The Grid gives you the opportunity to question some of drum & bass production's most prominent figureheads. This Q&A will consist of a moderated open thread in which you can ask production related questions to the interrogated. For this first edition we happily invite Noisia!

Noisia, Drifter and Hustle Athletics are all aliases which belong to the same three individuals: Martijn van Sonderen, Nik Roos and Thijs de Vlieger. They hail from Groningen, a city in the northern part of The Netherlands where out of five inhabitants at least one is a student; A peculiar type of species which they themselves belong to, even after their recent success. After their first initial signing on 'Shadow Law' and release on 'Nerve' things moved very fast. In a two year period they've released on a fuckload of labels, including forthcoming material on 'Metalheadz', 'BC Presents', 'Renegade Hardware' and 'Subtitles'.

What is your current set up and what does each part play? What do you use/value the most?

we use software only, we have 3 studios, basically bedroom setups with PC and active studio speakers... but right now the main studio room has 3 pc's:-one is dedicated to audio, nothing but audio programs and samples on it-one ( a little laptop) is running cooledit's spectrum analyzer, so we can see what we are doing, very very useful!-one is for Internet laming (DOA lurking)

we use cubase sx 2.2 and everything else we can get our hands on

we use ADAM p-22a monitors which are really really good, we highly recommend them to anyone who wants to take sound seriously.in the other studios we have mackie hr 824 and event tr-8 speakers.

we all have a little soundcraft mixer which functions basically as a volume control and a late night bass cut (we have a roommate that doesn't particularly like 30 Hz at 3 AM)

those bass sounds. current grid "best guess" seems to be basically ... taking some sort of Reece bass sound, sweeping notch/filters through it, re sample, layer, more sweeps, re sample, layer, repeat many times.... with added distortion/pitch env etc, to tastecare to give any more specifics?

it varies per sound, there's no set path to every sound; but generally the sounds are made from base sounds we make out of synths, re sampled, put into a sampler and played with (and yes - rinse and repeat) - we often just spend an afternoon making mids on dedicated sx projects, meaning you can use all your CPU on one sound, and bounce out a bunch of variations / sequences to be used as audio later or loaded into a sampler again. its all about getting to know your tools and slowly learning what you can do and how you can translate whats in your head into a sound, or just make accidents happen that might sound good ;)and of course filters are important, but key here is: the thing about basslines we like so much is the dynamics in the sound - movement. and that doesn't necessarily always have to come from filters, theres a million ways to make something change over time, for example just using volume changes run into a distortion plugin can work; ring modulation, pitch modulation, anything goes really. it wont help anyone if we start dishing out specific details on how a sound was made; it's all about finding your own taste in things, no one ever taught us anything about basslines... we just listened and fucked around.

and to round it up; learning to discern what you like and don't like about a sound (might sound obvious...but it's not!) and knowing what to do in the latter case is probably the most important thing to get into.

and the only way you can find energy to dedicate yourself to this long and exhausting process, is to have a lot of fun doing it :) so you can keep it up longer without getting bored or frustrated trying to do something you think you should be doing.

Wot freq do eq your sub kicks too and wot do you use to get that evil distortion?

we eq out the low bass from kick drums generally up to about 60-80 hertz depending on the tune/sub etc, and the sub sits in the obvious regions... 30-70 hertz depending on the notes being played.

distortion: we use our ears to get that evil distortion, there's not really a set path or plugin or whatever...just to give an example, a few weeks ago nik and martijn recorded a Reese that was actually an arp on a drum kit preset on the korg n5, so it was basically a bunch of drum sounds being played in succession rapidly and recorded into the PC way too loud. it sounded evil as fuck and somehow we could even tune it. you never know.....

which do you prefer writing at the moment? breaks, house or dnb... question for the batty one known as Thijs

most of my time goes into noisia and drifter...but making weird ass breaks for a change is a lot of fun and gives a fresh perspective on making music/sound... but we lack time to really capitalize on house and breaks, it would take so much time to reach the level of satisfaction we have in dnb... for now i see house and breaks mainly as side projects for fun, not as serious efforts to make really sick tunes... although all of this might change of course, who knows where I'll be in 5 years, maybe on top of the homo house disco breaks scene wearing tight boot cut denim pants, huge sunglasses and tennis shoes...

Out the tunes you have made which took the longest and which one is your favorite?

lately we have been spending a lot of time on tunes, it started with 'meditation', we knew it was a special opportunity for us so we wanted to do our absolute best, i think we spent about 3 months on that tune. then messiah remix, if it counts, took us about 4 months, a week for the intro orchestration, a month or two on the main groove (drums and sub work) and trying all sorts of ideas and angles out, a couple of weeks making reeses for it, edits etc...then sequencing it out and finishing it up.right now we are working on a thing called 'the tide' which has already taken us about 5 months, we want it to be special so we're gonna take our time...

favorite tunes... thats hard....nik:-noisia : concussion / messiah remix-drifter : come true

thijs: same

martijn:-noisia : lockjaw / meditation-drifter : deeper love

How are you using reverb on your breaks? Do you insert it on a group channel or do you put it on individual parts of your breaks separately and then group them?? Or do both??

Also do you send the highs to one group and the kicks and snares to one group and deal with them separately??

as far as reverb goes, we usually either use the natural reverb thats in the recording of the break (we also use single hits obviously, but I'll bypass that bit for now) or use a mild room verb on the drum track, hardly audible, lately we've been just reverbing the snare, just taking one snare and put a dedicated reverb on it, and run it outside of the usual drum routing to give it room to breathe...

as far as freq splitting is concerned, it depends on what we think the breaks need, multi band compression is a great tool, we use it quite a bit but not everything needs it by default at all... we do split drums into kicks/snares/ghosts/hi hats/rides channels, and eq/process then separately, especially when the break is dirty and needs cleaning up. and sometimes if we want to retain the feel of the original break more we duplicate the entire break onto 4 channels for example, splitting it into frequency ranges, so you can control them individually - for example gating the lower mid region can be quite useful on muddy breaks....and then sometimes we....etc etc

as you can tell our entire way of working is subject to continuous change and self criticism..

Can you explain how you guys make tunes as a group of three? How does the creative process work between three people, and how is this realized in the actual making of the tune? I generally find collaborations to be very difficult, any tips?

the big key for us to collaboration is trusting your 'creative companion' with your 'artistic integrity' (yeah right, like theres such a thing in d&b )you have to realize that the other person will never make something exactly like you would, and you have to accept that his influence will be in the music, you might not like everything the other does, but it is a collaboration, and if you want to work well together, you have to give each other space - you might not see the potential of a certain element the other is working on at first glance and lose faith but chances are the other person knows what he's doing and will come out with an angle you hadn't expected. once you have given each other the space to feel comfortable in, you will notice that creating a vibe together is much easier, sometimes you might not take the same path to a certain idea as the other but if you've all arrived there, you have succeeded (wow, that sounds esoteric). and there is nothing quite like vibeing off something together. it's all about getting that vibe going....

I always thought your breaks sounding fat but without being too close if that makes sense.....? For some reason producers I have spoken to seem to rubbish reverb and say they never use it but it's blatantly obvious they do, seems unfashionable or something. Glad you guys are big enough to admit the use of itSo are you using reverb through sends or inserts???

both :)

sometimes you want to place a sound in a different environment, sometimes you want sounds to sound "together", as if recorded in the same space... that makes it sound easier than it is, but that is basically the consideration you have to make when choosing between different insert reverb or one send reverb.

generally in our tunes there's always a room reverb (0.4-0.7 seconds, small room, for mids and drums) a large

reverb (2-7 secs, a little predelay, for pads and fx, and some sort of echo (lately we've been using one which has a high pass filter in the feedback chain, which means every new "tap" has less low frequencies in it, sounds sweet)

when using an insert bus, don't forget to set the mix switch to 100%

How do you make a Reece?

detuning waveforms

or recording weird shit.

a week ago they were cleaning our windows with some high pressure cleaning device, we recorded it... sounds SICK :)

look out for it in the tide :-p

Do you process and re sample a lot of individual hits from a drum break before you put them in your tunes. Like compress, eq, limit, etc....

How are you using limiters...Do you insert them on the master Buss or on group channels? Or denounce the use of them?

individual hits:

yes processing individual hits can be a very wise idea, because a snare drums doesn't always need the same processing as the hi hat or kick drum we don't usually limit breaks by themselves, sometimes together with the other drums and bass...

a lot of times we'll use a limiter on bass to get it constantly loud, and sometimes limiters have nice overdrive characteristics when raped 8)

we used to go nuts on the limiters on master buses a while ago (esp hubcap, it had a waves L2 limiting the master mix 15 db or more!!)but we will be the first to agree that that is not the way to get a good sounding tune, it's about finding the balance you want between loudness and subtlety... but we do use software limiting on our tunes (waves L2, kjaerhus classic limiter, waves L3 multimaximiser for multi band limiting )

Im interested to know how often you create per-note samples - as apposed to just spanning one/several sample(s) over the whole keyboard.

rarely, we usually use different bass sound for higher notes... but we don't make one sampler instrument with all kinds of different sounds in it.. we want to process the different sounds differently, maybe later we route them into a bus together to process them together. but we don't really multi sample reeses or mids. its all about the weird artifacts you get when you don't do stuff like that :) (not saying that lofi artifacts are always good, but can be!)

What do you use to record such sounds?

anything... we use a cool shure sm-58 stage mic and a tube preamp right now... but we'll invest in some more pro equipment later im sure.

Where do you get the MC samples from? Do you record them yourselves or are they sampled?

block control: ice cube&dmx - we be clubbin'

usually just a Capella or sample packs, but we also record weird shit ourselves. remember the 2nd drop of exorcism? has the 3 of us on the mic making a windup rising noise by going 'ghhhshshshhhsshshhhhhhh!'. sounds awful.

but not too long ago we asked MC verse to record some vocals for a tune by us and mayhem, so it's not all leech and steal :P

Exorcism has a sample from an acid techno tune, doesn't it? Ot it happened that you, Dave The Drummer, Chris Liberator and even Dieselboy all bought the same sample pack?

we used a very little bit of the mentasm as found in joey beltram-mentasm (i think)

favorite instrument and fx plugins?

kontakt 2 is greatand everything else by native instruments... sick things.

we don't use synths/vsti's an awful lot tho, a big part of our tunes is just audio loaded straight into cubase's arranger (you can cut up breaks so much faster if you bypass recycle and your sampler and midi and all that, also applying individual processing is a lot easier this way)

waves bundle fx are very good, we use the C4, the Rcomp, the REQ and the L2 a lot

ultra funk plugin range is good if you want to spare your CPU

od:amplitube, big tick nasty shaper, predatohm, campelphat, of course always, it all depends on what you use it on...PSP vintage warmer and the bluetubes DR and the antares Tube are cool too for od fx.

the TC Native 3.0 bundle has a good filter and a compressor with side chain ability :)

the kjaerhus audio classic series has some nice vintage gear emulations, with a very musical sounding limiter (as opposed to the very hard brickwallish L2 by waves)

for filtering psp nitro and antares filter have some cool modulation options and for simple filtering with low CPU load the little duck filter is quite cool.

hexaline blue plugins. although a bit buggy here and there, are still cool... free :)

but again, the trick is too apply these fx with care and skill, applying presets to any sound wont get you anywhere...

How long did it take producing until you reached a level u were satisfied with. How did you go about getting Ur beats heard?

The sickest thing about Ur production style is Ur dirty drums IMO Where do you get Ur samples from? What are u using for drums?

been making tunes since 98... read our bio if you want the full story :) - i guess we're never really satisfied with our stuff tho, when you make tunes you challenge yourself and when you've met that challenge a new one arises, so when you look at the last thing you did, you'll always have some sort of angle to better it or something that makes you not write the same thing again. it's always an ongoing process. we never really sent out any demo's, people got in touch with us after we had put something up on a website and things started rolling...

drums:

of course your whole drum line shines or shits according to the source samples, so collecting high quality samples is the first step. we usually spend quite a bit of time on drums, depending on the tune and how 'produced' you want something to sound. with drifter tunes for example we like to take a less produced approach and try for a more natural sound, whereas some noisia drums are 'totally 'controlled', every aspect of them has been processed and worked over until we think its right (the definition of which changes pretty much every day...)that means lots of eq'ing, compression, layering etc, sometimes keeping the dirt that is in a sample or adding it with some nasty plugins.

What are your experiences with sub woofers in small rooms?Do you use one with your ADAM p-22a, if so which type?Do freq analyzers play an important role in getting your subs right?

we don't use sub woofers, we haven't felt the need to try using them yet, we don't have any experience with them so i couldn't say whether they're a good thing or a bad thing, all i can say is that the Adams have a great bass response, down to about 35 Hz..

freq analysis is important, yes, and another trick we've been using for years - and recently heard optical does too - is putting your hand in front of the bass ports (if your speakers have them) and feeling the air move. if it's capable of drying a wet hand and the kicks punch through it, then thats always nice ;)

reference is key here, if you know your speakers, and for example what it sounds like if you're standing in a corner where the bass is piled up cause of the room, and you know what a good tune sounds like there in comparison...etc....important note here is that you have some sort of set level where you play your tunes on, if you change the

volume on the speakers all the time and then reference its obviously not going to work too well....

When you set out to make a tune do you have the overall sound and structure of the tune already in mind or do you just work on the fly and try lots of different sounds and elements until something works?

both occur; sometimes one of us has an idea he wants to work out, sometimes we're just fucking around making weird sounds...

having a big collection of pre processed beats and basses makes it a lot easier tho to get your ideas down nice and quick... but then you are spending a lot of time preparing to make it easier later, so it's not like it saves time or energy.. just makes it easier to get down ideas..

generally what frequency range do you have you strings and pads at???

generally speaking you want to take the low end out of your pads, but sometimes it's very nice to have a heavy sounding pad with a lot of rumble to it... so i guess that's a pretty worthless answer isn't it?

When you're producing a tune, how much do you think about making your tracks "DJ friendly"?

dnb - a lot!!!

a lot of thought goes into getting the tune dance floor smashing:

getting in the head of the people on the floor, trying to think what would make them want to move a lot... long builds, loud bass, defined drums... a lot of psychology is involved i think :)

and as to DJ-friendly: usually we try to make an intro we can mix easily ourselves and we just assume that other dj's will find a way to mix it as well...

whats the negative points of event tr8, compared to Adam? why did you swapped them?

it sounds like the Adams have a much faster response time, so the dynamics of a sound sound a lot more defined...

you can hear on Adams subtle differences in dynamics you wouldn't be able to hear on the events.

not saying you cant mix down on events, but the Adams have a lot more precision

and the high end is a lot better and easier to listen to (yay ribbon tweeter!!!) and the bass of these speakers goes deeper and has more definition..

with the analogue desk a lot of people find you can get a more elements in your mix separated better by routing them through a desk (also being able to get some analogue crunch on drums) Ive got to admit i have found that you can hear a difference, but i would prefer not to have a analogue desk.....

i don't suppose you gonna be able to answer cause you haven't come across this...no worries!

OK i understand, but yeah, as we've had very little experience mixing down on desks i really cant tell much about the difference in separation man... i mean i can hear the difference between a hive & gridlok mixdown and a noisia mixdown, but i cant explain much about it as im not very educated about the physics of analogue desks compared to the algorithms of software processing.. we just try to get our mixdown as good as we can, using what we have and what we can afford :)

do you master you own tunes (at least for dubs if not final)?

for CD/mp3 use we mix down the tunes ourselves yes, but i wouldn't call that mastering, the vinyl mastering is always handled by a capable professional... (varies per label/distribution who exactly does it...)

do you do all your drums entirely on audio tracks, or still use sampler and midi for some (hits and bits)?

all drums are done on audio tracks.

does your computer crash?

not a lot, cubase freezes up sometimes, but we can always ctrl alt del out of it, here's a VERY important tip tho:

try to get used to saving your project after every little thing you do, and also before every thing you do! make sure you have plenty of backup versions (save as!) so you can backtrack when you accidentally delete something and find out later.... we usually end up with 30+ projects saves when a serious project is finished :)

SAVE AS and save your ass

do you think it is recommendable to pair up with someone or to find a partner in order to make tunes faster (time wise) and better. I just say this because I've been doing this solo for a really long time now (4 years) and sometimes I just lack the momentum I need in order to sit down and produce, something I think would be much easier if I had a partner to produce with

yes. it's not likely we would have come half as far if we weren't together, stimulating each other, keeping each other sharp... most important tho: making music/sound should be FUN. we've written about this before, but if you're not having fun, there's no way you'll find the energy to keep trying to achieve the sound you want... it's a very long and hard learning process, which is frustrating at times, and very exhausting... having a friend besides you who makes grimey faces when you make a nasty sound is such a reward... making stupid jokes all the time just makes your "work" a lot easier... having someone that takes over control when you're out of ideas can be very enlightening at times..

so that's a big yes... co-operate en dominate :)

so, did the quality of production just come with time and making lots of different tunes, or did do a bit of homework? you u just fukt around a lot but u must have surely? also you say you've been producing since 98, is a lot of the stuff you've been releasing recently all written recently or is some of it a bit older?

only "the flow" and "conscience" are old tunes still coming out, the rest of the old tunes are already out or we stopped them from coming out.so pretty much all the tunes you'll see coming out from now on will be quite recent.

and you could put it this way: just fucking around making lots of different tunes is the best bit of homework there is, mixdown techniques, ways of arranging tunes, sound design, writing melodies, it's all easiest and most fun to learn in the process of writing a tune... an almost finished tune will give you a motivation to try to get it right...

one thing about mixdowns tho, we always try to mix down every sound we put in a tune AT ONCE. don't fling something in knowing it sounds horrible and think "ye I'll fix that later"... make it sound good at once or you'll be sorry later... we can't stress enough how important this is... for us mixing down a tune is almost equivalent to making a tune... meaning that putting in a sound is equivalent to making it sound right.it hardly ever occurs anymore that we mix down a track when the rest of the work is done, and when it does occur, it's usually very annoying and frustrating.

so the answer to your question looks a little like:mixdown skills come with time, you have to develop your hearing skills, you have to be able to analyze what it is in a tune you like and what you don't like... this takes a lot of practice, but i think anyone who is dedicated and willing to spend some time an energy (and money on speakers!! you cant mix down on laptop speakers...) can achieve this.

My question is about your orchestral intros like in Meditation, Believe or Messiah Rmx: Do you use samples or do you have any orchestral emulation plugin??If these are samples, where do they come from??

martijn has a bunch of sample-Cd's with multi-sampled orchestral instruments... (instruments playing single notes)with these instruments we write our own little symphonies...

there are plenty of packs like the ones we use, they usually come in giga or akai or halion (fxp) format.

Can we please have a bit more details about this "Drums in audio" business?

Are you talking about using hit points in sx instead of making rex files, or do you chuck your breaks/hits into an audio track and process them from there? Different audio tracks for kicks/snares etc or is it all processed within a single drum track?

What about things like envelope shaping? Can you do that in an audio track?

if its a break, we chop it up in an audio channel manually, separate the hits, spread them across tracks, process them individually etcetera. usually sent to a drum bus with some general processing - same goes for single hit sounds, apart from the chopping up bit.

envelope shaping: sx3 apparently has a wicked expanded audio envelope; the one in sx2 just has a fade in and a fade out - these are essential for drums though...the rest of the envelope shaping is done with compression.

are you saying with your Reese type bass sounds that they are not saw waves?? would you not use a wave? u said about recording your windows being cleaned. do you layer recorded sounds with waves?

some of the reeses are saws yes, some them aren't, some are recorded things, but most are based on synth base sounds, which can be anything essentially but do usually have a good spread of frequencies...we layer stuff, yes, and again that can be anything too, but we don't layer things by default. i think if you want a big and unmistakable mid/bass sitting right in front of your mix then keeping the sound simple (not layering for example) makes mixing it down a lot easier; albeit less interesting maybe....

Ive been finding it hard getting the right balance of frequencies within a (fucked up) Reese i hear some of your filter sweeps and wah type sounds. and try to recreate similar sounds. but i think that ure either using amazing filters or the sounds in the first place have certain sweet spots that when filtered sound phat. do you understand what i mean? could u clear this up?

i can clear it up to the extent that i think it just comes down to developing a taste in those things...amazing filters? we use the kontakt 2 filters loads, i like them but i wouldn't say they're mind blowing..same goes for sounds, of course sweet spots are important but i don't think theres any hidden trick to this apart from knowing your tools & taste....

Snap drums to the grid or rip the original groove and apply that quantization to other drum parts?

im not exactly sure what you mean, we hardly ever use the original groove of a break untouched - we just cut them to pieces, every single hit, and then write a groove with the elements and adjusting all the other layers/breaks/single hits etc to the same or similar groove...

I'm getting better at layering sounds for reeces, but have you got any tips for getting that real sense of speed and velocity to the way the sound evolves. A real ripping, tearing sound? I've had success moving from notes with glide, bandpass filters and generally just going up the keyboard. What say you?

mate, if you've had success with the bits you mentioned, all i can say is use that confidence to move on and try more stuff! there's really no set path to it - keep in mind, music and everything (IMO) comes down to 'dynamics' (a very simple thing really - changes in a characteristic over time), so your Reese/mid, if you want it to be fast-moving, fluid and meandering ( ) keep in mind what makes sounds sound like that, example; a formula 1 race car racing by - that sound has a lot of energy, and a lot of dynamics, and it isn't even that different from some d&b midrange...and that only is a big volume envelope (amplitude dynamics) and a Doppler effect... what im trying to say here is don't get overly into the tech side of it (which can blind you and your creativity - even though i must say i am a complete and utter GEEK! ), look at it from a broader perspective and see the similarities/ possibilities..

Tips for drops please!

drops.... get into the mind of your average raver - theres actually quite a bit of psychology involved i think; the obvious tried-and-tested kick roll plus rising pitch synth seem to always work, but make sure it fits what comes next...on one hand sometimes you'll be at a party and hear some dnb with a ridiculous build, ending in a drop with just some relatively weak beats and bass - this DOES work in a lot of cases though, the energy built up inside the crowd just needs to get out; as long as theres a snare theres a rewind in that case... ;)for good reference try and have a good look at pendulum's bacteria remix. apart from the engineering being absolutely ridiculous (yes, you heard me, ABSOLUTELY REDICULOUS. <3 you rob), the way it builds into the drop and the satisfaction the drop gives - every element in there has a purpose, down to the last bit of build the spectrum is full and even then it sounds so big when it drops (what i mean to say is; without going thin before the drop)...a few general pointers: high end madness (when used in moderation) gives the listener a sense of panic. use

this.another nice trick is to break down, have a lick playing that sounds like its the main lick, and beats (and sub, possibly) will only be added to it when it drops, then when it does, first just play that riff, then let loose your thunderous 2nd riff no one saw coming...the A/B thing at its most basic, but it can also be done to less obvious result..and an obvious one; make sure that right before the drop theres no bass as loud as your final sub; for example if you break down into a sub thing, with 2nd /3rd harmonics, you can let it play along, hi pass filter it up, and as the bass evaporates you add other tense elements to 'mask' it; then shift the whole emphasis of the build freq wise from lo to hi, while the sub sound it technically still there, then drop with all that yummy bass that people has subconsciously forgotten about ;)this of course is just a little list of things i think could work :)

When you say that your desk is more like volume control, are you splitting tracks onto channels and summing on the desk - i.e. just leaving everything as is (no eq, no routing etc) or are you only using 1 stereo channel on the desk?

our 'desks' (tiny soundcraft mixers) are just volume controls in the sense that we use them to control the volume of the monitor and headphone playback ;)we record/bounce internally.

How often do you side chain your drums?

well, side chain with what...? or side chain what with drums...?sometimes we use side chaining yes, for example compressing a ride loop with bass drum and snare as side chain feeds, or compress a group of things that way, but it's always a 2 element thing in effect (apart from when you mute your side chain feed, which we hardly ever do, except when you want to control the sidechainer separately from the sound its actually representing; like in a house tune, side chaining all that funk with the bass drum, but then when you don't have the bass drum playing, it'll not have the same dynamics, and in case you don't want that, you make a copy of your bass drums and use those as side chain feed but mute them so you can side chain even when its effectively not playing....right, did that make any sense?)

At what point did you guys start taking your production more seriously, at some point you must have been listening to your own work and thought "Fuck we could smash it if knocked out more tunes like these" Did any of you try to hold down a full time job as well as produce?

none of us ever had any full time job i think, thijs especially is very experienced in the fields of sitting on ass and not working , we have had part time jobs and of course a study is supposed to take 40 hrs per week of our time...but..you know ;)

i think when we wrote block control we did sort of sense that it could do well on floors and that we had broken new ground for ourselves, but we had been taking production seriously way before that; about 2.5 years ago we didn't have monitor speakers, and ever since we did get them (when we wrote silicon / tomahawk) we've been far more serious about mixdowns...but i think we don't usually think in terms of 'smashing it', the biggest satisfaction we get is from making something in the studio and feeling you've outdone yourself...that work ethic has been there since we first realized we truly loved making music. of course getting a good crowd response is great too, but its secondary to our own criticism.

What have you learned by dealing with dnb labels? ie things to look out for in a contract, things to look for in a deal, or things to avoid

it's a matter of getting to know the people you're working with for us, drum&bass isn't big enough for huge corporate style stuff, most of it comes down to dealing with deals made over aim, email, etc. when there is no contract, make sure you know and trust the person you're dealing with, if there is a contract, read it carefully, even though bigger labels have standard ones that have been tried and tested its always good to familiarize yourself with them. nonrefundable advances, percentage deals, licensing, its always written out so detailed and thorough in terms that baffle you sometimes and if they do, just consult someone who knows their law shit :) if you talk about advances / set fees always make sure you have a set date/'deadline' for it. in d&b things are very personal with a lot of labels, meaning you often act upon friendly basis with labels but don't let that get in the way of business! even if the guy putting your tune out is your best friend, and he's just bought a new house or whatever, you are entitled to your money and he's making money with your work, so no mercy there. if they are professional enough about it they will understand and it will not get in the way of your personal relationship

How loud do you set your drums in the mix? Around -6db seems good to me, but I wondered where you had them? How loud do you place your SUB in relation to the kick drum? The same volume or...?

we play that by ear, and freq analysis, it completely depends on the character of your drums and sub. also dB values don't mean everything since loudness isn't the same as amplitude..

Sometimes, I'll bring the bass up in my mix and the drums seem to lose power. Do I need to cut

with eq's more or is it something else?

that could be an eq issue, yes. it completely depends on the drums and sub and anything that might run on them grouped/in the master bus.

How do you add the clean but dirty 'crunch' to midrange sounds? I can make smoother sounds but have difficulty getting dirty sounds that sound right.

we pretty much covered this already, but i suppose eq'ing is key, especially after and before your od/dist etc plugins/fx, you can get rid of the mud and get the good bits out.

After cleaning up drums with eq, sometimes they sound a bit thin. Is this just too much eq'ing, or is there a process afterwards I am missing?

can be too much eq, can be that the break just isn't that strong after all when the dirt is gone...then you can for example lay off the eq a little, add the dirt yourself, or layer some more...a/b ing on eqs can be a great help in that case.

Let's say you've got a two step beat, with hats on the 8th. Aside from a shaker and ghost hits, how would you make that beat sound more pacey and fast?

we usually experiment quite a bit in that region...we record a lot of percussion/shaky Esq noises ourselves, process them, etc. this again, all comes down to dynamics. if all your 16ths are at one level, there will never be any dynamics. if you look at it like a curve from kick to snare - leading into the impact of the next or offsetting the groove by placing an extra accent...we layer quite a bit of percussion / shakers / whatever sounds nice. remember, 'drums' are just percussive sounds...anything goes!

So where do you stand on reverb on basses??? Do you leave your sub really dry and then use it on the mids and highs of the bass??? Also do you tend to always split your basses in to composite or different parts??

e don't reverb the sub, that's for sure we do reverb mids sometimes, to create a contrast in space, or to make it sound bigger and more 'epic'.

sometimes we split basses up, sometimes we don't, we do usually have more than one bassline/mid, sometimes routed into groups, sometimes separately...not much of a defined answer aye

I was wondering with your synths and stabs....I've been told to stick to centered... but i like nothing but a duplicated stereo spread version. Do you pan at intermediate levels in the field? ....and separate elements by EQ and stereo separation? I was wondering with your synths and stabs....I've been told to stick to centered... but i like nothing but a duplicated stereo spread version.Do you pan at intermediate levels in the field? ....and separate elements by EQ and stereo separation?

we make most noisia tunes specifically for club systems, and as we've been told lots of times that most club systems are mono, we usually have the main elements almost completely in the center of the mix, so it won't lose power when mono'd.

but a lot of times we'll apply some subtle panning in fx and pads, use some chorus or stereo imaging to get some sounds a bit wider... but everything we want to stand out in the mix is usually very near to mono.

usually our send fx are quite stereo wide (especially reverb) but we have low kills on the plugins so that we get no low end out of stereo phase

Which soundcard are you using ?

right now we have a couple of soundcards;in the main studio PC there's a emu (creative) 0404 soundcard which has some dsp functions but we're not using them cus the manual said they weren't really reliable when using offline bounces... ehrrrr good showbut it has good latency and good a/d d/a converters (same as the emu samplers)

How much time do you spend on mixdown ?

as you might have read before, we strive to have every sound sitting in the mix right, before moving on to add a next sound. this means we're basically mixing down the tune all the way till it's finished.

Any tips for shopping labels ?

make good tunes, and people will definitely sign them :)and also keep in mind that the first tune you send out to a label will be your first impression on them, so should you should be quite sure that the tune you send is quite representative of what you do, what you want to do, and what you can do. don't send demos with more than 3 tunes on them...a&r people have very short attention span

what is your vocoder of choice, if any?

ehm, the akai vocoder, and the one that comes with cubase.

with the messiah remix is the sub hitting on a saw wave on 1/16th note triggered with the bass drum?

no. it's a bunch of samples layered on top of each other and put in the typical messiah rhythm.... more or less

What sort of compression strategy do use for leads / subs? i.e. how would use compression in a long sub+Reese note? would use much if any to "glue them together" and how would each compressor be set eg. attack release etc

we hardly ever compress those, we limit them occasionally, but the amplitude enveloping we do either in the synth/sampler itself where the sound comes from, or in cubase itself, in the audio engine. a long sub / Reese note....well if you don't like the attack of the sound or would like to create some dynamics in the 'constant' part of it you could use a compressor, or you could set it up so that it effectively limits the signal, in which case i would just use a limiter :) (compressor with infinite ratio)

And kinda the same thing but how do you vary compression from short bass notes to long ones. i.e how do you balance initial punch with overall volume.

initial punch completely depends on what you combine the sounds with, if you want a sound to be very punchy on its own, you might want to drastically compress it, but then if you play it along with the beats it might get lost after the initial pop...that again is something that completely depends on what you want/have going...i (nik) really love compression and it took me quite a while to figure out how it can benefit your sound...like most things, in the beginning you love something new so much you use it very drastically, and when you look back on that later you realize the aggressiveness of your use of it, and slowly learn the nuances (or at least i tend to have that).....this of course concerns compression for me in general.

Do you ever use multi bands on the final mixdown? if not where do you use them?

multi bands; i love multi band compression on drums, although it can make them sound very dull and lose their liveliness - as i have learned as described above... ;)when used in the right places it can give a nice touch of control over your sound, we use it on drums occasionally and sometimes (for example messiah remix - on a group of drums and bass, basically the core groove of the remix - although thats not at all the entire reason why it sounds the way it does... ) we hardly ever use it on an entire mix, although it can benefit a bad mix, but only if there is no option of modifying the mix in its individual parts..

with a really grimey, noisey, or even poor sounding break.. (like those ones that have mad funk..) whats the first few steps y'all would take to clean it up? eq + x-noise?

a really grimey, noisy break is sometimes best left for grimey, noisy production like old school hip hop that really takes it's character from the imperfections of recording, usually it's very very hard to get a shit drum loop to sound good (to polish a turd, as they say) so it's always a trade-off between cleanness and the original raw dirty funk in some breaks.nevertheless it's usually eq'ing and some gate compression that helps most, sometimes breaks have very resonant frequencies which can be eq'd out, preferably with a dynamic eq (one that only effects a frequency when the frequency is there, instead of a normal eq that does a notch or boost on everything regardless of what happens)the gate compression effect can also be achieved by cutting up the break and shortening the hits, and so eliminating the noise between kick hat and snare, but this sounds very weird most of the time.pitching up breaks is a good one as well, because a break that has frequencies up to 7 kHz, has frequencies up to 14 kHz if you pitch it up an octave! (of course an octave is way too much, your snare will sound like a bongo and the kick like a low conga hehehe but you get the point)

whats the weirdest self recorded sound in a noisia tune.. and do you guys ever put your own vocals in tunes (fucked and twisted around or otherwise...)

we've done a lot of weird recording stuff (especially outside noisia life... our latest break tunes features thijs playing the funkiest of melodies on a piece of scrap paper he holds very tight before his mouth and blows over.... :D)

i reckon the weirdest recording sound in a noisia tune must be an effect sound we made for conscience, by rubbing a piece of cardboard against martijn's ass and recording it and reverbing it (sounds sweet!!)

do you guys ever put your own vocals in tunes (fucked and twisted around or otherwise...

yeah. could be anything. sometimes we sing stuff but unfortunately that always turns out cack unless gruesomely disfigured. vocal shaker and reverse crash hits are the shit tho

What bpm do you tend to write dance floor stuff at?

floor stuff: 172 bpm

What tricks other than ghost hits and percussion - so I suppose we're talking synth and sample lines - do you use to get a sense of speed in a track?

speed: a lot of it comes from the groove that exists between your main bass/mid/whatever you have playing and the drums, a 'fast' drum loop alone isn't everything, it's all about getting that groove there... that doesn't mean everything needs to be fast - again, 'dynamics' apply - if everything hits on the 16ths then nothing will be fast, it will just be a stuttering noise. accenting and offsetting the groove (basically applying dnb-tempo funk techniques...) is key here for us

i always wondered how you got that wahwahwahwah sorta bizness on the bassline, was that just clever pitching or what?that was probably some filters and some distortion. i don't recall the time we made it too well tho, long ago.

I am struggling getting a balance between the loudness of my tunes and other pro tracks...I always seem to make the break farrrr too loud and then the bass cuts through but then turning down the break doesn't help just makes my once phat break sound weak.....Any tips on loudness and the clipping lights on Cubase SX??

How do you get the levels right or roughly right between the overall loudness of your track??

that's a thing we do from the start, we generally start out with a drum loop, make sure it sounds fat, then add other elements in...and every element added is directly 'mixed down' into it as well..

loudness: there's a lot of ways to make something louder, gaining analog desks, limiting, clipping, etc...perceived 'loudness' is a very intricate thing though, since apart from the discrepancies between amplitude and 'loudness' theres obviously also aspects of sound that just 'sound loud'. putting a break through some massive distortion unit will make it sounds loud, because it squashes the break, it sounds like there is a lot of 'pressure' on the sound, no (head)room, also the frequencies it accents and the harmonics/overtones it produces are generally in an area that your ears are sensitive to, for example a lot of high end will never sound as loud to you as a lot of mid - your ears are tuned for human speech which generally sits from 100 to about 6000 hertz..what i mean to say is this is simply something you have to devote a lot of time to, find out what does what, what makes what sounds like what. what what.

getting the levels right is pretty much the same deal...one thing though: if you start out with your core groove and the things that you know will take up most space, then it should all fall into place more easily.

Keyboard?

korg n5, terratec tmp1 (x2), roland fp 8, korg sp 200

which reverbs do you like?

waves verbs, the ultrafunk verb, kjaerhus classic verb, dasample glaceverb...not really a specific favorite though.

But i have to ask u one more thing, most of the time when i am making tune over one month I started to dislike it and loosing the whole energy from it?Where do u find the energy and inspiration to finish it?

we have that too in some cases, some times we soldier on and it becomes something, sometimes we ditch it and bounce out the nice stuff...but when the core of it is good, then working on it is never annoying...although sometimes after you've finished something you'd already do it differently the next time, because you no longer like some bits as much as you did, but thats a good thing i think...

Whats Ur perspective/thought about the use of "haperingen" in your own tunes? With what intentions do u create certain edits in tunes.

Because we absolutely love it. We love the idea of hitting the listener with a bunch of 'new' (switch) sounds in succession, at a speed where every time he thinks he's got it, another sound flies by and he never gets to truly catch up...which should lead to some sort of '..........damn..!' sensation afterwards, like after watching a hi octane fighting scene in a movie, with quick edits and transitions, not being able to follow it all, but still getting the sensation that it was sick...also its a good way of keeping things interesting i think; when placed well it can really benefit a tune and its floor effect. i guess in general you can say we like to mess with people's heads a little. and also it's a bit of showing off i guess...plus working on a tune that just loops isn't fun, then sometimes you want to do something new, making sounds just for that one spot....it's great fun

2. How long do you spend time on those edits in tunes.

as long as it takes...usually quite long, considering the short nature of it, for example for messiah remix we made switches in separate projects, the one that comes in at 3.36 is one of those.

3. And what is your favorite "hapering" of all your own tunes and in general (non-noisia)?

general:these are the ones i can think of now that i really like (nik)

teebee - deceive - 2.11 - it sounds like the entire tune falls apart and comes crashing down onto a big pile of dishes mostly consisting of pots and pans....signature sickness.

konflict - the beckoning - 6.03 - maybe not as switchy and aggressive, but so well done. minimalism at its finest :)

typecell - bad illusions (bse remix) - 2.54 - very minimal again, but that stab...........chills down my spine

then there's some sick A/B things around.. but i don't think you mean those right?

noisia tunes:

right before the drop on vanishing point, drum roll plus Reese

meditation, just before when the second melody comes in and it stutters with the really fucked up low Reese and then the melody begins

moonway renegade, the switch with kungfu noises going into a mad drum roll into another kungfu sample... and the end of loop one with the 3 hit combo and shinobi 'huuyah'

Whats your guys' take on the master outs of Cubase and their representation of the true volume?

im not sure exactly what you mean, for us, when it clips its bad, when it just doesn't it's good, and when it sounds loud thats even better

quick ? about mastering.....dunno if u use soundforge at all,but SF and wavlab seem to give different WAV looks of the tune...if u peep in SF, should the body of the wav be squared off or no? i thought no but im being told otherwise latelyand if it clips a lill in soundforge but its not audible, how bad is that?

totally depends on what you want, don't blindly follow someone saying it should or it shouldn't; if you think it sounds good then thats what matters. clipping isn't necessarily bad; if its not audible then that part of it is cool, but you have lost your headroom

bout mixdowns....how much headroom is sufficient to leave for mastering?

if you really want to know ask a mastering engineer; who in turn will probably have their own preferences amongst themselves as well...try sending out 2 or 3 different versions with different limiting, no limiting at all, compression, etc and see what they pick. generally if the mixdown is 'open' (not squashed to fuckery) there's a lot more an engineer can do - if he thinks it needs something. and if you've got stuff on wax you will learn from it and every time you get a tune out you will have learned more about how you should mix down for vinyl.

What's your take on the whole Cubase Master Buss clipping lights?? You can run these lights red without any perceived clipping...Like a track I have on the go goes up to 5db over the 0db Master Buss and doesn't sound like digital clipping....Is this wrong??

How far typically do you guys go above 0db on Cubases Master Bussess??

we don't clip our stuff in cubase, maybe the occasional bounced element that was accidentally clipped, but never by intention.and again; if it sounds right it sounds right...if you think it doesn't sound bad clipping 5dB then fuck it, keep it that way :) but don't make a rule out of it for yourself and don't be reluctant to discover other ways or meet your own mistakes..

I'm having the most trouble with my intros how do u make an intro interesting? i usually have the beats dropping @ around 22secs, with bits of the main bassline or whatever to make the listener expect a drop a bit, but still surprise him/her when the madness drops (around 1:28 mins). and this minute of intro always seems boring as fuck

sometimes an intro isn't necessary at all, just some mixing material to go into the drop...

but let's assume you do want an interesting intro...

the key point is i think (very trivial maybe, but hey thats how we do):make sure everything you put in the intro is sick.pick a good sample, write a good melody... whatever.. every time a new sound comes in it should make you think "yes. yes yes. yes again." be very critical of what you put in there.

[ don't be afraid to use samples that you think are sick. there's a lot of people that start off that don't wanna sample because they want to be original artists. every original artist has a basis, and uses other people's ideas to express his own ideas (Mozart, Michelangelo, fucking tarantino does nothing but quote sometimes)sampling is a very good and effective way to get sounds that are sick, if you cant make them yourself ]

the intro is not by default introducing the elements of your tunes. your intro is something that prepares for your tune. have you heard sacrifice by us and upbeats? the intro has nothing of what the original tune will be like... but it builds into the tune quite all right (we think).all that matters is that the transition into your drop works, that means your intro can be anything - it should be viewed as something just as needful of filling in as your base groove - it's not just the drop's little brother with all the sounds in there.

if it gets boring, you can apply 2 strategies:1.add more (elements of what will be in the tune when it drops can make a good transition, but sometimes this is still really boring because you don't want to give away the final groove either...)2.be more critical of what is in there.

ad 1.listen to your intro, and add something where it gets boring. don't worry if this is something that doesn't come back later at all, it's good to have sounds that are just there to serve a one second attention span.

ad 2. we'll try to give some pointers what to look for in building a good intro, but this is really really hard and please don't take this literally as if we're saying: "here's how to make an intro" OK? this is just some tips that we can think of right now, that might help you.

a. loopability. make sure that the elements that you loop, are nice if they are looped. some things sound so beautiful when you hear them, but when repeated are fucking annoying! a lot of tunes use brilliant loops of things that wouldn't really stand out in a normal tune...b. progression. the intro should give a feeling of taking the listener upwards, taking it somewhere. try to have the listener think "where will this go....?" (melody is a very good tool to achieve progression, but it is also the classical and obvious way....)c. sound design. the intro is the space where you can freak out and show off cool sounds that you made/found. some of the sounds never fit on top of a drum loop but can be used in the intro. use sounds that make people go whoa. d. don't just turn loops on and off - you have the space, use it to give character to your tune you wouldn't be able to give it when its dropped. don't see it as something serving the drop, but as an identity by itself with a close relation to the tune when it has dropped. (this relation can of course be a relation of contrast....)

How do you mix together FAT BASS (neuro, not sub) and FAT DRUMS . thats bass and drum stay fat ?

umm, sometimes your drum loop doesn't sound too great on it's own, but when coupled with the bass sounds wicked...its always a case of writing them to fit together - fat drums plus fat bass could mean a shit combination..

you told before bout side chain compressor with BD and ride.but do you use side chain compressor between SUB bass and drums ? if not do you send SUB and DRUMS to one group for one compressor ?

sometimes we side chain kick to sub comp, but not often...sometimes we send them both to a group yes, more often but not by default at all.

I need some frequency advices, i know there is nothing like a perfect frequency, but what frequency range do u prefer for sub bass? and kick drum?

sub; depends on what its playing but we always try to make sure at least one big note of it sits in the 30-60 hertz area.kick; depends on your samples but somewhere between 60-100 hertz usually.

for kick drums, do u layer different drums and put each drum track into its own frequency range? And if so, do u do the same with Reece basses and breaks?

we layer drums yes; sometimes using layers for specific frequency ranges yes, but not always - splitting stuff up too much can make things sound very unnatural - but that can be a good thing too ... ;]reeces same thing applies, although we don't layer as much.

On that collab with Upbeats how the hell did you do that fucked up bass sound in sacrifice.. it sounds like a guitar really or rather guitar synth. What I mean how did you get this wikkid motion into it?

if you mean the high sound - don't know... nik went into his room and came back and played a sound he'd made, but i don't know how he made it nor does he remember it very well...it is based on a reesy sound though...

a tune like monster, how does it evolve? do u fit the bass to the beats or the other way around?

We always fit them to each other, sometimes you have something you like about an element you want to bring out / keep untouched and then you eq/process around that - but generally its a '2 way street' ..

about your bass-sound: with that way of working, editing > bouncing > editing > bouncing, aren't you always tempted to give it another round? when/how do you decide its enough?

when it's right it's right...you just have to know when it's enough i guess, sometimes you take it a little too far and then end up using an older version that wasn't too fucked up..we try to do stuff 'live' in the project as much as we can though

What do you consider the most important aspect of production to learn, try and get your head round when starting out?

Any advice on how to attain it?

getting to know sound - get monitor speakers. you'll notice you start hearing everything so much clearer in everyday life. when you understand a little bit about the physics behind it it's really nice, you notice things about all sorts of sounds you wouldn't have before....when you know your sounds and tools well, making what's in your head becomes easier. of course you always set out from A to go to B, and end up at C, but you will get to understand and anticipate the things that turn B into C and influence it

How many hours a week are you spending producing guys?

a lot...whenever we're not away/eating/sleeping/watching shit movies really...but i don't count my hours, and a rough estimation i don't want to make, because I'm scared of it's possible outcome. i don't want to know

just wondering how much you use samples as the basis for sounds as opposed to synthesizing them

for bass, pretty much all the time its sounds we made in synths and re sampled

i would like to know since you do you breaks audio do you find that it take you very long time to make the breaks right. As i make my breaks in audio as well. But When you chop in cubase and then arrange then separate kicks and snares etc then group then do it again for another break... have you guys found a method to speed things up any? as i like to layer and its a pain sometime having to make 3 - 4 channels per break and then arranging. I don't know i love it but maybe you guys had some other insight on this.

we don't have any way to speed it up i guess (apart from lightning quick *find-the-hit points-and-cut-them-all-in-one-wrist-movement* technique..)

and arranging can become difficult with lots of layers but thats where folder tracks are for ;)

also do you guys lay you bass in the audio as well? if so how to you make it sound smooth as i find theres always a lil dirt when layered in audio vs midi.

um, we haven't noticed any big difference between using a sound in a sampler or loading that same sound into the audio engine.... bass is a lot of audio bits yeah, but also midi now and then, depends on the sound

do you guys run all your kicks from all your breaks to the same group and then to a drum master?

No

also since you chop breaks in cubase.. do you just cut a fresh break every time you work? Ive been doing rex files lately even though i hate them because im so tired of chopping the same break over and over.... well thanks for the info and ill see you guys soon when you back here in the atl

yeah we cut fresh breaks. usually it starts with a break we found, and then we cut a few more, layer some more hits, etc etc... sometimes we spend days just making drum loops saving them for use in other tunes. that can sometimes make the creative process quicker..

those stompy sounds on sacrifice & meditation , are theymade urself with kicks and fx or whatever on it or are thosetaken movie samples (reworked) ?

you mean the big percussion things? i think one of them is from an orchestral bank, the other from a movie. both reworked to fit in of course

HOW THE FUCK DID U GAVE BACKDRAFT THAT SICK GROOVE ?

we wrote a bassline and then accidentally (or intentionally, don't remember) offset it by half or a quarter of a bar. we were struck with awe by it.

what do you feel/think when producing a tune?

do you try to describe some pics from your imagination or try to get really cool and original sound?

personally (nik) think d&b is very visual music, i make graphics/do design - quite often i try to make it look a lot like d&b sounds to me, for example stuff like this thing (old..!) , this sorta thing and stuff for people/labels. peep that directory for an extra bunch of unsorted things.

so i often see a lot of things when we do music (.........). not sure if the rest is the same tho.and of course sometimes you have a certain sound in mind, or just want to try some technique out you thought about when you couldn't sleep

How do you guys like having your spectral analyzer set up, ie, FFT Points, Windowing, Weighting and frequency bands?

let me go through the whole setup then;we have a separate laptop, that gets feed from the recording output of the mixer, our speakers get the monitoring signal.

the laptop only runs cool edit, we really like cooledit's spectrum analysis because:

1.it's a module in cool edit, you can set the window as big as you like, and it has lots of options...2.it has something that we seem to miss in lots of other analyzers: you can make 4 snapshot lines to reference to, so we load in a sample of a well mixed down tune, with loud bass, loud mid and loud high. now we can see whether our bass should be louder etc etc... this is very important! it's almost impossible to remember what a good tune looks like in a spectrum analyzer because little differences (3db or less) can be really hard to see but they are rather important!

settings:we have the FFT size set to 2048, which is rather poor, but it has a much better response time than 4096, above 4096 cooledit's analyzer won't even go realtime on the input signal, to use FFT sizes over 4096 you have to record the audio and play it in cool edit to use the analyzer

the other options you mentioned (windowing, waiting and frequency bands) are not available in cool edit's spectrum analyzer, and since we haven't found one that does the job as well as cooledit's does, we haven't really dug into the options that other analyzers have... :P

what vst synth are u using for Ur outta this world basslines?

we haven's found a synth yet that we use every time to make bass sounds... it's usually some detuned sound from some random synth (we have loads) processed to smithereens..so there's no "get yer instant sick morphing creature with painful venereal disease screaming in agony bassline right here right now" synth as far as we know...

when you mixdown in sx what do you put on the main line of the mixer do you use the usual vocoder that is there automatically?

or is there more than just using waves L2 to get the mixdown right

ehm i don't think you really meant to say we put a vocoder on our master bus?? because we don't on the cubase master bus the only thing that is there automatically is the uvr-22 (or something like that) a dithering plugin... it has something to do with making your sound perfect for 44 Hz 16 bit audio by adding some noises here and there, im not really sure what and why..if you want to know what it really does ask someone else.

waves L2 is just one of the possible limiters that you could use to get your sound louder, but of all the ones we've tried that's the one we ended up using most.

but as we have said before, mixing down doesn't happen somewhere in the end of the process of building a tune, we mix down everything at once, when we build drums, we make sure they sound good in the mix...

surely we have our occasional eq on the master (use a good one if you want to do this, a waves eq or another one you know is really high quality) if the whole tune has too much highs or not enough lows or whatever... but that is not our normal situation, normally there's just a limiter on the master.

how do you get your snare and bass drum sound so punchy?

i try do it using compressor with attack about 10-16 ms but when i do this i get a punch but lifeless bd or snare all fat are gone!

well, there's no set way; compression can help a snare that needs punch, but it can also fuck up a snare that already has punch enough; it's about balancing and not going for that one thing you think 'always works'.

You said your kicks hit around 60-100 - I find that particularly low - I usually went for 90-100 Hz before but Miklo, my production mate, mentioned they sounded a bit low (as fitted for breaks more than d'n'b) and since then I pitch my kicks to hit around 120-130 instead and find this leaves more room for the sub. Same pitch applies to the snare, so as to keep them in tune with each other. Any comments on this pitching and tuning business?

totally depends on what you want to do; if you like your bass drum there then thats fine :) depends on your sub too...obviously when your bass drum is lower it will have a different effect, play a different role in your tune - it all depends where you want it, but i guess its safe to say for us we hardly ever go lower than 60 Hz on a bass drum (but thats probably cause we haven't tried going lower yet ) pitching and tuning, yes we do that too, but not by default always trying to get everything in the same pitch

Do you ever use stereo separation on snares and other main drum elements? I feel it can sounds a lot wider and larger in the listening situation (and I have a feeling Teebee works a lot with stereo drums as well) but I am wondering about trade-offs with the mono-approach for the dance floor.. have you had problems with this or do you keep the snare and kick strictly mono and just use stereo reverb to widen up the snare a bit?

again, depends on the role you want the element to play; if you want unmistakeable presence, go mono. if you want more air/character, then stereo can be nice. a little reverb can make a break sound more lively; even while most club systems are mono (so we have heard..) it will still give it a (albeit flattened) touch of space. your beats (apart from the mono-bass-cutting-rule) don't necessarily have to be mono to come across strongly; there's a big space between stereo-drums-all-over-the-place-and-no-raver-will-be-able-to-get-a-hold-of-the-snare and mono-robotic-sounding-overly-obvious-dead-center-you-must-comply-drums.

Our whole crew consists of students and previous students (now working) - several of us doing computer science and information technology. I know all about making music when you're supposed to do academic assignments - works a treat, really. Just out of curiosity - what do you study?

nik - art school graphic design 2nd yearthijs - philosophy 4th yearmartijn - none (used to do composition and studio ting

do you sample films and dvds and other sources such as maracas / rain sticks? keys jangling? eggs breaking?

yeah, although the sounds you mentioned we would probably record ourselves instead rather than sampling a movie

do you feel insane when you walk to the shop after a six hour tweaking session?

Yes

how loud do you monitor at. roughly. like quietly or loudly. when you test your bass do you wack it up. and if so do your ears get really tired and do you take breaks. I tend to always change the volume as I produce to try hear differences in the high end etc.

we try not to change it too much, but we do; when doing mixdown and bass levels we usually crank it up for a bit, when working on sequencing it out we turn it down, trying to spare our ears as much as possible.

how many channels do you roughly have per track?

depends, ranges from about 25 to about 50 i think...never counted them tho.

once you re sampled something, do you put it into its own audio channel? how many audio channels do you run roughly?

also depends, but we run a lot of audio tracks in d&b, from about double as much as midi to pretty much only audio sometimes (not just cause we like audio so much, but also a lot of times cause of CPU issues...!)

do you have a big folder full of kicks, snares, and hats? and another one full of raw sampled breaks?

yes. bunch of hits/breaks we've collected