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Hi all.

I clearly remember Burial being asked about his use of rain and other rustle sounds: "To hide the lameness of my tunes". Personally I think that's one of the things that make Burial's tunes unique and awesome.

Sometimes when I make a tune, it sometimes sounds too "clear", too "fake" in some way. I'm not sure if you have the same problem, but sometimes it gives so much colors to a tune if you add echoes and delayed sounds (which I am trying to), but adding some kind of indefinable rustle and crackling sounds.

Any plug ins or tips ? I use Logic.

drop the bit rate down to 11 or 12 bits (not bitcrush!) for authentic crunch and hiss.

Have a fuck about with vocal samples, drum breaks, machine noises. something i do quite a lot is use the dr.rex in reason - bring in various loops then fuck about with the pitch and panning of each hit. once youve got something you think is pretty cool high pass it to make it sit in the mix a bit more subtley (or low pass depending on what kinda sound your trying to achieve). something like a winston churchill speech can very quickly turn into an ant walking on a bed of broken stones with the right tweaks.

i was actually thinking about this the other day; you spend years trying to make your tunes sound clean and crisp and heavy, with no hiss, then when you crack that you spend years trying to make them sound crackly and rough again

There's a difference between making it on purpose and no ability to do better

Both can result in a nice and a bad sounding tune

Run some noise through a few slow lfos, some gating, phaser, delay and a bitcrusher.

Or just record some of that wonderful detuned radio sounds you can get on those old manual knob tuning analogue radios.

Get some crackling vinyl samples, or sample loads of rocks tumbling on top of each other, but then slow it right down and add some reverb or something.

sample a record before the music starts...

Dropping the bitrate works well too. I agree with fox, 11 or 12 is perfect for that warm fuzz. I use Logic's bitcrusher, but there are probably loads of plugins out there.

Bitcrusher works great as an alternative to a standard compressor too. I use it as a brick wall limiter of sorts. It's better for overdriving individual sounds though as opposed to your entire drums bus.

timestretch a small sample into a long one, mess with types, process.

james fox wrote:i was actually thinking about this the other day; you spend years trying to make your tunes sound clean and crisp and heavy, with no hiss, then when you crack that you spend years trying to make them sound crackly and rough again

so true

Abs wrote:Get some crackling vinyl

no samples needed

just old records

district wrote:get some fx samples like rain or fire crackling, even using plugins live vinyl noise and the zotope trash plugins and exporting them is good. i often use a bit of delay and reverb over these to thicken them up. it does sound really heavily like burial though so you have to be careful, the track lost cause in my myspace player has all this....

Nice stuff man! Just listened through all of your cuts twice!

lo pass and bitcrush. actually, bitcrush first, and then lo pass to get rid of the fizziness.

Thanks for all your answers.

Run some noise through a few slow lfos, some gating, phaser, delay and a bitcrusher.

Can you elaborate some more please?

Run some noise through some detuned oscillators, fuck around with all the lfos, filter it, process it with whatever you feel like. Experiment.

Or just bitcrush something to within an inch of it's life.

I have found the secret to the Burial sound, and am currently finishing a tune I did purely for the fun of it / in homage to one of my most favourite musicians. The tune will be mixed this weekend and hopefully posted by Monday. I think you guys will get a kick out of it, especially Azair.

Here are a few suggestions:

-Record from movies. I know this seems obvious, but I'm not talking dialogue snipets--record people walking, opening doors, keys jingling, people leaning on stuff, clothes rustling, etc... even the "hum" of a person standing in an empty room--its the tiny noises, normalized to 0--little stuff, like a grunt at the begining of somebodys sentence, or a tiny exhale, its amazing how many sounds they put in movies. Plainly put: this is what Burial did, and if you're trying to sound like this, then use the same tools. Doing something else (like using fresh sounds from an 808 kit) and trying to re-engineer it to "sound dirty" is just not going to work.

-Don't clean it up. So you've got the sample: its somebody unlocking handcuffs. You're temped to zoom into the waveform to fade the ends of the sample. Don't. Leave the clicks and pops. Let the atmostpherics / background noise suddenly end right where you stopped pressing record. Leave it that way. By the time you add lo-pass, delay and reverb, etc, it will sound like Burial.

-Don't use subbass. I noticed that Burial did exactly what I used to do in the early 2000s (which is around the same time he originally did those songs so it makes sense) on my Roland keyboard which didn't allow me to go very low. I also didn't know anything about sub bass: He uses low end strings C2/C3 lowest, mostly (unless its a sample) note E. Basically just go as low on a normal keyboard as you can while still hearing sound, and thats your low end. Dont use MIDI and slide the notes lower. Low pass that and turn it up to muddy the mix. His bass his not particularly deep, and what is there was obviously added at mastering.

-Don't quantize anything. Very important. With my beat I had no choice with the kicks because I don't know how to turn off Snap to Grid in Logic--but everything else--strings, choir, sound effects, etc leave all that exactly as you play it. Off centre and wrong. Let it bellow out naturally. Use long releases, and slow attacks. Lots of delay.

-Low pass everything. And I mean everything. LP the kick by itself at various points in the song, leaving the hats and Sound FXs. However once that is done, go over the whole song with a LP at intros, breakdowns, etc... Also add a denoiser to the whole mix. Not very much, just slightly muffled, barely noticeable. Leave strings/synths/echos normal when you do this

Note:
I am in no way condoning not developing ones own style--nor trying to actually be Burial. But, you know, purely for kicks and a creative challenge--you get to do something different, produce in an unconventional way, and... well... its just FUN!

there is a plugin by TCWorks called destructor (I think) that looks like a simon game from the 80's

it works well for crackle hiss & pop

I have found the secret to the Burial sound, and am currently finishing a tune I did purely for the fun of it / in homage to one of my most favourite musicians. The tune will be mixed this weekend and hopefully posted by Monday. I think you guys will get a kick out of it, especially Azair.

Interesting, I'm looking forward to listen to it. Also thanks for the long and detailed post, Ketamine, I appreciate that.

I'll try to experiment a little bit here this weekend.

Azair wrote:

I have found the secret to the Burial sound, and am currently finishing a tune I did purely for the fun of it / in homage to one of my most favourite musicians. The tune will be mixed this weekend and hopefully posted by Monday. I think you guys will get a kick out of it, especially Azair.

Interesting, I'm looking forward to listen to it. Also thanks for the long and detailed post, Ketamine, I appreciate that.

I'll try to experiment a little bit here this weekend.

Here's my Burial tune.

-Lots of crackling and popping.
-Sampled everything but the drums from movies.
-Played the strings.
-No vocals, but I'm tired of working on it and want to move on. LOL

http://www.zshare.net/audio/54977101c1980d3e/