PSP N2O

One of my all time favorite plug-ins PSP Nitro has been replaced with an all new version. I’ve used Nitro on almost every song I’ve recorded the past few years because it has a very unique and nice sound quality. It mangled audio but also has a professional sounding sheen. The replacement called N2O was rewritten from scratch, adds new modules, extended modulation and about 200 presets. Upgrade price is $69 until Dec 31. $149 to buy it new. More videos: click here

“Up to four sound processing operators at a time; among the available types are: morphing resonant and formant filters, eq, delay, reverb, pitch-shifter, compressor/expander, bitcrusher, distortion, full-wave rectifier and many more. Up to four modulators at a time; the list includes: LFO, envelope detector, ADSR step sequencer. Built-in limiter that uses algorithms from our extremely well regarded PSP Xenon hi-definition mastering limiter. Sidechain (key) input. Expandable architecture – new operators and modulator types to be added in future versions while preserving backward compatibility. – pspaudioware.com

For more info: pspaudioware.com

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on December 23, 2010 at 3:46 pm, filed under plug-ins and tagged , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



Spend time to make wicked transitions.

When producing a song I can spend a good 20-30 minutes working on creating a single ear tingling transition. Usually I make transitions when the song is almost finished. The reason I wait until the near end of the song’s creation is two fold. First, I like to hear the entire song from beginning to end and as I do so my brain tells me, “This is the spot where something is needed!”. Second, I use the audio of the full song’s mix to create the effect. You can here the kind of transition I am talking about at :06 seconds right before the vocal starts:

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Here’s how it was done using Ableton Live:

  • I rendered one bar of the full song exactly where the transition is going to be placed.
  • I created a new Audio Track.
  • I delete the audio on all the channels where the new transition will be (cut a hole).
  • I drag my rendered clip into the arrangement on the newly created audio track and place it horizontally where I created the hole.
  • Now I play back the song. It should sound just like you have not done anything yet.
  • I experiment by loading different effect plug-ins on the new audio channel where the rendered clip sits. I try and find some heavy mangling plug-ins to really make the transition stand out.
  • I re-render the clip with effects on it. I will usually do 4 different variations.
  • I delete the plug-ins and the original plain rendered clip leaving a blank channel again.
  • I drag in each of my rendered variations one by one replacing them with each other and listening to figure out which one is the most interesting fit.
  • I also reverse each variation (in the Clip View) and listen to how that sounds.

Usually by this point I have a wicked sounding transition. In the audio sample I above I also cut and repeated the last 4 sixteenth notes and automated Ableton’s built in high pass filter to sweep down.

This process may seem like overkill but its the minor sweet effects that are the icing on a good song.

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on September 24, 2008 at 7:31 am, filed under Ableton Live, music, plug-ins, song writing, sounds, synthesizer and tagged , , , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



Stamba remix with Creative Commons samples.

The next release on my record label is by French DJ and producer Stamba. I am remixing one of the songs called Deviation. All the tracks on the release are what you would call darkwave, ebm, techno. Don’t you love all these sub-genres? Take a listen:

SoundCloud Deviation-The Horrorist remix by thingstocome

I recreated his original song in Ableton Live, keeping his vocals but using all my own sounds. Some of the gear and plug-ins used include a Jomox Mbase-01, Vermona DRM1 MKIII, Audiorealism Bassline, Korg Legacy, PSP Nitro, Fabfilter Volcano 2, assorted TC Powercore dynamics and Sugar Bytes Effectrix.

We have released the remix samples under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. If you want to grab the samples for your own fun head to the discography page for this release at Things to Come Records:
thingstocome.com/discog/TTC-017

The full release will be available on August 4, 2008.

This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on July 23, 2008 at 12:42 am, filed under Ableton Live, hardware, music, plug-ins and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.