Techdiff! How do you do it?

[davedavidson Profile]

Everything sounds so damn crisp, tight & punchy, that beautiful granular effect on the drums that sounds like they’ve been time stretched, pitch-shifted all over the shop then recompressed or something, what is that? Quit hogging all the talent & spill the beans x

[Fez Profile Website]

dave is a twitching genius basically!

[PEPCORE]

Agreed, he has a style of his own. Crisp, clean and chaotic at the same time.

[Draegg Profile]

isn´t he on this forum? This seems like a perfect opportunity to start the q&a sessions again

[ohmega sir Profile]

isn´t he on this forum? This seems like a perfect opportunity to start the q&a sessions again

think he had some posts a while ago but not seen him here for a while, but yeah his stuff is mad amazing, pretty unique think if he spilled all his beans he would have 100's of people trying to copy and never getting it right, somethings are best kept secret

[Fez Profile Website]

i saw him jam out once using a broken disposable camera hooked up to a diy keyboard made out of meccano and dried pasta.

[TechDiff Profile]

Sam!! That was a secret test project, now EVERYONE is gonna be rockin the macaroni-mecano-midi controller =(

Only happy to chat about music stuff, its all I ever talk about anyways except my house mates just get bored and walk off.

Happy to go into detail about drum stuff, not sure quite how far to delve though:

I try to avoid using compressors as much as possible. Sometimes, rarely, Ill run a comp on the drums groups once they've all been mixed and EQed, just to tie them all together. But even then it'd be negligible, like 1:10 ratio. Sort of how you'd set up a comp on a master bus.

I guess the thinking behind it is that compressors effectively reduce the dynamic range, and since i like things to be snappy it seams more sensible to go without compression and use a lot of amp envelopes instead, layering also.

I do a lot of layering with breaks, I remember being told it was a good idea years ago, but it took me a while to realise how it could be used to get the sound I wanted. So rather than just running 2 snares over each other (tends to sound really ambiguous most of the time imo) I'll use tiny hits, like less than a 16th with a rapid decay to accent the initial transient of the hits I want to bring out, important snares, kicks, sometimes a ride or hat too. The danger is that it can make everything sound clicky, so it takes a fair amount of mixing to get spot on, but makes things more snappy when its just right. It's also important to think about what characteristic you're hoping to enhance when layering something, a bit more snap in the top, whack in the mid, whatever. More often than not I'll do the layering with synths as you can make a patch that adds just the bits you want.

The only other thing I do a lot, is leaving space between hits. I really love rolling kinda breaks, but when ever I try and do em, Im disappointed with the outcome. Instead I like to make things twitchy, snappy and spazzy. So yeah, I often leave little spaces between one hit and the next. Again it goes back to dynamics.

I think the perceived volume of something is directly related to the volume of whatever proceeded it. So if a snare drum comes right after the decay of a kick, the impact of the snare will be lesser than if there was silence between them. Even just a microscopic amount of silence is enough I think.

I guess imagine it in terms of your ear drum. A loud constant break will cause constant vibration of the membrane, no discernible impact, just shaking. Slight gaps in sound would allow the membrane to settle meaning that the next impact would be considerably more effective.

Hope this is helpful. Its a bit hard to explain to be honest, I could go into detail but I think it'd take a load of screen shots and clips to make sense and showing all the things I do would possibly make people thing I was a bit strange/obsessive and definitely make people think I have too much time on my hands!

[AfA62 Profile Website]

I think the perceived volume of something is directly related to the volume of whatever proceeded it. So if a snare drum comes right after the decay of a kick, the impact of the snare will be lesser than if there was silence between them. Even just a microscopic amount of silence is enough I think.

I guess imagine it in terms of your ear drum. A loud constant break will cause constant vibration of the membrane, no discernible impact, just shaking. Slight gaps in sound would allow the membrane to settle meaning that the next impact would be considerably more effective.

I remember having this in mind once, all the silence thing you're talking about, which could give the next hit more impact, and yeah I guess it's how it goes.

Anyway I'm pretty much agree about the fact that techdiff is obviously an awesome sound designer/ producer.

And Dave, I was wondering if you use to edit/glitch your break with a reaktor plugin you created ? and if not I would really like to know how you stretch your drumhits, especially your (amen) snares ?
It sound like it's a really small grainsize stretched sample, you resampled and reedited or somethin, but I can't get your badass sound...

Also congratz for the awesome lastest peace off release and thank you for being that creative, innovative and inspiring !

[ohmega sir Profile]

also would like to know how you get all your sounds so clean even when distorted every sound seems to have its own space within the track as a whole, do you mixdown tracks individualy or do you do it on the master track??

[davedavidson Profile]

Cheers for the reply man, It has to be said your work is fucking boss, It is usually the strange obsessive types that are willing to put the time in that bust out the masterpieces. It’s that granular effect on the drums that I’m most curious about, weyheyhey!! Uses a lot of it aswell, and Venetian snares in some of his stuff. I’ve tried time stretching a break I made then recording it and playing it back at normal speed, sounds kind of similar but nowhere near as clear and crisp. The other thing I tried is having individual drum hits in a sampler the writing in some 16th or 32th notes and moving through the sample with the sample-start knob, if you transpose or pitch shift that about it sounds pretty gnarly, but still not quite there, and seems kind of long. do you use renoise per chance?
Pleases keep doing what you’re doing btw, I love your stuff x

[TechDiff Profile]

I was wondering if you use to edit/glitch your break with a reaktor plugin you created ? and if not I would really like to know how you stretch your drumhits, especially your (amen) snares ?
It sound like it's a really small grainsize stretched sample, you resampled and reedited or somethin, but I can't get your badass sound...

I do quite a few different things for stretching drums etc. I have about 4 or 5 different patches that I use, all have slightly different characteristics and work better for different things.

I've got a few I've built in Reaktor.

One is just a simple sample masher made using the Resynth sample module. Nothing especially fancy, but it's great for really gnarly, crude time stretching. Nothing subtle basically. There's one which is a time stretching algorithm I programmed myself. Again it's pretty crude but the results are pretty similar to that of an old Akai sampler, really good for that classic jungle time stretch snare sound. There's a third one too, which is built using delays, kinda tricky to explain how it works tbh. But it's useful in that it functions as an effect rather than a sample player. Can be used over groups etc without having to resample or whatever. I use the built in FL one a fair amount too. It's pretty shonky for a lot of things, but you can get it to make really ace resonant metallic sounds. There's other ones too, like Absynth and Alchemy both do time stretching really well, but I don't use those for drums. Great for really screwing up sounds for ambience or effects.

[TechDiff Profile]

also would like to know how you get all your sounds so clean even when distorted every sound seems to have its own space within the track as a whole, do you mixdown tracks individualy or do you do it on the master track??

Distortion is a tricky one. I don't use it all that much to be honest, at least for the breakcore stuff.

I think what bugs me about it is the after effects of it. Like, playing a kick through distortion and you get a little bit of fizzing out after the sound has finished playing. Even though it's just a little bit, it's enough to get on my tits.

So I really only use distortion as a pre production type thing. If I'm sat making a kick or whatever, using distortion for that. Once Im happy with it I'll render it out as a hit so that I can chop and tail it and avoid the after fizz.

With Mixing I'm pretty clueless in all honesty. Like, I kinda understand the concepts and such, but struggle to apply them to what I'm doing a lot of the time. Just kinda muddle through till it sounds right.

I do a lot of grouping, helps me to keep track of everything as much as anything else. With some tracks I'll end up with like 100 different snare sounds for example, so I'll go through and make sure they're all the right level and then group them so I have one fader to control all the levels at once. Do the same with kicks and breaks etc, then send everything to another group so I've got one fader for all my drum channels.

Sounds with reverb or delay get the same kind of treatment too. A synth sweep for example. I'd do all the EQing etc on its own channel before sending it off to a group for reverb or delay. The idea being that I can keep a consistent sense of space.

Aside from that Im not too sure, as I said, I just sort of bumble through it. Although, I do spend most of my time working through headphones, and very quietly. Seams like it's easier to tell when somethings level is off that way, the differences really jump out if something is too loud

[S2K08 Profile]

I use the built in FL one a fair amount too. It's pretty shonky for a lot of things, but you can get it to make really ace resonant metallic sounds.

You mean the FL delay (2) right? Because I think it has this mad distinctive sound to it, too tinny, not great for stetching, or emulating stretching, rather...

Do you use any comb filters?

Does anyone know what the flashbulb uses (please don't say hardware or magic) - because his stretches are the best sounding IMO, when you hear it's proper like, that's the fucking flashbulb right there. Be nice if he used any other effect though, he's a fuckin fiend for it.

Obligatory: I love you techdiff shock my nipples with your face

[TechDiff Profile]

You mean the FL delay (2) right? Because I think it has this mad distinctive sound to it, too tinny, not great for stetching, or emulating stretching, rather...

Do you use any comb filters?

Nah, I know what you mean about the delay though, does have a pretty unique sound.

But no, I meant the granulizer channel in FL. It got revamped in version 5, different algorithm I think. It's one of the reasons I've never properly upgraded, still using version 4. I have the newer versions but just don't get along with them.

Like I said though, it's a very crude granular channel, but it has it's quirks and that's what I'm interested in. More or less every featured DAW has time stretching capabilities, and they're all very easy to spot. Ableton's especially so. I just like to mix things up a bit, another way to add a bit of sonic interest or whatever, more fun for me too!

I do use comb filters from time to time. I don't get along with them so well when I'm producing fast stuff though, for the same reason as always. Too resonant, tails that drag over... High feedback and gating rhythms though, that's a shit load of fun. I probably use them more in my live set up. Got one I built in Reaktor, separate circuits for left and right with a shed load of modulation. Get's pretty silly, wicked for big blasts of metallic feedback though.

I use them a lot for synth stuff though, Karplus-strong type patches. Really cool way to get nice pad sounds or thick low midrange warmth. Massive is pretty good for it, Carbon2 (Reaktor synth) as well.

Does anyone know what the flashbulb uses (please don't say hardware or magic) - because his stretches are the best sounding IMO, when you hear it's proper like, that's the fucking flashbulb right there. Be nice if he used any other effect though, he's a fuckin fiend for it.

No idea tbh, although some of his tracks definitely have some Reaktor bits going on. Might be a good place to start =D To be honest though, never got that into Flashbulb

Obligatory: I love you techdiff shock my nipples with your face

Aww love you too <3

[S2K08 Profile]

tahnks for all the ideas of stuff I could try that I'm never gonna get round to trying, and when I finally do I'll somehow end up with a mashup of freestyler with the ace of spades or something... will definitely check out that granulator, although I've never been certain how or what it do