Since I saw some seriously horrible tutorials, here, on other forums, blogs & on youtube
Here's some advice for the people DOING these tutorials
1) Make sure the sure the title is not misleading
- If you're talking about kicks, you should do kicks.
- This is maybe the biggest epic fail you could do and also the most common mistake.
so make sure that the RTAS/VST's/AU's you're using are also available as AU/VST/RTAS!
if NOT, please recommend a synth/plugin as similar as possible.
There are SO many really good tutorials which get USELESS just because people ignore the fact that not every DAW has has VST/AU support. But you can rescue the "usability" of your tutorial by...
- What are you doing? And do you know why you're doing it?
Always keep in mind that there may be some people watching your tutorial who have never ever used that synth/daw/fx in their lives. Explain what you are doing, and do it as detailed as possible, that will help a lot & people who already know some basics can use the techniques on other synths/fx/daws/whatever in case they don't have exactly the synth you're using.
- so you're using symphonic choirs, all NI-instruments, and at least 4 different distortion plugins by 4 different providers.
Keep it real. Somebody who's watching your tut will NEVER have all of them and it takes a lot of time and money to get them. Use as much free and internal plugins as you can, as long as it fits paragraph 2 but never more than needed.
Examples:
Every DAW has an overdrive, a bitcrusher, several equalizers and other stuff included! you don't need expensive plugins to do that!
Not every DAW has an internal synth that can be compared to another internal synth, eg: logic, reason, ableton & cubase don't have the fabulous and amazing 3xOsc - envy!
Keep it minimal, you're just explaining a technique, the noob has to find "his sound" him/herself
- a reverb is a send-fx, not a insert. any channel clipping is a no-go. strange sounds suck.
If you're doing it wrong - don't do it. if you kick sounds muddy, your screech sound messy and you channels are clipping, you shouldn't be posting tutorials. People will laugh at you. very sad but true. /:
- Stuff I do when I can't find the preset: i try to figure the preset out by looking at it in the video/blog/whatever.
pictures and (HD
) videos are worth gold for a noob.
if you don't know how to film that or screenshot it, try explaining what the parameters should be like or how stuff should sound like
(before/after examples are awesome!)
(grammar-failz & typos can be eaten, they're still fresh & juicy
)hope this will raise the quality of "our" tutorial section a little bit :3
btw: sticky pls?
good one, cause some tutorials just confuse us more...
lol
). Im ok at basic screeches etc but yes how some of those fx sounds are created is beyond me, Alphabverb uses a lot of cool ones.