French house technique

[foxxx]

hi whts up.
i've recently began making house/dance music.i'm a noob.
i was wondering if anybody could help explain to me how to get this particular effect?
http://soundcloud.com/****mylife/today-im-french
what i mean is...it seems like each separate track of the song seems to come in at some point, die out, then come back in, etc.
deadmau5 posted on his facebook page that he used a lot of cutting and pasting.
well i guess i kind of understand that part, but what i don't get is , is there sidechaining involved? or do you have to kind of raise the attack a bit?
please help.

[Yoozer]

There is no difference between perfectly transparent sidechaining and volume automation. In both cases the volume changes over time; it's just that sidechaining makes this really easy. The cut&paste comment is not that revealing in that sense.

What also makes it easy is XFER LFO tool. If regular sidechain doesn't get you the desired effect, try that - and route it to the track group volume of everything that is not percussion.

However, if you're a newbie, first learn to write this kind of stuff without sidechaining first. Try taking apart Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby".

[foxxx]

thanx for the pointers.
really helpful.
btw..those high pitched notes that fill in between parts of the songs....
can you recommend any vsts that might have that kind of preset?

[Yoozer]

Don't look for presets unless they're blatant.

There's lots of high-pitched notes in there

If you mean the short "digital" sounding bursts, then those can be made in various ways.

I've no idea what DAW or software you have at your disposal, so here's a few techniques.

Short samples are the easiest. If you have Ableton Live, you could take the "Simpler" device, load up any waveform (as long as it's reasonably short and noisy - percussion tends to work well for this) and set the loop points really close together so you get 5 or 6 wave cycles.

An alternative would be to explore the waveforms of wavetable synthesizers - Massive has several available that sound like that, but you may have to search for them.

Another alternative is to use an FM synthesizer and use 3 operators in a row, modulating eachother at pretty high strength. By choosing ratios like 1:6 or 1:8 you get a clear, very digital and cutting kind of tone. Adjust the fine tune to get a slightly wavering effect. Then, record yourself playing a note, cut a part out of it, and paste it where you want it. You could even resample it - that way you get all kinds of artifacts when you transpose it down.

[foxxx]

lol haha all of that's kinda hard to digest for a noob but i'm studying it very hard right now hahaha.
right now i'm using fl studio, and using a few vst's (gladiator,sylenth1,alchemy,minimonsta)
i'll be sure to check out Massive or whatever it is.
xfer lfo, i'm plannign to purchase it soon.
and thanx again really for helping me out.

[Paggos]

...This is exactly what i meant in my thread.
Anyway, just use short samples and find some good bass guitar pluck samples.

[Primativ]

I'm going to try my hand at making a track like this, I love this style. I know Deadmau5 was inspired my Madeon to try his hand at it, and his attempt is pretty good. Could do with a bit more funkyness though. :D

[Yoozer]

Originally Posted by foxxx

lol haha all of that's kinda hard to digest for a noob but i'm studying it very hard right now hahaha.
right now i'm using fl studio, and using a few vst's (gladiator,sylenth1,alchemy,minimonsta)

OK. In that case, take a cymbal in the default FL Studio sampler.



The waveform will look like this:



I've highlighted the part that you should use - put loop points around it, or crop it (this means throwing everything away that's not marked white/blue in this waveform) and enable looping.

If it doesn't sound good, take half of that fragment and crop it again. Continue until playing high notes on your controller sound like your example - a rather thin, buzzy, very digital sound.

Voila, no plugins needed.

[elijahbrown]

I cant listen to the clip for some reason. but, i can tell you that house music, well real house music sorry daft punk isnt really house, has chord progressions that are just 3eds stacked to the moon. For rhythm just have some 4 on the floor 808ish drums. And have a 303sounding thing playing bass. Without hearing the clip this most likely isnt really that much help...

[Yoozer]

Originally Posted by elijahbrown

I cant listen to the clip for some reason.

It's because GS's board software censors naughty words. The SoundCloud username is "fuckmylife".

Here, let me help you: today, im french by ****mylife on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

[okoshiyasu]

pretty simple, yeah. take a disco track from late 70s, full of stabs and strings. chop it in a few very short samples and position them randomly on a 4 or 8 bar loop. get one of those numerous electro samples cd, add the ugliest kick drum you can find in the library and mix it with a huge distorted clap and hihat. sometimes you dont even need to program the patterns since they come with pre-recorded ready to use beats. add one of the ready-to-use bassline from that same cd. put the ableton extreme compressor sidechain on the whole track except the kick drum and triggered by the kick drum. then make the master chain go into ableton multiband compressor with extreme settings, and if it's not squeezed enough, make it go through another compressor afterwards. then make it go through the ableton limiter and push it as loud as you can. then bounce everything. you'll get that kinda track in no more than 10 minutes 'work', seriously....

but just do us a favour, don't call that house music. just call it commercial electronic music junk.

[Lengai]

YouTube - ‪ableton live compression‬‏

Lots of Compression tutorials for Ableton Live.

[incurablebeatlus]

Originally Posted by okoshiyasu

pretty simple, yeah. take a disco track from late 70s, full of stabs and strings. chop it in a few very short samples and position them randomly on a 4 or 8 bar loop. get one of those numerous electro samples cd, add the ugliest kick drum you can find in the library and mix it with a huge distorted clap and hihat. sometimes you dont even need to program the patterns since they come with pre-recorded ready to use beats. add one of the ready-to-use bassline from that same cd. put the ableton extreme compressor sidechain on the whole track except the kick drum and triggered by the kick drum. then make the master chain go into ableton multiband compressor with extreme settings, and if it's not squeezed enough, make it go through another compressor afterwards. then make it go through the ableton limiter and push it as loud as you can. then bounce everything. you'll get that kinda track in no more than 10 minutes 'work', seriously....

but just do us a favour, don't call that house music. just call it commercial electronic music junk.

Wow, thats a seriously UMAD first post...

[okoshiyasu]

Originally Posted by incurablebeatlus

Wow, thats a seriously UMAD first post...

yep, off a good start :D

[pukozade]

Originally Posted by okoshiyasu

yep, off a good start :D

lol post a track then okoshiyasu

[okoshiyasu]

Originally Posted by lucozade

lol post a track then okoshiyasu

foxxx asked how this kinda track was made and i'm just telling him how it's made. i know many of these paris electro guys enough to tell you that what i wrote is just how most of them works. there's no need of exceptional skills to create a track like that. we master in the same cutting studios so i've hang around with a few of these lads.

it's just about chopping disco/funk or 80s pop samples to find something that does the job, or even put the whole 4, 8 or 16 original bar loop and combining it with over-squeezed and distorted beats, adding loud basslines, over-exagerated sidechain, and soft synths stabs or arpeggiated sounds on top of it. there's tons of plugins that'll add additional automated fx such as sugarbytes effectrix or ableton's own beat repeat. but the rule is that it has to sound like FM radio, hence the over-compression, distortion AND most importantly the extreme sidechain. everything tend to sound good in the end with massive comp & SC, at least to the general public

now daft punk (again them) have been pretty good at it before everybody. i went to thomas' home close to montmartre once, in '97 or so, and i remember him mixing his demos through a ghetto blaster with a 5 band eq to get that fat smile-curvey sound. i personally think that a few guys after DP were also pretty good and came up with a few big hits, but aside of that, for the rest, and especially these last 5 years, it's been just pure commercial in-your-face-fm-radio electronic music and it's rather not interesting as an electronic music style.

but once again, if there's one thing that i wouldn't call it, it's house music, at least in the way that the 10000 house vinyls seating in the room right beside me have told the story for more than 25 years. with 99% of records shops gone, kids dunno what is what anymore since they get their information from the internet, and since the internet is a big giant mess, they end up thinking that trance is techno, and tiesto the king of house.... seriously just check the ableton forum or beatport, it's not even funny anymore...

[Fifstar]

I was listening to the track in the op and thought two things? First, what does it have to do with french house and second, why does it have so many listens because it really doesn't sound good to me? Then I realized it was actually Deadmau5's account, which explained the listents.

Anyway, it's not a french house track just because is samples some disco record. Sounds like a Deadmau5 track with a disco sample treated like Skrillex
treats his basslines.

[sftd]

Originally Posted by lucozade

lol post a track then okoshiyasu

+1 plz kthnxbye

[Primativ]

It's just not that easy. Anyone can copy a technique or style with the right knowledge, make a Skrillex type track, or a daft punk/french house style track, or a deadmau5 style track...but can you make it sound GOOD so that it can stand up on its own as a bit of musical marksmanship? Sorry, it's just not that simple.

[foxxx]

ok well i see a bit of commotion starting...maybe i shouldn't have posted this. lol
i guess he just made it for fun, not something deadmau5 would release officially.
anyways, i was just interested in how this type of sound/technique was done and tried pretty much everything everyone posted, with the help of my friend of course who's pretty knowledgeable about music production.
and it worked .
maybe i'm just advertising my stupidity but the track itself(today i'm french) doesn't really sound that good since it....well doesn't have a clear...melody. just sounds like a bunch or random sample noises organized in some complex way.
it sounds cool but just not, really musical.
but then again, i kind of see that's the whole point of all this technique. to kind of just manipulate the sound into something like this.
ok so basically, my friend told me tweak a preset i like , compose something and he'll sidechain it for me. now ofcourse, i'm a noob so, please don't bash me too hard for posting this.
Sly by partyfoxxx on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

[foxxx]

oh and btw,about what i said about "today i'm french" not sounding musical,i'm not claiming mine to be any better or musical than deadmau5's. NEVER. haha.
i just wanted to try out the technique.
and please, feel free to give feedback/opinions/critique.
i've recently got into all this dance/house/ (so many subgenres i've found out) music, and decided to do it for a hobby.
i understand there won't be much to critique since it's just the same riff looped but ...you get the idea.haha

[Primativ]

Originally Posted by foxxx

oh and btw,about what i said about "today i'm french" not sounding musical,i'm not claiming mine to be any better or musical than deadmau5's. NEVER. haha.
i just wanted to try out the technique.
and please, feel free to give feedback/opinions/critique.
i've recently got into all this dance/house/ (so many subgenres i've found out) music, and decided to do it for a hobby.
i understand there won't be much to critique since it's just the same riff looped but ...you get the idea.haha

Mate this is an ecellent thread and it's much better than people trying to copy Skrillex's style all over the place.

I tried my hand at making a track yesterday but was really struggling for samples. Most of my old vinyl which I've borrowed from my dad isn't disco enough....so i'm lacking some source material.....

[apres garde]

Check out Cerrone if you're looking for samples. Every one of his singles is chock full of french house possibility.

Also, I always find Fred Falke's remixes to be a good source of inspiration.

[Primativ]

Originally Posted by apres garde

Check out Cerrone if you're looking for samples. Every one of his singles is chock full of french house possibility.

Also, I always find Fred Falke's remixes to be a good source of inspiration.

Thanks I'll check it out!

[robbbbb]

in response to "lucozade" and "stfd"

When you ask for advice on the internet, you should be glad to get it, and when someone takes the time to write a thoughtful response, you should thank them. I've loved music and sound for years, and in seeing two individuals insult and dismiss the advice of someone who clearly has more experience, my only thought is that you've never truly cared about any of this stuff other than as a status, and you truly are just "gear slutz."

I was so appalled when I read what you said that I took the time to join this site and write a SINGLE post, just so that you might read it and, in the future, use better judgment.

[Reptil]

be nice folks.

[RobJB06]

Fred Falke studio interview in Future Music this month, should be good:
‪FutureMusicMagazine's Channel‬‏ - YouTube

[Reptil]

hey those videos aren't bad at all. thanks