Need advice

Re: Need advice

The problem you are referring to is called clipping. It happens when your bass begins to overcarry your other frequencies and boosts them unexpectedly. The solution is to apply compression and balance the layers.

Re: Need advice

How do I do that exactly? It works when I turn down the volume on each of the elements, but then everything's too quiet to hear.

Re: Need advice

It's alright...

Re: Need advice

It's relatively in the ballpark, but still needs some help.
Same could be said about your feedback

Re: Need advice

I'm sorry.
It's alright, but it just seems as if it's all just a big line of same beats.
If you understand?

Re: Need advice

Clipping is a basic problem when it comes to music production. Lowering the db output of your instruments is essentially the basic fix. However, let's say that in your song you have an intro that requires bass. Now in the middle of this song, the bass is turned down because you have many instruments inputting into different frequencies, and you don't want it to clip. In the intro though, where not so many instruments are operating, you don't want your bass to sound puny. Now you can manually automate the db output of the bass, but that can be both a hassle and end up sounding very stoic and blocky. A general fix to apply compression to the bass. You can do this by making sure the instrument to be compressed is routed into an FX track that contains a compressor. There are many compressors out there, but for basic DB compression the Fruity Compressor works well with a minor CPU load. The parameters of the compressor show you all you need: a threshold db for when the compressor is to kick in, a ratio of compression to apply once the threshold is met (sort of like a goal), a gain that is applied directly to the output signal even when no compression was applied, at attack which is the time it takes the compressor to reach full compression once the threshold db was met, a release which is the time it takes the compressor to completely release its compression once the signal leaves the threshold level, and a compression type which is the rate at which the compressor reaches its (goal). The type can either be hard, medium, vintage, or soft, as well as another set that provides a softer version of these. A hard compression happens instantly, a soft one is applied over a longer time, thus giving a "hard" or "soft" feel to the compression.

I give you a good rundown of this because when I started music production, I was never told this type of information.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that generally clipping occurs because an instrument is generating more than 0 db of sound. 0 db is (very) generally the ideal db of the entire song.

EDT2: Here's a sample of something I'm working on now that I think displays the abilities of compression:
sleeplessdragn - Hand In Hand, We Ran (WIP)