear the stereo detail.
My method for beat making is to keep my single hits mono (snares, kicks, hats) and leave my pre-recorded drum breaks and samples stereo because there is stereo information associated with the mix. Mono hits sound pretty good layered on top of a stereo break, has more focus and the snare seems to stick out in a good way. Mono files also cut down on the size of your sample which is important if you’re limited with RAM in your sampler.
I’m assuming most of us producing Hip Hop is that we mix “In the Box”. The term means that everything is mixed in a software application and is never routed out to a physical mixer. The negative side affect of this is your mix will be “flatter” and not as “big” sounding as a commercially mixed song. The reason for this is dynamic range and unique circuitry that’s inherent in mixers. I’m not saying that if you buy a cheap behringer mixer that your tracks will sound better. But your mix will benefit from a decent mixer (older ones preferably), Some brands to check out are Spirit, Allen & Heath and some of the older Tascam mixers.
Older mixers have better components and some have no digital circuit boards that reduce sound quality (remember less path to go through the better the signal will retain quality). If you have a big home studio budget, check out the Dangerous 2 Bus mixer.
If you have a small budget, once your track is mixed as best it can be in your software application, bring your session to a studio that has a good board and mixdown from there. You’ll notice the tracks will sound more separated, clearer and sonically bigger with better imaging and detail. The reason for this is your audio engine and summing processor in your audio application is limited. In the digital realm your headroom is limited and digital distortion produces harsh sounding artifacts which is different from analog distortion which can be desired and more musical.
Now also keep in mind, you’ll need to route the signal back through to your audio software for the two track master or if you have an external cd recorder or reel to reel would work also.
So next time you have a great track mixed and want to take it to the next level, give this a try.
