The Drop Thread // How To Make Drops

[LilWUB]

If you're new to bus processing (sending all of a chosen sound type to one channel) - I would stick to using one bass patch for now. Learn parallel processing and bussing first. Parallel would be sending your bass to another channel for additional processing while keeping the original. Route the original and processed to one bus and start playing with that. IMHO of course.

[ephyks]

Best to make one patch, and then stem the rest of the other patches off of that original patch.

All about the flow.

[Toolman4]

>I'll tell you what...People have been saying this for quite some time now, but until you do it, you'll never know. Generally one of the hardest parts to get right is separation of time spent doing sound design vs Arrangement/composition. Going on 2 years since I started production, and finally have gotten around to reworking a bunch of my older projects. In the beginning, I spent a lot more amount of time trying to make growl/reese bass's as cool and powerful as possible, and then trying to fit them in an arrangement at the same time. Or sometimes I'd be working on an arrangement, and then get lost in sound design because I didn't like the sound after hearing it over and over. Now I am working on developing arrangement/composition skills separately from sound design sessions. And it's been nice, b/c I've really started getting the hang of 'complex' arrangements, or arranging a reese bass that's being modulated in a bunch of different ways. And I couldn't have gotten to this point now, without a good stock of prior made material. Being able to just sit right down and start arranging is awesome.

>>Another HUGE tip that will honestly impress you:
Work with 1 or 2 different bass patches rather than 3 or 4. You would be surprised how many novel modulations/ideas/arrangements you could come up with if you modulated fewer synths. The idea is that the sound is changing over time, but not too drastically. An envelope on the cutoff on a note at one octave range, could change into another completely different sound at a higher/lower octave, and a different modulation in the synth. Now you have 2 sounds to provide rhythmical novelty in your arrangement but not sound too jerky/foreign b/c they're so far in timbre and fx.

>>>Whenever you want to incorporate a new synth, a good starting point is to begin with a copy of the first patch, then change different settings so that the timbre is audibly different, but only so much to where the overall vibe of the track isn't lost. If you slowly incorporate new synth patches this way, you can build a more cohesive but complex arrangement.

>>>>Also, ALWAYS come back to your work with a fresh set of ears a few times. I know that ill gates promotes a 24 hr chop block policy, but for myself, I've always made compositional changes that I'm happier with when working on my projects over the course of a consistent few days/week. If you enjoy starting from scratch, coming back to your work after breaks will really help the track come to fruition.

As always with creative art, there is no hard and fast rules. Take all the above with a grain of salt, and CHEERS!

[Icetickle]

If you're new to bus processing (sending all of a chosen sound type to one channel) - I would stick to using one bass patch for now. Learn parallel processing and bussing first. Parallel would be sending your bass to another channel for additional processing while keeping the original. Route the original and processed to one bus and start playing with that. IMHO of course.

Any tutorials/readings about what bus processing and parallel processing is and how to use em? Because I like making more than 1 bass for the drop..

>I'll tell you what...People have been saying this for quite some time now, but until you do it, you'll never know. Generally one of the hardest parts to get right is separation of time spent doing sound design vs Arrangement/composition. Going on 2 years since I started production, and finally have gotten around to reworking a bunch of my older projects. In the beginning, I spent a lot more amount of time trying to make growl/reese bass's as cool and powerful as possible, and then trying to fit them in an arrangement at the same time. Or sometimes I'd be working on an arrangement, and then get lost in sound design because I didn't like the sound after hearing it over and over. Now I am working on developing arrangement/composition skills separately from sound design sessions. And it's been nice, b/c I've really started getting the hang of 'complex' arrangements, or arranging a reese bass that's being modulated in a bunch of different ways. And I couldn't have gotten to this point now, without a good stock of prior made material. Being able to just sit right down and start arranging is awesome.

>>Another HUGE tip that will honestly impress you:
Work with 1 or 2 different bass patches rather than 3 or 4. You would be surprised how many novel modulations/ideas/arrangements you could come up with if you modulated fewer synths. The idea is that the sound is changing over time, but not too drastically. An envelope on the cutoff on a note at one octave range, could change into another completely different sound at a higher/lower octave, and a different modulation in the synth. Now you have 2 sounds to provide rhythmical novelty in your arrangement but not sound too jerky/foreign b/c they're so far in timbre and fx.

>>>Whenever you want to incorporate a new synth, a good starting point is to begin with a copy of the first patch, then change different settings so that the timbre is audibly different, but only so much to where the overall vibe of the track isn't lost. If you slowly incorporate new synth patches this way, you can build a more cohesive but complex arrangement.

>>>>Also, ALWAYS come back to your work with a fresh set of ears a few times. I know that ill gates promotes a 24 hr chop block policy, but for myself, I've always made compositional changes that I'm happier with when working on my projects over the course of a consistent few days/week. If you enjoy starting from scratch, coming back to your work after breaks will really help the track come to fruition.

As always with creative art, there is no hard and fast rules. Take all the above with a grain of salt, and CHEERS!

Interesting.

[Ledger]

Any tutorials/readings about what bus processing and parallel processing is and how to use em? Because I like making more than 1 bass for the drop...

Just Youtube it. There are more than enough tuts on both. Essentially, parallel processing is basically just splitting a signal in to two mixer channels, leaving one channel completely dry (other than necessary eqing and possible compression), and doing whatever you want with the second channel. Then, bussing, is if you were to take both of those channels, and any other channels that you want to group up, and route them all to one single mixer channel, so then you can apply fx or whatever to all of the synths/basses, and even control the "master volume" of them all, all at once.

[Icetickle]

Any tutorials/readings about what bus processing and parallel processing is and how to use em? Because I like making more than 1 bass for the drop...

Just Youtube it. There are more than enough tuts on both. Essentially, parallel processing is basically just splitting a signal in to two mixer channels, leaving one channel completely dry (other than necessary eqing and possible compression), and doing whatever you want with the second channel. Then, bussing, is if you were to take both of those channels, and any other channels that you want to group up, and route them all to one single mixer channel, so then you can apply fx or whatever to all of the synths/basses, and even control the "master volume" of them all, all at once.

Thanks! Got my basses right finally. I applied one compressor for all of them on Send B. (buss processing right?)