Studio tip - 09-13 (Transients)

Transients: 
Meaning ~ The passing of something that doesn't last for a very long time.
I will be straight up in saying that this is something I have been messing around with for years and gone to great efforts to engineer; Yet it's only recently over the last year or more that I have learnt exactly what it is, what effect it has and how to achieve results. It was one of the many situations over the years of producing when I knew what sounded right, but didn't understand exactly what it was.
As in all these tips, I can't claim that this is the correct, or even the best way of doing things, I am only sharing what I know has worked for me!If anyone has any comments or additions to what I'm saying, email them to me 4HF@GMX.COM.

Transients are present across any production. A kick drum can have a spike of sound at the start and a tail of low sub frequencies, the spike at the start of the sound which hits into the 1khz, is a transient. 
Transients can be over engineered to enhance, create effect or assist in the volume of certain parts of a mix.
Example - A sub bass line in some Liquid DnB, should land with a thud, even if the note is long, the tune should drop with a bang, so it makes the speakers work, and so it sounds big, rather than just a tone of smooth air coming from the sub with a reasonably short attack. 
Ways I've done this in the past:
Layer a kick at the start of each sub note, filtered up to 150hz - 300hz, see what sounds nice (depends on the key of the track), if you're using midi, link to VSTIs together so they're both triggered by the same midi notes, have one as  your sub and the other as a Kick. Better still, pitch shift your kick across the octave, so that it follows the same pitch as your sub bass line. In some DAW sample editors you can bring up info on a sample detailing frequency, pitch etc. Which is handy for matching the key of the kick to the bass line. 
Construction kits aren't good for much, but collect them in your sample library anyway! Some "good" construction kit sample packs may have a kick in a folder with bass lines listed by the key, for example, if a kick drum is in a construction kit folder with a load of bass lines in the key of G, it's a good indicator that the kick will work with your bass line if it is in the same key. 
Another way of creating a transient to the bass line, if your making the bass line yourself (through a VSTI such as massive), is to automate the pitch of each oscillator up quite high, 48 semitones,  4 octaves, but automate it with either an LFO, or an envelope, so that it glides down from 48 to -24 but in 10ths of a second. This creates a pop or thud (if set right) at the beginning of a what could be a long bass/sub note.
- It doesn't have to be a kick at the start of a bass note, any crunch, hit or stab could do the same. 

Transients in snares. Firstly use envelope VSTs, turn up the attack and compress it to the same volume. Envelope first, compressor after it in the chain.

Make a snare your self, but think about how a snare drum works, a stick hits it hard, makes a bang, the drum skin vibrates, and the snares rattle, one after the other in the space of a couple of seconds. 
Get a high pitched tap sound, or crack sound. Then get a long sound, or a deep snare, but envelope it yourself so it has a long attack and next to no sound at the beginning, then another longer sound with a longer attack, so you create TAP/TONE/TAIL in the space of 2 seconds. - Working with sounds this way puts you in complete control of the transients. Turn up the TAP sound in the snare which will give it more presence and a better transient without the mid depths of the snare being any louder (which leads on to more overall volume of the mix).

Overall, work with dynamics, envelopes, compressors etc, and don't overlook or ignore the attack rate. 
Make a dirty filthy bass sound, but smash the first second of the sound with something short, and on a higher frequency and give any long dirty filtered sound more impact. 

Transients, the monitoring of and desired placement, does proceed into the realms of mastering, recording to digital, recording to analogue, exporting, converting, monitor speakers. Some speakers / cheap monitors will lose or lessen transients, some plug-ins used to normalise a track or whole compilation when (when burning a CD) can lessen transients. Exporting a track to an MP3 can also have an undesired effect on transients in a track due to the algorithms of the software being used. Recording stupidly aggressive transients into a piece of analogue outboard gear can have some decent effects pleasing to the ear, where as recording the same transients into digital will have a different effect and result in nothing more than some horrible digital clipping. 
In other words, if you notice that you're losing punch, or umph, in any track that your making / recording, try changing the way you do things, it may not be down to what you've put together or the sounds and effects you're using
Try chaining software together, example - Reason to Logic.. So you're first mixer has a low out put, while you're output mixer has a louder compressed output and used for the recording or exporting of the mix. 

Hope the above might help anyone.
Producing all the time... At the same time learning all the time, and dare say that I haven't finished learning about this. 

I think I'm fair to say, if you're still in your early days of producing - Don't worry too much about it, and just do what sounds right. You will probably end up creating 'sick' transients through any of the various methods without knowing which one it was. And there's nothing wrong with that. 

Analogy - A baby can push a triangle through a triangle shaped hole, and then keep doing it because they know that it fits  and that it's the right thing to do! But it's only through the years do they learn that, it has 3 sides, all sides are equal, the angle of all three corners add up to 180 degrees etc. 

Shotty 4HF

SIDECHAIN RECALL