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Sound Design Techniques Part 1

Like I said, we're about to get into some crazy, so we're about to get into some ruckus since, um, who knows what? Flux, but again, we're going to get to some sound design is going to show us some of a lot of his different tips and tricks. Of course, he's, not in a good way, all this secrets, but some stuff that you can use to enhance your sounds on your own. So we need another segment for that come up with your own sounds. So so, yeah, today, uh, again, I'm flux. So today, what I'm going to do is we're going to dive into the matrix of machine a little bit, uh, I'm goingto first start off with a little bit of a demonstration of a track that that shows a little bit of everything all together, and then I'm going to break down some different ideas from that, so I'll just play this off. This is using we're just in machine stand alone, and the scenes are set up to let us run the entire songs so you can see the arrangement for this track right here. It's, you know, just a seven groups and di...

fferent patterns for each group on here, which building. What I'm gonna do here is, uh, I'm not gonna play the entire track, but I just want you to hear how some of the variations come in on. When this next piece comes off, you'll start hearing the same drum who's, getting a little while so you can hear how the drums were kind of glitch ng off of each other and doing some different things, and what I'm going to do now is show you not only the clinching aspect, but how I get the dirtiness inside of here and alec it the sounds tio essentially be what we want them to be for the individual track. Uh, let's, start off by going to the sound level, ok? And on on your drum hits what you could d'oh is he actually, I'm just going to bring up a new project and we're going to use factory sounds so let's get right to our library. This is something that anybody with machine could be able to do their self. Exactly. So I'm using very normal sounds let's do the central stage kit. Okay, so this is very typical regular acoustic drum sounds right? What we want to do is we want to make it sound a little bit more like vinyl, right on, we want to make it. You know, kind of just break up a little bit so when the group level what we can dio is we can actually you know what we'll do is we're going to make this really we're gonna do this the right way so in the zone as joe was talking about the re sampling of the vintage moves I'm going to show you the totally different way of doing this I'm gonna pitch it up five and the reason I'm pitching it up five this emulates a turntable moving at forty five rpm ok, so it's like five point five somewhere around there s so this is basically emulating that I'm doing this inside of the zone area which is again separate from the actual sound too and so now that I have that done, I'm going to the sound going to turn my engine test b twelve it's gonna low actually weren't just turn the filter completely wolf so so now I'm back to even though it says negative five I'm actually back to zero because I pitched it up five now have pitched it down five and it gives it the break up that the vintage sampler would have multi sampled kid do you have to do that on each layer in the zone? This one I don't believe is actually too too bad because what you can do is you can just select all your zones all right? So I can just highlight this entire group if I can if it will let me do it real quick whoa it's not move that old one out I'm messing myself up here yeah I'm forgetting howto had a highlight all these it wants uh oh here we go well actually we can we can actually do the entire kit all at once a swell but what I'm really doing is I'm not really worried about all the different hits because I'm only using high velocity right so the one that I'm affecting in that way is that allowed a sound so that's why I was kind of hitting the pad hard when I did it I'm not worrying about the multiple samples on here because this kid is not going to be a dynamic it when I when I have it played back um so what if you highlight all of your samples you could do that but that's not really what we need to worry about so we've got this kick and now it's it's got the espy twelve sound on it we're going to do the same here pitch this down negative five going into the zone area all right up five so no it's it's just dirty all right and of course pad mood fix velocity right so the pattern we can start a new pattern now on the group level I'm going to break this up a lot more we're going to be using where we at here, lo fi and let's break it up a good bit. We're gonna take this real low and that is when you're designing your sounds do you usually like to have a look going? Does that help you? Yeah that's? Why the reason why? Late patterns? Because I like to get audio feedback as I'm doing it, so I'm used to what I'm doing right now, so I can kind of get in the range of where I want today, but then I find tune it while the loop is going oftentimes this is where, you know, we get yelled at by our neighbors because they just keep hearing the same hit over and over and over again. So we have this dirty kind of sound in the background, but this sample re we'll give you a pitched break up of that distortion, so when I adjusted up as I go higher, you'll hear the frequency is going to go higher, too, so the sample rate will give you like different frequencies and you can try to pull out different residences using the sample rate. Right now, I'm just going to keep a pretty low and they just fix built into the sampler, right that's going to flip over to the mixer just so they can kind of see that all the stuff is available in the interface in the software ok yes oh so what we can do is we can hit shift and navigate and that will bring up the software view of your mixer ok you can go to your I o here you can get your plug ins here you can see the low five point two there this is I think you're on the group yeah ok so I can hit sound and now you can see the scene the scene features here okay and then kind of show the bottom part so they can see the actual mixer the little sampler interface this guy down here yeah so if you cut it out if you click over his own you can see your zones if you click to this you can see here if we hide these we can bring this back up and you can see your your controls all your controls here as well so and we can actually bring it all the way up like this and then you can see your envelopes you know your attack and decay everything is right there so it's very easy to get involved on it let's let's go back to here for now and get out of the mixer view I'm just adding a couple of different effects that air going toe kind of gel everything together and make it very usable for a particular sound so I'm going to use the reflex wait what is that he reflects is like a very short reverb it's almost like throwing yourself until like a a very small room so a lot of the times when I'm working with drums like this, I like to kind of set them in their own place and with the smooth you could make it kind of cut itself off a bit and that's that's really nice for if you wantto later on if you're doing like pumping effects and things like that, it kind of helps bring those sounds out a little bit color setting that kind like a cute little kind of color is it's it's it's closer to atone novel in a guitar where it's it's a sweeping it's a sweeping e q and a you can just really basic, which is also really fun when you ought to meet that as well because like if you wantto act accent hi hats without actually doing a lot of velocity changes or anything you could just so now we have this this kind of broken up drum sound is getting a lot more close to something that would be found on the final that's that's broken up aa lot of the times when you're doing this, you can re sample these sounds so now I'm going to take something to me it still sounds a tad bit bright sounds a tad bit just not quite analog enough like it's yeah, I'm using a bit reduce or so of course, it's going to sound digital, but at the same time, you know, sometimes you want that this kind of weird clipping effect and that's what I'm gonna show right now. So I have the artery a microburst right next to us and this you don't have to think of this is just a synthesizer. You can think of it as an effect box on b e q you could think of it as any piece of external gear that you can send your audio interface through, and what I'm doing is I'm sending audio out of machine out of its own separate outputs. So on the audio interface we have and I'll put one into that your main outputs and then we have outputs three and four no three and four is going to be only for what I want to effect. Okay, so we can go to our io by going to the channel the output instead of going out of master, I'm going to send us out of external to now, and that now means that it's going to be coming out into my mixer, which is going through the microbrew microbrews, going back into machine it's going back into my audio interface one into so by having it on its own channel, you khun separated away. All right, so now what I'm going to do is this is very old school trick I'm just going to place a card underneath the key which keeps the gate open on the synthesizer if this was like, um like pre amp or or even a guitar amp or anything that you can re in things and send them through if you have guitar pedals, you can send things through guitar pedals and that's essentially what I'm doing here, I'm just using the filter of the microbrew I'm not using the also leaders or anything right now just a filter just the natural analog saturation that's involved in this so I'm going to hit play and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to set up an input channel uh, so let's, go ahead to a new group and an input source audio one and we're gonna go here set the song, so now we're actually sending through the microbrew when I start adjusting this to make sure I'm on the right, you know, usually you're trying to send into an affects box years that I'm turning on you because of, say, intense external audio input, which a lot of analog since actually have extra audio inputs so exactly should be should be I don't want tio just make sure I'm sending out the right place it might help this way so bear with me I'm experiencing technical difficulties getting my my mixed out to the right place okay so essentially what I'm going to be doing now is re sampling these drones okay after you sent him out into the analog synths back into machine to sample it exactly you don't end up with any feedback issues when you're doing that kind of routing that's that's why I'm giving you his way is to prevent feedback if I send it out of the scene inputs are same outputs as my master and then I'm coming back in and then that's going back out again then that would be a feedback loop and you don't want that so that's why I want to use a separate output here so let me just make sure that uh this so just to clarify as to why I was having that problem my output of the new group that I'm using input I didn't set I didn't give it a destination as to where to go and that's what the problem was so now I have the audio destination said is a master so now what you're hearing is this affected sand when I start tweaking this hardware now there's no many involved here there's no there's really no connection here aside from audio so a lot of times I'd like to use the envelope so that uh sound is going to be affected by the incoming or you I allowed this peaceably so now I can re sample these sounds ok and I can just select pads and start dropping these loops again we can use sink sample so I'm going to get a sample record external input one which is where we're coming in from sink is going to be I'm going to actually do to bars actually new let's do for wars so even though the pattern is only this short pattern, I'm going to be recording a longer pattern so that it gives me freedom to tweak as I go way have this sample now you can use this and a lot of different ways you can use this as just its own separate set of loops or you can layer okay so because it's it's sink sampled and it's the same thing I'm going to show you how we can layer this identically tio what we're playing out here so I'm going to go teo this empty area and I'm just going to sample a short loop right on and I believe that was what tomorrow will be a so we're in a sample this guy right here let's start ok? So we've got this loop okay? And what I want to do now is I'm going to just layer that sound underneath of the initial so I'm gonna keep it all in one group just to keep it organized for myself so that's racing ok and I'm going to turn off that external output now so the group is no longer being sent through the microbrew so I don't have to worry about that at all. I have this sample I'm going to duplicate it over to the original group to that blank pad that I had erased and now okay, so now I have it on the same group, okay? What I can do with that is aiken trigger it inside of that same pattern. So the original pattern is like this. What I want to do now is I want to trigger it right alongside of that. So I'm just going to hit shift on record and I'm gonna hit a one shot. First thing I want to check is I want to make sure that I am on one shot. I want to make sure my politically is that one because I don't want anything double triggering over top of itself. I don't want anything really kind of, uh, being off from where I wass so excuse me, a great way to do this is also through step editing, okay? So you can go into your step moon and you can just simply hit the pad that you're on if that if this pad is highlighted when I go into step mood, these air just events now so I could just hit one event now I have this this original sound if plug ins on it layered with this sound that's going through the microbe er and his more heavily affected and they're both directly in time they're going to be in time and phase you really don't have much issue very very seldom you'll have to do any phase shifting or anything like that to kind of move push her push the samples together but usually there will be dead on like this and this is a great way to just kind of add variations so now you can do things like throwing those glitches and throw one there's different effects and you'll have this very robust sound that's not not just a typical not not the typical plug in sound that you were normally get so this is very useful when you're doing like real hard core drones like like boom that type stuff on again you want to keep him on if you're keeping it all in one group when you re sample if you change up your pattern you want to change up the re sampling of it so you want to make sure that every because if you do a new pattern and you have that you'll come up with something different but you can do really interesting effects with so I had this affected sound and when I'm larry it I can affected further with the machine built in effects okay, so what I'm going to do now is I'm gonna add um I'm sorry shift browse going to go into here and I'm gonna add of course to it and I'm going to add skill and get really we're going to really make it different so we can go into rez accord rosen court is a great built in effect that allows you to essentially pull melodies out of the drums without actually playing any keys you can set it to accord mood where now it will it'll play an actual court and you can set your cord style up here I'll show you how that sounds as I adjusted I'm going to be using string mood which is a single newt but for the demo I just want to show you some different methods so you can do that as a cord you can go until like a minor chord ugo alternates and when this is all playing together you can also automate that so you can actually use this to create these the's interesting change ups so now with just a drum group I've got a melody going you know like you know you might not be great at playing chords you might not have an ipad but you can still you know have cords coming out of out of your drum groups just by simply you know, adding something like this told you flux makes melodies out of drums I told you he doesn't messed up we'll explain what the number is next to the style okay, so the number here the court is if you play piano or keyboard you'll know that when you're playing chords you can do like one three five seven you know your intervals and this would be your intervals on your court so matter of fact I'm going to through that on just a simple sound here this sound here and you know what I better I better be smart and hit shift insert or else all copy over top of that sample and we don't want that do it so let's go here on dh let's get back to resume accord now this is just do it was that you copied over to sample gonna do it anyway because you get back in that amazing that it's so nice that we have a button called undue but undo button so also yes so what did I do wrong there? I didn't even say thank you I did something wrong didn't and then you do that again did I ceded learning yeah yeah I love it I did it he's like dude, you're on you better you better message again awesome class the students are corrected instructing man I love it that's what we're doing is we're doing our jobs like nice wrong you see I'm trying I'm trying to use his cousin you know it's sze doing your way yeah that's what's going to have to happen so I'm going to get back to resident coartem looting and I know this is just a symbol sound and you'll hear how it effects on an individual hit on we can we can adjust the mix output let's get one hundred percent I think I'm actually going tio let's go into the sound yeah, so and here I'm going to take, uh, my input on dh yes, sudhir input and pie. Okay? And we're going to audio and turning that off. I don't want any sounds coming through there at all. Now when you're doing this, um, you can dive really deep into changing that structure of that sound there that structure of that plug in. So if I if I'm adjusting that the different styles, which are just different just like on the ap that he had, you're getting these thes yeah, like minor scales, blues gail's think that's basically what you're doing over here with that and then you have your two knob that well adjusted tuning, and then you got greatness, which is the brightness of that residence and feedback and decay. Ok, so but again, getting back tio this original sound, we're going to go to a single string, so I'm going to take this down when I play it all together wait a mutual friend by the name of rot in his prime they would love what you just did there was like some transit that's around in this prize it's a technique rate that I think he would he would very much like this so it's and it doesn't have to be used for such dark ominous sounds I mean you can use it for these bright sounds as well it's all to how you set up your tuning it's all up to how you decide to adjusted I just to spread down because I wanted to be more of a baseline and I want to thank straight at you if I just to spread and make it really wide it's adjusting the stereo field essentially so I want that fairly narrow what I'm going to do now is show you how that relates tio like a like a pad sound or synth sound so inside of machine we can go to we have our groups and then we have our sounds the sounds have lots of instruments in them okay so these sounds are they're pretty good but we can make them better and the way we do that is let's just take uh very like you know I see plain and fancy cords maybe tryingto made me feel like I have my panel good e news three chords I know half according so uh I'm going to go again there's a phaser on there right now but not a lot else going on so I'm going to do I'm gonna add just a couple of different things first thing on the ad is I'm gonna add rez accord ok and let's go and check that out okay I'm gonna make this minor so now we have it low and I'm gonna just the brightness of it down a bit so to say you like dark sounds general theme yes I like the darkness and if I want to just beef up a single stream now again we can hit shift and hit bypass if we want to hear how it sounds without that sound so shift bypass bypass again so when you are automating you could get really kind of ghostly effects with that no it's a little bit of movement you're doing exact automated exactly and this one I'm actually gonna have to spread a little bit higher so it was a very thin sound before and now it's getting a lot thicker this is where the real fun comes in though because using the effects that we were talking about earlier such as the delay greened away we can make this one single new echo out at different pitches ok and that's what I'm going to do here so um looting one green delay and I'm not stopping there I'm loading up another one let's just load up this guy here all right and then let's just check how it sounds right now two green delays and I haven't adjusted them at all all right, so let's go to the first green delay let's pitch it up I'm pitching it up in relation to intervals again so this gets back to the keyboard if if you're familiar with your thirds and your fist that's basically what we're doing when we pitch you know by a seventh theo all right, so now we're gonna go to the second one this one I'm going to pitch down the third now we're getting this this full sound okay? Now mr adjusting the clouds side of things so now we get these cool tree allowance and I'm going to go back to the other room and adjust it ok? So let's let's reverse one of those um let's d'oh the one that's going lower pitched we're in a row percent and when we start adjusting the size of that that's when you get lots of interesting movement ok, so let's, just start laying some of this stuff down. You hear all this crazy movement going question earlier you guys have been mentioning that like trying to catch the tail end of stuff like that you have to be careful is that we're talking about like, if that's if you want that at the end of the pattern however well that cut off meal is it reaches the next pattern if you can if you want the automation to loop around, then you would want to do that. Okay, so, like, if I wanted tio fade out the trail of that, but have it not be there on the next scene than I would let it wrapped. Okay, so at the beginning, I would have looked down piece, and then at the end, I'd have an upper piece, but it has to come back down if it stays at the upper piece. When you go to your next scene, you're going to get this echo out. Okay, bye. Up. Repeat. You're talking about the actual on vacation? Yes. Automation. So? So when you so, for instance, if you had another pattern after this but you wanted that the grain delay toe tow start is we'll stop at the end of that pattern, but wanted to still ring out of the angeles, still ring out, or does it completely just cut off on the flip? If what you would have to do is you would have to automate when the next pattern you would have to automate down down right away, so, like your first hit would be automating actually turned off. Yeah, so? So when it comes over it automatically news it needs. To be off, if you don't do that, it's, just going to let it go. It's going to think in the next part of this is where I am and it's going to stay where it was at that last pattern.