Side Project Update: New Jbox originals

Hey hey. So I'll be doing a blog next week covering my other projects and how they're progressing, but today I want to show you a little jam I've worked on over the last couple nights. My initial aim with was to test my workflow, and see how quickly I could get an idea together - get a clean & balanced mix, and have a mastered file ready to go. On top of this, I wanted to start implementing some of the techniques and aesthetic ideas I've gained from the Tame Impala remix case study.

Anyway, here's the track so far!

So first of all, I'm really vibing with the direction I'm taking this one. I'm having lots of fun with it so that's definitely a big positive for me. Below I'll cover some of the main production techniques I've used (that are different/new to my usual workflow), and also how I mastered this one in Ozone 7.

DRUMS

I've changed the way I do my drums in Ableton, and have gone back to using Drum Racks. I feel I have a lot more control in shaping the overall sound especially with some of new sample triggering features in the newer versions of Live 9. The drum rack also allowed me to play around a bit more with velocity, having that greater accessibility to controlling levels really does help - it also makes me look at the drums in a bigger picture, or rather as a full kit. In this workflow I've been able to better hear how they elements gel together, where previously I believe I've perceived my drum elements as pretty much separate instruments.

One of the first things I did was grab an already made drum rack and rip all of the samples out of there, to replace with my own. Some of the downloadable kits that come with Ableton already have some great macro'd effects, it's a really quick way to get some bus-compression or saturation happening and get that initial desired sound of your drums grooving. You'll see the plugins listed in the second screenshot below to the right of the chain, you can easily swap any of these out for your own - you would just have to make sure to remap the macro to whichever control you'd like on the new plugin.

At this stage however they weren't fully rocking how I'd like them, and so the only plugin that's on the chain outside of the drum rack - is the Major Tom compressor, which is an absolute beast that very closely captures and is inspired by the sound of the Dbx 160. Exactly what I'm after. I'm thinking I'll still go into the studio at SAE and run the drums through the dbx and hear the comparison, but I'm loving the punch and character that I'm getting out of this plugin. As a final subtle glue, I sent the Drum Rack to a reverb return.

You can see with the decay and predelay times that my aim with this wasn't to create a more 'live' sounding kit, but more-so just giving the entire kit a subtle smooth over to link it all a little bit more. I feel in producing electronic music it's very easy to create drum sounds that feel very detached and not related to each other, so hopefully by the final product of this track it will feel even more like an entire unit.

EFFECTS

So one of the biggest take-aways I got from researching Kevin Parker's production techniques, was his focus on making effects an instrument of its own and truly having it be a living part of the mix.

I plan to add a lot more creative effects and modulation to this track, but at the moment I believe I've already added some fun interest to the mix.

First of all is my over-the-top use of sidechain compression (kind-of) to create a pumping effect, but is layered with other elements doing the same musically but without that effect. Putting this on particular instruments and at different times rhythmically gives the instrumentation a lot of groove, and even feels like there's a bit of swing.

This doesn't have to be done with a compressor either. I like the smoothness I can achieve by using an 'Auto Pan', inverting it and changing the phase and timing so that it phase-cancels itself on the timing of my kick. By changing the rate to something else, you can get it to sound really wacky and detached, so that could be fun to experiment with later on too.

I also used automation with effects like Erosion and Auto Pan to create more interesting transitions, creating build and excitement without the use of a white noise sweep or some kind of other 'build-up sound'.

I've got some warbly flanger on the keys during some transitions as well. Ableton's flanger effects aren't amazing, so I think I'll have a research for some great plugins. I guess the main sound I'm after is how in the Waves remix, Parker has this flange that really smoothly flows throughout the main sections - giving so much life to the track without being intrusive, and they also seem to be affected and warped (kind of like a ripple effect after dropping something into water) when a kick or snare hits. What I did find really cool with native plugins however, was by using the 'random' shape on the flanger's LFO - you can get this really awesome & wide liquidy sound!

MASTERING

Finally, I've run this track through Ozone to see how it sounds after being driven into a limiter. I'd also like to have a playable for my upcoming DJ sets, and test how it's all sounding on some Funktion-Ones.

I'll leave going fully into a mastering discussion later on when I've taken the final track into the studio, where I'm able to better critically listen to the mix. However here is a couple of the main things I've picked up lately and used in this project:

For EQ, you'll notice that narrow -3.5dB cut at 110Hz. What I aimed to do here was to listen for the frequencies between the kick and the bass elements, finding that and attenuating it ensures there is less frequency masking between the instruments. Whilst there isn't too many times where both the bass and kick are hitting at the same time, the main groove has a lot of low information happening slightly off beat to the kick. This EQ cut helps the overall groove and have the transient of the kick take precedence when it hits.

There's a little bit of a smiley face curve going on in terms of the boosting of low and high information; but i've also done some cuts at 30Hz and 19kHz to get rid of any inaudible information that may be eating up my headroom for when I want to push this track into the ceiling of my limiter.

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And that's about it for now! Let me know what you think of the song so far!

More updates very soon.

- Lachy :)