Producing Berghain techno?

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NewSc2
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Producing Berghain techno?

Post by NewSc2 »

Been listening to a lot of mixes and productions from Marcel Dettmann, Norman Nodge, and other stuff off the Ostgut Ton label.

I'm trying to wrap my head around how to produce some of the dirty, gritty textures they have floating around. And a lot of sounds feel like they've been bitcrushed or run through some old equipment, but none of my efforts have gotten close to their vibe. I'd describe the style as kind of "tense," and I can't really capture that emotion.

Anyone care to offer some tips or analysis?
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thomasjaldemark
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Post by thomasjaldemark »

well, did a track today and it turned out quite "berghain":ish. dunno why it became that way though hehe. was keeping it quite simple, only 10 channels or so. only used delays and reverbs and eqs.. and of course.. distortion!

i think much of it comes from how you design your sounds.
hmm, wasnt helping much here :)
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agodi
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Post by agodi »

Ive been experimenting with similar sounds at the moment by doubling up some of my synth and drum channels, minorly changing some of the parimiters of the duplicate channels and then filtering them to be slightly lower in the mix. The result for me has been a wider grittier texture
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coldfuture
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Post by coldfuture »

resample much.

Loads of EQ to take off the air on the sounds. let the headroom you leave become the "air" to your tracks.

big verbs chained to soft bitcrushing then sent to other clean verbs.

delay, delay, and delay again.

Minimal sound source, much fx.

This can all be done in ableton very easily. Use EQ and filtering to create the space, then fill it up with reverb, subtle phaser, delay.

Use long fx chains. These are all Basic Channel tricks.
"Why does this process have to be SO complex" -- Ritardo Montalban
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Post by gowans »

not really sure on this but it could possibly be stuff overdriven on a nice analog mixer, if not that then fed through some kind of bit crusher/sampler?
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Post by JonasEdenbrandt »

At least on the latest Marcel Dettmann record theres tons of bitcrusch.
Also the berghain sound is kind of abbstract. To begin with i always thought of it as heavy and bassdriven but then again Prosumers latest track U & I is very ostgut and very berghain in a way but still being housey and not that heavy.
Any way on a technical level people have already posted the best tips i think. Creative works with reverb and space. And perhaps some long FX chains on a send channel.
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Post by Atheory »

agodi wrote:Ive been experimenting with similar sounds at the moment by doubling up some of my synth and drum channels, minorly changing some of the parimiters of the duplicate channels and then filtering them to be slightly lower in the mix. The result for me has been a wider grittier texture
this is interersting.
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Post by datalus »

Atheory wrote:
agodi wrote:Ive been experimenting with similar sounds at the moment by doubling up some of my synth and drum channels, minorly changing some of the parimiters of the duplicate channels and then filtering them to be slightly lower in the mix. The result for me has been a wider grittier texture
this is interersting.
i've experimented with something similar called parallel compression.

lately i've been sending (or busing) all my drums to a compressor and mixing the dry signal (the drums pre-send/bus) with the wet signal (compressed drums on a send/bus).

pretty simple, the devil is in the details as some days i feel like i do get pleasing results, other days i just can't seem to dial it in, but the more i do it the more i find i start to get familiar with it and i've had more of the former days than latter.
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