Advanced Tips and Techniques - EVERYONE SHARE ONE!

This thread is to share your ADVANCED tricks. No kiddie newb stuff, we're talking advanced-to-expert tricks you have up your sleeve. Of course, no one wants to reveal ALL their arsenal of techniques, but if everyone shares even ONE, we can all benefit and elevate the collective skill level of this forum.

Do NOT contribute with kiddie beginner tricks, or tricks found elsewhere in other threads on this forum.

Mine:

Take a copy of your main snare and have it pitched down about -6~12 steps, then layer it with the original at about 50% of the volume of the regular snare. Be sure to shorten the note length of the pitched down snare so that it doesn't play any longer than the regular one. This will create a much fuller sound to your snares.

Try it, see how it sounds. I think you'll like.

I was about to post something similar, except do that exact same thing with a pure sinewave kick, take the copy of the kick and step down the bit rate till it distorts to your taste. Layer it just like Tic said above..

Take some time out and sample into your MPC at different clip levels, l;earn how they sound on different sounds. it only takes a little while and once you have a clear point of reference you'll know when and how to incorporate digital distortion.

of course, this doesn't work if you're just importing wavs.

Make a copy of your snare or hand clap. Reverse it & play it quietly just before the actual hits of that sound. Combine this with a single slapback delay after the hit. Doing this with a sample rather than an FX unit is tighter.

To set this up really well it is best to use seperate outputs to three different mixer channels & be cutting out all the lows on the reversed & delayed hits. If necessary resample the combined sound but don't forget it will now need to start from the reversed hits.

bump

They're all "Cheap Tricks" once you know them....kinda like how everyones dissapointed when the figure out the magician....that being said...put a multi tap delay on your snare...play with decay times and speed. You can get anything from a flam to a very classy roll....While messing with just this one trick, you'll probably come up with a new tune....

Make a copy of your vocal track and offset it 30 - 60 MS for a mch fatter vocal sound.

For realistic time changes, insert your original tempo in the bar before the change. Then put your first "change" in the beats before where you would like to hear the change. These inserted markers define the time it takes to change from one tempo to the next. You actually neeed to be at the new tempo 1 beat before the new tempo should kick in....This will give you results more like real players and make your tempo changes "click". Also at a break you can insert a bar (avery short one) to give that slight hesitation before everyone comes back in....Done right it creates a sense of anticipation that will have your audience on thier feet as you launch into the next verse.

not advanced but oft overlooked: once you have written a bassline or decided on your scale set the important bass notes to cut each other off...this way you can experiement with trills and hammers and they will sound more realistic...

greg

Assign you Q link fader to MIDI CC messages and "automix" your midi modules and keyboards....I frequently do this for sequencing volume fades and panning effects but it will work with any CC message...If you use this trick put a correcting message in your first bar to reset it. For example if you use CC7 to fade your volume in and out during the song, be sure to put a full on volume message at the beginning of the song or your volume will be set to whatever level it was when you stopped your MPC....

IF you're using a "midi lab" type of setup where you allways run keyboard A on Channels A1 - A6 etc. , create a "template" that is 8-16 bars long with each keyboard or module assigned to it's own MIDI channel. This is a simple "trick" but that template will save you hours setting up MIDI parameters over the years....