What Is A Modern Sound?

Hi,

It's been 4 years since this thread was made...So things might have changed a little. I was wondering what would a modern sound be for a synth in a electronic rock band. I've listened to some old tracks and want to add them a more modern layer.

The problem is the "modern" sounds on my korg krome existent and new ones that I tried to make are way too quiet for them to be heard, the only sounds that can be heard in the mix are the good old synth strings and synth brasses that penetrate at the surface.

Otherwise if the guitar is playing a riff on a "modern" keyboard sound, the sound is lost within the mix, you can hear only a few of its original frequencies. Any Ideas on what else I can try to make it sound more modern? Or maybe some examples of other bands that found a solution? If you want a sample of how the songs sound, pm me.

This is actually way harder to do than I expected. The biggest problem is that I've heard these songs quite a lot lately and they actually sound good to me just as they are, so it's hard to get an outside view of the songs, like a normal listener that opens the track for the first time.

Thanks for reading my whole boring story about my journey into the art of modern sounds, if you have any ideas I would like to hear them, maybe they will at least point me into a new direction where I can start experimenting again.

Cheers!
 
Modern sound?

Enri said:
I was wondering what would a modern sound be for a synth in a electronic rock band.
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If modern tools like plugins are considered as the basis of factoring a present sounds and trends in the industry , then for this and for the original question a good reference (to make your observations on the subject) might be the latest Michael Jackson record - Xscape (deluxe edition,)

Including the original recordings of the songs - made mostly somewhere between 1979 and late 1990's and then there are the more modernized and remixed versions of the songs.

The complete credits for the record are quite massive
 
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From a compositional standpoint,
I believe that a modern sound incorporates a lot of motion and change.
This coincides with the use of automation in DAWs to create variation in digitally-produced music.

From a mixing/mastering standpoint,
I believe that a modern sound is loud on average,
with an increased emphasis on the low-end power and high-end brightness.

I'll write a blog post with some more detail coming up.

-Ki
Salem Beats
 
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ONE way its looked at is a wider Q(classic) VS. a more Narrow Q(modern) when EQing.

I know thats not the focus of this question, but its a difference people recognize.
 
Yumid said:
ONE way its looked at is a wider Q(classic) VS. a more Narrow Q(modern) when EQing.

I know thats not the focus of this question, but its a difference people recognize.
Click to expand...

Hmm.
I'm not so sure about this one.

I can see how you could establish that perspective,
however,
with modern digital EQs able to dial some ridiculously steep resonances.

I see a lot of YouTube tutorials where amateurs will instruct people to dial some tight Qs,
and almost never take action in broad strokes,
but it seems to me that many of big names who have been a part of crafting today's sound
only dial a tight Q to fix an irritating resonance as a last resort.

I guess this also boils down a bit to what kind of Q factor you consider "wide" or "narrow" as well as the type of curve and any non-linear response it might have to being tweaked.

-Ki
Salem Beats
 
There's also a difference between the popular modern and indie modern.

Two differences I always notice are
1) Brighter than older tracks
2) Much Dryer, especially than 80's tracks.

But then an electronic rock band as you describe could go lots of ways. Dave Pensado talks about pop rock.

"Another trend, Rock – just to stir the pot – I don’t think there is any Rock anymore, at least not that’s easily accessible. Rock is now Pop music with turned down guitars and sweet effects. The last great Rock record was Queens of The Stone Age. Rock is now pop with guitars instead of synthesizers. The drums aren’t even live."
But that's not to say albums can't be popular that don't follow modern trends. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNdj0V_c4kM
That song had the vocals recorded on an iphone for the first half, and I think the guitar as well.
The reverb on "We are all" is so obvious and drenched. The general tip mixers give you is "Don't let the reverb become the sound, let it compliment the sound." But it's so prominent on those vocals.
Everybody at my school was telling me I needed to hear that album, and that's from a bunch of pop heads that only listen to the radio.
 
Salem Beats said:
Hmm.
I'm not so sure about this one.

I can see how you could establish that perspective,
however,
with modern digital EQs able to dial some ridiculously steep resonances.

I see a lot of YouTube tutorials where amateurs will instruct people to dial some tight Qs,
and almost never take action in broad strokes,
but it seems to me that many of big names who have been a part of crafting today's sound
only dial a tight Q to fix an irritating resonance as a last resort.

I guess this also boils down a bit to what kind of Q factor you consider "wide" or "narrow" as well as the type of curve and any non-linear response it might have to being tweaked.

-Ki
Salem Beats
Click to expand...

By Classic I meant Analog and Modern I meant Digital. The Q differences are noticeable from analog to digital (wider to more narrow).

One way of emulating an analog console with a digital one is by adjusting the Q and using a Q clone to compare it to analog. Theres a lot more to it than that and theres no way I can explain why or how to do it as good as it needs to be done right now. But we spent all day in class getting shown this about a month ago. It works and is true, I just don't really know how to explain it as good as I need to right now.
 
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The ideea is that people are used to complex synth sounds, with lots of layers. These type of sounds go well on a pop song cause the drums are really repetitive and if there are guitars, they mostly don't have riffs or distorse, they are only overdriven a little and that's it.

By following these simple steps you can get a modern sound:

1. Nice sounding drums with a repetitive pattern
2. Deep electro bass line that compensates for the high pitched synth
3. Multi-layered synth with effects and maybe some arpegiators
4. Slightly over driven guitar at a low volume


This seems nice to do, the synth has a lot of room to breath so you can play with it and make it more complex.(high quality)

Problem is in a electro rock band, the synth has very little room to breath and only the high frequencies can be heard.

So the challenge is to make a sound that sounds complex and not so 80's on high frequencies which hopefully will be able to penetrate the mix without making a mess and making the whole song sound too loaded.
 
Sound

The progression of sound developed into what we would separate as modern from classic is tied into the tools available.
there is no other recorded sound than the sound thru the tools available.

1.The classical era of sound ended when the tool Vinyl was replaced by digital standards such as CD so the modern digital era begun
2. this change happened together with the digitalization of the recording (and many other areas as well) tools thru the industry.
 
Yumid said:
By Classic I meant Analog and Modern I meant Digital. The Q differences are noticeable from analog to digital (wider to more narrow).

One way of emulating an analog console with a digital one is by adjusting the Q and using a Q clone to compare it to analog. Theres a lot more to it than that and theres no way I can explain why or how to do it as good as it needs to be done right now. But we spent all day in class getting shown this about a month ago. It works and is true, I just don't really know how to explain it as good as I need to right now.
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Yeah, I used my demo time with Waves Q Clone a while back to observe what my vintage-modeled plugins were doing "behind the scenes".

It was a struggle to set up with REAPER (mostly because of REAPER's feedback prevention), but once I set it up, I found it very interesting.

I was considering buying a copy when it came around for sale, but I missed it in some way or another.
Now I have to wait for it to come around again (I only buy Waves stuff from their monthly sales list).

-Ki
Salem Beats
 
Salem Beats said:
Yeah, I used my demo time with Waves Q Clone a while back to observe what my vintage-modeled plugins were doing "behind the scenes".

It was a struggle to set up with REAPER (mostly because of REAPER's feedback prevention), but once I set it up, I found it very interesting.

I was considering buying a copy when it came around for sale, but I missed it in some way or another.
Now I have to wait for it to come around again (I only buy Waves stuff from their monthly sales list).

-Ki
Salem Beats
Click to expand...

Futureproducers must have scoped out that we were talking about Q Clone, because all of a sudden all the Ads on the website changed from my school to Q Clone haha. Point is that I think there is a sale right now, cant remember what the AD said but i think its either 39 or 49 bucks. (Reg 400) The Ads gone now but the sales probably still going.

I was typing out my notes from the day in class I mentioned as a refresher and we actually used Q clone along with Q capture to come up with our end result. Which was that Analog synths and digital synths do handle Q values different; but using Q capture and Q Clone you can (after a long crap process) gauge both of their "true" responses and tweak your digital settings to match the analog settings going off of what Q clone and capture are saying, rather than the EQ's actual interface. Because even though a digital software synth can have the exact same Q settings programmed in as an analog emulation, the analog emulation still 'treats' that Q a bit differently just based on the guts inside that EQ. We used Dyn3 Compressor/Limiter as our digital and the SSL EQ as our analog. Once again I don't have the experience to explain it perfectly how to do it, but I do understand what we did and what we found out. It was pretty cool.

Anyway the whole point of this was to tell you I seen an AD for a possible sale on Q clone.
 
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Yumid said:
Futureproducers must have scoped out that we were talking about Q Clone, because all of a sudden all the Ads on the website changed from my school to Q Clone haha. Point is that I think there is a sale right now, cant remember what the AD said but i think its either 39 or 49 bucks. (Reg 400) The Ads gone now but the sales probably still going.

I was typing out my notes from the day in class I mentioned as a refresher and we actually used Q clone along with Q capture to come up with our end result. Which was that Analog synths and digital synths do handle Q values different; but using Q capture and Q Clone you can (after a long crap process) gauge both of their "true" responses and tweak your digital settings to match the analog settings going off of what Q clone and capture are saying, rather than the EQ's actual interface. Because even though a digital software synth can have the exact same Q settings programmed in as an analog emulation, the analog emulation still 'treats' that Q a bit differently just based on the guts inside that EQ. We used Dyn3 Compressor/Limiter as our digital and the SSL EQ as our analog. Once again I don't have the experience to explain it perfectly how to do it, but I do understand what we did and what we found out. It was pretty cool.
Click to expand...

Yumid said:
Anyway the whole point of this was to tell you I seen an AD for a possible sale on Q clone.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I actually saw that ad today, on Amazon, believe it or not. Lol. Probably gonna pick it up. :D

Thanks for coming here to give me the heads-up!

-Ki
Salem Beats
 
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Yumid said:
Futureproducers must have scoped out that we were talking about Q Clone, because all of a sudden all the Ads on the website changed from my school to Q Clone haha.
Click to expand...

ermmm.... that is because the ad generator watches what you search for and look at online and "targets" ads to you personally... you've never heard of this?
 
Yumid said:
I was typing out my notes from the day in class I mentioned as a refresher and we actually used Q clone along with Q capture to come up with our end result. Which was that Analog synths and digital synths do handle Q values different; but using Q capture and Q Clone you can (after a long crap process) gauge both of their "true" responses and tweak your digital settings to match the analog settings going off of what Q clone and capture are saying, rather than the EQ's actual interface. Because even though a digital software synth can have the exact same Q settings programmed in as an analog emulation, the analog emulation still 'treats' that Q a bit differently just based on the guts inside that EQ. We used Dyn3 Compressor/Limiter as our digital and the SSL EQ as our analog. Once again I don't have the experience to explain it perfectly how to do it, but I do understand what we did and what we found out. It was pretty cool.
Click to expand...

1. "Dyn3 EQ" is not an emulation of an "SSL EQ", so I wouldn't expect them to mimic each other.

2. Every EQ's Q shape looks different. You can type the same mumerical settings into 3 different eq plugins and they will not give you the same results. You can set 3 different analogue EQ's with the same settings and they will not give you the same results.

3. "analogue emulation" as a generality means the synth (which I will use in this example since you talked about this with regards to a synth) will exhibit "analogue style properties" in general and sound "analogue-ish" though not necessarliy like any particular synth. When you have a particular plugin/digital synth that is an "analogue model" of a particular synth, then they are trying to recreate the properties (such as Q shape) from the synth... And if it is not exactly the same, the reason for that is because "modeling technology" is not perfect... but it is not because "digital Q looks like this and analogue q looks like this."

4. Even analogue clones of analogue synths are not accurate.

5. Every vintage analogue synth/eq/etc is different... I mean, if you get 5 of the same vintage analogue synths/EQ's, they will all sound somewhat different from each other... so you can't really make direct comparisons like that... you look for general characteristics.

4.
 
dvyce said:
ermmm.... that is because the ad generator watches what you search for and look at online and "targets" ads to you personally... you've never heard of this?
Click to expand...
Everyone knows about this, i just find it funny. I don't think i even mentioned or searched for Q clone besides for this thread.
 
dvyce said:
ermmm.... that is because the ad generator watches what you search for and look at online and "targets" ads to you personally... you've never heard of this?
Click to expand...

in opera 12 I get no adds as I block the source sites that the ads come from but when I went into firefox briefly yesterday (soundcloud's player widget is faulty in opera but works fine in firefox!) - I got an ad for an older dating site, so what gives????
 
dvyce said:
1. "Dyn3 EQ" is not an emulation of an "SSL EQ", so I wouldn't expect them to mimic each other.

2. Every EQ's Q shape looks different. You can type the same mumerical settings into 3 different eq plugins and they will not give you the same results. You can set 3 different analogue EQ's with the same settings and they will not give you the same results.

3. "analogue emulation" as a generality means the synth (which I will use in this example since you talked about this with regards to a synth) will exhibit "analogue style properties" in general and sound "analogue-ish" though not necessarliy like any particular synth. When you have a particular plugin/digital synth that is an "analogue model" of a particular synth, then they are trying to recreate the properties (such as Q shape) from the synth... And if it is not exactly the same, the reason for that is because "modeling technology" is not perfect... but it is not because "digital Q looks like this and analogue q looks like this."

4. Even analogue clones of analogue synths are not accurate.

5. Every vintage analogue synth/eq/etc is different... I mean, if you get 5 of the same vintage analogue synths/EQ's, they will all sound somewhat different from each other... so you can't really make direct comparisons like that... you look for general characteristics.

4.
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1.) I didnt say Dyn3 was an emulation of SSL, that was part of the point of everything I said

2.)which is why you use Q capture and Q clone to determine the actual response..I feel you are drastically missing my point here.

Just read all of your further points before replying to them and it all comes back to the same thing..I know it varies..thats why you use Q clone and Q capture to determine the actual levels being spit out by the EQ, not by what your parameters are set at..then you tweak any EQ to match any hardware EQ if you follow the pattern shown in Q capture. You just need to reference back to Q capture instead of the set parameters.
I didnt mean to mention synths I've meant EQs the whole time

it could just be that I'm not explaining my points as good as i need to be. I don't know a ton about this, I've just seen it done and know it works.
 
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Yumid said:
1.) I didnt say Dyn3 was an emulation of SSL, that was part of the point of everything I said

2.)which is why you use Q capture and Q clone to determine the actual response..I feel you are drastically missing my point here.

Just read all of your further points before replying to them and it all comes back to the same thing..I know it varies..thats why you use Q clone and Q capture to determine the actual levels being spit out by the EQ, not by what your parameters are set at..then you tweak any EQ to match any hardware EQ if you follow the pattern shown in Q capture. You just need to reference back to Q capture instead of the set parameters.
I didnt mean to mention synths I've meant EQs the whole time

it could just be that I'm not explaining my points as good as i need to be. I don't know a ton about this, I've just seen it done and know it works.
Click to expand...

I think that dvyce hasn't used Q-Clone before, hence the misunderstanding.

It's a pretty obscure little plugin to most people, and kinda confusing to many because there's no controls and the setup is not straightforward.

-Ki
Salem Beats
 
The new Romare album on Ninja Tune is a very modern sound - a modern sound is all about a fusion of styles and production techniques
 
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