https://instagram.com/p/7Pk35aC8vn/
A quick tip if you’re layering breakbeats: it’s often wise to decide between a “main” and a “layer” break and have the main break dominate in terms of transients. Use sidechain compression on the layer break so its transients duck according to those of the main break. This way the signal often stays clearer and doesn’t get messy.
First vinyl master
https://instagram.com/p/7C9pQLi8jT/
Proud to be holding in my hands the first vinyl I’ve mastered. After having treated a few hundred digital masters, I had the honor of handling this beauty released by Boston-based Zakim Recordings.
Tunes are dope! Celebrate the divine wax.
Espresso Addicts Anonymous EP
My new beat tape kinda thing, “Espresso Addicts Anonymous”, is out today via Redefinition Records. Redef’s been my favorite label for a while now.
These tracks are actually a few years old, so they’ve been “brewing” for a while. Most of them were made with a MPC 4000, but there’s a Maschine beat or two in there as well.
Get that brew and play it loud!
A point about mastering / loudness these days
I wanted to raise a point about loudness and mastering these days.
I was going thru some bigger label promos today and was struck by the same feeling I’ve got many times before: it’s too loud.
I know, I know – this is actually old news, and I’ve been happy to see a lot of artists and labels going for sound that’s way less crushed.
However, Continue reading A point about mastering / loudness these days
About high-pass filtering your songs
Some time ago I blogged about getting your sub bass right. Another thing worth mentioning relating to having a good sub is highpass-filtering the song – and being careful with it. Sometimes I see this done wrong in the premasters I receive for mastering, and thought writing about this might help producers to get the sub right. This mostly applies to “bass music” where the sub bass is lower than the kick and where we want to achieve the fat, full low end, but can definitely be used with other genres, too.
Why HP-filter your song? There’s two things.
1) To get rid of excess lows and rumble and to gain more headroom Continue reading About high-pass filtering your songs
A little sampler shootout
I wanted to do a little sampler shootout between Akai s950, Akai s3200XL, and E-MU Ultra E5000 to see how different they’d sound.
What I did was I sampled a break into them first at the original pitch. Then it was transposed by +7 semitones in Ableton Live (no warping) and transposed back by -7 in the sampler, and in the last version that was transposed by -12 in the sampler.
I didn’t want to go for full bandwidth in sampling Continue reading A little sampler shootout