AMA submissions

1. How do you go about starting a new track? What’s the workflow usually like? 2. Other than fm synthesis, what other techniques do you often use for creating bass? 3. I was really curious how Nik made the basses from ‘Mundus Theme’ in razor, may we have a mini walkthrough? Thanks for the AMA!

how was the drum break in "the hole" made?

If you three could score any film (solo or as Noisia), which would it be?

Timmie van Engelen

Would you guys ever consider doing a breakdown video of how you made the Divide and Conquer remix?

I know you guys started your journey through tagging - did you guys go into drum and bass production with virtually no knowledge of music production? how did you guys define your roles as partners in the production process, did everyone do everything? do you all still?

Hey guys thanks a lot for this AMA! Here are some questions (feel free to go as technical as possible!): -How do you achieve such a clean and defined mid-range in all your tracks? Even when using reverb or distortion it is always sitting still and kinda “back there”, making space for everything rest. - (Speaking about reverb) – In some of your videos you use a lot of convolution as a way to bring “elements to life”. How exactly do you apply this method? - What’s your go to method(s) to make you basslines sound more organic and keep them distorted but "clean"? -At what sample rate do you work? And if at higher ones, which differences do you mainly feel? -There used to be a thread in some forums about a technique in which you guys bitcrushed only the high end of some elements to retain peaks and make them softer. Do you still/do it? And if so could you please give us a little more information about the processing? - Which influences/approaches (Martijn) retains from Noisia to use in Zonderling and vice versa (if so)?

Is there a strict chain of plugins/processes you use to achieve loudness (upto -6/7 LUFS, for example) in your final mastering or do you still experiment with each track? What inspired Sinkhole? One of the most underrated Noisia tracks (in my opinion). feels like your in a wormhole and the sound design is incredibly unorthodox, could you reveal any secrets or stories behind that beast? From various football tweets and random World Cup shout outs at DJ sets in the past, this leads me to suspect you guys are football fans, do you follow FC Groningen or other teams? Recently I stumbled across an amusing video at a punk gig, of a woman on her knees committing a sordid act on a happy-go-lucky punter. In all your years of playing out all over the world, what are some of the weirdest/shocking/bizarre/hilarious/tragic/shameful things you’ve witnessed in the crowd? A question for all of you individually, do you have a set-in-stone methodology and/or hierarchy of stages from start to finish when making a track, if so could you shed light on time-saving tips to get tracks done on a more efficient timescale? What kind of things really catch your eye when people submit demos? What track submissions from mere mortals impress Noisia? Did you ever find out who the culprit was that leaked Outer Edges? I remember a time when the concept of Current Value making jump-up would of been met with confusion and disbelief! Coming from a generation that remembers when Jump-up was relatively frowned upon and mocked by ‘tech/neurofunk’ heads, what contributors do you think have played a part in the sub-genres successful reemergence in the past few years? What simple adage would you give to the unknown producer? What are your guys favourite holiday destinations and why?

Scartip

Yo yooo. Not expecting all these to get answered though thought I’d throw a few out:-

Scartip

No Dead or More Limit? :D

Why do you call the studio Thys' studio instead of just "the studio"? Do you have one each in that building?

1. I’ve always been a huge fan of the stereo field of your tracks in how the sides always complement the mids. Aside from achieving a full stereo sound from the synthesis stage, what type of post-processing do you guys implement on the side information of your tracks to get them sounding so full and wide? 2. What are some of your favorite go-to distortion & saturation plugs in 2019? 3. What are some of your favorite distortion techniques you use to morph bass sounds into another sound entirely? Some distortion fx plugin recommendations would be highly appreciated. 4. Are you guys fans of Acustica Audio plugins? Looking into purchasing their El Rey compressor for my drum bus, but would love to know if you guys recommend anything else for DNB drum bussing? 5. Can you explain what phase bow-tying is and how to prevent it with kicks? THANKS AGAIN FOR DOING THIS AMA =)

Hello hi, first of all big fan! Just wondering, what happened to Behind Outer Edges? Did you guys 'cancel' it or, are the other episodes still going to be released? Also, how are Thjis parkour skills as of now? Can he still do the infamous bench roll from 2005? :D

Also...The Hole pt. 1... Are you striving to get a fresh identity more oriented on sound design and exp.electronic\IDM (just looking on the solo projects of Thijs) or you just think it's an experiment that end so good to release?

There was a concept behind outer edges? if yes it was separated from the music videos(mantra, collider)? what's your favorite books related to audio (if you have one)?

Foreign Beggars will part at the end of this year :/

Moonerium

What's your opinion on MCs?

Are you planning more collabs with Foreign Beggars? Do you think death metal lyrics would fit with neurofunk tracks and did you consider making something like that?

Are there explicit/discussed rules for what is and what is and isn’t a Noisia track/sound? Or is it just natural for what makes the cut?

Santino

Will the "Huilende Rappers" ever release a new album?

Looking at https://www.reddit.com/r/AdvancedProduction/comments/38e8ba/noisia_ama_for_radvancedproduction/ nik did art school, martijn studied music production and studio technology, and thijs studied philosophy. the college grant definitely helped us starting our careers. nik does almost all of the artwork for our labels, so he learned some useful stuff in school. martijn's study was more about traditional song writing (solfeggio) and production (recording), but it still proves relevant from time to time. thijs's philosophy study isn't really relevant to a music production career tbh :D

This man.... we all can run basslines through saturation/distortion but they're able to keep it distorted while being "smooth" to the ear.

Trash can make or break some neuro basslines but its hard to dial in those settings. Check out some of the convolution reverbs Worchestor amp stack is a good one in Izotope) - https://soundcloud.com/7atino/accident-1/s-GpVh9 (this is some of Keota's basslines ran through Izotope trash).

In your Noisia & Camo & Krooked video how exactly did you layer that bassline with those "chords" (assuming it may just be a 5th lead being played above the neuro bass? Frequent does something similar but your bassline seems like its not as wide lending itself to a much cleaner sound - https://soundcloud.com/frequentaudio/illenium-pray-ft-kameron-alexander-frequent-remix In the larger view of things what exactly do you guys do to your sounds that separates your tracks from intermediate/advance producers? For example if you took your drums,basslines,chords and exported by themselves they sound very "full"vs our tracks individual bus groups.

Do you find yourself using a lot of subtractive and additive EQ when making drums? Thanks.

Can Nik actually play that drum kit or is it just for show?

i would love to know how you guys get this unreal amount of lufs levels without sounding extremely distorted ? Do you mix into diffrent limiters and do a lot of parallel processing to keep it dynamic ?

Do you use templates to start a new song? Such as having all the different reverbs & delays prepared on the aux-sends or analizers on the master or something? Would love to know more if so :) Thanks for doing this AMA! Am excited for your show in LA in 2 days. Got my tickets ready! 💥

BERRIX

What do you think of the Kilohearts plugins?

Do you prefer club partys or festivals?

What advice would you give to your 21 year old self?

My friends and I have been wondering, for a while now, why is there that stutter in Leopard Slug at around 2:21? Is that a rendering mistake or was it intended and just sounds that way to us?

Can you talk about how you go about writing as a trio? Do you assign separate duties to different members, drawing on your personal strengths?

If you see the credits of big EDM names, you can see that Martijn also work as a ghost producer. Is it a kind of secret or which big names do you produced till now and how important is ghost producing for you? (Only answere, if this question is required)

Moonerium

Do you work on a new album?

Moonerium

What kind of jobs did you all have before you formed Noisia? Also, did you have a formal education in audio engineering or are you mostly self taught?

Akuro (James)

Thanks for doing this AMA! I've been excited to hear some more midrangey dubstep like Infekt, Moody Good, and Space Laces on Noisia Radio. What do you guys think about this flavor of dubstep? Can we expect some nasty 140-150bpm from you guys in the future?

Akuro (James)

What plugins do you find yourself using on almost every master? Also do you tend of do most of your saturation / high end excitement and such on the master or on each channel to keep things clean but crispy?

Hi Noisia, I hope you're all good, and thanks for doing this for us! Okay first question.. Who or what inspired you to get into making drum and bass from the start of your producing days? How do you find inspiration on days where your not feeling as productive but want to be? Would it be possible for you to give us a run down on the process of how you would start a new tune from scratch? Lastly, and this is a hard one.. if you had to try and name three of your top favourite tracks at the moment... what would they be? Cheers! :D

INVASION - MONSTER DUB CLUB

What's more important, quality or originality?

When & why do you ever use a linear eq?

BERRIX

Are you guys aware about the phase shifting that may happen when working with EQ? And if so, what's your analysis on the subject and how does it affect your EQ decisions? Especially with those steep 96db filter slopes, it does something to the signal. Even when the Pro-Q3 is in natural phase it still shifts phase. This phase shift info is available in the fabfilter manual guide aswell but check out this video it goes straight to the point: https://youtu.be/TiwxtXaSZbM?t=116

BERRIX

I know thijs has an alias called Thys. But I believe I've never heard an original from just Nik or Martijn. Kind of am curious to hear some solo dnb projects from all 3, is that available anywhere on the internet?

BERRIX

Do you put compression on the mixbus? If so what compressor are you using & for what purpose?. Is it to let those kick & snare transients cut through the mix a little better with a slow attack setting?

BERRIX

What is your approach to making your drums so alive and groovy? Do you work with the grid turned off or use some kind of groove quantizing?

So I've read pretty much all the Noisia basses eventually run through trash 2 by Izotope.. Could you do an in depth tutorials on how you use it? Or are you not planning on doing tutorials at all?

BERRIX

What sample rate are you guys running your projects in? Anything higher than 48khz?

BERRIX

With heavy dnb, do you ever catch yourself redlining the master channel & exporting the final version of a song? If so, please explain more detail on your approach & why

BERRIX

What earplugs do you use on stage?

BERRIX

What studio desk chairs are you guys sitting in for hours?

BERRIX

What are some of your favorite contemporary non-electronic artists?

What synth(s) did you use on the Asteroids remix?

What's your "secret" to keep the constant high quality in terms of art direction/style with Noisia. Not only but especially with songs?

Tom Finster

What was the trigger point for you to deep-dive into signal processing? I remember Nik talking convolution a while ago; a subject which made my brain melt at university...

Alex

how do you start working on a track?

What are your main go-to synths for making basses?

Some nogos and musts in mix and master?

Also, could you please share some tricks to reduce Dynamic Range in a track ? I know you guys are really good at it !

What are your favorite ways to work on bass modulations and what do you modulate most?

Hi guys, I'd really like to know which softwares you use for Kick & Sub mostly ;-)

Are you guys fans of riddim dubstep? You've had guys like Infekt on the radio show so I was just curious

BigClit

What's you guys' educational background? Did you study after high school or did you go straight into music production?

whats your go to Reverb?

do you pay attention to phase alignment between kick and bass? And if so, how?

Lastly, if music was not your life, what would you be doing? Luv you guys! Thanks for all the years of wicked art 🤘🏻

How do you correctly mixdown sub bass?

Müs Amseth

What is your favorite movie to watch when things are melting (or not melting ;) ?)

Don't know if you'd like to talk about this, but what are your private lives like? What pets do you have? Do you have a wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend?

What was your first music creation software?

What's your favourite ride in the Efteling?

What do you think of the DnB scene at this moment, is it any different from the scene ~15 years ago? If so, how?

When you play sets, you always use a launchpad with ableton instead of cdjs. What do the different buttons on the launchpad do exactly? How does your setup work? And in general, what made you make the switch from cdjs to a launchpad?

Last one, how are you guys getting those ever-present high frequencies (2khz-18khz) without overcrowding that range and sounding harsh?

What do u see in an artist while signing to one of ur labels? (i mean i understand tht the production has to be really kickass, but how do boil down to the vibe and how do u decide tht some artist has to be signed or u should wait for something more better from him/her)

Raghav Wagh

how do u get ur tracks so loud and upfront!!!

Raghav Wagh

I’d also love to hear about placing synth pads in the mix. Your synths sounds never sound EQ’d it’s incredible!

how do you guys approach distortion on bass? I find it tough to keep really aggressive elements sounding smooth like your music.

what techniques do you guys use for stereo widening?

Welk aspect van samen muziek maken maakt jullie het meest gelukkig?

What multiband plugins are you using and in which cases u use them ?

How you approach resampling?

Question: Boys y'all but y'all getting y'all girl something just because , what y'all get ? Girls what would you want ? How much more than the death?

Taking just your basic drums and neuro basslines what separates your professional end product versus our basslines/drums?