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Editing - Riff Building

Lesson 6 from: Advanced Bass Production

Andrew Glover

Editing - Riff Building

Lesson 6 from: Advanced Bass Production

Andrew Glover

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Lesson Info

6. Editing - Riff Building

Lesson Info

Editing - Riff Building

All right, what's the problem with this song roughest there's no base with someone to delete a couple tracks um we're well just get them out of my way. I'm glad everybody picked up that there was no base in that song because that would have been pretty depressing if I was trying to prove how important it was. So if you guys look here, let me get to sixteen mil mode. All of this space is already dead on the reason being because I tracked it here yesterday afternoon and edited it as I go went because I wasn't playing very well. Um I'm gonna show editing technique that I used on a breakdown at the end because I know that I didn't do the best job, so this is called rift building and basically to me what ripped building is is almost using audio to program apart and it's a lot of metal stuff people want that on humanly tight just wanted perfect wanted to sound the exact same one people want their bass guitar to sound like a kick drum on parts and, well, that might not be necessarily musical ...

it definitely it serves the purpose for a, uh, punishing mix so I'm gonna show you where I had attempted to riff build yesterday and I got some bad edits and then I'm going to show you how I'm going to fix it so what that's supposed to sound like israel percussive and I missed the attack on a lot of it, so if it's easier, I guess just the listened turn that off, too, because it was a really fast kick part, which also, so so you guys can hear like it dives my initial down beats are good and then when I up pick it just loses all its power someone a fixed that real fast, and I said that I want to get up to grab this base right now, but I'm going to get up to grab that base. Perfect, thank you. And this I kind of think base is the only instrument you can get away with this technique without I've tried it on guitars when and it just gets harder that makes it sound like a computers just doing it, but wait back engine. So I'm adjusting this because it's I have it set up to mix with a lot more computer power that'll work for what I'm doing, so I'm basically I'm gonna mute the whole song except for the kid, except for the click, and I'm going to record four down strokes and then I'm gonna record for obstruction, and then I'm just going to program my pardon and that's going to kind of show what I'm talking about. And you can the techniques you can use this technique with other riffs but you can't use this few notes but I definitely a lot of times and recording I'll go through and I'll note by note track a riff especially if a player is not very good or if the parts just really technical and you want every note toe voice itself perfectly quick her enough shoot so so so I got those and then respect on that stand I wish I could say a tripping on stuff was not part of my every day at the studio but I usually fall about four to thirty times a day so I know I come off like a really cool tough bad ass dude in a klutzy dork but okay so right now I'm just putting these onto downbeat so that they're easy for me to look at um anybody else here have bad vision many only one said yeah they feel like I just I notice one thing when I can't see very well my mouth opens up like that it's part of why I'm not good at video because I feel like I'm just like drooling or looking just insane while I do this but so down the big dubbie appease so you just want to talk us through what you're doing as I'm just right now I recorded the four down beats and four up strokes on the base and right now I'm just putting them in order since I did them I didn't go down up, down, up, down, up I'm putting them in that order so that when I use them to program the part in right now it doesn't sound like down down up of up, down kind of thing um and obviously this isn't the pattern of the breakdown yet, but it will be and that there's even companies now that have whole like instruments like sample packs where they just sampled an entire base like this and that's it's actually something I've considered just four breakdowns and stuff is going in and doing my own versions of my bases, but I don't seems like quite the headache, so if you guys can see right here I have my kick pattern, which is going to be one my breakdown is based on, so I'm going to go and start breaking this up with the b to slice command and sliding this over. So if I select this part right here, you kind of hear it it's just it's not punctual like it's not really like tight punches, so at that point I can go and it's all to taste really but can kind of tighten these up short in the noted and this obviously through an amp it sounds better when it's not a d I but what I'm doing is just kind of giving that percussive lowland element and I'm just complimenting the cake and then I have a snare beat down here so a compliment that as well and it's best I kind of under picked but with this technique the more attack the better if you can get those notes and key and you're just really beating it it's going to get a good sound guitars play the most, so I'm just kind of trying to remember the pattern off the top my head and I won't bore you by doing the entire part I'll just implement my old track eventually but this whole get an idea of what's going on with this so so here we go this would be the part you just kind of like that way you're building, you're getting the low end and sometimes you need to really tread carefully with how you use a technique like this so that it doesn't just sound mushy but you can really start to get like that ultimate tightness where at that point you're kind of sacrificing the base tone so to speak but you're getting just the really the impact on the overall mix, which is obviously crucial in its own right so this stick with this loop of it I missed a couple beats you guys here really be friends it up so let me try and figure out where I missed these parts it's just not making a couple of them long enough so and right now, I'm doing the same thing, I'm just kind of moving fast or as fast as I can everybody, I'm assuming knows how to copy paste stuff in their dog and slide stuff around, so I'm not really diving into that too much, but here would be the breakdown kind of with this part, bill, and it really just versus and obviously that's just a d I there's no amtrak or anything going on on that, but I showed you guys the whole monitoring with amtrak, really faking it up and that's really that's what rift building is and you can it's not something you can teach to a technical thing passed that cause you'll start dealing with notes, and I'm not going to program an entire song of just cutting and pasting little blocks of audio, but it can really take you there when you when mostly I use it most when I'm writing a song, and I'm just like, I need to get this on record because I hate having a crappy demo, so I'll just so I don't know this song very well. I'll go through it all rift build the entire song on base just because it's easier for me to riff a song out and get tight on it on guitar than it is on base, and then I'll do this for the parts that are difficult for me or like they're really poly rhythmic parts which present I have a harder time with single string rhythms than I do with uh they break down like chunky stuff so build the breakdowns record the risks and it's like now I have a song that I can actually show people and so that's rift building and that's kind of that's die editing, so I think that's a really good example of how basically he said thickens it up without necessarily being, you know, audible yeah like that's a blunder together trample all I have right now is my d I and I can even we're talking about e q on base this you can see like all that's happening on base is this butt load a lowland and everything else is just out of there and it you put it in there and although it's only everything from what I don't even know why I'm cutting two hundred hertz down its it's there it's the second I turned off it's like, oh that's not a mix and I turned it back on like that's that's a song so question from steven tv generally kind of touched on this, but maybe now that we've done that you can explain in more detail what's the advantage of building a riff this way over having someone play it or something along with it time wise, if you're producing a record in studio where the songs aren't completely written or your I mean so many bands right with easy drummer, a lot of bands don't even if you have real drums don't record real kick and I can tell you we recorded this song with one of the best drummers I know casey stockbridge used to playing the ghost inside I've talked to about him um, I don't know if you guys were hard core fans, it all but the ghost inside rips and, uh, casey, I wrote this song with casey and he and I I'm going to have another session later on where casing I just start bands together record une p and then don't talk to each other for six months and we didn't have the song I had the song down on guitar, he didn't know it on drums and we have little parts where we didn't know a cow's this pattern going to go and we just like now get out in the studio and I was like, ok, don't play cake all program your kick and all the kicks in this on this breakdown, we're programmed so it's if you don't know the song right away and you're in a rush not that I'm saying that's the right way to be a musician, but if you're just like so it's better in the young get somebody to play it tightly that's hail but sometimes you know things aren't yeah and also it's a time thing like you were here yesterday I did this track this whole song and I asked you had left but ryan who's not in here I tracked the song and a half an hour and I knew that I could have gotten that breakdown done in fifteen minutes but the rhythms were I was too tired to comprehend him it was easier just to go and build my breakdowns yeah if you have somebody if you know the song is one hundred percent and you can get him tight you know you have to do is to have to transition or not ed it at all preferably that's the way to do it but this is just way to get a sound that you might not have been able to get without it another question speak of editing from mark zero which is what method do you think is more transparent for editing slip editing elastic gaudio be detective whatever uh I would say flex audio is the least transparent um pro tools doesn't have slip editing I know ah my assistant justine and all the producer engineer from the studio jeff you slip editing and they do great jobs with it I think for my personal workflow tab to transit and beat detective which are basically the same thing and the grand scheme of the way at its sound those were the best for me slip editing cz killer if you're in a dog that offers it um flex audio to me is elastic and pro tools is a little bit better I'm not as comfortable in it so I and I like to know that I'm giving with realaudio not stretching you're compressing um but flex saudi is just not there at least destructive as of prose as of logic nine flex audio was not there I read something on a forum during our break that somebody said in ten it kills you would have better experience with that than I do so it's destructive and it has artifacts and warped sounds and I just don't want to put out records that aren't my hundred percent best and I've used it on records and I can hear it and I don't want to ever hear it again so speaking of tab to transient any of each and evey age fifty one fifty who thank you for all the awesome questions on classes does the tab to transient trick not cut out that all important pick attack that andrew wade highlighted is being imperative to goto editing so he went through with editing guitar dies and beat detective kind of howto you know how you can pad your pick again exactly what detective tab to transient does cut off right after the attack but if I'm noticing with my guitar tracks, I used beat detective a lot more on guitar than I use the attempted transit. Um, if I'm noticing it a lot, I'll go through, and I'll pull back every single region, just a tiny bit to make sure that it's locked in and it's all your ears and it's taking time. You've got to be willing to take the time to make the record perfect, and I agree with andrew weighed one hundred percent, that pick attacks important some riffs, especially with the rift building thing, like, if I'm doing a swedish riff, sometimes my pick attack is more or less important, depending on different things. So all use it in different ways. It's all what complements the song, but he makes a good point. Yeah, you tapped. A transient will end up right after the pick attack a lot of the time, so you want to compensate for that yourself.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Session Stems.zip

Ratings and Reviews

Vasily Sizov
 

Overall the course is nice. Andrew is good at explaining things, and covers various aspects of bass tracking and mixing. I would not say that I found too many things I didn't know before, but I definitely reconfirmed some of the knowledge I got from Eyal Levi's courses and others', and grasped a few more new techniques, especially on using hardware (SVT, Sansamp, etc.). On the negative side, I would state that the demo tracks used for mixing had too dry and thin sounding drums: they were claimed as mixed, but they obviously were not, or mixed poorly; mixing bass when you drums are not ready is not good, as drums-bass interactions is essential for bass mixing. Another problem during the mixing sessions is that the bass was way too loud! Probably, Andrew was focused on tweaking the bass sound or maybe monitoring situation in CreativeLive studio was not that good, but in the mix context it was just dominating over everything else, which is not helping to get the full picture. Other than that the course is nice and is worth watching. Things I found lacking, and which I would prefer to get covered in the course are as follows: - Using loadboxes and IRs for bass reamping and creating tones (it was promised to be covered during the mixing session, but it was not) - Slightly deeper coverage on differences between basses (e.g. Fender P & J, Musicman Stinger, Warwics, etc.), passive and active, how to pick the proper bass for different styles of music - Quick overview of other popular equipment, like DarkGlass B7K and etc., which is super popular this days: it was not even mentioned during the course

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