Reverb before compression (and why it matters)
Tonight’s session might need a drop that breathes. Max Chapman packs a handful of fast, usable moves into one video: reverb before your compressor so the tail still pumps, ghost kicks, filter automation on your returns—the kind of stuff you can try in the next hour. Also on deck: five free Steinberg plugins from the dawn of VST, including the first VST instrument ever, and a transient shaper that lets you saturate just the tail.
published today
Rast Sound Cusp Lets You Saturate the Attack or the Tail Independently(€39)
A transient shaper where you can dial in ±10 dB of attack or sustain shaping, then add three flavors of drive (Edge, Iron, Tape) to just the hit or just the tail. Mid/side mode and a delta listen button for surgical tweaking. Intro price €39 until August 30.
◢ learn
Bass Maker Synthesizes Sub Where There Is None
This plugin tracks your input and generates a new low end — either a static frequency you set, or one that follows pitch. Throw it on a thin kick or a bass with no weight, then match output level with the built-in analyzer. A walkthrough shows how to avoid making things just louder, not deeper.
▶ Max Chapman’s Drop Building: Reverb Before Compression and Ghost Kicks
A dense set of quick moves: duplicate the kick as a silent sidechain trigger so you get pumping without an audible ghost kick, put reverb before the compressor to keep the tail sidechained, automate filter cutoff on return tracks alongside the drum bus, and use Utility for volume rides so mixing moves stay intact.
Laidback Luke’s Short-Session Workflow to Beat Writer’s Block
He caps studio sessions at about an hour, walks away for 15–30 minutes when stuck, builds a quick bank of sounds sampled from vinyl, and uses Splice Assistant to drag loops into a sketch before arranging in Ableton. The rule: if you’ve been tweaking a sound’s EQ for 15 minutes, swap it and move on.
◢ the word
Steinberg Revives the First VST Instrument and Four More Free Plugins
Steinberg is giving away updated versions of Neon — the first VST instrument to ship with VST 2.0, back in 1999 — along with CS-40, Karlette, VB-1, and LM7. Neon’s digital edge still cuts, and the rest are a fun time capsule you can drop into a session tonight.
Kerri Chandler — Rain
the filtered piano stab that flips at the second drop · pairs with the drop-building tricks above
- technique: Time Stretch + Filter Grunge — Load a 16-bit PCM piano or organ sample, set poly to 1, lower the bit depth or sample rate until the high end crumbles, then route it through the onboard resonant low-pass filter. The filter removes the highs as you close it, leaving the chunky midrange bark. Run it through a Boss DS-1 pedal for extra filth.
- technique: The M1 'House' Chord Stab — The organ 2 preset and the piano 16' preset aren't just presets—they're the blueprint for every chord stab in early warehouse records. The key is transposing the sample up 4–7 semitones so the sample plays back faster, shifting the harmonic content into a glassier, tense register before you hit a chord.
- artist: Robin S — Robin S's 'Show Me Love' (1993). Allan George and Fred McFarlane built the whole track on an M1, primarily using the Organ 2 patch. The bass is pure M1 'Piano 16'' transposed down, proving the machine could deliver a dry, weighty bottom end without an external module.
🔮 Producer Horoscope (for fun) — Your hi-hat will try to take a solo. Let it, but mute the clap for two bars—that’s tension.
Happy tweaking, see you tomorrow.
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