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Pro tips
Nu-Rave quick tips
It's compression, bit-crushers and sidechains that give you the big, lo-fi disco sounds of artists like Daft Punk, Justice and MSTRKRFT, writes SM
Drums
Compression is key here – lots of it and on every possible hit. Use fast attack and release times on kicks and snares and try sidechaining a hat or shaker loop with a bass drum for that maximum pumping effect. Use further compression or limiting on the entire loop or mix bus to get additional slam and volume.
Keep things uncluttered and choose sounds that don’t carry much bottom end to allow for greater loudness in the overall mix. Using a combination of vintage drum machine hits coupled with live hi-hats or shakers helps create a great rhythm track to build on.
Synths
Sidechaining synths and carefully eqing them will ensure maximum punch in the mix. Experiment with resampling synth loops at a lower bit rate to give them genuine old-school vinyl grit. Cut, paste, glitch and bend sections of the loop or rearrange Rex files using MIDI to add variation and spice to your arrangement.Bass
Lo-fi is key here. Use distortion or stompboxes on live bass or synth sounds (analogue is best!) and try using guitar amps and recording the DI out alongside a mic'ed signal to give extra beef. Keep the low frequency elements tight and punchy to ensure maximum volume. Multiband compression and transient designers work extremely well on slap bass sounds. Trim the fat by low-filtering bass-heavy sounds.Vox
Record your own voice on the oldest, most battered mic you have – even through your computer mic. When you have a hook you like double, triple, quadruple-track it to bulk it up,then mangle it. Pitch-shift, vocode, ringshift and bitcrush.Vocal transformation plugins will give instant robotics. You can also get retro spoken phrases by sampling a computer’s internal speech utility.
To add further movement get gitching: cut and paste parts of your loop (usually picking the most characteristic elements) to create stuttering new loops. Finally, get sampling! Dig around in your attic for Speak’n’Spells, kid’s computers with speaking abilities, mobile phones – anything that has a speech output. Then sample, downgrade the bit-rate and get mangling.
Mix Bus
Feel free to pile on the effects on the mix bus. Experiment with flanging, filtering and distorting selected sections of your arrangement. A heavily clipped or compressed mix bus is a defining characteristic of Nu-Rave so don’t be afraid to bend the rules. Distorted or overdriven high frequency sounds have richer harmonics and give a greater impression of volume so don’t underdo the distortion either! Automate eqs and multiband compressors to drop out during breakdowns to ensure maximum effect when all the elements kick back in.
Cut whole sections of your arrangement into 32nd notes and rearrange or reverse segments. Repeat and stutter transient-heavy slices or pitch-shift selected hits to give your track that characteristic dancefloor boost.
- To buy Nu-Rave and Electro-House sample downloads see here: www.soundstosample.com/genre/HouseElectro/1