Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

No guitar setup is complete without some toys… you know, effects! When you listen to bands like The Mars Volta, Sonic Youth, or maybe Radiohead, perhaps you say, “Wow, awesome sound. It must require a lot of effects to make a sound like that!” You probably ask yourself, “How can I get a guitar sound like that?”

Sometimes it’s not a lot of money you need, but a knowledge of the effects. Here is the info to get started.

Guitar effects are an interesting phenomenon when playing guitar. No matter how much you spend for guitar effects, you’ll get a good sound when you learn how to chain these guitar effects to work together. And how you set up your effects can help you achieve your dream tone. In this tutorial I will explain more about effect chain order.

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Step 1: Basic Effects Chain Order

Guitar —> Pre gain effects —> Gain related effects —> Post gain effects —> Amplifiers.

Perhaps you confused when look at the picture above, “what these pictures mean?”

This is the map of basic effects chain order. In next step I will explain more about “how these chain works”. And a little explaination starting from each category until each effects. Sound samples included

Continue reading “Effect Chain Order”

In this quick tip, we are going to look at a few ways of playing with the timing of drum patterns to give the illusion that a standard drum ostinato is speeding up or slowing down in time.

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Rushing the Snare

The first and easiest way of creating this illusion is to slightly rush or delay a certain drum element. Here, I have set up a basic ostinoto with a standard four to the floor rock/dance pattern.

Download audio file (ostinato.mp3)

Now, if I nudge the second snare hit forward by a 192 division, it gives the portion of the bar between the first and second snare hits a subtly faster and more energetic feel. It may be difficult to hear, especially against a full band, yet it is an effective trick that many drummers use when they want to intensify certain areas of a song. This also helps to give a more humanistic feel to your programming, while giving the snare a more swung and accented feel.

Download audio file (nudge.mp3)

Here, I have added a bass to help emphasize the snare’s timing against the rest of the loop.

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Hi-Hat Displacement

One drastic trick that many jazz drummers use is to displace the constant hi-hat pattern to the 2 of the beat rather than the 3 for certain sections. This gives the hi-hat a feeling of working against the music and serves as a good way to break up sections of a song. You’ll notice in the example below that the hi-hat sounds polyrhythmic and as if it were moving backwards in time against the song even though all that is happening is a 16th note displacement.

Download audio file (offset.mp3)

The pattern with one bar of the displaced hi-hat.

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The Fabric of Time

Another subtle way of playing with time is to take an element or group of elements and offset their timing so that they rush and delay uniformly but at different rates. For this particular example, I’ve taken the constant hi-hat pattern and left the first hi-hat perfectly quantized, set the second one back 192nd, set the third back twice as far (96th), set the third back 192nd and the fourth perfectly quantized.

In this way, the hi-hat begins to drift off time until it is off by a 96th and then it drifts back to create a slight swing while progressing at consistent increments. This is another technique implemented by drummers to help the groove expand and compress (however slightly or dramatically) to give the music and groove and new feeling.

Here, I have rushed as described above in the first measure and then delayed it in the same way for the second measure. I then repeated it to create a four bar loop of contract/expand/contract/expand.

Download audio file (fabric.mp3)

A good way of thinking about this concept is to think of music as a piece of fabric. When you stretch the fabric, the threads offset more or less uniformly with the largest stretch occurring in the center and the sides gradually moving back to equilibrium. The exact same thing is occurring here, except we are replacing the threads with musical events to make time seem as if time is stretching and contracting.

These concepts are used by professional drummers all the time, and although you may be behind a monitor rather than a drum set, there is no reason not to implement these ideas to make your music swing and have a more ‘real world’ feel. In my next quick tip, we’ll look at some interesting ways to divide the bar to create some off time and polyrhythmic feels without departing from common note divisions.

The offset filter is a great tool to use to create a repeating pattern for a website background. Unfortunately, for us, the offset filter only works for a flat, one layer image and doesn’t work under all situations. In today’s tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a repeating pattern using smart objects and the nudging technique with your arrow keys.

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Resources Used

The following resources were used during the production of this tutorial:

• 5 Floral Ornaments

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Basic Principles of Pattern Design

Before we begin, let’s start with some basic principles of pattern design.

1. Anything that is placed in the center will repeat easily. You don’t have to do anything with it (1).

2. Objects placed on the edge will be cut off (2a). You need to add it to the opposite side (2b).

3. Objects that are placed on the corner will be cut off (3a). You will need to add it to every other corner (3b).

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Step 1

Download Floral Ornaments and open it in Illustrator. Select one of the objects and press Cmd + C to copy.

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Step 2

Create a new file. We are going to create a 256 x 240 px pattern.

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Step 3

Create a new layer. Fill it with any color, right click and choose Convert to Smart Object. This smart object will become our pattern.

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Step 4

Click Image > Canvas Size. Activate Relative and set Width and Height to 200%. This will increase the canvas size to 3 times larger than our pattern will be.

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Step 5

Duplicate the smart object pattern by pressing Cmd + J then fill the canvas with the pattern. At this point, you will have 9 smart objects on your canvas. These 9 smart objects were created from same parent, editing one of them will change the other 8. This means we will be able to see the edits we make to our pattern change in real time.

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Step 6

Double click one of the smart object thumbnail layers to edit its content. If you find this dialog box just click OK. The smart object will be opened as a new file in a new tab. This is the file that we will put the objects for our pattern.

Click Window > Arrange > Float All in Windows to see both files at the same time.

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Step 7

In the pattern file, paste (Cmd + V) the vector shape from Illustrator. Place it in the middle of the image. Save pattern file (Cmd + S) and automatically the big file will be updated. Because the object is in the middle, pattern looks fine (Principles #1).

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Step 8

Return to Illustrator, copy another shape. In Photoshop paste the object and put it on left edge. Save file and you can see in the big file some part of the object is missing.

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Step 9

Duplicate layer (Cmd + J). We need to put this on the opposite side, right (Principles #2). Remember that the pattern width is 256 px. Nudge this layer 256 px to right. Every time you press arrow key, you nudge object 1 px. If you press Shift + Arrow you nudge 10 px. So, press Shift + Right Arrow 25 times then Right Arrow 6 times. Press Cmd + S to save pattern and see how the pattern changes.

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Step 10

Grab another shape from Illustrator. This time put it on the top edge. Save the file and you’ll see that lower part of the pattern is missing.

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Step 11

We still use Principle #2. Duplicate layer (Cmd + J). Nudge it 240 px down, that means press the arrow key 24 times. Save file and see the pattern working.

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Step 12

Grab another shape from Illustrator. Put it in right bottom corner. Save file and you’ll see that there’s missing piece in some areas.

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Step 13

For object in corner, we need to put its pair in every other corner (Principle #3). Duplicate layer and nudge it 240 px up. Save file to see the result.

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Step 14

Duplicate layer and nudge it 256 px left. Save file to see the result.

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Step 15

Now the last piece. Duplicate layer and nudge it 240 px down. Save to see the result.

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Step 16

Fill empty space with smaller shapes from Illustrator without touching the edge. Save to see the result.

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Step 17

Delete background layer to make this pattern transparent.

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Step 18

Click File > Save For Web & Devices. Choose Preset: PNG-24. Activate transparency.

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Step 19

Open the PNG file we have just created. Click Edit > Define Pattern.

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Step 20

Create a new file.

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Step 21

Add a radial gradient from white to black in background.

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Step 22

Create a new layer. Click Edit > Fill. Choose Use: Pattern and select pattern we have just created.

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Step 23

Add Adjustment Layer Hue/Saturation. Activate Colorize and move sliders to add a bit of color.

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Final Image

That’s it! We’re done. You can view the final image below. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learned something new. Try to use this technique with other shapes or lines. You’ll amaze yourself with the result.

Textures have a seemingly endless number of uses for graphic design. A nice texture can be used to add depth or a sense of realism to an otherwise flat design. They can be used in print design, web design, and even 3D graphics. Today, we have a really nice set of 4 free high resolution grunge textures from our friends at Texture Vault that you can download right now and use in your work.

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4 Free High Resolution Grunge Textures

This pack includes 4 free high resolution grunge textures that you can use for personal and professional projects. See the download file for more information regarding licensing. Below is an example of the textures included in this pack.

This exclusive set of textures was created by Bjorgvin Gudmundsson of Texture Vault. We are excited to partner up with him on the release of this set.