To answer everything… regarding VPS Suite and LFO Tool. It really makes no difference which you use. Speaking of using less expensive tools, before I got the VPS stuff I actually used to just use a preset volume fade in Cubase which worked great too. There’s plenty of other options too like the Cableguys stuff amongst others… they all essentially do the same thing. My main reason for using the Vengeance one is they were the first to offer a multi band version which allowed you to set different side chains for low and high frequencies. The VPS effects suites are nice, decent price too but they’re not absolute essentials so don’t stress. I recently picked up AIR’s effects suite along with all their plugins for something ridiculous on sale (I think its was $30 or something) and was actually really impressed with those too. U-He UhBik is another great option for a multi effects suite. You could also wait from something like Unfiltered Audio’s Byome which is coming soon… everything all bundled into one plugin.
Just to touch on Midi Bay… all midi bay is is a virtual patch cable between an instrument channel and an instance of one of Vengeance’s Midi triggered devices. Multiband Sidechain can operate in Sync mode (Follow your track timing), MIDIBay trigger, or directly triggered via a midi input too. The benefit of MidiBay is you can trigger multiple effects units from one single midi channel. I haven’t seen this sort of capability in many other plugins.
Regarding your question on presets… I really consider sound design and music production two completely seperate entities. There’s times when they intersect one another but I try not to ‘make’ sounds when I’m in the process of arranging. So, no, absolutely nothing wrong with using presets in that sense as they save you time when doing the creative stuff. Thats exactly why something like Nexus is so popular… people,e complain about its lack of edibility but thats kind of its strong point too… you just play it. When you’re writing music you want to get it out of you as quickly as possible. If I don’t finish a large portion of a track within 2 or so days I delete it. You don’t want to be fiddling with the technical stuff during this process so I set aside times for experimenting and creating libraries, and times for using those sounds in music creation. Furthermore, purchasing synth presets is a great way to learn how to create those sounds from scratch too. What should you focus on? Well that really depends what your goals are… are you wanting to create sounds to use in music, or are you just wanting to create a track you can play out in a club. I fall into the full on geek and audio nerd end of the spectrum so I focus a lot on the technical stuff but its not essential to go that route either.
Hey , this was a while ago… would have to watch the video again. I’m not sure there’s much to explain, a lot of the time I just go by ear as to what sounds right and what doesn’t… drop me a line though with the video number from this series and maybe a time that I can just go check it out again and come back to you.
You might feel like being stuck if you’re sticking too much with music theory here and I think that @Protoculture comment leads to one key point here : how does it sound in the end. Focusing on standard music theory will let you think the chords progression is wrong because you’re gonna find notes outside of the scale or jumps between scales or chords that won’t make any sense in conventional music theory.
Especially in electronic music, you also have to think about frequencies and tonality, especially with synths and it’s a common practice to add extra notes to fatten a synth sound for example. The same goes if you feel like the sound needs more mid/high tonalities. You have to forget the rules and this can help to craft a chord progression that really match the sound and feel of the instrument & track.
If you google something like “how to make chords progression like Deadmau5” you will find some interesting videos showing you how he does it, not following any music theory rules ( or just very minimal ones ) & not recording his chords live into the Daw, because he’s not a pianist at all, he’s crafting very complex chords progression just with the click & mouse.
So really, if you try to focus on this part in the track and are able to replicate the same sound, just correct the progression and make one following the rules and listen back through Protoculture’s progression vs the “standard” one, you should “hear” what I’m trying to explain.
There’s a lot ike this going on in electronic music production like custom chords/scales, adding/removing notes, using ghost notes, layering synths playing -12/+12 semi-tones same chords and then using delays…etc.
Forget the rules & focus on the sound, that’s really the key point here IMHO.
That chord progression is not standard, it could be considered a mixture of phrygian and locrian scales with inverted chords.
It is important to know basic music theory, but it is not strictly necessary. The important thing is to: feel, experience and express. What sounds good, is good.
Pretty much what @Tekalight said… more about what it sounds like than what would be typically done according to theory. That said, if you want the theory behind why those chords are like that, look up chord voicing as well as suspended, add and diminished chords. If you’ve got something like the chord track in Cubase you can play around with chord modifications really easily. There’s a lot more too it than just major and minor chords.
Try dragging out the audio after its processed… otherwise a work around is to add a block of silence after the audio, then paste them together and then process it offline.
Amazing tutorial and loved the fact that he made it from scratch and got to see him go through the trial and errors which you don’t often see with some tutorials!
