For a single song it’s $130 US Dollars for the complete pack but as I had fewer tracks he quoted me a very reasonable price of 95 Dollars (single mix only price) but provided me with a final mix and mastered version.

Firstly let me say Nick is a great guy to work with, and very patient. I sent around 8 separate sets of tweaks to his versions, which he did without complaint, although there was some delay on a few of the updates. His price is great, but I’m not sure his end result is that much better than the master I did myself with T-Racks. I’ll let you decide…

1. My rough unmixed version I sent to E-Mixing Studio:

Stalking The Followers (My Original Un-mixed version)

2. E-Mixing Studio’s 1st version:

Stalking The Followers ( E-Mixing Studio – V.1)

3. After 7 more requests for various tweaks here is E-Mixing Studio’s final Master:

Stalking The Followers (Master E-Mixing Studio)

4. My own mixed and mastered version:
Stalking The Followers – EscMode ( Master v3) by EscMode

This version uses the exact same files that were sent to E-Mixing Studio. All the drum parts were on one track – as I’d lost the separate parts for snare, kick etc… and only had the mix down of these files.

So what do you think – which master sounds best to you?

He made some very cool edits to the beats, but I’m just not sure there was a great improvement in sound quality, when comparing his final version (#3) with my own version (#4) – mastered on headphones (I have no monitors) using T-Racks.

This was my first experience with an online mixing service so maybe my expectations were unrealistic, especially considering the song itself is not that great. They have some great testimonials on the site and most of their before/after audio examples are superb – so I don’t really understand why the final master of my track sounds so dull. Maybe it simply comes down to sh*t in = sh*t out.

So would I still recommend an online mixing service? Yep, I would and I’ll try a few more services and post the results here. I still believe a professional sound engineer with finely tuned ears, technical know-how, quality processing & monitoring gear and the motivation should be able to produce better results than your average home-based electronic music producer. Most of whom can’t afford both the music gear to produce the sounds PLUS the pro audio equipment to make sure those sounds are perfectly mixed and mastered.

Recommended Listening: Acid Tracks

Click here for Video and Written Tutorial on Creating a TB-303 sound in REASON

Create TB-303 Acid Sounds, Click below for a:
Video and Written Tutorial on Creating a TB-303 sound in REASON

I must have spent thousands of hours since 2002 on music production and almost all of my songs have never been heard by anyone other than me. And that’s because to me they’re still unfinished. It seems lame that all that time has been spent tweaking… editing… stretching…mangling…routing..etc…etc..and for what? So I’d love to get them consolidated into one ‘album’. Not really for anyone else – just for me, so I know all those hours haven’t been a total waste of time and I have something to show for it….. a shiny CD or USB stick I’ll give to my daughter when I’m gone…her inheritance. Lucky girl. haha

I prefer the musical side of creating tracks more than the engineering side of crafting the ‘perfect’ final audio mix and master. That’s not my strong point and I don’t have the outboard gear. Besides, sometimes we’re so entwined with our own music (especially if you’re going solo) that it’s hard to be objective – I’ll never know if I’ve achieved the optimum mix of my song. Never. Period. That’s why I think I’d be better with a subjective pair of ears.

So why not let a better qualified sound engineer with more finely tuned ears and better gear to do the job for me….like times gone by. Just like the Beatles did. And they could do it in about 100th of the time it would take me – it takes me years (literally) to finish putting together the elements of a track and so it would take me an infinite amount of time to do a proper mix…and infinite time is something I’m sure I don’t have.
Well, maybe it’s time to try one of the many online mixing services that have cropped-up to service indie music producers, on a fairly tight budget. Hence the reason fro putting together this list of online mixing services. They’re not ranked yet… but maybe one day soon, they will be.

Always listen to the songs that they have mixed. That way you can hear what each ‘engineer’ has to offer. There are good ones and bad ones out there, so you should ask for examples from your genre so you don’t get burned. Engineers like anything else have a certain sound or flare that may or may not suite your style of music.

If you’ve tried any of these services, you’d be adding a great service if you posted your feedback on the finished mix.

Clickproduce is a great new online rescource for computer based music producers looking for low-priced, royalty free samples, loops, instruments and FX. For those more interested in the end result, rather than the actual process of making music, they offer complete song-building packs – great for beginners. Whilst for those that like to get their hands dirty ‘under the hood’, they also provide individual instruments, to tweaks and effects for adding that little something in post-production.

All samplepacks & loops, instruments and one-shot hits, are sorted by instrument and musical genre and available in formats: WAV, AIFF, REX2, EXS24, ReFill, HALion and AppleLoops.

Check them out, Click Here > Clickproduce.com

Photo: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Click Image to Enlarge

Check-out this monster of a mixing room. What you see on the left is 600,000 watts of power pumping out 110db of sound at 100 meters from the stage, via 54 speakers weighing over 15 tons. What’s even more impressive is that the sound engineers have less than 30 minutes to get the next act’s gear rigged-up before they hit the stage. The main Pyramid stage operates as a ‘flip-flop’ system. While one band is playing, the next act is set-up behind the curtain, with levels monitored by mixing desk ‘B’ (right of main mixing desk). Interesting to note that the Digital gear installed in 2008 was replaced by analog this year, with miles of copper wire connecting the majority of the system.

The following video was filmed at the Arcadia dance arena and looks incredible. I think a lot of people will be feeling nostlagic about their time spen there for a long time to come.

Below are video highlights from the line-up of Glastonbury 2010 artists. On the main stages, dance and electronica wasn’t that well represented which is maybe a sign-of the times. With that said, Faithless, Groove Armada and Orbital all put in blinding performances, as did Gorillaz. We’re waiting on more videos to hit the web for dance artists playing on the smaller stages including The Orb, LCD SoundSytem, Snap!, Spooky, Four Tet, Freq Nasty, System 7, 808 State DJS and DJ Alex Paterson.

Glastonbury 2010 Video’s

Gorillaz – Clint Eastwood

Groove Armada – My Friend

Hot Chip – One Life Stand

Oribital (& Matt Smith) – Dr. Who Theme

Faithless – Insomnia

Muse – Knights of Cydonia

Orbital – Halcyon on and on Part 1

Available on the album ‘In Sides’. Click Here to download at iTunes

Orbital – Satan

Putting theory to practice; racks 101 and a couple of general tips.
(<< Back to Pt.1 of Multiband Processing with Ableton Live)
Personally I like a bit of grit on my percussion so I suggest we drop a Dynamic Tube and a Compressor in there.

Click Image to Enlarge

Some rather extreme settings on that Dynamic Tube but it really drives the midrange out in that dirty fashion. After listening to it one realizes that its too dirty. The trouble with that is that we still want to retain the dirty but still have some not-dirty shine through; this right here is the magic of Multiband processing. Duplicate the mid-chain (ctrl+d/cmd+d), then simply delete the Dynamic Tube and trim the eq a bit so that it only affects a bit of that midrange:

Click Image to Enlarge

With an easy Compressor it will still retain the dynamics of the hits while still having the dirty dirty mid processing on the other chain, which is exactly what we want and exactly why producers should use this way of processing; we can achieve incredibly complex, diverse and extreme effects and still retain the original dynamics of the source audio just by separating the bands a bit. After some aggressive tweaking on the Dynamic Tube compressor, a small volume adjustment on the gated highs, take a listen at how it sounds.

Notice that the last chain is just dry, so in practice we are doing multiband processing and parallel processing, which is in theory a different topic all-together. So, just by taking a seemingly boring random break and with just a few steps and a very simple audio rack we have made it interesting. Now, one could easily drop in a phaser, perhaps a grain delay or a small plate-style reverb and it will fundamentally change the break into something else, your imagination is the only limit (and of course, your processing power).

In conclusion, multiband processing is what you want it to be, it can be as subtle or extreme as you want, and it can fundamentally change the feel and texture of the source audio. Most importantly; its a cheap and easy way to gain total control over your frequency content.

Phase Cancellation

One thing to take notice on is that when processing different frequencies it´s incredibly easy to end up with certain frequencies cutoff, or missing entirely from your source audio (usually depends on how you set up your eq). That can be fixed with phase cancellation. The idea of phase cancellation is simple: if it´s silent, it´s cancelling out perfectly; if it´s not silent then there´s a difference in phase. This comes with a pleasant suprise; if you make a rack with a phase cancellation eq and a dry chain, your effect rack will always be 100% transparent when it´s dry. A more indepth explanation about that can be found on my blog here.

If you want to learn more, and in particular if you want to learn more about multiband processing, be advised; the topic is as thick as the topic of mastering itself, jampacked with theory and do´s and dont´s and it all differs depending on the context and the source. This article was merely an introduction of how you can roll your own mutliband processing racks the easiest and most convenient way in Ableton Live and is in no shape or form the “right” way to do it.

With that said: Remember; you can´t learn unless you experiment.

Have a nice day people.

Ableton Live Music Production Software (Macintosh and Windows) List Price: $449.0 Price: $399.00 Version 8 enhances the Ableton vision of creative, real-time digital music with a wealth of new techniques, effects and most-wanted workflow improvements.

Why do you need it, and why would you want to use it?

The basic concept of multiband processing is to take an audio source, split it up into frequency bands (consider a basic DJ eq; low, mid, and hi), then process each band individually. This is a favourite trick amongst producers used to get something to sit perfectly in your mix, whether you need to tighten up the low-end while warming up the mids, or to completely destroy the mid while having a frequency dependent reverb on the highs; Multiband is where it´s at.

Now folks, in the early days of the DAW generation we would have had to use several tracks, or several sends and returns to perform such a simple task, but since we are using Ableton Live, we can save all those send tracks for something better (there is also another reason why you wouldn´t want to do that; Live splits the cpu core load per track, meaning that its virtually impossible to assign one core for a multiband process, unless you use a rack).

Infact, it´s so easy to do multiband processing with Live it´s almost ridiculous. Simply make a rack with several chains (check the manual for more info on racks and how they work), select the frequency range you want to process (cut out all other frequencies with an eq) and that is basically it. Now, stacking up audio effects after that EQ means that those frequencies are the only ones that will be affected.

So, what does this mean for you, the Producer?

With multiband processing you have total control of all the frequencies, as opposed to the whole frequency spectrum. Producers like control, and so do we. With that said, lets get down business!

Putting theory to practice; racks 101 and a couple of general tips.

The complete Ableton project files for the following tutorial are available to download here.

Let´s start by examining this drum-loop sample for a brief moment. Sample >>>Click to Play. This beat has a lot of stuff happening to it. It also sounds incredibly dull.

Let’s Get Dirty

Let´s pretend that we want to make it a bit more dirty, and a bit more punchy, while still keeping the high-end clear, popping out of the mix. The first thing to do is:

1.  Make an Audio Rack, and separate the high-end.

2. Drop the audio rack into your track.

3. Drop an Eq8 inside the first chain and select the frequency range, something like this would do:

Click Image to Expand

4. We´re also going to drop a gate after that EQ and a Compressor to accentuate certain hits without accenting the whole break, like so:

Click Image to Expand

Seperate the Mid-end

Now we make a new chain in the rack and select another band of frequencies to process. The mid-end could surely use some attention, so isolate that and then we´ll make a dry chain too while we´re at it (unprocessed).

Click Image to Expand

Multiband Processing with Ableton Live Part 2  >>>

Ableton Live 8 Upgrade from Live 1-6 List Price: $289.0 Price: $289 Though you’ve enjoyed working with your old version of Ableton Live, it’s time to step to Version 8 which enhances the software’s vision of creative, real-time digital music with a wealth of improved techniques, effects, and workflow improvements including:New groove engine Groove patterns can add life and swing to straight sequences. Live 8′s new groove engine lets you apply groove patterns in real time, extract grooves from audio or MIDI sources, and quantize audio and MIDI in real time. It also comes with a new groove library.New warping engine Live 8 introduces a more direct way of working with warping and some important Warp Mode enhancements. You can now warp audio events by adjusting the events themselves on the timeline. Beats Mode has been updated, and there’s a completely new Complex Warp Mode. Plus, you can slice audio files to MIDI tracks based on transients.Looper A much-requested feature, the Ableton Looper effect gives you classic sound-on-sound looping without the limitations of a hardware device. Looper is set up for remote operation, so you can record, overdub, undo, and more without touching the computer.Effects Live 8 software includes five powerful new effects: Vocoder, Multiband Dynamics, Overdrive, Limiter, and Frequency Shifter. These effects cover all the well-known aspects of these devices, but really shine due to some innovative features and enhancements from the Ableton labs. Brand: Ableton

Launched back in 2008, Novation’s original Nocturn was an innovative addition to the budget midi controller market. Priced at £69 in the UK (  $99 in USA) it is ultra affordable and doesn’t fall short in terms of features, providing a vast array of control that unleashed the full potential of our favourite VST instruments and effects. It does lack one thing though -  a midi keyboard. Thankfully,  late 2009 Novation followed-up with two Nocturn Keyboard models available with 25 and 49 keys designed by Fatar. Both have been tested by MusicRadar who were impressed by the robust and responsive playing action. The only difference between the keyboard controller and original Nocturn is the lack of cross-fader – a useful tool for DJ’s but not essential for music producers.

Novation have addressed two major issues found in most controller keyboards with their Nocturn 25 & 49-keys. Firstly, providing extensive control of software parameters with adequate knobs and buttons. Secondly, simplifying the hassle of assigning them, and remembering what they are assigned to can become so obstructive to getting on with making your music, you end up turning back to your always convenient mouse.

Nocturn Keyboard’s Automap control software claims to have solved both these problems. To assign controllers, simply click on the parameter, touch a knob or button, and it is assigned! It also enables you to keep track of what is assigned to what – instead of using a small monochrome LCD screen, Nocturn Keyboard displays control information where you really need it: on your computer monitor. The Automap software graphically displays Nocturn’s control surface. The controllers themselves also tell you what is going on: LED rings around the 8 encoders show their current settings, and LED’s behind the buttons tell you if they are on or off.

So here’s the deal – when you buy a Novation Nocturn 25 or Nocturn 49 at AbsoluteMusic, you get a free download of Novation software worth £149. So, why do you need it – and what do you get?

Free Novation Software worth £149:

• Novation V-Station: Normally priced at £40 the V-Station offers all the functionality of the hardware K-Station (except the vocoder) in a low-latency program with simple architecture, excellent sound quality, 3 fat oscillators and silky smooth filter make it ideal for both the beginner and the seasoned producer. Read full review here.

• Novation Bass Station: Modelled on Novation’s classic analogue snyth, the Bass Station’s  filter design does a very convincing job of recreating the original bass sounds similar to the Roland TB303, Juno and ARP and Moog instruments. The current version is still being updated and goes for £31 at AbsoluteMusic. The Bass Station is shipped with the classic original presets that became the soundtrack for many of the dance hits of the 90s along with many more totalling 100 sounds covering a huge sonic range from screaming leads to phatt funky basses. Read user reviews here.

• Novation FX Suite: A bundle of  5 of the most most used effects offering a significant upgrade in sonic possibilities when compared to standard sequencer effects. The five independent VST/AU plug-ins include Chorus, Delay, Tremolo, Phaser and the famously flexible, powerful Filter featuring overdrive. Derived from the legendary SuperNova II, this powerful filter has an array of features and a unique sound. Normal Novation FX Suite price is £50.

• Automap Pro: The ‘pro’ version of Automap  (read below for details) supports multiple Novation devices, meaning more than one Novation controller can be managed at once and have Automap working with both of them at the same time. Further enhanced features include Keystroke Assignments, Drag and drop and Autoview mode. However, the move to charge for a product which can only be used on Novation products and actually encourages users to buy more Novation controllers has been  crticised, but what the hell. Here you get £20 of essential software for free.

Buy Novation Nocturn 25 or 49-Keys and get £149 of Free Novation Software.

Esprit Records recently announced winners for Goro & Dephzac – Infinity remix competition originally posted here.

Winners are:

1st place: Dosage remix
Dosage (aka Paistyboy) are young dubstep producers from Watford, UK. Goro & Dephzac judged this as the best remix saying it was a ” fresh and original dubstep remix with a decent sonic quality”. Don’t be fooled by the fairly weak and commercialized intro – this is nasty once it kicks in.

2nd place: Ketz & Wreckage Machinery remix
Ketz is from Essex, UK and Wreckage Machinery is a young producer from Vienna, Austria. This deeper remix sounds strong from the start…similar to Klute and personally I prefer this version to the winner.

3rd place: Braincrack remix
Braincrack is up-and-coming producer from Budapest, Hungary. He submitted a phat neurofunk rolling remix which Goro & Dephzac thought deserved 3rd place. We’re in agreement.

Look-out for these upcoming Infinity remixes released on Esprit Records later in 2010, and will be sold on Itunes, Emusic, Juno Download etc.

<< Module 1: Creating a Drum Beat