Steve Voidloss aka Dirty Bass is a producer with experience in various scenes spanning well over a decade. Starting out in industrial bands, eventually moving on to running a free party soundsystem in London as part of the infamous United Systems movement, Steve has settled into production and mastering. Dirty Bass reached massive accalim with many internationally successful releases on the imprint DirtyBass Records, and still plays bass heavy techno and dubstep today. Voidloss is the darker more pensive side to Steve, an evolving explorative journey into electronic music blending in occult knowledge and ritual. Steve has kindly allowed the use of his production masterclass to be presented on Elevation Music for all you wonderful people to digest.  Even if you don't produce techno there are methods and techniques here that can be applied to any genre.  Enjoy!

Complementary Kicks

Sometimes it can be frustrating getting those really big, solid kicks.  A technique I sometimes use is doubling up the kick drums.  Generally I’ll find, or more often make, a kick drum I like with good solid sub to mid bass presence, but it still seems to need extra sturdiness.  Sometimes this can be a simple EQ or compression problem, but sometimes I`m looking for a more dynamic sound. In this situation I’ll find or make (generally I tend to mix a synthesised kick with a sampled kick) another kick with more presence in the high bass to top end frequencies.  I then blend the 2nd kick over the 1st by chopping out the lower frequencies of the 2nd, so it sits “on top” of the 1st. After then compressing the 2 this gives a nice full present and crisp kick, with loads of bottom end woomph and nice punchy mid and top. Also, a lot of people seem to neglect the top end of their kicks.  A nice crisp, balanced top end on a kick drum with help the groove relationship between itself and the hats/high end percussion.

Sub Rumble

For nice deep ambient sub rumble in tracks, one of the techniques I sometimes use is to get a nice subby kick or bass sound, and run it through some monstrous cathedral size reverb.  I then sample the result, pull out the initial sound so I end up with just the deep verb on its own. Then you can slap this under your kicks in a track, sidechained to the kicks, and it really gives a nice cavernous rumble.  For some interesting sub madness sometimes it`s also nice to make a subtle bass melody using this sample, and have that rumbling away under the kicks.

Pattern Length

Dance music has become increasingly easier to make due to the accessibility of the technology.  And probably in some ways techno has become one of the easiest styles of music to make at it’s basic level. “Just mash some loops together” etc....With people getting a little tired of over loopy-ness it really is time producers started getting a little more clever with their programming.  One of the things I like to do to enliven the 4x4, 16 step nature of techno is to use unusual pattern/loop/phrase lengths. Sometimes, for example, I’ll make an intricate hat pattern and spread it over 20 steps, instead of the usual 16.  It means the pattern rolls over on it’s own separate groove, but is still in time to the 4x4 beat, giving a jazz like spontaneous sounding flare.  This simple technique, although it can make programming a little more laborious, can be applied to any part of your tune.  Bass lines, leads, whatever, and when varying pattern lengths mix together you get some interesting shifting groove effects.

Just Close Your Eyes

Make your ears do the work. This is music after all.  Sometimes screens, sequence patterns, knobs and buttons can all act as a distraction from the basic heart of your project ie. SOUND. Close your eyes and listen to the music. This is a very helpful way to sit back and reflect on the sequence or indeed a valuable way of “seeing into” the mix.  Sounds simple and obvious, but do you do it?  It’s great, especially when things all get a bit hectic in the mix.

EQ & Separation

This whole process is an art unto itself, and there is no hard and fast method that will ensure you get a clean separated mix.  Here are some hints and tips though.Visualise your mix. I see the mix as a side running bar chart. (This is just my example, your own mental picture should be something you yourself can visualise) with the sounds running from top to bottom on the chart, top being the high end, bottom being the bass frequencies.  The bigger the sound, the thicker it is on the mental picture, and visa versa.  The object is to cut and fit the sounds so they fill the graph from top to bottom, but overlap as little as possible. Placing the sounds visually in your head makes it a lot easier to separate your mix.  I also split the bass mentally into three bands.  Low bass, mid bass, high bass.  And the same for the mid range and the top end. And then mentally picture where each sound lies.  It may seem a bit odd, but drawing a mental picture really does help a lot.  The EQ process I use and you should always use for mixing is Subtractive EQ.

Edits

No more high pass filters please!!! There is so much more you can do creatively. Here is an idea for example…Record the whole track, cut out sections where you would like edits and then apply effects, resample, and cut back into the track.  There are some fantastically creative effects out there, and lots of them are freeware. Use them. There is a certain buzz when working for the moment, but the rush to finish a track leads to lazy programming. Always go back a few days or a week later to a so called “finished” track, and you can then approach it without the creative “fever” clouding your final production.  It`s good to approach a track first from the more creative and spontaneous side, and then later from the more considered and clinical side.

Less Is More

Sometimes no matter what you do with eq, the mix is muddy and confusing, or too busy.  Try zeroing all the sliders on the desk.  Bring the elements back in one by one, in order of importance (in your eyes).  So that would be, main groove elements, then main melody etc With each sound you bring back carefully sculpt it into the mix with eq, and as each new sound comes in, you can then also adjust the sounds already in the mix to accommodate as well. It saves running over the whole desk in some kind of EQ frenzy trying to get everything right all at once. At some point you may find you still have some elements left, but the mix is full, and the groove is tight. You may then do well to discard these leftover elements (it may be painful, but it is worth it). Or maybe use them in the tune, but when you bring them into the tune (in the sequence) take out another sound that fills the same place in the mix. This will keep the mix from cluttering and also provide some nice changes.

Super Grooves

To improve your groove creation skills you might try the following exercise. Many people start a track with the basic staple elements, Kick, bass then hats and main riff or percussion.  To make a real killer groove, don’t use a kick or any hats to begin with.  Try building a groove that rocks within the 4x4 environment, but stands on it’s own without kick and offbeat hats.  Once you’ve done this it is more than likely that when you add the kick and the hats this groove will lock so tight you’ll cream your pants.

Broken Beats

Although I love the broken beat, I hear a bit more getting made these days that misses the point.  Simply making standard techno, where the offbeat is the counterpoint and drive, and then moving the kick elsewhere doesn’t really work the groove to its full potential.  When you dive into broken beat, the whole groove can swing a different way if done properly, but the drive of the 4 to the floor ideal can still be retained.  When the kicks are moved off the 4, then the counterpoint for them also moves. The offbeat is no longer the 3rd, 7th, 11th and 15th step per bar. It shifts with the new kick arrangement.  Play with this, you can end up with a really pounding but ass shaking off-kilter groove, but still with the emphasis on the kicks.

Experimentation

The key to originality and creativity in any art form is experimentation.  Its bad practice in my opinion to look at every track you make with the expectation of releasing it. Some tracks are useful experiments and it’s ok to leave them as they are.

Instrument Tuning

Instrument tuning can be very interesting to play with.  By this I mean non conventionally melodic parts, such as percussion hits, hi hats etc. Try this experiment....Make a basic percussive groove: Kick, sub, hats, and some mid range percussion, maybe some kind of synth stab as well.  Now try tuning all the elements to the same note, say C.  Probably sounds a bit over resonant and uncomfortable I expect.  But it`s a good starting point.  Now try retuning your groove into a scale (or chord essentially), say, C major.  If you don’t know your scales and chords there are plenty of resources on the net.  So take all the elements and tune them in the C major scale.  Essentially treat each separate sound as a note on the same keyboard, and play a chord using all your various sounds. Sounds pretty interesting huh?  It’s a great starting point for a huge area of experimentation.

Steve Voidloss
http://www.myspace.com/dirtybassvoidloss