Focal invited me to Dean Street Studios for a Focal SM9 and Twin Studio Monitor Speaker Demo ages ago, but I just haven’t had time to write about them until now. 

When I walked into the room, the monitors were set up along with some NS10s like we have here for our mixing course. They looked massive with what I thought was an extra driver in the top of the cabinet! More on that later.

Focal SM9 with the passive radiator in the top

The guys (Focal, Focal’s distributors and Gav at Kazbar Systems) had a selection of CDs and asked me to take my pick. I chose James Blake’s album so I could check out how man these monitors are first with that ridiculous bottom end on that record. We flicked through his album until we found the tune, and on it went. All I can confirm from this test is that the sub bass in that record is just too low. I couldn’t really hear anything but the cones were violently flapping about along with the curious cone in the top. It was this point that I asked what the hell it was. It’s called a passive radiator, and all it is really is a speaker cone without the metal bits and magnet. It concave when idol and flaps in and out to low frequency. As for the rest of the design, the inside isn’t designed like a resonating cabinet, nor it it full up with absorbing material. It’s just a sealed box with crossovers, air and amps. You could say it’s neither ported or infinite baffle design. I do wonder what effect the negative sound waves that come out of the back on the speaker bouncing around a cabinet full of amps and crossovers arranged in no particular way. Also, the frequency range is 30Hz right up to 40kHz. 40 kHz!! When we’re born, we’d be lucky to hear 20kHz, and by the time you get to my age around 18kHz is impressive. Lord knows how I can still hear up to 19kHz with the hammering my ears have had over the years! Anyway, what’s the point in going up to 40kHz? At over £4k, they’re not cheap. Are they that expensive because they go up to frequencies twice what a human can hear? I’ll be interested to see how many they sell.

They sounded good when they played something a bit more normal from what I remember. They had some Focal Twins on the floor of the control room so I asked them to set them up too so I could A/B the pair. I do remember the twin sounding not too hifi which is what I get form my Genelec 1031s which I liked. 

Focal Twin and SM9 side by side

One thing about the Focal SM9s that I liked is that they work in two modes; i’ll call it ‘full fat’ mode which is 3-way and ‘diet’ mode which is 2-way. In a nutshell, ‘full fat’ mode is all the speakers on full steam ahead, and ‘diet’ is a neat cut down version where not only the main driver is turned off, the crossover is altered so it’s practically like having an extra pair of near field monitors. I’m a big fan of that, the only problem with it is that you have to change the monitors individually with a fiddly switch on the side of each cabinet. I know if I had that, I would use it half as much as I would if I could control it easily from my listening position with an ‘alt’ button in the middle of an SSL for example.

To summarise, they sounded okay but they didn’t blow me away, it was difficult to tell and I didn’t instantly try and justify £4k in my head for some studio monitor speakers that I don’t really need. I’m a bit scared of the never-seen-before design with that weird passive radiator because I don’t understand fully how it works as I do infinite baffle and ported designs. There’re faults or at least draw-backs with both the infinite baffle and the ported designs, but I do worry about what happens to those negative sound waves in this design. I guess the jury’s still out. I need to get Gav to get me a pair to borrow for a while and will report back. Watch this space…

Congratulations Adam Heaps who won Resident Advisor’s Ableton course competition with us. He’s nearing the end of it now, so we thought it’d be a good time to catch up with him…

Congratulations on winning the Ableton course. How did you find out about it?

“I often check the competition bit of RA and it was there. I wasn’t aware of Garnish School of Sound until I saw the competition (which I was lucky enough to win). I was really pleased to win the main prize, and I have had some decent luck on their competitions over the years, as it is a site I am constantly on.”

What made you enter? Are you a DJ, producer looking to learn Ableton, audio enthusiast…

“None of the above! Ableton is software i’ve been aware of, having known friends use it and reading various articles about similar products, but I hadn’t ever considered learning any music production software before. I have a passion for music, that’s about it really! Most of the other students on my course are from a DJ or songwriting background, but everyone’s on the same level, everyone is loving learning and gets on really well.

I am always looking to find new skills and techniques, both for learning and appreciating music too. I didn’t expect to win the competition though, but I am very glad I did as I always seem to be either practicing or recording on Ableton now!”

Resident Advisor is the no 1 dance music magazine. How do you think they have got it so right for so long?

“I have been using RA for some years (I believe they are having their 10^th anniversary), and I am on the site a lot. The event listings section was initially which brought me to it, and you can see how much it has grown too as I have found venues in quite a few different countries – the furthest was a club on a beach in Ecuador, watching Damien Lazarus. Shame to be back in London really…

The forum is always strong with the technical help, as are the news and reviews. There is a lot of information on there, especially as some articles seem to go back many years, making it easy to search specific topics. Also, when I come across a new DJ who impresses me, I read up about them on the site without fail.”

About the course itself, how did you find it?

“As previously mentioned, I was fortunate enough to win the competition through the RA website. Having now attended Garnish School, I can say that I have learned so much in such a short space of time, and I am constantly trying to build on and at the same time putting my ideas to the test.

Garnish has a relaxed environment, which definitely helped, as there are plenty of questions to be asked! I appreciated the fact that there are tutors from various different backgrounds (including producers, sound engineers, and instructors who are certified by Ableton too). This gave a broader approach to what Ableton is capable of as well as knowing there is more than one way to achieve what you want. The warehouse adds to the vibe of the whole experience too because it’s not just a school and you feel that; there’s always a record being mixed or produced somewhere in one of the studios. There’s a buzz about the place, everyone’s really friendly and you never know who you may bump in to.”

So is there a next chapter on your music production journey?

“There is now! I’ll continue making new tracks from scratch, as well as recording mixes too. There always seems to be more to learn on the Ableton software, so will definitely be using it as much as possible and trying out new ideas.

As I have been building up my library of sounds and beats, and having played with some friends, I want to hopefully look in to live performance too.”

Larry Holcombe is our teaches mixing and mastering and week three of the EDM course where he shows he learners how to make Dubstep in Massive. Massive is the first tool that springs to mind of you want to start learning how to make Dubstep. As you progress, you will want to start using other toys too including Logic’s ES2 and maybe some outboard gear like a Nord lead 2. Larry shows you how to make a Dubstep bassline in Massive and then the exact same patch in Logic’s ES2 demonstrating that you don’t need Massive.

Larry Holcombe

This is the new Rebel Sonix video mixtape spring 2011. The mix was put together using serato video and the vj software resolume. The boys use an edirol v4 mixer to crossfade between 2 video sources in the same way that a DJ mixes between 2 audio signals using a Dj mixer. Larry Holcombe uses serato video to mix in rebel sonix videos and scratch in video samples. Phil rebel sonix uses resolume to vj live on tracks that the boys don’t have videos for. They even go as far as to make custom videos for other people’s tracks in their mix or produce new remixes of their videos! If you would like to learn how to make Dubstep, give us a shout and we’ll try and engineer it so you get Larry!  http://www.vimeo.com/24094102

Electronic Dance Music | How to Make Electronic Dance Music | Act Natural… by Steve Powell

I personally feel that you can break electronic dance music (EDM) down into three things when learning how to make dance music; structure, sound and soul. The soul you put in is a mixture of so many things like groove, expression, the spirit of a track, it’s emotion, subtle timings and a million more extras. At the end of the day however, soul is a fairly unexplainable term. It’s just there, you feel it, love it and that’s about… it. Musical structure (as an analytical term) is a massive subject and is itself a part of the soul of music whether it’s the way that a breakdown happens in a house track or the tiny fill a drummer plays just to vary the beat. Sometimes the devil is in the details, sometimes it’s in the master plan, and hopefully both. For this article however I’m going to talk about sound, particularly in electronic dance music 

Electronic dance music (EDM), against what some people think about it’s ‘mechanical soullnessness’ really did grow out of spirit and love for the music. Detroit techno, Chicago house, early rave and hip-hop were all born, not out of machines, but people wanting to express themselves and make music. The fact the styles developed as they did was far more out of the faults, limits and idiosyncrasies of electronic equipment than anything else, but develop they did. However, digital sound has always been a little lacking (far more lacking at the beginning), compared to analogue, and analogue even loses out in terms of detail and richness to real world acoustic sound (any analogue-heads out there shouting and waving sticks can argue with me at a later date). However, synths produce sounds which cannot be made in the acoustic world which is their real strength; they are sonically unique. This exploration of other-worldly digital sound does have a price tag though; it can’t quite stand up against acoustic sound in terms of richness, depth or quality. If you have ever played with or done live sound engineering with a combination of acoustic and digital sound sources you will know how difficult it can be to keep the dynamics of the digital sound in line with the acoustic instruments. Simply enough, acoustic instruments will always have more punch and clarity than the sound produced by a computer. So if you can’t beat them, join them. Here’s a few ideas of how we can take this and use it to our advantage.

If you were to make electronic dance music (EDM) such as house out of natural sounds like thumps, squeaks and crashed from the real world, it would be pretty quickly put under the heading of ‘avant-garde’ house more than anything else. That’s not to say house never has acoustic sounds in it, they frequently do, especially the piano (or an emulated version of) but in general they are made out of synthesised sounds and electronic drum kits. Why? Because that’s part of the brand, and you can only push the sounds so far before it becomes re-branded. I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be done, I’m all for more experimental styles, but it might not be what you want if you’re trying to make a dance-floor house record. The trick here is to take what you want from acoustic sounds to support other bits of your track. An example for you…

One of my favourite types of kick drum is that hollow, knocking type that seems almost dead but still has richness. The material most often associated with that timbre is wood, so simply enough we try to get that sonic imprint into the track by layering it into the drum. For this exercise you need a microphone, a microphone cable and an interface. I’m guessing you already have an interface which hopefully has a mic input. To begin you really don’t need an expensive microphone, try the classic Shure SM58 to start with. It’s solid, doesn’t require phantom power, has decent sound and survives pretty much anything from being dropped in a puddle to being whirled around some young punk vocalists head. Not that I suggest you attempt these things. Find something wooden and heavy such as a table top, bed post or door. Experiment by whacking it with a number of different objects and recording the results (basic recording guides can be found anywhere on the net). Then, in your audio editor or DAW, try putting the recordings together with kickdrum samples, making sure the hit point exactly coincides (zoom down to sample level for this). Try compression, EQ and level changes to change the way the two blend together. Tuning one of the samples to balance better with the other can really help, just use whatever pitch changing plug-in you have to hand (remember that the more extreme the tune, the more it degrades audio quality so be slight if possible). Also, change the envelope with which each sample plays so that you have the initial hit of the wood with the tail of the kick drum. Trying all of these techniques can help you come up with a unique sound which can help compliment or oppose other elements in the track, or simply give a different edge to it. In this case it can give a tribal feel to some of the drums, very effective with toms, congas, bongos and shakers.

Another line of attach from the natural world can come in the line of more sustained sounds. Instruments such as the double bass can do wonders for improving the richness and solidness of bass-lines, but having a double bass to hand is not always possible, so a good sample pack can help out with that one. There are however plenty of sounds to record free and conveniently. Try dragging something across a surface: pencil across paper, a jam jar lid down wallpaper or the squeak of a fingertip across wet glass. Record it, drag it into the DAW and mess with it. There’s a huge world of sounds to be used, looped, layered, reversed, distorted or FX’ed to death, and whilst they may not immediately appear to be completely typical to the genre that you make, real gems can be found which make your music stand out from the rest and be truly unique. One other interesting tip is convolution. Convolution reverbs such as space designer in Logic uses recordings of real world spaces to create virtual ambiences for sounds to be artificially ‘played’ in. These recordings known as ‘impulse responses’, are recordings of starting guns or popped balloons in good or interesting sounding spaces. However, there is nothing to stop you dropping in any sample you like as an impulse response to impart some sonic character.

The moral of the story is to try new things. Making interesting sounds can be as easy as recording yourself scream and messing around with it in your computer, and it can be easier to do than learning how to use a new synth.

Dave Garnish runs the boutique music production school Garnish School of Sound, with sound engineering courses for all levels

Article URL: Electronic Dance Music

Dance Music Production – Creative vs. Technical by Steve Powell

What does it take to make a record in terms of equipment? A four track? A Mac Pro? An SSL4000E? What people use and how they use is of course crucial to the quality and type of dance music production that’s made. The equipment heavily dictates many of the attributes of the music that’s created, probably far more than many people realise. It was commented by one well known electronic music producer that “I realised that I was getting bored with a lot of the music I was hearing; everything seemed to sound the same structurally. After a while I realised it was because the first, and often the following sections of a piece of music were all the size of the default Pro-tools window.” Case solved it seems. Similar occurrences are frequent such as the abundance of house tracks that many labels receive all being at the default Logic 120 beats-per-minute tempo. This is even before having to get started on the continuous use of presets that come with synthesisers, and how often samples from well known packs are woven into received tracks.

To make music that is different and unique, especially with computers, you often have to be more technically active and aware. A few examples of this are learning more in-depth synthesiser techniques, becoming more familiar with some of the more involved parameters and idiosyncrasies within your DAW and developing your knowledge of how to apply more advanced music theory to productions. Truth be told there are some people out there who can take thirty year old sounds and make new and interesting creations; there is a whole chip-tune community out there that can attest to that. However, writing music with sine-waves and bursts of white noise may not be your thing, and if you composed a draft for a romantic score with the love child of Super Mario Bros and Venetian Snares you’re unlikely to get the get the contract. So… to change your music to be more interesting, to sound better and maybe to give you the edge over the person vying with you for that contract, record label or high profile DJ slot, it may be time to delve a little deeper into some technicalities.

However, there is another consideration that presses upon a musicians, as well as everyone else’s mind; time. Presuming you are a beginning or amateur musician, or even a more established one, it’s pretty likely that you still have a job involving non-musical activities for your main source of income. Therefore, your time is of utmost importance, and to get the best out of it you can, a good balance between learning and doing can be very helpful. I would personally argue that doing is more important than learning, because you automatically learn as you do, but you don’t necessarily do whilst you learn. It’s also important to make the distinction between doing something that you have learnt to do, such as writing a track with arpeggiated notes after having learnt how to use an arpeggiator, and learning something new in a fashion that optimises the speed at which you learn and therefore puts that practice into use. A well established example of this is learning scales on an instrument such as the guitar. Left to their own devices, many guitarists will learn over time what notes to play in a certain fashion at the time they feel best. If we had a look at a guitarist fifteen years after starting to play, chances are that we would find them playing the major and minor scale attuned into whatever genre they like to play. This way of working is of course a perfectly legitimate way to learn and comes very natural to some. Stevie Ray Vaughan famously never learned a scale in his life and was one of the greatest players that has ever been, but that doesn’t mean his way is the best way for every instrumentalist. Say we took the guitarist in my example at the beginning of his playing life and taught them the major and minor scales, modes, pentatonics and more exotic scales. Learning these along with techniques and exercises such as speed picking, string skipping, playing to a metronome and sweep picking has been proven to be the most effective way of learning the skills to play as an all-round guitarist. Result? A better player, quicker. Before anyone objects to this by saying the music should come from the heart, I agree; completely and absolutely. But it’s better to be a playing from the heart with great technique than playing from the heart with average technique.

Lets take this concept and apply it to a computer music example. We have someone who has been DJ’ing on decks for a few years. Having started with techno and house, they’ve veered slowly onto more experimental beats and Intelligent Dance Music (IDM), and after becoming interested in the prospect of using Ableton Live for Live DJ sets, decides to make the jump from vinyl to digital. Also, our budding laptop performer fancies making a few loops in Ableton to merge into the set along with tracks by other artists. Now, someone who is knowledgeable with computers should be able to install the software, launch a new project and know how to save and load with ease. Also, the concept of a digital channel strip, EQ and FX should come naturally to a DJ. Upon initiating their first project, our newbie delves into the program and works out after much clicking and frowning how to create a new clip, open an instrument, route some audio and midi, flip between and clip and arrangement view and draw some notes. This might well have taken quite some time without any help at all, even with Abletons on screen tips and help. The quicker solution would have been the quick-start guide or the in-program tutorials. However, these are basic concepts and have still taken some time to work out. Take warping or complex signal routing for example, how long would they take to work out with no guide at all? There’s a simple answer; spend some time learning and find the answers. You can pretty much guarantee that the most successful and knowledgeable musicians today are still learning, referring to the manual, watching tutorials, posting on forums and have a list of things they want to learn as long as their arm.

Having established that some learning time can be good for us all, I have a warning from the other side of the fence. It’s far too easy to get bogged down in the technicalities. It’s also easy to get so involved in learning something or doing something technical that you forgot or lose track of exactly what you are doing it for. I work with Max/MSP and love making my own instruments and tools for music, all of which has musical purpose; to make this sound, that sound, to be able to control this synth in a particular way or whatever I want to do. However, there have been times when I suddenly realise that I’ve been coding for days and not actually made one sound and that what I set out to achieve has become lost or blurred in the process. I’ve also known guitarists that have practised scales so much that they don’t write a song or learn a new lick in weeks, just like I’ve known Ableton DJ’s get so lost in making perfectly warped, catalogued and levelled libraries that they practically forget how to mix.

I hope I’ve given a heads up to a very simple but sometimes difficult to balance element of the musicians life. Whatever you want to achieve musically, knowing what to do when can be one of the most helpful insights of all, so have a think about whether you spend your time best to get to where you want. I suggest trying three things. One: Make sure you learn a little regularly and put it into practice. Two: Remember that it’s all about the music and never forget why you’re doing something technical. Three: Be aware that even though lessons, exercises and practising can be tedious, it is in fact being creative, simply because it’s part of the process that creates.

Dave Garnish runs the boutique music production school Garnish School of Sound, with sound engineering courses for all levels

Article URL: Dance Music Production

Get your music heard by A and R at music management/label:

Antony Meola is the A&R manager at Upper 11, they are a top music management company and record label in London. He’s been in touch with me asking if I could recommend any hot up and coming producers at Garnish School of Sound to collaborate with existing producers on their roster working with artists both on and outside of their company. This could end up with you having a management deal with them so I have decided to offer this opportunity out to all of my supporters. I can’t forward off all emails myself and we can’t have email addresses published, so to get round this and spread the music career furthering love in as much of an automated way as possible, I have set up a Gmail email address which will automatically forward to Antony’s assistant Jess. Please send your  MP3′s, Myspace URL’s etc and contact details to garnish.aandr.forwarding@gmail.com

He is looking for all genres as long as it’s master quality sounding. I think that’s why he wants to hear my students He is looking out for remixers too which is what I think a lot of you dance music producers might be more interested in. I will keep an eye out and give feedback where I can – I’m quite looking forward to it actually!

I’m taking a bit of a risk posting this on all of my social media because I know not all of you have done a course at Garnish School of Sound so PLEASE only send in mixed material you think would pass on a UK club dance floor or on the radio. Antony is looking for good production, If he doesn’t get much of it, he probably wont ask me again or even ask me to stop the forwarding. I’m afraid I don’t have time to listen to all of your masterpieces and only send the quality stuff on to Jess so please take this into consideration, because if you don’t, it could spoil it for others. Of course I do appreciate that one persons idea of master quality is not everyone else’s but Jess knows what to listen out for. This is really an experiment which I hope goes well and i’ll know quickly if it isn’t. I just wanted to offer this opportunity to all of my supporters.

Good luck and please let me know how you get on – I’m really looking forward to hearing the success stories!

Mixing vocals and Audio Compression in your home recording studio:

I’ve just got a youtube channel organised and my first video is all about mixing vocals using audio compression in your home recording studio.

I only scratch the surface and I think I need to work on my presenting skills but I played it to a musician friend of mine who said he learnt loads about mixing vocals using audio compression – that’s the important thing I guess. I keep saying that there’s no time and don’t explain why. There was not enough time because youtube only let you upload a maximum of 10 minutes at a time and not because my dinner was on and I didn’t want to ruin it!

In the video I go through the various hardware emulations, talk about the threshold, ratio, attack and release parameters and the gain reduction meter of Logic Studio 9′s built in compressor. How I get my Lead Vocal to sit in the mix. When not to use a spectrum analyser and use your ears!

As I mentioned in the video, we spend 4 hours on audio compression in our mixing and mastering course now here at Garnish School of Sound so if you get the feeling I’m going too fast in the video, I probably am and now you know why!

Watch the video HERE

Garnish School of Sound press release

The new GARNISH SCHOOL OF SOUND where we teach you what you need to know in the way you learn best.

22/2/11 London

The new music production school, Garnish School of Sound is the only school with six week courses that teach you all you need to know to make great sounding tracks. We use cutting edge, real world equipment in a fantastic new facility in London’s home of music, Camden. With tutors whose clients read like a who’s who of music of the 21st century, this is surely the start of something special. Managing Director, Dave Garnish has nearly twenty years experience in the music industry working in all kinds of creative areas at the highest level, and has brought together a team which represents the best experience and knowledge for music production.

Dave Garnish says: “I don’t believe anyone can learn Ableton or Logic in a weekend, but neither do you have to commit years of your life to learn all you need to know. The feedback from people i’ve worked with over the years has been fantastic. The learners can also look forward to some pretty special masterclasses with some industry legends”.

“This is the school London has been waiting for” – Norman Jay MBE

“Your EDM course look awesome” – Anthony Middleton (Audiofly)

“Dave Garnish’s work and knowledge of music is outstanding” – Mike McCormack Dep. MD Universal Music

Their EDM (Electronic Dance Music Production) course caught our eye;  it includes an introduction to synthesis and track construction as well as sampling & beat making. You are shown how to create massive sounds using Massive and other synthesisers along with specialised synthesis techniques. You learn about groove and rhythm, arrangement, FX and lots more. Other courses feature everything from lyric writing to mixing & mastering. All this on a variety of platforms which all have their own beginners dedicated six week course.

The school offers a grand new central point for encouraging the talent of the world’s producers, musicians and DJ’s. With a philosophy that learning should be informative and exciting, the school offers an experience that leaves good memories, instills a whole new set of skills and gives a bucket load of inspiration. The courses reflect this ethos by providing a balance between how to use the tools of the trade, and how to put these tools into practice.

The class numbers are kept low making sure that during workshop time everyone gets plenty of one to one time from their industry active professional. Using an educational practice known as the Spacing Effect, students learn during the class, rest and recap over the next week and then come back for another session fresh. All courses are over six weeks and cost £399

Your can find out more by visiting their website at www.garnishschool.com or calling 020 7682 1082. Also, they have a great blog with some great articles and free tips, tricks and videos: www.musicproductioncourses.net