Your "OHHhhhh" moments..

[amphibian]

Curious as to what was one of your more profound "oh" moments, where you realized during your practise what something did and how it could be manipulated to get desired effects. I'll start with a few moments I had and the effect they had on production, in order of felt profoundness:

1. Understanding exactly what the cutoff filter did. This opened up a whole new world in regards to opening up the cutoff for wobbles and more importantly - using envelopes to create my beloved "whomp" sound
2. Waveforms and how they affect sound. More specifically, realizing that the "sharper" the end of a wave form, the more abrasive it was going to sound. Ie. Sine waves for more "hollow" sounds, followed by triangle, square/pulse wave, then saw for really abrasive sounds.
3. Learning scales. I cannot stress how important this was to me in order to make anything sound decent. Spending a few hours on this (and I go back to it every so often) has really improved the musicality of my tunes.

Over to you, community!

[710]

Automation.

[collige]

panning/stereo expansion

[yoseph]

repetition! i used to make 2 minute breakcore tunes that took longer to program than the last 7 minute monster i finished. not repetition in the sense of just copying and pasting a 2 bar loop, but just how to let a groove ride and using fills and incidentals to propel a track instead of programming a constant robot sound effect drum solo. i still love that too though, was just really eye opening to learn a different way to hold interest. plus girls dont dance to robot sound effect drum solo music.

[wabble]

use of stacking synths for wabbles and side-chain compression

proper eq suggestions for individual sounds tracked out by a mixing engineer exposed some ohhhhh frequencies too

my new beyerdynamic cans and ns-10s gave me ohhhh for mixing hi-end in the stereo field

[AnalGangstaHo]

[wabble]

alot of ohhhh moments to be found in the production bible aswell

[cloak and dagger]

realizing I should just lowpass stuff in Cubase (including the master channel) instead of trying to find a reverb like the one in Reason that slightly lowpasses whatever's going through it

[shaneynclan]

realizing that dirty basslines are actually clean at their core.

[wayoftheworld]

ableton

[project midnight]

Automation.

[amphibian]

realizing that dirty basslines are actually clean at their core.

haha yeah. I think I spent some time before I realized this as well =P

"hmmm... low cutoff to saw wave isn't creating filth... what haz i dun wrong!?"

[Wikum]

split processing a synth bassline

[Wikum]

that's actually a great tip. must try this out with evoc in logic.

[jaydot]

LFO automation, proper phrasing, Massive.

[nowaysj]

Hard to think about, most of my ohhh moments were a long time ago.

But there it was: SIDECHAINING Always knew it was there, just thought it was about pumping. But I've been up in that bitch like a mofo.

[JFK]

Like my man Noways these occured a while ago but there were two main ones for me:

1) Automation - How the fuck I ever made a tune without it I will never know.

2) Using envelopes properly. I used to layer up about 20 snares to try and get a really fat sound, failing to realise that most of the time the transients etc were cancelling each other out. Used to bring me to the point of smashing the comp to bits in frustration.

[naus]

Hard to think about, most of my ohhh moments were a long time ago.

But there it was: SIDECHAINING Always knew it was there, just thought it was about pumping. But I've been up in that bitch like a mofo.

Please enlighten me..... I dont use it because i thought it was only about kick n sub etc...what eles can it be used for?

[paravrais]

repetition! i used to make 2 minute breakcore tunes that took longer to program than the last 7 minute monster i finished. not repetition in the sense of just copying and pasting a 2 bar loop, but just how to let a groove ride and using fills and incidentals to propel a track instead of programming a constant robot sound effect drum solo. i still love that too though, was just really eye opening to learn a different way to hold interest. plus girls dont dance to robot sound effect drum solo music.

Haha you should come to Cambridge, Breakcore is big here. Lots of girls at nights...hippy girls, but they are still female XD


There have been so many of these moments over the last year really though I think I had one yesterday to do with eq, I think iv'e been taking WAY too much out of a lot of my sounds so i'm letting a lot of things breathe a lot more today and it's sounding much better so far..

EDIT: I actually prefer the snare at the start of that video to at the end :\ am I the only person that things snappy and dry snares sound much better in dubstep?? (constantly getting grief in the feedback threads for having dry snares but it sounds way better that way!!)

[jaydot]

repetition! i used to make 2 minute breakcore tunes that took longer to program than the last 7 minute monster i finished. not repetition in the sense of just copying and pasting a 2 bar loop, but just how to let a groove ride and using fills and incidentals to propel a track instead of programming a constant robot sound effect drum solo. i still love that too though, was just really eye opening to learn a different way to hold interest. plus girls dont dance to robot sound effect drum solo music.

Haha you should come to Cambridge, Breakcore is big here. Lots of girls at nights...hippy girls, but they are still female XD

ROFL.