Share your techniques for Sound FX & Ear Candy in your music

[futures_untold]

Ez dubstep producers, I need some help for the new production bible.

Many of us don't realise we can often add interest to our songs by using incidental effects and ear candy.

Some generic examples are sweeping risers, reversed cymbals and little bleeps.

Q. What techniques do you use to make and arrange these small but important sounds in your music?

The more info on techniques you can share the better! Step by step numbered methodologies and screenshots a bonus.

Thanks for your time...

Patrick

[kingGhost]

using low volume high pitched quick synth hits with a healthy helping of reverb and like a 5+ step delay. fun to put hits here and there and see how the delay stacks em up. i would post screenshots for reason, but a lot of people on here apparently hate that DAW. not to mention it's a pretty simple technique.

[deadly_habit]

vox - pitch shift, timestretch, glitch repeat syllables. thanks to argh forget his name on here the kerovee and revee plugins which are freeware.
drums i've covered bussing, but when layering use just one and soak in verb, delay or distortion for a one shot or intro
a simple one on snare, when working in dj friendly bar based beats on 4th bar on last snare dup it and reverse and layer it as decay on orig is going out like a half pipe
hats, slight delays and panning and learn your on/off for fx so they don't tail into parts
could go on and on, but theres some to start

[deadly_habit]

oh and the classic reverse reverb effect for that sucking in vacuum style sample especially on vocals

[DZA]

Format filters and BARE LFOS

WOB WOB WOB WOB WOB

[deadly_habit]

Format filters and BARE LFOS

WOB WOB WOB WOB WOB

joo forgot the bitcrusher blud

[DZA]

Oh shit yeah and dem high pitched squeals

[deadly_habit]

Oh shit yeah and dem high pitched squeals

crank your resonance too blud

[DZA]

Good plan!

[nitz]

Am guessing your referring to transitions in a song, from one section to another, i.e chrous to verse ect.

- Reserve a cymbal going into another section, or i tend to reverse the last clap.
- Change up in drums, pitch shitting, or use a chorus/flanger, but not in the traditional in manner, and only on certain hits, not the everything!
- Thunder, normally does the job for me.
- Rise up snyth's, or pitching the current snyth.
- Class delay, to get the long delay...
- Ping pong delay, this will make the signal delay left to right, its like delayed panning.
- Reese glitch like stuff, before, or at the beginning for the bar
- Filtering
- Changing the Freq cut off (not just of the wub wub wub tones) to build tension.
- Big chord! Not a triad, maybe 4/5 note one. (along with delay if needed.)

.... Or

- Silence!

[futures_untold]

Thanks guys for sharing your tips and techniques so far. The more the merrier!

These will be really useful for new producers when they read the production bible.

I'm not talking about transition effects per se, but any kind of one-off effects that you use to keep your song interesting as they progress.

For instance, if you listen to the instrumental for Sean Paul's 'Get Busy', you'll hear a voice saying 'oh yeah!' just before the main melody kicks in each time. This is subtle, but adds nicely to the vibe and isn't generally noticed upon first listening.

I'm not talking about variations on a bassline using a different LFO rate, that is standard. I'm talking about those really small background sounds that make songs seem 'more complete'. They only happen once or twice in the whole track, and are added just as a way of filling the track out.

Thanks !

Patrick

[deadly_habit]

tails of reverb or delay into a silent bar then cut off for that split second
it doesn't have to be a full bar of silence

[futures_untold]

One I like to hear occasionally is those crowd horns, and quick blasts of a dub siren.

Making a dub siren is easy.

1> Get a synth and set the oscillator to square wave.
2> Tie the LFO to the oscillators pitch.
3> Set the LFO shape to a square wave too.
4> Tweak the LFO to pitch depth and the LFO rate to taste.
5> Add a very short amount of delay to the whole sound.

You now have a dub siren and can play a short bursts of it occassionally throughout your tune!

[deadly_habit]

One I like to hear occasionally is those crowd horns, and quick blasts of a dub siren.

Making a dub siren is easy.

1> Get a synth and set the oscillator to square wave.
2> Tie the LFO to the oscillators pitch.
3> Set the LFO shape to a square wave too.
4> Tweak the LFO to pitch depth and the LFO rate to taste.
5> Add a very short amount of delay to the whole sound.

You now have a dub siren and can play a short bursts of it occassionally throughout your tune!

no that shit needs to die, i'd rather hear noise makers from childhood comeback
hip hop, r&b, mixtapes and mtv ruined the airhorn/dub siren
bring back the old synth stabs!

[daft cunt]

I posted this recently and it might be worth reposting here.

Non-exhaustive bass guide :
1 - choose waveforms that complement each other and make the whole patch sound as nasty as you can.
2 - use whatever options your synth has to add some harshness. In Massive, the phase modulation osc can make a drastic difference. You can also use filters without automation to make it even more gritty (for instance with a comb filter).
3 - apply a bit of distortion before and after your filter to bring out the harmonics but do it gently, you don't want to fuck up your sound.
A nice trick a learnt recently is to set your effect to 100% wet, make it sound the way you want then adjust the wet/dry knob. And always A/B your effect to make sure it sounds better with it.
4 - apply more post filter effects. Again in Massive, the dimension expander works great on bass sounds.
Basicly the idea is to use all parameters in your synth to make your patch sound better without yet giving movement to the sound.

If you followed all that carefully, you should have a nice bass already and very few options left to add anything to it to the sound.
At this point :
5 - I always apply some external multiband distortion. No distortion below 150 Hz, then 2 bands separated at whatever frequency works with the sound (1500 Hz is a good one tho).
6 - you also want to EQ the sound to remove any mud or harsh frequencies. Narrow Q, boost, sweep until your reach a frequency that sounds particularly unpleasant, then cut. Repeat as necessary.
7 - time to resample (long note, low octave) and use your sampler.
8 - now you can start giving movement. Phaser, flanger, chorus, vowel filters, automated notch or double notch filter, ... whatever sounds good.
Something to keep in mind when it comes to effects (distortion in particular) : "the best sounds aren't made by turning one dial up to 11, but by turning eleven dials up to 1" (found on the grid).

Now you should have a big fat moving sound ready for wobble and I'm sure you know how to do that but for the love of dubstep, plz do not use lfo automation. There are so many possibilities to make interesting and original bass sounds, don't restrain yourself to that.
What's important now is to bring out the harmonics after the filter. There are several ways to do this : blatantly using an EQ but I prefer to apply multiband distortion first and boost the high frequencies by increasing the volume level of the uppper band. If you want to sound like everybody else you can use a bitcrusher instead.
If you didn't yet, you want to EQ now to make your bassline fit with the other elements.

Now you have a solid bassline but with only one sound which might be boring after a while. Time to add more tracks, repeat all these steps and alternate your sounds and filter automation to make the bassline more interesting.
Last but not least, you can use a send bus to regroup all your bass tracks and HP the whole lot and make a proper sub bass track and LP it at the same frequency you HPed the others. That'll make the whole thing much more solid.

[sixth sense]

I use white noise and stuff

[dav.id]

3 or four 16th triplet kicks or hats at the end of a couple of bars with some rising velocity always makes me happy

[press]

something different i did recently taking advantage of reapers per item fx was:

put a lowpass filter then a big hally reverb on the last four bars of a 16 bar phrase of mid/bass, then automated the cutoff down. it made for a very interesting effect/transition.

[deadly_habit]

one i rarely use in finished tunes, but has worked in the past
duplicate a track you wanna eq, either emphasize the areas you want out then process them in some way like distortion fuzz etc flip the phase and layer em
can be gold can be a pile of shit
also adding artifacts to original source material then flipping phase and layering works wonders at times too

[Phigure]

one i rarely use in finished tunes, but has worked in the past
duplicate a track you wanna eq, either emphasize the areas you want out then process them in some way like distortion fuzz etc flip the phase and layer em
can be gold can be a pile of shit
also adding artifacts to original source material then flipping phase and layering works wonders at times too

Oooh that's a cool idea