Gate Presets In Vsts

duder5k · September 19, 2009, 10:57pm

An example of a gate preset:

How should they be used? For transitions in a song? Or just background padding or something? I mean, pads and strings, I understand how those should be used in a song… but the repeating gate sound, not too sure.

dblue · September 19, 2009, 11:37pm

There are no rules. Just do whatever you want. If you like the sound, and it fits with the rest of your song, then what’s the problem? Just do it!

duder5k · September 20, 2009, 12:51am

Yeah, that’s great, but I’m more interested in how they’re used traditionally, like if anyone knows a song that has a “gate” sound in it, so I can I have some kind of idea how to implement it.

vvoois · September 20, 2009, 9:48am

Well, gating can be applied to several track types, but usually, gating is used to make your track sound tight. just see it as a time-compressor.
You can always revert to Bytesmasher’s Gating tutorial to get the drift.

1uS5_K0jwho

Assuming you aim on basics regarding “traditional” use.

monograph · September 20, 2009, 2:27pm

I think the picture example was whats affectionatly known as a ‘trance gate’ - whereas you also have the other traditional type of gate (i alsmost said common or garden gate but it was probably a bad pun considering international users).

What a gate does is when a tracks volume goes below the threshold value - it turns down the volume - a fade out according to its hold (sustain) and release time (the release is where it actually fades)

Practical tradtional applications would be such as on a vocal track to cut out back ground noise where there is (almost) silence. This is very useful if you have a tendency of adding distortion to your vocals. (or indeed any instrument - you dont really want that background noise incresed do you? )

This technique would be applied to other tracks - particulary drums where there is large amounts of what should be silence but also a large amount of back ground noise (overspill from nearby drums or instruments)
In a traditional studio, if they have enough noisegates they would probably use them on every track (paticularly if you think back to the days of tape and its hiss).

Its useful to gate long reverb tails when you want that massive bricks in a concrete mixer percusion sound.

Also some noise gates have a ‘side chain’ or ‘insert’ . This is where you could gate one tracks audio by another audio signal. This is what the trance gate on many vst synths have superceded.

Johann · September 20, 2009, 4:23pm

I thought I understood it when vv said “just see it as a time-compressor”…

…but now I’m just confused!

???

Srsly though, the poster really does mean the trance gate thingy… “repeating gate sound” kinda gives it away… and unless it’s in some way fancy, you can usually create the repeating gate very easily with LFO/automation, so IMHO it is a better idea because it often gives you more options and control. As a minor benefit it also makes it independant of the instrument used.

But how you “should use the sound”… uhhh… just do what sounds good to you, as already mentioned. I for example use it as cheesiness enhancer

vvoois · September 20, 2009, 5:02pm

If i understand correctly, something similar like the old volume down slide effect that has been used in trackers since the '87 before it got used in the commercial music scene half a decade later?

(Renoise can do that trick in two ways…
Either with the LFO device, or like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>  
<PatternClipboard.BlockBuffer doc_version="0">  
 <TrackColumns>  
 <TrackColumn>  
 <TrackColumn>  
 <Lines>  
 <Line index="0">  
 <NoteColumns>  
 <NoteColumn>  
 <Note>C-4</Note>  
 <Instrument>00</Instrument>  
 <Volume>80</Volume>  
 </NoteColumn>  
 </NoteColumns>  
 </Line>  
 <Line index="1">  
 <NoteColumns>  
 <NoteColumn>  
 <Volume>80</Volume>  
 </NoteColumn>  
 </NoteColumns>  
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 <Volume>80</Volume>  
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 <Volume>80</Volume>  
 </NoteColumn>  
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 </Line>  
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 <Volume>80</Volume>  
 </NoteColumn>  
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 </Line>  
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 <Volume>80</Volume>  
 </NoteColumn>  
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 </Line>  
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 <Volume>80</Volume>  
 </NoteColumn>  
 </NoteColumns>  
 </Line>  
 <Line index="7">  
 <NoteColumns>  
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 <Volume>80</Volume>  
 </NoteColumn>  
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 <Volume>80</Volume>  
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 <Volume>80</Volume>  
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 <Volume>80</Volume>  
 </NoteColumn>  
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 <Volume>80</Volume>  
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 <Volume>80</Volume>  
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 </NoteColumns>  
 </Line>  
 <Line index="15">  
 <NoteColumns>  
 <NoteColumn>  
 <Volume>80</Volume>  
 </NoteColumn>  
 </NoteColumns>  
 </Line>  
 </Lines>  
 <ColumnType>NoteColumn</ColumnType>  
 </TrackColumn>  
 <TrackColumn>  
 <Lines>  
 <Line index="0">  
 <EffectColumns>  
 <EffectColumn>  
 <Value>FF</Value>  
 <Number>07</Number>  
 </EffectColumn>  
 </EffectColumns>  
 </Line>  
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 <Value>00</Value>  
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 <Value>00</Value>  
 <Number>07</Number>  
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 <EffectColumns>  
 <EffectColumn>  
 <Value>00</Value>  
 <Number>07</Number>  
 </EffectColumn>  
 </EffectColumns>  
 </Line>  
 </Lines>  
 <ColumnType>EffectColumn</ColumnType>  
 </TrackColumn>  
 </TrackColumn>  
 </TrackColumns>  
</PatternClipboard.BlockBuffer>

Not for individual notecolumns though…)

Johann · September 20, 2009, 6:06pm

Exactly that

http://soundcloud.com/boomtopper/tip-firefox-enigma

vvoois · September 20, 2009, 6:40pm

Double dare:
Cream of the Earth (Romeo Knight) : http://amp.dascene.net/downmod.php?index=60426
Released in 1990 by TRSI with the famous “Cebit '90”-Demo.

(yet didn’t we heard this from Xerxes live performed recently?)

tnFjE4URodM

monograph · September 20, 2009, 11:13pm

Is there a way i can turn up the cheesyness enhancer past FF or do i have to run two in series?