Lessons

Lesson Info

Mocking Up Synth and Creating a New Hook

Here's what we're going tio way we have built up a by now we've we've pretty well hashed out a decent arrangement um I keep meeting this court hook um and you know what? I'm just going to delete it we don't think we need it and it's ok, we're just going to take that out um I feel like the weekend this the song is interesting enough now with with all the nuances with the baseline we've got we've had a pretty decent arrangement so yeah, what we're going to do now though, is it does feel like it needs a little bit more from the original song so and especially like right in here I'm going to play this little this little part where it just doesn't feel like it's doing enough right? So wait right up here in sixty five like it's a cool transition but it needs more it needs to do something more so I think that, uh I'm going to drop out the kick drum so we've got a little bit of a break here will be a little bit more of a break um I'm even actually continue the kick drum going up to that part b...

ut also once it stops and it just really needs to do to have somewhat somewhat of an impact so I want to dig into the some of the original sound the team with the projects into the stems and swat two tongue of arguments on twenty bpm stones and um um, since star sample there's this thing which you can't hear it when you click on it because a lot of silence and it what have you but I'll drag it and so you can see um, the sample something like this it's pretty much all of those way when it drops into it um, it should have a little bit of an impact closer to what we're looking for it does those two notes, but I mean, like, it doesn't really it's a it's not quite enough it's close, you know, it has that imp impact, but it just so what I was thinking when I when I entered this mix was that I would just kind of create a new hook based on this one particular thing, so, um what I will do is you see her, we will take this audio sample, we will train kate it down to just this right here on I'm going to make this piece of audio its own sample, so I'm gonna right click in the drop down menu for the sample and I'm going to choose make unique has sample and it will tell you it's not used anywhere else in this clip and say ok, because what it's going to do is make it the new sample this short so yes and cool I must say that back right back into the directory that it was in and uh now if I double click on the sample I have uh it's it's it's own sample I'm going to create a new instance of battery um right here to create a new instance of battery and I'm going to bring this sample into battery I could just drag it right out of here right into battery easy like that super simple now in battery I'm going to chop up the sample into its own individual parts it's really just two parts so it's going to be really easy I've got um the first note on the second so when you bring a sample in the battery thie actually let me skip back first thing I'm gonna give you a quick run down the battery just so you can get a general idea when I did I did say each each cell has its own parameters but didn't really talk about what a lot of these perimeters are, so in battery you have these tabs here you have your cell parameters, you're set up parameters you're mapping parameters wave loop modulation effects parameters and they're all uh they all could be used for each individual cell right um then the cell parameters you can choose which sample is being loaded in the cell if I click neck it'll just dropped down to the next sample in the directory that that sample is sitting in you know it's great for drums I'm not going to toy with that at the moment um the key range if I wanted to make this map to a keyboard and play the sample like it was on a piano or whatever I can take it so that it's not just on c one I can you know make it to a wider range and then it's playing over well, you know, maybe see want to see two on beacon play baseline with that sample or something um and then here's your tuning for the sample I can uh all right um and then the envelope which by default on in battery when you load up an instance of battery or if you put a sample in there the uh the envelopes the volume envelope is off so when you hit it it just plays through play each and sound and all the way to the end of the sample but I wanted to be on something and click this power button thing here on dh um and turn on the envelope there are also other settings there's uh, you kind of you're panning set rates on dh if you double click on anything it centers it back out to to the center or zero um you have different algorithms just like I showed you with the nfl studio for stretching and battery three you got just not the best time stretching don't really play around with it and battery for which I'm not using here today they actually has a better time stretching all the isms um and then you have a pitch on the lope, which is similar it's kind of similar to the volume envelope on do you could do a strange things to the pitch, which I'm not going to toy around with right now just right now I want the volume envelope to be on you have attack hold decay sustained and release right? I'm going to bring the attack all the way down to zero and bring the holdout and you'll see a visual representation of what's happening on this envelope, right? I'm gonna bring in all the way up close to the next sample and then I'm gonna bring sustained down all the way so the hold is the number of milliseconds the sample is held until you until the did the decay part of the on the lips kicks in and then the decay actually is how long it takes to fade out to where the sustain is right? So if this is sustained is zero the decay is how long it will take to fade down to zero if the sustain is that say mina's eight d be it'll be how long it takes to fades down to minus state tv and then the release is what it does when you let go the sample so I'm going to just make it chopped down to the next sample and then I'm going to copy the sample to the next cell and to do that you need to do is hold down control, click on the sample, drag it to the next cell and then let go of the click and now he's got the same sample onto cells now the first cell or the second, so I'm going to change the sample, start to the next sample, zoom in with this is zooming tool or whatever to get a closer look at it and make sure that my start is right at the beginning of that sample on now I've got and so what I'm hearing is something like, I don't make another copy of it that's what I'm kind of hearing happening right here is what I'd like tio tohave happened um and maybe what I'll do is I could play it in aa battery or I can just play the one extra note that isn't there, so I think that's what I'm gonna do, uh, copy of the sample create a pattern for the additional battery track I'll call this, uh extra right here, wait a little bit quiet and that's probably because by default battery is at minus six tv I'm just gonna bring the master volume of this track of this instrument although it to zero and ok that's cool um well we'll copy it so that it goes over for a little bit select the range and shift click drag copies nfl studio right? So when it drops into it wait look it's good I think that we're going to kind of thinking that hook up a little bit make it a little bit more rich um and doing this is infinite ways to do that I'm thinking like maybe just play a piano on top of it a layer of piano just sort of because right now it sounds kind of kind of samba lee one layer if I have put some piano on top of it then it will add another layer to it so uh to do that, I'm going to add another when I call this piano to create the pattern for it I'm gonna drop it right here and at an instance of contact another instance of contact and inside the uh and said the contact library there are all these pianos that come with it on dh all this grab an upright piano I mean doesn't I'm not really concerned over what, whether it's a new york concert grand or vienna concert planned it's I can't really I don't really know the difference so um just ah upright piano drag drag it in there and these piano instruments are very oh realistic sounding I swear I need to take piano lessons all right? Sure I've got this right I guess that's close enough right lester out sounds altogether without it it's a little bit more rich feels a little nicer I'm gonna copy those over as well maybe all had some basic bc bc or notes in the piano as well to kind of give it some some lower and but I'll turn the base year ones down a little bit so if I select these notes by holing well done control to select right and dragged to select the notes if I hold downshift and control at the same time I could add to my selection um if you hold down all ts and move the mouse wheel you can actually adjust the velocity of the notes so I'm just gonna turn them down just like that, okay? We're almost there um needs just a little little bit punch to to it as well. Um and ah, so one good way to add some punch tio stab me hook stabbing look like this this is put a kick drum over it so that has the very first attack houses you know, so um what I'm going to do is, um I'm just going toe inside my drums track I'm going to pull in a kick drum not a really heavy lake impactful kick drum kind of a really lame thud kind of a kick drum that you might not want to use that as a name kick drum in a song but something that's just like kind of simple and um so I'm going to go into my hips um my sound library got my drums here um I'll just take we're back to that scene directory here that guru drums there's a lot of different kick drums inside it um there's something acoustic yeah, simple. I can filter it down if it's tio two bright drag it over here and in the I'll put it in the same track is this piano things since they're sort of part of the same thing anyway, so this piano track will also have that kick drum that I want is part of the steps I'm gonna double click here so that actually inside the kick drum I mean inside that piano thing go to the track that has the kick drum and it on and on there's my kick drum it's basically like that so it does feel a little bit break I had a feeling that it was going to sound that way so it's also a little high so maybe I'll pitch it down a little bit so it just I just want thud that's all I'm really looking for so it's pretty good and then inside the um uh so I'm the effects tob he's got all these different effects you khun big crunch it saturated cue it I'm just going to click on the q and naturally it's going to be kind of a lower one and I'm not sure this is exactly how I did it in my original tune but I'm doing it here so um that's a good good turning sample down a little bit it doesn't need to be turned down that's fine um so let's listen to it in the context of the whole song you know wait all right that's cool all right on baby, I'll have it happened again at another point in the song so I've got my theme here it all together and it's a little group here I can select all that hold down shift and then drag it over and I've got a lake I can place it somewhere else um maybe um right well, listen to what happens right over here said this over here for a second e all right, listen to it from ninety seven so wait wait I think that it one last time as part of this sort of um kind of it seems like it's part of the brake or whatever right before it switches up right here at one thirteen let's, do it one last little bit right here. So, yeah, that sounds good. I mean, this did what it was intended purpose was for. So, um, I don't want to, overly, and indeed this song with, like, stabs and hooks and stuff. It's, nice and it's simplicity, you know, but I do feel like maybe we could. We could play with this sound just just a little bit more.