the bass is very light and weak for what you're trying to achieve. run a sine wave underneath to give it more weight at the bottom end. the mid range is also weak, make sure you retain some hi res. you could make the top of it crisper too. all about having the right layers, find that 2x instances of my reese patch (hi and mid) and a sub bass following it works the best for freq control of the overall sound.

the drums are ok, but sound a bit random. maybe try and get more of a melody down with the bass, and chop your drums around it?

good attempt though, at the kind of sound you want to try and make, good filtering and movement. don't forget to make sure it sounds like you and not noisia/spor

Cheers for the advice bra, would a bass ranger work as well as running a sine wave under it? Wouldn't I have to automate the pitch/filter of the sub sine according to the reese pattern?

And yeah I remember taking out some of the mid....I thought the whole thing sounded crisper without it.
And yeah I was only working on the tone of the reese more than anything....the drums and melodies/rhythms of the reese were done pretty quickly - I just wanted to hear the jist of what it sounded like

Actually it's good that you should mention the melodies, because I'm having trouble actually automating several aspects of my reese. When you have a solid reese tone, how would you go about making rhythms and melodies in your sequencer? Would you export as a wav, and mess around with reverse n shit, chop it up and make a general rhythm (which is what I did) or would you use a sampler to make a MIDI melody (maybe use automatic filter/volume/cut off/phaser automation?)? How does one make melodies/rhythms with a solid reese sound?

cd x

__________________
Jamiroquai - Too Young To Die (JKream Remix)

LilTommyJ - Back in Mississippi (JKream Remix)

just save your synth patch, make a new midi track (duplicate the one with the reece notes you've already got), open a new version of the same synth you were using, open the new patch, and change the waveform in the oscillator to a sine. this way it will keep all the other settings on the patch like pitch/glide etc..


yeah thought you were, so i was mainly talking about the tone/sound of the reece. there needs to be some middle otherwise it wil sound weak. you want the bassline to be one of the main elements of your track i assume, so make it stand out. again, maybe it would benefit from a devoted mid range synth/track? you could use a different waveform, or the same one with some more res and a different timbre?


imo you should use both techniques.

seems like you have a decent understanding of chopping a bounced copy, and how to produce the 'reece' sound, so why not try making a full melody just with synths? you can then apply your knowledge to working on longer samples, and then why not smash these new clips back into a sampler again? but yeah, a combination of both techniques is best for your development, after time you'll know what to do and when, at different times.

keep it up. and don't forget to make the drums and bass work together. at the moment it's sounding very erratic, less is often more, and huge drum/bass edits have more impact when they aren't too frequent. i think you have the basics for making a reece down, but need to work on how to make a tune with a reece (the reece will sound much better if it has more 'purpose', i.e. fits a tune/melody/track)

good work

well i made the melodies/rhythms of this reece by bouncing a solid reece sound i created in Massive, and then warping, cutting, reversing, copying, pasting around in the sequencer to get some general rhythm....so i guess a benefit of creating a melody using MIDI is you can duplicate it for shit like sub sine waves underneath...i'll be sure to do that next time

do u mean 'devote' as in double the melodies/rhythms of the reece but using a different sounding mid synth? or do u mean a different sounding synth doing seperate meloides/rhythms all together?

This is great advice, and I'll be sure to heed it in the future, but like i said, the melodies, drums and rhythms aren't great in this track. I just needed something to play with the new bass tone i made (obviously the tone of the bass is definitely affected by whatever is going on around it, but i just wanted an idea of what it would sound like). So this thread was mainly to see what needed improving with the tone of the reece.
But thanks very much for all the advice and criticism

I encourage any more criticism, if I can get any

cd x

__________________
Jamiroquai - Too Young To Die (JKream Remix)

LilTommyJ - Back in Mississippi (JKream Remix)

i mean duplicating what you already have, like my suggestion with the sine wave above, so you have more contol, you can keep the same movement/filtering/pitch/glide (cos you're copying the patch) and fuck with the waveforms or add effects. or yes, you can use a completely different synth playing different patterns - it's up to you, whatever sounds good. this is an example of a production trick becoming musical, it also has lots of value in terms of 'tone'.

basically when i make something like what you're trying to make, i will open a synth and make a reece, i will then copy the track twice, on each track i load up a new instance of the synth i was using and devote each track to a specific frequency range using filters so i have more control. i will mess with the sounds, then send all of my tracks to a group, and i can compress and/or process further. you can absolutely smash the fuck out of the top one with distortion, overdrive, dirty filters, phasing, whilst leaving the middle and bottom fairly clean, giving them more 'weight'. also - you can have as many tracks as you like really for different purposes, but here is a VERY rough example..


track 1 (my reece) with a high pass filter: 600+
track 2 (my reece) with a band pass filter: 120 - 600hz
track 3 (a sine) with a low pass filter: 0 - 120hz

i like to split frequencies this way for my reeces. but with drums for example, you would send the track to however many send busses with relevant frequency splitting, because of phasing. but i quite like the phasing on the bass sometimes, depends what i'm going for

yes make sure you do, basically you've hit the nail on the head. what i said above is just applying this technique to a wider picture, obviously... you can fuck with it all later as you normally would by chopping the audio etc. try using a sampler for things too, using all 3 techniques is better than just using 1!

hope this helps. after working this out for myself, i now try and approach lots of other things in this way. as the mutant says in total recall "open your mind" lol.

Get your ass to mars

I do always hear that splitting the frequencies and processing them seperately is often the best way to make a reece. I'll definitely be sure to do that next time

Thanks for all the advice Bigfoot...its helped me out massively!!

cd x

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Jamiroquai - Too Young To Die (JKream Remix)

LilTommyJ - Back in Mississippi (JKream Remix)