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Marshall Jefferson is a bona fide house music legend.

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7. Another thing to try with mda Image is to turn the S Width down to 0%. This will 'mono-fy' the signal and enable you to place it precisely in the stereo panorama using your sequencer's pan control. This can be useful when you want to accurately position percussion sounds in the stereo mix.

8. When using doubled parts in this manner, you can use the stereo space to create different feels. Try doubling the Mr Ray electric piano with something else, using mda Image to increase the stereo spread of Mr Ray and mono-fying the other patch. This will keep the electric piano vibes rolling around the stereo field while retaining a lot of definition in the centre of the mix.

"If your chords don't have enough body, you can make them bigger by doubling them with another instrument."

9. Effects are generally used quite sparsely in Deep House, so those that you do use need to be up to scratch or they'll stick out like sore thumbs. Reverbs, then delays are the most commonly used - if you're in need of a high quality reverb try Ambience and for delay, give Big Tick's Dual Delay. Both are free and cross-platform.

10. If you're using reverb or delay send effects on sounds that have a large amount of low end, you can curtail the amount of bass output from the send effect by adding a high-pass filter at any point of the effect chain.

11. When you're using a lot of percussion sounds, you can find more space to squeeze sounds into the mix by panning their stereo positions - if you pan all your drum sounds dead centre they can become one indistinguishable mass. Again, mda Image is useful when you want to do this.

12. While sidechain compression is generally used more in cheesy pop house, it's still worth employing in deeper forms of the genre. If you feel the need to emphasise your kick drums, sidechain them with a group featuring your track's musical elements. This will help the kicks punch through the mix a fair bit more. Slim Slow Slider Side Chain Compressor is a good free plug-in to get started with (PC-only).

13. Dub effects can be useful for creating textures and atmospheres, so it's always worth having a half-decent delay lying around. Bionic Delay and various other dub-inspired effects are available from www.interruptor.ch. By automating the feedback level, you can create delay crescendos and sweeps - perfect for building up intensity or adding atmosphere to your tracks.

14. Funky filtering effects can be created with the use of a vocoder plug-in. This can be used to modulate sustained instruments (such as synth strings) with drum loops or vocals to make highly rhythmic, textured effects. Try bouncing down your vocoder experiments and then cutting them up to get the best bits. These can then be looped and delayed to create interesting pad effects.

"When you're using a lot of percussion sounds, you can find more space to squeeze sounds into the mix by panning their stereo positions."

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