What Sound is the 'Right' Sound?

[mattus123]

Hey guize

I saw a post on mr Enzed's facebook offering a tip about music production

basically saying that picking the right sounds is one of hte most important parts of production

I have heard this alot of times before, but im struggling to find the 'right sound'

Is this something that just comes with experience, or are there basic rules of thumb that help to use the right sounds and samples

(im more concerned with picking the right drum samples, as i make my own bass and synths)

Cheers!

[legunner]

It is mostly experience I think. Picking the right sounds could just be those go to drum samples that sounds fat and beef up your track or those couple of synth presets which are the foundation for most of your tracks.

[GREMM1S]

Drums that arent muddy etc, synths that dont take up frequencies needed for other parts of tracks.

[wrxfiend]

for me its

Sample (some dope old tune from vinyl)

Bangin Drums (snappy snares and deep kicks)

Bass Line (have a few in Mascine i like to use but need moar!)

Hip hop is quite simple tho.

took me ages to find good drums, so much crap out there, i decided to make my own from break records and dj tools vinyl

Peace

[mattus123]

ah i thought it mighta been something like that

damn producers offering advice to beginners that can only be understood when heard by a non-beginner

[street]

Ryan was pretty vague with that post, but pretty sure he is talking more about synth selection. When you're doing a mixdown, you are trying to give the individual elements their own space in the mix, which can be achieved through EQ, stereo imaging, panning, compression etc. and what he is saying that sometimes all the EQ, compression and processing in the world still won't work if the synth patch itself doesn't suit the track. When he says he "ignored it for far too long" he probably had a synth patch he liked and was processing the shit out of it to try and make it fit in the mix, but all he need to do was chose a different synth sound.

The same can be said for drums. You want a snare/clap that works with your kick. Individually, they might sound great, but if they don't sound good together, you're going to want to look for a different sample, rather than processing the shit out of it.

[mattus123]

yea that makes sense

Cheers Street!!

[Tomy]

just always remember "Trash in = Trash out"

and it's as simple as that. If you have some dodgy shitty crash cymbal then in your track you are going to hear, a dodgy shitty crash cymbal no matter how much reverb and eq-ing you do. Same goes for mastering if your mix down is rubbish don't expect mastering is going to fix a thing because it wont.

[street]

Yeah, if your mix is good enough, all that needs to be done at the mastering stage is get it to commercial volume.

[mattus123]

Cheers fellas

I guess that the determining a trash/non-trash sound will come with experience though ey

Ive noticed by replacing kickdrums/snares/etc that it makes everything sound better, but i defiently wouldnt have been able to pick it straight away- more just on a trial and error basis

[street]

yea, so much of it is just trial and error, but down the line there will be less error as you improve.