If the bass is nice and the drums are nice the tune doesn't really even need anything else to it in my opinion.
But to keep the tune interesting you could have some jazzy piano chords coming in every once in a while, or maybe some modulated vocals.
The thing that makes a darkstep song stand out isnt always the bass, a lot i have heard have very similar bass effects and sounds but they still rock because they have something to them like some awesome samples of vocals or real instruments or whatever. then there are the ones with standard neuro basses and nothing else to them...
have an experiment with cool samples you have.
and you can never go wrong by adding more cowbell...
Other crazy shit...
Scary sounds, vocal bits, sweeps, clicks, ... anything that sounds good.
Make sure this stuff isn't too loud as you want to keep the focus on DRUMs and BASS after all.
Something that works really well for me is very silent loops which are almost inaudible if you don't know they are there but they cover up any silence very well without getting on your nerves. Check SpectraSoul and other minimal artists to discover how it works, they always have some tiny sound carpet going on in their tunes. In minimal there is a way bigger risk of painful silence so they need to focus more on covering.
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Originally posted by BattleDrone
Other crazy shit...
Scary sounds, vocal bits, sweeps, clicks, ... anything that sounds good.
Make sure this stuff isn't too loud as you want to keep the focus on DRUMs and BASS after all.
Something that works really well for me is very silent loops which are almost inaudible if you don't know they are there but they cover up any silence very well without getting on your nerves. Check SpectraSoul and other minimal artists to discover how it works, they always have some tiny sound carpet going on in their tunes. In minimal there is a way bigger risk of painful silence so they need to focus more on covering.
SpectraSoul is awesome!
Alright - so something that you wont notice, but makes it whole?
What I found worked pretty killer on a Neuro track Im working on is reverb.... but wait before u jump to conclusions....I turned the decay right down to 1ms and raised the pre-delay and kept the entire reverb vol down, but it gave it a basic dimension expansion which I found filled the spectrum perfectly
Originally posted by Mahyhem
What I found worked pretty killer on a Neuro track Im working on is reverb.... but wait before u jump to conclusions....I turned the decay right down to 1ms and raised the pre-delay and kept the entire reverb vol down, but it gave it a basic dimension expansion which I found filled the spectrum perfectly
Read this somewhere else too... never tried it though.
How long is your pre-delay approx?
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Originally posted by Mahyhem
What I found worked pretty killer on a Neuro track Im working on is reverb.... but wait before u jump to conclusions....I turned the decay right down to 1ms and raised the pre-delay and kept the entire reverb vol down, but it gave it a basic dimension expansion which I found filled the spectrum perfectly
This...along with automating the both of those parameters works nicely. Opening up the 'verb's decay to pick out notes etc.
haha thats a good question...to be honest I don't think Ive ever looked at the parameter of the pre-delay lol Thats one thing I always just do by ear, but on the fruity reeverb 2, I usually turn the knob to roughly a third. It really depends on the tempo of ur track, so u really just have to mess around with it until it sounds good and fits ur tune
