Producing Beats

vinyl record
Recently I've been working on some tracks to be released later this year which have a Old Skool vibe to them, one of the things I wanted to do with one of the tracks was to make it sound like it is being played on traditional vinyl by having a record needle put down at the start and then bring in the crackles, hum and sound just like a record. One way to do this is to actually put it on vinyl and then rerecord it, but that's just too hard, costs money and has uncontrollable results. Thankfully it wasn't too hard to do and we show you below how I managed to do this.

Here's a quick example of the intro of the track to give you an idea of what you could create using this technique.

This one has to be one of my all time favorite VST effects. I can remember when I first found it, I played with it for a good few hours and you probably will too.

I find it works well on drum beats as the video below shows. Glitch has 9 different effects which TapeStop, Modulator, Retrigger, Shuffler, Reverser, Crusher, Gater, Delay and Stretcher. Each effect does what it sounds like it should do and each one can be tweaked to suit you with the controls below each one.

A good track usually has a nice clear sound down in those bass frequencies which doesn't sound muffled. Many mixes from beginner producers struggle to get a great sounding mix and complain of a muffled sounding mix in the lower frequencies. Usually the cause is that too many instruments are competing for the space within the bass.

A commonly used technique to leave room in this area is to use some low cutting of EQ or a high pass filter on certain problem instruments. For example, imagine we have a bass guitar and a standard electric guitar. When both are playing together, the electric guitar will still be producing some frequencies down in the range where our bass should sit. Applying a high pass filter (cutting out the low frequencies) on the electric guitar can remove these often unnecessary frequencies that the electric guitar is producing and thus allowing the bass guitar to push through much clearer.

Fuzz is a great little effect which you can usually hear being used by guitarists. They work by clipping the sound which makes the sound wave a bit more square. We know of a great little VST plugin that we think most producers should add to their arsenal of effects and best of all it is free.

Audio Damage's FuzzPlus 2 is simple to use with just four controls - Fuzz knob, Tone knob, Output knob and Bypass button. We find that by adding it to sounds as we are producing can give a something a little special to sounds and ultimately our mixes.

One thing all us electronic musicians love is to get hold of some free samples and that's just what we're going to give you. Our first sample pack has been made using a few different synthesizers and has been expertly programmed (well we think they have). Contained within our first sample pack is 25 x alarm sounding synth sounds for use in your own tracks, so whatever style of music you make, if you're looking for a synth sound that sounds like an alarm, this little sample pack might have it.

This sample pack is free for you to use within your own music tracks and give out to your friends. Please don't distribute it on another site and steal the credit for it, we took a while to make these samples, instead please link back to this post. Do not resell, it is royalty free, we are not selling it, why should you?