Thanks DigitalSmigital for the nice comments. I'm glad that it worked out. I tried something a little new and put in some harmonics of the bassline down around 40hz or so. The pitch isn't so much percievable as is the fact that it will get a subwoofer rooling around pretty good. I also used some plugins to help put some sparkle in the high ends by adding some additional hash up in the 10 to 20k area which makes things seem all sparkley
Rhythmschism:
You are correct I chopped up a bunch of drum kit loops for the percussion and also dropped in some auxillary percussion loops to like conga and windchimes. I got a pretty good method for doing it.
1. record song with a click track
2. lay in full kit loops for verses, chorus's, and bridges
3. put cymbal and kick drum hits between on accented parts
4. add fill parts leading up to the cymbal/kick hits
5. add additional flams and fills.
Tip for rock drums - always use a kick along with a cymbal crash
It usually takes about 5 tracks to do all the drums. You can do with any program that lets you work with loops; sonar, fruity loops, acid, and any others that belong in that group that I can't think of.
As far as mixing with headphones I have a couple tricks.
1. I listen to a professionally record track of similar material before doing the final mix.
2. I use the same headphones whether I'm recording or just listening to music so I know them pretty well. They aren't anything special they are Sony MDR-V600 which is sort of an industry standard headphone. They sell for 100 bucks but they are cheaper than pro audio monitors and just as flat.
3. A cool trick somebody told me that I use for mixing with headphones is to lay the phones down on the table and listen to the overall mix once you think you have it dialed in. For some reason things that stick out just become real obvious, especially vocals. It's a good way to make sure the vocals are bedding with the rest of the track.
Scott Kern
