composing techniques

[przechuy]

Hi guys.

I would like to start discussion about yours way to produce,compose a track.Ad this point i want to focus only on arrangement,composing.

I guess most of us uses just VST instruments and cant afford analog external instruments etc.

Now,as we know if you run in your DAW few VST instruments,delay effects,reverb it can totally exhaus the possibilities of your CPU and at certain part of song you probably often met problems "damn how can i carry on ,i made this buildup and cpu barely breaths"


How do you deal with it? I certainly few times had such problem (i work on quite crappy PC ,but actually i kept it on purpose ,it forced me to learn a lot)

Now i decided to start new project and "glue" tre track with made by me few bars loops.For example in few minutes i wil lsit down with Massive by Native instruments and compose a melody riff. Same with bassline etc.

And i will be importing them to a project ,arrange it all and then again i will switch from my project to a VST and compose another part ,export as wav,and then import to project.



What are your ways?

Actually it seems to be soooooo easy,but i never done it And i noticed that everytime i was watching tutorial vid by pros,like stonebridge etc they had in their DAW imported WAV files,not running any of those cpu consuming VST instruments.All software that was "on" in final projects were only sidechain compressors,compressors,delays ,reverbs etc,but all melody in final project was based on WAV files arranged into a final mix.

I think it is called "bouncing " the track? Am i right? It seems to be only reasonable way to compose more complicated and full of effects track.

Or maybe you have a machine like i think ian carey described on his board,24 GHZ total etc

[sven hauck]

You can certainly bounce or freeze parts, thereby unloading CPU hungry plugins. I work that way often.

For some parts I keep the VSTi live to be able to automate parameter changes. However, you can do those with the effects acting on an audio file as well. Kinda depends on what you are after.

But less is certainly more as you have to work within the constraints of your system, so you do learn a lot from that.

[przechuy]

Yesterday i noticed interested thing regarding this topic.

I did as i wrote,composed a loop and exported it as a 24bit wav file. Then I imported it into the mix and it sounded better then straight from VST,i mean it somehow seemed to fit the mix better.

I heard that using 24 bit samples is strongly adviced as it gives more space in mix ,looks like it was the case.I sidechained this loop with kick and effects are really good.

And btw,i have to learn freezing in Reaper

[Edel]

Bouncing down vsti to audio files is def a good habit in my opinion as it frees up your cpu. i tend to prefer working this way, not too sure bout 24bit giving you more space in the mix but im quite certain that 24bit does benefits when
additional processing is needed.

[przechuy]

Ian Carey if i remember mentions that "you want to have your samples in 24 bit" and also talks there about this space.I have seen this oppinion recently few times ,that it is bit underrated,but 24 bit can provide more space in the mix.
And i think i figured out how to do this bouncing stuff in reaper

[admin]

Yesterday i noticed interested thing regarding this topic.

I did as i wrote,composed a loop and exported it as a 24bit wav file. Then I imported it into the mix and it sounded better then straight from VST,i mean it somehow seemed to fit the mix better.

I heard that using 24 bit samples is strongly adviced as it gives more space in mix ,looks like it was the case.I sidechained this loop with kick and effects are really good.

And btw,i have to learn freezing in Reaper

VSTs will be operating most usually in 32bit float so bouncing to 24 actually very slightly reduces the dynamic range they have. It could have been something minor or even psychological to make it sound better. If you a/b against the live version with one of the tracks inverted you should find they cancel out completely.

[admin]

Ian Carey if i remember mentions that "you want to have your samples in 24 bit" and also talks there about this space.I have seen this oppinion recently few times ,that it is bit underrated,but 24 bit can provide more space in the mix.
And i think i figured out how to do this bouncing stuff in reaper

I've seen that too but it's a common myth unfortunately that just keeps getting passed around. Not many people understand how digital works, even the big name producers, and what seems correct in an intuitive sense is not always right when it comes to how digital audio actually functions.

Bit depth only serves to affect noise floor. The source material may have more noise inherent than even the range that 16bit can provide. In this case a 24bit sample would have no benefit. Also remember that the DAW converts everything to 32bit float when it processes so further calculations are done with more precision.

[przechuy]

Wow,thank you.So much great informations in few words .This forum is great ,I just love to read all this stuff

[przechuy]

I have one more question

REgarding freezing/bouncing.

When i bounce the track in reaper ,this DAW does:

-Mute the original track,and render it into a wav file and puts it below original track with VST.
Without any effects on it etc,but it is already processed (getting silent where kick hits if sidechain was applied etc)

And now i wonder if it still sounds as good as with VST?Or maybe i should use bouncing only during production,but before rendering the whoole song i should remove those bounced tracks and let it render from original tracks with VST?

[sven hauck]

Usually the less generations of recorded/rendered/bounced tracks the better, so if your DAW will allow it I'd keep everything 'live' until the mixdown.

If you run out of processing overhead then bounce a few plugin intensive tracks, but keep the drums live to the end.