Synth Setup Tips #1 // Ft. BURG // Audio, MIDI, Sequencing, Recording and more

hi the minute you start making music with more than one hardware instrument setup questions start to come up just like there's no best synth i don't think there's a perfect hardware setup or hardware workflow for everyone in this video and if there's interest in future videos in this series i bring in a producer and performer whose work i appreciate and i think we can learn from and i ask them questions about how they make music everything from audio and midi routing to sequencing recording and mixing i've been following juni aka berg for a while not only for the quality of his music but for how effortlessly he commands sinks and glides above a massive setup of electronic instruments now you obviously don't need to have a large hardware setup to make music but hopefully there are elements of his setup and workflow that we can all find applicable in our music without further ado let's get started with my questions and berg's answers today in my studio i have two mixers set up i have a main mixer with 16 channels and a secondary sub mixer with 10 channels on the other side of the studio the reason why i have it like this is because the main mixer doesn't have enough channels in order to connect all of my gear at one at the same time so i've decided rather than buying a bigger mixer i just bought the smaller one which i'm using on the other side of the studio now there's two upsides to this obviously it's a simple way to expand the mixer with not enough channels but when some mixing i also like to have a smaller mixer closer to the other gear on the other side of the studio because this helps me with you know setting levels and setting eqs and whatnots in a regular you know fashion and when i'm doing sound design and we're mixing and not jumping so having the mixer close to the other gear helps with the workflow another thing that i also like to use is to submix through some of my instruments i have the analog 4 akai force and also digital as sub mixers in my setup now this is not mainly to gain channels in my main mixer it's because um all these three instruments they have built-in audio inputs and you can also for example in the analog 4 you can automate the effects the delays and lfo panning or whatever right and that not only helps me with getting more channels but also has helps to give me some creative uh capabilities by using the automation in these synthesizers akai force i'm using it for sidechaining and the digitone i have reverbs choruses and delays so by selecting the gear that i'm connecting at that point of time i can actually use those instruments for some extra sound design so when you're building your studio you need to figure out which device would be your main clock now that could either be a sequencer or you know a drum box or you know a groove box or whatever right but that should be the main heart and thinking about midi cable management and synth management it's important that you try to limit yourself and how many daisy chains you're allowing in the midi setup now i've over the years learned that having two hops is is a good good recipe for making the latency more or less you know non-noticeable right so that means you have your main device uh sending a midi cable to your first synth and through from that phone for the second synth and that's it okay now you might ask yourself well what if i have a lot of instruments i still need a daisy chain right so but you should rather be investing in a midi through box right because a midi through box will give you multiple outputs from just one from your device and also if you get a powered one that will help to amplify the midi signal and also help to minimize the latency right so having a midi through box i would say is a cheap investment and all that also helps your midi cable management uh to some extent so you don't have to have like a where does everything go where is everything connected type of scenario right so you have one out your midi through box and that midi through box and splits the signals to multiple devices and you just use one cable to each box and you're good to go in my setup i have a digi tag that's my main clock and i use a midi through box to split that signal to the akai force the 707 the avalon my modular the analog 4 and so on right and i'm also since i'm sharing the midi clock to the archive force i'm using the akai force as my main sequencer but not the main clock so from the kai force i have a second midi through box which i'm splitting to another five devices which i'm sequencing from that device so that helps me with the midi cable management as well so i have one box for the detect one box for that high force and that gives me you know a good overview of what's happening when it comes to the cable management side of things [Music] when it comes to midi channel management i think that i'm utilizing the oldest trick in the book i have standard tape this blue tape i would say is one of the best ones out there and it's non-sticky and you can tape that to whatever surface or wipe with the marker on it and that helps you to you know remember which scenes that you have on what channel and i'm actually taping these on the mixers as well as i'm writing the not only the instrument name but also the mini channel number on on the mixer input so i know oh okay this is the model this is that channel oh this is the subsequent 37 this is that channel and so on [Music] one good thing to think about when it comes to keeping noise levels down if you have a lot of effects pedals like myself um i want to use the one effects pedal one power supply unit approach right the reason for this is that i bought one of these multiple power supplies that has like a daisy chain cable out to my fx pedals and that proved to be a you know big mistake right because um maybe when you're using it together with the guitar pedal on the floor panel type of thing and you have one guitar one signal that's routed through all the pedals from one source uh you won't run into these problems but having multiple sources um you know multiple pedals sharing the one of the same power supply unit that for me created a lot of problems right so uh desi chaining power i would say is not the best thing and also secondly when it comes to to usb power i have also seen that you know using the one on the same usb wall board for two usb powered devices has proven to be a little bit of a challenge from time to time one of the things that i've noticed over the years is that having some better cables shielded cables really helps with keep keeping the noise floors down right and if you're planning on you know running longer cables if you have the possibility to run balanced with xlr that's an awesome thing right because you know the longer the cable the more susceptible it becomes the interference and um one of the things that i've also you know noticed that if you run um signal cables next to power supplies psu units and and stuff like that the bigger whole words the one not the one what's the good on the wall the bigger units and the mean wells and whatnots they might sometime you know create interference for some of the you know lesser quality cables out there so either you purchase some better shielded cables or you make sure to separate your power from your signal you will probably end up having a lot of cables in the studio and one way to easily manage lots of lots of cables in your setup is just using these very simple velcro zip ties and these come with in many shapes and forms out there to help you you know spool up cables that are very long and you know having them very tidy in the background makes it easier to find and troubleshoot any issues you know which cable goes where in case of having noise issues you know and other problems right and also these zip ties help you to separate uh the power from from the audio uh to give you you know better or min at least minimize the risk of any noise interference [Music] one of the things that i wish that somebody told me in the beginning when i started building my studio is that i need to think about where i'm placing my gear right and you know it's always fun to put stacks on the walls and a lot of instruments all over the room but you know over the years i've learned that keeping the setup as compact as possible when it comes to the vincinity of the gear from each other right so that allows you to quicker move from instrument to instrument without having to bend your back and you know getting back pain or whatever right so ergonomics i think is key in order to have a good studio because uh you will be spending a lot of hours right days in and days out and nights in the nights up right making music so it's important that you don't get tired of you know sitting in the studio making music and this for me has been something that i focused really really hard on lately putting shelves on the walls with an arm length so i can easily reach the other side of the studio without having to twist my back or anything like that right so keep that in mind and you know once you've found uh sort of an optimal uh setup or workflow as well you will notice that muscle memory will come in helping you as well finding the gear finding the instruments knowing where to go next right so don't be afraid of moving stuff around a little bit if you think that this synth maybe should be better over here because i tend to use that a little bit more than this other year [Music] when i'm creating tracks i have two ways of approaching the actual sequencing of it all you could say that it's loop-based most of the time i have some of my devices my drum machine some of my root boxes they are limited to either 16 number up to 64 steps per pattern which you know doesn't give me that much opportunity to do poor changes and progressions and whatnot but these instruments are mainly used for parts that can stay the same way throughout the track even though that there might be a chord progression down the row for example for percussion i try to do as much randomized percussion as possible and you know with the conditional dreams and whatnot in the electron devices and also randomization in the modular this to create things you know keep things interesting right so once i created a loop and a groove i think it's important for me that the loop can be you know rolling for a longer period of time and it still feels like it's evolving right so even though it's the same drums the same bass the same percussion sounds something is happening uh it's it's unpredictable right it's not you cannot predict exactly when each hit is going to come [Music] this is something that i you know do with high-end percussion like the hi-hats and you know the snaps and crackles and pops right anything that isn't kick and snare and this this creates a lot of you know ambience and also allows the track to progress over a longer period of time without actually making it boring if i let's say make a sequence uh like like a bass sequence on the avalon baseline that's only 16 steps or maybe even just eight steps it's important that these notes work with whatever chord progressions i might be planning longer down the road i need to you know have a fresh idea in my mind these are the chords that i'm going to be using and when i'm programming the bass line in the envelope baseline i need to make sure that it doesn't hit any you know off key notes the main sequencing then for the other instruments let's say the main low-end baseline or the main melodies and you know sequences and arpeggios are being done in the akai force the akai force allows me to launch clips i can do different sections i can do different you know scenes and things like that [Music] and by using the main idea of a song type of thinking right i'm gonna run this bar for you know x amount of time and play this melody on top then i'm gonna run this other you know these other bars of patterns of sequences and run another melody on top right and then i might go to a scene where i do an actual word progression and change where i start changing up the melody and this is really how i think about the sequencing part of things i have the main core the drum and bass a little bit depending on on the song structure obviously and then i have all my top end sounds my percussion my eye hats and blips and blobs on top of that that stays you know randomized and then i have the main chord progressions done in a sequencer when i launched clips based on which part of the song i want to go to and this allows for a lot of you know the ad-lib and when i'm doing my session and when i'm recording the tracks i might you know next time i might extend the section i might shorten down a section i might not even use a section at all right because i didn't don't think that will fit into the mood uh doing that transition at that point in time so that gives me a lot of flexibility i think to have the loop-based stuff that keeps the machinery going together with the click-based stuff that i have in the force to allow me to pull in stuff and do major changes whenever we need one of the most important things that i've learned over the years when it comes to mixing a track is to pay a lot of attention and put in a lot of effort in fixing the fundamental in your track when i say fundamental what do i mean it's it's the kick and the bass everything that's low end and has a lot of energy to it right because the fundamental in the track if you have too many sounds that try to you know squeeze in in the lower end of the of the tune that you're creating you're going to get a lot of wobblyness and muddiness right it's important that you have a clear distinct kick a clear distinct baseline right so how do you achieve it how how would you achieve this i mean one of the things that you can do is obviously if you have like a legato type of base is that you use side chain so whenever the kick hits the base will duck and that will create more space for the kick when it appears [Music] and it takes away the low end base so it doesn't interfere with each other right so that's one really simple way of achieving a good tight result in the low end now it doesn't have to be that breathable super ducking thing right it it it can be just a subtle way of just pressing down uh the legato base enough to make plays with the kick when it comes in right so let's say you want to add an additional baseline right you have your kick you have your low end base and you want to have a third baseline to place melody or whatever right so what i try to do is just high pass filter away the low end from that base because you will already have enough energy in the low end base so adding a secondary base with you know also a big massive fundamental will just you know make everything sound muddy so uh using high pass filter on sounds that will be you know playing around in the fundamental area actually helps to make you more clear and distinct type of sound now i normally incorporate two sounds i have a i might have a low end very very stable like sine wave or triangle or you know square wave base low end base with almost no harmonic overtone content and then i have a secondary bass line with maybe pulse width modulation or something like that a little bit wider in its spectrum on which plays the exact same notes as the low end bass but i'm filtering all the low end out of that cell not all of it uh just some of it by using h uh high pass filter right and by doing so i can get this wideness of the bass sound without making it too muddy in the doorway [Music] so when i continue in building my mix i've started with the kick and bass obviously i can add more high-end sounds the higher frequency sounds and they're not as sensitive of layering um you know the frequencies on top of each other as the low end fundamentals are right so that gives you a little bit more opportunity to layer more stuff on top of each other as long as your high pass filter out the low end as well so i do that to mainly i would say almost all of my other instruments i use high pass filter if i have a piano i have high pass filter if i have like an arpeggio i use high-pass filter if you don't have high-pass filter on your mixer you can just you know cut the base a little bit remove a little bit with the eq that's that's perfectly fine as well but um i feel that you know if you have the high-pass filter i gravitate towards that one because it feels more musical it keeps more you know of the interesting content in the low end and you know continuing to mix as well i think it's important to reference listen you listen in your monitors and listen in your headphones and you also listen in and in the devices that you normally consume music in as well and compare your stuff to other artists you know and music that you generally like and try to achieve the same energetic bottom as they do try to find the same type of high-end and stereo perspective as they do as well and by comparing yourself with other artists out there and try to get the same type of sonic spectrum in your own mixes i think is really really you know a good approach and you know really about mixing as well it's not that hard you don't need to think about the levels right levels is important you have your fundamentals you kick in base that i talked about before and setting the levels i mean the main part in the track should normally be the one that you can live with the most i.e the one particular sound the one particular melody the one particular sequence that you can listen to hours in end without getting tired of hearing it that's most probably the main theme of your track right and keeping that in the front end you know helps create uh you know uh this this how would you say it it helps to to give the narrative to your track right so by mixing and making sure that those sounds that you think are interesting or in the forefront really helps to give that special you know tone and or special you know feeling and vibe to your track once you're mixing it in my setup today i have a quite large amount of effect pedals and the way i like to use them is to have them on inserts and or you know in chain directly on the actual instruments themselves rather than using send and return in my mixer two reasons for this i have so many pedals that you know if i would be using them in a send return configuration obviously that would consume a lot of channels in my mixer so i would you know hardly have space for the actual sounds themselves so that's one side of i mean the second one is that i like to use the pedals as you know part of the actual sound design itself so when i'm training a lead sound you know for me it's important to have that type of delay that i'm looking for the type of reverb that i'm looking for at that particular moment when creating that sound and i like to have those effects specific to that instrument and i like to think of the pedals as an integral part of each and every synthetic instrument each synth really deserves to have some sort of effect to it and by using effect pedals it's very very easy to get out of the comfort zone and create something really really you know different from what the actual instrument maybe was intended for initially one of the most important parts in building a studio setup is to figure out how will you record it all right either you could have a stereo recorder of some sort a zoom device or maybe you want to record into a computer or maybe you want to use some kind of multi-tracking device right and this this part is really key for how you're going to wire everything up in your studio and um you know it's it's important that you have a clear picture in your mind of how each and every instrument will you know work and and how you will subsequently record them to take right and many of my previous recordings have done full live jam sessions where i've recorded basically everything live there's been download know quite fun and and quite challenging way of doing music as well because it doesn't really leave any room for editing and fixing stuff in the end right because you end up with a two-channel track and really the only thing that you can do there is to maybe do some post processing and mastering to fix things right so you can't edit errors you can't edit any misses you know what's recorded it's it's still take right so there's no way of going back other than just re-recording the entire session now that's one way of doing things and i do really like that approach because recording live jam session takes away the pressure on you know needing to polish things on end right forever and ever and ever so that gets you to a quicker result at a much earlier point of time right so you might be jamming you might be creating music on the fly and when you do record you know this is the moment where everything you know that you rehearsed is being put to test right and once you're done with the recording that's that's what you have right you can't go back and edit things so that to me has been a way of actually progressing uh my my the amount of recordings that i've done over the years and helps me to achieve more content as well uh having done that for some years um obviously i wanted to change things up a little bit this month so recently what i've been doing is that i've been doing these live sessions but only using those as a template for the final recording that i want to make right so i do a live jam session i record it on video i record it on on on audio tape and then i listen to it and then i re-record the entire session one instrument at a time and the reason why i do this is to keep the noise levels down a little bit and that also allows me to tweak every individual instrument in more finer detail right maybe i'm running the cut-off filter maybe i'm chaining changing you know envelopes or something like that maybe even changing effects right and that allows for more more of a versatile approach doing multi-tracking in that way but keeping the same live jam approach to the original idea helps to build a template for the final [Music] song most often times i record individual instruments i might record them completely dry and also if the if if the sound is designed with a specific effect right maybe i'm using a tape delay that i have you know that i like really much or maybe a specific stripe and reverb that i like very much i might you know record that with the effect wet in into the computer as well but most most often times i try to you know recreate the actual effects post in the computer so um i'm using standard door like cubase for myself and i just rerun the track and i do each and every individual section record a kick drum i record a snare drum i record the bass i recorded pianos and whatever right and individual one instrument at a time and by doing so um i i also have the opportunity to change things up i have you know the possibility to to you know fix and tweak little things and it might sound like an overly complex procedure but i found that the the end result really really when it comes to quality uh talking about noise floors and also overall details that i can work on really helps to you know push the tracks a couple of notches you know upwards in quality for myself [Music] once i have everything recorded into the computer and you know i have all my tracks in place i've done the final mix i'm happy with the final levels and you know overall results right it's time to do some post processing um so that would be of the actual stereo track itself right so i try to work the track to a finished state as much as possible without incorporating any mastering techniques right so the better result you can get by just mixing and using levels and eqs and whatnots and the lesser amount of work you actually have to put into the mastering stage of things so i normally use very simple techniques compressors for a little bit gluing the things together on the master bus and also a limiter at the end to make sure to take care of that threshold right and really from that that point of view the track should be ready for release and one of the good things that i've you know noticed when you have a lot of diverse content uh if you compare this with running two track recordings versus multi-track recordings is that if you have tracks that are quite different from each other in in the actual sonic you know territory right it's very hard to make a song sound a little bit like another song if they differ too much in the actual post-processing and mastering stage whilst if you have everything multi-tracked it's much easier to change the characteristics of the song altogether by doing a remix in in the daw so this is one of the reasons why i gravitated towards doing multi-tracking versus keeping doing two track recordings right even though i like uh doing the two track recordings because that's something that's really you know rewarding i would say because you you rehearse the track you learn to live with the track and then you rehearse it a couple of times so it becomes you can you become a part of the tune right and once you've done that it becomes much easier for you to recreate that into the computer it might sound like a very long elongated process but i think that the rewards at the end of the line is is really worth it because you have a way of artistically creating a song a template if you will right and based on that template you can then finalize the song so you know for myself i think that this has been you know really fun and i think that you know going forward this is also something that i will continue to use as part of my daily process so that's it for now let me know in the comment section if you'd like to see more guests on the channel hit like if this was useful and if you'd like more electronic music sequencing synthesis and mixing ideas check out my ever expanding book available to the good people who support this channel on patreon thanks for watching and see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: loopop

Views: 82,451

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Id: 4wyjULUo3n8

Length: 30min 30sec (1830 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/SkoomaDentist]

His comments about "midi hop" latency only apply if you use gear that has soft thru, such as the Roland Boutiques or the new MC-x0x. If the gear has only one thru / out that's settable from menus, it's probably sw thru. If it has separate thru out, it's almost certain a hw thru.

HW thru adds only a microsecond or two of latency and is a complete non-issue. Then the only reason not to chain too many is because the midi signal quality (reliability) drops and too long chains may cause missed or hanging notes. Also it's a cable management issue.

[u/Tigdual]

This is possibly the best video I watched this year. So many questions answered!! Thanks Loopop you do an amazing work.

[u/markincork]

I’ve been watching Burg for a while and I love the way he still comes back to the Volca Keys. I learn something from every video I watch.

[u/d0Cd]

Agreed this one was excellent, and that's saying something considering how many Loopop videos I've appreciated.

I need to explore sidechaining more, as I have almost no sense of how to use it, and I'm glad Burg brought up the 9v daisy chain topic, as balancing Invasion of the Wall Warts against noise is something I'm battling at the moment.

For those in a similar struggle with pedal-related noise, I found there's a HUGE difference in quality across different AC adapters. I had serious IC noise coming from my Behringer NR300, and just changing from a generic 9v adapter to my Boss PSA made it all go away! My current plan is to try a second Boss PSA with a Monoprice daisy chainer and see if I can keep the same quiet performance across 3-4 9v devices.

[u/sunoma]

It's like he's in my head and just makes exactly the video I want to watch and then probably purchase something

[u/doctrineofthenight]

I literally just got a Deluge as the brain of my setup - this couldn't have arrived at a better time!

[u/HaileSelassieII]

Any idea what he's using for that shelf/stand?

[u/leachim6]

I was surprised by the lack of patchbays. I don't wanna crawl behind stuff any more than absolutely necessary. Otherwise I loved this video

[u/caidicus]

I feel the title of this post could describe any and all of Loopop's videos. They are all remarkably informative and entertaining.