Before I start, I want you to be critical to my workflow and realize that this may not work for you specifically. If you feel like any of the Pro-tips are incorrect/bad advice, don’t hesitate to correct me!
I’m going to write this workflow starting from the point where you have an acapella and want to create a track around it. You can apply any of these techniques in your own original tracks and in acapellas that you got off your mates/colleagues.

Starting out production, I always felt like I needed to wait for inspiration to be able to create a track and could never create one on demand, but the more I saw how the pros could just produce track after track, the more I realized that they used some sort of formulas and that in order for me to be able to do the same, I need to be able to understand all the intricacies of their formulas.
I set out on a quest to find out exactly what the common threads in all tracks are and started to analyze a few artists, but only one at a time so as to avoid confusion. I recreated their tracks, melodies, mixes, mastering (Pro-tip) and I learned a lot that way. For example: instead of doing what the pros were telling me to do, I did what the pros were actually doing. A lot of the time you’ll find that you’re given bad advice and false advice, so always be wary when a producer reveals one of his secrets (Pro-tip). He may just be blatantly lying to you or avoiding to reveal what the real secret is.

With that in mind, let’s get started:

1. Import an acapella into one of your last tracks (Pro-tip).
   I think this is a really good idea, because it gives you a template that you already know works and you get the choice of what you want to keep from the old track and what you want to scratch. Also I want to use the same BPM in all of my tracks (170BPM) since it makes it easier for me and everyone else to mix and I don’t see any reason to vary the speeds of my tracks. Also varying the speeds in tracks means that the DJ playing your track will have to timestretch or pitch your track, which will either make the kicks sound less powerful or the track sound out of key.
2. Beatmatch the BPM to the acapella (not the other way around, as most people would do) (Pro-tip).
   Whenever I start with an acapella that’s not 170BPM, I slow down the speed of my project. I haven’t seen anyone else do it, but I know that if the timing is right at a slow BPM, it will only be more spot on at a higher BPM. Don’t be afraid of cutting the acapella and requantizing if it goes out of sync, because not all acapellas will line up perfectly.
3. Create a bass-progression that works with the acapella.
   If the bass and acapella aren’t in the same key, it’s gonna make everything sound awful, since I base all my other synths on the bass.
4. Create a pad based on the bass (and thus works with the acapella).
5. Create a melody based on the pads (and thus works with the bass and the acapella).
6. Change various melodies, timbres/sounds and samples.
7. Delete characteristic sounds from the old track and create new characteristic sounds.
   This can be anything from an arp to a drum-sample or effect.
8. Arrange the track.
   A rough outline will do at this stage. Preferably use arrangements from other tracks you like. (Pro-tip)
9. Add details here and there (especially in transitions) to give it the pro-edge and make people go “how did he do that?” (Pro-tip).

Keep in mind that less is more (i.e. a select few good sounds will work better than lots of bad sounds) and to keep it simple. The dancefloor is the judge of how good your track is. Remember though that not all details will be heard when you play out and sometimes too much detail can steal the focus of your main elements, such as the kick/bass, lead synth and vocals.

I hope this gives you a little more insight into how I view a track as of right now and most importantly that this gives you a way to create your own workflow and lets you be more productive. The way I work is constantly shifting, so I may redesign my entire workflow by next year, but this is what I do as of right now.

If you found this article useful, please let me know and also share it with your friends!

Feel free to share your own tips!

No related posts.

Today I’m going to talk about books. More specifically books that I believe every producer should have in his library. All of these books are the most popular ones in their category on Amazon.com and as such, I think that’s a good indication of their quality, which is why I’ve included them here. The books covered are as follows:

• The Dance Music Manual: Tools, Toys and Techniques
• Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music Theory
• How to Make a Noise: A Comprehensive Guide to Synthesizer Programming
• The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook
• Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science
• How to Write a Hit Song: The Complete Guide to Writing and Marketing Chart-Topping Lyrics & Music
• How to Be a Hit Songwriter: Polishing and Marketing Your Lyrics and Music

The Dance Music Manual: Tools, Toys and Techniques

This book is by far the book that covers the most aspects of audio production of the books I’ve listed. I have never encountered anything quite like it. This is my go-to book whenever I have a question about anything in music/audio production. It covers what tools there are and exactly how everything works (for example, that’s where I learned about compression, if you’ve read my tutorial). It covers synthesis, music theory (basic) and will show you how to program your own drums in any synthesizer. It covers different electronic dance music (EDM) genres, their characteristics and recommended listening (incl. trance). While it isn’t very good at explaining these genres, it at least tries to give you a summed up version of it. It also explains physics in a way that’s easy to understand. Another good thing about this book is that the author is very down to earth and understands the needs of the person buying a book like this and as such doesn’t demand that the reader buys plug-ins for thousands of pounds, but rather tries to give you alternatives to inexpensive tools that sound great.
If you read anything at all, make it this book.

Complete Idiot’s Guide to Music Theory

This book is very useful and will show you how to read notation, teach you about rhythm and the G-clef zZzZzZzZz — AHEM! Sorry… This book will teach you how to write proper melodies and it shows you how and why certain melodies are catchier than others. It will teach you how you can make sure that your melodies are in key and how you can fix your melodies when they aren’t. What’s more interesting about this though is that it will teach you things that you didn’t even know you could learn. This will give you a completely new insight into melodies and you’ll be able to spit out riffs and tons of variations thereof (all in key, of course) in no time at all. I was very impressed by this book and thought it covered every areas extensively. It doesn’t go in-depth into compositional theory, but there are other books designed for that. It will however give you all the tools you need in order to learn more about compositional theory.

How to Make a Noise: A Comprehensive Guide to Synthesizer Programming

I haven’t read this book and thus can’t really say anything about how it’s written, but it seems very good and I’m looking forward to reading this once I’m done reading my other books. There’s a free on-line version of this on noisesculpture.com that shows you down-to-earth real-world examples of patches that you can create on very popular plugins. The information on it can be applied on any synthesizer, so it’s definitely worth a look or two if you’re stuck on your synthesis skills. No matter if you’re patch junkie or a synthesis purist, this will help you get the most out of your synthesizers.

The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook

Without a doubt, the best book I’ve read on Mixing theory. It explains exactly how you should think of a mix and helped me improve myself a lot. I had read and seen a lot of material on how to mix your tracks, but it wasn’t until I read this book that my skills literally skyrocketed. It shows you various examples of real-world tracks so that you can easily follow the examples and hear for yourself what the author is trying to show you. It explains exactly the how and why of everything. Compression, EQ, stereo-positioning, etc. are all covered in a humane matter. The author of this book is not stuck up like a lot of other successful musicians seem to be (sadly) and that only makes the book even more enjoyable.

Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science

If you want to get into mastering, this is the book of choice, but personally, I believe every competent producer should own a copy of this book. Written by one of the most prominent figures alive in this area (Bob Katz, inventor of the K-metering-system) and read and recommended by lots of Mastering Engineers (including Ruffage of PureFocus Mastering). It goes very in-depth into a lot of technical areas of audio and will teach you all about bitrates, bitdepth, samplerates, compressors, etc.

How to Write a Hit Song: The Complete Guide to Writing and Marketing Chart-Topping Lyrics & Music

This book had some very inspirational tips and it shows you how a well-structured lyric is supposed to look and the author also gives some inspirational advice. This was recommended to me and it was a fun read, but the author however is clearly very full of herself, which makes this a pain to read sometimes, especially when the first thing you read in the book is an angsty rant on how music has become wide-spread because of the Internet and how her royalties suffer because of this, although she clearly makes a very good living off her songs. She is also a bit detached and tries giving legal advice which is just not possible for those starting out.
The exercises make up for this though and it’s actually a decent read.

How to Be a Hit Songwriter: Polishing and Marketing Your Lyrics and Music

This is the follow up of the former book and generally has some good exercises as well. It does suffer from the same thing as the first one though; the author. While the first book is more focused on getting the basics covered, this book is more focused on teaching you new techniques so that you won’t suffer from lack of inspiration.

Final Thoughts

I think there are some really nice books out there, especially the Dance Music Manual. I’ve listed them all in the order that I would read them. I’ve listed them like this after importance. The first book will cover the basics of all areas of production, but doesn’t go too in-depth whereas the latter books demand that you have some degree of experience in the area covered, but give you that final push from amateur to professional. As such, I wouldn’t recommend getting too caught up on mastering before you know how a track is usually arranged. You can get by without the songwriting books (unless you want to give your lyrics a nice polish) and while a lot of people will say “you don’t need music theory to write awesome tracks,” I believe they’re forgetting that knowing your theory will teach you how to write even better tracks!
I hope this tutorial has inspired you, that you’ll learn stuff you didn’t even know were possible and that all the pieces will finally start coming together. All your questions should be answered, but when in doubt, use your Google-skills.
Have you read any of these books or plan on doing so? In that case, go ahead and let me know what you think!

No related posts.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaUiD0oIV8E

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

No related posts.

• Threshold: Say you put a sample in your compressor which peaks at –9dB, the threshold will determine when the compressor should kick in. So if you set the threshold to anything higher than –9dB, it won’t do anything (since the drum will never be louder). If you for example set it to –10dB, then it WILL kick in at any peaks above –10dB.
• Ratio: Now the ratio will determine how much to lower the volume. If you set your compressor to 2:1 it will turn down every 2dB that’s over your threshold to 1dB, this means that if it’s 4dB over the threshold, the compressor will make it 2dB and so on. With a compression of 3:1 it would turn down every 3dB that’s over your threshold to 1dB and likewise if it’s 6dB over the threshold, the compressor will make it 2dB and so on. In other words, ratio determines how much it will squash of the signal that’s louder than we allow (with the threshold).
• Attack: The attack will determine how much time should have passed where the signal is over the threshold, until it compresses the signal according to the ratio.
• Release: This will determine how long it should compress the signal before letting the signal be uncompressed again.
• Gain: Gain will only let you change the volume after compression, so there’s nothing special about that.

As you can see, this is relatively straightforward, but some people may be confused as to when and where to use compression. The saying usually goes “don’t compress unless you need it,” but it’s non-trivial to know when you need it. A good tip is to apply it on things that should cut through the mix or should be snappy (like a snare for example).

A simple way to see how compression affects your sound is to do the following:

• Set the threshold to as low as you can (like –80dB).
• Set the ratio to as high as you can (approx 10:1).
• Set the attack to 0ms and the release to maximum (maybe 300ms).
• Now you should only hear a small click on whatever sample you are using. This is a prime example of the compressor working. Tweak your settings from here to see how much compression you want.

Good things to bear in mind:

• Gentle compression can give a nice touch to things. In order to be gentle, have a fairly high threshold and a fairly low ratio.
• The attack should be fairly short if you want it snappy. Less than 10ms usually.
• The release should be adjusted to the speed of the song, so don’t leave it at maximum.
• Compression alters the transients of your sounds, so be careful with what you compress.
• If your compressor has automatic make-up gain, turn it off. The reason for this is that it will seem like the threshold will turn the volume up, rather than down, because the compressor will make up for the volume that’s lost to compression, by gaining it. Only enable this if you know what you’re doing or else it will be counter-productive.
• Don’t let the loudness fool you. Even though your compressed signal will be quieter than the original (and therefor probably subjectively sound worse), you should remember that you can use the gain.
• Hard compression hurts! go easy on the ratio-meter.
• Don’t overcompress! It kills the transients and causes listener fatigue.

That’s all there is to it! Now go on and experiment!

No related posts.

What follows are a few tips for experienced producers, so the language may be a bit too challenging for those just starting out. I’ve written this tutorial so that it applies to any genre, in the hopes of making it as useful as possible.

Folders
When making your tracks, make good use of folders. Personally, I use 5 folders: effects, vocals, drums, synths, unused.
In the effects-folder I’ll have anything that I consider to be an effect (except for vocal effects), like sweeps, risers, hallkicks, oneshots, etc. In the vocals folder I’ll have a different track for main vocal, harmony, effect-tracks (i.e. a track with a delay with feedback or any other “special” effect). In the drums folder I’ll have any percussive sound. In the synths folder I’ll have any synthesized/tonal sound. In the unused folder I’ll have anything that I may not want to use for this particular project, but may use in other projects (such as 303s or samplers).

Buses
Buses are a godsend since you can cut down a lot of CPU-power by using them and they give you even more control over the overall level of the mix.
With basses, I’ll usually have one bass-layer and one or more other layers with the lows cut out, so as not to interfere with the bass frequencies of the first layer. This I usually do by having all additional bass-layers routed to a bus called “Bass Layer” which uses one EQ to cut out all the lows which in turn is routed to the “Bass” bus where my first bass is routed to. That way, any additional bass-layer will be low-cut and added into the mix at the right volume (most of the time). I’ll do the same with pads, because I don’t want the bass-layer of the pad (or subpad) to play at all times. The subpad is also bused and narrowed so that the subpads are in mono. In the end, all my tracks are routed into a bus of some sort.

Melodies
Melodies are quite easy to calculate, in case you ever get stuck. You can reverse engineer most melodies and see that there’s a pattern to it. Most melodies revolve around a 1 or 2 bar pattern and make use of root, 3rd and 5th notes with the odd step or skip note. Find this pattern and you can use it in any key that you want by transposing it. Simple, yet extremely effective and guarantees results. Once you have your basic pattern for the melody laid out, you can spice it up by introducing step and skip notes.

Sounds
The most important thing in the mix is the sounds that you use. Every single sound you use should be carefully selected and serve a purpose. If you can, recreate the sounds from your favourite tracks or ask for help on forums, if not, try to rip the sound directly from the track. If you can’t do that either, try finding a sound that comes as close as possible to it and EQ it to make it fit. A/B all the sounds you use to the track you’re trying to learn from.
A word of warning, because legally, you’re not allowed to rip the sounds. There’s also the moral aspect to it, but ask yourself if you really want to sacrifice the quality of your music because of morals.

Effects
Delays are often very short lasting and usually will only be heard once or twice to fill up the space, so using a preset like MegaFeedbackDelay may not be the best decision for your mix. Remember: The goal of mixing a track is to have 100% control over each element.
Use at least 2 reverbs. One short and one long. You can use the short one on shorter, less improtant elements (like claps, closed hihats) to give them depth and the long one on things like vocals, leads, pads, etc.
A lot of people will cite “If you can hear the reverb, you’re using too much” which I used to believe myself, but if you listen to your favourite tracks, you’ll notice that they use quite a lot of reverb and it sounds really good!
Put the reverbs on their own send-channels and put the delays directly on the channels where you need them. You don’t need to put delays on a send channel.

Filters
Filters work wonders for transitions. You can choose to filter-sweep a sound n² bars before the next part and it is guaranteed to sound great. Using resonance can help the sound to be louder through the filter and using different steepness on cutoffs will help your resonance to be more prominent, so experiment with those. You don’t have to have your filters going from absolute minimum to absolute maximum. In fact, I never do this. The trick is to have the filtered sound clearly audible, but obviously filtered. Experiment with it and see what sounds right for your specific track, in your specific mix at that specific moment.
Delays can often interfere with the original sound. This is not uncommon in vocals and leads. A trick to get it to melt better with the original sound is to use a filter. Many delays offer a high-pass and low-pass frequency knob, which you can tweak to your liking.

Equalization
While having the best possible sound to start off with is the best approach, sometimes you’ll find that for example your kick doesn’t have enough bass or too much mids. You will only be able to learn this by doing and referencing to other professional tracks, but try to keep the changes subtle. There’s plenty of guides on how to EQ on the net, so make use of those, but remember that extreme settings will most likely only cloud your mix and make you lose control over it. I tend not to go above or below 9dB, but prefer to keep it between –3 and +3dB.
Use a low cut on everything that you don’t want in the bass-frequencies. Use a slight lower mid cut wherever you can to make space for the mids as these parts will get filled quickly anyway.

Stereo Image
Try to keep focal sounds in the middle but wide. You can do this by using delays, reverbs and unison. Always check how your mono-image sounds.
Sometimes you really can’t centre the bass-frequencies of a sound (for example, when using a reverb on a kick), but to aid this, you can use plugins which centre your bass-frequencies or split the sound into two buses, one with a low cut and one with a high cut and narrow the high cut channel.
Panning non-critical sounds will also help free up space in your mix, which would be much better used for vocals, kicks, basses and leads. When you do, try to keep both sides equally busy (preferably at all times). Don’t hard pan your sounds unless it’s as a special effect. The trick is to make it sound centred but actually being panned.

Master Channel
A lot of the time you’ll hear that you’re not supposed to have anything on your master channel, which I see as a half-truth. It is true that the uninformed producer shouldn’t process the master-mix, but rather go back into the mix in order to fix what’s causing problems. In reality, I have my master bus jammed with plugins, but those are merely there for analysis.
A lowpass-filter to hear if I have any instruments interfering with the bass-frequencies.
A stereo imaging-plugin to be able to monitor my mono and stereo field quickly. If I hear any bass frequencies in my stereo field, I know I missed something and can go back to fix it. If my focal sounds are too weak in the mono field, I know I have to go back and fix it.
A limiter after that to get my songs as loud as commercial tracks, so I can get a feel for what the end product will be like.
A mastering suite which I will turn on once I’m done with mixing.
A spectral analyser to see what my waveforms look like. Especially helpful when trying to get the balance between the kick and the bass right.
A frequency and stereo analyser to see how my stereo field is behaving and to make sure I get a good frequency distribution.

Arrangement
If your song is too hard to mix into other tracks, it won’t get played by untrained DJs. Therefore, always, always, always make your intros and outros the same amount of bars that other current tracks are.
Introduce your basses only after the amount of bars that are common for the genre. The trick is to make the track so that the next DJ theoretically shouldn’t have to EQ. Don’t introduce melodic elements before the previous track’s outro is finished, otherwise your keys may clash and the DJ ends up with a horrible sounding mix.
Make your intros as interesting as possible without breaking those rules. The reason for this is that it shows the DJ AND the audience quality immediately. A lazy intro won’t be recognizable and home-listeners are likely to skip it, unless you have something good to offer, which makes you seem lazy. If you want to sound like a pro, you have to be a pro.
Apart from the intro and outro, you have your usual structure of breakdown (pads, pianos, textures), buildup (rolling drums, filtersweeps, sound effects), drop (chorus with lead vocal, drums, bass), breakdown, buildup, drop.
Make sure that your second breakdown is as interesting as possible, because if it isn’t, it’s likely to be cut short. This holds true for DJs AND compilations. If the DJ only has 60 minutes and tries to cram as many songs into it as possible, he’s likely to cut your track short unless there’s something special about it.

No related posts.