This month, we’ll tackle transition effects — sounds that emphasize the beginnings and endings of various sections of club music arrangements. Back in the day, this role was played by drum rolls and crash cymbals, which are tried-and-true but a trifle dated by today’s production standards.
Nowadays, there are cooler methods for setting up a breakdown or a new section of your remix. One of the most popular transition sounds is the “whoosh,” a synthesized, four- or eight-measure crescendo followed by a long release.
The classic, old school whoosh uses a noise generator as the sound source, swept by a slightly resonant lowpass filter.
A more modern approach is to render a long reverb tail, then reverse it and copy the reversed portion to the beginning of the original tail. The nifty thing is that you can use this on any type of audio material — drum hits, vocals, horn stabs, you name it.
Let’s take a closer look at these old- and new-school techniques using Propellerhead Reason and Ableton Live. Instructions for each step are below the corresponding screen shots. Click each screen shot for a larger version, and click the text in each step for an audio example of what the process sounds like at that step.
Old-School Whoosh
Here, we’ll use Reason’s Subtractor to create the sound, since this synth has a classic configuration that applies to almost any hardware or software synth.
Step 1 (click for audio). Initialize Subtractor’s settings. Then turn on the noise generator and turn the mix knob fully clockwise so only the noise is heard. Switch Filter 1 to highpass mode and roll off some of the lows.
Step 2 (click for audio). The sweep for this whoosh is created by automating the lowpass cutoff frequency of Filter 2. Once you’ve activated Filter 2, lower the cutoff to about 40 to 50 percent and add a touch of resonance to emphasize the sweep.
Step 3 (click for audio). Using Reason’s track automation, select “Filter2 Freq” and create your sweep by changing the cutoff as the noise plays. In this screenshot, the first four bars create the rise, after which the sweep fades for the next four measures
Step 4 (click for audio). By adding touches of delay and reverb, you can expand the ambience and width of the sweep.
Step 5 (click for audio). For a more overtly sci-fi sound, increase the resonance of Filter 2 to about 75 percent. Beware when adjusting this parameter, as too much resonance will take off your head and/or scare your cats.
New-School Whoosh
Since this technique relies on audio, we’ll use Ableton Live to demonstrate the steps. Any full-featured recording app will have similar tools, so if you use Sonar, Cubase, Pro Tools, Logic, Digital Performer, etc., the principles will be the same.
Step 1 (click for audio). Live’s Drum Machines collection includes classic Roland sounds, so let’s start with a TR-909 snare. Create a clip four measures long and add a snare hit on beat one.
Step 2 (no audio example). Now, we apply the reverb necessary for creating our new-school whoosh.
Step 3 (click for audio). Turn the reverb wet/dry control to maximum and increase the decay time to 15-20 seconds (longer if you want a 16-bar sweep). From there, right-click to freeze the track, then right-click again to flatten it. The result should look like the above screen shot.
Step 4 (click for audio). Next, move the start point to beat 1 of bar 5, and crop the clip down to four bars. After that, increase the clip volume accordingly.
Step 5 (click for audio). Use control-d (Windows) or command-d (Mac) to duplicate the four-bar reverb clip. For the duplicated clip, use Live’s “Rev.” function (pictured here) to reverse the sample.
Step 6 (click for audio). Now you’re ready to create the whoosh. Copy both clips to the arrange window and place them on a single track, with the reversed sample followed by the forward sample. Hit play, and you’ll hear the two samples with a little dip in volume (which we’re about to fix) at the peak.
Step7 (click for audio). Trim the two samples slightly. Take a beat or two off the end of the reversed sample, then cut the same number of beats off the beginning of the forward sample. Repeat this process until it sounds right, then butt the two samples together. The result should look like this.
Step 8 (click for audio). We can now apply some effects to individualize the sound. Live’s Erosion, Overdrive, and Redux are good for grunging up the sound. Modulation effects are good for adding animation. Here, I added flanging followed by delay, then some highpass filter to make the whoosh blend better in the mix. To really up the ante, automate one or more of these parameters — or assign several to a Macro and “play” the knob as you record.
