Electrohouse techniques?

June 24, 2011 8:42 PM

What is the simple way of explaining electro house production techniques?

Does someone know how the bleepy blops are done in electro house? Think artists like Ford Mustang or WolfGang Gartner. This clip from 0:30 to 0:40 is a great example.

In short, do the artists line up a tonne of separate tracks that do separate things and then automate between the different tracks (via solo and mute) or do they get one synth to do various sounds and have the automation change the parameters on that particular track?

As well, how do they get such clean noise gates (when a synth is ON and then OFF), as I find my reverb trails always get in the way.

Cheers!

posted by fantasticninety to grab bag (3 answers total)

I think what you are hearing around 0:30 is some heavy sidechain compression pumping.

In short, do the artists line up a tonne of separate tracks that do separate things and then automate between the different tracks (via solo and mute) or do they get one synth to do various sounds and have the automation change the parameters on that particular track?

Both. Some people like to work in audio, others prefer to automate hardware or soft synths.

As well, how do they get such clean noise gates (when a synth is ON and then OFF), as I find my reverb trails always get in the way.

Have you tried gating after the reverb has been applied? Or using a reverb with a shorter tail?
posted by b1tr0t at 10:19 PM on June 24, 2011 [1 favorite]

With the gate, you just gotta increase the threshold as close to the instrument level as possible, and set both the attack and decay to 0.

But I'm not really hearing that here.

What I think might be going on in that bit of the clip is a series of manual crosscuts on a DJ mixer (or some other bit of gear with a DJ-style crossfader, which a lot of them have these days), and compression, compression, compression.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:49 PM on June 24, 2011

As well, how do they get such clean noise gates (when a synth is ON and then OFF), as I find my reverb trails always get in the way.

Depends on where your gate is located: you need to be gating after the reverb. If your synth and gate are on one channel, but the reverb is on an aux send, your gate won't be cutting off the reverb tail at all.

Those little stutters at the end of each phrase could be crossfading, or it's also possible that they're triggering the gate using a key input/sidechain, with something like a drum machine or other noise source feeding it.

If you're using Live, you can draw automation envelopes and trigger them for a similar complex-gating effect. See "dummy clips"

Or it could be a sample that was manipulated any number of ways, and it's just being triggered.

It's really going to be difficult to narrow down precisely how that is happening here; currently there are so many options in both software- and hardware-land to achieve different effects. If you tell us what gear you're using, people could probably make some suggestions as to how to get similar sounds, but you probably won't get the exact path unless you ask Mord Fustang specifically.
posted by dubold at 2:02 AM on June 25, 2011 [1 favorite]