hints and tips of edm production

[setback]

you'll probably noticed it's from some of your records but it's not just drums sounds, you can change the velocity that's the loudness of each individual note and this will make your tunes groove probably. in the old days I used to use logic that was logic 4 and 5 you had these functions to compress the velocities as a percentage and also set possible quantizationso it would shift if the notes say 75 percent. you have a keyboard player it retains the natural paying off a part. the only problem is it would make compression slightly more difficult some people don't even set velocity is for each note but I find a little change really helpsit's not impossible to stuff up a rock piano properly leading to under compression I even met one guy who fixed velocities of everything probably for this reason

[setback]

it's funny but I was producing tunes in vi college studio as a teenager and I didn't know about grooving or note quantize funny cuz I wasn't listening to my cds properly it sounds a bit obvious but you can work out a lot by spotting it on your records something I wish I knew then it was listen closely and work out what they've done theoretically you could steal all the secrets of making tunes and it also works for sound engineering and effects as well

[SkoolYardMafia]

Yeah, "swing" is what I think you're thinking of in regards to drums having more of a funky groove. Especially noticeable in 2-step/garage stuff. Velocity automation is really just about how "hard" the notes are hit, which is also really important when it comes to humanizing your drums.

Speaking of 2-step, obviously playing around with ADSR for your drum hits is important, and I use this genre as an example specifically because of how it plays a big part in "that future garage sound". Quick/short decay and little to no sustain on hats and snares give the drums a really "snappy" and quick kind of vibe. I sometimes use gates for this as well, which can get especially noticeable when all of the hits are effecting each other.

Sidechain compression, like you mentioned earlier, is just controlling the compression drops of one sound, from the source of another. In EDM, it's in most cases the kick controlling the dips in whatever sound you're trying to effect.

Chorus is another quick way to make synths, like pads and leads, really wide and warm. It's almost identical to the unison function that you see on some plugins, and hardware synths like the Roland Juno or Jupiter's, in that it basically replicates the note, detunes it a bit, and layers that, giving it a much broader sound.

Adding non-sidechained compression to drums, especially on kicks, is a great way to squeeze your drums together for a kind of "fatter", thumping mix. I love playing around with parallel/NY style compression on dram tracks, or throwing a glue compressor on the master to bring the whole track together for a nice, almost tape-like sound.

Uhhh, there's the basic stuff, like EQ, portamento/glide, pulse-width modulation, and the not-so-basic stuff like really taking advantage of different types of filters and envelopes that can go a LONG way in completely changing a sound from warm chords to screaming leads, but I don't really want to get into that rabbit hole right now

Limiters to make your tracks louder without going into the red, noodling with sequencers/arpeggiators with filter/amp envelopes, bit-depth/samplerate and bitcrushing, PWM, granular synthesis is ridiculously fun, etc...

The list goes on for miles...

[setback]

Im sorry but I have to spill more secrets of groove. The aim is to make each note of your drums sound different. you choose the same sample for each hit but you've changed the sound. Your equipment might be doing this already a usual change is to put a mild phase on the sound but yhere are loads of ways to do this for instance pitch change envelope time stretching etc. so listen to the breakbeat for example because it's an acoustic drum kit sounds different with each hitin the old days you might have a multi sample which means severak different versions of each hi Hat or snare but this is highly regarded as cheating in the same way as using a break beat you haven'tmade it roll yourself. unfortunately I think these techniques are a bit out of date but you never know.
one of my favourite was to make the little snares of the break by cutting off the start of the snare works unbelievably well for breaks or drum and bass. when you're using more than one layer of drum sounds you can shift it Slayer differently and the little notes can be only one of the two sounds.

[Puregroove]

Layer kicks.

[setback]

Knever tried to layer kicks myself I guess provided you eq the two sounds in different places as normal it should be ok but because its base any clashes going to come up louder in the decibels. More mixdown and compression on thread mixdown and mastering tips for edm. My geeeza says compress tge two separate and together on a buss. Never done that with snares either but dnb in the back in the days group compression on your whole drum section makes it sound like a break. Alleggedly.
geeza says it only works if there are no clashes or in my terms no back to the sounds. The frequencies in one kick you have to take them out of he other. Dunno really mmeasure the decibels on afader that will tell you. The only example I can think of yhat breaks it down for you is hardtrance acperience by hardfloor

[setback]

and talking of multi samples for drums the lushest nicest way to get samples instruments is when you ever make the sample has recorded each note separatelyor sometimes they record a few notes and zone or crossfade so each different sample covers several notes useful in the old days because of reduce memory availability. this is much better than using a single sample because the instrument resonances change naturally and also sometimes stay the same so pitch shifting changes the resonant s in different proportions. Also not only do acoustic instruments tuning H note slightly differently also analogue and virtual synthesizer changed each time you press the note because they are attempting to model the unpredictable behaviour of analogue circuitry. I'm not in the sample market myself so I don't know whereto get them but if you're in the business of recording your own samples from equipment or microphones etc this is an indispensable technique

[setback]

but what if someone buys the same sammple as that tune it would be your fault you've got to warn them. I think you're thinking of the marimba from Alex Adair make me feel better but I'm not sure. I'm listening to drum and bass and I can't be bothered to change the tunes round

[setback]

yeah I think so but sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference could be subliminal ... oh I hate that word

[setback]

so basically its this effect I have to tell you about alter the sound on each note got it? You can use any parameter for instance pitch tuning or record with equalisation or record synthesizer on different notes. Using layers and shifting each layer different etc.