Why Use Varispeed?

Varispeed isn’t the sort of tool you’ll need to use every day, but it’s the sort of tool that you like to know is available to you. Every now and then you’re halfway through a project when you decide that the tempo just isn’t right and the song should be slower or faster. Varispeed allows you to determine which tempo suits the song better, quickly and easily.

Alternatively, you may be having trouble recording a difficult part in the song. While Varispeed may not be your first port of call, after struggling with the part for too long it’s convenient to be able to slow the whole project down, record your part, and snap it back to normal speed afterwards. Your new part will be in time with everything else.

If you feel like a cheater recording the part slower, at least you can practice at a slower tempo before working your way back up.

And, for maximum fun, Varispeed can be used as an effect as well.

Step 1

Varispeed isn’t instantly available from the transport bar on a default installation of Logic Pro 9. If you right click anywhere on the transport bar you’ll get a menu option that says “Customize Transport Bar…” — click this.

This is what you’ll see:

Tick the box that says Varispeed in the second column, and then click OK.

Step 2

You should now see this button among the group of buttons on the right hand side of your transport bar:

If you click this button, Varispeed is enabled, and you’ll see a section of the transport bar’s information panel go orange.

Step 3

Your project still sounds the same at this point. Varispeed is on, but the change in speed hasn’t been specified yet.

Before we start tempo-shifting, let’s listen to the original piece. I didn’t want to record a bunch of music for this tutorial so I’ve just arranged a little tune from stock loops. It’s a bit busy because I wanted to demonstrate how well Varispeed tempo-shifts multiple audio and MIDI tracks all at the same time.

Download audio file (Original.mp3)

Go back to the orange panel on the information bar. If you drag the bottom section with the numbers in it up or down, you’ll change the tempo. The default view measures the change in percentage, and that change can be between -50% and +100%.

I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with how well Logic retains the tune’s cohesion at the most extreme ends of the spectrum. Here are the -50% and +100% versions, respectively:

Download audio file (Minus50.mp3)
Download audio file (Plus100.mp3)

Step 4

That’s cool, but modifying the tempo by percentages doesn’t quite give us control that’s fine tuned enough for a real song. We need to be able to modify the number of beats per minute directly.

In the top half of the orange section of the transport bar’s information area, there’s usually text such as “Speed Only”. Click and hold here to bring up a menu, and select “Resulting Tempo”. The percentage is gone, and now you can set a specific tempo, which gives you much less comedic and more useful results.

Here’s our song at 130 BPM, up from a base of 120 BPM:

Download audio file (130BPM.mp3)

Step 5

I mentioned that Varispeed could be used as an effect. Most features that allow you to speed up or slow down entire songs try to retain the original pitch of the track, which is what makes using Varispeed to record difficult parts possible.

But Logic gives you the option to change the tempo and the pitch in parallel. If you lower the tempo, you lower the pitch. If you increase the tempo, you increase the pitch.

This allows you to crank the tempo and create one of those silly chipmunk songs that I always see in American movies or create a dark, warped effect by bringing the tempo and pitch down low.

Here’s an example of each, at 66 BPM and 178 BPM respectively:

Download audio file (Pitch66BPM.mp3)
Download audio file (Pitch178BPM.mp3)

To do this, hold down on the top row of the Varispeed information section on the transport bar. This brings up the menu again. Now, switch from “Speed Only” to “Varispeed (Speed and Pitch)”.

At this point you can change the tempo or speed change percentage and laugh at the results.

This track has been submitted for your friendly, constructive criticism. They have put their track (and their heart and soul) in your hands to learn and get useful feedback.

• Do you enjoy the song or track itself? Does it have potential?
• Can the arrangement be improved?
• How did you find the mix? What would you do differently?
• What do you enjoy about the rhythm track? What can be done to improve it?
• Is the choice of instruments relevant and effective for the style/song?
• Are the lyrics (if any) effective? Does the style, arrangement and genre of the song suit them?
• Can you suggest any specific techniques that might improve the track?
• Do you have any other constructive feedback?

Kisapada by Milica Paranosic

Milica describes the track: “Three vocal tracks and some sound FX. A simple track. A Serbian folk tune.”

Author’s website: www.milicaparanosic.com

Download audio file (kisapada.mp3)

Terms of Use: You can only stream this song from the audiotuts website. No downloading unless you contact me personally.

Have a listen to the track and offer your constructive criticism for this Workshop in the comments section.

Submit Your Tracks for Workshopping

Need constructive criticism on your own tracks? Submit them using this form.

Music Education Sites

1. Audiotuts+

As you’re reading this article, Audiotuts+ needs no introduction. Several commenters mentioned Audiotuts+ – thanks for the support!

2. Musictheory.net

This is a great Flash site with many resources to help you learn music theory. “Welcome to Ricci Adams’ Musictheory.net. To begin your journey into the realm of music, please select a lesson, trainer, or utility from the lists below.”

The site content is split up as follows:

• Lessons, including topics that cover notation, chords and scales
• Trainers, that teach you notes, keys, intervals, triads, keyboard, guitar and brass. There are also “ear trainers” that teach you to hear intervals, scales and chords.
• Utilities, including a chord calculator, staff paper generator and matrix generator.

Michael comments: “I have found http://www.musictheory.net very helpful. I am working my way through a Bachelor of Education with a major in music, and the aural training apps on the website are very useful for helping to train my ear, something that I’ve never worked on before now.”

3. Scalerator

This is a site that helps you with scales and chords. “Generates scale charts and tablature. Choose the scale you would like to learn from the drop-down boxes below, then click the button marked ‘Scalerate.’”

The charts are guitar-based, and there are options for various alternate tunings and other stringed instruments. It helps guitarists visualize what they are doing.

4. Scale Finder

A website that helps you learn musical scales and chords.

5. Sonic Academy

Subtitled “Learn music technology”, this site is all about learning audio. The site contains video tutorials, industry news, and a great forum.

6. Serious Sounds.net

Tutorials and information on MIDI sequencing, arrangement, sample use, soundfonts, using DAWs and VST/VSTis. “Providing Music Producers with Tutorials, Help & Advice on Music Production.”

7. Nick’s Tutorials

Joe comments: “Great Ableton/sound design videos.”

“My goal with this site is to provide high quality video tutorials to professionals and hobbyists alike. In the videos, I cover various topics such as sound design and production workflow. The product list is always growing as I complete new projects.”

8. Production Advice

A great site by Ian Shepherd. Here is a quote from his About page:

When I’m recording, mixing or mastering, I have only one goal in mind:

I want people’s jaws to drop.

I want them to look at me, thunderstruck, and say – “This sounds incredible !”

Or maybe even better, I’ll be chatting casually to someone and something I’ve worked on will be mentioned, and they’ll say – “wow, I love the way that sounds, it’s one of my favourite albums ever”.

My guess is that if you’re reading this, you feel the same way.

If so, then this is the site for you – because I want to help you make people’s jaws drop. I’m lucky enough that this has happened to me numerous times in my career, and I know I can help you achieve it, too.

9. Music Software Training.com

“Welcome to MusicSoftwareTraining.com and welcome to what many consider to be the most in depth and easy to follow Ableton Live tutorial Videos available ANYWHERE! My Goal is that you are able to come here as a beginner or as a professional and still take away a wealth of valuable information that will set your musical creations in motion.”

10. Key of Grey

“As the technical barriers of creating music are lowered, what was once only the domain of technical wizards has become accessible to everyone, everywhere, at anytime. With the abundance of new computer software that makes music easy and fun to create, a whole new group of enthusiasts is able to do in minutes what would have taken an expert days to do only a few years ago. “Key of Grey” is a resource for new songwriters and producers who want to learn how to produce a quality product with a minimum of technical jargon.”

11. Youtube

And don’t forget there are a lot of video tutorials available on Youtube. Many tutorials from other sites also find their way here. Just search!

Online Magazines and Blogs

12. Sound on Sound

Calling themselves “The Worlds’ Best Music Recording Magazine”, the site is full of useful articles and reviews. “Welcome to SOUND ON SOUND, the world’s premier music recording technology magazine. Based in Cambridge, England and independently-owned, we’ve been around since 1985. This web site houses our continually-expanding archive of highly informative articles (from January 1994) that chart the impact of technology on the music production and recording processes.”

13. Musicradar.com

Musicradar confidently calls itself “The No. 1 website for musicians.” It has sections for guitar, tech and drums. They have a forum, podcast and tuition section.

Their About page describes the site: “Created by musicians for musicians, MusicRadar.com is the number one website for guitarists, drummers and producers. Check out the latest gear updates and artist news. Read expert reviews on the best new kit. Play along with our expert video lessons or try our handy tips and projects. Add on our blogs, podcasts, competitions and a vibrant forum and MusicRadar.com has everything the modern musician could want!”

14. Create Digital Music

A site with lots of great articles and reviews on everything audio.

15. Innotune.net

“It’s quite simple. Electronic music needs more juice. More stories. More entertainment. More of that viking touch. That’s what we’ll bring you. We’ve got a team of well known dj’s and producers as well as some you won’t be able to miss out on in the future. And we’re all on a mission: Bringing you the best up to date electronic music, the best stories from the industry and breaking news.”

16. Beatportal

“Beatportal aims to be the world’s best electronic music blog and resource. The blog offers up-to-the-minute news about electronic music, informed music recommendations, DJ technology news, remix competitions with top artists and labels, and live blogging coverage from the most important artist tours and industry events. Beatportal’s Beatwiki – an index of 72,000+ artists and 8000+ record labels – is the biggest publicly editable database for electronic music available online. Beatportal is powered by the recognized leader in electronic music downloads, Beatport.com.”

17. Remix

“Remix educates DJs, engineers, producers, and performers of electronic music about the latest applications and new products specific to the electronic and urban music markets. Remix is the premier consumer magazine in North America dedicated 100 percent to the tools, techniques, and production syles of electronic and urban artists.

“Remix focuses on recording and live-performance gear, electronic musical instruments and music-production hardware and software for the electronic and urban music markets. Remix also features comprehensive product news and reviews about music-production and live-performance gear as it hits the market.

“Remix is the ultimate magazine devoted to keeping readers up-to-date on producing groundbreaking music: everything from house to hip-hop, trance to techno, experimental to electronica, drum ’n’ bass to downtempo and all other underground sounds that evade categorization”

18. Electronic Musician

“Electronic Musician is the #1 magazine in the U.S. for musicians who record and produce music in a home or personal studio environment. Its editorial focuses on music-production technology and techniques for musicians. It includes coverage of recording and live-performance equipment, electronic musical instruments, and music production hardware and software. EM provides comprehensive product news and reviews on the latest equipment and services.”

19. Wire to the Ear

“The popular pro-audio weblog with daily articles on creating music with computers, sequencers, plug-ins, synthesizers, microphones and more. On going discussions about song writing, the music business, promotion, live performances, publishing, royalties and great music recommendations.”

20. Home Studio Corner

“Tips, tricks and advice for home recording studio owners.”

21. The Music of Sound

An audio blog by Tim Prebble. “Tim Prebble is a film sound designer & supervising sound editor based in Miramar, Wellington, New Zealand. While most of his waking hours are spent working on film soundtracks other interests include making ambient/alaetorical music, collecting records, playing double bass, making electronic dubwise beats, planting sunflowers & wishing he was on holiday in Japan.”

22. New Music Strategies

A blog about independent music business.

23. Steve Lawson.net

Blog and tutorials by a solo bass player.

24. Audio Geek Zine

Joe comments: “Great tips and gear talk.”

25. Musformation

“Daily musicians’ news tips, gear, business and gossip.”

26. Tom Cosm

Blog of Tom Cosm, who gives all of his music away for free. The site includes video tutorials, and Ableton Live packs.

27. You Produce

Interesting magazine about music production.

28. Gear Junkies

This is another great forum and website about audio gear. “Gearjunkies is a website dedicated to Gear enthusiasts, people who love to play with gear for electronic music production and DJ-ing. The idea for Gearjunkies was born in 2002 by a group of three gear enthusiasts, and in 2003 we went online. Ever since we are working on the website to create a humongous online information archive for everybody to use and to share.”

Forums

29. Gearslutz.com

Gearslutz is probably the most helpful forum you’ll find on audio gear. If you have a question about some gear, it’s probably already been answered and discussed there. If not, ask.

30. Harmony Central

“The #1 Online Community for Musicians.” A strong point is its detailed gear reviews by users.

31. Recording Review

Jon T comments: “Great very friendly and fun forum.”

32. The Womb Forums

Jon T comments: “Home of the Mixerman Radio Show. Tons to learn on the forum.”

Resource Sites

33. KVR Audio

This site contains lots of useful resources, including plug-ins.

34. The Covert Operators

The site includes lots of free downloads for music production.

35. Future Music

Axl comments: “Soft synths, gear and more.”

Keyboard Sites

36. Keyboard Magazine

Great magazine with articles and tutorials for keyboard players.

Synth Sites

37. Matrix Synth

“Everything synth.” Ineresting synth site.

38. Muff’s Modules & More

Synth forum. “Cats and modular synths, but mostly cats.”

39. Analog Suicide

“Analog synths and music from the world of Tara Busch.”

Guitar Sites

40. I Heart Guitar

This is a blog dedicated to guitars, and contains interviews, articles, gear reviews, music reviews, and lessons.

The site is put together by Peter Hodgson. “I’m a guitarist and journalist from Melbourne, Australia. I contribute to magazines including Mixdown, Australian Guitar and Australian Musician Magazine.”

41. Guitar Noize

This is the first website I’ve found to have a feature article on guitar toilet seats. Put together by Audiotuts reader Jon, it contains everything you ever wanted to know about guitars (and some things you didn’t). The site’s byline is “Guitar news from the furthest corners of the interweb.”

Sites for Listening to Music

42. Grooveshark

This is a site where you can search for and play music in high quality, promote your band, and upload your music.

“Grooveshark is a revolutionary music community that rewards users for sharing their music. Grooveshark was founded by three University of Florida students hell-bent on changing the music industry, and the world, forever. Grooveshark’s goal is to compensate everyone in the value chain – from users to rights’ holders. Let us know if you are interested in joining Grooveshark.”

43. Soundcloud

A site where you can listen to music for free, and share yours with others. “As you might expect, over the years we’ve grown tired of getting emails with YouSentIt links or FTP log-ins just to be able to check out our friends latest soon-to-be released tracks. Not to mention how annoying it is to try and email a reply with some comprehensible feedback. Music is just kind of tricky to deal with over email. So, we thought we’d change that. SoundCloud is our way of doing it.”

44. Alonetone

“alonetone gives musicians a home for their music
unlimited distribution, sharing tools & warm fuzzies”

Audiotuts reader Sudara comments: “Free of advertising clutter & corporate stank – just a bunch of musicians putting their stuff up.”

45. Flowmi.com (Spanish)

Commenter Raymi describes the site like this: “I normally listen to http://www.flowmi.com, an Argentinian site that has a player called Flowcast which displays all kinds of music and remixes I love. They also have articles for design fashion and new albums that come out on the market.”

Music Stores

We’ll cover places to buy your music online in more detail in a future article. But here are a few sites mentioned in the comments to our Open Mic.

46. Beatport.com

Beatport is an online music store with a focus on dance. The site was a little slow to load, but seems very functional, and has a lot of tracks available.

“Beatport is the recognized leader in electronic dance music downloads for DJs and club music enthusiasts. Download high quality MP3s and WAV file formats. Weekly top ten DJ Charts. Buy from 600k+ tracks of House, Techno, Electro, Trance, Drum & Bass, Minimal, Dubstep and ten other dance music genres. Ten free digital downloads to get you started.”

47. Podcomplex

Podcomplex are a music store, but not just a music store. “Podcomplex produces and distributes independent, high-quality, original music, video and multimedia.” They also have a blog with guides for using DAWs and producing music on a PC.

What you might not realize though is that it’s a surprisingly easy effect to achieve. All you need is a source track and an Auto-tune plug in (or an Auto-tune clone, in this case we’ll use Logic Studio’s built in Pitch Correction).

First I’ll explain the parts of Pitch Correction that we’re going to use. Next I’ll walk through two different examples of how to put the effect to use. In this tutorial I’ll use the term Pitch Correction to mean the same thing as Auto-tune.

Pitch Correction

Pitch correction is mainly described as a way to “correct intonation”. If a singer is a little off pitch it can correct this error and make the performance sound better. But the effect can warp the sound of the audio, so for it to go unnoticed it needs to be applied subtly. Eventually someone figured out that the warped sound can actually be pretty cool, and by applying pitch correction heavily you can get some interesting effects. At last, gone are the days when you actually have to be able to sing to be a singer!

When you first instantiate Pitch Correction on an audio track you see the following window:

The only parameters we’re going to work with in this tutorial are Response and the individual pitch keyboard. What we’re essentially going to do is choose which pitches are allowed to pass through (using the keyboard) and then decide how much of the effect to apply (using the Response parameter). The Range on the left side we’ll generally leave on “normal”, unless you happen to be working with a particularly low pitched source.

The keyboard allows you to choose which pitches the source sound will be tuned to. If you have every note selected (which is the default setting), then the plugin will determine which pitch the incoming signal is closest to and adjust to it accordingly. Sometimes if you’re original signal is especially “pitchy”, the plugin can misinterpret the intended pitch. (For example if you sing a C but it is so flat the plugin thinks you meant B, it will “correct” the pitch to B).

Therefore it’s generally a good idea to only allow the pitches you want to be heard. If you’re original signal only uses Cs, Ds and Gs, then only highlight those three pitches.

The Root and Scale settings allow you to set an entire group of notes with just a few clicks, rather than have to go through and individually select every note that we want to pass through. In this case “Root” is the key you’re working in, so in C major your root is C. Scale is obviously the scale. In almost all cases you’ll want Major Scale or Natural Min Scale, but you have plenty of options available. It can be fun to click through the different choices to see what kind of result you get.

The Response parameter allows us to determine just how much of the effect we want applied. This is determined in milliseconds. The less obvious you want the effect to be, the longer it should take for it to apply which means a higher response setting. For our purposes, since we’re going for a very affected sound, we’re going to set the Response time all the way to 0ms. That way the pitch correction will be applied immediately, giving us the robotic effect we’re looking for.

For Effect

Now that we’ve seen the basic parameters let’s see how they can be applied. For our first example I want to create a downtempo electronica track. I want to use a pitch corrected vocal not as a lead singer, but more like just another sound in the overall texture of the groove. I’ve chosen the following samples from the Deep India library as my base vocal sounds:

Download audio file (1a_DI_Dry1.mp3)
Download audio file (1b_DI_Dry2.mp3)
Download audio file (1c_DI_Dry3.mp3)

The first thing we’ll do is apply Pitch Correction, so I’ll instantiate the Pitch Correction plugin on the audio track. The default setting is a chromatic scale with a Response time of 122ms. As I mentioned earlier, we need the effect to be applied immediately to give us the specific “vocoded” sound we want. I’ll set the Response to 0ms, which gives us the following effect:

Download audio file (2a_DI_Pitch1.mp3)
Download audio file (2b_DI_Pitch2.mp3)
Download audio file (2c_DI_Pitch3.mp3)

I don’t really hear much of the effect, mostly because every pitch from the chromatic scale is being allowed through. Let’s bring them all in towards a cohesive idea by limiting the pitches. In this case I’ll limit them significantly to only 5 notes, a D minor pentatonic scale.

Now listen to how the 0ms Response time and restricted pitch makes the samples sound like they actually belong together:

Download audio file (3a_DI_Pent1.mp3)
Download audio file (3b_DI_Pent2.mp3)
Download audio file (3c_DI_Pent3.mp3)

The Pitch Correction is now where I want to, so I’m going to color up the sound a little. I’ve chosen a Guitar Rig preset called Phase Wurli (Believe me, there was no science behind this decision. I chose Guitar Rig because I figured it would give me a wide range of interesting choices, and then I clicked through presets until I found something I liked). Here are the vocal samples with the Guitar Rig effect applied:

Download audio file (4a_DI_FX1.mp3)
Download audio file (4b_DI_FX2.mp3)
Download audio file (4c_DI_FX3.mp3)

Lastly I’ll apply a touch of reverb and delay. I mentioned that I want this sound to be a part of the overall texture, so the reverb and delay will help make it feel a little more washed out and part of the background.

Download audio file (5a_DI_Dly1.mp3)
Download audio file (5b_DI_Dly2.mp3)
Download audio file (5c_DI_Dly3.mp3)

Here’s how the final result sounds in actual context:

Download audio file (6_DI_Example.mp3)

Lead Vocals

The next example will be more of an upbeat dance track where the vocals are actually the lead, rather than just a background effect. We’ll start with the source track, which is a lead vocal for the song’s chorus. For this song the chorus has actual pitches that need to be matched, so I am going to select those notes individually. Like before, we’re going to set the Response time to 0ms.

To save myself from public humiliation and to save your ears from bleeding, we’re going to skip listening to the “raw” vocal track. Just take my word for it that it needs tuning. Here’s the sample with pitch correction:

Download audio file (7_LIBT_Lead.mp3)

To keep to the conventions of the style I’m going to heavily compress the vocal. I’ll start by instantiating Logic Studio’s Compressor and choosing the “Opto Vocal 01″ preset. I want to take it further though so I’m going to set the Threshold even lower to -18 and the Ratio even higher to 5.4:1. I want it to be so squashed you can taste the compression.

Here’s the compressed lead vocal:

Download audio file (8_LIBT_Compressed.mp3)

Next I want to beef it up a bit more so I’m going to sing the same line an octave down. Again pitch corrected with the same pitches. and with the same compression applied.

Download audio file (9_LIBT_8vb.mp3)

And finally I’ll add a harmony above the top line.

Download audio file (10_LIBT_Harmony.mp3)

Now that there are so many parts going on I don’t feel like the lead is cutting through as well as it could. I’m going to add a Stereo Sample Delay plugin to the lead vocal. The Sample Delay will split the signal to the left and right sides, with one signal delayed just a little. This gives us a “doubling” effect which makes the original sound feel much thicker. I’ll set the right side to delay by 800ms. Too low a setting and you wont notice the thickening, but too high a setting and the split signals wont feel like they still go together.

Here’s how our full Pitch Corrected vocal ensemble now sounds:

Download audio file (11_LIBT_Vox.mp3)

And finally, here it is in a the context of a real song:

Download audio file (12_LIBT_Example.mp3)

One More Time…

Using Pitch Correction for warping vocals doesn’t give you the same level of control and nuance as a traditional vocoder, but it does allow you to get an interesting effect with just a few simple clicks. All you have to do is turn it on, pick out your notes, and viola: you sound just like any other electronica diva.

You don’t have to restrict your use of Pitch Correction to vocals, of course. What happens when you use it on a guitar solo? Or even a drum loop? These tools are here for fun and there are no rules. Experiment!

To learn more about what you get as part of Audio Plus, read this. To take a peek inside this tutorial, hit the jump!

“We don’t do a lot on live sound at Audiotuts+, but it’s an essential area of knowledge every musician should have. After all, no matter how many tracks you record in a studio or at home, nobody will know who you are until you get out there and play for someone. One thing that’s stopping more artists from taking this step is their fear of the big fancy mixer. It’s quite a bit different to the mixer in Logic and Pro Tools.

“Due its vast array of controls, many find it intimidating, but it’s really nothing to be scared of. Let’s take a look.”

Table of Contents

• The Strip Layout
• Setting Up Your Channel Strip

Existing Plus members can log-in and download. Not a Plus member? Join now.

Don’t forget to come back and leave a comment!

Each Tuesday we open our mic to readers and lurkers alike to come out of the woodwork and tell us your thoughts and opinion, your experiences and mistakes, what you love and what you hate. We want to hear from you, and here’s your chance.

Do you produce music daily, every few days, once a week, or less often?

Do you spend every available waking hour making and playing music, or just fit it in when you can? Is it a consuming passion that takes time away from everything else, or something you are interested in and spend time on when you can?

What do the people in your life think of the time you spend making music? Does it cause problems? Do they support you? Do they understand?

I’ll walk through a few examples of how gates can be used this way using various DAWs. Even if your software isn’t featured here don’t worry, these techniques are generic and can be translated to pretty much any gate plug-in.

Step 1 – The Basic Gate

As most of you are probably aware the primary use for a gate is to reduce noise and any unwanted signal that is present in your recordings. For example you may have a vocal take with rumble, computer noise or heavy breathing in between phrases. A gate is the perfect tool for removing these problem areas, often with zero impact on the parts you want to keep.

As a gate is really just an automated level control they use very little to no CPU to run. Most DAWs include one or even two gates as standard and these will often be bundled with a number of pre-sets to get you going.

Propellerheads Record’s built in noise gate

As the process of gating isn’t particularly exciting and is often seen as purely a problem solving exercise, the gate can be somewhat overlooked as a creative effect. Let’s run through a few examples of how we can think out side the box, from a simple alternative use for our gate to something a little more special.

Step 2 – Using Gates as Transient Designers

First up let’s take a look at using our gates in an almost traditional way, but instead of reducing we’ll try using it in a similar way to a transient designer. This basically means that we can actually remove parts of a drum track or loop. This can be really useful for cleaning up our overall sound.

Let’s start by choosing a loop with a fair bit of noise present. Here I have chosen a .rex file for speed but of course this technique can quite easily be applied to a drum group / buss and will work equally well on acoustic drums as it does on electronic sounds.

The untreated loop used

The untreated loop:

Download audio file (2.mp3)

As the loop has been loaded in Cubase 5 I have used the standard, bundled Steinberg Gate plug-in. I have started by initialising the plug-in so that no gating takes place and no signal can be heard, this is a good starting point and is often the best way to go when using dynamics processors in general.

The Cubase Gate

The next step is to bring the gates threshold control down until you can hear the peaks of the loop come through. In this case the first peak to show its head is the top of the kick and snare. Keep pushing the threshold until the majority of these major elements are playing but the other sounds are still gated.

The gates threshold being altered

Although we can filtered out many of the sounds in the loop, to make the remaining sounds a little more realistic we have to alter the release and hold times. When doing this try to mimic the actual release times of the drum sounds themselves. In doing this you may get some ‘bleed’ from the other sounds in the loop but this is to be expected and shouldn’t be too obvious in the mix.

The final gate settings

The gated loop:

Download audio file (2b.mp3)

When comparing the before and after you should hear a dramatic change in the loop and using this technique you can slightly clean up your drum parts or completely transform them depending on the intensity of your settings.

Step 3 – Creating Your Own Gated Reverbs

Most fully featured, modern reverb plug-ins will contain some kind of gated reverb effect and they can work really well on short percussive sounds or drums. Although these presets can work well you can gain much more control over this effect if you can create it using your own processors.

In this example I’ll use a single snare sound. You can hear that in it’s dry form it’s not particularly interesting and is maybe a little too dry. By adding a gated reverb we should be able to make the sound a lot more useable.

The original snare

The untreated snare:

Download audio file (3.mp3)

In this instance I have decided to load the sound up in Live 8 and because of this I am using Live’s bundled gate and reverb plug-ins. Again this technique can be achieved using pretty much any reverb and gate combo.

The first thing I did was to add a pretty standard reverb patch to the snare. The decay is pretty long and although the sound is nice as an effect it would be far to long to use throughout a mix and robs quite a lot of the direct power and snap of the untreated dry version.

Basic Ableton reverb patch

The snare with reverb:

Download audio file (3b.mp3)

So that we can achieve the effect and size of the reverb we need to add a gate to the end of the chain. With a super fast attack dialled in, you should be able to play with the threshold to allow the majority of the sound through. The reverb tail will be cut off and stop the sound from becoming to washed out.

The Ableton gate used

The final gated reverb effect:

Download audio file (3c.mp3)

At this point you’ll want to play with the reverb mix, gate release and gain reduction amount. This will allow you to match the reverb time to the snares release and also ensure there are no unwanted clicks and pops introduced by the gating. You can hear that the result is a lively, stereo snare which will really find its own place in the mix.

Step 4 – Rhythmical Gating and Gated Patterns

One of the most creative ways to use your gate plug-ins is to produce rhythmical patterns with them. As a lot of DAWs now feature native side chaining, you can now feed your gate with just about any signal you like. This allows you to use the gate as a sort of automated tremolo or pattern generator. Some really excellent results can be achieved with a little imagination.

Moving over to Logic 9.02, I have loaded up instrument and percussion loops. I have used the more fully featured of Logic’s two gates here as this will allow us a little more control over the finished sound.

Keyboard loop:

Download audio file (4.mp3)

Percussion loop:

Download audio file (4b.mp3)

Untreated basic mix:

Download audio file (4c.mp3)

The two loops used

The gate is placed on the instrument loop and the percussion loop is set to control the side chain circuit. This will allow us to use the peaks of the percussion pattern to activate the gating effect. Once this configuration is set up start to bring the threshold of the gate down until you hear some gating occur.

The sidechain routing

The mix with gating taking place:

Download audio file (4d.mp3)

Once the gating is taking place try sending the percussion to loop to ‘no output’ or a muted group. You should now hear the instrument loop with only the gated effect. This will allow you to make more exact adjustments to the gates settings. Of course you can always leave the percussion loop out of the mix and just use t as a trigger. if you prefer you can program your own trigger part using midi, this will allow a more personalised pattern to be produced.

The Logic noise gate plug-in

The gated loops in isolation:

Download audio file (4e.mp3)

Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals

About the book: Audio productions are made or broken by the quality of the recording engineer’s ears. The ability to properly discern sounds, identify subtle problems, and act accordingly to apply the necessary fix makes all the difference in the quality of the final tracks and master. The good news is that these crucial skills can be learned. The ability to instantly identify frequencies, hear hidden distortions, and instinctively reconcile conflicts in the EQ of instruments, audio elements, vocals and more are traits of those who have mastered the art of audio production. The best engineers have trained their ears to immediately recognize audio problems that the consumer and those new to recording arts would likely not hear, but that, if left unresolved, would result in an amateurish final product. For more than two decades, students of F. Alton Everest’s Critical Listening and Auditory Perception courses have rapidly developed these skills by using the intense lessons found in this book and on the CD. Unfortunately the books and CDs included with the course were usually too expensive for aspiring engineers to purchase and were often available only in colleges, universities, or school libraries. Now for the first time these indispensable training sessions are available with this release of Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals. Through hundreds of illustrations and an accompanying disc containing high-resolution MP3 files with nearly five hours of narration of the entire course, you can acquire the audio discernment skills of a seasoned recording engineer by studying this course at your own pace, in your own home.

About the author: The late F. Alton Everest (1909-2005) was the most respected audiologist in the professional recording industry. His revered works and courses produced more than twenty books and editions in his lifetime, including The Master Handbook of Acoustics, Audio Techniques for the Home and Studio, and How to Build a Small Budget Recording Studio from Scratch … With 12 Tested Designs. As the supervisor of UC San Diego’s Listening Section Laboratory during WWII, Everest conducted underwater sound research experiments for the war effort. For 25 years he produced science fi lms for the renowned Moody Institute of Science, followed by years teaching and working as a highly sought after audio consultant.

For the chance to win a hardback copy of “Critical Listening Skills for Audio Professionals” (pictured above) all you need to do is comment. Make sure to include your correct email address with your comment so that we can contact you. This giveaway is open worldwide, but make sure to get your comment in before midnight this Saturday, Pacific Eastern Standard Time.

If you miss out, and would still like a copy of the book, check it out at Amazon.com.

Please note: Envato staff and people who have written more than two tutorials/articles for a Tuts+ site are not eligible to enter.

I remember that my search was fraught with frustration because that kind of information is hard to find, particularly if you’re a self-taught player like myself. If you’ve got a teacher who will pass that knowledge to you in exchange for a few bucks, you’re in a lucky position. It took me more time than I care to admit to find out where to begin, and as with most others, that beginning was the pentatonic scale.

This tutorial will be relevant to players of all instruments; the principles of improvisation are universal. You’ll still need to put an effort into figuring out how to best improvise on each instrument you play, though — I am dismal at keyboard improvisation, and not because I don’t know how it works, but because I’ve never put much of an effort in outside the guitar.

While this advice will help any instrumentalist wanting to learn to improvise, it’s for those who’ve never done any improv before. It won’t help you improve — it’ll help you get started. So if you’re looking to improve the skills you already have, you might want to skip this tutorial.

Understanding Intervals

I’m going to assume a certain amount of knowledge in this tutorial: you know how to play your instrument, in terms of basic technique and the ability to try the instructions in this tutorial out, and that you have a basic understanding of intervals.

You can introduce yourself to intervals by making a detour to the AudioJungle blog:

• The Ingredients of Melody: Intervals by Adrian Try introduces you to the concept, and provides you with everything you need to know to grok what follows.
• Boot Camp for Your Ear: Detecting Intervals with Song Associations by yours truly is about training your ear so that you’re able to tell which intervals are being played when you hear them. This isn’t necessary to learn to improvise, but it will come in handy when you want to go on to more advanced improv such as call and response, and since it takes a long time to learn you should begin now.

Scales are often expressed in numbers from 1 to 7, and some of those will have a b in front of them to signify a minor or flattened interval. 2 is a major second, but b2 is a minor second. This provides musicians with a way of expressing a scale — a pattern of notes — irrespective of key, and is thus a handy tool for you to learn now and continue using after you’ve finished this tutorial.

Minor & Major Pentatonic Scales

A pentatonic scale is, as the name suggests, a five note scale. There are several varieties but here we’re just looking at the two most common: the major and minor pentatonic scales. Let’s check out which intervals make up these scales, and what that equates to in C.

Major Pentatonic Scale

• Scale: 1 2 3 5 6
• In C: C D E G A

Minor Pentatonic Scale

• Scale: 1 b3 4 5 b7
• In C: C Eb F G Bb

That’s straightforward enough for most of you to begin playing the scale now, although if you play guitar or bass guitar you should check out these tabs, since figuring out the right shapes for these scales on your own could take you a while:

• A Major Pentatonic Scale Tab
• A Minor Pentatonic Scale Tab

Learn the scales on your instrument until you can play them forwards and backwards easily.

It helps to hear them played sometimes, so here is each scale played on guitar. As scales are defined by the context they are in, the scale is played alone once, and then again with the root chord playing in the background.

Download audio file (MajorPentatonic.mp3)
Download audio file (MinorPentatonic.mp3)

Get GuitarToolkit

While I realize just because the iPhone is popular doesn’t mean everyone has one, I like to share when I find something really useful. I no longer have to carry around a tuner or a chord book because of a great little app called GuitarToolkit, and as you may have guessed, it provides you with a scale dictionary too. Great for helping you visualize and memorize the pentatonics (and many others).

It also has a metronome, which is great for you as you learn to improvise since a good guitarist has great rhythm, and good improvisation depends on the instrumentalist’s ability to capitalize on rhythmic opportunities.

This won’t help the non-guitarists among you, but scale shapes and tuning are problems you keyboard players won’t need to worry about.

For Guitarists: Extended Pentatonic Scales

The shapes provided earlier are quite limited, given that the notes in each scale appear repeatedly throughout the guitar. Take the time to break out of the basic shapes and figure out how to play the scale up and down the neck.

The shapes are awesome for helping you get started, and for helping you dive into a key you don’t normally improvise in, but if you find yourself wanted to quickly crawl up to the 17th fret and back down to the 5th by playing every note in the scale between those points you may find yourself out of luck if you only spend time on the basic patterns.

GuitarToolkit makes this easier as it will show you each scale on the entirety of the fretboard.

Enough Scales, Let’s Rock

Keep at the extended scales, but certainly don’t try and memorize them before you continue learning how to improvise.

At this stage you know the scales, and it’s time to start making music out of them. Most improvised lead segments are not totally improvised; whether the musician realizes it or not, the lead is often made up of many riffs they’re familiar with tied together with the notes in between, at least at the start. As the musician practices improvisation, they either begin to truly improvise on the spot, particularly with jazz-style improvisation that forces the musician to do so, or they rehash the same solo in different ways by overusing the same riffs.

Exploring a Riff

At this stage it’s important to be mindful of that potential plateau, and also accept that putting riffs together and then experiment with them is how you learn to improvise. Using one of the scales, come up with a few short phrases. I started with the minor pentatonic, so here’s a riff in A minor pentatonic you could try (excuse my attempt at ASCII tab):

E —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — 
B —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — 

G —  —  —  —  —  —  — 5 —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — -
D —  — 5 — 7 —  —  —  —  —  — 7 —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — 
A —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — 5 —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — -
E —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — 

It’s very basic, but it gives you enough to play with. First, learn the riff until you don’t have to look at the tab to play it. Then begin to experiment.

Do the following:

• At first, don’t change the notes themselves. Play with different rhythms. Make each one different as you repeat the riff, so it sounds like you’re improvising when the only thing that’s changing is the rhythm, not the notes themselves.
• Add fills. For instance, instead of starting the riff going straight from 5 to 7 (or C to D), hammer-on from 5 to 6 and then to 7 quickly (C – C# – D). Don’t emphasize the C# – you’re not adding a new note to the riff, you’re just using it to get from C to D.
• See how hammer-ons and pull-offs change the sound.
• See how bends change the sound.
• Finally, add or omit notes, or change existing notes to something else in the scale.

Creating New Riffs

Now that you’ve fully explored one riff, it’s your turn to come up with another short phrase and repeat the process. Fully explore these phrases until you feel you can do anything with them.

The next step is to connect them. Learn to move from one to the other while sounding musical. Add riffs in between or just use a single note, or just go from one to another directly. Master the transition.

At this point you need to continue coming up with riffs. At this stage, the riffs are smaller subsets of the scale that are helping you explore it bit by bit. Connect them, explore them on their own, and eventually you’ll become totally familiar with the scale as a whole and can start to move beyond reliance on the riffs.

Remember not to use the same pattern too much, and try to deliberately shake things up. If you find yourself only including adjacent strings in your riff, start skipping, and if you notice you’ve barely used certain notes in the shape, add them into your existing riffs or your next one.

Your First Solo

… will suck. Doesn’t matter how long you sit down and play with the scale without backing music first. It will take time, time and more time to learn to make up music on the spot that goes with certain rhythms and certain chord progressions.

But don’t let that discourage you. It’s more discouraging, I think, to expect that your first attempt with this newfound knowledge would sound any good.

What you need is to fire up your DAW or even a sequencer and create a drum track and a chord progression. It can be a guitar chord progression, a keyboard progression, or a choir singing chords if you really want. But those two elements are essential as they form the foundation of your solo, and they provide you with training tools — how to solo with the rhythm, and how to solo with the main melody of a song.

At this point, the next step is to practice a lot using the same kind of explore-and-connect technique you used to become really familiar with the scale. Your first attempts, once you’ve gotten a basic handle on the process, might sound something like this:

Download audio file (MinPentatonicBasicImprov.mp3)

If you can do that within a few days, you’re on the right track. Tune back in next time for more on basic improvisation.

This track has been submitted for your friendly, constructive criticism. They have put their track (and their heart and soul) in your hands to learn and get useful feedback.

• Do you enjoy the song or track itself? Does it have potential?
• Can the arrangement be improved?
• How did you find the mix? What would you do differently?
• What do you enjoy about the rhythm track? What can be done to improve it?
• Is the choice of instruments relevant and effective for the style/song?
• Are the lyrics (if any) effective? Does the style, arrangement and genre of the song suit them?
• Can you suggest any specific techniques that might improve the track?
• Do you have any other constructive feedback?

Guetta Who Mastered by BARKMATTER

BARKMATTER describes the track: “A simple song but something different from the typical dance/trance and pop communities.”

Download audio file (guettawhomastered.mp3)

Terms of Use: You can only stream this song from the audiotuts website. No downloading unless you contact me personally.

Have a listen to the track and offer your constructive criticism for this Workshop in the comments section.

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