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TUTORIAL
SERVED
BY
TUTORIAL
MECHANIMAL
MUTAGEN RECORDS
FOLLOW HIM AT:
Mechanimal launched its first live in October 2009 and has been
blasting full power trance music around the globe since. Now with
over 20 successful releases and ever growing experience Mechanimal released its debut album rocking dancefloors worldwide!
Psychedelic e-Mag catches up with Mechanimal for this month’s music production tutorial:
Creating impacts with Mechanimal
C
Introduction
reating strong impact in your music is important. I always found it difficult to find clean effect samples so I ended up learning how to create my own. Once you get in the habit it will save you lots of
time, make your productions cleaner and give your tracks a personal touch rather than reaching
for the same overused samples.
Step 1: Clap/Snare Sample
Find a clean Clap or Snare sample. Many will work well so try a
few with this tutorial and see what you like. I find that a clap with a
nice transient (green) works best. Avoid heavily distorted or compressed samples (Red) as they will give you a white noise wash
rather than a punchy impact (unless that’s what you need).
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Preset:
Start with a large hall or any preset that has a long reverb tail.
Decay:
This is sometimes called “Reverb Time” and sets how long the reverb goes for. As a guide 15-20 seconds
lasts for about 8 bars.
Pre-delay:
This sets when the reverb starts. For example if you set “0” the reverb will start immediately. If you set
50ms it will wait 50 milliseconds before working. This is very useful as you can let the initial transient
through. Play your clap on loop and slowly raise the pre delay until you can hear the reverb almost separate from the clap sample: now simply bring it back until they glue together.
MiX:
Use this to balance between the punch of the clap and the reverb wash. I find that between 50%-80%
works well.
EQ:
Most reverbs have some form of filter or EQ section: shape the sound of the reverb to taste.
Step 3: Finalising
The impact is starting to sound good but still may sound like a clap with reverb rather than a full bodied
sample. The last step is to add some compression to further “glue” the clap sample with the reverb. For a
detailed guide on compression read my previous tutorial (p28): http://bit.ly/PMissue4
Compression
Short to medium Attack: This let’s some transient through whilst bringing up the tail of the reverb. Long
release: allows the compressor to work on the entire reverb tail. Medium Ratio: This is the amount of
compression. Around 2:1 normally does the trick.
Step 2: Creating space
Place a reverb on the insert. This is where we will shape the sound.
Export
Export to wav and import into your project. Make sure place the markers with enough space to catch the
entire tail of the reverb.
Step 4: Experimenting Try this tutorial with kick drums to create boom