Essentials 04 – Reggae & Dub

[by Loopmasters]

As part of our ongoing effort to bring you top quality samples at a great price – and introduce you to some of the best packs we offer in each genre – we are happy to announce to release of Essentials 04 – Reggae & Dub. Including  a superb collection of influential Reggae and Dub samples from Live Dubby samples, through to the latest Electronic Dub styles for the harder styles – “Essential Reggae And Dub” is a must have collection for producers on a budget looking for a wide range of some of the best Reggae/Dub samples released to date.

If you aren’t yet familiar with the Essentials Series, these are a range of sample packs which include a handpicked “Best Of” collection of loops and samples from our in house team, which reflect excellent value and enable you to sample a good selection of 5 products which we feel include some of the very best loops available for that  genre.

In detail Producers should expect  to find here a collection of 29 Bass Loops, 27 Music Loops, 42 Drum Loops, 4 Vox Loops, 2 Bass hits, 17 FX One Shots, 34 Drum and Percussion Samples, 13 Instrument Stabs,  5 Vocal hits and 6 Drum fills.

We hope you enjoy!

—————

Essential Reggae And Dub includes 120 loops, and 80 one shot samples from the following packs. If you really like the samples from any included pack within the product then use the included coupon code to get 20% off the full pack at any time!

Celt Islam – Sufi Dub Soundsystem

[by Loopmasters]

Celt-Islam uses a fusion of music from Dub/Electro/Drum and Bass and collaborates it with Islamic/world grooves to create a unique and mighty Dub driven dance crossover sound. Celt Islam creates music in quite a diverse range of styles and genres. He produces Sufi inspired Global Grooves to create a sometimes Meditative Dub that transfixes everybody who comes across it, to Electro-Dub driven Drum and Bass to satisfy the dance world.

—————-

Dub Tech

[by Loopmasters]

Dub Tech is a future-proofed collection of new sonic experiments which mix elements of House, Techno, Dub, Dubstep and Electronica. Inspired and influenced by the likes of Basic Channel, Beat Pharmacy, Fluxion, Deepchord, 2562, Martyn and many more – Dub Tech is a modern production tool featuring Deep Echoing Synths, Spaced Out Textures, Filtering Sweeps, Ambient Delays, Heavy Bass lines, Abstract Percussion and Dub-Techno Drum Loops.

—————

Dubmatix Automatic Reggae

[by Loopmasters]

Loopmasters have teamed up with Dub, Reggae and Roots sensation “Dubmatix” to bring you a fresh and exciting collection of Roots influenced musical loops and samples, carefully fused with modern technologies for Producers of Dub, Reggae, Dubstep, DnB and Downtempo music – welcome to Automatic Reggae!

—————

Mad Professor Reel2Reel Reggae

[by Loopmasters]

A disciple of Lee “Scratch” Perry, Mad Professor was one of the leading producers in dub reggae’s second generation. His Dub Me Crazy albums helped Dub make the transition into the digital age, when electronic productions started to take over mainstream reggae in the ’80s. His space-age tracks not only made use of new digital technology, but often expanded dub’s sonic blueprint, adding more elements and layers of sound than his forebearers typically did.

—————

Prince Fatty – Crucial Dub

[by Loopmasters]

Prince Fatty is a champion in the Dub Arena, and Loopmasters welcome this masterful Dub Engineer to the Artist Series with open arms, to present “Crucial Dub”, the all in one sample collection for Dub, Reggae, Roots and Dubstep lovers worldwide! The Prince Fatty sound is designed to dub your feet with Rock Steady beats … delivered in an up-beat, positive and organic funk fashion. Mixed in an analog haze of vintage spring reverbs, tape echoes and custom hi-grade mixing consoles, Prince Fatty won’t disappoint the lovers of the early 70s Jamaican Rock Steady , Dub and Roots Reggae.

Mason – Analogue Farmhouse

[by Loopmasters]

Dutch duo Mason make the kind of records that often defy being pigeon-holed and given a label. Their productions have been destroying dance floors to tearing it up the World’s charts since 2006, laying the foundations for more forward thinking music. It’s not about making records for a particular set of Djs or trendy scene but just good honest music.

——————–

Underground Techno Vocals

[by Loopmasters]

Whether you are making Techno, House, or other forms of Dance Music – these samples recorded by pro session singers have been mangled, chopped and edited to provide you with the building blocks for some awesome grooves like those found in some of the most current dance anthems around today.

————–

Loopmasters pres. DNB Synths Thor

[by Loopmasters]

Patchworx 24 -  Drum and Bass Synths for Reason’s Thor, is a collection of Dark Basses, Deep FX, Searing Leads and Atmospheric Pads which have been  exclusively created for Drum and Bass and Dubstep Producers Worldwide who use Propellerheads Reason to make their music.

—————-

Kanji Kinetic Drumstep & Mutant Bass Vol.2

[by Monster Sounds]

This power driven pack by Kanji is set to blow you away with its superbly produced drum loops, dirty wobble bass line and melodic synths. With mixed tempos of 140 /175, spot on for Dubstep and Drum and Bass productions. If you simply want to add texture or a bit of aggy wobble to your productions, then this is the pack for you.

—————-

Funk Drops

[by Drumdrops]

No platform boots spared with this baby, 199 loops from 67-126 bpm of pure 70s vibes from P-Funk party beats and classic JBs style work outs to hypnotic afro funk and moody slow jams… ready for some pimping action.

——————-

Bass Monster

[by Industrial Strength]

Bass Monster is a blistering Ni Massive sound set for Electro, Fidget, Dubstep, Grime, Electro House, Tech House, Nu Disco and of course Techno music. This fierce sound set was produced by Nicky Twist and Chris Cee from Monster Bass Music in New York.

—————-

Abstract Hip Hop

[by Delectable]

Created in House by our Delectable Sample guru’s taking inspiration from artists like Dj Krush, Madlib, Dalek, Clouddead, Aesop Rock, Massive Attack, Daniel Nakamura, Dj Shadow, Portishead and Mick Harris’s Scorn Also taking inspiration from the Bristol ‘Trip Hop’ scene Abstract Hip Hop takes not only a non-traditional take on hip-hop, but also includes more conservative elements of the rap community.

—————-

CFA Sound DSP Drum01 ACE

[by Resonance Sound]

DSP-Drums offers a brandnew collection of futuristic drum sounds, complety designed with modern synthesizers. Each DSP-Drum pack offers 2 categories: pure – the raw drumsounds freshly from the synthesizer, and processed – with additional dynamic rework for much more punch and power.

—————–

Studio Essentials Tech House

[by Zenhiser]

“Studio Essentials – Tech House” once again adds a whole new away of Tech House samples and loops to upgrade your studio to the latest battleground in the Tech House, Deep House, Minimal Tech war.

Step 1: Prep the Session

Previously, if like the example you were using a limited audio interface and dependant on what software you are using, you will need to reset your outputs and maybe drop your two mono audiofiles that you have recorded onto a stereo audio track.

Now we need to choose the ‘Sweep Analyzer Stereo’ from the Audiosuite menu.

Step 2: Let’s Analyze

Now it is simply a case of telling the Sweep Analyzer what the ORIGINAL signal was, and then what the RECORDED signal was. Essentially it will create a digital algorithm, which will (when loaded into Revolver) tell Revolver the characteristics of the space and how it should process any incoming sound. The difference between this and a standard digital reverb, is that we are creating the reverb algorithm used.
The process is a simple one:

1.    Select Sweep on the analyzer, then select the original sweep audio region and choose analyze on the analyzer
2.    Select Response on the analyzer, then select the stereo recorded audio region and choose analyze on the analyzer

Step 3: IMPORTANT! Save Your Newly Created Impulse Response

All you need do know is save your newly created Impulse Response however you deem appropriate.

I have imaginatively called mine ‘Carpark’.

Step 4: Now Let’s Try Out Our New Reverb

You may remember in part one of this three part series that I offered a snare drum recorded in the space as an example of how the carpark sounded. Now we can compare the the original snare drum that I recorded in the space, with the dry snare sample with our created Impulse Response on it, and determine how similar they are. First of all I will import the original snare sample and create a stereo aux track to place the Revolver plug in on.

In Closing

Convolution Processing is a complex process and can be used for many things from band production to film post-production to forensics. If you take a few minutes and do a search through google you will find an abundance of information about it and about how you can implement Impulse Responses and create them, from simple methods through to vastly complex capturing (this tutorial falls somewhere in the middle). Good luck and remember that space is something that we as humans often take for granted, capture it.

Originl source: http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/production/quick-tip-convolution-reverb-mcdsps-revolver-part-3/

Step 1: How Does the Equipment Go Together?

Check out the diagram below as an example on how you should set-up your system.

A couple of points about the above signal flow diagram:

•    I have tried to keep the equipment generic, e.g. an Audio Interface as opposed to a Digidesign Mbox.
•    The headphones are plugged into their own output instead of the standard headphone output associated with an audio interface. The reason for this will become evident soon enough!
•    My diagrammatic representation of headphones is truly magnificent!

Step 2: Where Do We Put the Microphones to Pick Up the Best Sound?

Good question, and to be truthful this question would be an article in itself! However being outside the scope of this quick tip I will suggest the simplest way to choose where to put the microphones is to walk around the space clapping your hands and listening. Ask yourself, where does it sound most pleasing? When you have found this spot, place your microphones in a stereo configuration there.

Once your microphones have been placed where you want them, place your speaker a good distance away, in this example the speaker was approx 6-7 metres from the microphones directly in between them.

Step 3: Lets look at the Pro Tools configuration

This tutorial uses Pro Tools, but again, most DAW’s would be suitable, it’s all about how you route it. Upon opening a new session in Pro Tools you need to create three mono audio tracks. Set the routing of them as per the diagram below.

Now we need to use McDSP’s sweeping sine wave generator to create the sound we are going to output through the speaker to excite the space. Providing you have the software installed, go to the audio suite menu and choose ‘Sweep Generator’. We are going to choose a long sweep. I have trialed long and short sweeps of differing lengths and the best results seem to always come from using the long sweeping sine wave. The short sweeps are much better for noisy environments when you need to get your recording done quick.

Now select 30 seconds and press process on the sweep generator, it will give you a 30 second region with your long sweep in it.

Step 4: Press Record

Now it is simply a case of record arming your microphone tracks and pressing record. Loop record is a good option here, keep loop recording until you are confident that you have an entire 30 second recording with minimal ambient background noise, e.g. no surrounding traffic, aeroplanes, penguins etc! There a couple of considerations you need to keep in mind while doing this step:

•    Have the speaker turned up loud, without distortion.
•    Trial the volume of the speaker, is it reproducing the sweeping sine wave effectively?
•    You will need to play with the gain of the microphones, try to set the gain so that your signal from the microphones is peaking at around -3 to -6 dB.
•    Monitor your signal from the microphones as shown by the routing in Step 3, you are sending both microphones to the same output, (output 2) to the headphones, ensure there is no audible clipping and minimal ambient sound.

Original source: http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/production/quick-tip-convolution-reverb-mcdsps-revolver-part-2/

—————

royalty free loops, samples and sounds from Loopmasters – the sample boutique.

Here’s a great video tutorial on how to remove vocals from any song using only Pro Tools utilities and plug-ins.

—————

royalty free loops, samples and sounds from Loopmasters – the sample boutique.

I’m writing this with the assumption that we all have a good basic understanding of what compression does. I want to look specifically at how we can utilize compression to make our bass parts better.

Does the bass need dynamics?

This is a question worth asking. Do we need the bass to have a huge volume range? Or do we want to tighten down and make it very one-dimensional, with every note being the same volume?

If you’ve hung around HSC for very long, you probably think I’m going to pick the first option. But I actually think that the less dynamic range the bass has the better.

When mixing a pop/rock song, where you’ve got the typical bass, drums, guitars, etc., there’s one thing you want to be constant – your bass tone. If each note the bass player plays is at a dramatically different level than the next, you’ll end up with sections of the song where the bass just seems to disappear. In other sections, though, it will be overwhelmingly loud.

What to do?! Compression to the rescue.

Let me just say that this doesn’t apply to every bass part ever recorded. If you’re doing a jazz tune, you probably don’t want to slam the upright bass with a ton of compression. (Heck, you’re probably not gonna use much compression at all on a jazz track.)

However, if you’re mixing a pop/rock song (or if you think you’ll ever mix one in your life), read on.

The Purpose of Compression

For most instruments, I use compression to change the tone. I’ll use it to make a vocal more “up-front,” or I’ll use it to bring up the sound of the room on drum overheads.

With bass, though, it’s different. While compression does have its tonal effects on bass (like bringing out pick noise and increasing sustain), I primarily use compression to even out all the notes.

Ideally, every bass note in the song will sound exactly the same, perfect consistency from note to note. That’s one of the things we look for in a bass player, right? They play consistently.

We want our bass part to be heard and felt on every beat of the song. Therefore, we need to employ compression and limiting to make the notes as consistent as possible.

How I Set Up Compression/Limiting on Bass

Rather than go on and on writing about the various implications of using compressors and limiters on bass, let me walk you through how I set things up for my sessions.

After EQ-ing the bass, I’ll add a compressor. (I EQ the bass first because I want to get rid of any unwanted frequencies. A compressor will make these frequencies louder, so you want them to be gone before you compress.)

Here’s a screenshot of one compressor setting for a mix:

There’s not a ton of compression going on here. I try to use a longer attack time, so the transients still come through. The purpose of the compressor in this example is to bring up the overall volume of the bass, particularly the sustained notes.

After compressing, I’ll put a limiter on the track. The limiters job in this instance is to completely squash the bass, preventing it from getting any louder.

You’ll notice that the threshold is about 6 dB below the ceiling. That difference is bringing up the overall volume of the bass. The ceiling, though, is preventing that volume from going past -7.6 dB.

This makes every bass note almost exactly the same volume. Bringing that output ceiling down allows me to control the output volume of the bass. Bringing the threshold down throws everything that comes through the limiter up to the ceiling, where it is prevented from getting any louder.

If you’ve never used a limiter before, this can be a bit confusing. However, once you understand what’s going on here, you’ll realize that a limiter can be a useful tool for more than just squashing your entire mix.

I don’t use this technique on every song I mix, but hopefully I’ve given you something to think about and experiment with next time you’re in the studio.

Original source – http://www.homestudiocorner.com/mixing-bass-part-3-compression-and-limiting/

—————

royalty free loops, samples and sounds from Loopmasters – the sample boutique.

]]> http://blog.loopmasters.com/tutorials/daw-tips/protools/mixing-bass-in-pro-tools-part-3-compression-and-limiting/feed/ 0 http://blog.loopmasters.com/tutorials/daw-tips/protools/clip-based-gain-tutorial-in-pro-tools-10/ http://blog.loopmasters.com/tutorials/daw-tips/protools/clip-based-gain-tutorial-in-pro-tools-10/#comments Sun, 22 Jan 2012 20:22:17 +0000 loopmasters http://blog.loopmasters.com/?p=11345 Every recording musician and post-production engineer has come across this issue at one time or another: volume levels across clips (formerly known as regions in Pro Tools) that simply don’t match. The time-consuming workaround to this problem in Pro Tools 9, or virtually any DAW, is to ride the faders in real-time to try and match inconsistent levels. Of course, it’s also possible to draw in volume automation to match the levels, but this “shot in the dark” approach can be inaccurate as the waveform view doesn’t update to reflect gain changes.

The Clip-Based Gain feature in Pro Tools 10 provides a much quicker and visually appealing solution. Using the clip gain line you’re able to adjust the gain for individual clips and match their relative levels. You’ll notice right away how the waveform view updates in real-time to reflect the clip gain changes. Very impressive!

Once you’ve made changes to the clip gain you can move, cut, copy, paste that clip anywhere in your session safe in the knowledge the clip gain settings will stay attached to the clip. Good-bye volume automation!

This one new feature has the potential to dramatically change the way we edit audio, and dare I say, even enjoy editing audio! Let’s take a look at how to get started using clip-based gain.

Step 1 – Enable Clip Gain Info View

In this session we’ve got three clips all recorded in different environments. As you can see from the waveforms, clip 1 is the quietest, clip 2 has the highest waveform, while clip 3 has some loud and quiet sections. Our aim is to quickly match the levels across all the clips.

The clip gain view is already enabled. Take a look at the bottom left corner of each clip which displays the fader icon and 0dB indicator, which means no clip-based gain has been applied to the clip.

First, we can enable the Clip Gain Line from by choosing: View > Clip > Clip Gain Line:

Step 2 – The Clip Gain Fader

To adjust the gain for an entire clip either use the grabber tool to drag the Clip Gain Line along the vertical axis or drag the fader icon in the bottom left of the clip.

As you do so, you’ll notice a larger gain fader appears and the amount of gain you’re adding to (or subtracting from) the clip is displayed in dB. This can act as a handy way to quickly see which clips have had gain applied to them.

And as you move the fader you’ll also notice the waveform overview getting taller or shorter in real-time. If you hold down the Command key you’ll be able to change the Clip Gain at a finer resolution.

Note: All of these changes made using the Clip-Based Gain feature take place pre-mixer that is, before effects and levels on the channel.

Step 3 – Working With Breakpoints

So far, so good. Adjusting clip-gain across a whole clip is pretty easy to get the hang of. But what if you have varying levels within one clip? There’s no need to split the clip: using breakpoints (much like automation) you can draw in new gain values to be adjusted in a certain section only.

Click with the pencil tool on the Clip Gain Line to create a breakpoint. Using the Grabber tool drag each breakpoint to the desired level. (Logic and Final Cut users might like to think of breakpoints as nodes and keyframes, respectively).

As you drag the breakpoints you’ll notice the waveform adjusts accordingly making it easier to match the sections of audio visually.

Step 4 – Drawing Dynamic Clip Gain With The Pencil Tool

Select the pencil tool again and this time drag to draw a number of breakpoints which will represent Clip Gain.

You can always redraw the line with the pencil tool if needed.

Remember that after adjusting levels using the Clip Gain feature you can cut, copy and move that clip around, keeping the gain attached to the clip!

Step 5 – Further Options And Tips

There are a lot of useful shortcuts and tips to help make Clip-Based Gain an indispensable part of your editing workflow.

I’d encourage you to explore some of these by right-clicking on a clip and looking under Clip Gain sub-menu. From here you can bypass and clear Clip Gain and even copy it from one clip to another. Importantly, you can choose to render the Clip Gain into the clip and show/hide the Clip Gain Line, too.

Original source: http://www.macprovideo.com/hub/pro-tools/pro-tools-10-tutorial-clip-based-gain

—————

royalty free loops, samples and sounds from Loopmasters – the sample boutique.

This video tutorial explains parallel processing and shows you how to use parallel compression on drums. Of course, this concept is not just applicable to ProTools and is used commonly in any DAW.

—————

royalty free loops, samples and sounds from Loopmasters – the sample boutique.

High-Pass Filter

Wait…what?! Aren’t we supposed to be improving the bass rather than removing it? Yep, but stay with me. I’ll explain.

We’re in search of good bass tone, right? “Tone” is such a vague term, I know, but the whole process of mixing the bass is about achieving the perfect tone for the song. The bass part you recorded may sound awesome by itself, but 99 times out of 100 you’ll need to alter it quite a bit to make it fit well in the mix. You need to dial in the tone.

So what does a high-pass filter have to do with tone? In my experience, the low frequencies of the bass actually tend to distract me from the tone I’m trying to create.

Everything below 100 Hz is mostly “rumble.” It’s the part of the bass that you “feel” more than you hear. Of course we want this to be present in our mix, but while dialing in the bass tone, I like to get rid of this rumble temporarily.

Here’s what I do. I use a high-pass filter to roll off everything below 100 Hz. From there, I’ll use the rest of the EQ to carve out the bass tone I’m looking for. Once I’m happy with the tone, I’ll slowly re-introduce the low-end rumble back into the track by slowly rolling the high-pass filter back to the left.

Sometimes I’ll remove the high-pass filter entirely. Other times it sounds right to leave the HPF around 50 or 60 Hz. Depending on the style of music, it might make more sense to have more or less sub-bass in your mix.

Cure the Headache

I’ve spent hour and hours EQ-ing bass guitar. Over the course of all this “quality time” with my favorite instrument, I’ve realized that my brain does not like low-mids. I literally get a headache if I don’t get rid of this low-mid boom quickly.

Do you know what I’m talking about? You hear the bass, and it doesn’t necessarily sound bad, but there’s something about the low-mids that almost seems to “press in” on your head?

I used to be annoyed by this, but I later realized that these headaches are pretty helpful for mixing! Initially, I couldn’t tell what was causing the headaches, but I finally figured out that it was the bass. Particularly somewhere between 100 and 500 Hz.

Almost every bass guitar you ever record will have a bit too much energy in this range. When you combine it with guitars, vocals, keyboards, etc., there’s just and overwhelming amount of  low-mid information.

Which frequency you need to cut varies from bass to bass (and also from performance to performance). Finding the offensive frequency can be easy. Simply do an exaggerated boost with the EQ (something like 12 dB), and sweep the frequency around until you find the most annoying frequency.

Once you’ve found it, destroy it. No EQ cut is too extreme when EQ-ing bass. Here’s a screenshot of my EQ settings for a bass part I recently recorded:
Looking at the EQ curve, you’d think this bass part must have sounded awful to begin with. Nope. This is just what I needed to do to get it to sit well in the mix. (There was wicked build-up of muddiness at 200 Hz, hence the 9 dB cut.)

A Quick Note oan High-Mids

First off, when EQ-ing you should always cut before you boost. It’s much more natural-sounding to remove frequencies than to boost them.

However, you’ll notice in that image above that I boosted 1 kHz by around 6 dB. This is pretty common with bass guitar. Boosting anywhere between 1 kHz and 3 kHz will help bring out the pick/finger noise of the bass, which can help it punch through the mix a little better.

Original Source: http://www.homestudiocorner.com/mixing-bass-part-2-eq/

—————

royalty free loops, samples and sounds from Loopmasters – the sample boutique.

Dealing with bass frequencies in general is a frustrating task. Whether it’s bass guitar, or kick drum, or acoustic guitar, or even vocals, those low frequencies can cause all sorts of problems.  Over the next couple of days, I’m going to give you some tips for dealing with bass.

What’s up with the low end?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we get rid of all bass in all of our songs. A well-managed low end is one of the things that makes a mix great. While I do think you should get rid of any excess low end with a high-pass filter, I’m not advocating cutting out the low end entirely.

That said, the main reason the low end causes so many problems is that it’s hard to reproduce. Most of use aren’t sitting behind a $5,000 pair of studio monitors. We’re on smaller monitors or headphones.

Bass frequencies need big speakers to accurately reproduce them. Headphones do not have big speakers in them.  So what ends up happening is we mix for hours, and it sounds good to us. In reality, though, our monitoring system isn’t letting us hear what’s going on in the lows.

You finish the mix, then take it over to your father-in-law’s house to listen on his surround sound system in his living room, the one with the subwoofer. You pop in the CD, and your head drops in shame.

It’s too boomy.

“But it didn’t sound like that in my studio!” you complain. True. It didn’t, because your studio simply couldn’t reproduce those lowest frequencies.
The truth is, the subwoofer didn’t add low end to your mix, it simply revealed the low end that had been there all along.

All is Not Lost

Please don’t think that I’m suggesting you need to immediately go out and buy the biggest studio monitors you can. Big monitors introduce their own set of problems.

You can create a GREAT mix on the system you have right now. You can, but you need to be aware that your system does not always accurately represent the audio. You must learn how to mix on your system.

This means you need to do a lot of listening. Take your mixes to other systems and listen to how they differ. Adjust your mixing technique accordingly.
If you have to crank the bass track in your mix to be able to hear it clearly through your monitors, but the bass is overwhelming in every other system, you need to compensate. The result? Your mix might sound a little thinner in your home studio, but it will translate well to other systems.

What does all this have to do with bass guitar?

Well, in a typical pop-rock mix, there will be two things holding down the low end – the kick drum and the bass guitar. That’s it. If you don’t get these right, you’ve sabotaged your mix’s low end. That’s why it’s so important to invest a lot of thought into how you’re going to handle the bass in your mix.

Original Source: www.homestudiocorner.com/mixing-bass-part-1/

—————

royalty free loops, samples and sounds from Loopmasters – the sample boutique.