ED RUSH AMA

Hi Callum.

Please scroll down to find my answer 🙂

Hi Luca.

Collaborating can a great way to get the best out of all artists involved. It’s a balance of compromise and trust. Its cool to explore different directions you wouldn’t normally go on solo projects and open your mind to other peoples ideas. Someone may come with an idea which doesn’t sit right with you initially but grows on you and you end up loving it and its something you would never have thought of. This is the beauty of collabing.

Audio and I use the same DAW, which is Studio One by Presonus, so it makes life easy moving projects from my studio to his and visa versa. Having said that we do very often work with stems. We will start ideas or make a pallette of sounds on our own and then once a week get together in the studio and throw our ideas and sounds together and see what we like.

I have never made a track solely by swapping stems or project files online. I have always been in the same room at some point with the artist I’m collabing with, its the way I prefer to work and a good way to catch a vibe with someone I think its important to capture that energy together and work spontaniously on a track whether its at the beginning of an idea or the final stages or throughout the whole process.

With Optical we have always been in the same room from start to finish apart from a few tracks where we started seperately that was mainly beacause back in the day we shared a studio so we were always in it together.

Cheers Luca.

Ed.

Hi George,

I do like the NI RC 48 reverb on snares and percussion but I sometimes also use the val room and fab pro R it all depends on the track. I sometimes just use the RC48 as an insert and dial in the dry/wet but other times I will duplicate the track add the verb at 100% wet and fade out the initial transient of the hit so just the tail is verbed and jst balance the 2 signals, this way I dont ever have to comprimise the level or presence of the dry hit in my mix.
Sometimes for stabs, mids and especially vocals that need more verb I will have one dry channel and another 100% wet and sidechain the wet to the dry.

Hope this was helpful!

Ed.

Doc Scott told me many years ago. ‘Just do you, don’t worry about what others are doing’. That has stayed with me and I often think about it. It has helped me to trust my instinct when making decisions during the music making process.

Ed.

Wow. So many dishes to choose from. Depends on the season. I would probably have to go with Pan Roasted Halibut, Sautéed Girolles and Cauliflower puree. I love fish dishes and the girolles add so much flavour to this dish.

Top 3 films in no particular order.

1. Pulp Fiction.
2. Apocalypse Now.
3. Bladerunner (Original).

Hello Balron.

I never owned a Virus synth. We used Sequential Circuits Pro One for most of our bass sounds back in the day.
I think the best approach is to learn on software synths that are a fraction of the cost of a decent hardware one. Practise and practise untill you feel comfortable with synthesis and sound design. There are lots of plugins these days which get very close to an ‘analogue hardware’ sound. Although the hardware synths definately have charm, character and warm tones they are more restrictive than their software counterparts on the whole, like as you have mentioned drawing in your own LFOs etc.

Ed.

Have you checked out U-He’s Repro soft synths? It’s supposed to be recreations of the Pro One and Pro Five.

Hello Shrike.

Thank you for your kind words and support over the years. Its really appreciated.

We were living and breathing drum and bass. Listening to every mix tape we could find and absorbing everything that we could get our hands on. Going out to the raves and attending Blue note every Sunday for the metalheadz nights.
We didn’t really have a vision as such, it was more like we were just using beats and sounds that really appealed to us. Sure we took influences from other peoples music but we tried to do it in our way.
Optical and I were always drawn to the darker sound of dnb and we really wanted to see how far we could push that sound. We were making tracks for ourselves. Tracks that we liked and didnt care what others thought. At first some people said we were making devil music and they didnt understand it but when we started getting support from some of the big DJs like Groove, Goldie and Doc Scott and people heard the tracks on a rig they started to understand.
There was also an element of luck involved. Right place at the right time. The right people hearing the music. We were creating a sound that hadn’t really been heard before because the scene was still so young it hadnt been through any cycles of styles so it could have gone either way. But we were so pasionate about it we didn’t care what others thought. It helps to surround yourself with like minded people that share your passion and dreams, then you really feel like you’re in it together and it creates that comradery. It was the same before I started to work exclusively with Optical. It was me, Nico, DJ Trace, Fierce, DJ Gunshot and a few others all living and breathing the scene, pushing and challenging each other in creative ways.

I’ll hold you those beers if ever we meet.

Cheers!

Ed.

Hi djkymaera.

Thank you!

It really boils down to good sample selection, moving things around on the grid till they sit nicely with the rest of your drums and nice bit of sidechain. It is very tune dependant obviously. A good way to select your sounds is to have your beat looping round whilst you’re auditioning elements to add like shakers and rides etc and see which ones cut through the mix. Find a place in the groove where they sit nicely and add sidechain, works especially nice with rides.

Ed.

Hey Yung E! Hope you’re well. Its been a while.

I am using a drum buss less and less these days as I have built up a library of drum hits that have been processed multiple times and often sound best routed straight out to the master. Sometimes the individual hits might need a tiny bit of glue for which I might use a compressor just tickling the signal or add a camel phat with just a tiny bit of tube dist. I also own the slate VCC which can add some lovely character to the drums but I find I’m doing this less and less these days and Im getting louder results by having the main hits like kick and snare going straight to my master where I mainly use Ozone 7 to do a bit of limiting.
I am peaking around -0.4 RMS. As long as it not constantly going over 0 and it sounds ok then fuck it. I don’t think that is really that important though. As long as the track is well balanced and your mix sounds open and has depth there will always be gains on the mixer when DJing so we can trim it there.
Distortion wise I like trash 2 with the multi-band option you have so much control. I also like the old faithful Camel Phat which I use in every tune and there’s a free wavechanger from cableguys that came with Computer Music thats brilliant too.
I’m 100% in the box atm.

Good luck mate! Hopefully see u soon 🙂

Ed.

Hello Harry.

December 96. Yes, that would have been one of the earlier US gigs. Wow! Really showing our age man!!

I think people who make music or other artists such as painters etc all have a desire to create. It’s in our nature, a way of expressing yourself without language. I’m sure this is a common trait in all creative people.

Most people who were into dnb back in the era you speak of are middle aged now and have very different lifestyles to when they were into that sound. Most of my friends who used to come on the road with me every weekend have families now and are quite happy staying in these days.

It is a challenge to try to stay ahead of the curve and be open minded enough to embrace new styles, sounds and techniques. We need, as a species, to grow and evolve in all aspects of life and music is no different. I accept that theses changes wont be everyone’s cup of tea, but, if you stay true to yourself and believe in what you do and truly love the job the music will speak for itself.

I hope this answers your question. I’m not sure I fully understood it 😛

ED.

Hi ScaramangaDNB.

Thank you for your nice comments.

Mid bass – Most of the time I will make mid bass and its not good enough to take care of the sub too. So I will split it into 2 with the low end crossover around the 1st or 2nd harmonic of the sub note this is track dependant obv. This method allows much more control and you can manipulate the mids more if needed. Sometimes the sound is good enough to deal with all of the bass frequencies but not that often.

Drums – In order to have a nice sounding beat using breaks, it’s usually best to layer some solid sounding synth drum hits with your break. So, for example, you could find the key of the kick drum in the break u want to use, layer it with a fat clean synth kick roll off the low end in the break and balance to 2 together maybe add a bit of dist and or compression for a bit of glue, then do the same with a snare. This way we get the transients and weight the drums need but also get the funk from the break.

Good luck!

Ed.

Hello iLLtech.

High frequencies on hats and synths – It of course depends on the sound or sample you are using but its very easy for things to get a bit bitey up around the 3-6k region. You can use a de-esser or a multiband compressor to tame that region if its getting a bit fruity. Try to keep things in their own space as much as possible though so if we have a section where the hats or shakers are dominant maybe trackspace some of the higher frequencies out of other elements that are occupying that same space. You could automate an eq if you prefer. But generally if a sound is too harsh to start with and eqing it kills its vibe I just use another.

Thanks for the support!

Ed.

Hi Stefan.

Get yourself well rounded with your skill sets. You will need to learn about sample selection, sound design, sound processing and mixing/mastering processes and skills. You will find you have natural strengths in certain areas, maybe work on those 1st so you don’t get disheartened during the learning process. Then when you feel comfortable you are competent or at least getting decent results then move onto another topic. There is so much information out there now about production if you are determined enough you will succeed. Patience and determination are key!
Everything that we used back in the day that you mentioned in your question were and still are relevant if you have that kind of setup. Everything we used back then there is an equivalent of nowadays in vst form. So we are still doing the same or very similar things just using different tools now. We have much more options available to us now than we did then so its just a question of finding what works best for you.

Best,

Ben.

Hi panoptessoundworks,

Usually when designing bass sounds, I have an effects chain that consists of lots of distortion (sometimes multiband), eqs and multiband compression. I use these tools to get the desired sound then its a question of finding its place in the mix.
If its a tune that mainly focuses on the bass mids then they obv have to be upfront in the mix. If you bass sound has lots of high information, which is usually just fizz you have to find a balance with the top end of your drums like hats and rides etc. There are some great tools for carving space in your mix like trackspacer or FabFilter MB if things are getting a bit crowded and cluttered in certain areas. Most of the time as I mentioned in an earlier answer I will split the bass into 2, sometime 3 sections and run a clean pure sub underneath so my low end is strong and consistent. Trash 2 is a great tool for bass design as it gives us so much control in multiband mode so we can throttle the mids whilst leaving the low and high end information clean.

All the best!

Ben.

Hello lukesatin,

I made that tune a long time ago so I cant remember the exact processes I used. But I know for sure that the distortion on all the mid basses was camel phat. Probably a few of them stacked with some eqing to remove unwanted frequencies as we push it harder. I never really push the tube too hard in one instance of CP. I usually dial in up to about 50% but sometimes way less. I find a bit of Mech distortion can help too but this is easily overdone and is a lot less forgiving than the tube distortion so go easy with that one.
Nowadays I use waveshapers (there’s a free one form cableguys which is great), Trash 2, Camel Phat and some tape machine emulators to add distortion and warmth. I like the slate one and Uhe Satin but I know the UAD tape vst are incredible so if u have one of those you are golden 🙂
As far as filters go I like notch filters for bass design but as always its very track/sound dependant.

Best,

Ben.

Hello Healthy.

Thanks for the support man!

Yes, it can be very frustrating at times when you aren’t getting the results you desire. But youre absolutely right patience and determination will get you there. The fact that you are even on this forum shows you have determination and the desire to learn, so submerge yourself in the process. Watch as many videos, read as many forums as you can. The content on this site alone is ample to get yourself to a stage where you are a competent producer.
I faced many, many years of feeling dissatisfied with my skills so I just stuck at it and surrounded myself with like minded people and competent producers and asked lots of questions and kept plugging away. Even now I still ask questions to fellow producers about their techniques and processes to better myself. I love learning so I’m excited when facing new challenges and Im not afraid to ask if I don’t fully understand something. You will find over time that things become more intuitive.

Get stuck in and happy learning!

Cheers.

Ben.

Hey LiEnN,

Thanks for your kind words.

I wish I had known about side chaining earlier. So many of my old tunes would be louder, have more clarity and overall better mixes if I had known about that technique earlier.

With regards to finishing tracks. It is a common problem, there are however a few things you can try to improve in this area. Try to have more than one project on the go at once so you can switch between them when u run out of steam on one track. This also stops you becoming too bored.
I find one of the best ones for me is to get your initial ideas down and rough idea for the tune maybe get the drop sounding good and some intro ideas then leave it. Leave it for a few days sometimes its best even longer like a week or two then come back to it. You will hear immediately whats cool and whats not. Its a case of ‘sometimes you cant see the wood for the trees’ and when you work continuously on the same track you become numb to it and can no longer make good creative decisions. This works very well for me and I am able to finish a track within a reasonable time after leaving it for a while.
Another thing to remember is to not become too precious over things. If somethings not working and youre getting frustrated then move on. If an idea isn’t working but say the drums are cool then bounce them out and use them in something else so at least your time wasn’t completely wasted.
I hope this helps.

Good luck.

Ben.

THIS

Hi Ratta.

I feel your pain. My answer to the question above is relevant to your question so please read that.
Also try to commit to a track or an idea at some stage even if you know its not amazing. Get it arranged and bounce it out then its done and you can wash your hands with it and move on. We need to be improving all the time to feel like we are making progress so don’t try and write the perfect tune every time. Just capture a vibe, an idea and try to express it in the best way possible then move on.
This way your work should improve as you grow and we feel we are making progress and we have good positive feelings associated with being in the studio rather than frustration and negativity.

Everyone makes shit tunes sometimes we just never hear them.

As far as your question ‘how often are you in the studio?’ – Pretty much everyday apart from when Im djing. Even if its just making weird noises or going through some samples, that’s if I dont feel like writing.

Good luck man!

Ben.

Hello Sunken Forest.

My sample library is mainly categorised by genre so all DNB in one folder all house and techno in another etc. I also have a folder where I put things I like that I discover. They are sub sectioned into beats, bass, kicks, snares etc so I always have sounds in there I know I like. I then have a folder with in my favourites folder of sound I have made called My Kicks etc.
My sessions are usually split into sound design and writing the track, this way is easy and I believe most people use this method.
Over the years I have learnt not to procrastinate too much over details I think its better to commit to an idea and move on as getting too bogged down with minor elements crushes the creative flow.
I usually work on the drop first then a roll out section to get me to the break down then start finding intro ideas I can also incorporate into other parts of the track.
Before handing a track out I will give it a few good tests in clubs but also in environments that Im familiar with like the car for example.
Cheers,

Ben.

Pleasure 🙂

Hi Raff.

Appreciate your support over the years. Thank you.

My favourite vst for bass atm would have to be Serum with some of the distortion plugins I have mentioned throughout this AMA for processing. I love the control and flexibility it offers and the choice of filters is very diverse. Before that was massive. I was never really an FM8 fan. I found it very frustrating and left it to the geniuses amongst us.

For breaks I have used superior drummer but I have a decent collection of breaks from collecting for years so I usually just chop up an old break and use some processing to get them sounding nice. There are also some good sample packs of classic breaks you can find online.

Cheers,

Ben.

Hi Ben,

Thanks for your answers! I do love serum too, as FM8 and massive. Actually a few month back I was trying to re-sample some serum sounds through an old emu 6400 ultra, as I’ve also learned to use that over the last 5 years, just to see how this was coloring sounds as I know this sampler was quiet popular in the 90’s/early 2000 in dnb, particularly when your album Wormhole came out. So I wanted to explore the sampler (like going backward compared to where the technology is going but also using technology as serum in an outdated sampler). It was actually good to color the serum sounds as 808ish or any samples,but as you say all ITB is also good with cool distortion plugins, and the workflow is much faster ITB than OTB but different approach.

I can imagine that you have a good collection of Breaks from over the years, I’ve got some good classics too from online, and I do get some more when I find some interesting funky one time to time. So thanks for sharing your own approach for building your own drums, I’m always curious to know which plugins some of my favourite producers use!

Wish you all the best,
Raf

All good Harry and good luck with the production!

Ben.