Mefjus - Particles Studio Insights: Transit with IMANU 

Mefjus i would love tips for creating interesting perc Fx used in drops, it sounds like sounds ran through granulators producing random interesting sounds is this correct?

Hey man, love your work! One question, on the 3rd 16 the phrase starts with a sick low mid kind of pitching down bass which I absolutely love, any tips on recreating something similar? Incredible tune and loved your set in London!

Given that most, if not all club sound systems are in mono, how much time should be spend focussing on the stereo width of our tracks?

You talked about how important it is for you to have all in midi as long as possible. I would be interested in what CPU you are using? There‘s not a lot of benchmarks in terms of core count/core speed. So what cpu are you using and do you ever reach a performance limit? Thx

What are your pc specs?

💀

i also thought it was interesting with that little London twist

"Spo-ify"

it's martin, martijn is from noisia ;)

@@wolfgangrecordings my bad, updated!

Leopold Black no it’s not

Same reaction here LOL

no pun intended

How the fuck does any pc handle that

Depends on what you do in serum. If they arent very complex (loads of voices on the oscillators for example) a good PC easily handles this. I use a Ryzen 9 and never had any problems.

i did not know that, awesome thx :D

I second this question. Even though the routing might be unique to Cubase I'd like to know more about the effects you used and what you automated.

tweak eq tweak mono bass tweak, eq tweak widen mid and highs tweak tweak tweak EQ seriously thats what it is secrets in the tweaking needs practice and good ears and a lotta experimenting , no one way many people do it differently bu EQ is key and widening mids or high is also key

Shant Madenjian wicked question I find mixing high end harder than low end especially with neuro funk the bass is so prominent and bright it’s hard to get everything to be clear

that is definitely also the case! multiband compression in combination with sidechain works wonders some times :) my point here was just to show that the production process always is about balance between what/how you work on your drums and then on your bass/mids :)

If you don’t have a deep understanding of the genre as a whole you’ll never know what you want to make or what the rules are in terms of producing for things like phasing etc

@@aduken762 which can be a good thing... in terms of creating a new style

In my own opinion, you just have to make it. A LOT! Get yourself involved in a community, online, of music producers (bunch of amateurs is fine). Watch lots of tutorials (it's even more open now, than when i started) and just make it like crazy. Mefjus has probably made hundreds more tracks than he's ever released. You can cut it down to the gems and release those. Get curious, cause i have learned and enjoyed making music so much more, when i've just been curious. "Wonder what this'll do" has progressed my music so much more than any other effort i've put in. I'm no professional, but i know all the things i should've done years ago. The biggest one that screwed me...don't worry about the loudness of your track. I would A-B between my track and a Noisia tune and hate that it didn't sound as loud. DON'T stress about it, just make the mix nice and clear. Or, if you prefer a ruffer, grungier air, leave it a little clashy, but the mastering engineer has some incredible tricks and tools at their disposal, so, leave the loudness to them. I'm pretty sure Billain doesn't get mixes that are all that loud, but god knows, you can turn it up on a decent system, and i still enjoy his tunes plenty. Make the music how you want it to sound. Make it a lot. Most importantly have fun 🙂

@@danielvousden565 well I would say in good production loudness comes from the mix, since also mastering engineers don't have some magical wizard tools. The only thing is they know which tool, when and how much they need to use. Ofcourse you can crank every track into a loud sausage at the end.. but that doesn't always sound so good, if the mixing and design process is not already done with a loud/big approach in mind. Especially on very full projects. However at the beginning don't worry about anything and just do it for fun and gain experience.. read about audio stuff, get knowledge.. try stuff out.. get more exprierence.. more knowledge and so on... Mefjus, Noisia and so on.. are not doing this stuff since yesterday or so... there are quite some years (meanwhile it goes into decades for some) of experience behind.

@@NoNameLeft1500 Yeah, that's what i thought too, but i've seen mastering engineers posts online about it. They've sent mixes back because there's sound in the stereo field, but not mono, so the element just dissappears, when they switch to mono, which isn't good, cause there are still radio stations etc that still use mono. As well as that, it's the mastering engineers job to make the song/track loud. It's your job to send them a servicable mix.

+1 for this question!

More samples and more, different microphone positions in Superior.

I've also read somewhere that Addictive Drums' samples are slightly processed already in comparison to Superior Drummer samples are 100% unprocessed, just really well recorded. Might be wrong though

@@vowel5171 AD are quite raw, but in the presets you in factory sounds have processing with included in AD effects. Other products like EZ drummer or various Kontakt libraries and some others are almost mix ready (for pop and rock music).

I just learned Imanu is running FL and my brain popped 🤯

u have to route a midi channel's output into the midi input of the serum fx. the advantage is that your serum fx is pretty much an fx container, where you have multiple lfos (controlled/synced by that midi u set up before), cubase automation itself is cool, but there's no global lfo (like in bitwig) for that kind of automation

no compression, but sometimes the master limiter would color a little

sends are useful if you want to retain the original signal. with inserts, you are commiting to a sound (which does have a time and place) but you can use effects much more delicately with sends than you can with inserts. for example, when using reverbs on basses you can simply highpass the reverb on a send to retain your low end's punch and mono compatibility which, when using reverbs as an insert you wouldn't be able to do (unless your reverb plugin has built-in filters). the same is true for distortion and many other effects, you just get more control over the effects and you can mix them seperatly :) (actually i wrote this halfway through the video and at around 23:00 he explains exactly this)

insert fx vs sends: l2pnet.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/insert-effect-send-effect.jpg sidechain: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OlNfEFImt5U.html

Intel Core i9-9900K, 8x 3.60GHz Intel Solid-State Drive 660p Series 2 TB SSD M.2 4x Kingston ValueRAM DIMM 16GB nothing too special tbf!

@@Mefjus Interesting, do you bounce down your mix tracks? I like to keep my plugins running at all times for future edits. Kinda sucks when a plugin gets updated and new latency issues arise though. Could be sub bus compression and messing with transients though.. Hey can you send me track stems for - Work it? massivedubstep@yahoo.com

i think snare noise layers would not be interfering with each other much unless they're completely identical, if this does happen u should prob just use another sample

@@gyrofield9963 I know there won't be huge issues with phase if the samples are different but they still crop up every now and again. I guess I'm more interested in how mefjus approaches phasing issues because atm Im just fiddling with a phase shifter till it sounds better

I think the placement of the snare layers sounds good because of good enveloping and good isolation in the FQ spectrum. I dont think it has to with phase at all, unless you are talking about connecting the transient to the body of the snare.

@@Buunshin_ Buunshin defo enveloping and good frequecy spectrum mangement would make it sound good, was just using the snare as an example of layering. I guess a better question would be "If you have phasing issues, how do you deal with them" e.g when you're layering similar samples. Sorry should've been more clear haha

music theory play small role in Dark dnb, use a lotta semi tones, the keys end being oriental arabic ethnic etc.., but some times more FUNK, i..e neuro funk so no real pattern for keys n chords even though they are used , more about sound design, and a lottas semi tones

also 2 Stunden mindestens...

das variiert meistens von Projekt zu Projekt-wenn alles fix durchgeht und man inspiriert ist vielleicht nur 1 Tag also 10-20 Stunden...wenn man ewig rumschraubt und es nicht immer so klappt wie man will kann das aber auch Wochen rum liegen also 40+/- unendlich..soweit mal grob im Allgemeinen-wie das bei Mefjus speziell ist kann natürlich nur er sagen

@@SecondUniverse101 Ja kann deine Aussage nur bestätigen, und aus meiner Erfahrung sind die 1-2 Tage Projekte viel schlüssiger und authentischer

@@Michaelsongsfull40 ja da stimm ich dir zu..:)

Yo @@SecondUniverse101 scheinst ein echt feiner Kerl/Mädl zu sein, kann man Dir irgendwie abseits von RU-vid folgen bzw machst du selbst Musik?

@@TheJohnsofDoes very well expained, nothing to add :)