Trap Sounds and Production with FM8 Part 4 - Producing the Loop

This last lesson in the series from Jonny shares some nice production tips, as well as how he goes about handling the different elements made throughout the first three parts. Although some 3rd party plugins are used, you can accomplish the same basic results using whatever plugins you have available. Most DAWs come with a large selection of plugin tools for you to process your sounds with and produce professional quality music.

One of the first things looked at is converting the MIDI regions in the project to audio by bouncing them each in place. This is a good time to make sure that there is plenty of headroom on each sound so the rest of the mixing and mastering processes go smoothly and no one sound is out of line with any other.

Each sound is sent through an EQ unit to make sure only the most important frequencies are being allowed through. This way each sound in the mix has space to breath, develop and be heard fully in the end. This becomes more difficult with more and more sounds. This is also the perfect time to make sure there is nothing happening below 30Hz, as most humans cannot hear below this frequency and sounds in this range can sap energy in speakers and affect the quality of playback.

Compression is also touched on, as well as saturation, and how they can be used to bring out some elements that can be otherwise missed. Taking the time to get each sound perfect will help you get a better overall mix, which will lead to a great master! One way to keep the processing under control and not go overboard with any of your changes along the way is to use parallel processing and group sends. This keeps the original sounds intact, protecting the integrity and dynamics while simultaneously breathing new life into the entire project.

Cheers,
OhmLab