Blog Archives - Page 14 of 15 - Pheek's Mixdown and Mastering

Learn Mixing At MUTEK’s Panel Workshop

May 16, 2016/in Blog, Mixing, Production, Tips/by pheek

Learn more about the workshop here!

I’ve been asked by MUTEK to present a workshop on how to prepare tracks for mastering. This means, in technical terms, how to get the most out of your mixdown session. For many people, the whole music production process seems like a crazy, disorganized back-and-forth of constant tweaking, with the help of a lot of coffee. But if you look at the most common modus operandi, the stages actually go like this:

Sound design/recording. This is where you either create new sounds or select the existing ones that you’ll be using in your next song.
Production. Once you have all the sounds, you try to decide your hook. This stage involves deciding the structure and working on the arrangements.
Mixing. Once your song is canned, you mix the component parts so you get the best sound possible.
Pre-mastering. Shining and polishing. Adjusting so it sounds best, everywhere.
Mastering. Preparing the master copy for duplication.

Applying a methodology to your music production can provide many benefits. Many artists embrace the chaos of going back and forth between the stages, or working without a plan. This is fine if you think it’s the best way for you to remain creative. But if you want the best out of your sound quality, it might be a good idea to adopt a more ordered approach.

Why?

One of the most important reasons is that if you juggle between these stages, you will lose focus. The mixdown will be done best if you have everything set up first. If you have to keep changing elements around as you go, you’ll be forced to reconsider EQ and volume levels also to make sure that everything fits. Think of it as building with Lego blocks: if you move one brick in the middle of a wall that’s already built, you’ll need to readjust a lot of things around it to compensate.

So while there’s no hard rule on the order of the stages, and one can hop between them to fix certain problems, there is another major issue to consider. If you spent countless hours on arrangements, your ears might be bored to death when it’s time to mix it, and you’ll lose what really matters. This is why mixing is increasingly seen as a stage you might want to leave to someone else — not because you can’t do it, but because you want a fresh perspective.

If you decide to do it yourself though, you want your song’s idea to be sewn up so that only the sound needs tweaking. And ideally, once you have everything set, you might want to take a few days off and then attack the mixing.

For the MUTEK panel, I’ll be sharing some great tips on:

How to approach production generally.
How to work with a reference.
How to do great mixdowns.

I will be using some of the participants’ projects as an example.

You can register here.

Music Production And Studio Tips

May 9, 2016/in Blog, Production, Tips/by pheek

When I talk to music producers, both newcomers and more experienced ones, I realize that many of them could use some tips on improving their production workflow. I’m talking about the little things in life that aren’t necessarily computer related, but that can make a big difference in how effective you are with your studio time.

Most of these tips are based on the trials and many errors of my own experience, and on what I’ve learned by applying them every day.

When it doesn’t feel right, stop. Do you ever get to that moment when you finally have the time and space to make music (sometimes life is a hustle!), but after a few minutes, you realize that it sounds terrible? The weird thing is how in your last session, that same loop or track felt amazing, right? Well, there are a few things you can do here, but before you delete anything, try this:

Stop working on the project and start something new. If it doesn’t feel right anymore, it could need to sleep for a bit to be heard again later in a whole new moment of your life.
Take a 10 minute pause and listen to something else.
Consider: can you say what’s wrong with it? If it’s just a physical sensation more than something logical, then the problem is you. Yeah, you read that right. It’s important to do something else instead of trying to force it out. Smoke a ciggie, make yourself comfortable in any way you want, or just move on to another project. If the blockage persists, then try working on simple sound design with a new synth you haven’t explored yet.

Calibrate your ears. People really underestimate the importance of this one. It usually implies a fair degree of time spent setting your monitor’s volume at roughly 80 dB (there are smartphone apps that can measure this for you), then listening to music that you love and that you know sounds right. If you can listen for a minimum of 15 minutes, your ears will develop reference points of optimal sound levels.

Take pauses, often. I’ll never say it enough, but working a long, extended session is one of the least productive ways to work. You’ll lose your references, as well as your ability to evaluate your own work. Taking a pause is not only important to give your ears a break. When you start up again, you’ll have a fresher perspective on what’s working and what’s not.

Space out your sessions. I usually avoid making music (i.e., working on my own material) two days in a row. I space out my sessions by a few days and I try not to work on the same song more than once a week. This is why I’m always working on multiple projects in parallel. I’ll jump from one to the other, so that I’ll forget what I was doing with the first. Then when I open it up again, I might have a whole new perspective on where it needs to go.

Shorten your sessions. I often hear people say, “I worked on this track for 5 hours last night, and I don’t know why, but I feel like it’s just not working at all.” Indeed it’s not. Try not to spend more than one hour a day on a song. When you know your time is limited, every minute will feel extremely important, and your mind will pump more quality into the effort. By speeding up and working in short bursts, you’ll eventually get faster at what you do and your flow will be more effective.

Grasp the big picture before digging into the details. I highly recommend that you don’t start working on a song from the beginning. Find the main idea first, which is more or less the middle of your song, and then from there, unfold it to the beginning and extend it to the end. Making sure you have a broader view of your work before delving into the details is a good way to scope out the storytelling and back bone. This will help you identify the critical moments of your track, so that you can then work in the transitions, changes and so.

Listen at different volume levels. I encourage you to listen to your song at a very low volume, then high, and then vary it to a sweet spot somewhere in the middle. People don’t always listen to music at high volumes, so it’s good to know what the experience is at lower volumes too. This will also help you notice some things that need fixing in your mix.

Listen from different points in the studio. Get up and listen from far back, or move around the studio while listening. If you can, try listening from another room. I also use a wireless headset and will pace around the room while listening to a loop. I’m so used to just sitting there glued to my computer that this has a very strange effect on me. You’d be surprised how simply walking can open up a different perspective on a song.

Drink water. This one seems off, but trust me, keeping your hydration level optimal really helps with your focus.

Create Your Own Concept Album

April 10, 2016/in Blog, Tips/by pheek

I was recently discussing a concept album I did in 2015 entitled Tones Of Void, and I was asked about my views on what makes an album unified. It’s an important question if you want to create a concept album: how does one come up with a theme, or create their own style?

Let’s start with a basic understanding of a genre and its origins, say techno for example (since it’s the one I know the most). If you watch documentaries about some of techno’s pioneers, like Juan Atkins, Richie Hawtin or others, they’ll often talk about how when they began as music producers, they just made music with whatever they had or could get their hands on. In our current era, with its overwhelming abundance of plugins, sound banks, presets, hardware and the like, many people follow sites like Synthtopia to keep up with all of the latest toys. But in 1987, they weren’t as common or affordable.

Some notable mentions:

The famous TR-909

The acid sound was defined by the notorious tb-303, which wasn’t even invented for that purpose.
House and techno relied heavily on tr-909 and tr-808.
Early electro at the start of the 80s used tr-606 and tr-707.

These weren’t really deliberate choices or statements. They simply came from what was available.

Step 1: Build your sound bank

Knowing that sounds define a direction, a good way to start is to select a bank of sounds that will be used for your concept album. Try to be hard on yourself here, and remember that less is more. It will sound cruel as hell, but the fact is that a more restrained selection will prevent you from getting stressed searching for new sounds, and it will help you focus on production.

A good example of sounds that fit within a concept or genre would be dub techno. You will hear the first 5 seconds and immediately know the exact genre, sounds, and pretty much what the rest of the track might be like. Labels like Basic Channel or Chain Reaction (personal favourites) have built an entire catalogue from their sounds, and left a precious legacy that strongly influenced hundreds of later artists and labels who followed their ideology.

TRY THIS: Pick about 10 sounds, and create yourself a drum rack in Ableton that will be used over and over.

Step 2: Pick your effects

On my Tones Of Void album, what made each track similar was the use of a macro template on several sounds. This stimulated so much creativity and productivity for me that the whole album was recorded in a 3-day span while on vacation in Florida. It was such bliss that I even had to stop myself from making twice as many tracks! You have no idea how exciting it is to open a new project, drag and drop your favourite macro, and then just play sounds through it to see what will happen.

Romanian techno is a great example of a specific sound style

Image courtesy from Nightclubber.ro

For another great example of a specific music style, we can point to the emergence of the popular Romanian techno, lead by the dudes of Arpiar. One of the characteristics of this genre is the intense use of reverb effects. It sounds very puzzling at first, because some tracks feel completely hollow, like you’re standing inside a huge reverberation room. But it creates a very pleasurable feeling.

TRY THIS: Get a collection of random effects and group them into a macro. This will allow you to unify your sound design with an overall aesthetic. If you own Max for Live, I’d say to drop some LFOs in there or get new ones, and assign them to some parameters. This will be your swiss army knife for sound design.

TRY THIS TOO: Matthew Herbert had a really interesting approach regarding the use of effects. He would start a new session using a board, but wouldn’t initialize the board for the next song. That would sort of pre-determine the sound levels and effect assignments for certain sounds, which would automatically create new ideas. You can do this by using the most recently used session to start a new one, while leaving the effects on certain channels to see what it does. Happy accidents will happen!

Step 3: Design your song structure

Having a similar structure from song to song is another thing that can help unify your concept album. Think of how important song structure is in pop music, or in EDM today, with its famous drop that you just know has to happen at one point or another. In most dance music tracks, the breakdown and relief sections play an important role for crowd response on the dancefloor. If you want to create your own concept, explore the use of a similar song structure throughout the album.

TRY THIS: Just like in the previous step, opening the last project and just swapping samples in the arranger section can be a good way to explore this. You can even leave automations on and see what happens.

With these 3 steps, you can easily create a series of new tracks that could be the beginning of a concept album. But the first thing is always to finish the tracks you’re already working on, and if you are lacking inspiration, you can apply these steps to help give your current projects a new direction.

SEE ALSO : Creating Beauty Out of Ugly Sounds

Mindfulness for Creatives

March 22, 2016/in Blog, Tips/by pheek

The mindfulness movement has been getting a lot of buzz in the US health industry recently, but we hear less about how valuable this form of meditation can be for creatives. If you’ve never heard of it, you’re probably missing out on the next wave in healthy living, much like jogging or yoga. All of these practices complement each other, but mindfulness is the one I want to delve into here.

What is mindfulness?

It’s basically a technique to be more focused, aware and present in every moment. While it’s been used in hospitals for treating anxiety and depression, there’s also been a huge amount of enthusiasm for it in the creative domains. I’ ve long heard of DJs practicing yoga to stay healthy and sane during their long and demanding tour schedules. But recently, Ableton’s LOOP weekend even featured a very interesting workshop about mindfulness. I attended and loved it.

When I talk about it, people who attend music events often don’t really see the correlation between taking care of one’s health and partying, and they often see them as contradictory. But for many DJs, producers and fans, electronic music is about more than just partying. It’s also a movement that’s driven by an openness to new ideas and a celebration of life.

How do you practice mindfulness?

There are many ways to practice mindfulness. It’s not just an exercise, but a state of mind you aim to develop. The main way to achieve it is to practice a form of meditation that’s non-religious, purely technical, and very simple to do.

So, how does this come into play with creatives?

This is the tricky part, since you won’t easily find literature on the topic,yet. What I’ve found through practice, though, was that a certain amount of meditation really helped me to complete projects faster. It’s already hard to finish a project, so doing it on a tight deadline is even more of a challenge.

Mindfulness could easily become the subject of a long-term blog project in and of itself. For now though, I’ll just start us off with a few simple points that creatives in particular should find really useful.

First are the attitudes that are promoted by a mindfulness practice, and that are helpful to the creative process:

Beginner’s mind. In this state of mind, you can let yourself be amazed by simple things. See it as the antidote to getting jaded about something you love due to excessive exposure or overuse. With this practice, you learn to rekindle the fun in things, because everything suddenly seems new again. Dive back into production as if it were the first time you tried it.

Non-striving. You’ll always miss the chance to find the fun in things if you’re too fixated on achieving a certain goal. This is how so many musicians end up with countless unfinished songs. I know some people that have a list of labels they want to reach, once they’re done with all of their tracks. The problem is that they put so much pressure on themselves that they’re still stuck at finishing their first track, which has been in the works for over 6 months.

Non-judgement. For many artists, the hardest part about making music is learning to appreciate your own work. Creatives are often their own harshest critics, and they can set unreasonably high expectations for themselves. It’s actually pretty common for people to dislike their own music, for whatever reason. There’s something very personal and intimate about the process of making music, since a song is always a statement of where and who you were in a particular moment of time. This can be another reason people sometimes find it easier to reject their own work rather than embrace it. Practicing mindfulness will teach you to catch yourself engaging in these unhealthy mental habits, and it’ll make you think twice before pressing that delete key.

And perhaps this is the main message of this post: that whatever music you’re working on should be kept, just like an entry in your personal journal. Keeping ideas is a good way to keep track of your evolution. There are people I coach who send me one loop a day, and I love seeing how they evolve; how they can hit a wall for a few days, and then completely change. It’s quite fascinating.

You will appreciate your music if you let it be, without being too hard on yourself. This is the invaluable lesson that a mindfulness practice can teach creatives.

Create an Ableton Live Session Template

March 15, 2016/in Blog, Production, Tips/by pheek

After months of seeing clients repeat the same mistakes in Ableton Live, I thought, “If only I could provide them with a session template to use as a default, it would help them so much.” It’s not that I wanted to free myself from fixing certain things, but I really believe that having a good starting point is the key to jumpstarting our projects.

And so, here it is! Below I describe the Ableton session template, and provide some tips to help you along:

Label each channel. As silly as this sounds, labelling your channels is a very easy way to see what’s going on in a glimpse. Especially if you have a sound engineer like me working with you, when you swap projects, you avoid having to re-explain yourself all the time. It’s also very practical to colour-code each sound family. Organization can only do you good.

Group sound families. If you have multiple percussion samples like hi-hats or toms, it will be way easier for you if you group them and then EQ them all at once. Adding some compression evenly will also help glue them together,

Cut bad frequencies out. Anything below the fundamental frequency of a sound can potentially be problematic, as it can add a certain muddiness. I suggest you use the EQ to cut it down until you start noticing the sound becoming thinner.

Put the kick in the first channel. This is a simple detail, but keeping the kick in a highly visible place can be very practical, because you’ll often come back to it to adjust something. If it’s up there in plain sight, you won’t lose time looking for it.

Keep the low end in mono. This is to avoid phase problems. It’s also a must if your track will be heading for vinyl pressing later.

Sidechain your bass for clarity. You’ll get a clearer distinction if they’re sidechained, and punchier mixes. When the frequencies are close together, both sounds won’t be fighting to be heard.

Make macros. It’s important to create macros out of your most frequently used effects. This way, you’ll have your tools ready and reusable.

Have an EQ on each channel. This is the most important tip on this list!

Put your reverb in a send channel. I often see projects with 5-10 reverb plugins. No human ear can notice all of that though, so you might as well just have one in a send channel, and then any of the sounds that need reverb can be adjusted to various degrees. If one isn’t enough, have multiple reverbs in multiple send channels.

Put a limiter on the master. This is to avoid clipping.

The final step is to go in the File Menu and select “Save as template…”

So that’s the list. To download the Ableton Live session template, join my coaching program on Patreon.

Simple Sound Design Tips

March 13, 2016/in Blog, Production, Sound Design, Tips/by pheek

I’ve been giving some classes since the beginning of the year, and I noticed certain questions around sound design that kept coming up while I’d be sharing other tips. I thought I’d share them with everyone so it can benefit more than one person out there.

Recently I was in a café, and I had a little exchange with the barista about what I do. “I’d consider myself a sound designer, though technically I’m an audio producer,” I told him while adding some sugar to my tea. “Dude, that makes no sense to me… Are you a DJ?” he asked back.

That’s the thing, right? The DJ is the one that people see in public doing all the work and making people dance. But behind the scenes, there are the people who gave the tracks he/she plays their magic aura.

“I’m the DJ’s best friend, his best kept secret,”

was my only answer, with an enigmatic grin. I sort of prefer leaving some mystery around what I do. Even if I shared a few tips, there would always be so much more to say. Plus, the more you know, the more you realize how little you know.

So here are a few tips.

Use Ableton’s Live’s session view as your mad scientist’s lab.

The most common mistake I see from clients, either when I do mixing or help them with their unfinished tracks, is that they use the arrangement view to make their sound design.

The session view, while mainly used to jam, rehearse and perform, is perfect to make a loop and then mangle it until it becomes something completely new.

TRY: Loop a 1-bar percussion sample and then add a bunch of effects on the same channel. Record yourself for a brief moment while you play with knobs. You may also record your actions to be able to see what you did later. You can then go and edit your actions as automations in the arrangement mode, which will give you cutting-edge precision.

TIP: Go into the resampled session of yourself playing, and then isolate some interesting sounds. Copy the clip with the interesting sounds below the original (master) clip. Now you’ll have variations of the first one.

Bring your designed sounds into your mix.

Looking at your session view now, you should have the original sound clips of the main elements of your track, but you should also have many variations. Swap certain clips of your mix with the clip variations. This will greatly help.

TRY: When you do your sound design, make sure you have your original song playing in the background. This will allow you to improvise on top of it, while maintaining the feeling of the main concept.

TIP: Evolving sounds in a song is a great way to keep your track feeling alive and human.

Your kick drum should be the last sound you design.

This one is super important, and I hear a lot of people messing this part up. Your kick should not be the first sound to be designed in your track. People often select their percussions and build their track on top of it. This is a mistake, as your original percussion can be swapped for other percussive elements later on as you keep adding new sounds to the song.

TIP: Once your track is pretty much done, see if you can go and change that kick for a new one. Your jaw will drop once you hear how much changing a kick can dramatically change your track’s direction. Why? Because the kick is there to unify the whole concept. But when you start a new track, you have no idea where it might end up, and so the kick selected at first won’t be appropriate anymore.

SEE ALSO : Dynamic Sound Layering and Design

Make the Leap from DJ to Producer

March 4, 2016/in Blog, Tips/by pheek

Many people dream of being able to enjoy a self-sustaining life while working as a DJ or music producer. If you’re a DJ, you might be contemplating the idea of jumping into production. Both avenues can lead you to doing it full time, but not if you do it half-way. Make it your passion.

It’s always a bit delicate to talk about how to get started in a new hobby like making electronic music. There’s so much to cover, as there’s an extremely wide range of options to consider. While I already discussed how to get started with your equipment and such, I feel we can take the topic a bit further.

DJs often think about how they can make it to the next level, and it’s obvious to me that getting into production is the best choice you could make.

Channel your ideas into making your own music

Have you ever loved a track but didn’t like a certain part of it, and then arranged a hack in Traktor to get past that part, only to still not be happy with the result? Well this is actually very common, and as there are so many tracks being released every day, you can spend way too much time just finding the tools you need to make your sets.

So, while everyone is playing the top 10 on Beatport, you might want to pour your time and energies instead into looking through some of your unreleased material (or maybe starting to make some).

I do have to say that there’s nothing quite like playing your own music, and having people ask you what it is because they’ve never heard it before.

That’s the power of being a producer and making your own music.

With your DJing experience, you know what tracks will work well.

Not all producers are DJs, but if you are only producing, it might be a good idea to learn how to play in clubs. You’ll get to know how certain things sound on big systems and what it’s like to have a track that doesn’t create the proper momentum in a given space. Those things are hard to learn if you’re just hanging out in the studio and receiving feedback from your Soundcloud friends.

Listening to and mixing music, and seeing how a live crowd responds, is a valuable experience that will improve your studio work as a producer.

If you can score a deal with a label, you’ll get access to a whole new network of contacts, which can mean more gigs.

It’s not easy to be able to tour as a DJ, as it demands you work hard to expand your network. Making your own music is kind of like sending a business card out into the world, and the more people play it, the more it will travel around. If you work things out, it will be the leverage that gets you out there and travelling too. This is why the quality of your production work will matter so much, and so the more effort you put into getting things right, the better it will pay off.

Lastly, if you’re already a DJ, you’ll have a head start. There are many things you’ll know, from what a loop is, to how sound works in general, to having a basic understanding of technicalities.

So there’s just no reason not to try to produce; in no time at all, production will become your new playground.

Shortcuts to make the leap into production

Team up with another producer first. If you know people who produce, one of the best ways to start is to hang out with them one evening and participate in making music. If they have gear, you can try to ask questions. And if they’re open minded you can make a track with them, or at least make a sketch of a song.

The idea here is to see how it feels to you and if you like it. If you get excited, there’s a good chance it might be for you.

Also, this person will be able to give you pointers on what to get first.

Watch tutorials, use demos. There are many softwares out there that will let you try before you buy. Be sure to wait until you have a good period of time to actually try it out properly before choosing to install. If you’re in school and exams are coming, for example, you might want to wait so as not to sabotage your efforts, both in music learning and classes. Plus, there are tons of videos out there on how to start a track or how to get started. The number one mistake people do is to buy a DAW because someone told them to without trying it first. I’ve learned the hard way, trust me.

Remix. Before making you own tracks, try remixing and playing with loops. This is the fastest way to get something done at first. You can get parts on various sites such as this one. Eventually you’ll make your own when you get to see how people do it.

Conversations with Clients: Isaac Prieto

March 2, 2016/in Blog, Mastering, Mixing, Song Finalizing and Arrangements/by pheek

Isaac Prieto is a Detroit-based DJ and producer and the co-founder of vinyl label Detroit Vinyl Room. He was also a client of Pheek’s, who helped Isaac with song finalization, mixdown and mastering. I spoke with Isaac to gain some insights into his journey as a DJ and producer and his experience working with Pheek.

Note: this interview has been edited for length and readability.

Shawn: To start off, why don’t you tell me a little bit about your relationship with electronic music, how and when you got into it.

Isaac: Well it was basically when I moved to Detroit, with the first time I went to the Movement Festival, in 2012. I remember the experience, and not understanding why I had never heard this kind of music before, because I immediately fell in love with it. After the festival I sought out events in the city that played this type of music.

So you didn’t have any education or formal training in music, right? You just got into it as a fan?

Yeah, I was just a fan of the sound. I would always be using Shazam to find the tracks I liked, and I started listening to so many sets on Soundcloud and just building a music library like that. As my library grew, I got the urge to edit a lot of the tracks (slow them down/filter) to fit my style more, and that was my initial motivation. To make a set with my library, that I would enjoy.

So did you pretty much teach yourself how to DJ then?

Yeah, I started out with just one turntable and a Pioneer Traktor mixer. My friend told me to just watch a bunch of tutorials on YouTube, so that’s what I did. Something that helped me develop too was to try and find a set I really enjoyed [and] which I could find the tracks for, and try to replicate it.

Okay, so let’s talk a bit about your production work. In your Resident Advisor bio, it says you’ll be releasing music this summer on the Detroit Vinyl Room label that you co-founded. Can you tell me more about this project?

Yeah, so a few months ago a new venue opened up [in downtown Detroit], 1315 Broadway. I was asked by a friend of mine, Ali Unifier, to help put together the lineup for some events. To me the sets that always influenced me the most were vinyl-only sets, so we called it Detroit Vinyl Room. The parties went well, but after starting the podcast series I eventually decided to take a break from hosting events to focus on building up the label. I had some tracks I had been working on for some time, and that’s when I reached out to Pheek to help with the mixdown and mastering.

So it was a series of parties and podcasts that then became a label, is that right?

Yeah, correct.

And was it easy to start up a label?

Oh god no, it’s a lot more work than I had anticipated to be honest, but I’m glad I’m doing it. For a while, I had been contemplating whether I wanted to build a package of tracks to send out to labels, but decided against that. I made my main goal in releasing music to make something I would personally enjoy to have, and in turn it made the production process a lot more enjoyable. I showed the tracks to a few of my friends, and they liked it and wanted to be involved in the release. So on this first release, I’ll be providing 2 original tracks with remixes from MGUN as well as Moreon & Baffa.

And you say you needed help with the mixdown and mastering. Tell me more about this. Had you tried to learn how to do it yourself?

Yeah, I had looked into how that process works, but it was beyond the scope of what I could dedicate time to at this point. It really is a job for a sound engineer.

And aside from questions of sound engineering, how did you find the transition from DJing to production? Did you face challenges at first, either technical or in terms of the creative process?

It was a little more frustrating because production took more time to get the hang of. I started off with just getting to know Ableton with a MIDI controller and making loops that I liked, and then moved gradually to aquiring more analog gear. But that took time and money. Before asking Pheek for help, it had been over a year of working on stuff on my own until finally I had 3 or 4 tracks that I was pretty happy with. With one in particular I felt like, “Okay, this track for sure I want on vinyl,” and with the others I felt I had really good ideas, but they just didn’t flow the way I wanted them to, you know? And so I went and asked him for help, and he made them sound a lot better and gave me ideas about how to change them up.

Yeah, he helped with song finalization too, no?

Yeah, so in his tutorials, he talks about these ideas and sub-ideas. And for one of these tracks, I had it down, but it was just the transition points between these ideas that I was having difficulties with. And so I sent him the project, and he changed it up a lot. He sent me a few versions and I would tell him, “Okay, more of this, less of that.” He sent me a few versions, and then afterwards he sent me the different parts of the finalized version that I liked the most. And from there I could easily tell, “Okay, these are the changes that I liked or didn’t like,” which allowed me to make the the final arrangements for the track into something different that fit my own style better. But I wouldn’t have been able to reach that last version had he not changed some other aspects first himself.

Right, so he sort of unblocked you, you could say?

Yeah, he took this block out. Like he would say, “Okay, that transition is really nice right there, but I want it to be more this way.” And now that the song is finished, it’s something that I felt was definitely, was organically, all my idea. He’s just been working with music for so long that these things come so easy to him. So the more we work together, the easier the process gets I guess.

So what brought you to Pheek originally though?

I had been a fan of his music, and so I just followed him on Facebook, and I saw that he posted stuff about production. I found that pretty helpful. I have an agent here in Detroit, my friend Maggie, from Auxetic, and I was telling her about the idea of the label and what I wanted to do, and how I saw what Pheek had been posting on Facebook. And she’s like, “Oh actually, he’s a good friend of mine, he’s a great person, you should totally get in contact with him.” So she made that connection. I mean I already had a bunch of his records, and I like the sound that he makes, so I thought he would be good as someone who can understand what I wanted to do with my sounds.

So it sounds like it’s been a very fruitful creative collaboration for you.

Yeah, yeah. I had chances where I could have put stuff out earlier, and some digital releases and stuff, but nothing really got me that excited about doing that. And it wasn’t until I thought, “Okay, now this is something I’d want to have as mine.” And even if it sells out or it doesn’t sell out or whatever, I’m just gonna print out a few copies on vinyl, and I think it’ll fall into the right hands.

And do you think that the collaboration has brought something to your own production more durably?

Yeah, definitely. I saw how he was able to change what I had, and it gives me new ideas as to how I can do that for future productions. He also posts a lot of good ideas [on his Facebook page and blog] that I wouldn’t have thought of, like “Do a loop a day.” Or, even just how he’s honest. Like when I first sent him the songs, one of them, it just wasn’t ready. And he said, “You can make it sound better.” So before I sent them back, it was a few more weeks of changing it up, before I thought, “Okay, I’ve reached a point where I think this is the most I can do with this track, and I think, with your help, it can be better.”

Follow Isaac Prieto and Detroit Vinyl Room on Soundcloud.

Making the Choice To Be Exclusive to a Label

February 24, 2016/in Blog, Production/by pheek

You might have heard of record labels asking for exclusivity, or maybe you’ve at least heard the term mentioned in one way or another. But what does it entail exactly, and how should you approach the decision if you’re ever faced with such an offer?

In another post, I shared a personal story of mine where I had the chance to commit to a huge label and bring my career to the next level — but I refused. It’s the kind of moment that doesn’t happen many times, but when it comes, it calls for careful reflection before making a decision. In my case, it was hard to seek advice from friends, as not many of them had been in the same situation before. I followed my gut feeling, and opted to follow my dreams without considering the possible outcomes.

All and all, there are a few questions to consider:

- Where do I see myself in 5 years, musically speaking?
- How can this exclusivity arrangement help me reach that goal?

So that should pretty much form the basis of your reflections.

While it’s hard to imagine ourselves down the road or even to give ourselves a reality check on how achievable our goals are, it is still quite essential to develop a vision of where we want to go. There will be certain things you have in mind, and if you have a firm idea of your goals, it will make it easier to decide whether you should commit to being exclusive to a label or not.

The DJ and producer

Being one doesn’t exclude the other, and while you can do both individually, the winning combination is to do at least some of both. This way you can create a great release, for example, and you’ll be able to tour to promote it, which then brings you more requests for new releases, and then more gigs, and so on. The wheel spins organically. In this case, if you commit to a label, you will need this label to cover a lot of ground for you because there will be a lot of opportunity.

The entrepreneur

You want a label, you want to do a bit of everything, and you want to be in control because you like things done your way. This is pretty much a scenario that many people see themselves in, but if you’re not an entrepreneur, it is a difficult road to choose. More power brings more responsibilities, but also all the freedom to express yourself. In this case, exclusivity doesn’t work well for you.

The studio artist

This means that you prefer producing to DJing, and that you’re not so interested in heading out to the clubs to tour. This is a tricky road. Exclusivity can be interesting to you because you will have a platform for your releases, and you can still use aliases to release elsewhere. But to make this worthwhile, your flagship label will have to be a major outlet.

Being dedicated to a label

Some artists want to be with a label and plan all their projects around it. They will be okay not creating many releases, will want to tour using the team’s contacts, and they’ll feel comfortable with everything the label does. The great thing about this is that you’re part of the label’s brand. This can make your own image and sound more powerful in a way, because you’ll be part of a collective of artists who you admire, and who will shape the label’s identity. If you produce a bit less, this outcome might be well suited for you.

Choosing Track Finalization over Ghost Producing

February 21, 2016/in Blog, Production, Song Finalizing and Arrangements/by pheek

A lot of you might already know what ghost producing is, and you might even have some pretty strong feelings about it. For those who aren’t familiar with the term:

Ghost producing is having your track made from scratch, with your instructions, by another producer.

What you might be more surprised to find out, though, is that many producers — even the most pro or successful ones — sometimes get others to finalize their tracks for them. I can tell you, for example, that even some big-name artists on the Minus label get Richie Hawtin to finalize their songs. But despite how common it is, there’s unfortunately still a sort of stigma around outsourcing your track finalization, and it’s easy to understand.

So first, let’s get this out of the way: song finalization is not the same as ghost production. Track finalization is nothing to be ashamed about, as the song is still the creative work of the producer. Let’s begin with a definition:

Track finalization is having another producer suggest ideas on how to get to a finished product based on your initial ideas.

Track finalization: The sources of a stigma

Back at the beginnings of electronic music in the early 1990s, DJs and producers had to be technicians too. You simply couldn’t get very far as an artist without being a jack-of-all-trades and an expert in the hardware of sound engineering and music production. It came with the territory, and DJs and producers prided themselves on their resourcefulness.

This DIY nature of electronic music culture became so deeply rooted that when laptops and software began taking off in the early 2000s, many seasoned producers and DJs bristled at the intrusion of laptops into live performances. I remember the very first MUTEK festival in 2000, when the novel machines began appearing on stage with one performer after the next — it was such an alien sight that no one knew how to react! Many of us viewed their use as a form of cheating at first, but it soon became clear that the game had changed.

Music technology continued to develop at an exponential pace, making electronic music-making accessible for more and more people. One impact of this, however, has been to make it seem like electronic music production is so easy… that anyone can do it! Well obviously, it’s much more complicated than that.

If anything, the proliferation of producers has actually made it harder to stand out from the pack. Meanwhile, the infinite musical possibilities opened up by the digital revolution have made it that much easier to get overwhelmed. Where once your kick drum would be a 909, for example, now there are thousands of options to choose from. Sometimes the best creative surges come when you’re faced with constraints, but pure freedom, while it seems tempting, can make it easier to get lost and lose your focus.

Track finalization as creative collaboration

The truth is that even the most experienced artists get writer’s block, and every producer is likely to have a hard drive full of tracks that they never got around to finishing for a variety of reasons. Chances are that there is at least one great album or a few EPs in there waiting to be unearthed and brought to fruition. So what’s holding you back?

Chilean producer Dandy Jack once told me that the day he understood that a shared victory was way more meaningful than doing it alone, his entire perspective on collaboration changed.

Having a trusted hand finalize your tracks can be an antidote to writer’s block and a gateway to beautiful and fulfilling creative collaborations. Unlike ghost producing, track finalization isn’t about substituting for your own creativity, but about gaining a fresh and friendly perspective to help you out of a rut. In writing, even the most masterful authors need a good editor. Why should music be any different?

Even if the finalized track isn’t always exactly what you had in mind at first, it then becomes much easier for the producer to take it from there and carry it across the finish line. Track finalization is about finding what’s blocking you and unblocking it. It’s about unleashing your creative potential.

And I’m here to help.

The Day I Refused Exclusivity to a Label

February 17, 2016/in Blog/by pheek

I don’t always talk about things that happened in my “career.” Since this is a blog though, I thought it would be fun and instructive to share some of the different decisions I had to face, and the consequences of each of them. I have a bunch of fun stories going back to 1998, and some might interest you.

If you haven’t read my bio, I can tell you that I early on took out the standard line all artists have, where they say they’ve been into music from an early age. Instead, I will point you to 1998, to the year where I created my alias, Pheek. What really ignited the project was a performance by Richie Hawtin, who made a rare live show (back then) as Plastikman/Concept:96. It was amazing!

That inspiration was critical in my development. It took me 5 years to figure out where I wanted to go and for me to feel confident enough to send a demo to Rich, which I finally did around 2003. He loved it, and he asked me for more music for a release. What followed was one of the most creative moments of my life: I made and sent him 5 CDs full of music over a span of 2 years. He finally picked one track, “Le Plan B,” which was released on the first Minimize to Maximize compilation, on Minus.

That was a big deal for me. Well, not just for me, but for everyone in the netlabel scene. You see, in 2005, there was no Beatport, selling MP3s was a bit of a weird concept, and people releasing on netlabels were seen as outsiders, even nerds. It was one of the first times that one of the guys from the community graduated to a big label like Hawtin’s Minus. Almost at the same time, there were other artists that followed, and netlabels became more and more recognized as a source for quality music.

I had my own label, Archipel, that I had founded in 2004 and that I wanted to pursue. There was no doubt that a release on Minus could only mean a great push for my personal projects. I started touring more, and soon there came a big milestone for my career that I still think about often. The guys at Minus offered me exclusivity, meaning that Pheek could only appear on their label, which would have given a huge boost to my career.

I refused. Yeah, you read right. I said,

“No, I don’t think I can see myself being exclusive, but maybe under another alias?”

To be honest, when I think of that day every now and then, I wonder what would have happened if I’d said yes. It was around that time that Minus was exclusively signing big names like Barem, Gaiser, Troy Pierce, Heartthrob and others. If I’d said yes, I think I could have pretty much become someone else entirely than the person I am today. But in a way, I have no regrets.

One thing to keep in mind is that it’s hard to achieve alone or with friends what an established label and group can do for you. You can build from scratch, but it will take a long time to get things to the same level. I released for labels like Sushitech and Leftroom in their early days, and I watched them grow as they became what they are now. I’m proud do say that I was a part of it at their beginnings.

If I decided to work with other labels, it was because I was producing a lot of tracks and felt like I wanted to tap into different networks and reach out to people I liked, even if that was the more difficult path.

There are two types of artists out there:

The ones who want to work with you for the long term. Those are the ones you connect with intellectually, and you love each other’s musical output. The connection is real and both parties feel it.
Then there are others who you only want to work with in the short term. Both labels and artists can qualify. Unless there’s drama, if the arrangement ends organically, then it had to be this way.

The reason labels want exclusivity is to get a return on their investment (ROI) by farming their own artists. The constantly changing branding is risky and tiring for labels. If the sound constantly changes, it can be an irritant for fans too.

I hope this helps you understand the complexities of label exclusivity from another perspective.

Turn Your Writer’s Block Into an Opportunity

February 9, 2016/in Blog, Production, Tips/by pheek

You’ve heard about writer’s block many times, and maybe you’ve experienced one. I also get one routinely. Many others have addressed the topic, but I’ll share some of my own views on it here.

Before anything, let’s just check a definition first so we’re on the same page:

Writer’s block is a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work or experiences a creative slowdown.

What I’ve learned through time is that a writer’s block is also your body and mind telling you to slow down. There’s no better way to see it. While you can learn to change your way of working, which might be leading to feelings of insecurity, frustration, or confusion, you also need to first make sure that you’re really in a writer’s block. These are some symptoms:

Nothing you work on makes sense. You feel the music is just copying a trend and that it’s not bringing you joy anymore.
Everything music-related sounds crappy. Your brain is tilting and all the beautiful sounds aren’t pretty anymore.
You have the omnipresent temptation to give up.

Where many people get confused is between a writer’s block and being exhausted. I know many prolific producers who work really hard for 3-6 months and then will not do any more productions for the rest of the year. They will focus on DJing, collecting new toys for the studio, or just spending more time playing music.

There’s no better way to approach the situation than taking a step back. For my friends, for example, this usually involves:

Collecting music that makes you feel good or listening to early tracks that inspire you. Just make playlists on Soundcloud, listen to old liked tracks, and take a moment to buy some.
Listening to music you never listened to before or music you actually don’t normally enjoy.
Playing video games.
Exercising.

It’s easy to fall into simple psychology tips, but I’ll refrain from doing so, mainly because each person has their own way about it. But one thing that I absolutely encourage you to do is to not panic.

Resist the urge to delete or sell anything you don’t like. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people tell me they deleted a project they were working on. I believe that this is one of the last things you want to do. Not only does every project have at least one great thing about it, but they can probably be recycled later on, maybe even many years later.

Take time to learn sound design or sound engineering. One of the things that happens when you are creatively productive is that you lack the time to perfect your design skills. You’ll be absorbed in mixing and making tracks and arrangements, but sound design is one of the most important parts of your work. Also, when do you ever have time to read technical stuff? Mostly never or just a few minutes here and there. Take the time to read up on the technicalities you usually avoid for fear of boredom.

Reach out to fellow producers to collaborate or remix. When working with others, things usually flow easily. That is, it’s not really your work, and teaming up brings motivation. Try it!

Recycling Your Tracks Into Fresh New Ideas

February 4, 2016/in Blog, Production, Tips/by pheek

Like with any creative work, writer’s block can be a very frustrating and demoralizing thing for producers of electronic music. Many artists spend hours and hours wrestling with their ideas just trying to come up with something new – but what if what you were looking for was already under your nose? What if old tracks that you thought weren’t good enough to release were actually the seeds of something brilliant?

I’ve found there are many practical ways for electronic music producers to beat the writer’s block and jumpstart their creative process. Recycling old tracks is a great place to start.

Generally, producers might make between 5 and 10 tracks before stumbling on the one that they love. But then, we’re also our own harshest critics! I’m not going to address the tracks that don’t even get done as we all have a huge collection of those.

The truth is that each song has something cool in it, even if it’s not good enough for release.

Elements (or “stems”) of old songs, whether it’s a kick, a bass line, a loop, or a vocal sample, can be remixed and made into something completely fresh.

It’s important to remember that remixing is the most accessible part of music production. Reusing stems, loops and parts of old tracks instead of starting fresh can kickstart your creativity and help you jumpstart a new song. This isn’t just about saving time. More importantly, it will make the creative process less intimidating and more exciting by allowing the creative juices to flow more freely. When you start with small ideas, bigger ones follow.

Pulling your inspiration from old material can also be a fantastic way to re-appreciate your own work. This will in turn boost your confidence and momentum as a producer.

To get you started on recycling old tracks, here are a few tips to think about:

Organize all your music projects in the same folder. This will make going back and reviewing old tracks easier. Avoid the temptation to sort tracks into different folders depending on how good or finished you think they are right after creating them — and never, never trash them! You might be surprised later at what gems you’ll find that you had written off or forgotten about!

Save your effects and synths as presets. The key to being an efficient producer is to never let your creative time and energies go to waste. Nothing is a more valuable resource for an artist – don’t deprive yourself of these resources, harness them! Building up your bank of presets will save you from always having to return to square one, and it will encourage you to develop your own distinctive sound and aesthetic over time. I also encourage you to create groups/macros in Ableton as a way to have personal tools.

Open an old song and keep all arrangements as they are, but swap the sounds. For example, you can import the stem of a kick you did from a certain song, which has its variations and moments of silence or its own structure. Then you combine it with the snare-clap of another track. Removed from their original context, united in a new canvas, they might interact in a way you’d never have thought to do on your own.

Recycling old tracks can be an extremely practical, effective, and (most importantly) fun way to beat writer’s block and take your production to a dimension you rarely visit. It will make you feel less stale and more fulfilled in ways that will surprise you, and it will encourage you to develop new styles or rhythmics.

Give it a try!

SEE ALSO : Is My Song Good ?

Get A Free Music Coach

January 29, 2016/in Blog, Production, Tips/by pheek

[Important update, August 2017: The Free program is being redesigned and put on pause. You can still register to get the free Ableton Live Template and get news on when it starts again.]

I made an important decision to remove my newsletter and change it into free music coaching for every subscriber. Sounds crazy? Maybe. But also fun!

A little bit of help to make great things happen

What exactly is a coach?

While you can google for the definition, you may also summarize it with a simple explanation:

“It’s someone who helps you reach your goal(s).”

We can add in there self-improvement, knowledge transfer, experience sharing and technical advising. The same applies to a music coach. While it’s pretty common in sports or at work, we often overlook it when it comes to arts. But why not include it?

Ever since I started making electronic music, I’d say that my best stretches in learning often happened when I was in touch with someone who could address my questions. I’d go to them to learn:

How to use a specific production technique.
How to focus on finishing a song, a project.
Tips on sound design.
How to expand my network.

The great thing with helping others is that it opens doors on many things, like when you pause for a moment to find the right terms to arrive at the best explanation possible, and you end up improving your own understanding in the process. Ever since I had a music coach, I’ve been really interested in returning the help, mainly because I asked so many friends how to do things.

It’s been quite fascinating to see how electronics have evolved to make it easier for people to attain their goals of producing electronic music. As time’s gone on and the technologies have become cheaper, it’s become increasingly accessible to make music through computers or machines. The democratization of music has opened the doors for many people to make their dream come true by making music.

But this also raises some questions:

What should I get to start making music?
Which technology is best suited for me?
How do I start a song once I’m equipped?
Is this song really done or should I add something?

These issues can be hard to nail down, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.

Everyone is different, both in personality but also in terms of how they deal with technology. Some are more tech-savvy than others.

The role of a music coach can be summarized as:

Helping you set goals. The best way to not get lost is to choose a destination. A journey has multiple destinations and a music coach can help break down your long-term dream into multiple mini-milestones. With a plan in mind, it becomes easier to not let your mind run wild and become unproductive.

Understanding your limits while expanding your strengths. One of the first steps in any new hobby, activity or interest is to take a look at yourself. While some skills are transposable from other areas into your new field of interest, you’ll also need to take stock of your own limitations. Quickly identifying your weak points is a good way to motivate you into developing new skills. If you run up against your own limitations in any area, there could also be solutions you’re not yet aware of.

Structuring your workflow. The technique behind all techniques is to coordinate the different parts so that things fall neatly into place. If you mess with your production order, you might run into an episode of counter-productivity.

Being present. A coach is someone that can reply to your questions, listen, encourage, and drive. This part is the most crucial one.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of my free coaching, join my mailing list and we’ll get you started!

Give A Direction To Your Loops

January 18, 2016/in Blog, Production, Tips/by pheek

I have never studied sound or music theory. My blog is a pure description of how my mind and artistic view has grown through time and practice. In this post, I will share some observations on percussion and how it can give your loops a new meaning.

Make Tracks From Your Loops

If you’re into making techno or more beat-driven tracks, you pretty much have your own routine. It’s always a bit different from one person to another because we all hear in different ways or simply work in a different flow. But all in all, here’s some of what we can say to sum it up:

Find an interesting idea.
Have a sub-idea to support the main one.
Fiddle the percussion around it.
Arrangements and mixing.

When it comes to techno loops or other dance-related music, it sometimes happens that the percussion is the heart and soul of the track. There can be different reasons for this: it can be the DJ tools or loops, or it can also be that it’s just plain good as it is (e.g. a “foreverloop” that you never get bored of).

If you’re into straight-up percussive loops and perhaps play with simple ideas for fun or for an eventual track, there are some tips you can keep in mind, just like I do. But let’s not get crazy about it either: On the one hand, some people study percussion all their lives without seeing all of its subtleties, while others can go to university and learn that every culture has its own intricate, complex way of doing it.

Let’s keep it simple. But if you want to learn more, there are tons of great reads online.

So, in my case, I’ve been inspired by early workshops I did with Gabrielle Roth and have been interested in the “5 Rhythms” approach. Ever since, it’s been in the back of my head whenever I try to design my tracks. The 5 Rhythms categorize dance types into families based on their style of percussion. Roth believes that within an hour, once a practitioner experiences her use of the different rhythms, they can reach a level of personal enlightenment.

This can make you question, in a way, your own personal quest and reasons for making music. Are you making tracks or are you working on a bigger set of instruments with the purpose of transporting the listener elsewhere? Not to fall into pseudo-new-age stuff, but it certainly becomes more exciting when you give your music a significance.

Now, when it comes to the rhythms, they are:

Flowing.
Staccato.
Chaos.
Lyrical.
Stillness.

One track can focus on one or multiple, but you can also integrate them all to create something balanced.

Flowing

To me, this is the most important one.

A good flow is the basis of all other rhythms.

It implies that your track, even with drastic changes, has a way of making all the rhythms work together so that it creates a cohesive whole. Great flow also makes a song catchy and re-playable.

When it lacks: There will be a feeling of awkwardness in the transitions. DJs will observe a drop of energy from the crowd.

Try: Working with transitions and arrangements. Try to separate your song into sections, and then find a way to move from one to another. That can be achieved with percussion changes or effects.

Staccato

Powerful and dynamic would be the best terms to describe this one. Think of huge samba drums or repetitive, hypnotic, minimal techno loops. The staccato is often dense and can go from very simple to very complex. It isn’t only necessary in percussion; it can also be in the form of simple arpeggios applied to a melody, for instance.

When it lacks: At some level, it can make a groove feel weak and static, which is the opposite of what a great staccato can bring to your work.

Try: Using arpeggios and applying them to any of your sounds. Tweak the settings to get something unexpected.

Chaos

Often hated by DJs who love linear and predictable loops for easier mixing, chaos here doesn’t necessarily refer to Ornette Coleman’s free jazz. I’d say it’s when things get a bit off the grid, and go slightly unquantified in the spirit of infusing your track with quirky grooves or unpredictable moments. When applied strategically, surprising a crowd can drive them crazy in a good way. Chaos can also refer to breaking free of standard genres and ideas to forge something new.

When it lacks: Your loop might sound generic, clinical, predictable — and yes, boring.

Try: Tapping percussions using PUSH. Apply weird grooves from Ableton. Adjust transients so they fall off the grid just a little bit. You may also slice your loop and randomize the order of the sounds.

Lyrical

To me this is the hardest, but that’s mainly because I’m more of an artist than a musician. What “lyrical” implies here is the use of melodies to conjure an emotion. There’s no restriction here: we’re talking pure emotional material, from sad to happy, deep to cheesy. Great melodies can become ear worms and can stay in people’s minds for a long time, making some material timeless. When someone can whistle your main idea, you know you have lyrical content.

When it lacks: Your song might be cold or simply ephemeral. There’s no main idea that we can refer to when describing it to someone else.

Try: Experimenting with melodies or asking a musician for help. You can turn to solutions like Liquid Rhythm to assist you as well.

Stillness

The most difficult to explain, because this one is a pure game of subtle micro-changes. Stillness in music is often translated to boring because nothing seems to happen. When nothing happens, a lot is happening… in the listener’s mind. They will start craving something, will start wondering, getting a bit anxious. Stillness is the art of creating an intelligent tension that makes the eventual release both soothing and powerful. You can also see it as linear music, which is a genre in itself. That is another game.

When it lacks: If you don’t allow for your listener to have any tension building, your song might feel self-supporting or shallow.

Try: Finding songs that build tension in you. When listening to them, pay attention to the very moment where you start getting a bit anxious, and notice how the song is built at that very moment so you can replicate the formula in your own music.

Useful Music Producer Skills For All

January 12, 2016/in Blog, Production/by pheek

This article will answer one of the questions I get sometimes from people who consider making electronic music, which is: what sort of skills make production easier? It depends on the personality of the music producer in question. My answer might surprise you.

What kind of producer are you?

The great thing about electronic music, and especially at the moment, is how it’s opened a democratic space that makes it possible for pretty much anyone to make music. It doesn’t mean that it’s easy to get where you want to be, but the doors are opened.

Here, I observe a few different kinds of producers’ personalities.

Six personality types of music producers

The musician: Very often you’ll see the musician who now uses software to be able to do everything they need.
- Strength: Music knowledge
- Flaw: Sometimes is technology-challenged.

The craftsman: Knowing pretty much all the technicalities of software, he loves new technologies and is more interested in tweaking, while not necessarily finishing tracks.
- Strength: Knows it all. Learns quickly.
- Flaw: Sometimes he believes the technology will do it all, and he procrastinates.

The party dude: He loves to party and loves the music but is neither a musician nor a computer guy. He would love to explore making music but it’s not an easy task.
- Strength: Has tons of ideas and is fun to be around.
- Flaw: Has trouble getting started.

The DJ: His main hobby is to spin records. He likes production but it’s not his main thing.
- Strength: Has a clear vision of how music should be made to work a dancefloor.
- Flaw: Is a bit lost in how to get there.

The artist: He’s not a musician but has tons of ideas and loves pairing with a craftsman.
- Strength: Highly creative.
- Flaw: Is sometimes allergic to computers, prefers gear and gets lost in the process.

Balanced profile: He’s a bit of everything above with one as a priority.
- Strength: Gets things done.
- Flaw: A Jack-of-all-trades is master of nothing.

Of course, this is all just based on general observation, and there are way more producer genres than this. There’s no best profile, but some will have an easier path ahead because of certain skills that are known to make things smoother.

Let’s see what those skills are.

Important skills for producing music

Geekiness

The very first skill I’d point out, from my experience and also from being an audio technology teacher, is a general understanding of computers. I’d say this is what has been helping my students most in going further in their production.

I know it might sound dumb. But you have no idea how people that are computer-savvy can progress so much faster than someone who’s not so good with general concepts.

They understand simple things such as “Save As” vs “Save,” file organization, installing, keyboard shortcuts, and troubleshooting. Those are skills that are essential because there’s so much time that is lost in studio trying to understand why things aren’t completely working.

How to get there: Follow great websites like Synthopia and Attack Magazine.

Curiosity

What would come next, if we relate to DAWs (digital audio workstations) in general, is not necessarily a skill but a personality trait: curiosity. The more curious you are, the more creative you will be, and the less stagnant as well. These are two essential things necessary to success, but also to fun!

Cultivating curiosity will come by the desire to know what else is being made out there and not to be content with your own circle of influence alone.

You know there are other ways to do things, and you’re curious to know how you can improve your technique. As music producer skills go, you can’t get enough of this one.

How to get there: Program a calendar pop-up based on location or time, so that when you get to the studio after listening to new music you found on Soundcloud, you’ll get an alert to check for technology tools on sites like KVRAudio.

Patience

This one is difficult, but patience can be your best ally. It will teach you to:

Let tracks be unfinished for now and know that they will eventually get done.
Not share your tracks immediately after finishing them because you might need time to listen again and fix certain details.
Accept that most labels will take up to 3 months to confirm they will sign a track.

How to get there: Set down rules for yourself on when to post a track and when to send it as a demo.

It’s hard to respect your own rules when you’re your only boss.

So you could ask a friend to be a moderator of your Soundcloud, for instance.

Deep Listening

Not completely technical, but oh so essential to get you anywhere. If you can use these tricks to improve your listening, you’ll always be able to discern what has to be touched and what has to be left as is:

Close your eyes to listen to your track.
Leave a loop playing in the back while you clean or cook.
Be able to follow the progression of one sound through an entire song.

How to get there: Practice listening to music with your eyes closed. If you’re a bit more open, try a Mindfulness app.

And to conclude, one of the main skills that will always help: People skills.

The art of understanding people and how they behave is such a precious asset when you’ll have collaborators.

With all this, you have a full set of music producer skills.

Nerds will have it easier, but the great thing today is that music is accessible to everyone — and in any case, not all nerds are sociable!

What is the Electronic Music Equipment Needed to Start Producing?

January 7, 2016/in Blog, Production, Tips/by pheek

Are you here because you’ve been planning to make electronic music? I will try to cover the main questions I get on a regular basis about electronic music equipment for home studios.

Get ready to produce

I recently received an email from someone who wanted my advice on what he needed to start making music. Usually, people want to know if they need a specific sound card or which DAW is the most appropriate. But this email had a never-ending list of gear, monitors, laptops, sound cards, VSTs, mixers and so on.

People tend to think that if they have the perfect studio set-up, music will pour out and things will get easier.

That’s pretty much a myth and I’ll explain why.

Electronic music equipment: facts vs myths

Bigger studio, bigger problems

While it’s easy to see how much fun there can be with more toys to play with, this comes with a bunch of problems. The best way to start is to get the minimum needed to get rolling and then slowly add to it. For instance, if you start with a DAW, which is pretty much the centre of everything, your first task is to get to know it by learning the terms and technicalities, and by understanding how it works — its logic.

As soon as you feel you need to add more things to get somewhere, you’re falling for distractions and getting sidetracked from your main objective.

If you add something new, you’re then stuck with 2 things you don’t really know of and you multiply the chances of getting lost. Then you will wonder where to start to troubleshoot an issue.

Too many options, too many choices

Facing too many options is a trap

In other words, the more options you have, the more you get lost in choosing your options. If you have fewer options, you’ll eventually run out of ideas and you’ll have to get creative to get elsewhere. When you have fully exploited your samples by playing with them, modifying them and so on, then adding new sounds will be a giant new addition to your toolkit.

The illusion of ease is counter-productive

Thinking that if you have the best studio, you’ll finish more songs is not only wrong, but also a good excuse not to sit and work. With the huge interest for modular synths/equipment in recent years, people have been frantically buying new modules thinking, “That one will get me that sound.” People buy, then resell, then buy again, and eventually they have that giant rack of equipment that produces a few bleeps. Well, it’s great — but the process to get there is costly.

So, where to start?

laptop ipad basic electronic music equipment laptop ipad tablet getting started producing producers production

The basics: laptop or tablet.

There are basically two main scenarios, if you’re starting:

A good computer, with good headphones and a DAW.
A tablet, such as an iPad, with audio apps and headphones.

Don’t fall into the trap. Buy analog gear to start with.

SEE ALSO : Equipment Needed to Make Music – Gear vs. Experience vs. Monitoring

You may expand if you want, but then you might run into some issues, such as being stuck with what you have. You might not be able to record what you do or edit it. The option of finishing songs becomes a bit tricky.

My suggestion for you is to have a cycle of acquisition for electronic music equipment. You can get little upgrades for one before moving on, or cover one completely and then move on. But since technology evolves really fast, if you cover one quickly, it might be outdated in 6 months to 1 year.

Here’s a good cycle to respect that I’ve found helps me not to get overwhelmed:

1 – Computer
2 – DAW/Software
3 – Monitoring
4 – External equipment

How it works. We start with the bare minimum and then as you get comfortable (and at ease with your budget), move to the next step.

1 – Computer. To me, this is where you gain the most returns on your investment, both in the short term and even long term. You can be self-sufficient with little programs that range from free to professional all-in-one solutions. On top of that, you can use it for communications or personal use. Things to focus on are a blazing fast hard drive (nowadays SSD is the best thing ever), a lot of RAM, and a fairly solid CPU. If you don’t have money for a DAW yet, there are many kinds of freeware or demo copies you can explore in the meantime and even record with. I know some producers who started with really laughable setups, but managed to do mindboggling productions. It was mainly because they didn’t have the bias of technical knowledge, and because the less you know, the more daring you are with trying new things.

2 – DAW. With a solid computer comes a DAW. This is where you take a step into the world of production on a more serious level. With your DAW, you’ll be able to record your jams, explore sound design, and compose your first songs with flexibility. I can’t point you to a specific DAW in particular, but I’d encourage you to use demos and pick one that you feel most comfortable using. Most of them also come in different bundles, so you can upgrade as you learn. Personally, I use many for my productions. Ableton Live is my top one because it offers me tools that are close to what I need the most, but for sound design I love Reason, and when it comes to mixing I like Studio One.

3 – Monitoring, both sound and video. As soon as you can, invest in a pair of good headphones, a sound card, and monitors, preferably in that order. For monitors, not many people will tell you this, but I suggest renting before buying. Sound is a very personal thing, and I might recommend something that wouldn’t work for you. This is a huge investment and keep in mind you might have your monitors for 10 years so be careful. If you can, get a dual monitor setup. They are very practical for helping you produce with ease.

4 – External Equipment. This part alone could be an entire blog post, but this section involves gear, synths, mixers, MIDI controllers, and so on.

Let me know if you have any questions! I’d be glad to give more details.