Sound Design and Arrangements Series Pt. 2: Balance

/in , , /by

This post is a part of a series: Part 1 | Part 2

Balance in mixing—and in music in general—is one of the main aspects of healthy sounding music, mostly because it is a reflection of space, and perhaps, our life as well. While this post is mostly about my philosophy of work, I’ll still discuss some technical tips that can be applied to your mixing strategy and arrangement work.

Let’s define what balance means in design and see how this translate to music:

Balance is the distribution of the visual weight of objects, colors, texture, and space. If the design was a scale, these elements should be balanced to make a design feel stable. In symmetrical balance, the elements used on one side of the design are similar to those on the other side; in asymmetrical balance, the sides are different but still look balanced.

Source: Getty Edu

While this comes from visual design, you should already able to see how this is applicable to the world of sounds. When I first read this definition, I could understand how I was already applying it to mixing music, as I get very conscious of space and the distribution of the frequencies. One of my favorite tools at the moment is Neutron, which I use on all my groups and sometimes, all channels, so I can monitor all of them visually. I can also apply EQ flipping, where if you boost on one channel, you’ll do the exact opposite cut on another channel that is battling the first one to be heard. Using the Visual Mixer tool, you can then place each sound in space. For people who struggle with panning, this is a precious tool that will also help you see if you have distributed your sounds properly.

One of the most misunderstood aspects of mixing I see is the volume difference between elements. Thinking that everything should be loud is a not only a misconception, but it creates imbalance. The volume difference represents the space use and you need some that are further away otherwise the louder one won’t be important, they’ll be lost.

Same goes for textures. Not all your sounds can be textured simultaenously, otherwise you won’t be able to notice their differences. However they can all be textured at different times. I like to split the arrangements timeline in 3 parts and will let sounds have their moment in each; it keeps the story evolving.

Regarding the stereo spectrum, we often relate this to left and right panning, but one important part a lot of new people to mixing don’t see is the importance of the mono section. If you want your song to have a backbone, you need that part to be dead solid. One trick I like is to have a compressor in a return channel and add a mono utility there. I’ll send a lot of my groups to that mono’er channel that will beef up the mono signal of the track.

As for the frequency spreading, I find that your whole spectrum can be divided in 5 sections: low, mid-low, mids, highs-mid, highs. You can technically have them all loud, but that’s not really good balance, and your mix will probably sound harsh if you don’t control resonances and transients properly. I think having 2 out of those 5 frequency ranges slightly lower than the others will give some room for your mix to breathe. When people book me for mastering, they can select a coloured or transparent master, and if they ask for coloured, this is basically what I’ll do. Re-adjusting 2 of the bands will give a new tone to the track and most of the time, mixes I get are already unbalanced as there’s often a band that is way too loud (most of the time, the lows). If the lows are too loud, then I will lower them.

Now, when it comes to arrangements, this is where it gets fun.

I find that there’s a lot to say about the significance of arrangements. Arrangements come in many forms: short stories, edited experiences, live jams, etc.—but I find those three types are a good starting point. A pop song can be a short story, and a piece of minimalist techno music can also be one, but with a different purpose. The reason we apply a certain methodology to arrangements is to maximize the potential of the sounds, as well as the patterns. In the previous post in this series, we talked about contrast and how it can be used in a specific sound—balance, on the other hand, can be exists on multiple levels.

How Do I Know if an Arrangement is Well-Balanced?

The idea of using balance to leverage creativity is not a rule, but an idea and approach. There are countless pieces out there that have no balance and it work perfectly. I find that balance in arrangements is a method of regulation, but it’s not something I’d focus on alone as the main approach.

See balance as tomato sauce. It can be a really great base for a lot of dishes and yes, it can be used as-is, but it does a better job when it’s combined with other ingredients. This is why it works well on a pizza and pastas, etc.

So It depends what you listen to and of course, some great songs are totally unbalanced and that’s what makes them special. I like to say that rules are made to be broken, but you need to know the rules first. A balanced song has a better chance of creating a quality that we all strive for in music: timelessness. In visual arts, minimalism aged well. The logo of Mercedes has basically remained the same, compared to Google’s original disaster brand. Same for music, in general. What I see is that music which is balanced, has a number of sounds playing at a time and has an organization and internal self rules that are set to keep a clarity and easy understanding.

I find that balanced arrangements usually feel easier to understand and are not too destabilizing. But if you go in the opposite direction voluntary, it can be a good way too create contrast.

A song with a balanced mix has a full presence and usually doesn’t have one element stand out. So for percussion, I like to have a balance of numerous sounds but you can then have one that pop out, in contrast (refer to part 1).

As for having balanced arrangements, I’d recommend the following:

Set the rules of your song in the 1st minute (or first part). This can be the tempo, time signature, density, motif preview, etc. The rest of the song is a balance of contrast operating in the rules you’ve set. By balance, we can agree that it’s about not placing all your tricks into the same thing.

Distribute your ideas evenly across your song. I’m talking about the motif for instance, that could reveal one variant more per section. Balance predictability as well unpredictability by having your sounds come in and out at times the listen gets used to.

Use repetition to create patterns that support one another. The famous call and response technique is a good example.

The best way to leave annotations in your arrangements is by adding a empty MIDI channel and creating blocks that you can stretch over sections of your song and leave notes accordingly. This can be very helpful if you have a hard time seeing how sounds are distributed once a channel is flattened.

I like to have colours for each genre of sounds. This usually tells me if there’s too many percussion blocks compared to another group, for example.

Background sounds are often a good way of helping everything work together. Songs that feel full have a background, a noise floor. It can be a reverb, noise, or it can be field recordings. People often ask me where you can find sounds like that. Archive.org, Freesounds.org, Loopcloud, and Soundly are all super useful for finding these as well as odd and out of ordinary ideas.

This post is a part of a series: Part 1 | Part 2

Improving Your Workflow to Prevent Decision Fatigue

/in , /by

What makes on 30-minute block of music making painful versus some other 30-minute block where everything flows organically? The choices you make can make a huge difference in how you use energy. If you use all your energy in the first 30 minutes of a session, you likely faced too many decisions and ran out of gas.

This overwhelming feeling often comes about when you’ve worked on a loop and mess around with arrangements for a moment before getting discouraged. You’re pretty much burning your brain out and then expect a second wind, but that doesn’t happen right away so easily.

What I’ll advocate throughout this post is a reminder of multiple things explained on my blog that push people to dive into music production and thrive in how they make music instead of being stuck. Strategies to facilitate an easier flow of your music-making are fairly easy, too.

Let’s dive right into the 5 different prerequisites to reach a state of flow.

  1. Risk
  2. Novelty
  3. Complexity
  4. Unpredictability
  5. Pattern recognition

One of the things that I didn’t list here which is important to focus on is the intention to spend a moment making something you know well. By venturing too deeply into something that is difficult (something that is, however, sometimes necessary for self-education), you’re acquiring some new information and achieving a good state of flow is not possible. Once you’ve learned a new concept/theory by practicing it multiple times, you’ll get good at it.

Hence the importance of making yourself:

  • Start a lot of new projects.
  • See most of your songs as lessons where you practice. Forget the aim to create masterpieces or to release all of your songs.
  • Spike time where you actively rehearse something you love doing.

When I teach music production, I explain to people that I can teach them everything their DAW can do, but then they’d sit in front of their computer with the idea of making a song and they’d be lost. The approach I encourage is to start by creating a strong base and then modulating each new skill into lessons. The idea is to focus on what’s useful to get from A to B in order to go to C and not try to go from A to Z in one shot.

A strong base means that you know some essentials, but beyond that, you know what you enjoy doing and what you seem to do naturally.

Once this is set and clear, we can approach the first take in my list above—taking risks. To know what taking a risk means, you need to be at ease with something. By risk-taking, I mean to try something in a different way. This can’t be really done if you can’t do the thing first. For example, you can’t take beat programming risks if you don’t know the basics of how your sequencer works (well, you can actually, but just diving in, chances are, your beat may come out with too much risk).

What’s a Risk in Music-Making?

Is it trying a new technique? Is it finishing a song? Is it learning a new software?

Let’s classify it as a single question: “What if?” This can and often imply a notion of risk. So let’s say you’re making loops, perhaps you can ask “what if I extend it to a whole minute instead of 2-bar loops?”

If you observe how we live, we often will do something we love doing and that usually is because we’re flowing in it; we don’t think—things just roll. You don’t have to make a lot of choices because you already know what you have to do. Taking a risk is a way of elevating what you’re doing a notch.

It’s a personal affair, and it’s something to be asked once in a while. But this gives rise to a second point which is novelty.

Self-Learning, Novelty & Complexity

Another thing I’ve been advocating for in past articles is the importance to see the majority of your music projects as lessons. A cycle I often notice is:

  1. Getting interested in a specific sound, aesthetic, idea, genre direction.
  2. Research and exploration on how to reproduce or imitate it.
  3. Struggle.
  4. Acknowledging a new concept.
  5. Practice and expression.
  6. Perfect it.

Each time I’m interested in something specific for music, I spend a lot of time trying to acquire the knowledge and techniques behind it. I spend a lot of time on YouTube on several How-tos, read some blogs and forums, and then test what I have. For instance, when I was obsessed with Dub Techno, I was searching a lot about it, which led me to acquire a lot of information about filters, reverb, chorus and delay, but also something I didn’t expect—noise. When you dig for information, you’ll find one thing you didn’t know or may not have been searching for, which is the novelty that is precious. In the state of flow, the exploration, in a context where you already feel comfortable but are on a quest of expanding, feeds you with a lot of creative energy that makes you get lost in what you do. But usually just before this happens, you’ll have a moment of struggle and it’s important to go over it to really get to the plateau of full creative force.

Once you practice and work on really handling a new skill, you’ll perfect what you do more and more. You’ll be more able to express yourself properly and eventually, you’ll want to perfect things. To get back to my example of Dub, I started to learn about delay techniques, tried many delay plugins and started understanding their personality and types. Same for reverbs, where I really got into plates and how they sound. The new trick I learned was about noise and started to get very much into the different types of noise: pink, white, blue, brown and red. Which then led me to get really interested in random generators, LFOs and modulation. Always adding a layer of information, precision and personality was a way to feed myself with novelty and complexity hand in hand. They’d play ping pong together.

Imperfection and Unpredictability

Choice fatigue roots in the quest of perfection. When you have more than two choices, you have a moment of not knowing. This clicked one day as I was reading a silly article that a lot of CEO in Silicon Valley will start the day with simplifying how they’d dress to make the least number of decisions possible. They’d have a work wardrobe of only a few things and they’d pick one without thinking. I find that flow starts with the yes-man attitude, as well as the why not. So it’s enemy would be a no, without trying.

Being in the flow, in a certain way, is almost the straight opposite of searching perfection. That is, you’re in the moment and you’re grasping something real and spontaneous. In a way, that is a form of perfection. When you begin searching for problems and feel doubtful about your work, I usually suspect you’re not in the flow, at all. You’re trapped in your analytical mind, the ones that questions and doubts. That part is really important much later, but I don’t give it too much importance in how to improve your flow.

A good routine for improving flow includes the following music-making tasks:

  • Explore, play, improvise.
  • Record everything.
  • Tweak to improve, not to perfect.
  • Consider the future of what was done. Release or not?

I find that I prefer to record 2 or 3 new songs instead of trying to give one a new life by working on it for 10 hours. I could even recycle the best part of a song that’s not working. Making more tracks makes you practice being more spontaneous but also more accurate in what you do, just like a DJ would get better at mixing, transitioning or doing tricks. As you go, your results need less polishing. For years, I left some imperfections in my work as I felt it was part of what made my music unique and human. It received a lot of positive comments and with time, if I listen to my older tracks, there will be things I don’t like, but I don’t know what was left there purposely or should be considered as a problem. That issue is itself, is part of the soul of the song.

As a mixing engineer, I do get in the zone as well. This is why my first mix of the day is crucial for the rest of the day. I usually start with all corrections, and try to do them in one shot, otherwise I start fixing stuff that clients like. I noticed that with time that if it works, don’t change it.

Now, unpredictability is something that feeds all the other ideas I’ve listed above that help to improve flow:

  • Taking risks by not knowing what will happen.
  • Discover new ideas you maybe have filtered out.
  • Making your routine more complex by including new items.

To me, adding a dose of unpredictability starts by making all your elements dynamic with your sounds and effects used. For EQs, I would make sure they’re dynamic (like the Pro-Q3). Compression is dynamic, but I’d link an LFO on the threshold. Adding LFOs, randomizers, and reacting envelopes to the incoming signal would make everything reactive, yet you never are really sure of where it’s going. This is partly explaining how people get addictive to modular synths because it’s all about modulation and unpredictability. A good way to check that is by trying VCV (free) or Softubes’ Modular that is a lot of fun. Reaktor is also an excellent platform to experiment.

Having separate sessions where you prepare an environment for making music is quite encouraged. By opening Ableton Live and launch a starting template that doesn’t take an hour to setup, you’re allowing yourself to be in the zone. Types of “setup” sessions include:

  • Sessions for setting up your future sessions. I’d encourage you to make themes instead of having templates that have all the bells and whistles.
  • Record sessions and sound design moments. These will be precious if you want to make music later.
  • Tweak, arranging and polishing sessions are helpful, but do them later.

The last aspect of improved workflow I’d like to discuss in more detail is pattern recognition—the moment where you realize that you’ve had a good or bad session, and are able to reconcile what happened in order to prepare the next session.

I like to tell my students that if you struggle in a session, it’s mostly because your preparation wasn’t adequate. If you struggle to arrange your session, start small…like, really small. Start from bottom to top: low end, percussion, mids, highs.

If you also fail to finish a jam, maybe you get distracted—a crucial thing to fix. Try to mute all notifications on your phone. Close social media, have snacks and water nearby. Avoid anything that can make your body and mind leave the moment to be elsewhere. If your session lasted at least 20 minutes, you’ve succeeded. Sometimes people feel sessions have to be long, but 20 minutes is sort of the key to get in the zone (unrelated, but this is also why I believe 1 hour DJ sets aren’t fair for the artist).

Personal Rules and Studio Attitude

  1. Be a yes-man to any idea that comes up until tried in context.
  2. Avoid maybes. It’s either a hell yes, or no. A maybe is a no, by default.
  3. Save all rejected ideas for future use.
  4. If it doesn’t feel good, stop everything. After a pause resume, or change tasks.
  5. If something feels like a lot of effort, take a pause and come back later.
  6. If you only have negative points of view, do something else.
  7. If an inner voice insists that you can’t do this or that (music-wise), I suggest you do it anyway to see what happens. Sometimes we stop ourselves from doing things that are creative.
  8. Collaborate as much as possible.
  9. Each session should have a session of listening before or after.
  10. Stay curious and open!

Let me know your experiences with decision fatigue and improving your own workflow!

Sound Design and Arrangements Series Pt.1: Contrast

/in , , , , /by

I’ve been wanting to do a series of posts about arrangements because I’m passionate about this aspect of music production, but also because I noticed many of the people I work with struggle with arrangements in their work. There are so many different approaches and techniques to arranging—everyone has their own, and that’s sort of the goal I’d like to drive home in this series. I invite you to make a fresh start in developing a personal signature, aesthetic, vocabulary, and personality.

This post is not for people who are just beginning with arrangements, but if you are, it still contains information that could be interesting to consider down the road.

What do I Mean by “Contrast” in the Context of Arrangements?

In design, contrast refers to elements (two or more) that have certain differences, and their differences are used to grab attention or to evoke an emotion. When I teach my students about contrast, the easiest example to understand and summarize this concept is a difference of amplitude (volume). In movies, to create surprise, excitement, or tension, the amplitude will be low, and then rise either quickly or slowly, supporting the images in the emotion that is present.

In many electronic music songs, we have heard (too often) noise used as a rising element to create a tension. Noise builds became a caricature of themselves at some point given their overuse—but it’s a good example, nonetheless.

How is Contrast Used in Sound Design?

I spend my days working with musicians—contrast comes into play in different circumstances.

Within a single sound, it can be fast or slow changes from one extreme to another. I like to visualize this by analyzing a sound through different axes to help me understand what can be done to it.

  • Attack: Does it start abruptly or slowly?
  • Decay/Amplitude: Does it get really loud or is it more subtle?
  • Frequency/Pitch: Is it high, medium, low?
  • Release/Length: Short – Medium – Long – Constant?
  • Positioning: is it far or near? Low or higher in front of me?

Good contrast, generally, is to have two extremes in some of these domains. Think of a clap in a long reverb, as an example of how a super fast attack with a long release can create something unreal, and therefore, attention-grabbing. A sound that changes pitch is another form of contrast, as we go from one state to another.

Another way of thinking about contrast is to think about how pretty much all complex sounds are the combination of multiple sounds layered. When done properly, they feel as one, and when it’s done with contrast, the contrasting layer adds a movement, texture, or something dynamic that revives the initial sound. Of course, short sounds are more difficult to inject contrast into, but if you think of a bird’s chirp, which is basically the equivalent of a sine wave with a fast attack envelop on the pitch, it’s sounds are short but incredibly fast moving, too.

If you think about using contrast within a sound itself, the fastest way to make this happen is to use a sampler and really take advantage of the use of envelops, mod wheel assignment, and of course LFOs, but it’s really through the use of the envelops that you’ll be able to produce a reaction to what’s happening, sonically.

As I mentioned, the easiest way to produce contrast is by using two sounds that different characteristics, for example, short vs. a long, bright vs. dark one, sad vs. happy, far vs. close, etc. When you use two sounds, you give the listener the chance to have elements to compare, and the ear can easily perceive the difference.

When you select sounds to express your main idea, think of the characteristics in each sound you’re using. Myself, I usually pick my sounds in pairs, then in batches of four. I’ll start by finding one, and the next one will be related to the first. I’ll keep in mind the axis of both sounds when I select them and usually start with longer samples, because I know I can truncate them.

In the morning I usually work on mastering, and in the afternoon, I’ll work on mixing. The reason is, when you work on mastering, you get to work on all kinds of mixes; they have issues that I need to fix to make the master ready for distribution. By paying attention to the mix, I often deal with difficult frequencies and will spend my time controlling resonances that poke through once the song is boosted.

When I’m mixing, often I deal with a selection of sounds that were initially picked by the producer I am working with. The better the samples, the easier will be the mix and in the end, the better the song will feel. What makes a sound be great comes from different things:

  • Quality of the sample: clarity, low resonances, not compressed but dense, well-balanced and clear sounding, open.
  • High resolution: 24 or 32-bits, with some headroom.
  • No unnecessary use of low quality effects: no cheap reverb, no EQ being pushed exaggeratedly that will expose filter flaws, no weird M/S gimmicks.
  • Controlled transients: nothing that hurts the ears in any way.

You want to hunt down samples that not too short, because you want to be able to pick it’s length. You won’t need a sample that covers all frequencies—you’ll want to feel invited to layer multiple sounds all together without any conflicts or have one shelf of frequencies to be overly saturated.

When I listen to a lot of mixes, the first thing that I look for is the overall contrast between the sounds. If they lack contrast, they will be mostly mushed together and difficult to mix, and harder to understand.

In theory, a song is a big sound design experiment that is being assembled through the mix. If everything is on one axis, such as making everything loud, you lose the contrast and make your song one-dimensional.

How is Contrast Used in Arrangements?

If contrast in sound design is within one single sound, it’s through and entire song or section that we can approach contrast in arrangements. A song can have different sections—in pop, think “chorus”, “verse”, etc., which are very distinct sections that can be used in any context as moments through the song. You can move from one to another, and the more of a distinction between one another, the more contrast your storytelling will have.

Is this type of contrast essential? No, but it can engage the listener. This is why, for a lot of people, the breakdown and drop in electronic music is very exciting, because there’s a gap and difference and the experience to go from one to another, is intense and fun (especially on a big sound system).

In techno, linearity is a part of the genre because songs are usually part of a DJ set and made to be assembled and layered with other tracks, to create something new. Huge contrast shifts can be awkward, so it’s avoided by some—tracks emit contrast very slowly and subtly, instead of a sudden drastic change.

So, what makes a song interesting, to me, or to anyone, is the main idea’s content, based on the listener’s needs. What do I mean exactly?

  • A DJ might be looking for song of a specific genre and want its hook to match another songs he/she has.
  • Some people want to have a song that expresses an emotion to be able to connect with it (ex. nostalgic vibes).
  • Some other people might want to have some music similar to songs they like, but slightly different, while others, to be exposed to completely new ideas.

When I listen to the songs I work on, my first task is to quickly understand what the composer is trying to say/do. If the person is trying to make a dance-oriented, peak-time song, I’ll work on the dynamics to be able to match music of the same genre and make sure all rhythmic elements work all together.

The precision in the sound design is quite essential to convey a message, whatever it might be. Sometimes I hear a melody and because of the sample used, it makes me frown—a good melody but weird selection of sounds results in an awkward message.

It’s like you trying to impress a first date with a compliment/gift that doesn’t make sense—you wouldn’t tell someone his/her nose is really big…?!

The combination of good sound design and supporting your idea, is executed by arrangements. The whole combination of multiple sounds through a mix is what creates a piece.

Some examples of contrast use within arrangements could be:

  • Different intensity between sections, either in volume or density.
  • Different tones, emotions.
  • Changes in the time signature, or rhythm.
  • Changes in how sounds move, appear, or evolve.
  • Alternating the pattern, sequence, or hook, adding extra elements to fill gaps, holes, or silences.

One of the biggest differences between making electronic music 30 years ago and the present, was that back then, you’d make music with what you could find. Now we have access to everything, so how do you decide what to do when there are no limits?

I find that when you remove all technical limitations like sound selection from your session, you can focus on design and storytelling. Same goes for if you feel like you have managed to understand your technical requirements and now want to dig deeper—then you can start with contrast.

To summarize this, use contrast within a sound to give it life, either by slow or fast movements. Create contrast in your arrangements by having differences between sections of your song—play with macro changes vs. micro changes.

Stuck on a Song? Tips to Help You Overcome Negative Thought Patterns

/in , , , /by

One of the best things I’ve ever done has been a challenge I signed up for in early 2020 to make one song per week for the entire year. It felt a bit like wishful thinking at the time knowing how busy I am; I didn’t think I’d be able to pull it off, but it’s turned out to be one of the best exercises I’ve ever done. The most important lesson for me was learning that writer’s block comes and goes, but being stuck on a particular song seems like it happens more frequently. The more you make music, the more you develop personal strategies to overcome this problem quickly. My experience making one song per week has been extremely useful when working with younger artists, as I quickly spot where they’re stuck and can help them see options they’re not seeing.

I made myself a list of rules and tricks to refer back to when I get stuck on a song and noticed they usually stemmed from two categories: technical issues, and mindset. Rethinking your mindset helps re-frame what the problem is, exactly—but that’s usually the hardest part of overcoming issues finishing a song.

The trick, as an artist, is to quickly spot in which of those two categories of problems you’re facing, and then find a solution. Let’s discuss some of the most common problems that makes people get stuck on a song:

“I don’t know where to start.”

Category: Technical Issue & Mindset

This thought pattern can also be re-framed as: I lack material to start using, I have difficulty translating my ideas into software, or I lack motivation.

This is a fundamental question that, even with experience, many artists sometimes still have. The thought of starting something new can be overwhelming. Coming into a new session with tons of motivation and ideas doesn’t overcome the very first hurdle you face when starting a new project: how to get it done, and of course, how to get started.

My first recommendation is to take a Kaizen approach (a Japanese project management methodology) and first think about what you want to do, and then start with the first thing you know about it. For example, if you are making a house track, maybe you know you’ll want a 4/4 kick as a loop, so start with that, then add a few other elements. Maybe it won’t be the right sound exactly, but just start with that. Can’t make a loop? Get pre-made loops, slice them, and rearrange them to taste, and have that as your starting point.

For productivity’s sake, use sounds you find, don’t chase something you have in mind. Find one that you like and then play with it to see what you can make out of it. Break your project down to things you know you can do, as this will bring self-confidence before tackling tasks that are difficult to do.

Is there a right way to start a song? No. Each song can be started in multiple ways. But capturing yourself jamming with loops and sounds is about yourself being “in the moment”, and that is very much what music is about.

If you’re overwhelmed by a lack of resources, I’d encourage you investing into LoopcloudLoopcloud. It’s a quick-fix solution to gather samples based on what you need, instead of buying bundles. It’s also an incredible option to find that missing link, as you can open it in your project, sync it to your DAW and play samples in context to see how things fit. Using samples is, for me, a hip-hop inspired approach that never fails. It’s also a way of layering different sounds to create something new. When I’m lost, I go back to sampling.

“I don’t feel motivated to make music.”

Category: Mindset

This thought pattern can also be re-framed as: I don’t see why I’m doing this, or I lack an idea of where this will go.

One of the reasons why people are obsessed with releasing their music comes with the fact that their efforts are now validated. A lot of artists are goal-oriented, others are more interested in the journey. As life goes on, you might find you’re more one or the other. If you lack motivation, it’s possible you lost track of priorities. Maybe you need to have a goal in mind? Or perhaps you need to be exploring a new technique?

Knowing your needs, you can reorganize your music sessions accordingly. If it’s because you don’t have labels to send your music to, perhaps you can focus on podcasts or DJs. If you need new ideas, I suggest you check YouTube and look for a technique, either new or something else.

I’m a firm believer that I get better results by seeing each song as a lesson, an experiment, something to learn…instead of seeing it as something to be controlled or perfected.

Every time I find myself in front of someone who lacks motivation, I try to bring them back to what makes them happy and encourage them to get back to what works, what brings them joy. Do that for a while, and prepare material for when the inspiration returns.

“My sounds (or anything I use) don’t feel as solid or as cool as my references”

Category: Mindset

This thought pattern can also be re-framed as: I lack the technical knowledge to achieve something similar to artists I like.

Comparing yourself is nothing new or uncommon; we all do it. Where it fails is, when you compare yourself with people who are not in your league. It’s like playing football and complaining you’re not able to play like Ronaldo or other pros. Your friends would start laughing, right?

How is that any different than comparing yourself to artists who has a lot more experience? You’re seeing a song but you don’t see the 30 other songs they did before nailing that one. Do you need to be a pro to enjoy playing a sport? No. It should be the same for music.

If you keep in mind that each song you make is a lesson, then making 20-30 songs will teach you a lot. On the 50th, you’ll have a vocabulary and fluidity to express yourself with a lot more ease. After this, you can slowly look to others to pick up tricks, inspirations, or ideas.

“After a while, I lose interest in what I do.”

Category: Technical

This thought pattern can also be re-framed as: Listening to my song for too long bores me.

Welcome to music production! If you only work on one song, you’ll get fed up with it quickly. The idea of working on a song is that it’s something you want to finish quickly so you don’t lose sight of your initial idea, but you want to take your time to fix the issues. I usually wrap a song and then I’ll come back to it in sprints of 30 minutes to an hour (max) to fix as many issues as I can, but then I’ll close it and do something else. I never get bored and the distance I take between sessions keeps my judgment fresh. As you might have already read, I’ve encouraged musicians to make multiple songs at once to not get bored in this blog many times before.

I have more and more clients that come to me being frustrated with their first song. Usually, this is normal. A large part of my songs don’t feel right, but I need to move on. Moving on is an important habit to learn, I find.

“My song feels boring because of getting too technical.”

Category: Technical

This thought pattern can also be re-framed as: I tend to over-analyze what I do to the point where I get lost.

Technical tweaks often kill the beauty of spontaneous creativity—I try to find a balance between the two. Sometimes, I ask friends to take care of the technical part of certain songs I don’t want to ruin the rawness of. The thing that makes it boring, is that you have been over-hearing it. To think that anyone would listen as much as yourself, or that someone would analyze your song as much as you do after 100 listens, is highly misleading. Again, this comes down to taking a lot of breaks and working on multiple songs at once.

“Mid point in the song, I don’t know what to do next.”

Category: Technical

This thought pattern can also be re-framed as: I struggle to make the story-line evolve properly.

Having a loop is one thing, but keeping it interesting is another. Many people make the mistake of starting a song by at the beginning, thinking their loop is the starting point, but I like to think of putting the main loop you’ve been working on, right in the middle of the song. Then I deconstruct it by simplifying it from the beginning. You can then add elements to create the last stretch of your song.

Usually when you’re at the mid-point, most of the song’s main work has been done and you can process your elements to create “child” ideas that you can use as supporting elements, which will help a song carry on until the end.

I usually start working on the main part of the song as well as what follows so I have a better idea of the song’s core. Creating the intro and conclusion ends up being a piece of cake. This usually solves this issue of now knowing what to do in the middle.

Now the other technique is also to give variation to your main idea. The fastest way to do that is to slice it and then change the order, either randomly or by hand, depending of your style.

“I’m lacking ideas on what to add to my song, is it enough?”

Category: Technical

This thought pattern can also be re-framed as: My song needs validation.

I always like to start with the premise that my song is enough, and that if something seems to be lacking, it could simply be because I’m not exploiting enough what I have already. Less is more, is the school I come from, and I’ve made tracks with three sounds alone, which was probably the most useful exercise ever, as well as an eye opener for creative use on whatever I had already. If someone playing the hand drum can make a song out of it or if a pianist can write an album, you can do a song with what you have already.

Now, if you say something is missing compared to… that’s another story. The best way to validate your work is to load up the reference and to A/B. The first question is, do they have the same amount of sounds used? Take the time to count them, you’d be surprised sometimes that you might have more than your references. Sometimes, what’s missing is just a good mix, a reverb, or modulations.

“I don’t know how to create a new idea that I’ve never made before.”

Category: Technical

If you’ve made 20 songs, at some point you might run out of ideas. If that’s the case, there are a few quick things you can do to get your inspiration back. I’m not talking about having a writer’s block here.

The first thing I encourage people to do to find new ideas is the “talking out loud, describing what you hear” method. I’m not sure if I’ve shared this idea before, but it’s fairly simple. The way I use it is to check a random song, either in my Soundcloud feed or Spotify, or whatever you use to be exposed to music you haven’t heard before. Play it, and then, using your smartphone, record some vocal notes of you describing your best what you hear. Try to do it for the duration of the song and when it’s done, stop the annotation. I like to have a bunch of tracks described like that and have vocal notes without any references to what I have listened to. When you eventually listen to your notes, it will be very abstract ideas of songs you can listen to. You can also do this throughout the day—some people think about making music all day and don’t know how to vent, so I suggest to record all the ideas they have, vocally.

This method came to me as I was waking up during the night with ideas and I would record a description of my dream. I would later listen to them and have a lot of concepts.

The other way to get a lot of ideas is to use songs or samples and chop them into random ideas. This sometimes will generate an idea that you can extrapolate by pulling out the best of it.

“I don’t feel satisfied with my mixes.”

Category: Mindset

This thought pattern can also be re-framed as: I feel technically inadequate.

This one’s a bit complicated. First and foremost, the idea of a perfect mix is counter-productive because such thing doesn’t exist, or at least, for the person who mixes it doesn’t. There’s always something to fix and at one point, you need to wrap it up and call it done, even with imperfections. What’s left undone, unless it’s a huge issue (which are usually hard to miss), will often be seen as something that is part of the song. People who are looking for the flaws of your song are rare. Usually someone will like or dislike it. This is why very few people care for details. People have small attention spans, and those who really see the issues, aren’t the people you’re making music for.

The idea that each song is a lesson also applies to mixing. You bring your song to the max you can bring it to. I like to have my mixing sessions in three rounds: the first, I remove all issues. The second, I work on embellishments. Third, I do the final adjustments and fix the tone.

You can’t fix everything effectively in one session so it’s always a good thing to take a second look after a night of rest.

“I don’t know how to finish a song.”

Category: Technical

Finishing music is a hot topic. It’s a good thing to know but it’s not a prerequisite to enjoy making music. Some people have a lot of fun jamming or starting loops and that’s it. The idea that you have to finish a song and potentially release it is, what I call, a romantic idea, and just like any romance, it’s not a necessity. Some beautiful relationships exist without romance. I find it way more important to collect ideas, create sketches, and make loops in large quantities. Eventually, when you get to finishing songs, if you have all those ideas and loops ready, it will feel like you have a gold mine.

Learning to finish songs is a skill that comes with using references, as I’ve explained many times in this blog. You use one song, check how it’s made, then apply part of the template to a loop you have. That’ll do it. Really, it’s that’s simple; it’ll feel like cheating.

I hope this was helpful in your day-to-day struggle!