Dubstepforum.com

Over the past couple of months, "From Fields" has became a major inspiration on me.
I would like to know how to achieve that dirty yet clean production technique he has nailed down.

Soundcloud

Soundcloud

Soundcloud

I don't know if he is just using a shit ton of Lo-Fi processing or what?
Any help will be appreciated.
Cheers

you dont!
learn how to produce your own sound

^ ignore curmee. Although developing your own sound comes in time, sometimes it's worth trying to imitate others. Just don't try to make it identical - you'll do nothing but get frustrated.

Yeah no don't get me wrong I'm not trying to copy him in his sense of style.
I'm just trying to get down the mixdown and master sound he seems to always have.
It's like really dirty, yet sounds perfect while listening in a pair of headphones on the way to the park.
Hope that makes sense. Cheers for your answer though

Are you talking about the vinyl esque-crackle layering over the actual track?
It's either low-fi recording, or he's just layering a constant pad loop of crackle,
also he doesn't have very harsh hi-ends so it doesn't so too bright, a hard thing to achieve unfortunately.
It's very much down to the art of eq'ing

curmee wrote:you dont!
learn how to produce your own sound

If trying to get a dirty production sound is copying someone else's sound then how is going for a sterile clean sound not?
As for this, a lot of it is in the sound design of his synths and EQ/effects. Something I like to do for higher sounds to get this feel is slightly low passed with a decent bit of resonance (depending on the original sound) or EQ and roll off towards the high end a bit, as people have said, to get a nice lo fi, warm feeling. Some vinyl crackle/tape hiss never hurts for this sort of thing either!

i think its always not prosessing a file,its original recording tecnigues what makes those
artist so unigue

Dublicious wrote:Are you talking about the vinyl esque-crackle layering over the actual track?
It's either low-fi recording, or he's just layering a constant pad loop of crackle,
also he doesn't have very harsh hi-ends so it doesn't so too bright, a hard thing to achieve unfortunately.
It's very much down to the art of eq'ing

When it comes to his crackle and vinyl sound, I can very much get close but, it's just his sound is very polished.
At times it sounds like he puts a low-pass filter on a return track and mixes to taste.
Though i'm not entirely sure.

drench in verb, low pass, eq out the highs and some of the lows post verb drenching
also tape effects and imperection vsts work wonders
http://www.delamancha.co.uk/unstable.htm
http://www.interruptor.ch/vst_overview.shtml wow and flutter

^thanx deadly! I've always had wow and flutter in my collection of VST's, but never got around to using it and understanding it.
Question though? Where would be the best place to put wow and flutter? In a return track or the master channel?

depends on what you want to have with the effect
play around

^cheers man

It sounds to me like he's using a lot of field recordings that may come from older/lower quality mics or tapes. Maybe he uses lots of tape compression too, like Flylo (who has a slightly similar sound). It sounds like he might use a few hardware effects. Try some very very slight bit-crushing too, I find that that really helps dirty up sounds when used right (ex. the hats in the song Iris in my sig). I agree with Deadly about the lowpassing, the warmer high frequencies might be a product of tape compression though. And yeah, tonnes of dark reverb.

WOW. I never heard of this dude. I actually don't like it that much. It's super boring to listen to. Maybe if I was on LSD or something the subleties would be more interesting. IDK, I agree w/ above when saying sounds like he uses field recordings

Try vinyl crackle, recordings of room ambience, electrical hum and machine drones low in the mix maybe a touch of reverb just expiriment

It sounds to me like the drums are super lo-fi with some sort of band pass filter on them and dirty reverb, but there are a couple of elements there which are really hi-res and clean - like the pads and the vocals. Also that really dirty lead synth sounds like it's been put through a guitar amp or amp sim (listening to 'Moments').

So basically if you get a contrast between really lo-fi on some sounds and really hi-fi on others, you should get close to that style of production. For the lo-fi vibe, also experiment with saturation and distortion plugins (Soundtoys decapitator is great for this).