Bass sounds can be tricky – but they can also be very simple. Many times you simply need something solid sounding to fill up the low end of a track without getting in the way of other parts of the song. The trick to good sounding bass is often striking the right balance between the […]
SYNTHETIC PERCUSSION
Another quick and easy thing to do with The Best Preset Ever is to make synthetic percussion. Start out by making the volume envelope of oscillator A fast and percussive: You’ll probably want to crank up Operator’s volume control at this point (it’s in the lower right hand corner). Now, get oscillator B into the […]
GRAIN DELAY: STEREO-IZER
Ah Grain Delay, how many times will I return to you this year? A lot, I’m guessing. One of the tricks to making a compelling mix is to fully utilize the stereo field. Sometimes you want to impart width to a sound – simply make it sound as if it’s coming from the sides of […]
KICK THAT SNARE
Alright. In the name of silly sound design experiments, today I’ll make a snare drum out of the same kick sample I started with a couple of days ago. I’m not saying that you’ll necessarily want to do this in real life – just showing how flexible every bit of sound in your sample library […]
KICK THE MIDS
Yesterday we took a look at filtering and layering to transform a kick drum sample. Today we’ll fill in the midrange a bit and look at a couple of other pieces of technique. I’ve duplicated the chain again, so now the Rack looks like this: The purpose of this chain is to add midrange punch […]
KICK THAT KICK
Thanks to everyone who joined up on the Hobotech Facebook page yesterday! If you haven’t done that yet, there’s now a widget in the right column of this site that will makes it one click away. If you’re a fan of these tips, please take two seconds and join up. When we get to 1000 […]
COLLECT FILES ON EXPORT
OK, so now that I’ve discussed the concept behind my Sounds Project, I’ll take you through some of the critical steps to get it set up right. First, create a Project folder. Right-click in one of the file browsers, and you’ll see the Create Project command to get things started. Next, create a few basic […]
THE SOUNDS PROJECT
Since I spent the last couple of days talking about creating a hand-claps Instrument Rack, I thought I’d tell you a little bit about how I go about saving this sort of instrument as a preset. You may recall that I recently spent some time talking about effect presets and how I store them in […]
FREQUENCY SHIFTER: SUBTLE MODULATOR
If you’ve played with the Frequency Shifter at all, you’ve probably gotten the impression that it’s one of the more aggressive sound mangling devices that comes with Live. Well, that’s true. However, I’ve recently become a fan of using it like a chorus to produce stereo modulation effects. Try setting it up something like this: […]
OK FINE, DON’T USE THE MOUSE
In theory, the easiest way to remote control the parameters of an instrument or effect device is to set up a MIDI controller as a Control Surface and take advantage of Instant Mapping. (see Get MIDI Set Up Right for more on setting up control surfaces). In particular, I’m referring to controllers that have a […]
