10-05-2024, 04:29 PM
Make the most important parts of your song (kick, snare, bass, main melody) the loudest parts of the song. Make sure no other instruments steal your attention away from these whilst they are playing. Make sire they are in the centre of the panning audibly (some of the OS instruments have panning built into the sample so keep that in mind). All the other instruments should support these main ones and NOT fight them for your attention. Their only purpose is to make the song feel more full.
Make sure your hihats aren't too loud.
Bass instruments and kick drums should not have much low mids (150hz to 800hz). You also don't want your kicks to be really long if you have a bass playing in that area, unless you are using a kick drum as a bass like in trap music.
Snare drums should occupy most of the frequency range but not get in the way of kick and bass. Most snare drums are loudest at around 200hz and 1.5khz.
Your main kick and snare drums NEED a strong transient. The EDM kit has some of the strongest transients of all the drums, and 2013 kit has pretty good transients too. You could use them as they are or layer them with other drums for the tone you want. Distortion kills transients by the way.
If you are layering stuff for a bass tone make sure only one of the instruments has the low EQ up or else the sub frequencies will phase and cancel out and sound weak. (This is because there aren't a lot of bass frequencies as frequency is a logarithmic scale. The sub area between 10 and and 110hz is just 100 frequencies whereas the high end between 5khz and 20khz has a looooot of frequencies).
Make your song as loud as possible before it starts to sound bad.
Don't turn down the high eq on everything or your song will sound underwater. Keep at least one thing playing the high frequencies.
Don't have too much stuff playing in each frequency range or they start fighting with each other. An example would be an open hihat, a crispy bass sound, a crispy lead sound, and a supersaw could all occupy the high end and add a lot of mud up there.
Make sure the area between 70hz and 250hz isn't too loud.
Making the song feel wide by panning the not main instruments around can help contribute to volume and fullness without getting in the way of the main instruments.
Having the low mid area really wide is usually good.
Do not use 8 bit drumkit as your main drums without layering it with something. Even then it probably would sound better to put the bitcrusher on another kit.
Don't add too much high end or else the song will hurt to listen to.
Adding distortion to a bass can introduce unwanted mids. Fix this by creating an undistorted clone of the bass and changing the EQ on the distorted one so the mids don't get all bad on it.
Don't distort cymbals.
Don't reverb bass.
Don't use an instrument that sucks as a bass as a bass (like vibraphone).
If you make the song too loud it can start to add distortion to the whole song. This can be useful sometimes but don't overdo it.
Stereo width comes from differences between the left and right speaker. When both speakers play the same thing the sound is completely mono, and when they are playing completely out of phase the sound is completely stereo. To make a sound wider, you can clone it twice, then pan the clone sall the way L or R, then slightly detune them. Usually between 3cents and 30cents sounds best, higher detunes sound more messy (which can be useful depending on context) Make sure to do the opposite pan and detune values on each one. You can detune in cents by opening Console by pressing F12, then type setDetune(instrument, numberofcentsyouwanttodetune). Values can be negative. 1200 is an octave, 2400 is two octaves.
Instruments that already sound wide are usually best to not pan around much, whilst mono instruments can be panned a lot. Electric Guitar is completely mono, and Sustain Strings are pretty wide.
The MOST IMPORTANT tip I can offer is if it sounds good use it, whether it contradicts this guide or not.
Make sure your hihats aren't too loud.
Bass instruments and kick drums should not have much low mids (150hz to 800hz). You also don't want your kicks to be really long if you have a bass playing in that area, unless you are using a kick drum as a bass like in trap music.
Snare drums should occupy most of the frequency range but not get in the way of kick and bass. Most snare drums are loudest at around 200hz and 1.5khz.
Your main kick and snare drums NEED a strong transient. The EDM kit has some of the strongest transients of all the drums, and 2013 kit has pretty good transients too. You could use them as they are or layer them with other drums for the tone you want. Distortion kills transients by the way.
If you are layering stuff for a bass tone make sure only one of the instruments has the low EQ up or else the sub frequencies will phase and cancel out and sound weak. (This is because there aren't a lot of bass frequencies as frequency is a logarithmic scale. The sub area between 10 and and 110hz is just 100 frequencies whereas the high end between 5khz and 20khz has a looooot of frequencies).
Make your song as loud as possible before it starts to sound bad.
Don't turn down the high eq on everything or your song will sound underwater. Keep at least one thing playing the high frequencies.
Don't have too much stuff playing in each frequency range or they start fighting with each other. An example would be an open hihat, a crispy bass sound, a crispy lead sound, and a supersaw could all occupy the high end and add a lot of mud up there.
Make sure the area between 70hz and 250hz isn't too loud.
Making the song feel wide by panning the not main instruments around can help contribute to volume and fullness without getting in the way of the main instruments.
Having the low mid area really wide is usually good.
Do not use 8 bit drumkit as your main drums without layering it with something. Even then it probably would sound better to put the bitcrusher on another kit.
Don't add too much high end or else the song will hurt to listen to.
Adding distortion to a bass can introduce unwanted mids. Fix this by creating an undistorted clone of the bass and changing the EQ on the distorted one so the mids don't get all bad on it.
Don't distort cymbals.
Don't reverb bass.
Don't use an instrument that sucks as a bass as a bass (like vibraphone).
If you make the song too loud it can start to add distortion to the whole song. This can be useful sometimes but don't overdo it.
Stereo width comes from differences between the left and right speaker. When both speakers play the same thing the sound is completely mono, and when they are playing completely out of phase the sound is completely stereo. To make a sound wider, you can clone it twice, then pan the clone sall the way L or R, then slightly detune them. Usually between 3cents and 30cents sounds best, higher detunes sound more messy (which can be useful depending on context) Make sure to do the opposite pan and detune values on each one. You can detune in cents by opening Console by pressing F12, then type setDetune(instrument, numberofcentsyouwanttodetune). Values can be negative. 1200 is an octave, 2400 is two octaves.
Instruments that already sound wide are usually best to not pan around much, whilst mono instruments can be panned a lot. Electric Guitar is completely mono, and Sustain Strings are pretty wide.
The MOST IMPORTANT tip I can offer is if it sounds good use it, whether it contradicts this guide or not.
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- tbyunomi
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