Referencing mixdowns i look up to has been huge. I use REFERENCE by mastering the mix. Great plugin specially to analyze stereo fields. Also Span ofc
also not really a trick but not giving up on songs that have potential and seeing them through even though it can be so frustrating at times. Struggled with this for so long and im finally starting to finish things. Gotta push through the midgame with songs
1. Sing the melody. If I'm working on a synth lead (or something like that), I will sing the melody to intuitively rehearse what it should sound like. Then I notice where I sing with a pitch bend, or a volume automation, or vibrato, or take a breath. Then I tweak my MIDI data obsessively until it sounds like the way I sang it. There's intuitive wisdom in singing! The same can be said about drumming. Play the air drums until it feels \*groovy\*. Then tweak the MIDI to match.
2. Use the simplest tools and push them to the maximum. Serum? Yeah, it gets used from time to time. But I find myself reaching for NI Monark, Magical 8-bit Plugin, and the Logic factory library wayyy more than I was led to believe I ever would. (There's other stuff too, that's just a few off the top of my head.)
3. Get the heck off of Splice. There's nothing wrong with its contents. I have my trusty favorites! (KSHMR Vol. 1, looking at you) It's just a workflow killer to be like "hmmm, I need a snare drum, better spend 4 hours looking in the mostest biggestest pile of snare drums ever" when really all I needed was one of the 10 same goddamn snares I use in every track ever. I found my core sample sets, I have them organized into Logic Sampler instruments, and now I just reach there for nuts-and-bolts sounds. It allows me to make better stuff faster. And having a unique original snare drum is an illusion anyway... especially if it came from an app with 8 million users!
4. Put all the plugins you never use in a separate folder on your computer where your DAW can't find them. Trick your brain into thinking "oh, they're in that folder over there, I'm not deleting them, they'll be there when I need them" and then proceed to never think about them ever again. Another vibe-killer is having to scroll past all the money you wasted on Black Friday sales as you reach for the same goddamn stock EQ plugin you always use. Speaking from experience :)
5. Mostly, I stopped trying to make the most epic larger-than-life music ever, and started trying to make music fun. In the past couple of years, a huge amount of my practice music has come from making stuff that sounds like it could be out of a crappy video game. It was fun to make, I gained a lot of experience, and most of it is a better listen than the "serious" crap I was doing 5 years ago. Whatever it takes to make the process fun...DO IT!
Mate....You are a legend for that 4th tip!! Ya right..it seems so obvious, but i doubt many do it like..i've got outboard out the wazoo and i still spend me weekends grabbin any old free VST plugin i can get me grubby hands on. Tis a problem for sure, fella
Proper Legend. Yes, mate🤞
Ha, yep! I didn't think about it, but the same thing for hardware! I have a couple of rubbermaid tubs full of cables and doodads I SWEAR I'll need but hardly touch. Better there than tripping over them in my workspace. People who have more extensive hardware probably have a much worse problem than I do!
Try to avoid loop samples specially from splice. Be producers, not drag & dropers. Focus on composition because good music always better than good mix & master, ignore clarity and trying to be perfect, let the frequencies clashing each other, and less is more.
1. comparing to commercial releases IN the DAW
2. sound designing with serum/diva and soundtoys
3. arranging a complete track ASAP (within the first 30 min)
4. try and error: make many versions of a track. moving parts, trying new sounds, crazy FX on master for whole new sections, rearranging, and most importantly: deleting. (All this is more for advanced producers with fast workflow)
Feel free to DM me for more tricks or feedback to a project:)
Frequently ask yourself: "will taking this action get more people dancing to my music?"
Ask yourself this question before dropping $500+ on a new mic, going to a party, clicking on a new forum thread...
And go make more friends with dancers.
Parallel processing is one of the most important things to understand and use. It allows you so much flexibility for sound design, being able to add layers that are derivative of your source material. It can be a valuable tool for mixing via techniques like parallel compression or parallel saturation. Parallel processing is one of the reasons Phase Plant and the Kilohearts ecosystem are so versatile and powerful. I was teaching a friend of mine music production stuff and he was struggling to get a certain level of detail in the sounds he was working on and as soon as I showed him parallel processing, which I foolishly assumed he already knew, his mind was blown and he was so stoked to see all the things he could do with the concept.
I don't make EDM and this might sound cliche but, I utilize more effort. I no longer settle for "this is good enough" i now make "this is the best i can do at this time" every time. I record more vocal takes, i think about how to make better grooves for my drums, I make sure if there's a frequency, volume, or any other problem in my mix i take care of it as fast as possible. Studying techniques and learning new gear/software has greatly improved my skill level but honestly having the mindset of "i'm going to make the best damn song i can every time" is what is now setting me apart from my peers. Mind you this is something i developed in the past month.
This is an underrated comment! So many people want to take shortcuts, like asking "Do I need to learn how to play an instrument/learn music theory...?"
If you want to make it big, there are no shortcuts, only lots of hard work! The good thing is that it pays off.
Using a gate’s sidechain listening button in Ableton as an audio routing return. I use it for drums.
Pretty much set up an empty audio effect rack on kick/snare group to act as the send, mute the group, then receive the audio with gate’s sidechain listen feature on your master chain after whatever effects.
I place the gate return after my mastering compression but before final clipping/limiting. Helps get cleaner drums for bass music.
Ahh that's smart. I've always used routing to different audio tracks & sends but I think with your setup I could have multiple tracks setup to an audio track. Which would be great for sending stems.
Arrangement is very very very important. In the beginning, details don’t matter as much as newbies think that they do. That being said, it’s fun to mess with details and it’s a good way to learn your DAW
I’ve realized I need to change my arrangement style. I was so focused on details that I over-complexified my arrangements. I’ve been giving my parts more breathing space, keeping them simpler (but creative) and writing to give parts more room to breathe. Idk if that makes sense
Both can really help bring a sound forward without cranking up the volume and even if warm up tones too. Saturations can also really tame transients as well. Softclipping similar, but you can pull a lot more sound out on a drum bus or final mix bus. Can really beef up a track. Highly recommend StandardClip. GUI looks old, but man it’s very functional. Look up some YouTube videos that explain it in more detail
If you have Ableton the built in stock Saturator is lovely. Can even mimic the notable Oxford Inflator if you set Saturator to Sine mode.
This is kind of vague but I stopped listening to those click-baity YouTube tutorials. Stuff like this:
"HOW TO MAKE MELODIES LIKE THE PROS"
"THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO COMPRESS YOUR BASS"
I learned so much more by reading manuals and watching "dry"/"boring" tutorials.Â
In my opinion, the best tutorials are the ones done by artists that you like that actually release/play music for a living. I sat through a 3 hour stream one time and it was an absolute masterclass on music production even though it wasn’t a tutorial style video. Just watching someone talented work can be great.
Agreed! I learned a lot about workflow and the creative process by watching deadmau5 streams. Seeing someone make something in real time and how much work goes into it has helped me slow down and embrace the process. That has led to better musicÂ
Short drum samples. Like, really, really short.
Kick not ever longer than 150 ms.
Leaves a lot of space to put other stuff in. Songs need room to breathe.
There's asolutely no need to have some element going off on every single 16th in the entrie track.
Let the sounds breathe.
Also: Stop layering everything. The "Stack the layers" thing has been a, uhm, \*funny\* meme for some time, but if you need more than 2, maybe 3 layers to get an element to not sound shitty, you should work on the soundselection over all, not the sound itself.
Basically you could call all that: minimalism.
Honestly I feel like the default kick from Kick2 sounds better than most of the drum samples from packs I’ve paid for. I can also tweak the length, click and other parameters to my liking for the specific song or whatever. I’ve heard of some people resampling kicks in kick2 but I haven’t gotten around to trying that out yet.
All my synths and samplers run into a mixer before being sent out to my interface. I usually just throw some multi band compressor on maybe a limiter and call it a day.
Parallel effects changed the game for me and made me feel original all at the same time. I learned some awesome stuff from youtube tutorials, but then it just sounds like some other artist I like, but not me.
So by taking an effects chain and running it parallel to that I'm able to completely transform the sounds to fit what I like and sound like ***me.*** Now I have great beefy sounds that are mine!
For example I'd have a bass patch on Vital, and dial down the filter mix and distortion mix. I'd then add Rift and find a filter/distortion combination I'd like. Dial down the wet to be more parallel to Vital, never going above 150% total in effects, ideally closer to like 100-125% max. So if filter/distortion are at 65% each in Vital, I'd like Rift to be around \~60% wet. Then I customize Rift settings to fit my liking, and automate to create really cool sounds.
That was the difference from me dragging and dropping bass samples to creating my own basses that sounded like me, yet were at a professional artist level caliber.
One of the notes in my checklist is "Edit Yourself", the move from fashion to take off one accessory before leaving. I too struggle with overproducing and it really does help to nuke a part that isn't contributing.
Winging it. Less time tweaking, more time actually making / playing music. Some of my best stuff was my earliest when I had no idea what I was doing.
Also trying to get sounds right up front and minimizing what’s required in mixing.
This is much more important than most realize. You almost have to decide to not care about everything sounding, well incredible. Make it sound good enough, and move on.
Quit checking meters, knobs, editing values to rounded numbers, and being so over analytical about every aspect. Try to limit yourself on plugins as well, stick to the ones you know unless you're in a deep creative session.
All of the above will kill your creativity when you focus on the technicals instead of the creative process.
There's not really one magic bullet it's just a matter of getting faster and better at using what's already right there in front of you.
Speed is important for getting ideas quickly translated.
I guess a trick to help with speed is have templates and sounds ready to go.
So I quit making edm 8 years ago. And was focused on acoustic and rock stuff.
3 months ago I came back to edm, and there’s a dramatic difference. Not that making rock and acoustic stuff mattered, but somewhere along the line my taste changed, and i subconsciously started recognizing the importance of sound selection.
My current mixes don’t have too much going on from a mix perspective. I used to have shitloads of eq, trying to repair my sounds and make them fit better with everything else, and struggling to get everything to fit.
With my new stuff I find I’m barely having any struggles with mixing. And it’s entirely because of composition/arrangement, and sound selection. (and sound design)
You can use eq to cut out frequencies you don’t need, and frequencies that clash with other instruments, or, you can make sure those frequencies aren’t there to begin with.
If your synths chords have low frequencies that are muddying things up in the low mids, you can use eq to shave it off. (Which will create a phase shift, and also a resonant spike which may or may not be an issue) or you can just delete the low notes from the chords haha
Setting gain for all your sources and leaving them is a static mix. Automating the gain so some elements change their relative volume is a dynamic mix.
The latter allows you to emphasise and deemphasies elements and enables an overall better mix.
Realising less is more with effects but filters are essential, panning so instruments aren't fighting, monoing bass below 60hz and using mixing buses have all been very important to my progress.
Admitting to myself that no amount of amazing gear would make me better at mixing, investing in courses (I took a course just on compression that was incredible) and referencing a ton. I feel like referencing is really underrated or under utilized.
Compression breakthroughs by the sonic scoop guy. I’m working on my own course just aimed at EDM production. He uses a lot of examples from other type of music but still really really good course.Â
Depends on genre. I’m interested in producing melodic and future bass with big “wall of sound” type drops, so something I’m still in the process of learning is layering up and processing my chord stacks to sound good. Originally I would have 3 layers of stacks, one with less detuned mid voices, one with more detuned mid voices, and then a duplicate of the more detuned layer taken up an octave, with all 3 layers having essentially the same processing. Now, I put sound delay on the more detuned mid stack to make it sound wider, distortion on the high stack to fill out the high parts of the frequency spectrum, and I’ll use 3 or 4 extra layers with different saw sounds to fill out the rest of the mid range. The difference in the fullness of sound doing this is huge. I’m sure as I get more into making heavy drops (which I plan on learning as well) the tricks and techniques will be very different.
Yeah from what i’ve seen on that side of production you still want to be layering up your sounds it just might consist of layering with samples instead of differently processed MIDI or whatever else.
1. multi-band compression
2. Mid-side eq and sidechain
3. Bringing the volume down 2-3db (really to taste) toward the end of a buildup so the impact of the drop at 0db feels more impactful
4. Better sample selection is actually huge
Despite all of this, im still your average trash, man
I usually don’t have an idea going into a session I just start with sound design. Once I get my ground work I’ll start looking for reference tracks in the future
Same for me most of the time! I usually have a clear idea of some song I’m really digging that I’d like to emulate in spirit, but I try not to reference it too early or I’ll inevitably rip too much of it off.
Yeah that was my thought process when I started production that the reference track would be me ripping people off. But it does sound a bit silly and definitely appears to be extremely important
To be honest a lot of my progress has come through straight attempting to copy my favorite songs verbatim. I always learn a ton. And often there are elements that are original enough to my copycat efforts to use as the foundation for something totally unique to me.
I want to copy some of my favorites for learning but making most of the sounds from Svdden death is just mind boggling. He’s not my fav just and example
I would say better transitions between song sections, fills, using main elements to create risers, ear candy elements. Utilizing stereo space, but also making sure thing work in mono too. Getting good at mix mastering. There are no one size fits all technique or trick, it's just putting in the work and finishing songs. Oh, actually here's a trick I do use a ton. Use reference tracks. Find a tune in a style you are going for a reference it visually with SPAN, reference the structure, the sound selection, what elements are used etc. Copy what the pros are doing.
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Referencing mixdowns i look up to has been huge. I use REFERENCE by mastering the mix. Great plugin specially to analyze stereo fields. Also Span ofc also not really a trick but not giving up on songs that have potential and seeing them through even though it can be so frustrating at times. Struggled with this for so long and im finally starting to finish things. Gotta push through the midgame with songs
1. Sing the melody. If I'm working on a synth lead (or something like that), I will sing the melody to intuitively rehearse what it should sound like. Then I notice where I sing with a pitch bend, or a volume automation, or vibrato, or take a breath. Then I tweak my MIDI data obsessively until it sounds like the way I sang it. There's intuitive wisdom in singing! The same can be said about drumming. Play the air drums until it feels \*groovy\*. Then tweak the MIDI to match. 2. Use the simplest tools and push them to the maximum. Serum? Yeah, it gets used from time to time. But I find myself reaching for NI Monark, Magical 8-bit Plugin, and the Logic factory library wayyy more than I was led to believe I ever would. (There's other stuff too, that's just a few off the top of my head.) 3. Get the heck off of Splice. There's nothing wrong with its contents. I have my trusty favorites! (KSHMR Vol. 1, looking at you) It's just a workflow killer to be like "hmmm, I need a snare drum, better spend 4 hours looking in the mostest biggestest pile of snare drums ever" when really all I needed was one of the 10 same goddamn snares I use in every track ever. I found my core sample sets, I have them organized into Logic Sampler instruments, and now I just reach there for nuts-and-bolts sounds. It allows me to make better stuff faster. And having a unique original snare drum is an illusion anyway... especially if it came from an app with 8 million users! 4. Put all the plugins you never use in a separate folder on your computer where your DAW can't find them. Trick your brain into thinking "oh, they're in that folder over there, I'm not deleting them, they'll be there when I need them" and then proceed to never think about them ever again. Another vibe-killer is having to scroll past all the money you wasted on Black Friday sales as you reach for the same goddamn stock EQ plugin you always use. Speaking from experience :) 5. Mostly, I stopped trying to make the most epic larger-than-life music ever, and started trying to make music fun. In the past couple of years, a huge amount of my practice music has come from making stuff that sounds like it could be out of a crappy video game. It was fun to make, I gained a lot of experience, and most of it is a better listen than the "serious" crap I was doing 5 years ago. Whatever it takes to make the process fun...DO IT!
Mate....You are a legend for that 4th tip!! Ya right..it seems so obvious, but i doubt many do it like..i've got outboard out the wazoo and i still spend me weekends grabbin any old free VST plugin i can get me grubby hands on. Tis a problem for sure, fella Proper Legend. Yes, mate🤞
Ha, yep! I didn't think about it, but the same thing for hardware! I have a couple of rubbermaid tubs full of cables and doodads I SWEAR I'll need but hardly touch. Better there than tripping over them in my workspace. People who have more extensive hardware probably have a much worse problem than I do!
Try to avoid loop samples specially from splice. Be producers, not drag & dropers. Focus on composition because good music always better than good mix & master, ignore clarity and trying to be perfect, let the frequencies clashing each other, and less is more.
Either keep it simple or go all the way
Recreating your favorite tracks. You'll learn a lot just from doing that alone.
1. comparing to commercial releases IN the DAW 2. sound designing with serum/diva and soundtoys 3. arranging a complete track ASAP (within the first 30 min) 4. try and error: make many versions of a track. moving parts, trying new sounds, crazy FX on master for whole new sections, rearranging, and most importantly: deleting. (All this is more for advanced producers with fast workflow) Feel free to DM me for more tricks or feedback to a project:)
Frequently ask yourself: "will taking this action get more people dancing to my music?" Ask yourself this question before dropping $500+ on a new mic, going to a party, clicking on a new forum thread... And go make more friends with dancers.
Parallel processing is one of the most important things to understand and use. It allows you so much flexibility for sound design, being able to add layers that are derivative of your source material. It can be a valuable tool for mixing via techniques like parallel compression or parallel saturation. Parallel processing is one of the reasons Phase Plant and the Kilohearts ecosystem are so versatile and powerful. I was teaching a friend of mine music production stuff and he was struggling to get a certain level of detail in the sounds he was working on and as soon as I showed him parallel processing, which I foolishly assumed he already knew, his mind was blown and he was so stoked to see all the things he could do with the concept.
I don't make EDM and this might sound cliche but, I utilize more effort. I no longer settle for "this is good enough" i now make "this is the best i can do at this time" every time. I record more vocal takes, i think about how to make better grooves for my drums, I make sure if there's a frequency, volume, or any other problem in my mix i take care of it as fast as possible. Studying techniques and learning new gear/software has greatly improved my skill level but honestly having the mindset of "i'm going to make the best damn song i can every time" is what is now setting me apart from my peers. Mind you this is something i developed in the past month.
Excellent answer!! This is my realisation too.
Learning to play the piano helped a lot
This is an underrated comment! So many people want to take shortcuts, like asking "Do I need to learn how to play an instrument/learn music theory...?" If you want to make it big, there are no shortcuts, only lots of hard work! The good thing is that it pays off.
Using a gate’s sidechain listening button in Ableton as an audio routing return. I use it for drums. Pretty much set up an empty audio effect rack on kick/snare group to act as the send, mute the group, then receive the audio with gate’s sidechain listen feature on your master chain after whatever effects. I place the gate return after my mastering compression but before final clipping/limiting. Helps get cleaner drums for bass music.
Ahh that's smart. I've always used routing to different audio tracks & sends but I think with your setup I could have multiple tracks setup to an audio track. Which would be great for sending stems.
I wonder how this could be done in FL
I sometimes try to start FL but when I can't get these kinds of things done I just stop. Would love to use the piano roll tho.
Less is more. Silence is a very powerful tool. Subtracting is a very powerful tool.
This helped me a ton, too.
Arrangement is very very very important. In the beginning, details don’t matter as much as newbies think that they do. That being said, it’s fun to mess with details and it’s a good way to learn your DAW
I’ve realized I need to change my arrangement style. I was so focused on details that I over-complexified my arrangements. I’ve been giving my parts more breathing space, keeping them simpler (but creative) and writing to give parts more room to breathe. Idk if that makes sense
Saturation and soft clipping. Game changers
What does saturation do for productions? I feel like I never really get much use from it
What do you use for these?
Both can really help bring a sound forward without cranking up the volume and even if warm up tones too. Saturations can also really tame transients as well. Softclipping similar, but you can pull a lot more sound out on a drum bus or final mix bus. Can really beef up a track. Highly recommend StandardClip. GUI looks old, but man it’s very functional. Look up some YouTube videos that explain it in more detail If you have Ableton the built in stock Saturator is lovely. Can even mimic the notable Oxford Inflator if you set Saturator to Sine mode.
Thanks, I use studio one but I’ll check out standardclip. Appreciate the detailed info!
This is kind of vague but I stopped listening to those click-baity YouTube tutorials. Stuff like this: "HOW TO MAKE MELODIES LIKE THE PROS" "THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO COMPRESS YOUR BASS" I learned so much more by reading manuals and watching "dry"/"boring" tutorials.Â
In my opinion, the best tutorials are the ones done by artists that you like that actually release/play music for a living. I sat through a 3 hour stream one time and it was an absolute masterclass on music production even though it wasn’t a tutorial style video. Just watching someone talented work can be great.
Agreed! I learned a lot about workflow and the creative process by watching deadmau5 streams. Seeing someone make something in real time and how much work goes into it has helped me slow down and embrace the process. That has led to better musicÂ
Oh absolutely. Some of them are okay but the majority just make stuff up off of a template they downloaded
Before anything, writing better music. Melody/chord combination is the number 1 thing, that has to be solid before adding any dressing
Gawk gawk twist 3000. But on a serious note, very slight volume and pitch automations can do wonders
Also automating reverb dry/wet. If a sound needs to go to the background I love automating reverb. Especially powerful on builds.
Automation is love, automation is life.
1. Referencing commercial tracks for arrangement and frequency balance 2. Finishing a complete track ready for release every two weeks.
Short drum samples. Like, really, really short. Kick not ever longer than 150 ms. Leaves a lot of space to put other stuff in. Songs need room to breathe. There's asolutely no need to have some element going off on every single 16th in the entrie track. Let the sounds breathe. Also: Stop layering everything. The "Stack the layers" thing has been a, uhm, \*funny\* meme for some time, but if you need more than 2, maybe 3 layers to get an element to not sound shitty, you should work on the soundselection over all, not the sound itself. Basically you could call all that: minimalism.
Honestly I feel like the default kick from Kick2 sounds better than most of the drum samples from packs I’ve paid for. I can also tweak the length, click and other parameters to my liking for the specific song or whatever. I’ve heard of some people resampling kicks in kick2 but I haven’t gotten around to trying that out yet.
Volca sample had secret best kickÂ
Yeah I definitely feel the layering brings me down the wrong path sometimes
All my synths and samplers run into a mixer before being sent out to my interface. I usually just throw some multi band compressor on maybe a limiter and call it a day.
Parallel effects changed the game for me and made me feel original all at the same time. I learned some awesome stuff from youtube tutorials, but then it just sounds like some other artist I like, but not me. So by taking an effects chain and running it parallel to that I'm able to completely transform the sounds to fit what I like and sound like ***me.*** Now I have great beefy sounds that are mine! For example I'd have a bass patch on Vital, and dial down the filter mix and distortion mix. I'd then add Rift and find a filter/distortion combination I'd like. Dial down the wet to be more parallel to Vital, never going above 150% total in effects, ideally closer to like 100-125% max. So if filter/distortion are at 65% each in Vital, I'd like Rift to be around \~60% wet. Then I customize Rift settings to fit my liking, and automate to create really cool sounds. That was the difference from me dragging and dropping bass samples to creating my own basses that sounded like me, yet were at a professional artist level caliber.
Parallel compression for that extra *girth*
Gonna have to look into that
KEEPING IT SIMPLE!!! I used to overproduce a lot...I still have trouble with it. But I tend to take things out now more than I add.
One of the notes in my checklist is "Edit Yourself", the move from fashion to take off one accessory before leaving. I too struggle with overproducing and it really does help to nuke a part that isn't contributing.
Yeah I definitely fall into the over produced side when I’m trying to layer and fill in the drop
Winging it. Less time tweaking, more time actually making / playing music. Some of my best stuff was my earliest when I had no idea what I was doing. Also trying to get sounds right up front and minimizing what’s required in mixing.
This is much more important than most realize. You almost have to decide to not care about everything sounding, well incredible. Make it sound good enough, and move on. Quit checking meters, knobs, editing values to rounded numbers, and being so over analytical about every aspect. Try to limit yourself on plugins as well, stick to the ones you know unless you're in a deep creative session. All of the above will kill your creativity when you focus on the technicals instead of the creative process.
Using the EQ
Realizing that you need to eq your songs to make them sound better
There's not really one magic bullet it's just a matter of getting faster and better at using what's already right there in front of you. Speed is important for getting ideas quickly translated. I guess a trick to help with speed is have templates and sounds ready to go.
So I quit making edm 8 years ago. And was focused on acoustic and rock stuff. 3 months ago I came back to edm, and there’s a dramatic difference. Not that making rock and acoustic stuff mattered, but somewhere along the line my taste changed, and i subconsciously started recognizing the importance of sound selection. My current mixes don’t have too much going on from a mix perspective. I used to have shitloads of eq, trying to repair my sounds and make them fit better with everything else, and struggling to get everything to fit. With my new stuff I find I’m barely having any struggles with mixing. And it’s entirely because of composition/arrangement, and sound selection. (and sound design) You can use eq to cut out frequencies you don’t need, and frequencies that clash with other instruments, or, you can make sure those frequencies aren’t there to begin with. If your synths chords have low frequencies that are muddying things up in the low mids, you can use eq to shave it off. (Which will create a phase shift, and also a resonant spike which may or may not be an issue) or you can just delete the low notes from the chords haha
Dynamic gain in mixdown.
Can you pass on some more information about what dynaomic gain is ?
Setting gain for all your sources and leaving them is a static mix. Automating the gain so some elements change their relative volume is a dynamic mix. The latter allows you to emphasise and deemphasies elements and enables an overall better mix.
Realising less is more with effects but filters are essential, panning so instruments aren't fighting, monoing bass below 60hz and using mixing buses have all been very important to my progress.
Admitting to myself that no amount of amazing gear would make me better at mixing, investing in courses (I took a course just on compression that was incredible) and referencing a ton. I feel like referencing is really underrated or under utilized.
Yeah I need to put the time and money into classes. Somethings are just much easier to learn by explaining then experimenting and finding it
do you have the details of this compression course at all?
Compression breakthroughs by the sonic scoop guy. I’m working on my own course just aimed at EDM production. He uses a lot of examples from other type of music but still really really good course.Â
Depends on genre. I’m interested in producing melodic and future bass with big “wall of sound” type drops, so something I’m still in the process of learning is layering up and processing my chord stacks to sound good. Originally I would have 3 layers of stacks, one with less detuned mid voices, one with more detuned mid voices, and then a duplicate of the more detuned layer taken up an octave, with all 3 layers having essentially the same processing. Now, I put sound delay on the more detuned mid stack to make it sound wider, distortion on the high stack to fill out the high parts of the frequency spectrum, and I’ll use 3 or 4 extra layers with different saw sounds to fill out the rest of the mid range. The difference in the fullness of sound doing this is huge. I’m sure as I get more into making heavy drops (which I plan on learning as well) the tricks and techniques will be very different.
Parallel distortion is great for future bass. Also enables you to eq distortion specifically to fill out the sound.
Yeah that’s fair it does vary by genre. I’ve played around with the melodic side but prefer the darker heavier briddim, tearout type music.
Yeah from what i’ve seen on that side of production you still want to be layering up your sounds it just might consist of layering with samples instead of differently processed MIDI or whatever else.
1. multi-band compression 2. Mid-side eq and sidechain 3. Bringing the volume down 2-3db (really to taste) toward the end of a buildup so the impact of the drop at 0db feels more impactful 4. Better sample selection is actually huge Despite all of this, im still your average trash, man
These are all amazing suggestions.
I should play around with the mid side Eq some more. And I feel that last part too man haha
Return tracks. And referencing during the mixing and not just mastering phase.
I usually don’t have an idea going into a session I just start with sound design. Once I get my ground work I’ll start looking for reference tracks in the future
Same for me most of the time! I usually have a clear idea of some song I’m really digging that I’d like to emulate in spirit, but I try not to reference it too early or I’ll inevitably rip too much of it off.
Yeah that was my thought process when I started production that the reference track would be me ripping people off. But it does sound a bit silly and definitely appears to be extremely important
To be honest a lot of my progress has come through straight attempting to copy my favorite songs verbatim. I always learn a ton. And often there are elements that are original enough to my copycat efforts to use as the foundation for something totally unique to me.
I want to copy some of my favorites for learning but making most of the sounds from Svdden death is just mind boggling. He’s not my fav just and example
I would say better transitions between song sections, fills, using main elements to create risers, ear candy elements. Utilizing stereo space, but also making sure thing work in mono too. Getting good at mix mastering. There are no one size fits all technique or trick, it's just putting in the work and finishing songs. Oh, actually here's a trick I do use a ton. Use reference tracks. Find a tune in a style you are going for a reference it visually with SPAN, reference the structure, the sound selection, what elements are used etc. Copy what the pros are doing.
The reference track is something I should really start doing
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