what does your process look like?

[hiroprotagonist]

no im curious. im completely all self taught. anything i use ive learned on my own with no manuals or mentors.
right now its all pretty basic. i record my sounds from my synth and drum machine into my computer via a halfway decent sound card with sound forge. then i tweak the sounds with plugins to make them just right and upload the samples into acid 4.0. at this point its all laid out punched into a wav and sent back to soundforge for any after effects and slight eq tweaks.
what do other producers do? i know my setup isnt the best in the world but right now im not expecting to purchase anything new for some time due to my finances. what process do you go through?

-hiro

[interferron]

well i was self taught for the first 8 years or so and then went to school to study recording/production - to see how it's done in the "real" studio with "real" musicians hah.. i was surprised to see that my process didn't change that much, i was already doing the same at home..

it's mostly like this for me

1) "composition" - with all the midi equipment, arrangement, mad ideas and creativity. i do everything in logic audio. all the editing and tweaking here. basically anything i want to do to get a sound or an arrangement.

2) recording - i record every instrument to audio tracks in logic. get the best possible signal level, normalize everything, mostly record everything dry without effects/processors. tracks go like: 1-kick, 2-snare, 3-hihat, 4-percussion, 5-bass, 6-synth, 7-synth, 8-sample... etc.

3) mixdown - throw all the midi sequences away and work with the dry recorded audio tracks. just mix the track, because everything should be arranged and edited in the first stage. sometimes of course small audio edits and even arrangement improvements. i use logics processors, vst:s and external effect/processor units to compress, eq, reverb, delay and whatever every audio track individually and get the balances right.

4) pre-mastering - i record a single wav file from the mixdown, and do whatever needed.. if its going to vinyl, just a little eq:ing and limiting. if it's going to net or a promo-cd or whatever, i do what i can with my home equipment: multiband compression, eq, exciters.. not much really, because i regard the mixdown stage as one of the most important stages of the whole process - everything should already sound very clear/good after it, there's not much that can be saved with mastering in my opinion if any of the previous stages failed

the beauty of it all is that you can concentrate on one thing per stage. the trick is to learn what can be done in every stage of the process. and i always try to sound as good as possible from the first stage, and not to trust that "i can fix this in the mix"..

[DJZeMig_L]

humm kinda depends where I make / started the track... It can b from fruity which will probably b from some old samples that I've been collecting thru the years, mainly my own fidling with analogs, sound mangling, and also some sampled short sounds, vocals, loops... or even a virtual synth.

If it's cubase then most of times will b all midi, then maybe runned 2 audio when the basic sketch is donne, then the all sequencing, which will change things around 70 % !?

Or it can be all hardware if I get my hands on a mpc....

later I'll bring it into wavelab, and smooth it up a bit, phatten it and compress/ multi-band compress it ...! It try 2 touch it as little as possible...

Most of what I know was picked up along the way and listening 2 a lot of people ignoring some and doing lots of mistakes! :(

Z

[Basil Rush]

Techno ... load up a kick drum and some loops, time stretch the loops, listen to the thing go around and around, delete some parts, take a long drag, cut some holes in some of the parts, shuffle them around, find a synth, find a bass, record it, delete it, swap a few sounds around, put some effects / eq on. Duplicate some loop parts, move them around, pan them around, chop holes in them.

Figure out what the core drivingness of the rhythm is.

Tweak the mix.

Enhance it.

Tweak the mix.

Stretch the track out, arrange it, edit it, find some more bits etc.

Tweak the mix.

Play it to someone and see if they think it rocks or sucks.

Do some master bus type tweaking.

Bounce it, DJ it, come back and fix it.

[professor]

at some point in my process I mix records with the track (while it's still in the sequencer, i.e not bounced) just to see if it mixes

[Basil Rush]

Yeah, blatantly. Good for checking you've got the right kind of energy and not just written some noodling mess as well...