SLOPPIER CLAPS

So, once I start messing around with intentionally making things sloppy or uneven I find that it’s something I can play around with forever and keep discovering things. Here are a couple of other tricks to keep things loose in the clap track.

A little bit of random panning in a few of the clap layers really helps because the more panned a sound is, the more it tends to stick out, so this creates an additional shifting of the balance from clap to clap.

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As a finishing touch, you can triple the size of your clapping section and make it fuller sounding by getting a Filter Delay into the mix. Set it up something like this:

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The essential parts of this setup are:

  • All delays are in Time mode, set to values under 100ms, each 20ms apart.
  • Feedback is set to 0% (or very low) to avoid obvious delay artifacts.
  • All volumes are set to 0dB so the dry and delayed signals are the same volume

Feel free to experiment with the filter shapes, although I found that leaving them in their default positions worked just fine. Try turning them off and you’ll probably find that the whole thing gets a bit too bright and sounds less realistic…but of course your mileage may vary depending on what you’re doing…