Tips to Keep a Loop Interesting for an Entire Song

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To keep a song built mostly on a single loop interesting, we need to discuss how you work and your perceptions. I can’t just recommend technical bells and whistles that will solve everything. You need to think about how you see your music, and from there, there are certain things that I think can make a difference in helping to keep a listener engaged, even if your song is built around a single loop.

There are two main things you need to consider with regards to listener engagement when making a song:

  1. How someone listens to a song.
  2. How your song can engage the listener in his/her experience.

Meeting Your Listener’s Expectations

If you read this blog, you’ll know that this topic has been covered in other posts, so I won’t deeply go into this again but I’d like to remind you of a few key elements. The first and foremost important point here is to understand what you want to do in the first place. From the numerous talks I’ve had with clients, this is where many people get lost. To know what you want to do with a song has to be clear from the start.

Is a plan for a song something set that can’t be changed afterwards?

Of course you can change your mind, but this can open a can of worms, as the direction and vision of what you want to do becomes less clear. Music is about communicating some sort of intention.

When, in the music-making process, should you set your intention?

You don’t have to about your intention explicitly, of course, but doing so helps if you’re struggling with a lack of direction or when you feel you can’t reach goals. I find there are two important moments where setting an intention can provide significant benefits. The first is when you start a project—when you start a song, you can think of something somewhat general, such as “an ambient song” or “making a dance-floor track”; but the more precise you are, the more you are establishing some boundaries for your wandering mind. Many people don’t feel this approach helps and may skip this aspect of writing music, but for others, it can be a leveraged to maximize your efforts in what you do.

For instance, I often make songs without a precise goal because I just like to let things flow and to see how it’s been made affects the end-product. But when I’m asked to make an EP, I need to focus the results.

For me, for example, to meet my client’s expectations, I need to know what they want. It helps if they work in a specific genre or can reference an artist they like so I can help them deliver music that will appeal to people with similar tastes. When working with a clear intention, one needs to study how the music is made, more or less, in terms of variations, transitions, number of sounds, duration, tones, etc.

The objection I always get to this recommendation is “yes, but I want to have my own style.” I feel this a bit of a erroneous statement. We always are influenced by other artists and if you’re not, then you might have a problem in your hands: who are you making music for?

I know some people who make music for themselves, which is great. But when they tried to sell it or promote it, there was no way to know who it was for because we had no model to reference. Can you be original and still be heard? Yes, but I think a certain percentage of your songs need to have some sort of influence from a genre that people can relate to. For example, a very personable version of drum and bass, or house—then your music will fall under certain umbrella.

Meeting Your expectations and Your Listeners’ Expectations at the Same Time

The number one problem I hear is of the producer being bored of his/her own music, rather worrying that the listener might be bored, and that’s quite normal, considering the amount of time one can spend making music. Personally, I make my songs with a meticulous approach:

  • 1 idea, 2 supporting elements.
  • Percussion, limited to 5 elements maximum.
  • Bass.
  • Effects, textures, and background.

That’s it.

The main idea rarely evolves more than 2-3 times in a song. If it changes more frequently than that, you might want it to evolve on a regular, precise interval, i.e. changes every 2 bars.

When Writing Music, How Can You Keep a Single Idea Interesting?

I use design principles that are used in visual content and apply them to my music. If you learn about these principles for music-making, you’ll develop a totally new way of listening to music. In searching for these principles, you’ll see some variety, but generally these are the ones that usually come up:

Balance: This principle is what brings harmony to art. Translating this to music, I would say that, mixing wise, this could mean how you manage the tonal aspect of your song. If we think of sound design, it could be the number of percussion sounds compared to soft sounds, or bright vs dark. I find that balanced arrangements exist when there’s a good ratio of surprises versus expected ideas.

Contrast: Use different sources, or have one element that is from a totally different source than the others. This could be analog vs digital, acoustic versus electronic, or having all your sounds from modular synths except one from an organic source. If everything comes from the same source, there’s no contrast.

Emphasis: Make one element pop out of the song—there are so many ways you can do this! You can add something louder, or you could have one element run through an effect such as distortion, and so on. Emphasis in music is often related to amplitude, dynamic range, and variations in volume. In a highly compressed mix, it will be difficult to make anything “pop”.

Pattern: This is about the core idea you want to repeat in your song. It can also be related to the time signature, or an arpeggio. It could be the part you repeat in a precise or chaotic order.

Rhythm: This is the base of a lot of music in many ways, and this, to me, can directly refer to time signature, but it can also mean the sequence of percussion. You can have multiple forms of rhythm as well, from staccato, chaotic, robotic, slow-fast…it’s really one of my favourite things to explore.

Variety: This relates to the number of similar sounds versus different. This is a bit more subtle to apply in music compared to visual design, but a way I see this is how you repeat yourself or not in your arrangement. If you make a song evolve with no variety, you might lose the listener’s attention…same thing for if you have too much variety.

Unity: This is what glues a song together. To me, the glue is made from mixing, but there are things you can do that makes it easier, such as using a global reverb, some compression, a clean mixdown, same pre-amps (coloured ones) or a overall distortion/saturation.

To wrap this up, I can’t recommend to you enough to space out your music sessions, set an intention and pay attention to your arrangements. If you know what you want to achieve with your song, you can refer to a specific reference, and then build up your ideas using some of the design principles I have discussed in this post. Good luck!

Bass Line and Low-End Mixing Tips

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Tips on mixing low-end is an often-requested topic in our community and Facebook group. Handling low-end in electronic music is important to give it the glory it deserves, since it’s one of the most important parts of the genre. In this post, I’ll cover tips on how to handle low-end from multiple points of view, not only from the software side, but also from a monitoring perspective. As I’m writing this during the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine, I’ll also propose some tips on how to manage low-end at home.

The Theory

I won’t go into boring engineering theory here because it’s not my blog’s style. I like to keep things simple and straightforward. So for making low-end easy to understand, let’s cover a few important points:

  • For the purposes of this post, “low-end” means 20hz to 300hz.
  • The low-end is basically the fundamental part of your song. If it’s muddy, your track will not flow.
  • Low-end is the most powerful part of your song in terms of loudness. If your song has a lot of lows and not much mid, it will feel less loud while in theory while actually being very loud from a technical point of view.
  • Over-powering lows makes a song feel muddy and empty in a loud, club context.
  • Lacking lows will make your song feel wimpy.

When it comes to mixing, I usually start by cutting everything with a filter or high-pass EQ at 20hz with a 24db/octave slant. This cuts unnecessary rumble that most sound system can’t reproduce. If you feed monitors garbage frequencies, it takes away precision in the “good ones.” So I cut everything on the master/mix bus, but I will also high-pass every channel by removing any frequencies aren’t needed. When mixing claps, for example, I will remove everything under 300hz.

Low-End Frequency Bands

  • 20-30hz: The section is the sub area. Not always present in every sound system, but when it is, it really creates a warmth that is quite addictive.
  • 30-50hz: I find this section is where a song gains in power. Most clubs cut at 30, and on vinyl records they also cut there—this zone is critical.
  • 50-80hz: The range that creates a lot of punch.
  • 80-100hz: Punch, presence and precision.
  • 100-320hz: This is the body of the song. It gives a lot of weight.

I usually put everything under 150hz in mono. This really solidifies the low-end and avoids phasing issues that are often present, which can help in clarity. Vinyl cutting requires mono low end or the cut will make the record skip. I’ve seen producers who enjoy the weird effect of a stereo low-end but that’s for home listening mostly, and they know there can be issues.

Frequencies are shared by many sounds, and the more you free space for your low end content to breathe, the better it will perform. I know it’s time-consuming but there’s nothing like doing it this way compared to using a side-chaining tool. This phase of mixing is critical for clarity. The more care you put into each channel, the better the results will be in the end.

Since the low-end has fundamental notes, in electronic and dance-oriented music, it’s generally important to pick a key note for your song and not change it much. You can change it as much as you want, of course, but if you do, you’re going to deal with a few headaches.

The Challenges of Mixing Low-End

Handling low-end has multiple challenges, but with time, but hopefully some of my suggestions here help you to deal with those challenges more effectively.

Monitoring

In general, people who can’t hear or deal with low-end properly is because they’re not equipped to work with it. Using a sub is a good, but it will never have the precision of a tool like the Subpac. The Subpac is a wearable device that reproduces the low-end more physically, making it easier to understand what’s happening down there—you feel low-end on your back directly. Headphones, on the other hand, can mislead you, as you cannot hear lower frequencies.

After figuring out the bet monitoring options for your setup, you need to A/B your mix with something to see how your low-end compares to it. There are two main plugins I highly recommend for A/B tasks: Bassroom and REFERENCE. Both allow you to pick a song you like, and then it measures your work in reference to that song to show you how to manage your song to get the desired result. Doing this without these plugins is very hard unless you’re a veteran engineer.

A/Bing requires something very important that a lot of people find difficult to understand when I explain it: you need to find quality song that has well-mixed low-end to compare your work to.

You can’t make quality music if you have never been exposed to it beforehand.

Low-end mixing approaches also vary widely in genres and producers. I would recommend that you pick a song to A/B that you like the feeling and sound of, and then try to emulate it with those plugins. For instance, some techno producers prefer the bass too be present all the way to 20hz and the kick to hit at around 80hz, while some other genres, it will be the opposite. One isn’t better than the other—they’re just styles—but both will create a certain feel on a dance floor.

Shared Frequency Ranges

Speaking of the kick, I should also mention pads, toms, and synths, as they all share space in the low end with the bass elements. It can quickly get messy down there, and the more shared space, the muddier it gets. If you look at the different bands I mentioned, I try to make sure one one sound per section occupies each band. This is why side-chain compression can come in handy—when the kick hits, you can apply ducking to all the rest of the signals that could be present in that range as well. You can also side-chain the bass with percussion or synth so they all have a moment but not at the same time. For quality side-chain compression, I highly recommend looking into the Shaperbox 2 plugin. It’s a “knife” for extremely precise ducking, filtering, and applying mono to your low end—it’s crazy-good.

Space is not only shared in frequencies but also in time. We all love low-end and I see people getting a little bit too excited and have way too much decay on all their sounds down there, which means a lot needs to be removed. The shorter the sounds, the clearer your low-end will feel. You can do that with Shaperbox 2 but also with the very useful mTransientMB that can help you make super punchy sounds.

This means that picking your envelope can be a very delicate task. If your low-end has too much attack, it will compete with the kick and make things muddy. If it lacks attack, it will feel slow and lifeless. To shape your sounds, I would say Shaperbox is the best tool, but if you can look into understanding the attack/decay/sustain/release of your tools and perhaps looking into a good envelope follower, too. Some max patches can really come handy for this as well.

Density

It’s not because your low-end is loud that it’s dense. If you have your low-end coming in loud, it might need some compression to have more density. I find that the best way to get that is by having side-to-side compression (eg. insert 2 compressors), both in parallel mode (wet/dry at 50%) which will condense the signal and make it thick, warm, and fat—pretty much what we love in low-end. You can also add harmonics by using some saturation. I personally find that the most interesting saturation for the low-end is tape; it just works very well. My favorite is the Voxengo CRTIV Tape Bus plugin, it’s a marvel.

Practice Mixing Low-End

Practicing the mixing and design of the low-end of your song takes time, good monitoring, and understanding of each of the challenges that come with it. Once you start working on it and start feeling something isn’t right, check which challenge you’re facing. Try to be methodological about this.

Here’s how I approach it, step by step.

  1. Pick the root key of your song; G, for example.
  2. Find the hook, motif and main idea of your song, then tune it to the key. Usually the main idea, which could be an arpeggio, will situate itself in around G5.
  3. Use the same idea, pitched down to G1-2 to define your low end. It could be one or two octaves difference. It will support your main idea in the same key, making sure your song feels unified.
  4. Put in mono—all your elements under 150hz should be mono.
  5. Add your percussion. You can tune each element to the root key. Tuning the kick can really give a whole different feel.
  6. High-Pass all channels to remove garbage frequencies.
  7. Clear the decay. Fine tune the decay of all sounds so there’s no bleed and they have more dynamics.
  8. Side-chain elements that are masking one another.
  9. Add or control the attack of each sound for precision.

If you do the items in this checklist, you’ll have much better results already. The rest will come with time.

Writing Bass Lines

This tip builds on my previous post about chord progressions and music theory. I come from the dub techno world where we had one-note, one-bar bass lines that felt satisfying enough, so when people ask me if a bass line can be monotone, I sometimes reply that the simplier the low end, sometimes the more effective it can be. Sometimes making it complicated doesn’t mean good. That said, having a bass line over two bars instead of one is often pretty lovely for variation.

I also find that powerful basses are the ones that are reply to the main idea. Support is efficient, but it will make your bass line lack interaction and making it less engaging.

A good way to find a dialog for a bass is to put a square LFO modulating the volume and then using it to mute parts of your bass. If you change the speed of the LFO, you’ll gate parts out, and might find a good combo or variation. In Hip Hop, they often use a pure sine tone and they’ll duck with an LFO or kick. This makes the low end very full and thick.

Oscillators

If you’re going to pick a synth to design with, it might be wise to consider the use of certain wave shapes. For instance, a sine is warm and pure but it can have resonances which are difficult to remove with a bell EQ because they can phase. You want to control your low end only using filters (high-pass) or a shelving EQ. A filter’s slant will help control a rumble. You can put it at 30hz and then switch the slant from 6dB/oct to 12,18, 24 and see how the low-end changes. They all make it very different, from taming to numbing it out. I like to use a square oscillator, but I’m not a fan of the harmonics it creates, so I will filter some out. I’m very careful with resonances in the low-end, but they can also bring a certain warmth to it. For instance, you can use resonance as an extra sine oscillator, which brings fullness to the low-end.

I hope this covers low-end sufficiently for you. Feel free to share your own findings, techniques, or extra questions!

Artistic Integrity and Music Theory

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Last week, in one of our online coaching sessions, we discussed the importance of music theory. In describing my own opinions on the importance of music theory, I’d like to outline different stages of music discovery I’ve gone through during my life. In this post, I will also elaborate on some of my reflections on the current state of music itself.

It’s hard to pinpoint the first time I heard electronic music, but it was probably in the ’70s, and obviously, I fell in love with it. There was a whole science fiction trend at the time, and anything related to sci-fi was characterized by electronic music in the score. During that time, in a sea of pop and rock, electronic music was the oddball, not sounding like anything else. It had its own rules, and while some people were making electronic covers of known songs (which I’ve always hated deeply), I had an appetite for original music.

In the early ’80s, I was really into break-dancing and early electronic hip-hop or electro, which was all the rage. The use of 808s was common, and for me it was also instant love. What I discovered later on was the strong bond between early hip-hop and jazz. Recently, I watched a Blue Note documentary which retraces the roots of hip-hop and jazz, which was very refreshing.

What’s inspiring in this documentary is how this label, in its beginning, was trying to really give artists a chance to share a very personal take on music, and they didn’t follow trends or worry about sales. What was shocking about the film was that, for most part, the artists and label owners talk about what they do largely coming from the same perspectives as electronic musicians do about their own craft.

This type of vision has always resonated with me; what makes an artist wholesome is striving to be personal before anything else. If that’s obvious to you too, I’m sure you also know it’s not the case for many others who might be reading this post. This is why I became close friends with Bryan, who I make jazz with. He’s been playing sax for more than 45 years in all kind of contexts. When it comes to learning music, knowing chord progression rules and things like the circle of fifths, he’s probably the best person to talk with.

We had a talk about those so-called “rules” once. His point of view was very clear: knowing fewer rules might actually keep you more open to making things that are ground-breaking rather than thinking that certain things shouldn’t be done. I can related to this, because when I hear about “engineering rules”, I often feel like I’m preventing myself from doing certain things by adhering to them. Bryan is not interested in guiding me with respect to melodies. “Ya gotta break patterns, man!”, he’ll say, sometimes talking about how it works in free jazz.

“Music rules got blown out of proportion in the ’80s when musicians understood they could make a lot of money if they knew the tricks. Then everyone were more interested in repeating known recipes than making something personal,” he says. We have discussed how historically music elitists came up with serious rules to keep music-making limited to wealthy people who could afford music classes and thus it became less available to the poor. The dialog around music theory has traditionally been downwards, from the higher classes to the lower class—one way communication.

Jazz made music more open and accessible. The early beginnings of the rave days (circa 1987-1992) where music and the scene was really about inclusion and a big F-you to the music industry had a similar ethos. There was a lot of tension back then between electronic music and other genres. Electronic music was often misunderstood, mocked and put down, probably because it was the exact opposite in terms of values and ways of life.

From the early ’90s until around 2010, one of the most important values in most branches of electronic music was a sense of novelty. In my early rave days, we’d attend to be musically challenged. We wanted to hear music that we never heard before, and we even wanted to be disoriented. You’d have DJs dropping a huge mish-mash of different styles, and beat-matching was not as important as it seems to be now. It got more and more organized and popular DJs became the ones that were more structured, and eventually DJs started playing sets of one genre alone. One genre would emerge, stay for a while, and then become “bad” until another one usurped it as it faded into the past. This progression had many victims: Trance, Techno, House, Drum and Bass, etc. It was pretty different from today where there’s room for everything and artists are the ones to come and go instead of genres. Maybe they never really “go”, but the media focus often shifts to others in the same genre who are slightly “different”.

But let’s get back to music theory and academic chord progressions.

Often people make melodies based on some concept or rule they have in mind, or something they’ve heard before. One thing I hear a lot from people is that when they read about music theory and then try to apply it in their own work, they sound cheesy or too pop-y. So the question is, is there a way to know rules regarding melodies and still make something that sounds right?

That’s a bit of a hard one to answer.

It’s either you understand the tones and keys associated with a genre first and then try to reinterpret them in your own creative way, or you don’t. But to me, this raises some issues regarding artistic integrity—perhaps you want to work within a genre but still create a strong sense of originality. Is that possible?

Well, if you chose a genre that really speaks to you that you want to work in heavily, that’s a certain decision you make about who you are as an artist. But in my opinion, the quality of the vocabulary you can develop in electronic music comes—first and foremost—from understanding sound design.

That said, understanding music theory is a huge help in understanding how to strike a particular note. There are numerous tools out there to help you improve your tonal and theoretical knowledge. Here are a few:

  • Instascale: Not familiar yet with this one, but I’ve heard good things.
  • Scaler: For helping you understand chord progressions by proposing what could follow your melody, based on a genre.
  • Melodyne: one of the most used plugins for pitch correction.
  • Captain Plugins: The complete suite gives you access to tools that facilitate melody-making, pitch detection, bass-making and can make a huge difference in creating musical structure.

One thing I do a lot is work with my reference tracks using a pitch detection plugin (Mixed in Key, studio edition) and then will have that as a starting point. Then if you want to generate a different starting point, I’ll use Rozzer (Free Max patch) that generates a random pattern. That usually helps me find a motif for a song. Andrew here also has a few good suggestions:

I find that one thing that helps me a lot about making melodies is to work with what’s proposed instead of trying to control the output too much. If you start working with an expected melody in your head, you might spend hours trying to recreate it and it will end up sounding like crap. You sort of need to find the right melody for the right sound. That’s where it’s easy to go down the rabbit hole.

This is why if you work with what you have and try to get the most out of it, you might end up with something more original. I’ll record a lot of MIDI ideas and usually will go back to them and try a large series of presets until I find what feels like a perfect match, then tweak the sounds (this is where the sound design knowledge comes handy).

In this blog I frequently talk about remaining open-minded as much as possible and letting go of control. The notion of having control over what you do comes with practice. Same an understanding of musical theory. You need to make a lot of projects and a lot of songs to become more fluent and understanding in what you do. But to get there, first you need to really let go!

It’s Time for Musicians to be Inclusive

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Anyone making music regularly goes through numerous phases of wisdom. Sometimes, it can seem like the music industry is a video game, where—with some luck and networking—you can “level up” until you attain glory. Making music with this frame of mind, which many artists seem to do, produces certain unattractive behaviours:

  • An unwillingness to share knowledge and contacts
  • Taking a competitive approach to music
  • Snobbery and arrogance towards other people and artists

New producers are often thrown-off by the attitude of established artists. Established artists do filter people for other reasons, as being completely open to everyone and everything can become draining, especially if many are trying to “use” them (i.e. for attention, feedback on music, etc). Some artists are also really bad at communicating or just shy, which makes them adopt a closed persona as a way to hide. That said, there exists a very thin line that can be crossed from filtering to snobbery.

Where Does Arrogance Among Artists Come From?

If people work hard on learning something, giving what they spent time and money to understand to someone else for “free” might seem unfair, right? People might also feel that if they’ve reached a certain status, maybe others coming up behind them might bump them out of their position.

Sharing knowledge doesn’t make you lose it.

Sometimes people also feel that opening up to someone to share valuable information and getting anything in return can be very frustrating, as it feels like a waste of energy. Or worse, sometimes there are concerns that there will be some sort of betrayal if the recipient gets “further” with the shared piece of information than the original artist did themselves. It’s not really a surprise that many artists are extremely protective, as they constantly feel like they’re at risk of being “surpassed”.

Seeing someone succeed doesn’t mean you failed.

Reality check—a music career is just a series of ups and downs, with some peaks and plateaus. You can’t escape it, it’s part of the game. It’s never related to other people’s success, it’s just organic. A music career is absolutely bipolar and extremely volatile. These conditions are conducive to feelings of hyper-vigilance, anxiety, and depression. Some people manage to reach a flow where things work longer than others—this is related to a good combo of solid networking, natural talent and a good dose of charisma. Sometimes helping other artists can actually help an artist’s career for the better.

What are the Benefits of Being Inclusive and Helping Other Artists?

While for many this might seem obvious, you’d be surprised how for many others, the idea to work with other people sounds like a bad or compromising idea. I’m not one to judge anyone’s opinion because there is indeed a big risk we need to first address: theft and knowledge abuse. Many artists are taken advantage of by labels, club promoters, Spotify or other giant takeovers in the music business, and even other artists copying or “stealing” content/ideas. Does being inclusive pose risk for these types of situations to increase?

Being inclusive is not being naive. It is—first and foremost—trying to help others, as you wished you were helped when in need.

While writing this post, most of us are in quarantine and have no idea what things will be like in the near future. Interestingly enough for me, for the last 20 years, I’ve become used to being in my studio, secluded and working remotely. I’ve done countless collaborations online and ran labels as well. But now this lifestyle is imposed on many people who aren’t used to it. Not everyone can feel comfortable in this position, even musicians. In the last two weeks, I managed some online groups through Zoom to support my community. Sessions of three hours with more than 30 participants made it clear to me that we all want to reach out to one another, and that our life is far from a dystopian movie depicting revolts and violence. I see way more creative collaboration, online performances, tons of entertainment, classes and people spending their time helping strangers. I want this to happen with music-makers as well.

During a prolonged time of inactivity such as the situation we’re in right now, many institutions, clubs, festivals, and artists will suffer losses. I see people organizing crowd-sourcing campaigns, but they don’t seem to be gaining much traction. Money is only one aspect of the problem—it’s not the real solution to this situation. Where we’ll really need help will in reaching out to one another, supporting local musicians and businesses, and cutting out this business of acting like a “music diva”—we should rethink how we work.

I would like to outline some ways of acting towards others that have been my way of life. I don’t see myself as perfect, but I try to live by these maxims. Being inclusive is something essential to my daily life.

  1. One thing I often do, since of course I don’t always have the time to help is that I teach people to troubleshoot their problems, find answers through efficient researching. For instance, YouTube has solution to many issues and many people ignore that.
  2. I give everyone a chance until they prove me otherwise. Just like in life, if someone comes to me, seems friendly and wants to chat, I’ll usually take the time to chat back. I’m always interested in getting to know others with the time I have. For the most part, people are really friendly. The great thing about an online presence is, you can take distance yourself easily if things don’t go well. But I like to give people a chance and would never snob someone unless I feel there’s a strong clashing of life values (ex. aggressive behaviour, inability to listen, excessive drug use, or anything that can put my health at risk).
  3. I like to be a “yes-man”. For the most part, whatever people ask me, I will do my best to say yes and answer. I’ve been told I’m too nice and that people take advantage of me, but there are a lot of people who are like that and it’s often more energy-boosting than draining. I find that having strong boundaries are essential, though.
  4. I invest in those who invest in me. I’ve often chased after people who I thought were cool, but from whom I wasn’t getting any attention back. I kept trying and usually ended up feeling resentful. That behaviour is in the past now for me, and I only invest myself in people who give attention back. If I send an email and there’s no follow-up, I might poke a second time, but I usually set no expectations. This has cleared up a lot of frustration towards labels who don’t reply or other artists I’ve been wanting to work with that would never reply. I now focus on people who come to me in the first place. There’s a lot more energy there.
  5. Listening to what people have to say teaches me one thing a day. When I do online coaching, I spend time listening to what people have to say. There’s space for learning just as much as for teaching. I believe that everyone gets to teach me something because the world of music making is too vast to claim to know it all.
  6. Develop trust that even when confronted with what seems like a failure, there’s something ahead that will benefit me. Sometimes I felt like some misfortunes were really bad for me personally or for my music career. It’s really impossible to foresee what’s ahead but strangely enough, when it comes to the future no one is in control; magic that can happen down the road, in ways that were impossible to imagine. Stories of missed flights, cancelled events, pirated albums and so on, have been things I went through and I could go on about, but there was always something positive that came out of those experiences. I’m not someone that believes “positive thinking” can in negative situations fixes everything, so I prefer to stay grounded and have a sense of trust that there’s something to come that will be better for me or others.
  7. Always put people in touch—sharing connections creates power. I’ve never ever kept contacts for myself but this is something I often see people do. I don’t see the point to keep people apart. If you can put people in contact and something happens from that, you’ve just created a channel that many people will benefit from.
  8. Never take anything personally—’Nuff said.
  9. You never know who will help you in the future. So many times, I’ve talked with some random people and years later, these people came back to me with something. Recently someone booked my services for a mix and said I gave him a CD in 2004!
  10. Being nice often pays more in the long run. I don’t believe that being difficult pays off in any way, and in the long term, people will avoid you if you’re unpleasant.
  11. Explaining is learning. This is my motto. If you can teach someone a trick, you need to know it well enough to explain it. Therefore, you’re teaching yourself how to do it again. Often, if someone doesn’t get it, you need to find other ways to explain it, which tends to help discover new opportunities in your workflow.