Reso Producer Q&A

[reso]

As a couple of people have asked for it, here it is.

Ask me some questions and i'll try my best not to bore you to tears with my highly crappy answers!

Fire away........

[wub]

How do approach starting a new tune? Do you have a standard workflow of building beats/bass first, or focus on another part to begin with?

[lowpass]

Big up for doing this!

- I'd like to second the workflow question, do you usually wait till you're in the right state of mind before starting a track or do you just sit down and see what comes out?

- Out of the tracks you do start, how many get finished? how many get released?

[reso]

How do approach starting a new tune? Do you have a standard workflow of building beats/bass first, or focus on another part to begin with?

My workflow is really erratic. Sometimes i start from scratch, so i make the main beat, then find breaks and percussion to layer it up, then create some bass patches, stick some incidental fx noises in and try to get a good 16 bar loop on the go.
From there i'll quickly knock up a skeletal arrangement and enter into the absolute mission of detailing the track 8 bars at a time.

Other times i'll have just been messing around with various chords and find a nice sequence then go from there.
Other times again i might find a wicked sample whether it's a vocal clip or whatever and that gives me the idea for the tune.
Sometimes i'll have a tune that's about 60% finished and i'll do a section that is far better than the rest of the tune so i'll scrap what i did before and use that as the main idea for the tune (that's how otacon came about)
Other tunes can be a composite of 4 or 5 other ideas i've been working on.
It really depends, i really don't have any hard and fast rules that i stick to in regards to making new music, i try to just let it evolve naturally, it's all about knowing when something works or when its a turkey but still using the goodbits from the crappy tunes to make something new.

[wub]

What's your most used plugin, and what makes it (in your opinion) so essential?

[Brutal]

mate tbh busted crunk actually tears it up hypes me up whenever i listen to it haha after the last drop 4.05 ish how did you make that bassline if you would be so kind...

thanks

[kaiori breathe]

How do I grow up to be you?

[reso]

Big up for doing this!

- I'd like to second the workflow question, do you usually wait till you're in the right state of mind before starting a track or do you just sit down and see what comes out?

My pleasure chap
Sometimes i just sit down and see what happens, others i'll have the intention of making a harder tune and end up with the most chilled out thing possible.
It really is all about your state of mind, i've sat there for hours n hours trying to make a hard tune but the instant i switch to making something more melodic and chilled it all comes gushing out. This can be a pain in the arse, if your soul is saying "make something lush" you'll only end up making absolute cack if you fight it. I have fought this and have made some terrrible music.

Saying this, you can fight it by drinking about 40 cups of coffee and powering through with the madness, although the results can be sketchy hahaha.

- Out of the tracks you do start, how many get finished? how many get released?

Maybe 30% of the ideas i start get finished, it just takes me ages to get tunes finished. As a result quite a lot of the stuff i finish gets released but that's just because the stuff i finish has had a lot of work put into it and you can tell (i hope), plus if it didn't get released nothing would ever come out.

[tripwire22]

BIG up reso you already kno but I loved the temjin release

[reso]

What's your most used plugin, and what makes it (in your opinion) so essential?

i use too many, my favourite at the moment is the Tone 2 bifilter just because it has awesome combs and a variety of other filter types that twist sounds up a treat.
The native logic plugins do it for me, i batter the life out of them, they'll all really solid and do what they say really well.

[reso]

mate tbh busted crunk actually tears it up hypes me up whenever i listen to it haha after the last drop 4.05 ish how did you make that bassline if you would be so kind...

thanks

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Piece of piss, you can see what i've done in massive, used saws and i programed the arp with midi. Add some eq and i layered it with a sub underneath. Simples!

[reso]

How do I grow up to be you?

Eat your crusts and drink guiness. Smoke about 20 snouts a day too.

[spencertron]

Hi Reso, Could you explain how you process your drums? Each element is gelled perfectly in your mixdowns...is there some bouncing/layering and grouping tricks which you do?

cheers

[serox]

Piece of piss, you can see what i've done in massive, used saws and i programed the arp with midi. Add some eq and i layered it with a sub underneath. Simples!

What does this mean exactly?:)

I dont use Massive but always interested in what people are doing.

[Mysius]

Safe for doing this Reso.

- There has been a lot of threads about Chords and intervals of late I just wondered do you have an in depth knowledge of these. Do you build a tune around a certain scale or do you just jam something out till it sounds nice.

- Sampling. Are you the sort that likes to use old vinyl to get snippets of atmos, fx, melodies etc or do you use synths mainly for your sounds.

- Finally what is your setup? Do you use any hardware or are you software only (i see you use logic)

Thanks

[Brutal]

mate tbh busted crunk actually tears it up hypes me up whenever i listen to it haha after the last drop 4.05 ish how did you make that bassline if you would be so kind...

thanks

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Piece of piss, you can see what i've done in massive, used saws and i programed the arp with midi. Add some eq and i layered it with a sub underneath. Simples!

sound mate. haha another quick question around 4:47 theres a synth sound and i was wondering if you could show the same again if u cba <3 keep up the good tracks too mate

[wub]

Could you post a screenshot of the arrangement of one of your tracks?

[ajfa]

Dear Reso sir,

First up just wanna say love your work, you inspired me to start making dubstep.

Couple of q's for ya mate:
- creating the right 'space' in your tracks. I struggle to get all my elements to fit in their own space, having some things fit in the background whilst other things (bass and drums usually) upfront and crisp, which you seem do do really well... the amount of 'incidentals' creating atmosphere seem huge. got any hints on how to go about doing this? My tracks tend to either sound dry, or too washed down with reverb when i try to fill out the space.
- your drums manage to strike a balance between REALY LOUD AND BANGING and dynamics, really sounds like an actual drummer a lot of the time. What sort of breaks / hits /rolls do you generally use? Sounds like a lot rock style drums from something like drumkit from hell as well as the usual suspects to me...
- seriously, how many hours did you spend on otacon?

big ups reso!
cheers
justin

[reso]

Hi Reso, Could you explain how you process your drums? Each element is gelled perfectly in your mixdowns...is there some bouncing/layering and grouping tricks which you do?

cheers

Righty, this can depend on the tune but for this i'll tell you how i do it for tunes like technetium.
1. Pick a kick sample, finding a good source sample is essential.
2. i run it through the Shaack transient shaper to give it some attack and trim off any excess flab, then slam it through a compressor (native logic one) and mess with the ratio/attac/release until it sounds crispy and punchy.
3. If required i'll give it some eq, bossting between 70-100hz for max punch and maybe boost the tops a little for some presence, roll of any frequencies below 65 hz.
4. Wack a limiter on top and render it down
5. Repeat this process up to 3 or 4 times tweaking settings as you go to give it some proper punch (i also draw in fades on the audio to trim excess sound i don't want)
(bare in mind you may not have to do any of this if the source sample is good enough)
6. repeat steps 1 to 5 for your snare but eqing around 190-200hz for punch and roll off below 120hz
7. Keep these in mono
This is what i do for the main punch for the drums.

After that i layer a much toppier snare or claps to give it some slap, rolling the bottom off at around 500kz/2000kz and panning the various samples to spread it out.

Next i'll find some good hi-hat samples and just roll off the bottom maybe adding a bit crusher on top with the drive slightly up to crisp them up.

finally i'll start adding some breaks underneath the fill in the gaps and get the whole groove rolling. It's up to you to decide which breaks work best, eqing them to fit in with the rest of the drums.

its all been audio so far which at this point i'll load all my samples into a multichannel esx24 sampler and route the various samples to different auxillery channels (so kick on 3-4, snare on 5-6, claps etc 7-8 and so on), I program all my drums as midi as i find i have more control.
i'll then do some parrellel compression on all of the drums and breaks.
I'll send my main kick and snare to bus which works as the trigger for my sidechaining and then sidechain the breaks and percussion
Now i send all my drums to another bus (including kick n snare) so they're grouped together and put the a small amount of limiter over the top. I'll do this with all the breaks/perc etc as well.
I generally have my drums peaking at -10db.
Finally i'll send some reverb to the drums via a bus as well just to smooth them out.

Hey presto!
This is just one way of doing it, i find this works for really heavy tunes where you're fighting for headroom to keep it loud and for the drums to really hit through.

[reso]

mate tbh busted crunk actually tears it up hypes me up whenever i listen to it haha after the last drop 4.05 ish how did you make that bassline if you would be so kind...

thanks

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Piece of piss, you can see what i've done in massive, used saws and i programed the arp with midi. Add some eq and i layered it with a sub underneath. Simples!

sound mate. haha another quick question around 4:47 theres a synth sound and i was wondering if you could show the same again if u cba <3 keep up the good tracks too mate

Do you mean the arp-ish lead thingy (technical term there)?