JADE & MINDSCAPE Q&A

@,billykrush

the mail address is [email protected]

What works best is an SC private link w/ download.
Wetransfer etc times out fast, and we don’t check the demos every week.
The tune is best is finished as much as possible, We have a lot of incoming stuff, half done tunes get lost even easier.

I also must say, that we don’t reply to everyone any more. So please don’t be pissed if you don’t get a response.

I totally second that.

All tuts arounds here are focused on drums, basses , mixdowns, and workflow.
They are pretty Amazing but it’s really lacking of tuts aiming to create synths, leads and all the things that goes Well over a bassline.

It would be really cool if you guys Can elaborate on synth creation.

Anyways, the video was really cool , thanks you guys for the time spent doing it.

How did you create the samples for the sample pack is indeed not something i can cover in a simple forum reply. But fair enough, we can talk about that in the next video!

We are fixed on the sub bass, that limits us. F is the most generally used key, true. But not as radically as you say. Several tunes go down to E, that’s still a typical key, and there are some in D#, but i think that’s the edge, some systems fail to go down that low.
G is pretty popular too, and a couple of notes above, but that’s where the note looses the ‘sub’ characteristic, it doesn’t punch you in the gut any more. We leave A to EDM ?
So yeah, true, we are limited in that regard, but not to one note, but like half the octave.

I usually have the drums on separate group channels as – kick, snare, hats, breaks.
Mindscape makes even more groups, and connects all beats into a beat master channel.
I like to have them separated like this.
Kick and Snare channels always have these kind of plugins:
-transient shaping (Transient Master or Transient Shaper) it’s important for having those snappy clear hits. Attack up, Sustain to your taste.
-EQ (FabFilter Pro Q) EQing is the art of melding the samples into the environment, hence there is no global trick here, every sample needs different EQing.
-Distortion, saturation. This gives the beef part, but don’t overdo it! The more distortion you use the more dynamics you loose. My favorites right now are the D16 plugins, Camel Phat, and the Sausage Fattener.
-Compression. That’s up to you as well what kind of sound are you after. I use the FabFilter plugins here.
-Reverb – slight room reverb on the snare, nothing on the kick. Hat’s can have more!
-Stereo enhancement on the hats, breaks (iZotope)

I have both the kick and the snare as the triggers for the sub sidechain compressor (FabFilter Pro C2)

I often call Mindscape the master of group channels ? He definitely influenced me to have better use of grouping and the grouping the groups!
But generally what i pick up on sessions like this are the tiny little tricks in Cubase, the stuff you always did effectively somehow, but there is always an easier way. Like for example when you click on 2 events, and press P. You will have a new playback loop from the beginning of the first event to the end of the 2nd. This takes about 0.5 second less than to click start and end of the loop.
I never really had any major revelations during collabs though.
One thing slightly surprised me, when we were working on a tune with Noisia, to start the tune they only used samples from their own sample folder, and only later added some synths.

If you have doubts about your drums sounding together, make a group channel, route your drums into one group. Then apply some effects that you’d do normally separately. Like some saturation. After that compress them together.

The 2nd question is a really strange one 🙂 why would you want to make a pad from a bass? Sure you can make your life harder than it should be, but i don’t see the point.
But let’s play with the idea for the sake of fun.
If it’s a long enough sample i would make a loop from it in Kontakt, pitch it up, add some reverb.
If it’s a short sample then it’s going to be the real trick.. I guess i could try having a giga reverb on the sample with 100% wet, loop and pitch up that?

There is no rule how loud your sub _must_ be. Tunes differ a lot in that regard too. It’s also pretty hard to measure the sub alone, if you solo it the loudness will be entirely different from the loudness you have in the mix. The sub takes up the most space, and the rest of the mix heavily influences the eventual loudness of it in the mix.
Best you can do is use a reference tune or more, compare to them every now and then.

As far as it goes for gear – well that’s where things get crazy expensive. A decent speaker you can fully rely on sub wise starts at 2-3k.
Anything below that, you will need additional gear to check it. Headphones can be helpful, but the 100€ range is not really pro still.
There is a new invention, the sub pack. Either you wear it, or you put it on your chair, and it vibrates, gives you the sense of the sub that’s missing from your speakers.

But the best advice really, and not just for the sub, any time you have doubts – reference!!!
I always have 2-3 tunes actually loaded in Cubase, and every 10-15 minutes i solo them and listen for a few seconds. Then it doesn’t matter if your system isn’t perfect, you will have a base to return to, you will hear how it should sound, and you won’t get lost in your project, mix, system.