Problems making "brostep".

[SoundNuisance]

I have been away from the forum for awhile and at the same time I have been away from making what is now coined brostep. I can literally only make laid back tracks. The harder I try to get the harder it fails. I just need the help of all the nice people on this forum. How exactly do I break the "barrier" that is in my way? I really want to get into making the harder, mid-range dominated dubstep. I know it may sound stupid but it is bothering me. The sounds I make are fine. I just can't seem to arrange the tracks right. Maybe I am making my songs too "melodic" and simple enough to make a brostep song. All positive remarks are welcome Also I want to know what it is you guys look for when deciding if a "brostep" song is good or not. Thank you in advance!

[ehbes]

Ok so I'm really not into most brostep, but the bits I do like usually following something like this:

The baselines arent screeches, self explanatory
The tune is in key and the drop has a coherent flow to it
The drop isn't 20 different sounds overly compressed compressed together, instead it's one really well automated patch

Prime example of what I'm taking about is Koan Sound

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

Couldn't really tell you how to get passed your barrier because it's going to be a personal thing based on your own journey.

All i could say is do lots more sound design/arrangeing e.t.c. and practice loads more, you'll get better and eventually get passed this roadblock.

[InternetSlaveMaster]

My only bit of advice (which you probably don't want to hear) is don't try and make something that doesn't come natural. Explore your more laid-back style.

But as for any useful advice, I'm not sure. All I know is I made plenty of bad "brostep" tunes before I really got a knock for it, so just keep experimenting. It takes time.

Also, brostep is more based on sound design than anything else. Get a good patch going and that's about 75% of the work.

[Climax]

clean hard midrange bass is difficult bro (no pun intended) you gotta keep practicing and experimenting

what have you tried so far, what are you using?

[SoundNuisance]

I expected a bunch of trolling. I am so happy that is not what happened! Thank you for your opinions!
@ehbrums1 I know what you mean, I hate that over the top siren noises, they piss me off. I am also really digging Koan Sound, I was since the first time I heard them
last year. I guess people do like reese(reece?) basses in dubstep!

@Turnipish Thoughts I will continue down the laid back journey, I am thinking of mixing more trombone, bass and guitar playing into my music. Might start doing jazz with deep sub bass I guess only practice will help me with the barrier though.

@InternetSlaveMaster Now that I think of it Brostep revolves around the bass sounds rather then a melody or even percussive aspects. Wow, it may be easier than I thought.

@Climax So far I have been mainly making patches with massive, fm8 or absynth and then granulizing them with fruity granulizer. I have gotten pretty good sounds. But thanks to what InternetSlaveMaster said I just realized that my problem is me making things complicated. It is all about the patches!

[SoundNuisance]

By the way the second song in my signature is a "brostep" song, made it about 3 months ago.

[mtl6]

yes its all about the patches. if you have a midrange bass patch that sounds interesting and intense by itself, all you need after that is a simple kick snare kick snare pattern and some subbass. maybe a ride or crash symbol hitting on every beat. some white noise to make the snare sound huge.

don't make the midrange bass melodies too complicated. the midrange melody should only be a catchy 1 or 2 bar loop. maybe you can switch up the melody a little after the second drop. then, the trick to making the song melodic is to incorporate snippets of your intro (or breakdown) melody and end your bass phrases with them sometimes. if you don't tie the intro melody into the part of the song after the drop, people are going to get bored of your bass patch pretty quickly, no matter how interesting it may be.

think of the kick and snare as the framework for you to place your midrange bass patches around. the kick and snare aren't really there to sound groovy by themselves, they should really only emphasize the beginning of midrange notes. you just want to fill up the spaces between the kicks and snares with a bass patch and use modulation (think envelopes, not really LFOs except for vibrato) to make it pleasing to the ear. then at the end of every 2 bars or 4 bars or whatever you prefer, finish the melody with a different, more melodic instrument like supersaws or whatever you like.

as for the technical aspects of it, maybe you can leave the intro and breakdowns pretty uncompressed with nice dynamics in the audio, but when the drop hits you pretty much want that shit brickwalling with a limiter or compressor. say goodbye to most of the dynamics after the drop, its a pretty typical characteristic of "brostep"... don't really like calling it that but whatever. if you brick wall the shit out of it, you can use parallel compression to get back some of the punch in the kick and snare. put vintage warmers on everything.

just listening to your soundcloud song, you've got potential but some of it sounds out of key. not really sure if you mean to do that.

[Huts]

It's interesting to see people advocating what is so stale about 'brostep'. Don't brickwall limit your shit and lose all of your dynamics, don't make stale kick + snare patterns that do nothing but serve as placeholders for your bass, and don't think you have to stick to 1 bar bass loops with snippets from your intro to make the song 'melodic'. Do you guys seriously go into a track with all these limitations? No wonder everyone's shit sounds the same. You can make aggressive midrange dominated dubstep without watering down your sound to following some boring formula.

Stuff like this hits hard, is dominated by midrange, and isn't anything like what's been suggested.
Soundcloud

Listen to some Kromestar, Vex'd, Koan Sound, Distance, as well as Benga and Skream having some midrangey tunes. There is a thread in General where people coined their favorite tearout tunes, that's also a great place to get what you're looking for without watering down your sound

[mtl6]

^^^ don't mean to be rude, but how can you advocate against using a "formula" when your signature song blatantly rips off koan sound's style? funk bass guitars, 100 bpm, and phasey reeces... you pretty much stole their formula.

anyways the guy asked about tips on how to produce brostep. limiting and compressing can make a tune sound a lot more aggressive, which the OP is trying to go for. you obviously don't NEED to follow that formula but it is pretty good advice for getting that sound

[SoundNuisance]

Guys, please don't fight. I know becoming angry is very easy but try to not let it show through your reply. Anyways thank you so much to everyone who replied.
@mtl6 Thanks for the info. I think my real problem is trying to make the bass melody complex. I will stick to catchy but simple melodies until I am at the level of Taylor Raynor! And don't worry, I am not going to follow a guideline, I am just going to use it as a guideline. I might use the metal strategy, anything that is distorted will be loud (That was a joke by the way)

@Huts I love all your post man, you don't even know. I think every thread I have started you have replied! Don't worry though, I hate that genreic wub,yoy etc shit. It gets old very fast. I will check out that thread in General you are talking about. Thanks man!

[ehbes]

^^^ don't mean to be rude, but how can you advocate against using a "formula" when your signature song blatantly rips off koan sound's style? funk bass guitars, 100 bpm, and phasey reeces... you pretty much stole their formula.

there is a big difference between sticking to a boring drum pattern and making a tune in the style of an artist that you like

[Huts]

^^^ don't mean to be rude, but how can you advocate against using a "formula" when your signature song blatantly rips off koan sound's style? funk bass guitars, 100 bpm, and phasey reeces... you pretty much stole their formula.

anyways the guy asked about tips on how to produce brostep. limiting and compressing can make a tune sound a lot more aggressive, which the OP is trying to go for. you obviously don't NEED to follow that formula but it is pretty good advice for getting that sound

Not being rude at all, although I got the idea from hearing Teknian's '1984' rather than Koan Sound (who btw I heard doing the reese glitch-hop biz before Koan's EP's ever dropped). We all hear tunes and take ideas and inspiration from them, which is all I offered him. You were advocating destroying his tunes dynamics, boring drum patterns, and potentially uninteresting basses/melodies. Which in a style of music that already all sounds relatively the same, seems crazy to me. Listen to a ton of tunes, take ideas from them and make them your own, everyone does it. However I don't agree with putting these limits on yourself before you even start a tune

[Sonika]

Prime example of what I'm taking about is Koan Sound

This


KOAN sound and Feed Me are sort of my favorite producers in that field of "brostep"/hard dubstep. I don't really listen to them that much at all, but I dont mind when one of my friends is playing their tunes. Both very talented producers IMO.

[Theo Void]

Lotsa re-sampling and automation.
Get good at synthesis.

[mthrfnk]

I have quite a similar problem, I feel the reason I can't make "good brostep" is due to the fact that I go about making the tracks in a similar way to the way I make my chilled & ambient stuff - and I really shouldn't. Different styles need different approaches.

[Theo Void]

I've been doing a lot of experimenting and building ridiculous racks in Live. I was a bit obsessed w/ the whole "bro" sound for a min. I know, everyone was(is.) Crazy thing is as soon as the obsession passed I started banging out some pretty sick tunes, well IMO. I must say, I learned tons of useful techniques and stuff from my short obsession. That said, don't let it cloud and get in the way of your creative expression. I find that many times when I sit down trying to produce a certain genre it doesn't work out. Spend time learning the techniques, ie, synthesis, sound design, re-sampling, automation, and most importantly arrangement. Then once you know the shit experiment and you'll find a work-flow of your own and naturally apply the stuff you learned.
Not to plug my own shit but have a listen to my sig. track. It's on e of the results of all the stuff I'm (trying) to describe.
You can tell if it sucks. Or not?

[jamesmakan]

I find that EQ and compression are some of the greatest tools for producing a sound. It can be used throughout the entire song process (production, in sound design; mixing, to get a good balance between your elements and; mastering, to emphasize the rhythm, handle any frequency problems and bring the song up to the desired volume).
Personally I produce with a limiter on the master channel, use it in mixing, bypassing it and turning it on for a good comparison and I always do the mastering separately - try to listen to the song as if you had never heard it before.
The reason why mixing with a limiter can be helpful is that it allows you to hear the music similarly to how it will end up sounding: with some compression weighing all the elements of the mix all down a bit.
As far as how exactly EQs and compressors can be used...
The EQ is extremely valuable in that it can be used to take unwanted frequencies from a sound, allowing it to fit into a mix like a piece of a puzzle.
Too many instruments occupying the same frequency ranges will take away from the clarity of your song.
The HARD-HITTING sound of dubstep and electro is, starting with a cool sound , the balance between the instruments frequency-wise and in regards to their relative levels and some solid compression, personal observation and application leads me to say LAYERS of compression.
More technically with EQing, taking frequencies out a bit will help you when you are slamming it all together at the end.
A highpass filter around 50hz handles inaudible bass frequencies that will steal overall volume when limiting and taking a few dbs out of the 400-500hz range will add clarity. These are general figures I find to be true; don't take those figures as law. There will always be other unwanted frequency swells to handle but the main point to note is that EQing things OUT is way more useful in the long run than trying to compensate with EQing frequencies IN which will inevitable lead to more distortion and noise in your song.
Now as for compression; it helps to know what they were designed for before utilizing their application:
In order to hear more of the qualities of any given sound it takes the quiet details and makes them louder while setting a threshold for louder things, upon which passing, will be pushed down against or towards. This can usually be done with a ratio - the higher the ratio (e.g. 24:1, 4:1, etc.) the more it compresses when the volume passes the set threshold. The lower the threshold (e.g. -4db, -12db, etc.) the more of the sound is brought out through compression or more accurately, "targeted" for compression in effect, making it more audible. This can be looked at in the realm of frequency spectrum for more useability to your scenario - frequencies with higher volumes will be more contained and frequencies that are relatively quiet will begin to surface into the realm of audibility. With a nice mix and an even level of frequencies, you will get a hard-hitting sound.
As far as how I utilize the capabilities of a compressor, I usually use two, sometimes even a limiter after these.
The first is used to accentuate the dynamics of a track, the second to regulate the overall volume, (the limiter used in severe cases needing a ceiling to control it).
There's probably a lot more I could say regarding these two things but I feel like I've adequately stressed their importance.
A few other things I think you'd find useful if you aren't already doing:
Separate your "brostep" bass into at least two channels; one for the mutilated sound covering most of the frequency spectrum, starting around 200-400hz going up, the second for sub-bass. compress this but don't distort the shit out of it because it will decrease the clarity and "energy" of the drop.
Use a compressor before the master limiter, lightly, as I gave in my "two-compressor" arrangement on a single track, it can be used to accentuate the rhythm, and bring out some subtle details.
The last thing, apparently quite controversial, is about HOW MUCH to slam your song.
I say slam it. Dubstep as of late is quite slammed. This isn't a rock ballad.
DON'T slam it to the point of "pulsating" (when every time the kick hits, the whole song gets quieter, fading back up into loud until the next kick hits).
You can achieve this result, if desired, through "side-chaining" (also compressor-related) but the whole song should NOT do this.
More technically, I wouldn't limit the song much more than a max of 5 dbs, depending on the quality of your limiter.
This means the song is being suppressed by 5dbs during the loudest transients.
If you have the option, oversampling is very useful, giving you a bit more headroom to work with during the mastering process.
One more thing to measure loudness is the RMS level. This is a number that tells you the average volume of a song.
The higher the number the quieter. -14 is quieter than -10. -10 to -8 is pretty loud, I wouldn't ever go louder than this unless you want the mix to sound over-saturated, pulsating and mushy. More important, I have found, is the amount by which the song is compressed, as I said before by the limiter.

Anyway, now you have a pretty long summary of EQ and compression, I hope you find this extensive monologue useful in some way.

Feel free to ask any questions, I am more than willing to help out in any way I can. =)

Sincerely,
James

[SoundNuisance]

I can't believe you took the time to write all of that.............You are amazing my friend!

[cmgoodman1226]

Ok so I'm really not into most brostep, but the bits I do like usually following something like this:

The baselines arent screeches, self explanatory
The tune is in key and the drop has a coherent flow to it
The drop isn't 20 different sounds overly compressed compressed together, instead it's one really well automated patch

Prime example of what I'm taking about is Koan Sound

Tbf their songs typically have a shit ton of sounds that don't sound anything alike.