The next big thing?

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During a conference I was recently invited to talk at, I was speaking with a group of people @ College Du Montreal and was asked a question I couldn’t answer quickly. The question that came up was what I’d consider “next level”, which I responded by saying “chances are, you’re going to be disappointed by my answer.” And in many ways, it wasn’t the answered they wanted, and I could see that a few were puzzled, hoping to hear about something new, exciting, and truly ‘next-level’.

Now that that moment is behind me, the concept of genres, and what’s the next big thing has had time to linger in my mind and I’ve thought about it more.

Can you remember a time before Soundcloud? Before iTunes playlists, a time where you literally dug deep through record bins and spent time chatting up record store employees about what was new? Have you bought records without even listening to it simply because you connected with the artwork and knew this was something you needed to have?  Whether the music was next level or not you had the feeling you discovered something special.

In many ways, the overwhelming amount of content we’re exposed nowadays can make us lose track of what’s going on. Musicians can post a track the second after finishing it, and the whole world can potentially hear it within minutes. Yet the tidal wave of self-released music is so frequent that it can also be harder than ever to get noticed. If you’re attentive and curious, you can catch people’s new ideas, yet the question now is – how can one really can keep up?

Here’s a fact to keep in mind: One doesn’t know he/she is making next level music until afterward, and it’s seen as next level.

If you focus on making music that sounds good to you, your skills and confidence will naturally grow. If you have fun making music, you’ll fall in that mind state named the zone. In that mindset, you’re able to achieve the best of yourself with little effort. This concept isn’t esoteric or religious, it’s a known experience studied in psychology and a state within the reach of everyone. But this post isn’t about that.

Most commonly new genres are created when an artist creates a bridge linking different musical styles together – think Jungle which brought Jamaican MC influences and sound effects with faster beats, and thundering sub bass. Think about underground mashups and artists like Girl Talk, which can’t be released legally but borrow music from anywhere as long as it works melodically. Think about the latest genres of dance music to emerge with significant popularity – tropical house, future bass, etc.. can you explain to me what those genres represent?

On a sound design level, I think of Serum, a wavetable synth hugely responsible for creating the growling and murderous monster bass sounds in electro/dubstep. Do entirely new sounds or production technique make that music next level?

What is next level, exactly?

For me, next level comes from one’s point of view. My perspective of what’s next level has dramatically changed in the last 10 years. My interest in sound is continually shifting, and what I feel about it today might be different next week. Sometimes I love music with low-production quality but filled with originality, sometimes I love over-produced generic pop for the crazy slick techniques in the mixing and sometimes I go back in time to revisit classics by Miles Davis to acknowledge the true masterful skills he had in performing his art.

To me, the real question is, what and why are you looking for that?

Rarely will my next level tracks make it to my day-to-day playlist I can listen to in my car. Next level music is usually something I can connect to its world/melody/content. I believe this is also what most people are connecting to with once they pick to make a playlist that moves them. It’s not always something big, loud, or obvious, often it’s a musical element already known, just done really really well, or a touch differently. If the arrangement of a song is smart and tight, often time any tricks happening in the mix won’t be the first thing the listener will hear, but more generally will feel as a whole.

To wrap this post up, focusing on sound design is critical to any producer. Your sounds are your words and your voice as an artist and remember that this is what can get the attention of your listeners more than your technique or tricks.

 

SEE ALSO : Using and Choosing an Alias

When The DIY Becomes An Obstacle

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I want to talk about DIY – that is, the do-it-yourself approach to making music. Some people have the desire to begin massive projects where they create everything themselves, from scratch. They hunt for samples, they record bits of this and that, they spend days writing and re-writing melodies, they do everything themselves and more, and it takes forever if they don’t become overwhelmed by it all first and end up scraping the project altogether. This is when the DIY becomes an obstacle.

It reminds me of the video that went around the internet about this guy who decides to make a sandwich from scratch and create all the elements needed all on his own. He’s collecting salt from the sea, milking the cow himself, learning to bake bread. etc. Spoiler alert – when the guy finally eats the sandwich (which cost him nearly $1500 in expenses) the result was somewhat mediocre, and disappointing.

People who specialize do ‘their thing’ better, faster, with better ingredients, tools, finesse, and experience that more than often makes a world of difference. In the studio, it’s the same thing. I’m sure there are areas of music writing and production you don’t look forward to and others you could do all day. If we let every obstacle along the way frustrate us and chip away at our mental energy, the effect can be quite damaging.

The path doesn’t need to be cleared from obstacles. Obstacles are the path. (Buddhist Proverb)

You might have a feeling where I’m going with this as I’m a big fan of collaboration in music and productivity in the studio. It’s a great feeling to push ahead quickly in your productions when one person can lead with his/her strengths in an area and vice versa, so the question is – how do you make the most of your skills while taking advantage of help?

Find what you love doing. Identifying your strengths will make a big difference in the confidence, and understanding of yourself as an artist. It’s a task many people I coach and speak with overlook. Is your thing sound design, mixing, searching for the perfect set of samples? The production-oriented tasks where you’re the most happily active and engaged is where you’ll find your strength. On the flip side, it’s important to understand the areas you’re less happy and skilled at doing, and make a mental note of this when collaborating with others. If you can specialize at what you do best, you’ll be a great asset to anyone who is struggling in that department.

Invest in yourself. In whichever area you are strongest in, consider acquiring the best equipment and knowledge in that specialty. For example, if mixing is your strength, you should definitely follow Pensado on Youtube to learn as much as possible about mixing, and learn about kick-ass plugins used by the pros. Find your role model in that department and study what he/she does, what gear they use, how they use it and also go above them, and find out who are their mentors. If you get to know who influences your role model, you’re gaining critical influences.

Check your ego. Have you ever observed yourself snubbing a technique or tool just because you think it’s not for you? How many times have you counted out something great without even giving it a chance? If you can, think if you’ve been avoiding some plugin such as channel strips or a specific compressor, perhaps even a DAW without any evidence for doing so. Also, if something is considered ‘bad’ it’s important to understand the difference from that which is regarded as good and make your own judgment after accessing the facts. Things I’ve read people shouldn’t use have drawn my attention to tools such as multiband compression, which is one of my favorite tools for sound design now. For some reason, rock producers seem to dislike multiband compression, yet I can’t understand why if you imagine what’s possible in the right hands.

As always I want to hear your opinion and look forward to keeping the discussion open ~

JP

What Izotope’s Ozone Series Doesn’t Consider

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It was a great surprise to see the release of Izotope’s new Ozone and Neutron update last week. Since I use both products, often I immediately got started looking for whats new.

There will undoubtedly be a ton of new tutorial and youtube review videos posted of these tools, but I want to approach this post around how I use these plugins, and also mention a larger problem I find all too common within the production of software, and an issue I feel Izotope’s Ozone series doesn’t consider.

But firstly, let’s talk about where Izotope really succeeded.

The sound. I can’t put my finger exactly on it, but to my ears, there is a noticeable improvement of the sound quality in Ozone 8. Perhaps it’s an oversampling issue or something with the filters, but the sound is tighter, bright, and more precise over earlier versions.
The workflow – Ozone 8 comes with several new features that provide a faster way for me to achieve the sound I want. The maximizer now includes a loudness target and the reference addition to comparing the versions via the tonal balance control.

Tonal Balance. A fascinating tool that allows you to visualize the frequency levels of your track, and will enable you to match to eq targets from a specific genre of music. Having visual feedback of where your tonal balance per frequency is, and easy access to eq those levels is a great and fast way to achieve a professional sound. I did some testing earlier today and found the target system pretty accurate, but in the end, I found the target ranges slightly off for the lows and highs (see below in my low points).

Visual Mixer. This is the bomb within Neutron 2, and for that feature alone I’d buy the entire package. The visual mixer allows you to place and position your tracks visually across the spectrum, (volume, pan, and width). It’s a beautiful process, and the edit window looks super sci fi and modern. If you work with multiple channels and often have mono tracks this is simply a killer addition. One of the things that blew my mind was that you can actually automate the panning, which opens the doors to many exciting and beautiful options in sound design.

Improved Mix assistant. I really like the mix assistant by the way. I’ve heard many people mock the process, or are jaded to the idea  that it’s impossible for AI to do a man’s job but honestly if the assistant can pull up all the tools I need and set the table for me to tweak fast, you won’t hear me complain.

Communication between plugins. This feature is really cool. You may adjust EQ from one window on another incoming channel, which is reflected in other instances of the plugin. This is super useful when you want to tame the relation between kick and bass as you want to be EQing side by side, both channels. It works and looks seamlessly.

In the end, I’m really loving the update from Izotope and will be using many of the new and improved features. I also want to take a minute to point out a criticism I have with Izotope.

Generalization of customers – It’s unfortunate that I find many large, corporate companies narrow down potential customers into three simple types – pop, edm, and hiphop. I see how that makes marketing more manageable, but what about producers like me who are creating and working on underground and experimental music? I say this because many of the new tools shipped with Ozone and Neutron are built with presets as starting points to mix and master only three types of music. I my opinion, this is quite limiting, and the fact that you can only refer to 3 types of tonal shapes is, to me, a complete fail. It reminds me of LANDR giving only 3 types of loudness range. It’s disappointing because I feel like this software expects you to be either this or that, which is clear from the design of the genre-specific presets – as if there are no other types of musician in the world??

What Izotope’s Ozone series doesn’t consider is people like me, and many friends and colleagues of mine, who make our living from creating music, and don’t fit into the standard pop, edm, or hiphop category.

CPU hungry. I have a newish MacBook, fully geared up for performance, and while running several instances of Ozone my entire screen began flickering and making strange glitches. Izotope support claimed it was likely my CPU over-loading, however, I was only using 5 Neutron and 1 Ozone 8 instance, plus visual mixer. If my custom built computer is hit hard with CPU usage imagine how will the average Joe deal with such demands on the processor.

This goes along with the new mastering plugin by Eventide, Elevate that is so power hungry that it’s barely usable. Funny enough, a few days after Ozone 8 came on the market, Eventide droped the price of its plugin by 50%…

Still, in my opinion, the updated Ozone suite is a serious tool to consider having. It really delivers impressive quality sound. As always, I want to hear about what you think about these tools and feel free to leave a comment below and share your opinion.

Cheers,

JP

 

The Modular Trap

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The modular synthesis game is a big one right now, and for good reason. Sound designers and synth heads that want to take their sound design to the next level will find no shortage of fantastic modules to collect, and nothing is stopping you from patching together the tweaked out system of your dreams.
That being said the road to modular isn’t without its problems, and before you rush out and get started building a rig of your own I want to share some insights you might find helpful before you dive into the Modular Trap.

Intellijel Rubicon

I’ve spent a good while lately test driving a modular system of my own. I’ve been using the Intellijel Rubicon, and I can attest to many of the uniquely modular things people get excited about – all the hands-on messy fun that make modular such a unique experience, the unique, fat, and rich sound, the many fun surprises that come along with a somewhat unpredictable modular environment. Even with software like Reaktor, Reason, or Softube Modular, the sounds you can generate just can’t be done the same way without real life patch cords and eurorack modules. In my opinion, these are some of the pros about using a modular setup:
The quality of the sound coming from modular is somewhat different and pure. The Intellijel Rubicon I’ve been using seems to have a unique and pure sound, quite different than that from any sine waves I’ve heard from a soft synth. It’s hard to describe but I can honestly feel it more deeply – just like an analog mixdown will be slightly different than a digital one. If like me, you really are fascinated by sounds, you can easily become seduced by this.
Hands-on material plunges its user in a state of flow that can be addictive –. To get anywhere within Modular setup you must be actively involved in every step – patching one module to another, over and over, in different ways requires your full commitment and attention – it’s very engaging. Time can be lost easily when creating music this way, and being so focused on sound feels amazing, it’s truly addictive.
Community – You don’t have to look hard to find helpful, and engaging modular communities online.  You’ll soon learn how to use your modules in creative ways you hadn’t known were possible. Take the time to be a part of these groups as the knowledge shared within these discussions will be precious to you if you’re just starting out.
Knowledge – In educational terms, I feel working with a modular system of any size is one of the best ways to teach yourself how sound can be altered and modified. With automatic results you will train your ears to understand how one module can significantly affect another, and how combining several modulators can create truly strange and trippy sounds

So far it’s all good and fun, but when the initial buzz wears off, you’ll likely find yourself surprised by a few things you might not have anticipated earlier. Here are a few drawbacks to working with a modular setup.

Cost can be a limiting setback. Building a modular rig of your own can and will get expensive. Just the price of patch cords needed for every module alone could very well make you sweat, and you’ll of course also need a case, output, input, VCAs, modulators, oscillators, LFOs, filters…, and that’s just the beginning.
Time Investment. I can’t complain about losing yourself for hours in synthesis, but it’s pretty easy to do with a cool rig begging for your attention. Like any other tool in your arsenal you’ll want to be productive and useful with it, so knowing how to create the sounds you need quickly will take some getting used to.
Steep learning curve. For many producers used to creating sound entirely within software, getting things up and running can be a little more complicated to set up.
Overwhelming options – with dozens of companies producing filters, effects, and everything in between for Eurorack, you might get the feeling that you’ll never have enough for what you want or need.

All that being said, I recommend taking an opportunity to get hands-on with a modular system. But before you build a rack of your own do yourself a favour and ask yourself this ~

Exactly what you want out of this?

What I mean is, are you performing live? are you a sound designer looking for unique and original sounds for your projects and work? are you creating a rig for your enjoyment during your off hours? Those questions are important to know because you can then begin planning with help from a site called Modular Grid – a website and resource that will prove to be incredibly helpful in answering questions about getting started.

One last note – I feel like there are many ideas about ‘going modular’ that are quite misleading, and not at all true. I often hear

“how much easier it is to make music using modular synths, how you’ll be taken more seriously as an artist, and how so many more opportunities will come to you if you can build the ultimate rig…”

Reaktor Blocks: A killer alternative.

As I pointed out earlier, setting up a modular system is going to take a lot of time, plenty of money, and a steep learning curve you wouldn’t anticipate at first. Look at software systems like Reaktor where you can patch together virtually anything you can do with the same modular components. Reaktor is just $199 usd, and requires a modest computer, that’s it. Many people love the look of their ever-growing systems, but many less so are becoming well-respected musicians using modular gear. There are a few role models out there who have accomplished a lot with their analogue toys yet on the flip side there are way more people who are only spitting out random bleeps and farts, feeling mid-ground between fascination and frustration. That’s all fine if bleeps are your thing but the tidal wave of fan mail probably isn’t coming in as fast as you hoped it would. And lastly, building the ultimate rig is in many ways a never-ending race. As soon as your newest filter or VCA arrives you’ve already decided you need another component to make it even better, and you’re almost never satisfied with what you have.

Other possible alternatives: Softube Modular, Reason, Bitwig, VCF Rack (Free).

The consensus is in – Modular is awesome, addictive, and a great way to learn about synthesis. Its also true that building a rig of your own is extremely pricey and not necessarily more productive in the end. Since this blog is about productivity, creativity and tackling anything that stops us from getting there I hope my impressions about going Modular will help make your experience getting started a positive one.

I want to hear about your experiences, hit me up about your thoughts, impressions, or anything else by leaving a comment below.

Cheers ~ JP

SEE ALSO :   What is the Electronic Music Equipment Needed to Start Producing?  

Music Making Is Problem Solving

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Every once and a while the excitement to launch into a session fully inspired, fully motivated, literally can’t-get-into-it-soon-enough hits me, and it’s amazing. Seriously, in my experience there really isn’t anything that gets me pumped like that because when you know your idea is that good, and everything seems to come together perfectly, you know it’s going to be big. It’s different this time. So, you get started, loading the drum kit, mapping out the midi, tweaking the saturation.. soooo gooood….. then, your Facebook beeps, the insurance guy calls, your plugin freezes, and before you know it you’ve completely lost the groove, and the dream is over before it started. Music making requires endless problem-solving. 

Why is inspiration so quick to fade out? Why are there so many obstacles in the way? Does sitting down to make music always have to be this difficult? If you can relate to the experience I painted above you have tasted the sourness of the scapegoat in music.

There will always be a need to solve problems and cut through obstacles, both unexpected and predictable. Yet for better or worse, they come part and parcel with making music. Questions and distractions… Instead of fighting them, we need to minimize their effect on us, and as much as possible reduce the chance of distractions from happening altogether.

Looking back at nearly 100% of any consultations and coaching I do with people, I find there are four main ‘problem’ areas which seem to rotate and steal our attention. While there will always be some form of distraction, if we work to minimize these four main problems we’ll be in much better shape to stay on track during our next session.

We’re talking about a creative solutions to common solving problems.

Problem one: How and where do you get inspiration? I believe that there is a special energy that comes to us when she knows we’re committed to her. When I say her, I mean the work. Professional runners say that the hardest part about running a marathon is simply getting the motivation to put on their shoes, and leave the house. Boom. Just show up and get started – load up your daw, and start making noise, you’ll soon get excited and find something cool to work towards. One of the most important and simple approaches to music production, which I always recommend, is simply making music when you feel great. I’ve read several articles about the importance of rituals – where you design and carry out a pattern that makes you happy inside and out, and within that zone, your mind will enter a very positive space, which is super important when we demand creativity and imagination.

Problem Two: How can I know enough about music production to be a one-man band?
It’s impossible to know everything, and you don’t need to. What you really want to know are the ins and outs of your daw, and instruments you use. If you’ve been buying all the latest synths and each one of them is different, it’s going to take quite some time to know them all 100%, whereas if you are using one or two instruments, read the manuals and learn everything you can about JUST those two synths – you’ll be much quicker to make and achieve the sounds you want by knowing less (less instruments to learn), and focusing more (mastering the ones you use).

Less is more. I watched a video interview of one producer who’s had several track placements with Kendrick Lamar ~ the dude is 18, and records everything into Garage Band on his iPhone. He has a guitar and a phone. That’s it, and he’s making huge strides with his work, even with the most basic equipment.

Find a way to get engaged. Ask yourself what part of music production makes you forget about time, food, and everything else? This is a space where you’re in the zone, fully committed, and nothing else matters. Embrace this process and be aware of when this happens, you may not reach this level of focus and results during other steps along the way. For some, this state will only come to them when Dj’ing, and for others, it will come while locked in a mixdown, etc.. know where you’ll find your flow.

Problem Three: How can I commit to a direction in my music?
While there is no straight answer for this, I’ll simplify things to the belief that – you have multiple options, and don’t have to commit to only one. Record both ideas, and use the ‘save-as’ feature, allowing you to save a second version of the song to work on, and later decide which direction you’ll be happy with.

And lastly Problem Four: What will the afterlife of my song be?

No one can see into the future, so it’s impossible to know. I don’t believe it’s a productive use of your time to dream about what could be one day… without finishing your song, it will stay living on you hard drive forever, which is not what you want. What is important right now is to focus on the important things here:
Making music, Finishing projects, promoting your work, networking with other producers.

(for tips on how to promote yourself as an artist in a way that is personal to you, check this post) 

To wrap things up, problem-solving can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be. While a study suggested that in front of anxiety, one of the best things to do is to take a 2 day break, although I’d encourage you to take a week off to start with.

Photo by Oskar Wimmerman on Unsplash

In an excellent psychology related article I read that when one is faced with a challenge, it’s critical to understand exactly what you’re being tested with – that is, you need to know what is the real problem. To know and understand what the problem is you must be able to explain to someone else with clarity, with a clear description. Understand the problem, and understand the options available to you. I read that negotiators who talk to terrorists holding hostages will eliminate many options down to only two in an effort to achieve a quick, yet satisfying resolution. Reduce your options to get moving quickly. Making a decision in haste can also have a negative effect, so don’t feel the need to always make a decision right away – give your self time away from the problem, and trust your brain’s ability to understand that in the background, beneath the surface, at some point a creative solution will emerge, often when least expected.

In the end, to win more, to score more, to get through to the finish line more often, you need to be as creative in finding solutions to problems as you are in every other area of your productions. Set a up a system where you minimize the chance for distractions to happen.

(quick tip– every mac has an app called Automator, where you can assign a chain of commands for whatever you wish to do. Check this video to setup a quick way to close all programs, turn off wifi, launch Live, and kick-start your session fast.

 

Cheers Guys JP

 

  SEE ALSO : Checklist to see if my song is finished 

How to filter your best ideas

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I’m always looking for ways to improve upon what I do, and how I can better serve my clients. I’m not taking any breaks on becoming better and better every day. I read a lot and especially enjoy reading words from entrepreneurs to learn from, and help build upon the success of others. When I come across an article that brings up an ‘a-ha’ moment, I want to share it. One of these moments came from one article I read about how to turn a great idea into a business. Across many different fields, music, tech, etc.. one pattern in runs true throughout all of them – sometimes the best ideas come to you in ways you can’t always predict.

Another thing which is true, to generate ideas you start by brainstorming.

In the musical world, I would translate this as jamming. With nowhere particular direction in mind, you begin by tweaking and trying everything. Make sounds, press buttons, turn knobs, listen to the effect of this and that, try new techniques for the first time. In a past article, I’d invited you to use Youtube to find out something new or use a new synth demo and record the outcome.

Jamming freely. It’s known that Prince would spend time in his studio every day making a ton of noise simply to try new things, try new jams, and record these experiments which resulted in a vault of music no one would hear, except him. I’d encourage you to do add this to your daily routine, either very early in the morning or at the end of the afternoon.

Going back to the article that ignited my ‘a-ha- moment, the process of idea generation should involve the following two steps:

  1. Creative session.
  2. Analytical period.

The article states that the brain has a very difficult time creating and analyzing at the same time. In the moment of creation and discovery, our brains use a lot of energy to focus on active listening. In this messy and uncontrolled environment, our brains are set in one direction, we’re in the zone. The missing piece of the puzzle for me was reading that our brains have a very difficult time when asked to create and analyze at the same time. It won’t work both ways.

This is why it’s recommended to separate the two tasks, create freely one day, then analyze the material on the next. This would also explain why we often listen to what we did from our first session and find it mostly garbage. The key word here is – mostly.

It would also confirm my theory that spending too much time in the studio is counter-productive because without a change of perspective you don’t have enough distance objectively evaluate your efforts.

Over time I’ve nearly burnt myself out explaining this process to others who struggle with the process. I’ve also learned it’s sometimes best to let those learn by themselves, at their own pace. This confirms the idea that the creative process is very much a personal one, and that no two people will learn or develop at the same rate.

Session 1: Jam, have fun, explore, fail, win, repeat.
Session 2: review everything that was recorded and isolate the potential ideas that stand out, and are more usable.
Session 3: Go through isolated ideas. Work around one.
Alternate.

In other words, try to alternate between creative flow and analysis, self-criticism and more technical work.

Your brain can only do one at a time and more so, why go analytical when you are creative and why be creative when it is time to be self-critical. The main thing you’ll refer to as your analytical part is to listen to what feels good to you.

Build. Learn. Repeat. Build. Learn. Repeat.

As a child, going out to restaurants with my parents would normally involve using pencils and paper to draw pictures and doddle while we waited for our food. (this was waaaayy before smartphones became commonplace) For me, a blank piece of paper is a license to get messy. Everything is possible, and I always found it easy to get started. Our favorite game was one where one would draw a weird, unrecognizable doddle, and pass the paper on to the other.

The second player would have the challenging task of turning that mess of lines, shapes, and circles into something recognizable like a car, or a bird, or anything that required a bit of time and imagination. Until this day I’ve always thought this exercise was one of the most creative tasks I ever did.

So, here’s another way to approach this: take something totally random, even something you truly don’t want to work with whatsoever and try to make something usable out of it. Make a loop, make a playable sound, take something terrible and push yourself to find something in it that you can do something with. I did a full EP once, a while back where I’d force myself to work with sounds and recordings that made no sense whatsoever. It turns out it’s a good exercise but also very useful as you don’t depend on only good material to be effective with what you have.

SEE ALSO :  The Modular Trap   

Creating Timeless Music

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Recently my Facebook page was flooded in a fantastic way. This thread became overwhelmed with comments I was happy to read because it reminded me of how much music can drive and affect our emotions. We’re talking about timeless music.

I asked my FB followers to name some music that hadn’t left their DJ bag for years. These were the records that passed the test of time, and truly stood out as ‘timeless’ music. Which brings up the question, what is it about some music that makes it sound timeless? In many cases, music that has content touching on deeper themes can be easier to connect with since right away it feels more personal. Music can have a way of suggesting and expressing emotions which words sometimes cannot, which is why music is often such a powerful medium of expression.

A friend of mine mentioned that music with a particular sound or mood would seem to have a personality of its own, which is a similar comment my friend Vera told me about the records she always carries with her – that certain records were like friends or companions to her. Some records work better with others and some work really well in a very specific context. Some people talked about keeping certain records to close out their sets, and others perfect for a sunrise.

In a past article, I covered how to develop many ideas quickly, but also explained the lottery of finding a good one. This can be quite a complicated topic and in some ways impossible to pin down as a science. Despite the fact that so many popular songs can, and have been written very quickly, there is still no exact science to writing great music. That being said, it’s worth spending a minute to look at a few common denominator between these examples.

Let’s explore some theories you can put in place so that hopefully, you may one day create timeless music of your own.

First, some will say achieving a state of grace, which in psychology, is often labeled as being in a state of flow. Many artists have, and can touch that feeling yet sadly will often rely on substances to reach it again, which is in many cases counter-productive. What exactly is flow?

 

In positive psychology, flow, also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow can be characterized by a complete absorption in what one does and loses a sense of space and time.

You could also see this state of ‘flow’ as an activity where time flies by so quickly, and you are so absorbed by what you do that you can feel it is being made by nearly itself, in the most natural way. I would say that this is not something essential, but usually, as you make music and have experienced this state you’ll agree that some of your best music will be written during this time.

Another way you can approach writing music that sounds more timeless is to be aware of current trends in music, and understand what really defines what’s popular. There is no shortage of studies that have looked look at chord progressions common throughout different eras, and identified a winning formula. The use of the right chord progression mixed with innovative techniques of an era will make a musical and well-written song truly stand out. David Bowie is one artist who always had the flair to find and collaborate with upcoming, creative people to push the edge creatively.

 Get it done, and get a lot of it done.
Being productive helps if you avoid censoring yourself, and not to overthink the process. In other words, if you made 50 tracks over a span of time and 5 of those were truly excellent, will always be more prolific than spending years having only made five great tracks.

Below you’ll find some tracks that made it to the suggestions people did and what made the tracks timeless would be categorized to a few main points.

Melodies: More than often, a haunting melody or something very catchy will make you remember a track.

Innovation: Using some new technology or personalizing a technique. Sometimes what you can do is take a way used in another genre and apply it to what you do.

Arrangements: There’s no secret here to say humans love surprises and arrangements are the art of playing with expectations, unexpected moments, gratifying cues and misleading ideas. The balance of these elements, the ratio of events in your track, spread in the right perspective, will make your timeline, timeless.

Mood and emotions: When you hear an accordion playing in a restaurant in Paris, even though the song is probably 100 years old, you’ll automatically connect to the mood, the emotion and understand why that musicality belongs to the streets of Paris. You know that will still be played in 100 years too. It fits. Using triggers as these in some ways can really help your music to connect with a context.

To finish my point of view, I’ll share some of the tracks people suggested that got attention and I’ll try to explain why the track can be seen as timeless.

This track by Maurizio (Moritz Von Oswald) was when I felt I really clicked to the more minimal movement back around 1996. It was one of the first low key track that was completely hypnotizing and that could be played at pretty much any moment, mixed with anything (almost) and up until now, it has been copied, influenced the whole dub techno movement. It’s for sure, a well-known classic by any DJ that’s been digging for a while. Excellent to drop in any set, it’s one of those tracks that you can’t go wrong with. Would this record have the same appeal if it was released today? It’s still strong!

Timeless for: Innovation, use of pads, groove and endless feel.

Isolé got really big through the release of his track “Beau Mot Plage” which, when released, automatically went in most of DJs bag, listening to techno, house, etc… It’s just a beautiful, well-produced record that brings a smile when played. There’s no doubt it will be a classic for the next 20 years as well.

Timeless factor: Melodies and arrangements.

We were lucky enough to first see Ric play this during his live set at MUTEK in 2002. He had it sketched out and played it at the festival. It’s one of those records that, when played, often get people to ask what song is this. Mainly because there’s a super catchy bass at first then the guitar drops and it automatically creates an atmosphere where things feel suspended. The nostalgic, yet profound feel, and tone of it makes you want to listen to it on repeat. There’s no doubt the guitar use is what makes this track memorable.

I’m flattered this track came as a suggestion to have in the bag. When Hubble and I made this track, we weren’t expecting it to get the attention it got (it was on sale on Discogs for 150 euros at one point before the repress). Soon we saw videos of DJs playing it and gave us goosebumps. It seems that this track is one that you can drop in any set, mixed with other songs or by itself and it locks you in. I’m biased because I was involved in its creation but I get the attraction by DJs to play it.

Laurent Garnier is the man behind this track, and even though it’s from 1993 is still playable right now. It’s romantic to think back then, we were making music of the future yet this one really made it there. This acid bass and melody are making things work so well in many situations, and there’s no doubt it’s a classic now, raising hands when dropped. I believe it has made a good job at grabbing a snapshot of what was rave music of the early 90’s.

Very beautifully made, catchy melody and overall, this is the kind of song that can seduce pretty much anyone. You’ll feel Paris and you’ll feel love. It’s certainly not something you can play anytime you’d like in your set but I can imagine someone playing this to end an event and would have exactly the right effect.

SEE ALSO : The Art of Keeping People on Their Toes 

Goals You Set For Yourself

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As many of you already know, I’ve been offering personal coaching services since 2016, and seen some amazing breakthroughs with my clients. In every case, it’s best to get a conversation going to learn about what goals you set for yourself. In many cases, I help them to see the bigger picture and then find ways achieve those goals in a way that is very personal, and unique to each of them.

There are many myths about making music that floats around, which aren’t helpful for producers. I feel it’s important to debunk misinformation and share the most common goals I hear from my clients to help do that.

The two most common goals I hear from my clients are:
I want to become a known producer and get signed to multiple labels.
I want to become respected enough so I can tour.

The whole point of offering my coaching service is to help people get from where they are now to where they want to be in the future.

Having someone there to push you creatively can make a world of difference, so we might as well think big right? Big goals will often require big change, and I want to share my strategy to achieving the goals my clients wanted, but couldn’t imagine achieving themselves.

After you’ve set a goal, you need to imagine working backward to determining all the small, and many steps you’ll need to make to arrive there. The thing is, hard work will keep you focused on achieving your goals, but occasionally forces out of your control will make a big difference, one being known as luck.

There are many things you can’t control in your quest to become a known producer, mainly because getting known implies that you’ve been at the right place, at the right moment. Even an attempt to duplicate the step by step actions of another artist who achieved some level of success doesn’t mean those actions will work for you.

It’s very common for artists to try and replicate what others before him/her have done, which can work of course, but, the more likely result will be to be known as someone without originality if you follow someone’s steps to closely.

Now, thinking wide, long term is all fine and good and will test your vision, but often thinking too far ahead will distract you from what must be set in motion in the short term.

The truth is, wherever you want to go in music, you first need to produce a ton of tracks and find your path in that process. Bonus (check out a fool-proof way to know if your tracks sound good)

Now, one of the most common goals I bring people to set is to begin completing one track per week. Their main enemy in this process is getting attached to where the track will end up. It’s safe to say we all hope our music will get attention, will be played, will get signed, but these points are often uncontrollable. Bonus – easy ways to create tracks, and multiple tracks from just one idea.

Being signed, heard, or played out at clubs should not your final destination, this is simply one stage in the every growing process of your life as a musician. The proof is, low-quality music can often get a lot of attention while some fantastic tunes are ignored and get no play time. Why?

This leads me to the second most important goal I generally work towards, (which has been written about often on my blog) developing your network. In my opinion and in one way or another, everything comes down to that. SO much more than your gear, or the number of remixes under your belt, the support you can really count on is the people around you in the long run. Your network can help push you towards making bold work and great things, to outdo yourself, to grow via collaboration and inspiration.

In a very digital age many people have become less social, which can make going out and meeting new people harder. I get that. Yet, not being part of a strong network doesn’t mean you won’t create great music, it simply means without having that support you may not be pushed to create your best music.

Lastly, finding your path is a matter of what path you actually want. This can come to you in two ways: knowing what you love, what you love doing and what you do magnificently well. Whether you believe it or not, everyone has a talent, and through work and practice, that talent can be recognized world wide. So what’s yours? Some people are amazing at creating dynamic arrangements, others at running a label. When you can connect what you do naturally well with what you love doing, you’ll enter a zone of flow where you can achieve truly great things.

My destination as a coach is that zone ~ This is where I want to be leading people to. I find a lot of comfort in seeing my clients reach that point as it truly creates a fullness and purpose to the work they’re creating, as well as my role in the partnership.

In the end, am I trying to divert them from their initial goal of getting signed to labels and touring? No, not at all. What is true is that I’m preparing them to get there by focusing on the only thing they can control themselves: their own personal growth. To tour and be signed, implies to be in control of your art, part of a healthy and strong network, and finding a flow and confidence in yourself as an artist.

 

SEE ALSO :  Make Your Music Bucket List Happen

Besides music, labels are searching for these traits

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If your productions are tight and ready to go, and you have been looking for ways to get labels to sign your tracks, the natural next step would be to send out a ton of demos to labels and wait for them to call you back with a deal. It’s time to start living the dream right? You’ve done all your homework and followed the advice you’ve read online about how to get the attention of label reps. The thing is, and I hate to break it to you, there is another bit of info you probably don’t want to hear, but it’s important that you know.

Labels don’t want you to contact them. 

Many labels won’t come out and actually say, stay away don’t bother, but before you throw in the towel let me try to explain what this means in the most helpful, and constructive way. I’m also speaking from experience here, so please don’t assume this is standard for every label.

artist, electronic music, demos, label

Photo credit John Hult.

With the enormous and ever increasing stage called social media, a never-ending flood of new artists emerging daily, all wanting the same thing – your attention. With free and new tools available to make marketing and promotion easier by the day, the credibility of the ‘artist’ has become diluted from the perspective of the consumer.
Whether you believe this is good or bad, a new impression has been created which is:

  • Everyone is a producer, and,
  • They all seek some level of attention because they’re not getting in touch. Ironically, people want to listen to music more than ever, but the vast flood of new music leaves many listeners overwhelmed by it all. It’s the same experience for labels.

After such an onslaught of new artists sending in demos many labels become numb to the possibility of finding something great. This makes it harder for those who are truly deserving of attention and recognition.

Does this all mean to give up and stop sending in demos? I would say not necessarily. I’ve covered this topic in previous posts, but I’ll cover this point a more in depth here.

There is one important statement I’d like to point make out about our industry though: The whole concept of promotion has become obsolete and alienated. I’m talking specifically about the promotion from artists to label, artists to fans, artists to promoters as well as labels to DJs and labels to fans.

But still, labels will always find quality music and prefer if they find you. This is a fact. Think of Perlon for instance, they largely release music from their circle of friends and the track to be released will need to be tested by the core of the label (Zip mainly, but Ricardo too) in multiple contexts to see how well it’s received by the crowd. Serious label owners have a very particular vision of their sound platform, and your music will (in many cases) need to follow their established sound to get signed.

In my honest opinion: if you want to be on a label’s radar, you will get better results by getting played by DJs. 

Besides music, labels are searching for these traits in you:

Patience. this is perhaps the most prized trait a label will appreciate from you. In this fast paced world, patience is not only rare but it is also a quality that we all need to work on. It’s about having trust that things will work out in the end and that one’s results will be something that happens in some distant future. Parallel to patience, this goes hand in hand with trust. One goes with the other. It means to be able to have a bigger picture of things, that perhaps somewhere down the road, something great will be happening. Maybe not… but to not lose patience over delays is critical as these are common in the music industry.

Get organized. Being organized is super important and will make everything easier. An organized artist should have a solid promo kit on hand – professional photos, your music project and files in order, ready to be retouched or fixed in case of a problem. There’s nothing more annoying than having to go back to fix a sound, but if you’re all over the place, you might cause delays which then moves the entire schedule, or can even destroy your opportunity for exposure. It’s helpful to start off your productions right, follow these mixing and production tips and save yourself headaches later.

Reactivity. Fast replies to emails, answering promptly, precision with your communication will make you pretty awesome to work with. Busy people appreciate this, and it goes a long way.

Flexibility. This is the opposite of being finicky. Things will never be perfect so let’s try to make the best of it.

In the end, it’s up to you to put in the work, which can be made easier when you step back and look at the big picture. What are your goals? Work backward and determine what action needs to be taken in order to achieve your goals. Take a minute and check out my guide to shameless self-promotion here. Add in a little good luck, some magic here and there, and consistent focused daily efforts. Best of luck to you ~

JP

SEE ALSO :    Are online communities replacing labels? 

PreSonus StudioLive 32.4.2AI Review

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I’m hearing lot’s of friends and readers super excited to start using the new gear they’ve recently bought for their studios, I certainly know the feeling. The thing is, learning to be confident and comfortable with new gear takes time, and it can often be difficult to get everything in place when starting to write new material. The process of switching from only a computer only workflow to a digital/analog setup can take a bit of practice, and in this post, I’ll share a few tips you can use to make the process easier and share my thoughts after using the unit in my own studio.

For people into hardware, it will come a moment where you’ll need to never lose your flow and have all your channels on hand so you can have the control you want.

Today I’ll be featuring the PreSonus StudioLive 32.4.2AI I received from B&H. Truth be told, I’ve been digging this right out of the box. This post could also serve as a review of the mixer if you are in the market for that. PreSonus have plans to release an update to the 32.4.2AI mixer, so watch for a price drop on this model.

If you spend a lot of time at the mixdown stage, PreSonus has a fantastic workflow built into their Studio One 3 software.

With the integration of this mixer, the process of mixing with hardware becomes seamless and even more exciting. The super fast firewire connection allows secure and reliable hands-on tracking, mixing, and producing next-level enjoyable.

After using this unit for some time, I’ll share a few thoughts that have stayed with me.

  • Easy to navigate/and use: if you’re not familiar with a professional this beast immediately feels like a friend. It does look impressive on the desk but wherever your eyes go you never really feel lost. Bonus – if you are in the middle of the action you can quickly address any situation with a quick circular view. Everything is laid out so well and located within a natural place. The design is of the unit is also very slick.
  • Very little menu diving. Pretty self-explanatory here but this is something I’m allergic to because it always feels frustrating to dig deep within endless menus.
  • Easy to assign channels to subgroups. Since I’m often mixing, this task is an essential one for me. I’ll always use sub-groups for percussions, melodies, etc. There are 4 sub groups and while I often use 5-6, I could still be OK with that limitation.
  • Tons of Aux sends. As you grow your effects collection, you’ll become aware of how super important aux sends are for mixing. You’ll want to have access to your effects through the AUX and you never have enough. Most mixers have about 6 which means, 3 stereo effects which usually means more are needed.
  • A 32in/32out sound card makes tracking into your DAW easy and is perfect for studio work. As you know, this mixer becomes a sound interface, so you do the tracking and can focus on having everything on hand.
  • Assigning inputs from DAW is a piece of cake (buttons underneath phantom power).
  • Sound quality is really quite good. We did some comparing with our Prism audio interface of the UAD Apollo Twin, and we were quite impressed. It was great to hear how well the audio engine stood up against top names.
  • Line inputs on every channel for gear. Nothing but a wowzer.
  • Well built. It’s seriously heavy, robust, the knobs don’t feel cheap, faders have a nice smooth traction so it really does feel like you’re working with a tank. Perfect for live clubs.
  • Dynamics/EQ on every channel which is great for basic and clean signal control/correction, though not musical in any sense.

I love the mix of analog and digital and there are lot’s of great features here to be sure. To be fair, I need to address a few points I’m less a fan of.

  • Noisy Fan – this is minor, but the noise is noticeable.
  • No DAW control or motorized faders. Although in the next upcoming version, this is addressed.
  • Can only run at 48khz sample rate. Not a problem if you don’t need high resolutions, but I’m still a bit surprised by this limitation.
  • The unit we tested has a small glitch when viewing the input meters. Perhaps this might be fixed with an update, but we didn’t do any.
  • Only two stereo aux returns. hmmmm.

The PreSonus StudioLive 32.4.2AI is an excellent mixing solution if you have a modest budget and the price may drop slightly with the announcement of a newer version coming shortly. In my opinion, you’ll have a pretty good solution for your gear and great addition for your studio with the with the PreSonus StudioLive 32.4.2AI –

Special thanks to B&H on that!

 

 

My Music Doesn’t Sound Like Me

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Does this happen to you? You start a project with an idea and a direction, “I’m going to make a techno track”, you fire up a drum machine, get a baseline going, start jamming, looking for sounds, creating a groove, and an hour later you listen back to an 8 bar loop that sounds totally different than what you set out to make? “My music doesn’t sound like me”. Yeah, it happens to a lot of people, and it can be really frustrating to make music that sounds totally alien to you.

There is a special kind of disappointment that comes with not being able to make the kind of music you want to create. Many producers I’ve worked with talk about starting a project with one direction in mind but as the track evolves they find the sounds they’ve chosen and feel of the song completely opposite to their original direction.

Why does this keep happening? What is going on here?

From experiencing this myself, I understand the confusion. I want to suggest looking at this situation from another perspective, which I believe will be much more positive, and productive for you as a producer. It’s all about context.

Firstly, our moods and our thoughts are always changing. We are dynamic, and there are multiple versions of us. What I mean is, you are one person when driving with very loud music on, there is one while enjoying music at a party, there is another you while listening to music made for earphones. There is a big difference between the person you are enjoying music and the person you are when making music. Both matter, both are ok.
Tip– as soon as you start a project, save it right away with a name that describes the genre or feel of the song you want to create. A name as straightforward as “techno …. ” or “house ….” is easy enough.

It’s helpful to start your productions with a clear focus and intent in mind – otherwise, it’s quite easy to drift off. That being said, my personal opinion is that drifting is a good thing, and goes hand in hand with being in the moment, and more in touch with the YOU who is in the studio in that moment.
If you are truly in touch with your emotions or follow the sounds you are excited by, drifting off into other directions is going to happen. It’s simply a process of discovery.

The way I see music is similar to the birth of a strange, alien creature that has come out from nowhere. Even if the music you’ve created sounds completely foreign to you, it’s important to be patient with the material as later in the production or mixing phases, you learn to gently tame something raw and undeveloped into an evolved creature with a unique personality. If your music sounds a little different than what you set out to do, I believe that’s a good thing.

If you’ve been reading my posts over time, you’ll know I strongly encourage The Bonsai Method, and the habit of not spending too much time on any one track. Working quickly and finishing fast will significantly sharpen up your production skills, and you’ll be a much more prolific producer for it. You want your sounds to be a little raw, out of control, and strange. These sounds are the unsculpted gems you can only do when you stop censoring yourself. This is the stuff you are striving for.

Embrace unexpected results, and embrace change.

Imagine the number of ideas you’ll have to work with if you start 20 tracks from scratch as opposed to trying to polish one song for 20 hours. Spending too much time on one track will often take away from the rawness of your initial recording. This liveliness is precisely the sound that made us excited in the first place, and it’s important to embrace these unexpected noises, rhythms, and grooves. Taking away all the rough  charm of your material could be compared to photoshopping a beautiful and natural adult woman’s body into the thinness of a child to achive some measure of perfection. Here are a few essential tips to starting your tracks off right ~

Your work is whatever you want it to be.

As a people, we are always evolving, and our tastes in music will evolve as well. It’s ideal for your music to sound alien to you and progress yet understand that your progression may happen in an order you can’t predict. Through time and work, who you really are as a musician will begin to take shape.

Hearing the music you’ve made in the past is like looking at pictures of yourself from another time. It leaves a stamp. Find the photos of yourself from the past and pay attention to the ones you love. They might be aesthetically good, but I’ll bet that your favorite images will be the ones that recall a particular moment in your life. See it with raw, original sounds you find. The ones that are bold are the sounds that will stand out through years and perhaps bring you unexpected attention.

Tip: Bounce a version of your track before saving and closing your project. Compare how it evolves. Share it to people who know you. See what freak them…

As always let me know if you have any suggestions or questions about this post and leave a comment below and tell me what projects you are working on right now.

JP

SEE ALSO : Deconstructing A Reference Track

Deleting all yours tracks and selling your gear.

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Since the very beginning, I can remember many times I’ve questioned my abilities as a music producer. Feeling stuck on a project or coping with negative feedback from a track I was proud of left me wondering if I was starring down the path of a musical dead end. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to consider unplugging, and putting it all away for good. Several colleagues of mine have similar stories, and more than once I’ve seen someone debate deleting all their tracks and selling all their gear.

High highs and low lows. There is a wealth of research which supports the fact that making music can produce a massive dose of satisfaction, a high similar to the effect of drugs or the rush of an intense workout. The thrill after completing a track is huge, yet on the flip side when things aren’t working out the low can often be depressing. At times it can feel like you’re living in a constant state of low-grade misery. Our perspective often governs our moods, and with just a twist our outlook can turn from sour to super very quickly.

I’ve spent a lot of time reading comments within Facebook groups from people flirting with the idea of selling their gear and calling it quits. On the digital side, I hear people talk about deleting entire hard drives filled with a rough version of tracks, and I think about the hard work and time they’ve invested in projects that will never be completed. They feel the work is simply not worth the effort. So often the feeling of excitement and energy from listening back to our next best track can be replaced by frustration and self-doubt when seeing it stored away in the unfinished bin. Another great idea that stays just that, and idea – incomplete, unheard. Back to the drawing board. Again.

A personal rule of mine is never to delete any project or sample. I just won’t do it. 0% chance.

I believe the main enemies that alter our judgment are overexposure and adverse reaction. If I am working on a project that just isn’t happening, I remind myself to simply store it away and come back to it after a time has passed. Once re-opened and listened to with a new perspective, you’ll likely find something that inspires you, or at the very least – something you can work off of right away. As artists, we are always changing. The artist you’ll be a year from now might like or dislike what you’re producing right now. By keeping your unfinished projects somewhere safe, you are investing in your time and talent for tomorrow rather than throw away what you’re frustrated with today.

Tip: This might feel silly but if you don’t feel good about music, try simply saying:”For the moment, I don’t feel like making music.” Insist on “for the moment“, because it takes away the idea that your mindset is permanent.

In past posts I’ve talked at length about the benefit of planting seeds, creating a master project where all your ideas can be grabbed from and used as a springboard to something great with minimal effort. The benefits of having a library of sounds and tools custom-made, ready at a moments notice, is huge because momentum is critical to completing your tracks.

One thing that’s common is the search for old gear to achieve a particular sound. At some point, it’s natural to feel like you’ve outgrown your equipment and you’re sure that buying new (old) gear will solve the problem. We are constantly being tempted with new products and tools that promise to solve our problems and make everything that much easier. Even after buying new gear we sometimes don’t take time to truly audition them. How often do we ask ourselves what it is we truly need to fix? Can gear solve this? The hype and marketing work for sure, yet without fail the next time we turn around there is yet another must-have tool we’re after, because this one…. man this one, is going to make the difference.

Tip: Some gear can be rented. If you can test drive what you want, that can be really useful.

Take a minute to reflect what your goals are before making another investment.

To truly move on as a producer the best personal investment I can think of is to simply finish something, anything. I believe deleting your tracks reinforces your inability to finish what you started, and doesn’t bring anything good. You certainly aren’t farther ahead as a producer, and you’ll never have anything to show without completing your projects.

Take a moment to look at your progress or lack thereof. Where do you get stuck? Where does it come to and end? Is your sound design weak, do you break apart while arranging it? Find your weakness and draw a circle around it with a big, red, pen. That is your problem area. This is the tough part for you. This is where you give up and call it quits. Nothing you can buy is going to fix this for you. The good part is that now you know where you break down you can learn ways to improve on it.

Youtube. Thank the Lord. Whatever you are looking for I promise there will be a video to help you overcome your sticking point. Just don’t get stuck endlessly watching videos that hours later morph into a totally different topic (it’s easy to do). Also, to wrap things up, here’s a production tip I love doing: At the end of a session, bounce whatever you have, then store this in the folder of the production. Always do “collect all and save” It can be a 30-second loop ,the arrangements you have ongoing, or even export all your session stems.  Doing this is extremely useful when going through older projects but also, you can open a blank project and then import several bounces and play with them straight away. This tip has been so useful for my past albums!

 

SEE ALSO :  Finishing Your Projects

Use a main project for organizing yourself

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Over the years I’ve talked with dozens and dozens of people from various backgrounds that would love to begin producing music but simply don’t know how or where to start. On the other hand, if you’ve already been creating music but lately have become overwhelmed with too many sounds, too many vsts, and are less productive in the studio, this post is for you. We’ll focus on using a main Ableton project to organize your sessions, which will make for a productive and efficient time in the studio.

For your studio time to be productive and enjoyable, it’s essential that you are organized, and have a solid grasp on your sounds and tools.

DJ’s who’ve listened to hundreds of top quality, finely mastered tracks, will often complain that the quality and sound of their first efforts in the studio will clash with the loudness and polish of the music they’re used to hearing. This frustration is predictable, but also preventable, and it’s one reason I strongly encourage beginners to start by using pre-made loops or simply remixing the tracks they already have. To keep things organized and productive, select just two tracks with the sound and style you’d like your own productions to have, and work on just one project at a time.

Speaking of bought loops – I want to debunk the myth or opinion that using pre-made loops is cheating. This is 100% wrong, and counter productive to making music.

I believe the perfect mindset to approach music production is very much like that of a moderator, you must work with that which is in front of you.

This idea requires a lot of openness and humbleness, but using this approach will make you much stronger at being resourceful in the face of adversity.

The internet is an endless source of tools and options, and it’s critical at one point to stop consuming ideas and make the best out of the material you have. My rule: never buy a new VST until I have gotten a true and complete hold of the ones I already have. That being said, if you need a tip to help organize yourself, I highly recommend to create one main Ableton project that will be your mothership, your sound compendium, your personal lab for growing ideas.

  • Buying new effects for our synth: to truly get a hand of what your new effects can do, just drop your new effects in one channel and experiment. I highly recommend you record the entire session of exploration as wav file but also as a session where automation and knob movement will be recorded.
  • Gathering leftovers: Whenever you finish a song, there will be sounds you haven’t used. You can copy and paste theses into your main project. Using your audio leftovers is an excellent way to create fast and great sounding starting point ideas for your next song.
  • Building macros: Building macros can be time-consuming. Some macros I like to build are usually ones that involve a good use of the macro knobs because when I’m recording a session, I can just drop them on a channel and quickly controller parameters using PUSH which has the excellent automap feature.
  • Gathering new sounds: Because I don’t have the time and energy to record all the sounds I want I’ll just buy the few that I need. I’ll also purchase sounds that I don’t have resources to make such as sounds from a plane. Some sounds that you’ll use often will be a great investment, but there’s also many that are available for free.
  • Building drumkits: This one area where I often spend a lot of time. When I start an idea, I want to be able to throw in a good combination of percussion. With the huge selection available to me choosing the right sound can take forever. Check out this nice video here that shows how to create a tool to test many sounds at once. This is great but you still need to make your kits.
  • Creating layers: This is a bit of the following logic from the previous tip. Once you have multiple kits, you can work on assembling them in a drum rack in order to create layers. As you probably know, in sound design, one sound is very often made of up many sounds that have been layered correctly. It’s a good idea to make multiple kits in advance, organized well, and ready to perform when the session gets rolling.
  • Making categories with your channels: Each channel should have sounds of the same family. So perhaps, you can make one channel that has pads and another channel with kicks. This is useful because when you go in Ableton’s browser and open your main project, you have access to all the sounds from each channel, which makes it much faster to find a specific sound. Another big benefit in doing this is exporting your channels as stems will make for efficient mixing later on. (Read more about that article here – Bouncing Stems)  

When I look at how I work, I often see that I spend way more time preparing my music session than producing a track itself. The better your organization, the easier it gets in your workflow.

JP

SEE ALSO : Music Production Tips: How To Start A Track 

 

Templates As Seeds

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As a producer, you’re likely trying to balance several tasks all at once while working on your music. If you’re spending time to look through four or five reverbs in search of the perfect sound, setting up buses and groups to pre-mix your tracks while you arrange it, or just feeling frozen looking at a blank project screen and finding it hard to get going, it’s no wonder you aren’t as productive as you’d like to be.

Good news, this post is all about setting yourself up to win before you begin. Begin to see your templates as seeds. 

Many DAWs can be setup to load a template as an initial starting point. Reason will propose a pre-made environment, and Studio One will propose if you’d like to setup a project for mixing to speed up your getting started time. Ableton Live doesn’t have that feature by default, but you can easily change that to open a custom startup project.

Even though most DAWs have this helpful feature, that wasn’t enough for me. But it felt like I could do better.

In one way this is a follow-up post to the previous Bonsai Technique that I shared a few weeks back. It was super popular, and many people sent in comments about how it really helped them develop tracks from little ideas. Now, I’d like to follow up with this idea as I realized that many people are missing out on the fun of using a template to get their projects started. Also, there are a few things we can add in that will also be valuable for your next productions. Let’s have a look at the techniques to get rolling fast.

I’m going to suggest something simple in essence, but it’s very effective to get new projects sounding great right from step one.

Start your next project using the last song used. I heard about this technique from Matthew Herbert’s manifesto, and it got me inspired. Herbert would pick up the mixing board where he left things off from the last session. Why is this a good idea?
Starting from the last mix would provide a faster workflow but also, the random EQs, compression, effects, would be set to something he would never have set up beforehand. I thought this concept was brilliant and began doing this myself. Very often I would start with the last project loaded but would make the next song right after the end of the previous one. The same configuration and settings for the kick, percussion etc… were the same, which often led me into directions I didn’t expect at all. This is a big advantage. 

Consider keeping the effects on each channel as is, but drop your new clips into existing channels at random. In some situations, I also would copy the arrangement of one song and paste it into another song’s arrangement view. Very strange results would come up, often leading to unexpected yet very usable sound design results. I often have one “mother” project which will be a safe place for me to develop and grow these ideas. Then I will copy some loops into another project’s arrangement view, and sometimes move the clips between channels to see which one fits the best. I even did the exercise of dropping a full arrangement into another project keeping it as intact as possible. From there I wouldn’t even listen to it before bouncing it out. I’d then listen to it weeks later and get blown away. I made a handful of tracks from my album Intra or White Raven this way.
Next, challenge yourself to keep your bus routing and groups intact. It’s great to have pre-made sends channels or busses that you can re-use quickly. Of course, an easy way would be to be to assemble a macro of the chain of effects you’ve used, but I like the idea of opening a template and have no idea what effects would be awaiting me. I will sometimes swap my most used effects with others I newly acquired or some I’ve forgotten about. It’s often nice to dig up older, legacy plugins that can bring up a particular grain to your sound.

Clear your finished project from the clips and save it as a template.

One exercise you can start applying today would be:

  1. Create a folder for your templates.
  2. Each time you finish a song, you do a “save as…” to that folder. You’ll then clean it from the clips in the Arranger view. I will often leave what I call ‘leftover’ sounds that weren’t used in the project. I’ll set these clips in the session view in a channel named “Leftovers.” Doing this allows you to re-purpose those sounds, which may be a perfect fit in your new project.
  3. Midi clips could be left there as well because it is usually interesting to have on hand some midi material you can quickly throw new sounds onto and see what it gets that sounds like.

Now, an extra tip, which is to make a template for the design of an EP/LP. As you know, it’s always great to have a common feel for an entire release, and one of the things I would recommend would be in the way you apply your effects.

  • Reverb. Either you pick a reverb from one specific company (ex. Altiverb) and use some presets to get started, or you try to remain in the same family of space such as Plates.
  • Delays. Using the same plugin but changing the delay speed.
  • Saturation. Try to pick one type and stick to it. I recommend applying this through a send channel where you have more control over how each sound is colored.
  • Compression/EQ. Some apply a distinct color and are more or less transparent. It can be a good idea to keep the same type of combination through your channels.

As always I want to hear your feedback on anything mentioned in this post. Feel free to share this post or leave a comment below and tell me how these creative, and time-saving techniques are working for you. 

 

 

SEE ALSO :  Pointers To Define Your Sound

An Interview with Techno Producer Stan Soul

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This post is a Q&A with Dj, Producer, and label owner Stan Soul. Stan is based out of Tel Aviv, Israel, and has just put out an impressive 7th vinyl release as of late.

In this Q&A we find out where the energy to record 4-5 songs a week comes from, why vinyl is still important, how one contact he made opened the door to starting his own label, and what’s his favourite club to play at right now.

Hello Stan ~ I’m really excited to be speaking with you here, and I know many people will be looking forward to reading and learning more about you.

You’ve had a lot of success getting records signed, congrats!
Q. As an artist, where does your drive to produce music come from? Where is your choice of sounds and textures coming from?
A. I think that all music is going through people from the universe. So, in fact, we are just instruments in the hands of our world, and we are not in control during this process. Just a small part of it. All that I can say that I feel the music, since my childhood I hear new ideas in my head. Once I realized that all my life I can hear music in my head and I have to share it with people. To make music, you have to accumulate energy so nowadays my life is firmly oriented to save mental energy during the day and express it in a music session.

Q. Is there something within your tracks that is very personal, or unique within music right now?
A. Every track consists of things very personal because it’s totally based on my feelings in that current moment. I’m producing around 3-5 tracks per week and it’s always different because the universe is changing every minute with me.
Q. When you were a less experienced producer, (still dreaming of having releases signed), did you experience an ‘a-ha’ moment in your music making? If so can you describe that breakthrough?
A. Sure. It was very hard to understand what people were thinking about my stuff. I was very excited when I signed my first release and understood that some people did like it. I still enjoy the process more than the results. After some releases, I would like to play live sessions on my gigs.

I understand you’ve been really busy with Tevol, your vinyl label. I’d like to talk about that –
Q. Can you tell me what motivated you to get started with Tevol?
A. I’m always trying to make something that I want to play. So after experience with my digital label TEOL I realized that I want to create a vinyl label with dubby music oriented more towards dancefloors. After some research, my friend put me in touch with a contact from Memoria distribution. Since that time I’m very happy to be a part of Memoria’s family :).

Q. As a label what are you looking for in a track to sign/release, and what do you get excited about hearing?
A. I can’t explain what am I looking for because I never know. I just feel the music.

Q. How do you find artists & music you’d like to sign?
A. I just look around. Some music has come from my friend, some from my label mailbox. One track set for release I found within a forum related to techno music in a topic where people are releasing unfinished tracks. I just found a snippet, contacted guy and told him that I would like to release it on my label once he finishes it. It’s just fate, be in the right place at the right moment.

Q. How would you describe the feeling and vibe of a typical Tevol release?
A. I’m always trying to make release different. From the very deep hypnotic dub techno vibes to the full of energy minimalistic techno tracks. You can find something that you’d play on warm up and something that will exasperate people in the prime time of the party.

Q. Is the development and production for a record going to vinyl different than for digital? (aside from the actual pressing)
A. In fact there no differences. But sometimes I’m trying to make a track for vinyl a little bit longer because in that format I like “slow mixing” (when two tracks you are mixing are playing for 2-3 minutes). It means that the introduction part of the song should be longer because you can’t make a loop like in case with digital decks. I’m not releasing my music in digital anymore, so every track I’m producing is for vinyl 🙂

Q. Why is vinyl still important?
A. Vinyl is important because you can feel it. I can go deep into the process of mixing only with vinyl, and it sounds awesome as well 🙂

Moving along to the final set of questions, I believe that as an individual I am very influenced by my surroundings. Given this idea,
Q. How has being based in Israel shaped your musical tastes?
A. This is complicated. I repatriated to Israel from Ukraine two years ago and I’m still not feeling that I’m a perceptible part of the local scene. But it takes time, and now I’m fully concentrated on my label, production and always opened for any booking requests

Q. Is there anything great or unique about the Israel scene many might not know about?
A. The most valuable thing that has an effect on my production is the fantastic weather during the whole year and beautiful sea which I can see every day from my window.

Q. What is your favourite club to play out in?
A. In Israel, my favorite club is The Block. And Closer (Kyiv) If we are talking about worldwide it would be Closer.

Q. In general, do you experience music differently at home than playing out?
A. It alway different. Every gig for me is something new.

Q. Where do you see your music making in 5 years?
A. I can’t predict anything but I hope to continue producing music to be heard all over the world.

Q. Any final thoughts?

A. I just want to add that Pheek is a fantastic mixing and mastering engineer, and he’s been providing amazing service to make my music way more enjoyable and productive.

Thank you x10 for taking the time today Stan ~

Feel free to keep up to date with Stan by jumping over to the Tevol Facebook & Soundcloud page for more info and music.

 

 

 

What Is A Mature Sounding Track?

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Recently, a video artist friend of mine was critical of a clip we were watching, and I was commenting about the audio portion of the video. We were both interested in each other’s point of view to better understand what a professional in different fields felt the video could improve on.

In any domain you’ll eventually find the connoisseur, this is someone with a great depth of knowledge in his/her field, and is always searching for the best within his area of expertise. We can think of wine, poetry, painting, fields where true excellence is sought after. In any area of interest the more you are part of that which you love, the more you’ll be able to distinguish the highest quality.

People with years of experience in any field will have a much deeper understanding and perspective than those fresh to the scene. Without question, an experienced ear will recognize fine details and maturity in the music and can quickly tell if the producer has been around for a little while. This brings up the question –

What is a mature sounding track?

Sometimes I hear sarcastic questions such as “how can dance music be mature”? Different people will always have different standards, yet in this post, I thought I’d share how I perceive a song, both from my engineering point of view but also from the perspective of a label owner.

Firstly, I believe song maturity goes beyond if “it’s good (or not).”  I’ve talked about if a song is good or not before but I’ll comment again because many people confuse maturity with if the track sounds good or not. I believe it has nothing to do with that. If we compare it to food or art, highly acclaimed works are often not accessible from the general public opinion. In music, the more you discover and expose yourself to, the more you recognize patterns, ideas, clichés. To sum up a song by “this is good” has no resemblance to what the track/song may have been intended to do. You’re likely judging based on your preferences, which is biased by how you feel or what trends you are following.

The song brings to light it’s initial intention. An experienced producer will have a particular idea in mind that will be made fairly clear when he makes his song. In some cases, he may have a second purpose working within that track. What I mean here is, what the listener decodes from the song might not be what it is initially suggested, as there might be a second, hidden message behind what is going on sound wise. This depth of songwriting can play a huge factor in demonstrating the craftsmanship of the producer.

The song has a clear voice and something to say. Hence the “aha” moment or the “wow” you might have after listening to just a few seconds of a song. Sometimes the light bulb moment may come only after an exhaustive and focused listening session, or after listening to the full song several times. What’s unique about electronic music is that very often there are no lyrics, yet through the use of sound textures, melodies, tensions, and releases, a producer can communicate a state of mind and emotion that words may not be able to express. Just like the word Saudade which comes from the Portuguese from Brazil only, describes a definite feeling that other languages can’t clearly relate to. The use of certain frequencies can suggest specific feelings, and moods, quite powerfully.  I’ve always felt the title of a song is critical and provides context for the music. As artists, we have the power to shape information to make a statement, which can be very powerful when presented right.

It’s not a matter of complexity or simplicity. I’ve had someone who felt that complexity was a sign of maturity. All the crazy tricks and effects up front,  yet the thing is, with experience, you realize that sometimes doing less will often have more impact than overdoing it. Like I said above, creating a wow effect on people is something, but to capture their attention over the whole duration of a song is often a wow effect in a more subtle way.

Time invested in the song doesn’t make it mature. If you spend 5 hours in a row working on a song, you might bring maturity to the song yet perhaps you’ll dilute the original essence of what you originally heard. Over the years, I’ve noticed the significant benefits of letting a project in early development sleep and settle for a time before returning to develop it further.

Timelessness is one of the central points. Songs that don’t age and those that seem to haunt you are often the results of something very well planned or completely improvised. But in one way, this is the often the result of well-paired elements coming together in the right way. There’s part knowledge, culture, innovation, exploration, risk and good taste. The thing that is magical is when someone, no matter how experienced, gets inspired by a moment of grace and comes up with something even himself, cannot explain. That part, which is often pure intuition, is what fascinates me. It is in those moments that you get the best out of yourself.

Bouncing stems and mix

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Recently I’ve been weighing the benefits of focusing on just one part of my production process exclusively, or, working on all the steps of a production simultaneously – arranging, mixing, pre-mastering, etc.. Very often producers ask me to explain a perfect workflow recipe and the truth is, there really isn’t a one size fits all answer.

But in theory, there are 2 main approaches I’ve been seeing in production to make a song.

  1. Classic way. Which involves taking one phase at a time but with the option to roll back to go fix something.
  2. Modern way. You go from one phase to the other in no particular order, as your needs change. You’ll mix as your arrange, change sounds of the percussion to match a melody, add saturation for aesthetics, etc.

One of Ableton’s feature that I find killer is the option to export all channels as separate stems. It really is great for so many reasons but also allows your to really divide the production from the mixdown, which you could do in another DAW.

There are many reasons why you’d like to do your mixdown into another DAW. One of the reason is, you’re basically blending, what I call, software grains. Think of the various apps on your smartphone that offer various filters for your images, where you can go from one to another, taking advantage of each strength. I would say it’s the same for DAWs.

  • Workflow. Each DAW has its own workflow, appearance, feel. Sometimes, just a change of platform is enough to, psychologically, feel your track in a different way. There are countless researches that have been done in between DAW, to which has the best sound, but in terms of summing, if you take a file with nothing on it and bounce it, they will all provide the exact same file. Where there will be a difference is on automation, interface and that alone can make you behave differently in a mix situation. There’s also all the macros and gizmos they all offer too.
  • Native plugins. Again, this might be a game changer. This of an any DAW, they will offer different plugins doing different things. Now, just for compression and EQ, it becomes a serious business. Mostly because there’s a big difference between what you see and hear, plus no one really does things the same way.

That last point is crucial here. You can take the same compressor concept (ex. FET compression), but it will sound different from one company to another. There are no real universal standards on how to approach compression or EQing. An EQ can show you a curve but the filter in the back might slightly be different to give a color, for instance.

So, when it comes to Ableton, I now export all channels as stems to do the mixdown. No more mixing as a arrange. I put a wall between the 2 phases. Some of the reasons are:

  • It liberates CPU usage. No surprises here. When you deal with a heavy load of VST’s and plugins it can often be a lot to manage. The act of bouncing out and mixing stems will force you to focus on only mix related plugins such as EQ and compression. No more delays, chorus and reverb adjustments. At this stage, you’ll focus on the volume levels alone.
  • It put’s an end to the endless adjustments you can make to every sound. You’ll have the option of correcting that little hihat detail that’s been bothering after hearing your track 100 times, but honestly, someone who has just heard your song for the first time will interpret that sound as part of the track, not as a mistake. It’s good to put an end to endless changes and adjustments and move on to finishing your production. Professionals keep their eye on the prize and get things done.
  • The audio summing seems to reveal imperfections. I’m not sure what’s happening here but sometimes, when you bounce the stems, things are just slightly different. I can’t pinpoint why and in theory, it’s not supposed to be but sometimes, it does sound slightly different. In fact, once you bounce it, that’s when you know exactly how it will be so it’s interesting to bounce all channels apart.
  • Ability to use other DAWs. As described earlier, this is the ultimate way to move from one platform to another. You’ll be to leverage the strength of each DAW.
    • Build live sets or NI Stems. Having stems on hand can be useful to create live sets. Native Instruments offers a technology for creating a stems release to be played in Traktor, which is really cool, and super in demand by many of the world’s top dj’s.
  • Backup and remixing. Having stems is the ultimate way to have a real backup of your music. In 10 years time no one can predict what technology will be available, but having stems will prove useful as a way to be used with any new technology.

All an all, try it and see for yourself. Bouncing stems can only bring advantages to your workflow and I’d love to hear about it.

SEE ALSO : Use a main project for organizing yourself