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How to use a glue compressor

Every mix requires different glue compression settings, but you can use the following settings as a starting point:

• Attack: 10 ms
• Release: 0.1 s
• Ratio: 4:1
• Threshold: 0 dB

To dial-in settings that fit your mix, start by dropping the threshold level so that you see 3-4 dB of gain reduction being applied on your gain reduction meter. If you want the bus to sound less “pokey” and “snappy,” reduce the attack time. Attack times longer than 15-20 ms won’t usually provide the glue you want, but feel free to experiment.

A fast release time will lead to a clear, transparent sound at the risk of top-end distortion. If you hear unwanted distortion or want to make the compression more noticeable and musical, boost the release time.

At this point, you should readjust the threshold level to fine-tune the amount of compression applied. A ratio of 4:1 might be too intense for certain buses, but it’s often a good choice for your drum bus and more aggressive stereo buses. Drop the ratio to 2:1 if finding an appropriate threshold level at 4:1 proves challenging.

Phrasing refers to the technique of aligning the musical structure of two tracks so that their beats and phrases (typically 4, 8, or 16 bars) coincide, ensuring a smooth transition between songs. This helps maintain the flow and energy of the music, creating a seamless listening experience for the audience.

It’s important for new DJs to learn to use the phrasing of the tracks in their collection to smoothly mix tracks together.

For example, every eight or sixteen bars of four could be good spots for a transition to the next track. A DJ transition is the technique used to change from one song to the next in a set.

Basic DJ techniques include fading tracks in, cutting to the next track in the mix, and utilizing the EQ and/or effects to sculpt the transition. The simplest type of transition is called the fade, where one song fades in as the other fades out.

Here’s a beginner’s quick-guide to fades:

1. Start by loading in a track in Traktor in Deck A, and analyzing the track’s structure to find a part in the track that you can use to transition into the next song.
2. Play the next track in Deck B, beginning on beat one of a bar so that the second track comes in as the first track in Deck A fades down.

You can use Traktor cue points to put markers on your tracks at key places in each song, and use these cue points to remind you to transition. To learn more about how to transition, and phrase mixing, you may want to take a few DJ lessons with a local or online teacher.Learn more about five types of track transitions in our guide.

In music theory, you’ll commonly see chords referred to as their Roman numeral. This makes it easy for us to use the same concepts in different keys. For example, a I chord in C major is C major. But a I chord in D major is D major. To take that a step further, a V chord in C major is G major, whereas a V chord in D major is A major. Shifting the same relative pitches from one key to another is called “transposition.”

All of these types of chords are used in rock music. But there is also another, simpler type of chord used in rock chord progressions. It is called a “power chord.”

Power chords are similar to triads, but they only consist of two notes – the root, or first degree, as well as the fifth. We can make a power chord out of any triad by removing the third degree of that chord. If we take a C major (C, E, G) and remove the E – which is the third – we are left with a C power chord. Power chords are also sometimes referred to as “5” chords, like “C5”.

To hear the difference between a triad and a power chord, let’s listen to them side by side. Here is a C major chord:

How is a synthesizer used?

Synthesizers are typically keyboard-based instruments that can be played in real-time or sequenced. Synths come in both physical hardware and virtual software forms,and allow users to manipulate parameters such as pitch, volume, and timbre, creating a wide palette of sounds for music production, sound design, and performance.

Is it easy to use a synth?

Though some synths can be complicated, many synths are easy to use, especially if you’re working with pre-made ‘preset’ sounds. In this case you can load up a synth in your DAW, load a preset, then play and sequence it without having to do anything else.

Creating smooth transitions is determined by a few factors, including the keys, tempos and melodic content of the tracks. If a DJ is mixing together two tracks with vocals, a good use of cue points would be to place a marker where the vocal begins in the track. The DJ can use these cue points to bring in the next track so that the vocals do not overlap.

Placing cue points can help a DJ to make mix choices. For example, if cue points are placed at the beginning of the verse, drop or chorus, 2nd drop or chorus, or outro, this will give you four places where it would make musical sense to begin a new mix. A DJ may have a track that has a great intro, verse and drop but then a breakdown that they don’t want to play. Setting mix in and mix out points on a track like this allows them to play the parts of the track they want, but cut the track before the breakdown section.

During the heat of a live mix, it may be easy for a DJ to lose themselves in the moment and forget to mix out of the track exactly as planned. The cue point serves as a reminder to mix in the next track at the intended place. It’s worth mentioning that setting cue points does take additional preparation time.

To save time, a program such as Mixed In Key can be used to automatically set cue points and then these cue points can be imported into Traktor.

What is a bitcrusher effect?

Bitcrusher effects can offer a variety of capabilities, but all of them feature two main functions: sample rate reduction, and bit depth reduction.

Sample rate reduction reduces how much information an audio signal has over time. For example, if your project uses a common sample rate of 44.1 kHz, that’s 44,100 amplitude level values (or ‘samples’) for each second of audio.

This gives us a very clear sound, and the 44.1kHz value is commonly used because it’s just over twice the limit of human hearing (around 20kHz), and a sample rate of twice the maximum frequency present in a signal is necessary to capture that signal accurately. This is known as the Nyquist frequency.

Reducing the sample rate introduces what are known as aliasing errors, which distort the higher frequencies present in the signal. While this distortion is usually undesirable, it can be useful for certain creative effects.

Bit depth reduction reduces the amount of data used to describe the amplitude level of a sample. A bit can be either a 0 or a 1. So, if you have a 24-bit audio signal, each sample can be one of 16,777,216 possible values, enough fidelity to be very convincing to the human ear.

However, if you were to reduce the bit depth to, say, 4-bit, that’s only 16 different possible values. This is nowhere near as convincing to the human ear, and gives us a much noisier signal. You can read more about the relationship between bit depth and noise.

So, we can think of sample rate reduction as reducing the ‘resolution’ of an audio signal over time, and bit depth reduction as reducing the ‘resolution’ of an audio signal’s amplitude. These effects give us different-sounding results, and can be used independently or together to achieve creative effects.

3. How to mimic hardware gear characteristics

This tutorial will show you how to mimic the characteristics of hardware gear. One of the main criticisms I hear most often about computer-based DAWs, synths and effects is that they sound too perfect or sterile. Throughout this video there are a number of ways that one can introduce various small imperfections, for example, pulse-width modulation using virtual analog oscillators, and ways to trigger random option-in conjunction with the oscillator so as to create a “round-robin” effect, as well as affecting noise and the shape of noise in relation to the LFO section.

In order to demonstrate what a specific effect or modulation does, this instructor uses extreme settings so you can really hear what is being done. It also goes into detail about creating custom randomization, and setting up a situation where the sound will continually evolve and change throughout the duration of itself.  You can also learn about the noise waveform on the first LFO, and combining it with other LFOs to give the sound yet more movement.

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