Elektron-Users

This topic gets discussed a lot on gearslutz. Might want to have a look over there.

There are a lot of factors at work but here's one. You have to have headroom for all of the transients, such as the click you can place at the start of a drum sound on the MD for certain machines. For a lot of the values of the MD dial, you are not going to hear a huge difference (or even any appreciable difference) by going from one value of the click to the next because the transient is over so quick. When you are playing the MD through your speakers, there is no harm at all at increasing the volume of the click somewhat imperceptibly. However, when you go to digital there is a finite ceiling so the more the transient is increased, the more the rest of the track has to come down (unless you want to clip).

There are ways of processing around this obviously but I just mention this as an example of how innocuous choices on the MD can have a difference on the overall loudness of the track.

I think that it's not that hard to get a really loud yet still somewhat dynamic track, you just have to approach it differently than you might think would be best. A lot of people say that you need to EQ and compress everything in the mixdown, but I disagree. It's possible, don't get me wrong, but you have to really know those tools and how not to abuse them to pull it off.

Instead, I recommend people actually IGNORE the compression and EQ as much as possible. Instead of trying to tame the dynamics on each and every track, just make it sound really good. Bouncey, dynamic, nice sharp transients. If you do this, and then apply a good limiter during the "mastering", you can catch all those transients at once, and in a more cohessive sounding way (IMO).

So yeah, it really does come down to the mixdown, just don't think you HAVE to start adjusting everything either EQ and compression to get there. Try this too:

http://tarekith.com/assets/mastering.html

Lots of good points up there. ^^

Two of the big ones for me:

1. Proper sound design up front.
2. Cut headroom and spectrum munching frequencies where not needed.

have you thought about sending your music off to a mastering engineer? it doesn't have to be expensive.

http://www.panicstudios.com/

http://www.audibleoddities.com/

i've had a lot of music mastered at both links posted above. if you give them notes for each track and tell them what you are after they can make it happen and they are very reasonable especially for indie artists who are self releasing music or sending it to a net label or whatever. also, revisions were always free.. so if i wasn't happy or wanted to make changes or whatever i just let them know and they fixed it.

i'm all for dynamics and think the volume knob is there for a reason. keep the dynamics in.

thank you all for the feedback, seems that I might just have to get on with some reading about how things work together.

I have a pretty bedroom-approach to recording, I just record single jams, and my tracks are jsut one single stereo track into my DAW. Obviously, this means I've dealt with mixing "in the box", which isn't really a good option for recording. Now, recording track by track. how do you go on about that? I'd have to reorganize all my patterns in my MD if I am to place the kick, snare and hats on "standard" tracks in the MD, as my way of creating patternsn is of a rather hit and forget basis, but I know individual recording of atleast the bassdrum, bass, snare(s) and hats could be very useful.

on a somewhat side note, I've yet to try out the finesses of song mode in the elektrons, and I can't find this in the manual, but can the elektrons Song Mode work so that I simply hit record, and jam up a track structure (like I usually do), and the order of patterns/mutes and unmutes is recorded as the "song"? or would I need some software-based midi recorder for that?

My point is, that I'm afraid that I won't be able to deal with creating "songs" by plotting in one by one pattern, since my head just doesn't get the cohesion when doing that... I guess I could try writing down notes etc whn jamming, but it would be so awesome if song mode worked like that...


as I'm writing this, I think more and more that I'll just have to face it: getting good sounding tracks takes more effort that I thought. I've considered sending tracks to a mastering engineer, but I've only got single-wav files since I don't multitrack, would an engineer be able improve even that? I'm currently getting in touch with a electronic music collective in my hometown (who would have known!) and my hopes are if I get a foot in, I might get some help in learning, since they have a full on worling studio, and are used to integrating hardware and software (I think they even have a MD)

thanks again, you're a helpful bunch

one thing i have found helpful is to pay attention to a sounds overtones and if there is more than one sound being triggered simultaneously be mindful of if they share similar frequencies. i am no pro, but by shuffling around a few notes here and there i can make my track larger while still having a very dynamic range of volumes without hardly reaching for eq's or comps. again i am no pro but it works for me. this way i get to use effects as a way to color the sound, and give it depth, instead of saving me from a crap mix.

Trondc. We are on the same "wavelength" here (no pun intended). I am in the same situation as you. I recently played a gig amongst DJs on a very large system and the loudness issue was a big problem! Both DJs before and after me played very loud tunes and I feel my music was lost somewhere between them.

I'm currently trying to make my MD tracks louder, turning to the newly improved Dynamix for assistance. Still experimenting with this.

Like you, I'm also stuck with the issue of translating between in the box mixing and DAW mixing.

I feel we have made a very large compromise between sound quality/vs live performance ability, by choosing the in the box MD mixing method.

I would love for there to be an easy way to export my MD work to a DAW without multi tracking. The fact that the master effects are only available on the stereo outs make this difficult to avoid.

Justin Valer wrote:


I would love for there to be an easy way to export my MD work to a DAW without multi tracking. The fact that the master effects are only available on the stereo outs make this difficult to avoid.

yeah, thats my main concern too. How about, I connect the midi out of my md to the midi in of my soundcard, grab some software midi recorder, have the midi recorder track what's going on when I jam on the MD. then, I guess I'd have the option to just mute all midi tracks except the one I'm going to record, and hit play. sure, I'd have to do up to 16 parts just for the MD, 6 for the MnM and one for misc stuff, but I guess this would be a good way to record a jam in individual sound files for each sound without having to spend countless hours of trying to capture the jam mutes/unmutes within the MD, with all parts except the one playing muted..if that makes sense...

I'm currently being more and more involved in the local music scene, and for playing live, it's no big deal, but I'd want promos that stands out in a positive way, not a negative way. I've gotten feedback from local DJ's who tell me my tracks are too quiet for them to play, since they most likely already maxed out on volume, leaving my tracks as "holes" in their sets...

would a midi recorder do the trick?

TrondC wrote:

as I'm writing this, I think more and more that I'll just have to face it: getting good sounding tracks takes more effort that I thought. I've considered sending tracks to a mastering engineer, but I've only got single-wav files since I don't multitrack, would an engineer be able improve even that? I'm currently getting in touch with a electronic music collective in my hometown (who would have known!) and my hopes are if I get a foot in, I might get some help in learning, since they have a full on worling studio, and are used to integrating hardware and software (I think they even have a MD)


I sent a stereo mixdown to this guy and he did a great job: http://hermetechmastering.com/
Ill write up a full review with A/B in a while...

That said to achieve a great mixdown I think you need to record tracks individually- comparing the stuff I did from stereo outs to the stuff JCB mixed down (edit: on our collab), separating all the tracks, EQing them etc has taught me that. (Though since Im not looking for release Ill continue to ignore that and record stereo outs!)

would a midi recorder do the trick?

Not sure. I wonder if anybody has tried recording the machinedrum via midi then playing it back.

I'm tempted to write a 'real' song mode firmware for the Minicommand that does just this.