teCHNEWS IN ASSOCIATION WITH POINT BLANK’S PRODUCTION TIP OF THE WEEK CustoM FX RaCK desiGN iN aBletoN liVe


DANNY J LEWIS CREATES A CUSTOM RACK IN ABLETON LIVE TO ADD STEREO WIDTH TO YOUR MIX


Point Blank Online School brings you weekly fresh nuggets of music production advice courtesy of the team of pro producer course developers and tutors…


This week Danny J Lewis (Defected/Enzyme Black) takes the reins...


“With earbuds being the lowest common denominator when it comes to monitoring, is it any wonder people want a little bit of extra width in their productions? There are a variety of methods out there for getting more girth out of your sounds and most rely on some form of delayed copy of the original sound. This delayed copy is placed at a different position to the source to create an illusion of an enhanced stereo panorama, but this can cause problems when the track is heard through a mono system. You might be thinking that this won’t be an issue because mono disappeared in the


‘60s, but some club systems are actually in mono. What can happen to the sound? Cancellation is the main issue — where two sounds that are similar but slightly out of phase are played at the same time. This can result in


a thinning out of the sound. It’s always best to check in mono to be sure, and if there is cancellation to make an adjustment of the parameters used to bring things back into solidity. So taking all this into account, we thought we’d build a custom effects rack in Ableton Live that you can use to spice up certain elements in your mix. This is a complex effect with two separate chains for the left and right signal paths and features nested racks with a single set of Macro controls. It has individual pitch controls as well as a low and high cut along with a mono to stereo control to help you avoid phase issues. Watch the video and you’ll see a demonstration of the effect fi rst, followed by a step-by-step construction of the device. It is quite a lengthy video but this level of technical detail needs time to demonstrate.


LEARN MORE TECHNIQUES SUCH AS THIS ON OUR ABLETON SOUND DESIGN COURSE, AN EIGHT WEEK MODULE THAT INVOLVES THE CREATION OF MANY BESPOKE EFFECT AND INSTRUMENT RACKS. WATCH MORE FREE EXCLUSIVE MUSIC PRODUCTION TUTORIALS ON POINT BLANK’S SAMPLE COURSE PAGE.


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