How To Mix A Track As You Arrange

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One question I get a lot when I teach production is, “Should I start mixing as I work on the track?” There isn’t a precise answer to that as each song is different. I will say though, I do start working on the mix in the beginning, but it isn’t necessarily in the way that people would think. 

 

There are 3 things I look into when it comes to making sure my mix is right, from the start.

 

  1. Gain staging. This is something I cover in mixing tutorials and workshops but it’s mostly about normalizing. You want your input (sample, synths) to be close to 0dB. Then you’ll adjust the fader to the level you want (ex. -10dB).
  2. Amplitude hierarchy. Which sound is the leader? That one would be the loudest of your mix for most of the song’s duration. The others will be adjusted in relation to the leader.
  3. Sequencing and negative spacing. This is where the important part is played. Many people struggle with the mixing done at the end of a song’s production because of all the overlapping in the song’s amplitude (volume) and timing. For example, if you need to use side-chaining between the kick and bass, that’s because you didn’t prepare any negative space for the kick to lead. Then you’ll have to carve both frequencies sharing and amplitude.

 

Proper Sequencing Means A Proper Mix

 

My motto is that if your sequencing is done properly, you won’t have much to juggle with once in the mixing stage. You basically don’t want the sounds to overlap so much so you won’t have to carve into masking issues.

 

When I get a song for mastering, one of the main tasks I have to do is adjust the loudness. If the gain staging is poor, then I need to boost it much to reach the standard loudness. If I need to boost the loudness, this means any sound that is overlapping will be squashed and merged with others, killing all the precision an airy mix would have, creating a muddy and lifeless master.

 

Now some sounds can share the same position in sequencing, such as how, in techno or house music, kicks, claps and hats will shuffle around. But as you know, they are not in the same frequency areas. Kicks will be in the lows, claps in the middle, and hats in the highs. Therefore there is space in the spectrum for all sounds to cohabit. The claps’ transients can also accentuate the kicks, giving them more punch. 

 

(H2 Tag – Make sure to adjust this on WordPress) Pay Attention To Dynamic Range

That said, those sounds will have more punch if you have control of their length. Dynamic range accentuates punch and precision. What we refer to as dynamic range is the difference between the loudest peak and the lowest part. If you insert negative space (silence), your sounds will hit harder in theory.

 

This means reverb, delays, and background noises can kill the dynamic range as they will take some space out of the noise floor. Adding too much will make a song sloppy and muddy.

 

When you have this in mind, you’ll start by picking sounds and adjusting their length, then normalize them (eg. bring them near 0dB). 

 

Be Strategic With Your Voicing

 

When it comes to creating the main idea of a song, we will refer to the sounds as voices. You’ll make your life easier by sticking to 4 maximum.

 

One voice can be a synth or an instrument. If you add layers to it, then it’s still one voice. But if you add a second instrument that plays different notes at different times, it will be a second voice. So four of them make it quite busy.

 

Space In The Mix

 

Amplitude wise, we know the levels must differ, but panning and stereo positioning can also make a difference. You want to keep in mind that you will try to avoid stereo overlapping as well but in terms of amplitude, if two sounds are fighting, you can pan them differently so then you have space, and clarity.

 

Again, when it comes to amplitude, you can cut some frequency based so that some low-end or mid-range don’t interfere. This is why EQs that are passive, such as Pultecs or 3-4 band EQs come in handy. They’ll let you adjust a range of frequencies without changing the whole spectrum.

 

In the end, I invite you to consider how you sequence your music with care and I believe your mix will be way easier.

Chasing success is a failed model

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There’s something quite misleading about seeing artists we love in their studios, especially when there’s all the gear one can dream of. On one hand, you see someone accomplished with all that equipment and you might be thinking that the success brought all that gear or perhaps, the gear made that success. Then, on the other hand, you see yourself in that exact position where you dream to be the spotlight of everyone else. In both cases, you can imagine success all around and the studio is the key to get to your goals.

 

Chasing perfection is like running after a mirage in the desert. It is basically hunting a ghost, not knowing if that ghost is really exists in the first place.

 

In past posts, I explained some challenges regarding that and how to work with a definition of done so that you can have a better idea of where you’re heading.

 

The music industry has undergone a significant transformation in recent years. With the rise of digital music streaming services, social media, and other digital platforms, the traditional model of chasing success in music production is now an outdated approach. In this blog post, we will discuss why chasing success in music production is a failed model, and provide alternatives for musicians to achieve fulfillment in their music career.

 

The Misconception of Success

One of the biggest misconceptions in the music industry is the definition of success. Many musicians view success as achieving fame, wealth, and recognition for their music. However, this definition is narrow and incomplete. All those can’t be measured. You might think that a certain number of followers on a social media will provide some sort of success, but once you have that amount of people, you will realize that it doesn’t bring any passive income or more sales. You need to continue working hard times to get something out of it, which will be taking time away from your studio use. Same for sales. You might make a bunch, but then what? You’ll be chasing something else. Success in music should be viewed as a personal accomplishment, rather than an external validation. I often refer to that as perhaps, happiness.

Alan Watts, a British philosopher, once said, “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious, and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” This quote perfectly illustrates the importance of finding personal fulfillment in the music-making process, rather than chasing external validation.

 

The Context of Success

Another aspect that musicians often overlook when chasing success is the context in which success occurred. The success of an artist is not just a result of their talent, but also a result of timing, luck, and other external factors. The movie “Searching for Sugarman” tells the story of Sixto Rodriguez, a musician who achieved critical acclaim in South Africa in the 1970s but remained unknown in the US. The film highlights the importance of context in success, and how success can be achieved in unexpected ways.

 

Alternatives view to Chasing Success

So, if chasing success in music production is a failed model, what are the alternatives? Here are some alternatives to consider:

  1. Focus on the Creative Process (the journey)

One of the best ways to find fulfillment in music production is to focus on the creative process. Rather than obsessing over the end result, focus on the journey and enjoy the process of creating music. This approach will help you stay motivated and inspired, and ultimately lead to a more fulfilling music-making experience. As this is easier said than done, how do I do that? Well, when one is focused on the end result, you’ll get annoyed if something goes wrong: for example, a synth doesn’t sound as you have in your initial vision. Focusing on the process mostly means that you’re curious about the task you’re doing at the moment and less trying to perfect things.

TIP: Try to have 50% of your studio sessions aimed at doing nothing but jamming and having fun instead of be productive.

 

  • Develop Your Skills

Another way to achieve fulfillment is to focus on developing your skills. The more you practice and refine your craft, the more you will grow as a musician. One thing I tell people is that you’ll learn more by starting 100 songs than trying to perfect one. When you start 100 different projects, the goal is to face a different challenge each time. It could be a new technique, the use of a new plugin or an unusual sound. This will not only lead to personal satisfaction but will also make you a more competitive and capable musician in the industry.

TIP: Try to start 100 songs then work with them in alternating.

 

  • Connect with Your Immediate Audience

One of the most rewarding aspects of music production is connecting with your audience. The mistake most people make is to try to reach out to people who don’t really care. What you need to do is foster the close people who could care, which I call (no pun intended) the circle of five (wink to the circle of fifth). This approach will not only provide a sense of fulfillment but will also help you build a sustainable music career.

TIP: Commit to connecting with your 5 people and create a dynamic where everyone can help each other.

 

  • Set Realistic Goals

While it’s important to focus on the journey rather than the destination, setting realistic goals can help you stay on track and motivated. Rather than setting goals based on external validation, focus on setting goals that are meaningful to you and align with your personal values. Question your goals, talk to experienced mentors and producers and then try to scale down your projects to a minimum.

Tip: make a list of different sounds you love or songs you often listen to and then aim at trying to understand what you love it. Then work towards in making music you love.

 

Conclusion

Chasing success in music production is an outdated and failed model. The music industry has undergone a significant transformation in recent years, and success can no longer be defined by traditional metrics such as album sales or chart performance. Instead, musicians should focus on finding personal fulfillment in the creative process, developing their skills, connecting with their audience, and setting realistic goals. 

As Alan Watts said, the meaning of life is simply to be alive. The same can be said for music production. The most important aspect of music production is finding personal fulfillment in the process of creating music. So, rather than chasing success, focus on the journey and enjoy the process of making music.

 

How I Classify My Projects and Files

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I’m not sure if you’re like me, but it’s possible that your hard drive, after a while, becomes a total mess. There will be a few folders with some projects in them, and other folders with random samples. Not to mention all those projects named New project…

 

There are ways to organize folders and all your work that allows you to easily navigate it. The way I classify projects is also aimed at having a quick scope of which one I will work with next, which songs should go in an album, and those that need specific actions.

 

Before I explain myself, let’s talk about the different stages a project will go through and also, the different tasks related to that.

Note: If you’re new to this blog and aren’t familiar with my production technique, I would encourage you to read a few articles about this, which will give more sense to what I’m about to describe.

 

The different stages of music production (and labeling your projects so)

 

The way I work to maximize the results is to take each step in making music and call it a phase, or a stage. 

 

The different stages I label with are these:

 

1- Ideas digging, concept, testing techniques, hook finding, etc. 

2- Preliminary loop made from stage 1 that could be the heart of the song. Basic structure of the song.

3- Arrangements.

4- Mixing.

5- Song at 90% done and needs last minor tweaks.

 

The main reason why I give high priority to the state of the song is based on the idea that when I want to work on music, I might be in a specific mindset. Perhaps one day I’ll want to just have fun doing some sound design or another time, I need to work on an EP and will be checking for the few songs incubating. As you might know my approach for when I do music, when I reopen projects, I want to quickly know where that one is at. In an hour of work that I do on music, I hop from one song to another, while I also like to revisit projects that have been sleeping for weeks because what I want is to always have the freshest perspective on my work. If you work on something for hours, trust me, by the end of it, you might have lost all perspective and the work will suffer for it. 

 

Stages 1 and 2 can overlap

 

I’ll give you a study case of mine so we can have a clear understanding of how I can use a project and its evolution toward a finished song. But we’ll start with the 2 first stages. 

 

Projects that are in stage 1 are your pool for fishing ideas. 

So the idea of a project in stage 1 is really about ideas, not much more than that. It could be more if you want, it’s up to you.

 

Stage 2 is where we’re working on a precise hook or main idea. There are multiple ways to work and find hooks, we have talked about that in previous articles. I usually drop a very simple percussive loop to define what will be the rhythm of the song, its groove, and its accents, and then place what would be the hook on top. We often overthink the hook. It’s often very simple. 

 

Usually, in stage 2, I find that I should have:

 

  • A root key 
  • A scale
  • A hook, not longer than 1 bar
  • Rhythmic groove, time signature

 

If I have all of that, then I know the project has passed to that new stage and will rename it. Usually, when I rename a project, I make sure to save it, and do a “collect all and save” to make sure I copy all the needed files from its previous form. When you rename a project, it’s better you do “Save project as…” in the File Menu of Ableton and its original stage 1 will still exist. You can later decide if you archive the original project or keep it as an incubator. Usually, when I’m finding an idea from an incubator, I will make sure I save the different effect chains as macros so that they can be reused. I also will color code my channels, and name them as well so I can harvest them later from the right side browser of Ableton.

 

However, you might have an incubator at stage 1 that will never grow because you could mutate the original incubator to stage 2 but it’s completely different, but still came from a father project. For instance, I have projects that are sorely made for making sounds, where they never have evolved from there and tons of songs or even live sets have come from them.

 

Arrangements, the full story of Stage 3

 

I find that arrangements should start by working on the middle part of the song and then deconstruct that idea to the start of the song. So the early part of Stage 3 would consist of working in the middle part, roughly 1 minute long.

 

As you can see, you basically shift your initial Stage 2 loop and drag it to arrangements, then stretch it. Some people build their initial loop in arrangement mode so you can just move it from the start to the middle. When I work on arrangements, I usually love to make a quick draft of the song, where I’ll split it in 3 sections: intro, heart, outro. That draft is made quickly, sometimes in a surprising time of 20 minutes alone. I will come back later with a fresh look and listen from the beginning and will readjust the arrangements so it makes more sense. 

 

In stage 3, the mixing isn’t important. You can level it for pleasant listening but I wouldn’t worry much about it. 

 

Mixing as 4th stage

 

This doesn’t need much explanation here but one thing to clarify is that it’s not something rigid either. You might notice some arrangement problems in mixing that will make you redo them. As I always say to clients, if your sound design and arrangements are solid, there will be basically almost no mixing, or just touch-up.

 

Stage 5 is when your song is 90% done

 

To me, 90% done is my definition of done. I know it sounds weird but it is like that. First off, when you first accept that a song is never done, it’s easier to accept its imperfections and to move on. Second, you want to bring as many songs as possible to 90% because the day you want to do a release, you’ll take those and then wrap them all at once to 100%. This might sound confusing but letting your songs sleep at 90% and then wrap multiple songs at once means that the last stretch for all of them is your chance to unify them to make them coherent as a release. 

 

So what’s the difference between Stage 4 and 5?

 

Well, it’s kinda when you’re done arranging, you shift it to stage 5. It’s sort of like, I’m done with this one. Once in a while, I might reopen 5 to maybe do a little tweak but to me, when it gets to 5, it’s sort of saying that it’s ready.

 

In conclusion

 

When I open my folder with all my projects, I will see from 1 to 5, all songs being in order. With the file browser, I can also classify them from 5 to 1 as well. I like in mac OS to be able to put some tags as well. That can be for genre, if it’s signed or whatever is useful.

Photo by Amy Shamblen on Unsplash

Generating Ideas and the Listener’s Attention Span

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(photo credit Photo by Avi Richards on Unsplash)

There’s this zone where, as an artist, you’ll sometimes land where things are a bit confusing. It is precisely when you lose your perspective as if you’re doing music for yourself or for someone listening to your song. 

 

There are multiple perspectives in music – one from the creator, the other from the listener. There’s something quite contradictory about music itself when you make it where you are performing music, it comes from you, your imagination, and current emotion but yet, musicians often also have someone else in mind when creating. That person you’re making music for isn’t there to provide feedback. 

 

As someone who runs a Facebook group about coaching as well as a Patreon program where I train people, I face this situation over and over again with my students. They worry about their song being boring or that the listener will not finish the song until the end. 

 

Is there a silver bullet to guarantee that everyone likes the song and will finish it to the end? 

The quick answer is, no. You never can control how someone will perceive your music because you can listen to music at different times of the day and have different perceptions. It can be tied to the present emotion, where you listen to it, and what you were doing before, but the most disruptive thing will undoubtedly be the expectations the listener has. 

 

However, all is not lost – there are some ways that can increase the probability that the person will enjoy the track thoroughly. In the article, we will go through a checklist of things you can do that can certainly help, technically, to have the listener more engaged. 

 

Attention Is Competitive

 

I’d like to take a moment as well to point out that we’re living in an age of attention seeking and that has created a culture of wanting attention. This desire for attention is normal but you need to understand that people don’t have much on their hands. All social media platforms are hiring teams to pull as much attention from people like us so the attention span of everyone has dramatically dropped over time due to competition. The good news is that music can be a background experience – doesn’t stop you from doing other things while listening. You can still do your laundry, talk to friends, cook food, etc, while listening to music. This is exactly undivided attention, but when it comes to music, it’s just as good as any attention.

 

You Will Get Bored Of Your Songs (which leads to doubt)

 

One thing I see when people make music, they usually reach a point where they feel a bit lost. By lost, I mean that they might have certain doubts creeping on them. This happens mostly because people spend too much time working on their track, sometimes in a row (eg. extended session of 2h+) or they’ve been tweaking it for 3+ days in a row. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll already know my thoughts on this: not spacing the time you spend on your track will most likely result in either not knowing if their idea can be understood or if it’s “good” anymore. 

 

There are multiple phases in creativity, which is the initial where you have on your hands what seems to be a good idea, then you’ll try to put that in a story and last, you’ll try to make that into a timeline. Once you have these 3 initiated, you might circle between them over and over because the more you spend time on your song, the more you’ll hear things to fix and will feel the need to adjust something because well, you’ve been listening to the same idea for hours. 

 

No one, except yourself, will listen to your song as much as you do. 

 

This is exactly why you’ll doubt yourself. Because anyone who would be exposed to that much, would get bored or fed up of it. While in reality, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.

 

Don’t Fall Into Extremes

 

Now, when you make music, the balance of making music for yourself and or for others is something weird to find the sweet spot. If you, at one extreme, do music only for yourself, there is a good chance that it might be really messy and not reach out to anyone out there. But if you go to the other extreme and only make music for others, you’ll have no personality in there and be an empty shell. The right balance is understanding what works as a concept, then filling it with your ideas. In other words, what works is quite often the “same thing but different.”

 

You Have No Control Over The Listener

 

When it comes to the listener, you’ll have to accept that you have no control whatsoever over their tastes, attention span, mood, and availability. When anyone decides to listen to a song, they come from a specific need that is personal. Some will want something energetic for a task, others something smooth for relaxation, some who are DJs want music with a specific direction, others what in between for working/studying, etc. You can imagine that whoever will listen to your song, they will come with a specific need and it is also quite possible that the listener will be listening to your song along with a few before, and a few after. It’s not so often that you won’t listen to anything and then you listen suddenly to something and then nothing. 

 

Now, let’s think about someone who has a playlist and has some new tracks to add, they’ll have pretty much the same approach as a DJ curating his next set. The music they keep is mostly something emotional and tainted by tastes. They either like or dislike. Because of how music is easily available nowadays, people will just quickly move on to the next thing because they can.

 

Now that we have all this in mind, let’s see what can be a deal breaker in how people can like or dislike your music.

 

How To Keep People Interested In Your Song

 

Here are ways to keep someone interested in your song:

 

  • Mold a track upon a reference song that you know works. This one is the top because like anything in life, if you have a model of something that works, you can then replicate a concept. That works just as well for making a pizza as it does for a song. This was covered so many times in my Youtube videos but it’s basically about understanding the structure of the song, how sounds come in and out, levels, length, density, etc. Once you analyze the songs that you thought were amazing, you’ll realize that they are quite often simpler than you think.

 

  • Make your music not too predictable but just enough to keep someone interested. What usually keeps someone interested is the feeling of feeling intelligent. This comes with the idea that they can predict what will happen next in a song either in terms of chord progression or arrangement-wise. If you anticipate it and it happens, it can really trigger some excitement. But what makes you hook is when it slightly takes you off guard. On one end, too much predictability will make it boring, but on the other end, too many surprises will create confusion and irritability. So usually you want the first part of your song to create a concept of understanding what the song is about, but then you bring new ideas. For a while, this is why breakdowns were so important because they were basically the gateway to the next evolution of the song but since they became so predictable, to me, breakdowns are irrelevant now.

 

  • Have your music follow current trends but with slight novelty. I think any musician needs to spend some time every day listening to charts, new releases, what DJs play, and what people love. I find that quite often, I get ideas from the now and mix them with ideas from the past. I’ll listen to music from the 90s, hear an effect used in a way and then see how we can upgrade that old idea. Living completely in the past is not going to make your music feel fresh. But neither is being in the moment either, because you’ll either be lost in a sea of people making music like the trends or by the time your song is done, the trend is already old.

 

  • Share something personal. This one is tricky but important. In music, ultimately, you want to be yourself. That comes with spending time crafting sound until you find something you really love. I like the idea that if you stop at the first few ideas, they might be shallow ideas but if you take your time, and go deeper, you’ll find more and more complex ones. If things are that deep, and you love it, then you’re entering the realm of originality and personal space. That zone is very vulnerable though because the more personal you get, the scarier it is to share it because rejection will feel very personal. But the good news is that people who will love that space will also be really in touch with who you are.

 

  • Know who your music should reach and understand what they like. When you make music, you might follow a genre or not but if you do, try to understand what people like about it. Maybe you know it already. But mainly what makes someone skip a song are usually for the main few points: misalignment of their needs and what the song offers (ex. Songs has the wrong emotional tone or is technically overwhelming/underwhelming), clash of cultural sounds (ex. Song has a genre but is not respecting some basic concepts that might be irritating) or completely different tastes (tempo, tone, song key, production, sound use). Basically, being bold in what you love is encouraged but make sure it is also within certain limits of a genre, if you aim to be part of that direction.

 

Music techniques to find new ideas

 

Making music comes down to finding ideas. You can make music for years but a way to remain original is to have different ways to generate new ideas. Here are 3 main ideas that I use to generate ideas but there are so many others. Basically, you want, on one hand, to have original material and on the other hand, to find ways to process it. This means that you can have quality ideas that don’t need much cosmetics or have very generic ideas and add tons of processing. But both are 2 different ways which mean that you can create endless possibilities.

 

Creating new ideas can come, either from sampling/recording or generating synthetic ideas. I use quite a lot of randomization in my work because it is like a fast-forward from me fine tweaking. In other words, if I tweak a knob to find ideas it can take a while so instead, I use the computer’s power to come up with random tweaks, on multiple parameters, all at once which turns me into a curator of the best ideas coming out of that. Hitting the random button will give me in seconds, as many new ideas as the time I press that button. What’s powerful is that I can use every snapshot individually, and can also slowly morph between each snapshot, creating wonderful evolving ideas.

 

Randomize effects, modules, and macros. 

 

This is fairly easy in Ableton. You can use one or multiple plugins, then use command+G to group them together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then you can link parameters to macros.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For VST plugins, you’ll need to hit the configure button, then click on the parameters you want to use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you have a bunch of parameters assigned to the macros knobs, you can hit that tiny rand button to see different random ideas.

 

 

 

 

 

I encourage you to save your rack with the snapshots you can also keep with the little camera button on the left. These saved are so practical when you want to call back some past ideas. Most of my most used VSTs are all saved as a macro for fast recalling.

While we’re at it, the Shaperbox 3 is a HUGE game changer for me when it comes to sound design. You can do really, really crazy things with is and it’s also a swiss army knife for mixing, sound design, and even mastering.

 

Randomize Melodies

 

Randomizing melodies is another technique that I’ve been using for over 20 years. It’s been used in musique concrète and old early stages of electronic music. The quick way to do this is to use, for example, Rozzer. This is a free Max for Live patch that can generate ideas quite easily. Basically, you drop this on a MIDI channel, set a scale and root key, then hit random on the notes (it will generate a sequence of notes), then hit random on the Gates (which of these notes will play). That is a phrase that you can then tweak to taste or also you can explore polyrhythms by making the notes and the gate into different numbers (ex. Notes on a length of 12 and Gates, 7).

 

 

 

Sampling and resampling. This is also a fun technique. You can play a loop in your Ableton Live session and apply effects, then apply effects, but you record the whole playing around into a new clip.

 

From the recorded clip, I can then chop, reshape, reprocess, stretch etc. That is called resampling and it is a very powerful way to transform ideas. I like to say that resampling clips are generational. So a sound processed once is the first generation, then if you reprocess that clip is second, and so on. When I use sounds for my music, I usually go with sounds that are 4-5th generations. They are usually richer.

 

I hope this helps.

 

What Makes A Difference Before Mastering

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I often explain to clients, almost daily, that a good master starts with a solid mix. Therefore, I thought I’d list what actually makes a difference for me when I get files to process. This article will also talk about certain things that producers do to their tracks that they think will make the job easier for me, but really, they just end up making me work hard.

 

I would like to start with what is obvious to me but seems to not be for many clients, which is about how people listen to their music. Many times, people send me a song that will have issues related to how their studio is set or because of a lack of understanding about how their studio translates to the outside world. If the way you listen to music in the first place influences how you perceive it, it is clear that you’ll misunderstand the song you will get, once mastered. When I get feedback from a client that their song has a tone-related issue (too bassy, too bright), I will always reply with “compared to what?” Because in the end, that’s what it is – a comparison. You will always have some people comparing you to other things and the definition of perfection is extremely arbitrary. That’s why it’s always a good idea to provide me a reference. 

 

Every mastering engineer has their own touch, therefore the idea of working with a mastering engineer is directly related to how you like their work. The engineer will work with a definition of what they think works best for what you have, related to a genre, within a range of technical points that will make the best out of it. Therefore, the first thing that can make a huge difference is trust. When you have your song done and need the last touches, there can be some wild differences, but in the end, it’s about communicating your vision and hoping the engineer can manage to do it. I often get people sending me files and asking me if they’re ready for mastering to which I always tell them that the best way to know is to do tests, where you send me a version to master, and I see how your mix translates after the process. This is, to me, a huge step to build trust.

 

Obvious Technical Details

 

These have been discussed inside out. They’re also covered on pretty much any mastering sites or forums. However, I still get files prepared wrong. Some people forget, but there are also some people think they know better too, so let’s see once more, here:

 

  • No compression or limiting on the master bus: If you have your gain staging done properly, there will be no need to really have compression on the master as your loudness and density will be already solid. If you want to glue things all together, leave it to the engineer. If you want a certain vision, bounce a home master as a reference. A limiter is useful during production in case you get hot and push things a bit. Still, for mastering, you need to remove that tool because otherwise, it creates some intense processing on your transients and density that will be problematic for mastering. Note that many use limiters within the mix itself, either on the low-end buss or percussion, which is ok but sometimes can cause distortions too. Also, be careful with saturation on the master. Many people actually mess up their mixes that way – a 3-5% of wet factor of saturation may feel huge once mastered, so treat it with care.

 

  • Headroom: The usual requirement engineers will ask for is -6dBfs but nowadays, I’m cool with -3dBfs too, as long as there’s no limiting on the master 0and the transients are healthy looking.

 

  • Resolution and sample rate: This keeps changing but I find that the bare minimum is 24bit, 48khz. Some people send files with better resolution than that but on my side, I run most of my sessions in 96khz to get the best headroom so I can deal with pretty much anything. Of course, files have to be in stereo, wav or aiff.

 

These points are easily handled by most clients. If you aren’t sure of one of these points, you’ll easily get answers on forums or straight from a Youtube tutorial. I would say I often get files that don’t meet those requirements, but often we can easily fix them.

 

Average Level Technical Details

 

This is where things get messy. It’s what I would call, mostly average level. Meaning that new producers will have some difficulty with these but if you’ve been making music for a few months, and finished a bunch of tracks, you’ll probably run into some of these issues and the lack of experience might lead you into trying different things. It takes time to really pinpoint how a mix will translate after a mastering. It comes down also to your pick of engineer, their aesthetic and communication with you. Of course, the more you work with someone, the more they’ll know what you expect. Most of my recurring clients never ask for a revision because it comes as they want.

 

Advanced Technical Details:

 

  • Loudness. This is where many people are confused. There’s a difference between the peak loudness and the density of a song. I’d encourage you to get a loudness measuring tool and look into the LUFS indicator. 

 

If your track is at t -6dB, it means that I will need to add 6 dB gain as I’m trying to get it as close to 0dB as possible. In order to do this, I will need to boost the density to match other songs on the market. If your song is close to 0dB without density measures, it probably means that it’s not loud enough. 

 

There are multiple ways to boost the density such as saturation and compression. Sometimes, people wonder why their song is compressed and the reason is always about matching loudness. We can’t simply boost the gain, that won’t be enough. That said, people need to do their gain staging properly. I can’t explain in this post how to do it but there are multiple tutorials online for that. 

 

So, in the end, I always prefer a mix to be roughly around -15LUFS ideally. I can do with less but you’ll have to accept there will  be a pretty steep difference.

 

  • Stereo width. Most people I know love their song to be returned with a nice width, as they love to be wowed. If it’s too wide, there will be a loss in punch and assertiveness. Usually, people are pretty ok with this but there are a lot of people who get addicted to plugin that use width and clients might boost the sides a bit too much. I often have to rebalance the signal between mid and side. It’s not much of a big deal but if, in some frequencies, I notice the sides are too loud, I’ll have to control that because it might be a sign of phasing. That is one type of issue that clients have a hard time spotting because it requires experience or good monitoring tools. 

 

  • Saturation. Every now and then, I’ll have clients who will push saturation a bit much without knowing that loudness matching will multiply that crunch by much. This results in weird clipping, distortions, noise, nastiness. Some people are ok with that but some need to redo their mixes to find the sweet spot. My general suggestion is to add saturation until you hear it and then dial back a bit. If you hear a lot of the saturation and your gain staging isn’t right, I will boost your track much and the saturation will be boosted a lot.

 

  • Noise floor. If you record from synths and analog gear, there might be some noise in the background. You need to record as loud as you can so the noise doesn’t get boosted by your gain staging. It often happens that people record with lots of noise in the back and when I boost, then it gets amplified. So, be careful.

 

  • Effects. In general two red flags occur here: overuse of phasing, MS or reverb that is way too loud. Often clients have to fix the reverb and send me a new file. Long reverb are super tricky and sometimes I suggest to use ducking on it so it doesn’t mess up the transients or make the entire mix messy.

 

  • Compression. This one is tricky. Sometimes people will put compression on the master to glue everything together but I don’t recommend doing that so much. This is something I like to control myself since I do the final gain staging and overall adjustment of that matter. People who use compression as gain on the master or all over the place will end up having a track with exaggerated tails on the sounds that are supposed to be a bit shorter, which can have dramatic effects on the bass or the kick for instance. If they bleed into one another, the low end will be mushy and messy. Snappy kicks need space to be cutting through and if the mids are also bleeding all over the place, there will be a lack of precision. Overall, compression is useful yes but with some moderation, unless you want a puffy, really inflated-sounding track.

 

  • Samples. The higher the quality of your samples, the better the mix you might get. In essence, using mp3s or youtube ripped sounds will sound lofi and that might be exaggerated, once more, in mastering. This is where aliasing and weird digital artifacts can make a pristine-sounding song into a harsh one. When I refer to quality samples, I not only relate to the bit rate, but also for a good balance of density, clarity and precision. Samples with sibilant resonances and sharp transients also can be hard to control in the mastering process.

 

What usually really helps and will make a huge difference:

 

  • Resonances removal: If you think that I might do gain staging, you’ll quickly see how they’ll escalate into a harsh ringing if you have any resonances in there. Removing resonances isn’t something you easily learn but once you start being aware of the impact they have on your mixes, you’ll want to handle them right in the sound design part. While I can control them with my mastering EQs, there’s nothing like having a clean mix to start with. I had a try at this Reso EQ and it turned out to be quite solid. There also the MAutoEQ by Melda that detects resonances and lets you cut to taste.

 

  • Transients taming: There’s nothing more annoying than harsh transients on big sound system or at high volumes. There’s a difference between snappy and harsh, sometimes people don’t really realize until they hear the master. While I can control things, if you do the most cleaning on your side, your mix will sound stellar. One of my favorite transient shapers is Impact by Surreal Machines. But if you want something that is game changer, you can go high level and get the Oxford Transmod.

 

  • Proper leveling: This is the mixing 101 of all tips. Not much you can do else than practice, take breaks, listen to references but if you get your levels right. This always is a win in mastering.

 

  • Sidechaining, unmasking: If you have multiple sounds that are in the same frequencies, it will soon head into a masking issue territory. You can spend some time cleaning the frequency of one to let the other be heard but the fastest fixing method is side-chaining. Using TrackSpacer is always clean and fast, but lately, the new Neutron 4 has proven to be quite amazing. It also has a lot of other practical tools and it has been in every songs I mixed lately.

 

  • Proper gating: Gating is often misunderstood but it is a technique that will bring punch, clarity, dynamics to drums or anything with tons of details. It also resolves masking sometimes, clean noise floor and avoid muchiness all around. If you don’t know much about it, go check tutorials!

 

The last stretch of points is what I’d consider advanced but those are actually the ones that I will have the most trouble with because they should always be handled in the mix. The cleaner your mix, the better the master.

 

How To Compose With Consistency

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I’ve always been interested in the restaurant industry and particularly with the whole process of how they give awards like Michelin Stars. There are a number of criterias that will define if a chef will earn one and I find there is some inspiration to take from those points to apply them to one music producer’s work. While there’s no written notes on what the criteria are, what we do know is that there are key points such as ability, quality, and the chef’s personality. However, one that really stands out is consistency.

 

This is a common shared topic with clients of mine. Everyone pretty much dreams of finding a formula that will make sure each song is good and that each time they hit the studio, something worthy will come out from the time invested. There are straightforward ways to make sure we get there but there are also some points that I will explain that might be a bit unsettling.

 

Managing Expectations

It’s always a bit hard to talk about expectations with clients. There are a few points to keep in mind when it comes to that. First, many people are passionate about music in the first place and rely on that hobby for multiple hopes such as, acceptance and validation from their community or other hero producers of theirs. This alone creates some big goals, which creates stress that can glitch creativity and productivity. Same for other producers who have released some music and feel a pressure to do more, but they’re facing some tensions towards what they do: feeling of being inadequate, hitting technical limitations, unfair comparisons to others, etc.

I personally don’t really believe that having constant positive sessions from the studio, where you are 100% happy with your music, is humanly possible. For those who do, I would also question how much fun that is since in the long run it can be really stressful and tiring.

 

So rather than having perfect consistency in music, I think it’s better to change the approach to defining what your victory conditions are. In the Definition of Done article we covered how to set yourself clear points to know you’re done with a project while accepting how many imperfections you can live with. But victory conditions are slightly different, yet, also similar.

 

So for instance, I used to know some professional musicians that were forcing themselves to go to the studio everyday and make one song minimum. Since I worked with them, I had the chance to listen and I had to say I thought the songs they showered me were interesting about 5% of the time (there were a lot of them). We talked about it and realized not only was he not happy about the situation nor the outcome, but he also realized he was just not achieving anything he hoped for. So we worked together to shift his workflow and expectations.

I proposed my non-linear music making technique where he would work on several tracks at once instead of one song at a time. I also talked about what he loved doing so we can make sure that part would be at least 50% of his studio time. In his case, he loved sound design and creating new songs which are perfect. I showed him that music can also be about that and that making music is an important part of music making but it is not the only part of it. Starting new songs is, to me, just as important as finishing them. The more you start one, the better the odds to really create solid and original ideas. Then you harvest the best ones to turn them into a song. We also revised different ways to do sound design and techniques to try.

 

This changed a lot the outcomes of his music and the quality of the following tracks got much better, even if the pace of them coming out got a hit. This is why I sometimes encourage people to focus on tracks made per season instead of days, or weeks.  

 

Victory Conditions

We all have different conditions and there’s no real best way to do this but I find that victory conditions should be different than releasing goals. Some people feel victorious if they get their album out after months of work, but soon they want more of it and then they face a return to the studio that feels like a pain. In my case, after years of experience, I find that my victory conditions has boiled down to having a blast when I’m in the studio, even if that implies working hard on solving issues.

 

This implies two different things: First, there is a part of me that is there to solve issues, install gear, create an environment that is workable and fix details to ensure all is well. Second, I have to prepare for my conditions by making sure that I have all the necessary skills to make music. So, if in a Definition Of Done, we set the points that would make us see we’re done, in the Victory Conditions, we establish what is needed to go there and what is also to make it possible. 

Since for me, it is related to fun, I had to reverse engineer it. 

 

That implied that I had to look back at a really fun session and see what happened to make it work, and to enjoy it. More often than not, while a session can be ruined by technical problems, it’s clear that some sessions in the studio should be dedicated to preventing issues, but also, some other sessions would be dedicated to practicing a technique or new concept, so that when I hit the zone, I have all on hand.

 

So what about you?

 

In the development of an artist, there are numerous stages and phases. You might be in one that is so challenging that the fun doesn’t happen too much. It might be because you feel overwhelmed by a specific issue, some software limitation, lack of knowledge on a topic and aiming for fun might seem a bit of frustration. The thing is, if that can help, I have to say that there has been many years in my life where I accomplished so many things without knowing much and that the more I knew, the more I slowed down. I often say that it’s important to finish something and learn rather than chase perfection.

 

In other words, whatever you are struggling with might actually be a distraction. There are a lot of things to learn on Youtube and if you can’t find it, there are always people to help – that includes me. You don’t have to stay with a problem for long nowadays, compared to times before the internet’s abundant tutorials.

 

Perhaps you can create conditions where you work on a few things at once, small things and try to make the most of that.

 

Quality Control, being practical

We talked about the philosophical and workflow part of this topic but what about the technical side of things? What are some of the main elements that do maintain consistency between songs?

 

There are multiple points you could use a checklist. After years and years of working on music, I do see correlations between songs that manage to get some kind of success. I won’t dive into the promotion, releasing and anything unrelated to production though because that’s a bit of a rabbit hole which changes every 3-6 months. I can’t follow.

 

In music making, I feel there are 2 types: commercial and artistic.

 

By commercial, I don’t mean it in a derogatory way. I’m basically relating to music that is intended to be pushed for sales. If you make music and want distribution, there are chances the distributor might turn it down if they consider it will not sell enough. This is a norm for P&D (press and distribution) deals, because the distribution is basically covering the costs and will expect a ROI (return on investment). In my book, if you make music with the idea to make sales, it is mostly and clearly commercial (eg. we’re producing it in a sales angle). 

On the other hand, artistic music might be simply digital or released at the expense of the artist, without distribution and there is very little expectation of sales. This kind of music is often a bit more edgy, abstract, risky, not following many rules and has a bigger chance of not being able to be fitting any rules.

 

If we compare that to a restaurant, the commercial one is often knowing what sells and will feature a direction, style with some star dishes that people want each time they visit. The artistic ones would be a restaurant where they change the menu each day and take risks. 

They both need consistency on a number of things: fresh ingredients, recipes being respected, taste being coherent on each serving, temperature, etc.

 

It’s pretty much the same with music as well. There are certain criterias you can follow that will ensure that your songs will always deliver. Sometimes it might not have the same punch but if you cover the basics, you’ll have for sure some coherence.

 

Here are the criterias I have in mind:

 

  • Solid hook, main idea. What makes the reason for a song to exist is that you found a solid idea you want to share a story about. That’s how I see music. If you think of traditional music, people write a story and that will be the main idea. For electronic music, more than often there will be no vocals so the sounds and ideas are your story. Don’t make songs for the sake of it (note: I encourage people to make music for the sake of it though, which is different). Find an idea and build a story about it. It can be a sample, a pattern, a fun sound… There’s no rule here but to find one thing you want to listen for 3-6 minutes and really push forward that idea. 

 

  • Song in key, scale. This might sound weird, especially for people making atonal music or industrial techno who use a chromatic scale, but making sure all your elements are in key will give the song a much more wholeness to it. Not all songs follow one but having a coherent harmony will please many people, especially if in a specific genre, some scales are respected. Optional point here would be chord progression. You don’t always need one but if you have one, make sure that it is solid and coherent. Often when I give feedback to people who are starting in music production, I notice they aren’t respecting this basic point and once they do, they really bring it to another level already.

 

  • Rule of thirds in arrangements. This is a bit of a concept I bring up in feedback where I explain to producers that if they divide their song in 3 sections, they all should have some variation, to give the listener a sense of evolution and to keep the attention. If you understand the listening experience as a challenge of keeping attention, you know you need to bring new ideas, but not too much. The rule of third never fails. If you compose pop or anything needing a structure, keep that in mind as well.

 

  • Flat mix, coloured master. Clients don’t always understand what a good mix is. If you keep your tone flat but work with an engineer that can color it to match similar songs on the market, you’ll most likely always have a solid, enjoyable song that can compete well. Also, a flat mix means that your elements are not too all over the place, which is important.

 

  • Avoid masking, phasing. This is more technical but if you have a busy mix where many elements are used, you’ll most likely end up having a muddy mix. I won’t go into how to fix this in this post and you can google about it but keep in mind that it’s essential to quality.

 

  • Get Feedback. Show it to people you trust and ask for specific feedback. Otherwise people will say its cool. Be technical about what you need from them.

 

  • Get help. I don’t understand why people want to do everything themselves. It’s basically setting you up for average music. You’ll learn yes, but why not become a master at making music you love doing and get a master to help you mix so you get the most of it? It’s like, if you want to make a sandwich but you want to make the bread yourself, mayonnaise from scratch, grow the veggies, make the cheese, etc. Yes you can, but you could also buy the best ingredients possible and have a killer sandwich too.

 

  • Quantity for quality digging. If you see each song as an experiment to learn something new or master a technique, you can speed up your process and make more music. A good way to keep up with quality is to producer many, many songs and then trim down your output to the ones you know are shining. The more you finishing music, the more you’ll develop skills, which make sure the following tracks are better quality. Then when you can pick what you share abroad, to the outside world, they’ll only see quality.

 

If you cover these points, you’ll most likely have something you’ll be proud of and when you share a song, people will know what to expect from you, even if you take risks, creatively wise.

 

Common Beliefs and Misconceptions about Music Production

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Perhaps you’ve been making music for a little while or you’re completely new to it, perhaps on the verge of jumping in this as a new hobby, and you have this overwhelming feeling of being overwhelmed or lost. Let’s be fair, some hobbies are easier than others to start with. Maybe you’ve tried DJing and you saw how fast it is to get into it and then tried producing and found it to be a steep learning curve. Therefore, I thought I’d write about the different challenges people face when they start and the workaround or strategies that I give to students in order to get through the difficult emotions. 

 

Common Beliefs and Misconceptions about Music Production

 

There are so many different misconceptions about our passion that it’s a bit difficult to list them but I’ll try to debunk many ideas that confuse people I work with.

“Electronic music is easy to do” or a variant, “If you have everything you need, then it’s easy to do.”

 

This is honestly the one I debunk on a regular basis. I often also argue with strangers about it and I gathered so much theory. So to start with how easy it is, that’s absolutely not true. I’ve explored making music for 30 years and  there are still times where I’m not totally sure what I’m doing. Also, I learn something new every single day I practice. 

 

Do I need to know everything to make music? No, absolutely not. I’ve been able to make over 20 albums and on some of them, I was just scratching the surface of what production is about. 

 

The idea that it’s easy comes from the idea that compared to someone who grabs a guitar and performs music theory, rhythms and all that is related to music perfectly is harder, that’s something not everyone can do. On the surface, technology has democratically opened music making by making so many tools, software, and hardware that can let many do more than anyone could, 30+ years ago. It doesn’t mean it’s easier.

 

If you want to make a loop and play music, yes, it can be similar to video games and that part is honestly where most of the fun is. Anyone that wants to go deeper will soon feel like that will not be enough and want more.

 

This is where the second variant kicks in, with the idea that you need something else to do that. You’ll also be exposed that you need something from all the ads we are exposed to or if you talk to other producers, they’ll quickly tell you all the things you need… Which is a bit of a trap.

 

I’ve said it many times before, but to do music you basically, at minimum, need one device that can make a sound(mobile phone, tablet, hardware, computer) t and something to listen to (headphones, speakers). That’s really all you need. 

 

When I tell that to people, I often then get the famous “I knew it was easy!” response. 

 

That’s when I drop the bomb. 

 

Oh yeah, it’s easy… You’ll just need to understand the basic theory of sound design, signal flow, music fundamentals, engineering, storytelling, and perhaps also recording too, to name a few. So then again, it’s confusing because as a newcomer, you might be aware of how little you know and this triggers confusion and frustration. 

 

So this is where there’s a paradox. On one hand, everything is there, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll know how to get your way through to achieve what you want to do. 

 

My approach is simple – it’s about convincing  anyone diving into music  to start with little steps. I saw many people wanting to learn how to play piano and some of the first exercises they’ll start with is to get familiar with hands on the notes, play around with scales, and basically just practice going up and down the keys. If you learn piano, this is what you expect to do at first because it’s the basis of playing. 

 

When it comes to electronic music, people are all over the place. They want to make a song, they want to make music like an artist they love, they want to try this and that… So much to do and there’s not much of a methodology anywhere so people try things and it often fails.

 

So, more myths follow.

 

“You make a song by starting from the beginning and then finish it”

 

This one is probably the most damaging of all because it puts people in a workflow that is counterproductive, alienating and just not fun at all. If you are familiar with this blog, you’ll be familiar with my idea that making one song at a time is one of the worst ways to work. So perhaps let’s think about what it means to you to make a song, or what a song is supposed to be.

 

For some, it’s a little story, for others it’s an experiment, or it can be something for a DJ to play. The thing they all have in common is that they have a beginning and an end, plus some ideas that evolve (or not) in the middle. Some songs have one idea, others multiple. But what this means is that each song needs at least one idea. This is where music starts, by finding ideas. That means you can probably listen to music you like and love something in it. Perhaps you want to sample something from an old record or just want to write notes of a melody yourself.

 

I usually stress the importance of finding ideas as one of the main things to do because it’s not hard to do and because it’s fun. The other thing I tell people who start is to spend countless hours in their music software and not have any goals other than to basically test everything with intense curiosity and openness. The more you are goal driven in front of something you don’t understand, the more you might be lost and lose interest. One of the main conditions for finding flow in an activity is to do something that seems doable but a bit challenging while having fun. 

 

Exploring, getting familiar with your software, and doing little experiments is where you start.

 

Here are some little projects you can do if you’re really new to it:

 1- Drag a song or samples you like in your DAW and play with it

chop it, add effects, stretch it, pitch it up or down, destroy it wildly and see what happens. Note what you do and be aware that certain tools bring specific results.

 

 2- Spend time playing 1-2 notes on a keyboard and listen to the results.

This means, test all the synths you have, samplers. Play long or short notes, and see how they behave. Record the notes and try to record the sound, destroy it.

 

3- Be responsive instead of curating.

One of my approaches with music is to pick any sound and have the attitude that if someone paid me $1000 to do a song with this, what would I do?  The problem for many people is that they have access to way too much and they’ll spend the entire studio session searching for a specific sound they’ll never find. This makes you creatively lazy. You’ll learn more working with something crap  than searching for the perfect sound. You might actually learn how to make sounds you love by goofing around.

 

If we agree that ideas make songs and that you like specific ideas, you need to practice playing to gain ease, spontaneity and control in order to eventually make your own ideas. This is why I invite people to play with what they have to become fluent. 

 

So, to sum it up:

 

To make music you don’t need a lot.

There’s a lot to know but you don’t need to know everything to have fun.

If you have fun, you’ll want to spend time exploring.

Remain curious of what you think is useless or too complicated.

Exploration means practice.

Practice brings new ideas. 

Ideas can be turned into songs.

It’s easier to get the most out of a sound than searching for the perfect one.

Simplicity is sophistication.

 

Making music is about having fun. If it doesn’t feel fun, you’re not seeing it from the right angle.

 

Last belief that causes harm:

 

“I have great ideas in my mind but I can’t put them all together in my songs”

 

Anything one has in mind is wonderful but once you try to replicate it, things are never really exactly the same as what you’d expect. In years of making music, I never really was able to translate my inner world to sound. Perhaps if you’re a singer or folk artist, this is easier but in the realm of electronic music, things are completely different. You can have a nice melody idea but you’ll need the right sound. You might have the right sound, but then the melody might not fit. The more you chase something abstract, the less grasp you’ll have on what you actually control.

 

There’s a vast number of elements that can really cloud your judgment and to chase something, always brought me frustration. I sometimes had way more fun working on simplistic ideas than going for a very ambitious project. It doesn’t mean that you have to stop yourself, but it’s important to understand where you stand, technically, and operate with your current skills.

 

Someone was asking, how do I make very long techno tracks like some artists do? My answer was, don’t do that. He was surprised and disappointed. My explanation was that it’s more important that he becomes really good first at doing what he’s doing now. Then you expand and do something a little more challenging once your basis is solid. I explored longer tracks once I managed to make solid 6 minutes ones, then moved to 8, then 10, and then up.

 

Bonus tip here:

 

“My friend told me this software is crap”

 

I could have added a lot of quotes here but my point is that many people will tell you what their experience is, and how they came to some conclusions but in the end, it’s just someone’s perspective. I’m always a bit cautious of people telling me to not do something (especially if I never asked for advice) and will be more curious of people explaining how they managed to do something I like. Many people have self imposed rules that are super weird, not backed by anything technical. Many times I heard some bogus claims that some software wasn’t good enough (FLStudio, for instance is often put down)  or that a plugin isn’t for music, while I know so many people that made amazing ideas with the most ridiculous setup and ressources. It’s not what you use, it’s really what you do with it that matters.

 

Definition Of Done In Music Production

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This seems like a common scenario which involves one’s doubt about the status of their song, mainly to know if it’s done. You may be that person. You’ll be feeling your song is finished, bounce it, listen to it in the car or with friends and then you feel that wave of discomfort overwhelmingly creeping on you because you’re noticing all the mistakes and things that aren’t right. Let me reassure you that you’re not alone and this is more common than you think.

 

The concept of DoD (Definition of Done) is something I borrowed from the Agile process, that is typical of coders dealing with a scrum master, mainly in project management. In Agile, there are sprints where there’s a goal set, then tasks/actions are taken to reach a certain point. They’ll agree that the task is done when a certain number of criteria are met. This could apply to basically any projects possible, from weeding out your garden to cooking a dinner.

In a world that is not from the digital realm, with 1’s and zero’s, the concept of done can be a bit tricky as per the one who sets a DoD, the level of mastery might change. In other words, you might be agreeing that my DoD on a song will be very different from someone’s new to music. And that’s ok.

 

There are a few concepts that we can look into that will help you let go of whatever that inner voice of doubt is whispering you about.

 

A song is never really done

This one hurts, yeah? But I tell you, there will never be a field where uncertainty can hit you the most than music, mainly because things are abstract in the world of sounds. Your main enemy is really yourself and your self-judgment towards what you do will change everyday, sometimes it will completely change within a day itself. You’ll never really know honestly but there are a few things that can help you though. I’m not referring to you to just say to let go of things here. I’m more interested in knowing how much imperfection I can live with and how much a random person will notice. This is where it matters.

There are a number of things we don’t know and there are also a gray area of things we don’t even know that we don’t know of. Your song is in between there and your future self of in 10 years ahead, will have a more compassionate understanding that this song has been done within the technical limitation of that moment. And it’s really ok, trust me. 

 

References will reveal truth

This is where many people fail. You can’t know you’re done if you don’t have a model. So, for instance, you might cook a pizza but honestly, if you never ate one (I would pity you!), it’s sort of hard to compare it with anything. I had some of the best pizza of my life in New York and that taste was forged as my favorite. Whenever I have a pizza now, from the airport to a little restaurant, my mind compares it to that one I had in NY. It’s the same with sound. When I do mastering or mixing, I have models of other projects and know exactly how I want it to sound like.

So for arrangements, what’s easy is to simply load up a song in Ableton or your DAW and just use it as a cookie cutter. I encourage people to do critical listening, counting how many sounds they hear in the reference and compare it to theirs. So many times, people have way too much happening or maybe, there’s one less – and that helps much. Same for levels, in the mix.

But I want to sound like myself… I hear you say. Well, sure, you’ll get there but you need to get your skills of finishing songs to be solid first.

Again, most of the time someone feels they can’t tell if they’re done or not, I’ll first ask “compared to what?” Mostly because if we’re not comparing it with anything, we just feel arbitrary in the decision and this is why you’ll feel like a yes or nay, depending on your mood and insecurity level.

 

Lastly, be careful about comparing yourself to a master file. You might be setting yourself up for failure if you are comparing yourself to a song that has been made by a musician that has more experience than you, that has released a lot of music and also, if the song is mastered and yours is not, well, it will not be even. Checking for volumes (eg. snare vs kick), as well as other details is more of a fair fight.

 

Feedback, ask for it

There are multiple ways to ask for feedback and many places to do it as well. You can get some for free in my facebook group (when I’m free) or through my Patreon program. You can ask other producers, even if they’re not that experienced but be sure they listen to it in the right mind set, or context (some listen on their phones, no!).

 

Take pauses and distance

This has been said many times on this blog but studio sessions beyond an hour long are a road to trick yourself about whatever you’re doing. You might think it’s amazing or shit, perhaps it’s neither because your judgment, honestly, quits after 1h of work. It’s called decision-fatigue and you might have experienced it already.

 

I make sessions of 1h max, but preferably about 20 minutes at a time, with pauses. I let my songs sleep for weeks or months. When I reopen them, I want to have forgot about them enough to be able to feel I’m listening to someone else’s song and we all know how good of a critique we are when it’s not our own. I create projects and often rework them 3-4 years later. It’s really fun and eventually when you create these sessions, you’ll have a bunch and will always rediscover sleeping bombs.

 

When I make a really good idea and feel it would be really good, I usually stop right there and WON’T WORK ON IT! I will let it sleep for months. Mostly because what I think is an amazing idea might not be one and if it is, I want my future self to handle it. Between now and then, i will have thought about it, cumulated new ideas, gained new plugins and experience so that when I open that sleeping gem, I have all the goods to turn it into what I want. Sometimes I am working on a great song and might be missing something so I could also grab that idea and bring it into a almost finished bomb, which is for sure going to be beyong what I expected.

 

Decide when you feel good

This one might be confusing or so obvious you might feel caught off guard. Think of the last time you saw one of your friends in their facebook feed saying they quit their DJ career or something they like… well, they’re basically taking a decision when feeling bad. If you decide to quit, you’ve been accumulating frustration. This is the same about your projects. Like the previous suggestion suggested, taking pauses and waiting before making a decision is quite healthy and let’s you wait for when you feel actually good about your song. Especially if you feel like half of the time you listen to it, it’s shit. When in doubt most of the time, pauses are crucial. If you’re 90% of the time feeling something needs a correction, then do it.

How to set your DoD:

Now that we have covered strategies to find out if your song is done, let’s look into setting your own Definition of Done.

 

1- Pick a reference (or a few), as discussed previously. This is to set the tone, aesthetic, direction. Decide and commit to what this song will be (a ballad? Ambient drone? Dance floor bomb?) then find something you know is solid as your cookie cutter. You’ll refer to that.

 

2- Analyze your reference and know what are the minimum requirements. Understand in advance what you can’t do from that one and what you can control. Ask for help, check tutorials and do as much as you can.

 

3- Decide in advance what you will do and what you can’t. If you know yourself and parts where things are a bit more difficult, you can always ask for help. There’s this misconception that one should be able to do everything themselves but this is counter-productive. Do you want to be average at all the different sides of production? You ideally want to be having fun first and get better but you can also ask for help: friends, other producers, myself.

 

4- Give yourself a plan. You can set yourself a deadline but also zones of no actions to be taken as well. 

 

5- Define some points of what would be some targets of done. This can be a scope of how much mix you want to do (ex. I will spend 2h max in the mix). Or “I want my drums to be very punchy” as something to reach. Perhaps your song will never be as punchy as what you dream but when you ask for feedback to someone who has never heard it, you can ask if they think it sounds punchy. Asking general and vague feedback will bring vague answers.

 

6- Test in context. Play your track in a DJ mix or ask a DJ friend to play it. See what happens, how it sounds compared to other tracks. This alone can reveal many flaws and strengths. I also like to bring a reference in my DAW and play my song with another one, mix them so it is not a mess, so I can see with the arrangements if it works.

 

Conclusion

This approach has proven many times with clients that it works. The more prepared you are, the better. Do you need to always do that? No. I mostly do it when I have periods where I struggle with inspiration or when I’m booked for a bigger contract. But it’s good to put it in practice here and there so that when you’re faced with challenges, you don’t start this with no warnings. It could actually backfire.

 

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Are Albums Still Relevant?

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Are albums still relevant? Ok, that’s kind of a loaded question, because yes, I think they still are. There’s been a trend in the last four years, where people are saying that “the concept of the album is dead, no one listens to albums, blah blah blah blah blah.” I hear this all a lot. If you look at the current trends, it makes sense: you look on Spotify and a lot of people release EPs and singles because it’s the surest way to game the algorithm to get plays.

However, the concept of singles and EPs bores me to death. Like, I hate it. When I see a song, I’m like, “Oh, I want to hear the album it’s coming from.” So I go and check and quite often, it’s a single. This turns me off so much that sometimes I get angry. It’s like the artists have lost their balls, for lack of a better term. It’s like they’re being dictated by the capitalist system that says that putting out singles is the most efficient way to market their art. I think that’s a problem because artistry and capitalism rarely go hand in hand. When I see a single, all I can think is, “Where’s your artistry? Where is your vision? Where’s your soul? Is that all you have to say?”

To me, I find that albums are narrative. When I go watch a movie like Doom, or Star Wars, it pisses me off a little bit because there is no climax, instead, they hold you in suspense for years waiting for the next flick. Personally, I would rather see a movie that is five hours long instead of three movies. This is why I love series where they release all the episodes at once, like on Netflix. I know that it’s long enough that I’m going to become invested in the characters, and by the end of it, I will feel like I lost friends, and have experienced something.

To me an album, especially long albums that are an hour long at least, I find that it’s like a window to the artist’s studio. I feel like I’m peeking into the studio and I’m hearing the music he’s been working on in the last six months or year. Sometimes you listen to the songs and you feel like the artists went through different life-changing experiences, or experienced inspiration from a certain artist, and then they came up with an artistic response to their influences like they’re trying to make a statement within a specific culture.

I find that as artists and musicians nowadays we need to step up, and we need to be assertive in the way we expose ourselves in the music. If that means that we’re going to have an album with only two solid songs, where the other ones are experiments, then so be it. There’s a certain romanticism with an album where you’re relieving the artist of the pressure of coming out with the best side of himself for singles every time.

Additionally, with albums, I like the fact that you can sit with an album and you can listen to it on shuffle and have a different story each time. Sometimes I’ll do this for a week straight and marinate in someone’s creative potential. 

Another thing that I love is when an artist has multiple albums, and sometimes you listen to one and you’re like, “Wow, this sounds completely different, but I see a relation to the previous one.” It’s nice to see the evolution between the two. 

I like listening to albums, because I want to hear the music you did in December, for instance, even if it’s not perfect. I love that. That’s why when I make an album I typically make it in a day or two, in order to collect the thoughts that I was having at that moment and time. 

Typically, I never spend more than an hour and a half on a song, which a lot of people think is crazy. When people ask how I write an album so fast, my response is pretty straightforward – I have an efficient workflow. Now, that doesn’t mean that I only work on music for hour and a half increments. The work goes in beforehand, making sure that I have all the elements that I need to create an effective mood board.

Since I spend time getting all my samples and sounds in order when I make a song, I know exactly what I want, and I add the stuff around it from my template. And then I continue what I did in the previous one, and once I’ve finished that one, I open the third one, and so on and so forth. Then by the end of the day, I have a ton of new songs.

Some people will ask me, “How do you jam if you don’t have a bunch of gear – it’s a pain to MIDI map everything every time.” Well, if you’re using Ableton, it’s called Ableton Live for a reason. Use the session view, and start clicking clips you have loaded – you don’t need anything fancy.

I also have another student who just sings into an audio clip and then converts that into MIDI using the option in Ableton. It wouldn’t translate perfectly, but that was part of the fun of it all – it created restrictions.

Also remember, you don’t have to finish a song in one go – you can work on multiple songs at the same time. When you’re feeling stuck on one, just start another one, or open a previous project from that thought.

Another key to making albums quickly is to make it a habit. Prince was recording a few tracks a day, and now there’s a library of music in his vault. Ricardo Villalobos is the same way – he typically doesn’t spend more than a day on his songs. He just jams. A big part of this motivation comes from success, however, in order to be successful in this day and age you have to break through the noise, and releasing a ton of stuff is a good way to do that. Success, just like output is a grind, never forget that, but with it comes a lot of personal satisfaction.

Thoughts On “Average” Ideas

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What stops a lot of people from making music is chasing the perfect ideas. Often people think they need to make something groundbreaking for it to be worth working on. This is not true. There are plenty of songs that artists thought were mediocre, which ended up being hits for them. A good example of this is Deadmau5, who thought that his hit, “Strobe,” would only work as a B-Side. Turns out, it’s one of his most famous songs.

If you have a process and know how to create a mood board, it’s possible to turn average songs into great songs, or average songs into songs that people will appreciate for other reasons. That said, this post will be about the importance of working on average ideas.

 

Work On Things for the Sake of Working On Them

Sometimes the greatest surprises in music come from making it in the dark, oblivious if it’s going to be good or not. These moments involve tinkering away, creating loops, pulling sounds out of our sample bank, and fiddling around on synths just for the heck of it. However, sometimes we work on this for hours, don’t see any potential in it, and perhaps get frustrated. For instance, right now, I’m working on a new live techno set, and nothing sounds very inspiring to me. However, I realize that if I keep on working on it, and go through my checklist and process, eventually something interesting will happen. I understand that while it might not be the best composition, it could be a B-Side, which comes with its own set of benefits, which I’ll cover later in the article.

 

The Process

First, let’s cover going through my checklist and process. The first step in my process is what I call a “non-linear production.” Nonlinear production is a way of working where at first you, you sum up ideas, and you pile up a bunch of sounds that you like into the live view, instead of the arrangement. This allows you to essentially build a mood board of sounds that you can pull from and jam with. To build this, I force myself to record anything that just comes out, literally anything and everything. Then, I start activating and deactivating clips and see what happens. Quite often from doing this, I come up with way more than loops – I come up with entire phrases that become entire parts of the composition. And since I’m making techno, it’s loop-based and follows a predictable pattern, so things kind of just start happening.

Before I continue, I have a caveat:  I never go to the studio with an aim to average music. People who insinuate that I do this after saying they should work on average music, are kind of insulting. I’m always trying to make something good. 

However, I’m only human, and sometimes I have average ideas that I decide to work around and see what happens. Sometimes something fun happens, which allows me to make a ghost arrangement by going through my checklist. One part of my checklist is adding a groovy bassline. That’s fundamental to many of my tracks. Next, I figure out if it’s appropriate to respond to that call with a similar arrangement. For instance, does a lead respond well to the bassline?

Once I figure out that basic part of the structure, I think, “Can I make a complementary element, like a background sound?” So I start going through my mood board and picking out sounds that I think will fit nicely in the background – this could be noise, foley sounds, or even texture to add to the instrumentation. 

Next, I start building outwards, since normally what I do in the sketch ends up being the middle part of the arrangement. So I add an outro and an intro. Once these are done, I start thinking of all of the ear candy elements – the bells and whistles. This usually includes an oddball element that makes the song crazy and unusual. Then once I get all these elements together, sometimes something that is average, can be pretty cool.

 

Time Heals All Wounds

So what happens when you do all of this, and somehow everything is kind of “meh?” Easy. Just chill for a minute. Quite often, students will record something that they think is mediocre at the moment, but when viewed in a different mindset, that changes. What you thought was boring a while ago, could sound exciting now, or at the very least, feel worth working on.

Perception will always be the enemy of progress. We all have to remember that some music sounds good at some points in time, and at others, it doesn’t. Also, sometimes you have a sound that you don’t particularly like in the context that it’s in, but when paired with another sketch, it could take on a life of its own. Or it could just be average, and that’s ok! As I said before, the average to you might be awesome to another listener.

 

The Benefits of B-Sides

The thing is ordinary tracks, in my opinion, stand the test of time longer than complicated arrangements. When I do mastering, many of the ideas I love are not that original, or groundbreaking – instead, they are efficient because they cover all the elements of a song that I find important. The over-the-top stuff? Not so much. Perhaps some Chemical Brothers or Plastikman compositions, but overall, no – at least in my opinion.

B-Sides are often some of the best music out there, especially from a DJ’s perspective. They’re typically functional and filled with fewer frills than the main single. This allows for them to be easily mixed and used as a tool, allowing for DJs to create unique moments on the fly during their sets. Due to this, they might not get as many streams on places like Spotify, but they could perform better on places like Beatport or Traxsource.

Once again, I have to mention the Deadmau5 “Strobe” situation. He thought it would be a B-side, submitted it as a B-side to the label, and it became one of his biggest songs. What you think is a B-Side could be your main track.

 

Turning the Ordinary, Experimental

One thing that people forget is that sometimes it’s also good to make experimental music out of ordinary music. Remember that average idea that you had before? You can make it extraordinary with some simple tricks. First, build a long chain of effects on one of your return channels. Then take channels and start sending them to the return. By doing this, you can end up with some really weird syncopated patterns and textures far removed from what you originally made. You can either leave these textures throughout the whole thing or use them for some surprise moments to throw the listener off guard.  For instance, I recently went to see Chaos in the CBD and one of the strongest moments of their live set was right in the middle of the set where they had this wild, all over the place, sonic meltdown from an edit of a 90’s song. I thought it was brilliant because they took something old and made it new again – something that I touched on in the Murakami post. 

 

Make Music For Yourself

So many people are concerned about making music for other people, whether that is a DJ or a label. However, most great music comes from people just making it for themselves. When you make music for a DJ or a label, often, you might find yourself trying to read their mind and overanalyzing their intentions. This results in label owners complaining that all the tracks they get sound exactly the same. While this is a product of their own doing, as they often only sign tracks that fit their meta, at the same time, they aren’t wrong. Memorable producers don’t try to imitate. Instead, they create something that others try to imitate. And in order to create something unique, it has to come from a place of genuineness. And sometimes, if you’re just sketching out ideas, forming a mood board, and working on some songs that don’t quite fit into a paradigm, this is where some truly fascinating stuff happens. 

 

Greatness is the Sum of Averages

In other words, don’t worry about average – just start making stuff. After all, if you are trying to get noticed, algorithms favor frequency, so keep on putting things out. Most will miss, but if you keep doing it, occasionally, you may have a hit.

How To Use Hooks To Finish Songs

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I understand that many artists build a loop and then they expand outwards from there in order to build a track. However, quite often, this results in them getting lost, because they have no vision of where it is going. They hear their loop and think, “Wow this is really cool; I could listen to this for hours.” Then after listening to it for hours they realize they have no direction in where to go with it. 

Sure, there are plenty of people who can create a loop and then build outwards from it, but one thing I notice in coaching is that this is often not the case. Some people can’t finish songs because they have no vision for the finished product. Contrasting, some people can’t finish songs because they have too much of a vision and want to throw it into a template of theirs. Problem is, fresh songs don’t fit a defined template.

Therefore, there has to be a delicate line between planning and instinct. That’s when songs come together with ease.

The Hook Is Your Song

Someone who is excellent at this is production mogul Timbaland. If you’re not familiar he’s done tracks with Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, J Cole, Missy Elliot, and dozens more pop stars. 

Yeah, yeah, a pop artist, but if you have an open mind about music, you’ll realize that writing pop music is difficult. What’s especially difficult is to continuously write pop songs that top the charts, like Timbaland. There are only a few people on the entire planet who have this skill, so that’s to be respected. 

I was recently watching production tutorials of Timbaland’s and one thing that he harps on is that all great songs start with the hook. Sure, it might take a while to get that hook, but he recognizes that it’s the hook that people remember from music. Not the percussio, not even the verses, but the hook. If you don’t know what a hook is, think “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder. What’s the only part of that song that you remember? Yeah, that part. That’s the hook. 

Other good examples include Niel Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”, or Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.”

Making Non-Pop Hooks

But you may be asking me, “but Pheek, you make avant-garde dance music, and most of your students are avant-garde dance music artists. How on Earth do I take influence from pop hooks?” Well, a hook can be loosely defined. Let’s take Aphex Twin’s “Alberto Balsam.” In a lot of ways, that song kind of follows the “only-hooks” format that producers like Max Martin evangelize, where every phrase is a hook, in a way. Almost every phrase has some sort of memorable element, but in that way, it makes the hook less defined. If there was a hook, it would probably be when the synth first comes in and continues throughout the song in one way.

The key to that “Alberto Balsam” hook is that it readily defines the rest of the song. The moment that comes in, whether it’s a rock band covering it, or it coming on your playlist (because God forbid you’ll probably never see RDJ play it live), you know that it’s “Alberto Balsam.”

This example is easy because it’s prevalent over the entire thing and everything else is essentially a jam over top of it. And that’s all you have to do, in a lot of cases, is just jam over the hook, and you will come out with something memorable.

Hook Modifiers

But before you write your hook, it’s good to think about what sort of emotional direction you want to go in, because ultimately, the hook will define this direction. For instance, do you want your song to be uplifting? Then you have to build tension and release. Perhaps even a triumphant key, like D Major. 

If you want it to be emotionally releasing, then you need to change keys, perhaps from major to minor. It’s often these “hook modifiers” that make a song special.

If you want to raise the intensity of the song, then you can increase the density in the song – with delay, reverb, another layer of percussion. It can be done with velocity or volume.

However, in club music, at some point, someone invented “the breakdown” to raise the intensity of the song, and now we’re doomed because 95 percent of electronic songs have them. There doesn’t have to be breakdowns. Instead, we can have events, which can be to confuse people, change their emotions, or whatever, really. 

In a song, I heard Timbaland ask Siri a question. Yes, corny, but it interrupted the song and took people off guard enough for when the hook came back in, it was fresh again. In dance music, it could be a weird sample or field recording; it could be an awkward silence.

Build Everything Around The Hook

Going back to “Alberto Balsam” you will notice that the hook is prevalent over the entire thing. From there on out, the rest of the song materialized around it. If this was your song, all you have to do is add percussion, take away percussion, add verses. There aren’t a ton of timbres in this song but each one works because it sits overtop the hook. See what I mean that all great songs start with the hook, now?

Make Something New

Perhaps, one day, you will create a transition that becomes the new breakdown, where people start copying your hook modifier. Because ultimately, that’s what it is nowadays: follow the leader. One only has to look at the Beatport Charts to see how all the waveforms look the same: but at some point, there was a waveform that looked different and topped the charts.

However, if you think about songs as just memorable elements and hook modifiers that jar the listener out of their trance, then you may be able to create something that is lasting and memorable. So next time you decide “this part needs a breakdown” think, “can I do something different instead?” Because the goal is to give people something different so that the familiar becomes fresh again – and there are more ways to do this than taking the drums away and reintroducing them. 

 

The Problem With “Good” Music

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Here’s the problem with good music – it’s subjective. One person’s idea of a “good” song is certainly different from someone else’s unless they come from a similar cultural background. And even with a shared cultural background, people still differ between what they think is good and what isn’t. This is similar to people calling music “interesting.” 

The term interesting is subjective as well. What is interesting to me might not be interesting to you. For instance, I could enjoy a technical aspect of a song that someone who doesn’t understand that technical aspect might not care about.

Art Is Often Philosophical

The foundation for this article all started with a client of mine who came to me and asked if I could make his song interesting, which perplexed me, since as I said before, what’s interesting to me might not be interesting to someone else. This led to a debate about if it’s really the mandate of the artist to be interesting. Is it the artist’s fault if the music isn’t “interesting” enough? After all, music is subjective.

For instance, some people absolutely hate the music that’s on the radio, but if you’ve ever run a club, you know that it’s your Top 40 nights that are going to make you the most money. It’s reasonable to assume, that to the patrons, there is something about the music that makes it “interesting,” or else they probably wouldn’t be there. Sure, it might not be the music itself, but it could be the purpose… the intention.

I got the sense that my client doesn’t appreciate philosophical debates as I do, so they may have just been annoyed. But that’s what had me thinking about this article, because when people come to me and ask for me to make their track “interesting,” or “good,” I would like to have a reference to show them to help them describe what they really mean. So that’s what this article is about – giving people the tools to objectify something that is inherently subjective.

 

“Interesting” Is Intentional

Instead of interesting, it’s best to describe a context and/or an emotion that goes with it. Maybe you want the song to be exciting, emotional, tense, or have a narrative flow. Perhaps you imagine it in a soundtrack to a movie, or you want it played in a club. These will have different technical and compositional elements, which segment into their own specific terms.

For instance, if you want a song played in a club, that’s going to require more compression, and often more density so that it can keep up with the loudness of all the tracks it’s mixed with. However, if you want it to be in a soundtrack, it will be more transparent, and use frequencies that don’t clash with whatever it’s being overlaid with, whether that’s dialog, or foley sounds in the film, etc.

Also, the length of the song will matter. If someone comes to me and say, “I want a radio-friendly song” and they give me an 8-minute song, we have to figure out how to isolate 5 minutes of it for a radio version. We may even have to add other compositional elements to so that there is a congruity to the song when we reduce it that significantly.

Nowadays, whether we like it or not, social media runs everything around us. There are tons of DJs who get gigs because they have a great social presence, rather than artistic output. That means, in order to compete, many artists who do have a sizable artistic output still have to do stuff for Instagram, or TikTok. And if it’s good for TikTok it might not be good for Spotify. I was reading an article about making music that grabs attention in the first 4 seconds, and if they don’t do that, then it will fail on places like Instagram Reels and Tiktok. Once again, these are things I need to know in order to make it “interesting” for those contexts. 

 

The Axis Of “Interesting” Music

The aforementioned thoughts are best explained by an axis, I think. This axis is pretty arbitrary, as it’s my own personal one, but I think it does a good job illustrating the intention of music in general.

The axis is a pie chart of purpose, emotion, and technicality. Then somewhere surrounding that pie chart is distribution. 

When all of the elements are congruent, then magic happens. If they are off-kilter, there is a good chance it won’t sound right.

Purpose is the context: is it meant for the club, is it meant for at-home listening, is it meant for a movie, etc? Emotion is the existential part of it; it’s the part that makes it feel human. If it’s too emotional, then it may not develop, or it may seem campy, or annoying. Technicality is the musicianship and the engineering on it. While you want it to be technically sound, if it’s too technical, like a Dream Theater album, then it might sound emotionless, or pretentious. However, if there is too little technicality, then it might sound sloppy. Having a balance of these to fit your goal is the key. 

Sometimes songs are “purposely” untechnical. These are the songs that might sound kind of jangly or have poor mixing, but you can tell, based on the style of music, that this may have been intentional. Take “lofi” music for instance – it’s purposely mixed weird.

Or sometimes, things are purposely overly emotional in order to illustrate a point. Maybe it’s part of a skit for a campy comedy/parody about romance or something of the sort. That is bound to need an overly emotional track. 

However, what all of these examples have is a purpose, which grounds them.

Distribution is the final part. Is it going to be on vinyl, or is it made for TikTok? If it’s on vinyl, then certain mastering will be required. Also, you will need to consider the length of the songs as it has to fit on the grooves. 

If it’s TikTok, as I mentioned earlier, you have to grab their attention in 4 seconds, or else it won’t carry on the algorithm properly.

 

Attention Matters

Right now, one of my projects is to create a 12-hour long ambient album. Do I expect it to be intently listened to? No, it’s background music that sets the mood. 

The idea came from these playlists, or stations, that I leave playing for an entire day because it’s a presence that isn’t actively listened to. It’s more an atmosphere rather than for attention. 

There are different levels of attention: passive (background), attentive (stopping what they do to listen with care), critical (either people who are trained with music theory/engineering listening for flaws). It’s up to the artist to set that intention.

 

What Is Your Intention?

A label once asked me for “good music” and I was like that doesn’t make any sense – I don’t go into the studio thinking I’m going to make “bad music.” I try to make something that is meaningful – that’s all

At the end of the day, the question is: what are you chasing? Are you chasing appreciation, artistic integrity, or attention? You can’t have all three, because you can’t please everyone. But does that really matter?

Murakami’s Writing Lessons Applied To Music

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Recently I read this article about one of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami. This article wasn’t so much about him as it was about his lessons for being a good writer. While reading this, it dawned on me that his lessons can be applied to writing music as well, and figured I should write an article on this perspective.

If you’re not familiar with Murakami, he creates surreal stories that invoke a sense of wonder and deep connection to the main character and their psychology. They’re easy to read, divided into clear, conscience paragraphs that leave plenty of space for the reader to get lost in his vivid metaphors and similes. These words often transport you into the narrative and have the opportunity to rattle you in ways you never expected, not unlike a song. 

So without further ado, here are my interpretations of Murakami’s advice for good writing, as it applies to music.

 

Read

“I think the first task for the aspiring novelist is to read tons of novels. Sorry to start with such a commonplace observation, but no training is more crucial. To write a novel, you must first understand at a physical level how one is put together . . . It is especially important to plow through as many novels as you can while you are still young. Everything you can get your hands on—great novels, not-so-great novels, crappy novels, it doesn’t matter (at all!) as long as you keep reading. Absorb as many stories as you physically can. Introduce yourself to lots of great writing. To lots of mediocre writing too. This is your most important task.” 

–from Murakami’s 2015 essay “So What Shall I Write About?,” tr. Ted Goossen

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Just substitute reading for listening. By listening to a ton of music, good and bad, you open your mind up to new patterns and perspectives. You get an idea of what sounds good to you, and what doesn’t. At a certain point, you may be able to ascertain aspects of mediocre songs that you find appealing, as well as aspects of good songs that you find unappealing, and apply that to your own skillset. It’s only by listening to tons of different songs that you will find your own sound.

Also, don’t only listen to songs within your genre. Listen to all sorts of music, especially music that is outside of the periphery of electronic music, such as folk, classical, and even country. There is perspective in everything, and more perspectives allow for a richer understanding of music.

 

the old words and make them new again.

“One of my all-time favorite jazz pianists is Thelonious Monk. Once, when someone asked him how he managed to get a certain special sound out of the piano, Monk pointed to the keyboard and said: “It can’t be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean!”

I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, “It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.” I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them.”

–from Murakami’s 2007 essay “Jazz Messenger“

It’s interesting because he uses a composition metaphor to explain writing while I am trying to use writing metaphors to explain composition. What Thelonius Monk said is spot on. There are only so many notes and those notes have always existed and will continue to exist. What you have to do is put them in new contexts. In electronic music, this often means timbral ones. We are allotted more tools than ever before to shape and design sound; way more than Monk probably could have imagined during his storied career as a jazz pianist. Using an acid bassline that’s in C minor isn’t really a new timbre for the context, but taking an acid bassline and putting it in a Thelonius Monk song, now that’s making the old new. 

 

Explain yourself clearly.

“[When I write,] I get some images and I connect one piece to another. That’s the story line. Then I explain the story line to the reader. You should be very kind when you explain something. If you think, It’s okay; I know that, it’s a very arrogant thing. Easy words and good metaphors; good allegory. So that’s what I do. I explain very carefully and clearly.”

–in a 2004 interview with John Wray for The Paris Review

What I appreciate from his explanation is the accent on clarity which is also crucial in arrangements. You need to have an idea that is understandable and accessible so the listener feels intelligent because he got it. By balancing the complexity and accessibility of the motif, you can extend the listener’s attention to the song. Too complex and the person feels lost, too simple and ther listener is bored. That’s what he relates as good metaphors and allegory, as in, something parallel to explain an idea, which is the same thing in music. 

The images and scenes you create need to be clearly understood by your audience. For instance, there are certain moments in a song, such as the chorus. How do you connect the chorus with the pre-chorus?  You can be very smooth if you use a transitional element too to ease it. If you don’t have this element, it might be too abrupt and jar the listener (unless this is what you’re trying to do). 

 

Share your dreams.

“Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something.”

–from Murakami’s 2011 acceptance speech for the Catalunya International Prize

Dreaming is a full-time thing for musicians as well. We often dream about what other people think of our music, whether that’s a crowd, a label, or a friend. Those thoughts you have about your music in the context that makes you happiest are powerful motivators when it comes to finishing songs.  

Many times this means realising your music, whether that’s just to your friends, or a full-scale distribution plan. It’s a lot of work to finish and release a song, but in general it’s a lot of work to manifest a dream into reality. 

Another form of dreaming is the act of composing songs in your head. As a musician, you’re probably always bombarded with clips and snippets of songs that may or may not be original. It’s sometimes hard to capture these ideas, but if you can focus, you may be able to harness one of these ideas for a future composition. However, there are also easier ways of capturing these daydreams. if it’s a melody, hum or whistle it into your phone. Drum patterns can even be finger tapped out and then exported to Ableton where they can be converted into MIDI.

 

Write to find out.

“I myself, as I’m writing, don’t know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don’t know the conclusion at all and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don’t know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there’s no purpose to writing the story.”

–in a 2004 interview with John Wray for The Paris Review

If you already know exactly how a song is going to turn out, then what’s the excitement in composing it? We’ve all been there where we aim to do something, and then it turns out to be completely different in exciting ways we never could have imagined. That’s because, in a lot of ways, song writing is about piecing together ideas that manifest themselves out of creative motivation, rather than dedicated intention.

A great way to harness this unpredictability is to jam. Instead of drawing everything in a grid and using loops, try playing those out using some sort of reactive tactile motion, like playing a keyboard, drum pattern, or even live programming a sequencer. The spontaneity of live performance and the “accidents” that come as a result are rarely something your conscious mind can replicate. 

 

Repetition helps.

“When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long—six months to a year—requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.”

–in a 2004 interview with John Wray for The Paris Review

By repetition, Murakami means having unwavering habits. However, I would like to add something to that. By having scheduled habits, you are also creating a moment where you are the most fresh. I find that there is only one time per day where I have that initial creative plasticity that allows ideas to flow from me unencumbered by other thoughts or distractions. That’s why I make sure to dedicate out a block of time for music, and then once I’m done, I’m done for the day, because I know that anything else made outside of that pre-planned time won’t have the same impact.


Hoard stuff to put in your novel.

“Remember that scene in Steven Spielberg’s film E.T. where E.T. assembles a transmitting device from the junk he pulls out of his garage? There’s an umbrella, a floor lamp, pots and pans, a record player─it’s been a long time since I saw the movie, so I can’t recall everything, but he manages to throw all those household items together in such a way that the contraption works well enough to communicate with his home planet thousands of light years away. I got a big kick out of that scene when I saw it in a movie theater, but it strikes me now that putting together a good novel is much the same thing. The key component is not the quality of the materials─what’s needed is magic. If that magic is present, the most basic daily matters and the plainest language can be turned into a device of surprising sophistication.”

First and foremost, though, is what’s packed away in your garage. Magic can’t work if your garage is empty. You’ve got to stash away a lot of junk to use if and when E.T. comes calling!

–from Murakami’s 2015 essay “So What Shall I Write About?,”

Everything in your life should be captured as a source of inspiration, because you never know when you’re going to need it. Obviously it’s impossible to grab everything, but make a conscious decision to know how to locate things. In music this can be sounds, samples, field recordings, snippets from movies, anything. They can be the most mundane of things. Just as Muramaki said in his essay, it’s not about the quality of the components, it’s about the magic that is applied to them.

For instance, some songs are extremely simple. However, that doesn’t matter, because there is magic in them. It’s hard to say exactly how to create magic, but usually what makes a song gel together and feel magical is the right balance of different factors like technicality, emotion, and timing. There are songs that are very technical but have no emotion, and the magic is difficult to happen because there is no balance. But when you have enough of the two – the emotion vs the technical part – you have this sort of familiarity and humanity to it. The familiarity comes from the technical side, where you know that it’s going to sound correct, because it’s composed fluidly. Then the emotion is the human side; the unpredictable side that makes music fresh and interesting. 

 

Focus on one thing at a time.

“If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist [after talent], that’s easy too: focus—the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that you can’t accomplish anything of value, while, if you can focus effectively, you’ll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it. . . Even a novelist who has a lot of talent and a mind full of great new ideas probably can’t write a thing if, for instance, he’s suffering a lot of pain from a cavity.”

–from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“Although I compose essays as well as works of fiction, unless circumstances dictate otherwise, I avoid working on anything else when I am writing a novel . . . Of course, there is no rule that says that the same material can’t be used in an essay and a story, but I have found that doubling up like that somehow weakens my fiction.”

–from Murakami’s 2015 essay “So What Shall I Write About?,” tr. Ted Goossen

If you’re always looking for something to fix, or improve on, rather than concentrating on one aspect of a song at a time, you can get lost and scattered. When starting to work, set an intention. For example, focus only on the percussion for this section, or better yet, focus only on the syncopated aspects of percussion. Or if you start doing sound design in your session, focus on that, rather than figuring out how it will fit in the arrangement. Then when you’re finally ready to arrange, direct your focus there. In short, have an intention.

 

Cultivate endurance.

“After focus, the next most important thing for a novelist is, hands down, endurance. If you concentrate on writing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this, you’re not going to be able to write a long work. What’s needed for a writer of fiction—at least one who hopes to write a novel—is the energy to focus every day for half a year, or a year, or two years. You can compare it to breathing.”

–from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

In order to be able to focus on one aspect of a song, you must be able to endure the dedication to takes to do such a thing. If you’re only able to concentrate for an hour or two at a time, you’re going to have a heck of a time trying to create anything meaningful. At first, you’re going to feel tired after a few hours a day, 7 days a week. But eventually, by making this habit, it’s going to be just as Muramaki says, “like breathing.” You’re going to have to get to a point where you are doing it every day, for long stretches of time, sometimes up to a couple of years to create your most meaningful work. However, just like an athlete trains in the off season, when you’re done with your work, you must keep training, to keep your stamina at a certain baseline.

Experiment with language.

“It is the inherent right of all writers to experiment with the possibilities of language in every way they can imagine—without that adventurous spirit, nothing new can ever be born.”

–from “The Birth of My Kitchen Table Fiction,”

It’s easy to compose the same thing over and over again once you have a template. However, people may get bored with this palate because everything is just more of the same. If you feel like you’re stagnating, or you are getting feedback from your audience that it’s more of the same, trying changing up keys, and scales. Harmonics are the language of music. Changing them will create something unexpectedly new, even if you use the same tones and tempo. Some may be concerned about alienating their crowd if they change their language too much, but if you keep similar timbres, if they are fans, they’ll hear you within it and usually will be pleasantly surprised.

Have confidence.

“The most important thing is confidence. You have to believe you have the ability to tell the story, to strike the vein of water, to make the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Without that confidence, you can’t go anywhere. It’s like boxing. Once you climb into the ring, you can’t back out. You have to fight until the match is over.”

–from a 1992 lecture at Berkeley, as transcribed in Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, Jay Rubin


Trust what you’re doing. Some people can spend too much time on little things like their kick, or clap because they keep on second guesing themselves, due to a lack of confidence. If you start second guessing yourself, sometimes it’s best to just take a break from it and come back. Trust what you know you have the ability to do at that moment, and know your limitations. Just know that you may be able to exceed your limitations with the right dose of practice and confidence. That’s how we improve. But first, it takes trust in yourself and knowing what you are capable of.

 

Write on the side of the egg.

“[This] is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

‘Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.’

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?”

–from Murakami’s 2009 Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech

Sometimes we create something that we fear might be too abstract or might even sound incorrect, despite enjoying it. This is the egg – a fragile, messy, yet critical part of life, whether that’s as it’s function as an incubator for life, or as food. If you create an egg, and it seems to fit, yet you still feel a sense of controversy, keep it. These are often the indescribable factors that make people remember songs. You just have to rely on the listener to decode it. 

 

Observe your world.

“Reflect on what you see. Remember, though, that to reflect is not to rush to determine the rights and wrongs or merits and demerits of what and whom you are observing. Try to consciously refrain from value judgments—don’t rush to conclusions. What’s important is not arriving at clear conclusions but retaining the specifics of a certain situation . . . I strive to retain as complete an image as possible of the scene I have observed, the person I have met, the experience I have undergone, regarding it as a singular ‘sample,’ a kind of test case as it were. I can go back and look at it again later, when my feelings have settled down and there is less urgency, this time inspecting it from a variety of angles. Finally, if and when it seems called for, I can draw my own conclusions.”

–from Murakami’s 2015 essay “So What Shall I Write About?,” tr. Ted Goossen

 

If you judge something as being an absolute truth then you’re going to be disappointed. There is no objective right and wrong, especially in art. Everything is subjective, and the “rules” created are put in place by societal norms, rather than a cosmic order. Sure, there are standards that people have for their art, but that doesn’t make it right or wrong. It just makes it a personal standard.

This sense of objectivity is helpful when evaluating the art that surrounds you on a day to day basis; art that is often not your own. These are where we get our influences from. So rather than dismissing an entire genre or style, because of societal pressure, try to think objectively about it. For instance you might despise EDM, but why is it so popular? One could argue it’s popular because it has pop music structure and hooks. Perhaps that’s a lesson you can take away from it. In other words, pay attention to trends, because you never know what nuance you can take from a trend for your own art. 

 

Try not to hurt anyone.

“I keep in mind to ‘not have the pen get too mighty’ when I write. I choose my words so the least amount of people get hurt, but that’s also hard to achieve. No matter what is written, there is a chance of someone getting hurt or offending someone. Keeping all that in mind, I try as much as I can to write something that will not hurt anyone. This is a moral every writer should follow.”

–from Murakami’s 2015 advice column

In 2017, producer Dax J took a verse from Islamic prayers and sampled it in his music. Then, in all of his wisdom, he decided to play in in Tunisia. And as all of the murdered cartoonists who tried to draw Muhammed demonstrate, Islamics do not take kindly to people altering their religious symbols. Despite receiving death threats, Dax wasn’t beheaded. However, he was sentenced to jail in Tunisia for a year. 

This is an extreme example though. A good rule of thumb is to wein on the side of not culturally appropriating, or at the very least, when you do decide to sample someone else’s culture, know the audience you are playing to. An Islamic country is a terrible choice to play an Islamic prayer in. This is not uncommon knowledge. Dax should have known better. But playing an Islamic prayer in your techno song at Burning Man? Many burners suck up cultural approrpiation like it’s oxygen. I know that Muramaki says to write on the side of the egg, but there are things that are already determined to be culturally sensitive, and you should respect that, or else face the consequences.

Another way you can look at this is to not steal other people’s work and call it your own. However, there is always a fine line with this because electronic music is sample music.

 

Take your readers on a journey.

“As I wrote A Wild Sheep Chase, I came to feel strongly that a story, a monogatari, is not something you create. It is something that you pull out of yourself. The story is already there, inside you. You can’t make it, you can only bring it out. This is true for me, at least: it is the story’s spontaneity. For me, a story is a vehicle that takes the reader somewhere. Whatever information you may try to convey, whatever you may try to open the reader’s emotions to, the first thing you have to do is get that reader into the vehicle. And the vehicle–the story–the monogatari–must have the power to make people believe. These above all are the conditions that a story must fulfill.”

–from a 1992 lecture at Berkeley, as transcribed in Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, Jay Rubin

Take listeners on a journey. I’m an avid fan of trying to create a song that you don’t want to end, because it keeps evolving and is never boring. Whatever genre you’re making, the best songs transcend space and time, where there is always this feeling that time passes, unknowingly. When you lose track of time you know you’ve been in a musical journey. I also believe that DJs are collecting music to create journeys and one of our tasks is to feed them with memorable ideas for them to use. This is about letting the ego aside and see your music as part of something bigger than you but also important in other’s people lives.

Write to shed light on human beings.

“I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist’s job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories—stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.”

–from Murakami’s 2009 Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech

All music is an expression of human dedication and emotion. In order to be a great artist, one must be dedicated to their craft, and have the ability to recognize and alter emotion. Electronic music is often lyricless so we have to figure out how to express the emotions of a narrative in other ways, especially in music that can be seen as robotic to many. A good way to add humanity in electronic music is to add swing, quantazation, randomization, and actually performing and jamming your tracks, whether that’s in the studio, or live. Human recognizes human.

 

No matter what, it all has to start with talent. . . 

“In every interview I’m asked what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent. No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don’t have any fuel, even the best car won’t run.”

–from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

 

“Writing is similar to trying to seduce a woman. A lot has to do with practice, but mostly it’s innate. Anyway, good luck.”

–from Murakami’s 2015 advice column

. . . unless you work really hard!

“Writers who are blessed with inborn talent can write easily, no matter what they do—or don’t do. Like water from a natural spring, the sentences just well up, and with little or no effort these writers can complete a work. Unfortunately, I don’t fall into that category. I have to pound away at a rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of my creativity. Every time I begin a new novel, I have to dredge out another hole. But, as I’ve sustained this kind of life over many years, I’ve become quite efficient, both technically and physically, at opening those holes in the rock and locating new water veins. As soon as I notice one source drying up, I move on to another. If people who rely on a natural spring of talent suddenly find they’ve exhausted their source, they’re in trouble.”

“In other words, let’s face it: life is basically unfair. But, even in a situation that’s unfair, I think it’s possible to seek out a kind of fairness.”

–from Murakami’s 2008 essay “The Running Novelist,” tr. Philip Gabriel

Some talent is just innate. It’s the reason why you see so many dynasty professional athletes, where sons and daughters of their parents become equally, if not more successful. You also see this is siblings quite often as well. This example doesn’t always happen in music, because talent does not necessarily mean popularity, but when you’re talking about sports, talent is quantifiable through wins and losses.

However, many of us know those people, where they just pick up something new and they are effortlessly good at it. This is even true in music, where they might create their first loop and despite not having any experience in music, it sounds like something well beyond their abilities as a beginner. It’s these people, the Jimi Hendrix’s of the world, that go on to define their cultural niche for decades to come.

However, if you work really hard at something, you can be great, like Muramaki, who says that he is not an innately talented writer. He’s probably just being humble, however, I have seen in my own teaching where people come to me for coaching and the initial stuff they show me is pretty bad. Then they stick with it, take lessons to heart, and apply themselves. Then after a relatively short period of time, you start to see significant improvement. However, who knows, they could be innately talented to begin with, they just needed someone to give them confidence to harness their abilities. 

 

 

 

How To Prepare To Make Music

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When I was 10 I was invited to be part of the track and field crew at my middle school. While I always considered myself a proficient runner, one thing that we started to do more was stretch. At first, it seemed like a huge waste of time, since all I wanted to do was run. Instead, we were spending all this time doing these exercises that, to me, had nothing to do with running. However, after months of stretching, I started to realize that I was getting significantly faster. This is because I was warming up. Just like you have to warm up to prepare for running, the same goes for music. In this post, we’re going to discuss warm-up techniques that help you prepare to make music. 

 

Your Tools Aren’t That Important

I’ve talked about this frequently in previous articles, but it deserves to be reiterated. In music production, clients often think that they can buy all the equipment they want, and somehow, miraculously, they will be inspired to create. However, more often than not, they get stuck and the most productive thing that happens is my client cleans the dust off their wall of useless gear. 

Just buying equipment doesn’t do anything if you’re not intimately familiar with it. Imagine buying a nice guitar and thinking you can play it right away despite not knowing how to play guitar. Sounds ridiculous, right? Of course, it does! It takes time to learn a new instrument. It takes frustration. It takes commitment. However, sometimes they do know how to use this gear, and still, nothing happens. More often than not, their problem is they don’t know how to prepare to make music. And just like I was warming up for track and field, so must a producer. 

 

Come Up With Your Own System When Preparing To Make Music

Now people think there is a uniform way to prepare, however, everyone is different. The mind is not a quadricep, where there are standardized stretches that make it more functional. So what we do in coaching is to come up with a system that works for them. I start with figuring out what their current habits are because one thing we do know is that what they have been doing isn’t working. 

So once we figure out what they have been doing it’s time to figure out a system that works for them. Like I said earlier, everyone is different, so everything I’m about to make is a suggestion, not a catch-all. 

 

Actively Listen To Music To Prepare To Make Music

a photo of preparing to make music by actively listening to musicThe first thing producers can do is listen to music before they make it. This might be a huge “duh” statement, but how many people actively listen to music? How many people come home, crack a beer, put on a record, and then just sit there, doing nothing else, except engaging with the music? 10%, maybe? However, it’s this 10% of people who have set themselves up for success if they are music writers themselves.

When listening to music actively, it’s best to think of it as a reference track, in a way. Listen to the song over and over again. Note the timbre and structure of the song. Like actually note it in a notebook. This will get your mind prepared to make music by actively engaging it.

When actively listening to music, make sure to concentrate on the appropriate parts of a song. Lots of producers obsess over the kicks, hi-hats, and the bass, but at the end of the day, it’s the melody that people remember. So do yourself a favor and try to concrete things that you can easily absorb. You will probably not remember the exact timbre of a hi-hat, but you might remember the melody enough to replicate something similar later.

 

Listening To A DJ Set Will Help You Prepare To Make Music

Many students tell me that they find inspiration while they are in the club, and can’t get home quick enough in order to harness it. A solution? Listen to a DJ set for 20 minutes to an hour. The longer you prepare the better. 

An image of someone DJing, which is a great way to prepare to make music

You can take notes on the transitions and compositional intricacies, something that you couldn’t do while in a club. While not exactly the same as a club, I often find that my students say that all the ideas they had in the club start manifesting themselves again.

One thing I like to do is put on a mix while scrolling through and listening back to the samples on my hard drive. By doing so, you can hear when a sample fits nicely into the mix, which you can categorize, and use later. Just make sure the volume levels match what you’re doing in Ableton. You want your samples to vaguely fit inside the mix, rather than being the predominant sound. This is a helpful way of managing samples as well, because otherwise when you’re just scrolling through samples, and not comparing it to music, you’re just comparing the samples to air.


DJing To Help Prepare To Make Music

I think DJing is a great way to prepare to make music. Similar to the other suggestions, DJing is a powerful form of active listening. DJing trains your ears to deeply understand the structure and mix of a song. You can easily add or subtract frequencies to see how they modify the song. You can also hear where transitions happen, allowing you to build your tracks out to be more DJ-friendly (if that is one of your goals). 

 

Build Categorized Playlists To Help Prepare To Make Music

I know earlier I said that it’s easier to concentrate on the melody of the song, rather than the rhythm of it. So what are you supposed to do when you want to work on a specific aspect of a song? Well, as you’re listening, throw the songs into playlists that are labeled based on the aspects of the song that are inspiring. So have one for the melody, have one for that really specific hi-hat or kick. Have one for a bassline. Then when you want to prepare to make music, you can go back to those playlists and warm-up actively listening to those.

 

Take Inspiration From Your Inspiration’s Inspirations

Another way to prepare to make music is to learn from the people who inspire your inspiration. For instance, I’m inspired by Ricardo Villalobos, so I often read articles about him. Through these articles, I found out that he’s inspired by pianist Keith Jarrett. Jarrett does not make electronic music, however, he’s clearly had a large influence on the genre, whether he knows it or not. So, naturally, I listen to Jarrett to see if I can’t harness some of that inspiration.

 

There Are Many Ways To Prepare Your Brain

At the end of the day, the goal is to get your brain engaged. You can play video games while listening to music, read a book, or go for a run. You can also paint, or write. These are all just suggestions and you should find the one that gets your mind warmed up, since as I stated at the beginning of the article, a mind is not a leg – there is no uniformity.

 

Service Update: Track Finalization Is Now Exclusive

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It’s been a hard decision to make since I’ve enjoyed collaborating on so many tracks that have been sent to me through the track finalization service that I offer. However, I have found that by just allowing anyone to purchase this, it becomes not only a source of a great deal of stress but also the work to reward ratio often doesn’t pan out. Therefore, I am indefinitely pausing my track finalization service, except for people with who I have enjoyed working with in the past. 

However, rather than just pausing the service, I feel like I owe an explanation. This blog post will be a little different than most and will have two authors. First, I’ll explain my reasoning, and then someone who has used my service a few things will explain his thoughts on working with me.

 

Pheek’s Perspective

I have clients that have standards that are pretty high, which I have no problem with. I’m happy to help. However, paradoxically many producers come to me and love their track just how it is. Yet they still want me to work on it. This is confounding to me, because if you love your track, why do anything else to it? Music is subjective, and in the ear of the beholder, so it will never be great to everyone. The only thing that matters is if it’s great to you.

However, they still hire me and have a track that they are emotionally invested in because they have put so much effort into it. They just want the track to be perfect, so they think that I can do this, which isn’t true. Hiring an engineer won’t fix everything, and transform a piece into the hottest track to hit their respective Beatport chart. And while this sometimes may happen (usually by pure luck), engineers can only fix what we are allowed to, and often have to contend with people’s cognitive bias’ towards their track. 

Therefore, with these clients, it’s necessary to communicate that nothing is perfect and that the concept of perfection, especially in art, is folly. To be fair though, as an artist, this concept took many years to accept. I eventually realized that no matter how much I tackle imperfections, the end result is often staleness. And staleness is something that nobody who is writing art-focused music wants since it’s these imperfections that make songs exciting. It’s these imperfections that make them human. And humanity, especially within electronic music is sorely needed since the criticism from detractors is often that electronic music sounds too engineered, or robotic. 

This pursuit of perfection messes up my client’s workflow because they are often obsessed with having the perfect track rather than just finishing them. To me, this is essentially chasing unicorns in a field of chocolate, because, like I said before, perfection is a fantasy. Still, this mindset persists in many since people set standards for themselves that can’t be easily changed.

Now, a perfectionist mindset would be fine, if it was tolerable. However, after all these years of consulting, I’ve noticed that perfectionists always comes with one personality trait – they’re micromanagers. And let’s be real here when was the last time you heard someone praising a micromanager? Probably never, because it drives everyone crazy. 

The end result is usually two things: they will either say that the track is too close, or different from what they gave me initially. However, I usually don’t know which one it is until after I submit the track back to them. They reply with what else needs to be fixed, so I go and fix it, which I’m happy to do because there is no way I’m going to get it right the first time unless I’ve worked with them before. However, quite often, I spend hours going in a loop and reverting it back to pretty much exactly what they gave me in the first place. Or they will ask for so many additions that it eventually warps the track to a point where it doesn’t match the patterns they have set in their own heads. If you’re a producer, you know what I’m talking about – you can anticipate what is going to happen before it happens and if you miscalculate that, or if it’s different, it creates cognitive dissonance.

This cognitive dissonance is because producers are emotionally engaged with their tracks, and they have heuristics in their mind about where things should be in the mix, or compositionally. They EQ’d it a certain way, they didn’t have certain effects or compositional elements in it that are now in it, so when they hear it, it is jarring, because they expect it to be a certain way. Therefore, it doesn’t sound “right” to them. 

However, more often than not, a producer’s home studio is not representative of the outside world, so it’s no wonder that it doesn’t sound “right” to them. But since they are so wrapped up in it, they ask for more modifications, without realizing that what they are asking for is actually incorrect. However, this sometimes forces me to go back to how it was, because of their inability to realize that the reason why they hired me in the first place was to provide them a track that translates well across all systems. 

This happened again recently, where the producer lamented that it didn’t sound close enough to their reference track, which they never provided. So I asked them to send that over, and lo-and-behold, the reference track wasn’t properly mixed. Now, I happened to know this artist pretty well, so I provided them with a reference that was correct. Strangely enough, I haven’t heard back from this client.

As you may have surmised, I’m not a fan of doing business this way. Therefore, from now on, track finalization will only be available to people I’ve worked with successfully in the past. Because at the end of the day, why would you want someone to finish a track that isn’t on the same creative wavelength as you?

 

Alex Ho Megas’ Perspective

Ok, so none of you know me. However, I’ve been doing marketing for Pheek for almost a year now. And sometimes we trade services, and one of those services is track finalization. He asked if I would write something about my experience working with him on this since we have done it a few times. You may be thinking, “how can someone be unbias towards their client?” The answer is, I really can’t. However, I’m going to do my best to explain what working with him is like.

Reading Pheek’s perspective above, I intimately understand the cognitive dissonance that comes from having your track modified. You do expect certain things to be in certain places, subconsciously. Consciously, I know that they are most likely wrong since I don’t have a tuned studio and an acute knowledge of mixing and mastering. I, personally, just like writing music and designing sounds. 

One thing we often agree on is that music is usually a collaborative process and that electronic music is one of the only genres where it’s often not. Therefore, I hire Pheek knowing that collaboration often leads to better music. So you know, I’m not always immediately happy with everything I get back. I just know to give it time and to send it off to people that I trust to provide feedback. Then, I think critically about it and note things I would like changed. 

For instance, sometimes I notice that the tuning on a sample is incorrect, or that an element needs to either be extended or shortened. Sometimes there are parts that I want to have emphasized that Pheek deemphasized, like how a snare hits at a transition. So I confer with him and ask if it makes sense to change those things. Often he says they can be changed, however, I always make sure to just trust that 1) my room is incorrect and 2) that a new perspective is helpful. Sure, sometimes I override his recommendations, but only after careful consideration. And to be fair, I still could be wrong about those decisions, but as he said earlier in this post, music is subjective in many ways. 

I would say that the most difficult one we’ve worked on was the last one we did. Right from the beginning, there were some warping errors that made the channels not properly align, and therefore significantly changed the composition of the track. This was hard to explain because he was not familiar with the track, so he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. To him, of course, it’s correct, why wouldn’t it be? However, I just pointed him to a time in the original track where it was wrong, and had him compare it to the version he sent over. It took some time to figure out an effective communication method on this, but ultimately, we got there.

Then he added a bunch of foley sounds to the track, per my request. However, they were either too maximalist or minimalist, so I asked for a modification. These weren’t exactly what I was looking for, so we went back again. Being content with what it was, I sent it in for a mixdown. Then I sent the mix to another engineering friend to see what he thought of it – and it didn’t think it was right. So I just asked Pheek to bounce down the stems and send them over so I could see what my friends sounded like. Funny enough, after comparing the two, I prefer Pheek’s and will use his version when it’s eventually released. This example just goes to show that this track had a particularly strong hold on my perceptions, which makes sense – I worked on it forever. It was only after a good amount of time that I was able to crack these biases. 

 

The best recommendation I have about his track finalization service is to make sure to clearly mark where there are things that need to be changed. Note the time, note the duration. Make sure to have a copy of the old track handy that you can send him so that you can point to when you need things reverted. Make sure to mark the times and durations on those. He has a blog post about “how to communicate with an engineer,” which provides tips that will smooth the process of working with him on track finalization. However, it seems like now, he’s only working with people he has vetted in the past. So if you’re reading this, and have successfully done track finalization in the past, I recommend reading this article.

Another good thing to read would be his post on finalizing tracks on your own now that the service has been made exclusive to previous clients,

Is It Best To Produce One Style, Or Many?

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Why do people keep producing the same kind of track when there are others who have a wide palate of styles? I’ll admit, I’m a victim of the former. I’ve been producing the same type of music forever. Sure, often they sound different, but overall, I use the same formula and workflow, which translates into a bunch of songs that sound somewhat identical. This results in some people questioning why I don’t expand my palate. 

In response, I try to break out of the mold and create something entirely different. Then, the people who listen to me because of my consistency get annoyed and start complaining. There is no victory here, which is why I always suggest just making music for yourself. At the end of the day, the best thing you can do is be satisfied with your finished product. However, let’s explore the advantages of disadvantages between the two.

 

Producing A Similar Sound

Ok, let’s first talk about making the same song over and over again. In an era of algorithms and playlists, this is a sensible approach if you want to build a brand. With streaming, listeners have infinite choices nowadays. They can go on Spotify or YouTube and build their own playlists that fit their mood. And when they want to augment their mood, they often go and grab songs from familiar artists that satisfy that emotion. If you’re an artist that produces a bunch of different styles, they may not go check out your new stuff, because they know that it won’t fufill that emotional anchor. However, if you have a palate of sounds, tempos and styles that fit into a similar trope, then listeners can reliably count on you to produce something that satisfies their need. 

 

The Benefit Incremental Improvements On A Sound

Another reason for producing similar-sounding tracks is because the artist wants to keep on improving on something. Often they believe if they keep on working in the same vein that their tracks will get progressively better, which may lead to some sort of breakout moment. If they decide to take a tangent into other realms, then that may cause them to lose sight of that goal. They may even start making more predictable, cookie-cutter stuff since often when artists explore new genres, they start watching tutorials that thousands of other producers have watched. Often, this regresses their sound, when by staying the course it may have led to new, exciting sounds, even if they fall inside a stereotypical frame that they defined throughout their years of producing.


What To Do With All Of These Similar Tracks?

When you have 100 songs and they’re all the same, what do you do? Is that a waste? If you release all these 100 songs, you’ll burn yourself out because not all are worthy of release. I usually recommend making bundles of 3 or 4 and seeing which ones work by passing them to DJ friends who can play them. They’ll let you know which ones work, and what doesn’t. 

Also, don’t forget to store all of your projects. You never know when you can go back and finish a track with the new skills you have acquired. 

 

How To Change Your Sound, Without Becoming Cookie Cutter

However, there are ways for producers to keep a template and still change their sound. For instance, they can change the key. Each key has a different mood associated with it, and while the timbres and samples may be the same, the new pitch can redefine the emotional impact. You can still retain the mood that listeners expect if you switch the key to something harmonically relevant to a previous song’s key. Just check the Circle of Fifths to find out what works harmonically.

Another thing composers can do is time signature changes or add polyrhyms in their music. In dance music, it’s often hard to do something outside of 4/4. Sure, there are some tracks that work, like Jon Hopkin’s “Neon Drum Pattern,” which is in 5/4, or the rave classic, Jakatta’s “American Dream.” However, those are a pain to mix, and are a rare breed of dance songs. What I suggest is things like using triplets, or doing things like making your song half time or cut time. Another thing you can do is make your rhythm 4/4, and your lead 6/4, since they are both common time. However, if you don’t care if your songs are mixable, feel free to make songs in 9/8 or 17/4. Who cares? Like I said, it’s about feeling satisfied with your music, and nothing else.

 

Producing Many Different Styles

Ok, so let’s talk about artists who have a bunch of different styles. I would also say that I do this too, as I release dub techno, minimal, ambient, and more. However, with my sound, it all comes from a similar root, as I mentioned before.

Then there are artists that are all over the place, and cannot stay tied town to one process. A good example of this is the band Underworld. You might now them for their song Born Slippy, but they are way way more than that. They were originally an ‘80s rock band that evolved into the techno juggernaut that we know today. However, if you go through their catalog, you will hear many genres of music. There is house, techno, and breaks, for sure. But there are also ballads, and ambient pieces. Sometimes there are big beat songs as well. Then occassionally, they’ll return back to their roots and make a more rock oriented song. 

Another good example is Radiohead. Pretty much every album they change up their style. Ok Computer does not sound like Kid A, Kid A does not sound like In Rainbows, In Rainbows does not sound like King of Limbs, A Moonshaped Pool does not sound like King of Limbs. This process all started with Kid A when they wanted to make an anti-album that was intended to alienate their fans by switching things up dramatically, replacing drums with drum machines, guitars with synths, and normal vocals, with distorted ones. In other words, they were sick of stardom. But that backfired, and it became arguably the most critically acclaimed album of that decade.

 

Having An Artistic Signature To Tie It Together

However, if there is one thing that Underworld and Radiohead have in common is that they have an artistic signature, whether they like it or not. With Underworld it’s the timbre of the sounds they chose, paired with Karl Hyde’s spoken word vocals. With Radiohead, it’s the production veneer and Thom Yorke’s distinct crooning. This keeps the fan grounded in familiarity, even when the styles change. 

 

We Live In A Different Era

Keep in mind that Underworld and Radiohead are from a different time though. They existed in a time when I believe labels were looking for artists that pushed the limits of their creativity. Nowadays, with algorithmic streaming, labels are often looking for consistency, because they have artists put into boxes that they can market to said demographic. If you’re going to take this route, you may have to self release, or do a lot of research in finding a label that still has this old ethos. 

Frank Zappa has this great interview where he laments that cool kids running labels ruined artistic expression. He says that in the ‘60s, the reason why so much amazing, forward-thinking music broke into the mainstream is because the label heads were just old businessmen who didn’t know anything about music. They were like, “what do I know? Put it out, see what happens.” Then some of those records had great success, so they hired young, long-haired hippies to come in to advise. Those hippies became smug and decided they knew what was best, because they had taste, and thus began the decline of forward-thinking music, because often, they had no idea, despite thinking that they did. 

This has progressively became worse, and now these label executives have developed formulas for what should be released and what shouldn’t. Luckily, we live in an era where self distirbution is possible, and with the right marketing, and luck, you really never know where your multigenre music can go.

 

Whatever Route You Chose, It Doesn’t Matter 

Whichever route you choose, there is no right and wrong. Releasing the same sort of song can be fulfilling from a commercial standpoint, but from an artistic standpoint, it can become dull. Chances are most musicians are not going to be touring with thousands of adoring fans, so it might behooth you to make whatever you want, rather than trying to placate a potential audience. But, if you have a sound and know how to market it, then by all means, refine it. God knows that’s what I did. But I also expanded into other genres too. So perhaps, somewhere in the middle is a solid approach

Mid Side Processing Explained

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Often when I listen to tracks in my coaching group, I notice that the mid/side processing is often really off. Not having a solid M/S mix makes mixes sound thin, and muddy, rather than expansive and crisp. It’s often the M/S that is the make or break between an ok mix and a radiant one. Therefore, it felt prudent to write an article on what mid/side processing is, and how producers can have it done properly in the mix. Therefore, without further ado, here is Mid / Side processing, explained. 

 

What Is Mid/Side Processing? 

So what is Mid/Side processing? Basically, if you want a wide-sounding mix, you’re going to have to concentrate on mid/side processing. Often these sort of mixes sound “better” to the listener, and allow the producer to throw more sounds in their mix, without it sounding cluttered. While a wide-sounding mix can be accomplished through a bunch of different panning and stereo processes, mid/side is a strategy that can really dial that in, and create a spatial mix.

 

Mid in Mid/Side Processing, Explained

The “mid” part of the mid/side process is basically mono. It’s the sound(s) that sits in the center of the mix. Kick drums, snares, melodies between 200 – 500hz (like a pad), and any other “static” sounds can, and often should be placed in mid. Sure, there are artistic exceptions, but this is a good rule of thumb. 

Also, bass below 100hz. This is best practice. Why? If you print a vinyl, and if the bass is in stereo, the needle will jump. Also, in clubs, they do serial summing, where anything under 100 will be summed into 1 mono signal, but if your bass is in stereo, and it’s summed, it can quiet phased parts of the mix.

 

Side in Mid/Side Processing, Explained

The side-channel is the edges of the mix. Note: This is not to be confused with panning, where you can move sounds specifically into the left or right stereo field. Side processing is strictly hard to the right, or hard to the left, and is technically a mono signal.

When the side’s amplitude is increased, the listener hears a wider, fuller sound. A good way of using it is to increase the width of leads, or strategically move a percussion bus to the sides of a mix to create a fuller listening experience.

You can even get creative with this, and widen parts of the mix at different intervals in the song. For instance, whenever the chorus comes in, you can widen the leads on it, to give it a more present feeling, allowing it to become more expressive to the listener.

Pads are great for the sides as well, since it’s audio that “hugs” you, in a way. Other things that work well on the side are background noises, like field recordings, or weird ambiance -, that stuff works well on the side, it’s not present. Only present stuff should be in the middle. All decorative percussion can technically be on the side – swingy hi-hats, bells and whistles.

 

Side Processing May Cause  Phasing

Once mid/side processing is explained to many newbies, often they just go out and start messing around with it. However, side processing can reveal one of electronic music’s most dastardly foes: phasing. Basically what happens with phasing is when you have two of the same sound, on opposite sides of the stereo field, they cancel each other out. That means, we have to be judicious with the sounds we put on the sides. Generally, “less is more” is a good approach when dealing with phasing since there are fewer chances of frequencies canceling each other out. 

 

How To Correct Phasing

If you want to correct phasing while keeping them in stereo, the trick is to have one of the sounds reveal itself immediately after the other, so they don’t phase. This can be done with a very short delay. When dialed in, the sound will perceptually happen at the same time, but be delayed ever so slightly, allowing the other sound to peek behind the other one and be heard.

A more immediate, definitive way to correct phasing is to make the sound more mono. There is a tool you can use, called SPAN. This plugin allows you to see in yellow, mono, and in red, side signal. When the red goes beyond the yellow, you have to reduce. The tool you use to fix this is the utility plugin, native to Ableton. You can control the width in this. If you want it more mono, you just adjust the width down, and then turn the volume up. 

mid side processing can be explained well with the VST SPAN. Here's a photo of it.

However, let’s say you have a purely mono signal that you want to add some subtle stereo width to. There are certain effects that can impact this. You can use reverb with little decay (otherwise it will be too loud). 

You can also use a chorus. Eventide made a harmonizer that is beautiful for that. It’s two delays – left and right – and when you play with the delay of each other, it creates a weird signal/shape, and then you can play with the wet/dry to add degrees of stereo. However, if you don’t have the money, you can use the echo delay, and control the left-right, and create a very short delay to create a little more phasing and the width you can play with opening and closing it.

 

EQing in Mid/Side Mode Is A Must

In my opinion, all EQing should be done in MS mode. Sometimes people hear things that they don’t like in the mix, and if you just cut, you are cutting both the left and the right at the same time. However, sometimes you want a sound to be EQ’d differently, depending on the channel that it’s in.

For instance, let’s say you have a synth in your left channel, and it doesn’t exist as much in your right channel. When placing decorative percussion, there will most likely be a crossover in the panning.

But since the synth is primarily in the left channel, the percussion in the left channel is going to have to be EQ’d different to not conflict with that synth. However, since there is all this open space in the right channel, there is no need to EQ out some of the frequencies, allowing that sound to better express itself.

Fabfilter ProQ3 allows you to easily enter MS mode for EQing, and make precise cuts to the sound. If you don’t have ProQ3, you can unlink the left/right in Ableton as well. On EQ 8, there is a mode called stereo, but you can unlink left/right by clicking edit and then selecting left or right. You can also switch it to MS (Mid/Side), where you can edit either the mid or the side or you can treat left/right independently. When you do this, your sound feels more organic, because you’re not cutting in one place. 

A photo of ProQ 3 which has a mid/side processing mode.

More Plugins That Impact Width and Phasing:

 

Panman

mid side processing explained through the vst Panman. This is a photo of that VST.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PanMan really splits open the possibilities of panning. First and foremost, it’s a hardware emulation, which allows producers to mimic the syle of vintage hardware panning gear. You can also trigger panning if the track hits a certain parameter. The automation allows you to generate complex rhythms and stunning sweets.

 

Microshift 

This is an image of Microshift, a great plugin for modifying your stereo field

Need some width? Well Microshift’s got width. It provides you 3 separate kinds of stereo widening in just a single button push. It uses a specific algorithm to pitch shift and add delay to your sound, that morphs over time to generate brilliant stereo width. It’s very easy to play around with and can be used to give more flavor to instruments, or create nice blends.

 

MStereoGenerator

an image of MStereoGenerator, an excellent plugin for stereo imaging

With MStereoGenerator, you can convert mono recordings into stereo (or even surround). MStereoGenerator is a unique natural-sounding mono to stereo (or even surround) expander, which makes your tracks sound wider, stronger and punchier.  It’s especially good for acoustic instruments. 

 

Panshaper 3 by Cableguys

An imagine of Panshaper, which allows you to do crazy stuff with MS Processing and panning.

PanShaper 3 takes control over your stereo field to another dimension. The real-time LFO that can be drawn on every band and the envelope follower allow you to design evolving, dynamic pan patterns and make dialed-in stereo edits in seconds.

 

Energy Panner

an image of Energypanner which allows for dynamic panning responsiveness to inputs

Energy Panner reacts to the sound intensity by moving in response to it. A drum kit that moves to the beat, synth notes that move on attack, and many other behaviors are possible. Whether it’s stereo or Dolby Atmos, Energy Panner is a plugin you shouldn’t be without.

 

Width Shaper 2 by Cableguys

an image of the vst WidthShaper 2 which allows for amazing stereo mid/side processing.

With WidthShaper 2, you can fine-tune your stereo image to the finest detail. With three mid/side stereo adjustment bands, each with its own drawable LFO and envelope follower, you can gain precise control over the sound. It is perfect for sound design, mixing, and mastering, and can be used on single tracks and buses.

Once you have mid/side processing explained to you, you can see there is way more to stereo than just left and right. With M/S EQing you can surgically cut into sounds, and make them fit precisely in a mix. You can expand and retract sounds at different points in your mix, creating those illusionary, almost psychedelic effects in music that are almost inexplicable, since they are best described as space, rather than music.

However, with this power, comes the responsibility of not phasing your sounds out, and destroying the punch of your songs. Keeping in mind space, and how sounds relate to each other is a paramount skill in music production, and often an overlooked aspect.

I understand this can be complicated. If you need coaching or you just want to delegate this process to me, I’m available to help. Check out all of my services here.