Snoman R. Dance Music Manual: Tools, Toys, and Techniques

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PART 1

Technology and Theory

174

However, as good as the Line 6 POD does sound, there are still beneﬁ ts of

using a microphone to record the guitar. In fact, you will ﬁ nd that in many

cases the best results come from using a DI box and a microphone set-up.

With the DI box set-up to record the guitar, also use a dynamic microphone to

record the sound directly from the ampliﬁ er cabinet.

The microphone placement needs to be considered carefully, so you should lis-

ten to the sound of the DI box and then determine what type of sound you

require from the amp cabinet. If the microphone is placed directly facing

the centre of the amp cabinet, it will capture more of the higher frequencies,

whereas if it is placed further to the side it will capture more of the lower end

of the spectrum.

As a starting point, try placing the microphone approximately 300 mm above

the cabinet pointing downwards towards the speaker and roughly 400 mm

away. Again, using this set-up, monitor the resulting sound through head-

phones or in a control room before recording and move the positioning

around until you gain the sound you require. By recording in this way, the DI

box records a clean guitar signal, while the real microphone records the ambi-

ence of the room, alongside the tonal effects of the ampliﬁ cation. The two sig-

nals can then be mixed to produce the timbre required at the mixing desk.

If you do not have access to a DI box, then you will have no choice but to set

a microphone up to record the amp cabinet. Since you are recording with only

a microphone and no DI box to back the timbre up, it is unadvisable to place

the microphone too close to the ampliﬁ er since it will tend to capture a signiﬁ -

cant amount of low-end rumble from the cabinet, rather place the microphone

on a stand and place it approximately 600 mm above the cabinet pointing

downwards towards the amp and roughly 600 mm away.

Using this set-up, monitor the resulting sound through headphones or in a

control room before recording and move the positioning around until you gain

the sound you require. As a general rule of thumb, if you place the microphone

close to the centre of the amp, you’ll receive more of the high end of the gui-

tar, further to the side and you’ll receive the lower end energy, so experiment

before committing to a recording.

While the amp cabinet and DI box will tend to add their own type of com-

pression, it’s prudent to still apply some during recording due to the playing

styles of electric guitarists; it should be applied heavier than on standard acoustic

guitars .

A good starting point for compression is to set the ratio at 10:1 with a 7 ms

attack, a 50 ms release and a hard knee setting. From here, reduce the threshold

so that it captures the transients and prevents clipping. Note that you shouldn’t

aim to crush the guitar with the compressor since more compression can be

applied at the mixing stage, but too much compression applied at the record-

ing stage cannot be removed later.

Recording Real Instruments

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175

BASS

Bass is perhaps one of the most difﬁ cult instruments to record faithfully, since

by its very nature it’s a bass instrument and as discussed in Chapter 1, bass has

a long waveform. While all frequencies will reﬂ ect off walls, due to the length of

a low-frequency waveform, if you are recording in a small room there will be a

culmination of low-end frequencies at the microphone, even if the microphone

is pointed directly at the amp cabinet. This results in more ambience and colou-

ration being captured by the microphone which can result in a muddy sound.

On top of this, the bass is an absolutely vital element in a dance mix, it is part

of the groove that you dance too, so it has to be recorded perfectly.

The ﬁ rst step to recording a bass instrument is to ensure that the bassist can play

the instrument well and that it’s tuned correctly. A poorly tuned bass instrument

will result in a nightmare at the mixing stage. Also, while fret noise is acceptable on

an acoustic guitar it should be avoided on a bass guitar; while this can sometimes

be avoided by setting the string height from personal experience, the majority of

the cause is a result of an inexperienced thumb-slapping dickhead attempting to

show off his talents rather than concentrate on achieving a good take.

Similar to electric guitars, you can use DI box to record the bass but it is of

paramount importance that you use a good DI unit such as the Ridge Farm Gas

Cooker. However, while this type of DI box will result in a clean focused timbre,

do not underestimate the room ambience that can be captured by capturing

the sound through a microphone. Consequently, it is advisable when record-

ing bass to use both a DI box and a microphone to capture the sound; both

can then be mixed together during the mixing stage to attain the best results.

Recording directly from a bass amp is difﬁ cult since you should have a fairly

dead room to record in. This is because both reﬂ ections and reverberations

from the room will be captured and, as discussed in earlier chapters, reverb

should be avoided on bass since it will severely affect the position of the bass

when it comes to mix-down. You need to ensure that you record in the biggest

room available to prevent the reﬂ ected waveforms returning to the microphone

and adding more bass end than you wish to capture.

Generally speaking, microphones with a good low-end response should be

used to record the amp cabinet; if pushed to recommend a microphone, the

Sennheiser E602 produces very good results but some engineers will use a micro-

phone designed to record kick drums since they’re designed to capture the lower

end of the frequency range. Again, experimentation is the key and you should

experiment with as many different microphones that you have at your disposal.

The microphone placement is generally the same as electric guitars in that if

the microphone is placed directly facing the centre of the amp cabinet it will

capture more of the higher frequencies, whereas if it is placed further to the

side it will capture more of the lower end of the spectrum. As a starting point,

try placing the microphone approximately 600 mm above the cabinet, pointing

downwards towards the amp and roughly 400 mm away.

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Again, using this set-up, monitor the resulting sound through headphones or

in a control room before recording and move the positioning around until you

gain the sound you require.

Since a bass instrument is an incredibly dynamic instrument, compression is a

must. The settings to use on a compressor will depend entirely on the player,

since a player’s technique will vary widely from one to another. A good starting

point on compression is to set the ratio to 12:1, a 10 ms attack, 20 ms release

and a hard knee. Set the threshold to ⫺ 13 dB and then slowly increase it until

all the transients are captured. This should give a good recording with a limited

dynamic range that will ﬁ t into a dance mix.

BRASS

While bass is considered a difﬁ cult instrument to record, brass has to take the

award for being the most difﬁ cult. Firstly, with brass instruments the room’s

acoustics have a huge inﬂ uence over the sound, and since they are blown

instruments, there is an astounding amount of pressure leaving the bell sec-

tion which can easily destroy most microphones if they’re not carefully posi-

tioned. Also, brass is incredibly loud – often reaching a sound pressure level of

135–140 dB. On top of this, the sound of the instrument changes as the player

becomes tired and the instrument ﬁ lls up with spit.

Generally, ribbon microphones are widely regarded as the best to record brass

instruments since they cannot only capture the instrument directly but also the

surrounding ambience. However, due to the fragile nature of the microphones,

a pop shield is an absolute must. In fact, regardless of the microphone you

choose to use, always employ a pop shield since the sheer velocity of the air

leaving the bell can easily pop the diaphragm.

It is also important to note that the sound of a brass instrument does not come

directly from the end of the bell; rather it is from the vibration of the bell itself.

Therefore, it is prudent to place the microphone approximately 2 m in front of

the instrument and around 400 mm above the bell’s position. This allows the

microphone to pick up the acoustics of the room which is where a majority of

the sound’s character will come from.

If the performer is mostly going to be performing lower notes, you can place

the microphone closer to the instrument but it is inadvisable to go closer

than 500 mm since you won’t capture much of the sound’s character. In some

instances you can place the microphone just above the performer’s shoulder since

if it sounds good to them, then it’ll probably sound good to the microphone.

Obviously, the room should be appropriate for the sound, so you should try

recording in a number of rooms to see which gives the best result. Tiled rooms

such as a kitchen or bathroom (provided the room is big enough for the per-

former to perform in) can provide plenty of character to the timbre, but be cau-

tious since too much reverb captured in the recording stage cannot be removed

afterwards. Experimentation is the key here and will as always yield the best

Recording Real Instruments

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results. I’ve achieved great results by having the performer (in this case a trum-

pet) play facing a window with a dynamic microphone positioned 1 m away

facing the window to record the reﬂ ections.

Before recording you should wear headphones to double check how the micro-

phone is picking up the signal and not be afraid to move the performer’s and micro-

phone’s positions around until you have the best signal you could possibly achieve.

While setting up for recording it is particularly important not to tire out the

performer; so it is inadvisable to have them continually recite a performance

until you have found the perfect positioning. Playing any brass (or woodwind)

instrument is particularly demanding on a performer, they’re taking sharp

intakes of breath and blowing hard continually. Try it yourself for 5 min and

you’ll understand.

With this in mind, once you have the correct positioning, get the most energetic

parts down ﬁ rst and as quickly as possible. The most demanding parts will be

the higher and hardest notes, so try to get all these down ﬁ rst and always listen

carefully to what is being played. Few performers like to admit when they’re

tired, so listen out for missed notes, lower volumes, missing attack stages on

the instrument and also keep an eye on the player. A player turning red, then

blue, followed by collapsing to the ﬂ oor provides a good indication of just how

tired the player is becoming.

If you’re after recording a brass ensemble but only have one performer, do not

rely on chorus effects to reproduce an ensemble artiﬁ cially since it very rarely

works well. Instead, ask the performer to play the part again and record as

many takes as possible. Once you have them all, you can layer them down on

different tracks of the sequencer to recreate an ensemble performance.

If you only have one recording and there is no chance of repeating the per-

formance, you can copy the performance onto another sequencer track and

change the timing between the two tracks by a couple of ticks, but the result

will not be as impressive as multiple recordings.

As with most instruments, compression is absolutely vital on brass instruments

due to the sheer volume of the instruments. Start by setting the compressor to

a ratio of 10:1 with a 7 ms attack and a 30 ms release, and then set the thresh-

old to ⫺ 15 dB with a hard knee setting. Ideally, the compressor should be set

so that it captures all the notes to keep the volume level throughout the record-

ing. A ﬂ uctuating volume once recorded can be compressed further, but for

brass it’s generally a good idea to keep the volume steady throughout the per-

formance while initially recording.

GENERAL TIPS

As with the rest of the book, these techniques are not set in stone and you

should develop and experiment on the principles discussed. The most impor-

tant factor to bear in mind, however, is to remain patient.

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Since real instrumentalists are prone to nerves, emotion and exhaustion, you

must exhibit some patience; pressuring a performer will only result in a rushed

and poor performance .

What follows are some guidelines and general tips to receive the best possible

performance:

■ Use as many microphones you have at your disposal to record

instruments.

■ If possible, experiment with different pre-amps to see which gives the

best results for the instrument you are recording.

■ Record in as many rooms as possible and choose the room that gives the

best response.

■ Allow the performers to take regular breaks, even if they suggest that

they do not need one; ask them to take one anyway. Tired performers

will not give their best.

■ Always monitor the microphone’s response using headphones. This

ensures you are only hearing what the microphone is picking up.

■ If you have a portable system, try recording instruments in small halls,

etc., to see if it produces the results you need. Real reverb, in small

amounts, is much better than artiﬁ cial on some instruments, especially

brass.

■ Be prepared to regularly punch in and out of recordings.

■ Do not expect to receive a perfect one-shot performance. It is not

unusual to ‘comp’ together a number of recordings to create a perfect

performance.

Sequencers

CHAPTER 9

179

With a thorough understanding of the technology behind producing dance

music, we now need to look at how it all ties together, and in nearly all instances

this is accomplished via a sequencer. The sequencer should be considered the

most important aspect of any dance musician’s studio. Whether hardware or

software, it ties together all the technology, and over recent years, the sequencer

has become the central hub of just about every studio in the world.

With the increased power in computers and the microchip, today’s sequencer

can work with both MIDI and audio, permitting the musician to not only pro-

gramme synthesizer to play speciﬁ c notes at speciﬁ c times but also record and

edit audio and apply effects and processing – all in real time. Indeed, processing

power in computers has now reached the stage where it is entirely possible to cre-

ate, edit, mix and master an entire piece of music entirely on a laptop (notebook)

computer. It should be noted that what follows is only a quick rundown of a

sequencer’s capabilities; to discuss every detail would take another book in itself.

Nearly all of today’s sequencers can be broken down into working with two

main elements; MIDI and audio. While MIDI is often seen as an outdated for-

mat, a basic understanding of its principles is still important, especially in the

current age of software synthesizers.

The main page in any sequencer is often referred to as the arrangement page.

This consists of a series of tracks that can be created and listed down the left-

hand side. These tracks can consist of MIDI tracks, audio tracks or both. When

playback is initiated (usually by pressing the space bar, or clicking play on the

Sequencers

CHAPTER 9

’ Some great records are being made with today’s

technology and there are still great artists among us.

Likewise there are artists today who are so reliant

on modern technology; they wouldn’t have emerged

when recording was more organic.

’

Unknown

PART 1

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180

transport control), a timeline moves from left to right, playing back all the

tracks simultaneously in the arrangement page ( Figure 9.1 ).

In this arrangement page, it is possible to cut the tracks into segments/blocks

using a scissor tool, and copy, repeat and move them around to produce an

arrangement. For instance, if you have a 4 bar drum loop, you could continu-

ally copy this 4 bar ‘block’ over and over so that it plays for the full length of

the arrangement. The same could be done with the bass and lead etc.

While you can organize all the individual parts in the arrange page, sequencers

offer separate windows for performing more detailed editing. For MIDI, these

commonly consist of a Piano Roll and CC editor. To further understand these,

how they work and how they can be utilized to produce a record, we need to

begin by examining the basics of MIDI.

In its most basic form a MIDI sequencer can be viewed as an advanced musical

conductor, sending instructions to any number of synthesizer informing them

which notes to play and when. Naturally, to achieve this, the synthesizer must

be connected to the sequencer and the synthesizer must also be able to under-

stand the messages the sequencer transmits to them. This connection and inter-

communication is accomplished using a format known as Musical Instrument

Digital Interface. Introduced in 1983, MIDI consists of a standardized set

of instructions that all MIDI compatible synthesizer understand and using a

simple 5-pin DIN plug allows them to connect to one another and a sequencer.

FIGURE 9.1

The arrangement page

in Steinberg’s Nuendo

Sequencer

Sequencers

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In the early days of MIDI, a very simple set-up would consist of the MIDI OUT of

a sequencer connected to the MIDI IN of a MIDI compatible synthesizer via a suit-

able MIDI cable. Connected in this way, any instructions sent from the sequencer

would be received and performed by the synthesizer. The instructions sent by the

sequencer consist only of a simple set of instructions that the synthesizer per-

forms and do not consist of the sound itself. For example, a typical MIDI instruc-

tion consists of pitch with a note-on message, followed by a note-off message, for

which the synthesizer would play a speciﬁ c note and then stop ( Figure 9.2 ).

Whereas this set-up may appear incredibly simple it does offer many beneﬁ ts.

You could programme the sequencer note by note at your own pace and then

instruct the sequencer to play back the performance at any speed you desire.

Or you could instruct the sequencer to transmit instructions to numerous syn-

thesizers for all of them to play different parts of the pre-programmed per-

formance. To accomplish this, you need to understand the Piano Roll Editor.

Although different manufacturers of sequencers use different approaches to

perform speciﬁ c tasks, nearly all have adopted the ‘piano roll ’ interface that was

ﬁ rst introduced by Steinberg in their Cubase sequencer ( Figure 9.3 ).

As you can see from Figure 9.2 , down the left-hand side is a series of piano keys

denoting the pitch. The higher up towards the top the notes are, the higher the

pitch. To the right is the programming grid; when playback starts, any notes in this

ﬁ eld are played back from left to right at a speed determined by the tempo of the

piece. Drawing in notes is a simple as choosing the ‘Pencil ’ tool from the sequenc-

ers toolbox, clicking in the programming grid and holding down the mouse but-

ton while you draw in the length of the note required. If numerous notes are

drawn in at the same position in time, the notes will be chorded as the synthesizer

plays back all the notes simultaneously. Once a series of notes have been drawn in,

they can be lengthened, shortened, deleted or moved to perfect the performance.

Note, however, that the piano roll editor is split into a series of grids. These

grid positions play an incredibly vital part of any music written on a sequencer,

including drum sequencers, so it is important to have a thorough understand-

ing of why they are present.

The main purpose of any sequencer is to transmit the appropriate message –

such as a note-on message – to a sound-generating device at the speciﬁ c times

deﬁ ned by the user. However, no computer is capable of rendering events at just

Program Select

Group - Pads

14 - Breeze

15 - Killer Waves

16 - True Blue

17 - The Sunami

18 - Ever lasting

Windows has experienced a

serious error and needs to

shut down.

SHUT DOWN

MIDI OUT

MIDI IN

MIDI OUT

FIGURE 9.2

A simple MIDI set-up

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182

FIGURE 9.3

The piano roll editor in Steinberg’s Nuendo Sequencer

any time and they are limited by the clock rate of the software or hardware cir-

cuit performing the process. Every time this clock pulses, the computer can per-

form another operation; the maximum number of clock pulses, also called clock

‘ticks’, that can occur within a given time period is known as the ‘resolution’.

All MIDI sequencers specify this resolution in terms of pulses per quarter note

(PPQN), and the higher this value the more useful the sequencer will generally

be. As an example, if a sequencer has a PPQN of 4, each quarter note would

contain four pulses, while each 8th note would contain two pulses and each

16th note would contain one.

What does this mean? If you’re using a sequencer with a PPQN of 4, you couldn’t

draw in any notes that are less than a 16th because there isn’t a high enough

resolution to yield an integer number of clock pulses. Thus, not only would you

be unable to create notes smaller than a 16th, it would also be impossible for

any note timing to be adjusted to less than this either. This resolution is typical

of some of the early analogue drum machines that were used to create dance

rhythms and are responsible for the metronomic nature of the drum patterns.

While you could determine that you would only really need a PPQN of 16 to

write a dance drum loop, the elements that sit upon this basic rhythm need

a higher PPQN, otherwise the groove of the record will suffer because the

sequencer will have no option but to keep the notes on the pulse of the PPQN.

While on ﬁ rst impression, dance records may seem to remain very metronomic,

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183

that is far from the case. Very small sonic nuances give a record its groove, and

if you can’t accomplish small sonic nuances, your record will have no groove!

In the early 1990s, Roland came to the conclusion that a PPQN of 96 would

be suitable for capturing most human nuances, while a PPQN of 192 would

be able to capture the most delicate human ‘feel’. Subsequently, most drum

sequencers today use this latter resolution, while software sequencers have

adopted a much higher PPQN of 480 and above. A sequencer that boasts a

PPQN of 480 would work as shown in Table 9.1 .

Each of these clock ticks can be referenced to a grid position within the piano

roll editor (and indeed all of the sequencer), with the number of grids dis-

played on the screen determined by the quantize value. The quantize value will

directly affect whereabouts the notes can be positioned, alongside the length of

the note itself.

For instance, if the quantize value were set to 16, the grid would divide into

16th, and it would be impossible to place notes at smaller integers. The quan-

tize value can obviously be used to affect rhythm, phrasing and embellish-

ments, but its ﬂ exibility depends on the options offered by the sequencer.

Although quantizing features are helpful in creating the strict rhythms required

in house drum loops for example, overuse of these techniques can produce

anti-musical results. While there are some forms of music that, in theory at

least, beneﬁ t from strict timing of each note, in reality even the most stringent

forms of techno introduce subtle timing differences throughout to add interest

and tension. Indeed, the importance of subtle timing differences shouldn’t be

underestimated when creating music that grooves.

Quantizing also plays an important part if you’re more musically minded and pre-

fer to actually play the instrument rather than programme it. Many MIDI instru-

ments offer a MIDI OUT, and by connecting this to the MIDI IN of the sequencer,

two-way communication becomes available. Using this, it’s possible to play back

a performance on the synthesizer itself, at the same time using the sequencer to

record your performance. In many sequencers this is accomplished by creating a

MIDI track on the sequencer, pressing record and playing the instrument.

Musical Notation and the Related Ticks

Traditional Notation Length of the Note Number of Ticks (Pulses)

Whole note One bar 1920

Half note Half bar 960

Quarter note Quarter bar 480

Eighth note Eighth bar 240

Sixteenth note Sixteenth bar 120

Thirty-second note Thirty-second bar 60

Table 9.1