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Thu 18 June 2009
03:50pm
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Sometimes we find a great sample that we really want to use but unfortunately there is a click at the beginning or end of the sound. For this tutorial I am going to be using Audacity which is free to use and can be downloaded from the 
Audacity Website for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux. You should be able to use any similar software to do the same technique.
Here is a simple kick drum sound and if you listen carefully you will hear a click at the end once the sample has finished.
If we was to put this into a drum beat we would get unwanted clicks all over our drum pattern. If we look at our sound in Audacity we can see that the reason this click is heard is because the last section of our sample ends while the sound waveform is either above or below 0.
We can solve this very easily by highlighting the last few milliseconds of the sound and going to Effect > Fade Out which will make the waveform fade down to 0 and eliminates the sudden stop which was causing the click. If the click is at the start of a sample we can instead highlight the first few milliseconds and choose Effect > Fade In and this will achieve the same thing but at the start.
Here is our new click-less drum sample using this technique.
Audacity Website for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux. You should be able to use any similar software to do the same technique.Here is a simple kick drum sound and if you listen carefully you will hear a click at the end once the sample has finished.
If we was to put this into a drum beat we would get unwanted clicks all over our drum pattern. If we look at our sound in Audacity we can see that the reason this click is heard is because the last section of our sample ends while the sound waveform is either above or below 0.
We can solve this very easily by highlighting the last few milliseconds of the sound and going to Effect > Fade Out which will make the waveform fade down to 0 and eliminates the sudden stop which was causing the click. If the click is at the start of a sample we can instead highlight the first few milliseconds and choose Effect > Fade In and this will achieve the same thing but at the start.
Here is our new click-less drum sample using this technique.
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Sat 5 January 2008
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03:44pm
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I used to make a lot of hard house music and one of the most common sounds in hard house and similar types of hard dance music is the hoover sound. Even though it is used a lot (sometimes too much) some people have trouble recreating this sound themselves and end up using samples. The original sound was made on the Roland Juno Synthesizer and I’ve even heard of people buying that synth just to create this type of sound and spending hundreds of their hard earned cash in the process. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to make a basic hoover without a Juno. If your not sure what a hoover synth is then play the sound below.
Click Here To Listen To The Final Hoover Sound
I made that hoover style sound above as an example for this tutorial using the Malstrom and the NN-XT sampler in Reason within a few minutes and I’m going to show you how to get that style of synth sound so you can make all the hoovers you require without a Juno and also so I don’t have to hear a hoover sample that I’ve heard hundreds of times before next time I listen to some new hard house/dance tracks.
The following tutorial is done in Reason but you should be able to reproduce this sound using any synthesizer or softsynth which is good at making some sort of nice fat lead sound.
Creating the Starting Sound
First we need to create a fat lead type sound, I shall leave you to choose one yourself here as most synthesizers should be able to create sounds which are good enough. Here is the sound I used, so you can get an idea of the sort of sound that you need to start off with.
Click Here To Download The Starting Sound
As you can see it’s nothing special, it is in fact just 2 x Sawtooth like waves with one of them an octave lower than the other. There is nothing special about this sound and you can find samples of this sort of sound all over the internet for free. Experiment with different sorts of lead synth sounds as your starting point for the hoover, but to get a real fat hoover you need something that sounds quite fat to begin with. You want to aim for lots of high and low frequencies in there as it will make the hoover sound fatter and more Juno sounding.
Making The Hoover
This is the bit which most people who try to make hoover sounds and fail don’t know about. We need to use a sampler such as the NN-XT in Reason which allows you to use a mod envelope (ADSR) to control the pitch of the sound. I’m sure that there are many other samplers that can do this too.
For this you need to first export the sound from your synthesizer and save it as a sample to reload into your sampler. You want to create a very long sample or create a loop in the sampler so you can hold the sample down for a long time without it ending.
Once you’ve loaded the sample into you’re sampler, you need to make the mod envelope affect the pitch of the sample. For the example I set the mod env to pitch setting to +600cents (about the 2-O-Clock position) on the NN-XT. I increased the attack on the mod envelope to about midway up and the decay just that bit higher than the attack. The sustain, release and hold were set to none.
I also made the sound play three notes at one time to give it more substance, these were C3, C4 and C5 on the MIDI keyboard and placed a notch filter on the sample with the frequency set about half way. Now we have the basic hoover sound, you can now go and add some effects on if you want to make it sound even better.
See it isn’t that hard to create a hoover once you know how it’s done. Hopefully this has shown you that you can create Hoover type sounds very easily and quickly within Reason. You don’t need a Roland Juno or other fancy kit to create one. You can also achieve this with most synthesizers and a sampler with the mod envelope to pitch ability. Experiment with the hoover sounds too by starting with different starting synths, there are loads that can be made. If you use Reason there are some great ones that can be made with the Subtractor and Malstrom as a starting point.
Tutorial written byEdward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation.
Click Here To Listen To The Final Hoover SoundI made that hoover style sound above as an example for this tutorial using the Malstrom and the NN-XT sampler in Reason within a few minutes and I’m going to show you how to get that style of synth sound so you can make all the hoovers you require without a Juno and also so I don’t have to hear a hoover sample that I’ve heard hundreds of times before next time I listen to some new hard house/dance tracks.
The following tutorial is done in Reason but you should be able to reproduce this sound using any synthesizer or softsynth which is good at making some sort of nice fat lead sound.
Creating the Starting Sound
First we need to create a fat lead type sound, I shall leave you to choose one yourself here as most synthesizers should be able to create sounds which are good enough. Here is the sound I used, so you can get an idea of the sort of sound that you need to start off with.
Click Here To Download The Starting SoundAs you can see it’s nothing special, it is in fact just 2 x Sawtooth like waves with one of them an octave lower than the other. There is nothing special about this sound and you can find samples of this sort of sound all over the internet for free. Experiment with different sorts of lead synth sounds as your starting point for the hoover, but to get a real fat hoover you need something that sounds quite fat to begin with. You want to aim for lots of high and low frequencies in there as it will make the hoover sound fatter and more Juno sounding.
Making The Hoover
This is the bit which most people who try to make hoover sounds and fail don’t know about. We need to use a sampler such as the NN-XT in Reason which allows you to use a mod envelope (ADSR) to control the pitch of the sound. I’m sure that there are many other samplers that can do this too.
For this you need to first export the sound from your synthesizer and save it as a sample to reload into your sampler. You want to create a very long sample or create a loop in the sampler so you can hold the sample down for a long time without it ending.
Once you’ve loaded the sample into you’re sampler, you need to make the mod envelope affect the pitch of the sample. For the example I set the mod env to pitch setting to +600cents (about the 2-O-Clock position) on the NN-XT. I increased the attack on the mod envelope to about midway up and the decay just that bit higher than the attack. The sustain, release and hold were set to none.
I also made the sound play three notes at one time to give it more substance, these were C3, C4 and C5 on the MIDI keyboard and placed a notch filter on the sample with the frequency set about half way. Now we have the basic hoover sound, you can now go and add some effects on if you want to make it sound even better.
See it isn’t that hard to create a hoover once you know how it’s done. Hopefully this has shown you that you can create Hoover type sounds very easily and quickly within Reason. You don’t need a Roland Juno or other fancy kit to create one. You can also achieve this with most synthesizers and a sampler with the mod envelope to pitch ability. Experiment with the hoover sounds too by starting with different starting synths, there are loads that can be made. If you use Reason there are some great ones that can be made with the Subtractor and Malstrom as a starting point.
Tutorial written by
Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation.-
Fri 28 December 2007
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12:23pm
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Sine, Square, Triangle and Sawtooth are the basic waveforms (a graphical representation of a sound) used in most popular synthesizers. Most oscillators (The part of a synthesizer which generates the basic waveform) can produce all four of these basic waveforms. All are very different sounding and have their own characteristics which can greatly affect the mood of the sound synthesized.
I believe that by learning what each of these basic waveforms sounds and looks like can be a great way for anyone starting out using synthesizers to be able to start learning to hear a synthesized sound and then go on to reproduce that sound on their own.
Below are images of these four basic waveforms as well as audio examples for each.
Sine Wave
The wave that most of use will visually imagine when we hear the word wave. Can be great for producing very low bass sounds that sound smooth.
Download a mp3 of this waveform.
Square
As the name suggest the waveform looks square and this creates a unique sound compared to the other four waveforms.
Download a mp3 of this waveform.
Triangle
A triangle wave is a very basic waveform where the pattern rises and then falls by the same gradient creating a triangle shape.
Download a mp3 of this waveform.
Sawtooth
The dirtiest sounding of the four basic waves, it is named sawtooth because it looks like the teeth of a saw. You can also get a reverse sawtooth waveform where the slow gradient and steep fall are swapped around.
Download a mp3 of this waveform.
Hopefully this article has allowed you to see and hear the basic waveforms so you can begin to identify them when you hear sounds that have been created using these waveforms as a starting point.
All images of the waveforms are made usingAudacity
Article written by Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation.
I believe that by learning what each of these basic waveforms sounds and looks like can be a great way for anyone starting out using synthesizers to be able to start learning to hear a synthesized sound and then go on to reproduce that sound on their own.
Below are images of these four basic waveforms as well as audio examples for each.
Sine Wave
The wave that most of use will visually imagine when we hear the word wave. Can be great for producing very low bass sounds that sound smooth.
Download a mp3 of this waveform.Square
As the name suggest the waveform looks square and this creates a unique sound compared to the other four waveforms.
Download a mp3 of this waveform.Triangle
A triangle wave is a very basic waveform where the pattern rises and then falls by the same gradient creating a triangle shape.
Download a mp3 of this waveform.Sawtooth
The dirtiest sounding of the four basic waves, it is named sawtooth because it looks like the teeth of a saw. You can also get a reverse sawtooth waveform where the slow gradient and steep fall are swapped around.
Download a mp3 of this waveform.Hopefully this article has allowed you to see and hear the basic waveforms so you can begin to identify them when you hear sounds that have been created using these waveforms as a starting point.
All images of the waveforms are made using
Audacity
Article written by Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation.-
Tue 18 December 2007
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04:50pm
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I came across this article today complete with audio examples, about a psychology science experiment devised by Jessica Phillips-Sliver and Laurel Trainor looking into whether movement itself (dance) may affect the way in which we perceive music and sounds.
I thought I would bring this little experiment to your attention not only because I thought it was rather interesting scientifically speaking, but because it also shows how accenting different specific beats within a rhythm can affect the overall sound of the drum rhythm. All three sound examples on that page have exactly the same rhythm just different beats are more pronounced than others. This is a technique that you can use in your own drum beats to give different feelings at different points in your composition.
Visit the article on Cognitive Daily
this article today complete with audio examples, about a psychology science experiment devised by Jessica Phillips-Sliver and Laurel Trainor looking into whether movement itself (dance) may affect the way in which we perceive music and sounds.I thought I would bring this little experiment to your attention not only because I thought it was rather interesting scientifically speaking, but because it also shows how accenting different specific beats within a rhythm can affect the overall sound of the drum rhythm. All three sound examples on that page have exactly the same rhythm just different beats are more pronounced than others. This is a technique that you can use in your own drum beats to give different feelings at different points in your composition.
Visit the article on Cognitive Daily-
Sun 18 November 2007
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06:16pm
- View Comments
So far in this series of posts on the basics of sound we have talked about 
sound and how it travels through the air and also frequency and wavelength. In this part we are going to look at pitch and how it relates to frequency.
The Difference Between Pitch and Frequency
Pitch and frequency are very similar, but sometimes I hear people get very confused between the two. The main way of remembering the difference is to understand that frequency is the scientific way of specifying a sounds wavelength in hertz (the number of wavelengths per second) where as pitch is the musicians way of referring to a fundamental frequency (the main frequency of a sound) through the use of letters and symbols.
Standardized Pitch
Pitch can be set at any frequency we want, I could set for example the A above middle C to be 500Hz and as long as everyone else playing other instruments along with the music had also set their tuning to correspond to mine, it would make no difference apart from we would be all playing slightly higher in frequency. But to try and keep some standardization in the instrument market we have what’s called standardized pitch (set by theInternational Organization for Standardization (ISO). In standardized pitch the A above middle C is set to the frequency of 440Hz (A440).
Octaves
From this A of 440Hz (A440) all the other notes around it can be tuned from this single note. Every octave higher is double the frequency of the previous octave. So the A one octave above the note of A440 will have a frequency of 880Hz (A880). The A one octave below A440 will have a frequency of 220Hz (A220). Even though the gap between our octaves of As is different in frequency, we still perceive the distance between them to be the same.
The Other Notes in the Chromatic Scale
The twelve note tuning on most modern western instruments is called the Chromatic Scale which is C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B and back to C to start again. These notes can all be worked out in frequency from our starting point of A (A440). Every pitch higher is our previous frequency times the twelfth root of two which equates to 1.0594630. So basically our A# (the next note above A on the chromatic scale) is going to be 440 X the twelfth root of two (1.594630.....) which is 466.16Hz. To work out the next note which would be B we just times that notes frequency by the same amount.
Hopefully from this quick guide you can see how pitch corresponds to frequency and how they are two different methods of showing the wavelength of a sound.
Article written byEdward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation.
sound and how it travels through the air and also frequency and wavelength. In this part we are going to look at pitch and how it relates to frequency.The Difference Between Pitch and Frequency
Pitch and frequency are very similar, but sometimes I hear people get very confused between the two. The main way of remembering the difference is to understand that frequency is the scientific way of specifying a sounds wavelength in hertz (the number of wavelengths per second) where as pitch is the musicians way of referring to a fundamental frequency (the main frequency of a sound) through the use of letters and symbols.
Standardized Pitch
Pitch can be set at any frequency we want, I could set for example the A above middle C to be 500Hz and as long as everyone else playing other instruments along with the music had also set their tuning to correspond to mine, it would make no difference apart from we would be all playing slightly higher in frequency. But to try and keep some standardization in the instrument market we have what’s called standardized pitch (set by the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO). In standardized pitch the A above middle C is set to the frequency of 440Hz (A440).Octaves
From this A of 440Hz (A440) all the other notes around it can be tuned from this single note. Every octave higher is double the frequency of the previous octave. So the A one octave above the note of A440 will have a frequency of 880Hz (A880). The A one octave below A440 will have a frequency of 220Hz (A220). Even though the gap between our octaves of As is different in frequency, we still perceive the distance between them to be the same.The Other Notes in the Chromatic Scale
The twelve note tuning on most modern western instruments is called the Chromatic Scale which is C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B and back to C to start again. These notes can all be worked out in frequency from our starting point of A (A440). Every pitch higher is our previous frequency times the twelfth root of two which equates to 1.0594630. So basically our A# (the next note above A on the chromatic scale) is going to be 440 X the twelfth root of two (1.594630.....) which is 466.16Hz. To work out the next note which would be B we just times that notes frequency by the same amount.
Hopefully from this quick guide you can see how pitch corresponds to frequency and how they are two different methods of showing the wavelength of a sound.
Article written by
Edward Cufaude for Rhythm Creation.
