The influence of samples, sounds and loops on the music engineering process. Samples in the context of mixing and mastering.
Hi, I’m Lucid! This is my first post on our newly-opened blog. Its purpose will be to help you understand the basic distinctive feature of high vs low quality of music productions. This feature is the groundwork for everything that constitutes the complete piece of music, and on which depend: the quality of each single track, the quality of sound effects used, the quality of mixing, and last but not least the quality of mastering. This feature is… the use of samples in your productions.
A number of beginner music engineers have to fight a great deal of problems on the level of mixing the material, which usually can be very frustrating. Their problems tend to emerge from the lack of experience, but also on the account of the samples used. It too often happens that ‘young’ music producers either try to make their music more attractive by means of custom samples made on their own that don’t necessarily sound better, or use professional samples, which they modify and distort too much, also by overusing EQ effects. I’m far from saying that experimenting is bad, let them experiment. The results of such ventures are sometimes revolutionary; that way, even, new music genres are created. But such methods usually don’t go together with sound quality. Unconscious of their basic mistakes the producers try to fix the bad quality on the level of mixing, or think that mastering will smoothen the things, but unfortunately that is not the case. Indeed, during the mix you can work on each of the samples separately and I think this is the way to do it, but the less corrections made the better. The more sound corrections and the more fixing we do, the more likely we are to make mistakes.
Speaking from my experience, when I’m mixing tracks in fl studio, I have another editor opened which I use for correcting samples by means of the equalizer. Then I import a given sound anew into the fl project (I use ‘reload’ – ‘channel’ window, then settings>sample>reload) so as to replace the former sound. I want the samples to fit into the project without unnecessarily processing them, only after some frequency correction. Next, on the level of mixing, I use the EQ, but only in order to enhance the proportions of volume between each of the tracks, not to ‘fix’ any of them.
If you’re not sure you ‘do it right’ when working with the equalizer, here are my tips for you:
- Compare your sample quality with the professional music producers’ samples. Or, you can cut bits of your favourite music in which feature the instruments you want to use (e.g. snare drum) and try to achieve a comparable level of quality.
- Save a few versions of the sample, then compare among them and choose the best. It often happens that the first attempt is better than the last. And also that’s something which refers to the beginners as well as the professionals: the longer they work on a certain sound, the more they exaggerate with using the EQ.
- Mix two samples together. For instance, there’s too much bass in the first sample and too much treble in the other. If you mix both in one piece, perhaps you will achieve a better and fuller sound.
- Take short breaks to restore your hearing and mind’s capacity for objective perception.
In the posts to come I will focus on the issue of using the EQ for different kinds of drum sounds and synthetic percussion. The settings will be displayed on the screens. The mailings will inform you if new posts appear.
You have to be aware that utilising good quality samples in the production process will result in a much better quality of VST audio plugin effects – the sound will be better since the input material is of higher quality. Also, bear in mind that if your samples have resonances and you want to filter them so that their resonant frequencies are amplified, the resulting sound will be most probably unpleasant. Some time ago I wondered how those professional recording studios arrived at such powerful effects using plugins that I couldn’t get the hang of. Now I know that the secret of it lies in the quality of the material processed. It was in the times when I didn’t know how to handle the equalizer functions properly, as I know now. To say the truth, the equalizer is my most basic instrument when working with samples. The one I use has the frequency range display, so that I can know the intensity of each frequency at a given moment. I recommend using such to you too.
Remember that it is essential to construct your productions on samples that are sharp, well-equalized, full-sounding, and deep (that obviously depends on your intentions and the genre you’re in). On the level of mixing you will set the proportions, reduce frequency bands that dominate the sound in the context of the whole piece, but you won’t need to fix the deficiencies. I know very well how frustrating endless corrections during the mix can become. It was one of the very reasons I created quite a part of all my sample collection, at first for my own use, and now available at Lucid Samples.
In the next articles I will describe the details of how to set the EQ for different kinds of instruments; screens with explanations will be included! Additionally, there will be the screens of frequency bands of my samples to make it easy for you!
Best,
Lucid