My Music Production Tips and Tools for 2020

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As 2019 comes to an end, I’d like to discuss some of the most important things that went on, things I’ve talked about the most, plugins I loved, topics discussed in coaching, and so on.

Productivity and Writer’s Block

I was pretty busy in the first half of the year. I released my 22nd album and two EPs. While these achievements look great on paper, I can tell you that it was probably one of my least productive years of the last decade. I had a writer’s block (on-and-off) since May, and was unable to really finish a song, so I mainly focused on working on collaborations or engineering. Being hit by writer’s block at this point of my life was unusual, but reminds me that no one is really immune to it.

Signs of Writer’s Block:

  • Everything you do feels or sounds like crap or is uninspiring.
  • Other people’s music is not really hitting the spot either or feels old.
  • Being unable to make music for more than 20-30 minutes. A feeling of discouragement comes in really fast.
  • Mostly unable to turn a loop into a song.

If you’ve been making music for more than ten years, the signs are slightly different:

  • Feeling like you’re repeating yourself over and over.
  • Not feeling satisfied with the techniques or gear you have.
  • Unable to finish music in general or not able to start.
  • Mostly struggling to polish existing songs.

My solutions to resolve writer’s block are not necessarily going to work for everyone, as there’s no cure-all. Everything passes at some point, but you can’t resolve writer’s block without going through it—you can’t get around it.

Suggestions for Resolving Writer’s Block

  • Completely change how you work by trying a new DAW.
  • Test tons of presets from your synths and learn how they’re programmed.
  • Learn about modular synthesis.
  • Try online sound banks such as Archive.org, freesound.org, or even YouTube’s obscure archives.

But more importantly, figure out what the block is in your writer’s block. Is it linked towards your expectations? In my case, it’s simply a question of finding the next concept to build an album upon. The way I discover concepts is by trying to reverse-engineer sound design. The quest to make something similar with the use of different tools to shape the sound is more important than the result itself. I see many people getting writer’s block from trying to identically replicate a sound they want and discarding other techniques.

The difficulty in replicating a technique comes from the “early beginnings of a new producer“, in which someone starts on the wrong foot. I’m always happy to have someone who wants to start producing come to me to make sure he/she will start off well.

How and Where to Start Producing

In 2019, new producers have infinite access to information and tools. Too much information means a few things:

  • Giving you the wrong first impression that everything is easy and doable.
  • Misleading you into investing into things sold as being essential, while they’re not.
  • Having so many choices makes the task of picking one overwhelming. If you have access to all the sounds you could ever dream of, where would you start?

Counter-Productive Tips New Producers are Often Told

  • If you work hard enough, you can learn anything.
  • You can learn and do everything yourself.
  • Not watching tutorials or reading articles is better than education because you learn as you go.
  • Make all your sounds by yourself so you can be original. Hello, down the rabbit hole.

I see people coming into production with the wrong intentions/goals. Of course, if you come with the idea that: a. things are easy and that b. you can learn everything yourself, people set unrealistic goals for themselves before they’ve ever created a loop.

In the last five years, I have been frequently reminded of a client who once came to me with an artist page on Soundcloud and Facebook with thousands of followers, a logo, professional photos, etc., but not a single minute of experience in music production. He had to make some music that could match the image he had been selling, and the first step felt huge.

The other side to early production is the artist who finishes a first song quickly and gets signed. With no experience, keeping up the pace of releasing is difficult, and the quick rise can be a situation that might be difficult to handle.

My Suggestions for People Who Want to Start Producing

  • Listen to a lot of music when you have the time, and attend shows. This is super important for multiple reasons: you’ll learn the relationship between what you hear on your headphones vs. a venue. This is important to develop your mixing skills—learning how people react to sounds and how artists perform music in a live context. This is valuable information for music-making.
  • Try to befriend people who make music as well, a mix of newcomers and older producers. This is super important for building a network of contacts to ask questions, swap music with, share gear, get a bunch of info that you can’t find yourself, and also to break-up periods of isolation.
  • Ask as many questions as you have. No shame, just ask. Ask a lot of how do you do this or that? What is the name of that sound? What effect can create that impression?
  • Have studio jams. This is the best way to learn. You’ll learn so much because you’ll run into so many problems that you’ll have to troubleshoot them, and that’s useful. Jamming also puts music-making into a context that is impossible to replicate—alone in a studio.
  • Try to make loops everyday. You can make them all into one project file or start a new one each time. It’s important to make many because it’s good to first practice how to start making a loop. If you make a lot, you’ll get more efficient, develop tricks, and get faster at finding your way through a new tool.
  • It’s more efficient to do 10-20 minutes everyday than a five-hour session on a weekend. The optimal focus time for your brain is around 30 minutes, so you get the best of yourself. Working for five hours isn’t recommended at all: you’ll feel like you did a lot but after that time, your ears can’t really judge what you’re doing. You can do five hours in a day, but on multiple tracks. I just feel that it’s not the best of yourself that will come out of long sessions on a single project, but you’ll learn.
  • When you can start a loop in 10 minutes and feel great about it, then you’ve leveled up and you can now go back to all the loops you made and practice turning them into a song. Next level comes when you can finish them in a breeze.
  • One song, one idea. If you make a decent loop, it’s probably the middle part of your song. How many layers do you have? What is the main idea? Can you, or a friend, sing that idea?
  • Don’t make a big deal about not finishing songs. It will come naturally if you take things one step at a time.
  • Forget releasing your music or getting signed by a label. If you focus on that, you’re just distracted from doing what you have to do which is to have skills to make music like you want.

Common Issues Other Than Writer’s Block

People often share other struggles in music-making with me like:

  1. A loop or idea feels boring or repetitive at some point in the song. First, don’t reveal your main idea too quickly. Second, create multiple variations of that loop (ex. changing the timing or adding effects). Third, add modulation to the sounds so they’re constantly changing.
  2. A song feels like something is missing. This might be because you’ve heard it too many times. Try leaving it alone for a month. Otherwise, here’s the a quick checklist: percussion, bass, pattern or melody, background, and a supporting idea. If you have all those, you should be more than okay. Otherwise, try to compare your song to a reference, concentrate on all sounds and see if you have about the same number.
  3. A track feels empty compared to references. Often resolved by creating a noise-floor. Try a reverb or a hiss at low level.
  4. Sounds never feel right. You might have bad samples. If you are convinced you should do everything yourself, you’ll indeed sound off, for a while. Try buying and using pre-made sounds. If you can’t make them, find some, and learn how to make killer loops and songs. As you go, you’ll eventually train your ear on how these sounds are made and will be able to make them. Honestly, even after 20 years, there are plenty of sounds I’m slightly not sure how to make even though I know, in theory, how to… it’s harder than it seems!
  5. Creating original ideas and not cheesy ones. If you listen to a lot of music, this will train your ear. If you listen to a lot of music before making music, it will put you in a mood. If you use a reference track, or even try to compose music over it, it can greatly help with this issue.

Essential Music Production Tools From 2019

EQ

Even though it was released in 2018, Fabfilter’s Pro-Q3 has won many prizes this year and has gained prominence with many major engineers. I’ve been watching a lot of tutorials from Mixing With The Masters, and Pro-Q3 is often the EQ of choice. You can use multiple instances to see how each channels are interacting between one-another, do some side-chaining, corrections, and shelving. You can turn any points into a dynamic filter too, which is very useful. If you have the budget, try to get an analog inspired EQ such as the PSP E27. These types of EQs aren’t parametric and can add a musical colour.

Compression

The compressor I loved the most this year was the Avalon from Universal Audio. So badass, so powerful, so useful…no need to say more. If you don’t have a UAD, I always turn to PSP Vintagewarmer 2. Not only does it compress well, it adds warmth—people want both.

The Do-It-All Utility of the Year

No doubts, it comes to Shaperbox 2. It is perfect for resolving many, many issues like modulation, side-chaining, movement, variations, creative ideas on the fly…it’s so good that I blindly bought it when I received it in my newsletter from CurveGuys.

Reverb

If there’s one effect to have on top of your stock plugins is a good reverb. There are many out there such as this gorgeous reverb by Fabfilter but I suggest the Convolution by Melda—it’s fantastic and will be useful for years.

Quote of the Year

We make music to come together, and yet spend so much time alone. Reach out to others, create new concepts and see how viewing music as something fun will build things organically.

SEE ALSO : Design Thinking for Music Production

The acoustic-electronic combo

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In the last 5 years, I’ve been seeing more and more projects that combine the use of acoustic sounds, samples, and recordings with synthetic, analog sounds. What’s interesting is that in the 90s, this combo wasn’t very popular, and in the eyes of many purists it was a huge no-no. The benefits of an acoustic-analog recording combination is what I’d like to discuss in this post.

There are a huge number of amazing musicians we could point to as being good references of this combination. For instance, in 2011, ECM asked Ricardo Villalobos to remix some songs from their catalog.

I remember that Ric had been playing many tracks from the jazz-influenced label mostly because he loves to create these epic moments of weirdness, where he’s play something totally unexpected in the middle of his sets. Sometimes even in a peak moment where most people would be expecting a bomb song, he’d drop some weird jazz music and layer it with some of his own techno songs he recorded in his studio, mostly from his modular. Seeing him play some of that during a few events circa 2005-2009, I saw how the acoustic-electronic combo always brought some magic into a very electronic set, but you’d have to be happy. I remember some people being weirded out by it but that, as he’d say, is not his problem.

In the 90s, this combination wasn’t always welcomed, mostly because people were really wanting to dive deep into pure electronic music, as in, if it was techno, it had to be techno and there was no room for anything that wasn’t on that agenda. I’m sorry to say that I was one of those guys as well! Especially when I entered my minimal techno era around 1996, I wanted the purest electronic aesthetic and anything acoustic would make me cringe, especially guitars.

I find that ever since Ric explored the ECM catalog, it really opened a lot of doors for people to combine the two worlds to unite them. One person that jumps to my mind as one of the artists that explored that the most is certainly Petre Inspirescu, who was really known for bringing classical vibes to techno—in his mix for Fabric or in his work with the Pi Ensemble. It’s important to note that it was an exploration, yes, but it also worked really, really well. Sometimes people explore something and it doesn’t really work, but Petre, in my humble opinion, brought it to a more refined result than what Villalobos did.

So, what should we take from this history exactly? How can one get into the acoustic-electronic aesthetic and make it work well?

Reverb and Room Acoustics

It’s crazy how a good reverb can bring life to anything, and since acoustic instruments are recorded in a room, organic reverb added to a sound brings a whole new world to it. The more realistic the reverb, the more warmth it can bring [to a mix]. This is what influenced me the most to start my own reverb collection, and my lust for finding the most realistic reverb. I did many tests with mastering, asking artists who have great reverb in their productions what can make a difference.

  • Convolution: If you can, always use the convolution reverb by max for live. One thing I noticed about stock plugins is the grain that comes out weird during mastering; this is never the case for convolution. If you’re not familiar with what convolution means, it’s basically taking the “image” of a place’s reverb and applying it as a preset for your plugin. You can then have special places such as a specific studio, concert room or even, a restaurant. It’s used in movies for creating proper atmospheres but it does such a great job on percussion. One of my favourite convolution reverb plugins is the one by Melda called mConvolutionMB—it’s multi-band, giving you a lot of options for creating really special spaces. You can also browse the internet in search of free impulse responses that you can load in your plugin. I also encourage you to randomly put sounds in it to get the reverb that is used in the sample to apply it to your song so you get a feeling that it’s all part of the same place.
  • Record your own: I know some people who buy pieces of drum kits separately to have the real thing then can play with. They’ll then record themselves playing percussion over their song. You’d be surprised about even with a cheap microphone, you can create something pretty interesting to layer your sounds with. It will catch the reverb of your place which is also unique. Snares, hats, cymbals are cheaper to buy than you think, and having them physically with you is pretty fun too.
  • Binaural recording: You can buy a binaural microphone that allows you to record sounds based upon your head, which is ideal to create stereo impression on the listener who uses headphones. If you record percussion at your ear level, it will give the listener the idea that the percussion is right in front of you. It really creates a special aesthetic for whatever you record and also some stereo placement that is unique. There are all kinds of tricks you can do with recording random things. Since it’s very precise for stereo, some people use frequency modulation using binaural technique to induce the brain in different states of mind like relaxation. I won’t get into that but there’s plenty to read on the topic if you’re curious.
  • Hardware reverb: This is hard to beat. If you can invest into a hardware reverb unit such as a pedal or a rackmount effect, you’ll get some really next level results. Something like an old DP4 by Ensoniq or Alesis, Lexicon ones can be a dramatic improvement. You can also look into a multi-effect pedal like the one by Big Sky.

Preamps and Other Tools

While the idea of acoustic layered over analog is magical, you’ll have to agree that the highest quality recordings will make a huge difference. This is why when you look for quality samples, you’ll look for the highest sample rate possible and something like 192khz will be the holy grail. This means you can re-pitch it with the least compromise, and you’ll get a lot of what we call the air-factor, where the complexity of the high end will be crystal clear.

Something else people overlook, especially when it comes to samples that were recorded, is the use of preamps. I’ve been shying away from this topic for years until I really saw how using them can completely change the quality of your sound, adding not only beefiness but also, a special texture, depending of the preamp you’re using. Ones by Neve will sound different than API, for instance, and using them on certain things will change the character of a sound. Plugins that emulate them are pretty solid at it. I tested all of the preamps this year, from Universal Audio, and found that the ones by Neve are the ones that feel the suitable for the music I want to do. I also saw a considerable amount of enthusiasm from clients when I used them on their projects. So, recording your own, even with a cheap microphone, if you use some nice preamp, you’ll get something pretty solid out of it. Cheap microphone can even be a source of coloration for your samples but nowadays you can find really nice, affordable microphones so it might be worth investing a bit more so you get something useful for years ahead.

Virtual drummers are also something you can look into. There are many out there but Slate Digital makes really high quality program that can help you have highly realistic percussion. Otherwise, you can look at Addictive Drummer that has a range of different drum kits to get sounds from. It’s very realistic as well and layering it over a rigid drum machine sequence can provide a lot of depth!

SEE ALSO : Integrating a modular setup with your DAW

Making Digital Synths Sound Analog

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In exploring online electronic music production groups and forums, you’ll see a lot of hate around the use of presets. Some people think it’s a lazy way to get things done, and others that it’s just less creative and adds to the pool of music that all sounds the same. I have no shame saying that I myself use presets. I use presets to help myself understand concepts, how my tools work, and to give myself ideas that are outside of my normal routine. However, I don’t use presets “as-is”; generally—at the very least—I’ll run the sounds through a hurricane of colouring tools. I’m mostly drawn to very, very bizarre sounds that presets are usually not made for, except for some made by Richard Devine (but he usually goes too far).

Personally, my biggest pet-peeve with presets comes from cold-feeling digital synths or pads—they sound like Kraft Dinner served cold with canned peas; plain and horrible. Not only do I dislike these sounds themselves, but I can’t get over the fact that very simple things could have been done to enhance them, which is why I am writing this post.

Why Digital Presets Sound Cold and Bland

Analog equipment involves slight, microscopic, ever-changing modulations. Digital plugins and presets do not have these variations—they operate in a linear way. Think of an analog watch—the hands slide from one number to another without pause. A digital watch jumps sharply from one number to another without anything in the middle. This is the simplest analogy I can think of to help you understand why digital synths often sound surgical and cold, and inversely, why analog synths sound round and warm.

There are things you can do with tools to remove a digital or cold feeling, which mostly involves embracing the world of subtleties and tiny modulations. Don’t be afraid to push things to the point of feeling slightly “ugly”. Let me explain:

One of the things that’s become more obvious for me lately is how a tiny bit of distortion and clipping can bring a lot more of precision to a sound in a mix. I’ve always been a fan of saturation (sometimes my clients tell me to reduce it a bit); in case you didn’t know, saturation is a mild form of distortion—wave-shaping that you can really push in a very subtle way. Subtle distortion sort of breaks a signal’s linearity, or coldness. Recently, I was in a studio with my friend Jason—a brilliant sound designer—and asked him how he turns something cold into something more analog sounding. While he could have applied a bunch of effects and processing to a sound, he said he was more interested in creating multiple layers around the pad or digital sound.

A good way to combat the cold side of digital sounding synths is to add a good dose of acoustic samples, field recordings or other organic sounding findings around it. The combination of digital and organic really guides the perception [of the listener] away from the digital aesthetic.

What makes some acoustic recording samples feel warm is a combination of a bunch of things. The quality of the microphone, for example, can translate a lot of the details and capture more depth. The sample rate of the recorder will also make a huge difference. Microphones are often overlooked, but they basically determine the level of precision in your recording; if it’s extremely precise, with a lot of high-end information, it will contribute in the definition of the sound quality. Another thing to consider is the preamp of the recorder. There’s a world of difference between preamps, and having high quality one will certainly add a lot to sounds. If your sounds are thin and lacking substance, you can also use preamp plugins. Some of the best out there are from Universal Audio, but you can also rely on Arturia’s preamp emulation for something quite impressive as well.

I had a talk with someone who was saying that one of the things that made Romanian techno so good was the combination of the acoustic kicks with the analog ones, to which I added that without good preamps, the acoustic kicks would sound like garbage.

If you have raw synthetic sounds, you can also pass them through some convolution—this helps create a space around it. The mConvolution Reverb by Melda is quite spectacular. It also has some microphone impulse response which mimics as if the sound had been recorded in a space. You can make it multi-band so you can assign specific bands to have a specific reverb type(s). This allows you to be very creative, and if you leave it at a very low wet rate, it will infuse the sound with a nice, warm presence.

Regarding warm presence, again, with distortion, I’d encourage you to look into trying various distortion plugins and use them with a wet factor of about 3-5% max. Depending on the plugin, you’ll see how they add a little bit of color to a sound. My way of using distortion is usually bringing it up to about 20% and then rolling down until I barely hear it. You want to hear it a bit, but not much.

Some nice distortion plugins I like include Decapitator by SoundToys, mDistortionMB by Melda, Wave Box by AudioThing, Saturn by Fabfilter.

Get Out of “The Box”

There’s no doubt that moving outside your computer will infuse your sound with some texture, presence, and some analog feel.

Use a little mixer for summing. If your sound card (audio interface) has multiple outputs, then you can send them to a little mixing board where you can group your channels into different buses. For instance, you can split them into a channel for kick (mono), stereo channels for bass and melodic elements, and another one for percussion. If your board has more channels, you can experiment with different things, but just these sound groups are a great start; the mixing board will give you a rawer feel than your DAW alone. For simple, affordable boards, look into Mackie’s latest series—pretty impressive and absolutely affordable.

Use external saturation. People love Elektron’s Analog Heat. It’s a good external distortion and does a pretty solid job of adding colour to sounds, out of the box. You can also look into using distortion pedals, reverb, or invest in a 500 series lunchbox and get some saturation modules—there are many to look into.

Use VHS, cassette, or tape. Some of my friends have been searching local pawn shops for cassette decks or old VCRs; they offer a static saturation that you can explore. There’s a whole world of possibilities too when you compress the recorded result—you’ll create something weird sometimes, but it will give you a lofi feel.

If you have other suggestions, please share!

SEE ALSO : “How do I get started with modular?”