Tools To Understand Your References

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We’ve all been there—struggling to compose that perfect melody or write those captivating lyrics, only to be hindered by the relentless pursuit of originality. But what if we told you there’s a way to break free from this creative conundrum and discover a whole new dimension of musical ideas?

 

No matter how many times I get to my computer to make music, I’m often on 2 modes: trying to make music that will be completely original or trying to emulate ideas that I love (eg. the opposite of being original). In most cases, I forget that I have fun unless things feel flowy. Luckily there are multiple techniques that can be understood from music we love and there are also many facilitating tools to help understand whatever is the magic of certain songs. I’ll suggest some of the tools I use when I do production for clients.

 

Recently I read the book by Austin Kleon’s book, “Steal Like an Artist,” where we’ll uncover five valuable ideas to set your musical exploration. I felt like I could see how this applied to music.

Embrace the Remix Revolution:

 

In a world overflowing with music, finding absolute originality can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. But fear not! Kleon suggests embracing the concept of the remix—a creative collage of existing ideas and influences. Remember, even the most renowned musicians have been inspired by the sounds of yesteryear. So, dive into the archives, explore different genres, and let the magic of cross-pollination unleash your musical prowess!

The first exercise I give to any client who is in a writer’s block that won’t go away, I suggest them to get a bunch of loops and start remixing, without any goal. I would like to say that while this is the best remedy for most cases, some feel like this is stealing samples and such. But if the mind is stuck, it’s mostly due to overthinking. Getting the ball rolling with a simple exercise of playing with premade ideas is just an opened door to jump back and then expand to whatever feels right.

 

TIP: It’s hard not to have fun by using the vast amount of quality loops you’ll find on Splice. It also offers possibilities of rent to own synths, plugins or have presets for the genres you like. It also has a desktop app where you can preview loops, then import them in your DAW. I like also that you can sync the app with your project’s tempo by using the Splice VST.

 

Another alternative is to use Loopcloud, which is a bit like Splice but also features some tools like a really lovely drum machine where you can import any sounds from the library. 

 

TIP 2: I like to use Soundsnap for samples. It features so many found sounds, foleys, random recordings. It’s used in movies and it can be used in your songs as well.

 

Swipe Ideas, Not Identity:

As musicians, it’s natural to aspire for a unique sound that sets us apart. However, trying to force originality often leads to creative paralysis. Instead, take a leaf out of Kleon’s book (literally!) and steal ideas shamelessly. But here’s the catch: focus on the elements you admire and rework them into something entirely your own. Give credit where it’s due, but don’t be afraid to put your personal spin on things. After all, the world doesn’t need another copycat—it needs the extraordinary blend that only you can create!

Now, remixing can be more subtle. You could listen to Keith Jarrett, some old Studio One dub, modern classical and then pay attention to the sound used, how they are said (melody) and the space created. 

 

What are you noticing? Are the notes slow or fast? Is it dense or open? What is the time signature?

 

Write down the notes, then apply the concept to whatever you do. That’s cross-pollination.

TIP: You can buy MIDI packs or MIDI melodies a bit everywhere and look into ideas that aren’t in the genre(s) you’re doing. The MIDI notes don’t make a sound, they’re just melodies. You can use random harmonic sounds or use synths of your choice so you can pull out melodies that are out of your routine.

TIP 2: So many clients don’t realize that one step towards their songs feeling more professional is to use one root key with a scale. I like the numerous tools from Captain Plugins. They have studio related plugins that lets you understand the key and scale of important ideas or your own melodies (eg. some clients just improvise some melodies to later find out it is in a specific scale without knowing!). You can also look at Tonic for that type of analysis.

 

Curate Your Influences:

Ever heard the saying, “You are what you eat”? Well, in the world of music, “You are what you listen to!” Surround yourself with a diverse range of musical influences. From classical compositions to avant-garde experiments, absorb it all like a musical sponge. By curating a unique tapestry of influences, you’ll develop a rich palette of sounds to draw from. So, don’t be afraid to embark on a sonic adventure—you might just stumble upon the spark that ignites your musical genius!

 

To make quality music, you need to be exposed to quality songs.

 

This means, listen to music as much as you make some. From what you listen, try to diversify your repertoire as much as possible. When you discover an artist you like, dig his roots, early works and recent ones.

 

Befriend people who have deep love for music and ask them for recommendations. People aren’t asked enough about their favorites but it’s a loved topic if you’re into music.

 

I love this max patch that opens up the directory of all the sounds from Freesound.org. I love that site because it’s free but also because you can ask for random samples. I also like this page that gives me random Youtube videos to watch…

 

TIP: Elphnt did a nice patch that gives you ideas for starting new ideas or if you lack ideas at some point.

 

Constraints Set You Free:

 

Contrary to popular belief, constraints can be a musician’s best friend. Kleon emphasizes the importance of setting limitations to unleash your creativity. By giving yourself specific boundaries, such as time restrictions, limited instruments, or even unusual song structures, you force your mind to think outside the box. These self-imposed challenges become the catalyst for innovation, paving the way for musical breakthroughs you never thought possible.

 

TIP: Make yourself a drum kit and just a few samples for your song making. Pick a random songs and use that as a template for yours (BPM, section, mood, key, scale, etc). I love the tool of Decoda because it can really help pulling out a melody or understanding of how a song is arranged.

 

Embrace the Journey:

 

Creating remarkable music isn’t a sprint; it’s a lifelong marathon. As you embark on your musical odyssey, remember to enjoy the ride. Kleon encourages artists to embrace the process rather than obsessing over the end result. Each composition, each practice session, and each stumble along the way is a vital part of your growth as a musician. So, buckle up and savor the adventure, because it’s the journey itself that shapes you into the artist you were meant to be.

 

But what happens when you’re a dad or you have a demanding job and you can’t invest much time into your favorite hobby? The journey becomes a bit more complicated. Can you still embrace the results without having the time to do what needs to be done to get your project going?

 

There you have it, intrepid musicians! Armed with Austin Kleon’s invaluable insights from “Steal Like an Artist,” you now possess the secret weapons to break free from the shackles of creative blockages. Embrace the remix revolution, swipe ideas with pride, curate your influences, thrive within constraints, and, above all, savour the journey.

Remember, the music world is your oyster. So dive in fearlessly, create unapologetically, and let your stolen melodies reshape the very fabric of musical innovation. 

 

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.

 

Favorite Equalizer For Electronic Music

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People often ask me what my favorite equalizer for electronic music is, and my answer is that it depends on what their goal is, as well as their skill level. However, the EQs that I like for electronic music generally fit a certain set of criteria. Not every equalizer in this article fits all of the criteria, but here is a not-so-exhaustive list of things that I like to see when I’m purchasing a new EQ.

Keep in mind that all EQ’s are at their core, just filters, but some go above and beyond this. Equalizer settings for electronic music vary based on the timbres and styles, but each one of these will work universally for electronic music.

 

Criteria

  1. They have previews of the band that you can solo (you can press the button and hear the band on its own). This allows you to hear things more specifically.
  2. The plugin needs to be able to do oversampling.
  3. The plugin needs to be able solo the filter (EQ band).
  4. The EQ needs to have a mid and side mode, aka M/S mode.
  5. The EQ can switch from digital approach to analog. A digital EQ is very clean, and an analog is a little bit more organic and less precise.
  6. The EQ can be dynamic. 
  7. While all don’t have this feature, it’s nice if an EQ has a piano roll, so you can see how frequencies quantize to notes (this is a good way of seeing if a note will fit inside the track).

 

Fabfilter Pro-Q 3

A picture of one of the best equalizers for electronic music, in my opinion, the Fabfilter Pro Q 3

First on the list is the Fabfilter ProQ 3 – an affordable, easy-to-use EQ that hits most of the points I look for in an equalizer. It’s versatile, as in it can be used in both mastering and mixing. On top of state-of-the-art linear phase operation and the ability to get zero latency readouts on your EQ, you get natural phase modes, mid/side processing, and a bunch of other intuitive options.

 

A Neat Pro-Q 3 Trick


One of my favorite features is that if you have the ProQ 3 on multiple channels or busses, it can communicate with the ProQ 3’s on the other ones and let you know if there are conflicts in frequences.

Then, with the side processing (sidechain), you can easily duck precise frequencies, and you can even solo these frequencies to hear exactly how the sidechain is affecting the relationship between all the individual sounds. Or sometimes you don’t even need a sidechain, and you can just grab the curve and bring the conflicting frequency down.

Another neat trick with the Fabfilter ProQ 3 is that you can use it to split the stereo, and modify the same frequency at different amplitude levels on the stereo. So for instance, sometimes in a recording, you have a sound that mixes well on the right pan, and doesn’t quite mix perfectly on the left, but should be somewhat present on the left panning in order to fill out the stereo field.

With the ProQ 3, you can leave the level on the right channel as is, and on the left, alter the amplitude in order to fit the frequencies it’s conflicting with.

All of these reasons are why it’s a favorite equalizer for electronic music. It produces some of the best equalizer settings for bass, mids, and highs in all genres.

 

Wavefactory Trackspacer

A photo of Wavefactory's trackspacer, which allows you to have some of the best equalizer settings for electronic music without the hassle.

This one is not necessarily an EQ, but if you’re familiar with Wavefactory’s Trackspacer you can see why it would fit well within this list. Basically, it uses a mathematical formula in order to automatically figure out where conflicting frequencies are between two tracks and then it will apply precise side compression to the parts that are necessary to compress to get them to meld better.

You can even apply a low pass or a high pass filter to each end of the frequency spectrum to isolate what part of the sounds you want to compress. It’s ridiculously easy to use.

 

HornetVST Total EQ

a photo of HornetVST's Total EQ. It's one of my favorite equalizers for electronic music.

Not everyone has the money to invest in VSTs. However, HornetVST makes VSTs that are ridiculously cheap, and they often do sales, so you can get decent plugins for 5 bucks. 

The HornetVST Total EQ is similar to ProQ 3, sounds really good, and is easy to work with. Personally, I believe it’s better than Ableton stock EQ’s because you have a team working specifically on developing the best equalizer for electronic music (or all music at that matter).

While it doesn’t have all the gizmos and detail goodies that the ProQ 3 has, it’s still really good. For instance, it has 12 bands, a real-time spectrum analyzer, a whopping 17 different kinds of filters for each band, individual analog response and emulation for each band, band soloing (like in the ProQ 3), mono/stereo for each band, and a bunch more features.

 

Melda Productions – MAutoEQ

Image of one of my favorite equalizers for electronic music - the Melda Productions - MAuto EQ

The thing that makes this EQ special is the MeldaProduction Filter Adaption (MFA) technology which uses a formula to analyze your recording and make suggestions based on your recording, another recording, or even a spectrum that you can “draw” inside the interface. It’s kind of the Photoshop of EQs, in a way. It can also be used extensively for mixing and mastering.

MAutoEqualizer can place a track into a mix using the spectral separation feature, where you can, like in Photoshop, pencil your preferred frequency response. MAutoEqualizer’s technology will search for the best settings and alter the parametric equalizer bands to fit the best form.

With a normal equalizer, you are listening to the spectrum and then increasing or decreasing the amplitude of the band to fit what you believe is the correct level, which can be a chore. With MAutoEqualizer it gives your ears a little bit of a break by setting things to levels based on its algorithmic predeterminations. 

Also, if you are allergic to resonance in your sound then this EQ is for you. One of the things it does best is listen to the incoming signal, where it then finds resonances that it can apply filtering suggestions to. Then with the wet/dry knob, you can determine how much resonance you want in the areas it pointed out. It’s really simple, and a favorite equalizer for electronic music.



Brainworks’ BX3

A photo of the Brainworks’ BX3, which produces some of the best equalizer settings for electronic music.

A mastering and mixing EQ I recommend is BX3 by Brainworks. It’s an extremely powerful, surgical EQ that I use extensively. It can make space, clean, and can really polish things up. This EQ is not meant for adding color or character to mixes, but rather making sure that everything sounds as clear and crisp as possible. It’s a bit difficult to use if you’re not super familiar with mixing and mastering, but it’s extremely powerful, making it a favorite equalizer for electronic music.

This EQ’s Auto Listen feature automatically solos each band’s Gain and Q (resonance) controls based on their respective settings while doing the same with the channel’s Frequency controller. By setting Gain, Q, and Frequency on an individual channel (L or R), Auto Solo switches the monitoring to that channel.

Your tweaks are illustrated with separate frequency-response graphs for each channel. With this feature, you may notice that your adjustments will become more visible and audible than ever before since it allows for some of the best equalizer settings for electronic music.

 

Brainworks’ AMEK200

photo of one of my favorite analog emulated EQ's for music, the Brainworks’ AMEK200.

My favorite analog emulation EQ is AMEK200 by Brainworks. This is modeled after classic 70’s and 80’s mastering EQ’s, such as the GML 8200 and vintage SONTEC vintage EQs, but with some plugin specific upgrades, such as Auto-Listen features, variable high-pass and low-pass filters, and M/S processing.

All of these features result in a very transparent mix that does a really beautiful finishing. Note that the AMEK200 has no spectral readout, just knobs you twist, which is good for learning how to trust your ears.

 

So, which one is my favorite equalizer for electronic music?

There is no specific one. All of these plugins will allow for the best equalizer settings for music, whether that’s minimal house, techno, jazz, rock, hip-hop or k-pop. They all allow for the best equalizer settings for rolling bass, or entrancing mids, it just depends on your experience level, and your desire to learn and experiment.

This article contains affiliate links which I may make a commission off of.

Ableton-Hardware Hybrid Setup

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Producers often get comfortable in the computer and feel they are not getting enough, so they decide to invest in hardware.

Once you get good at something, it’s only natural to want to upgrade to the next level. You may get that feeling that you aren’t getting enough out of it, or that the medium is limiting in some way. With my students, often this feeling means leaping from a DAW like Abelton to a hardware-based setup. 

They often think that by doing so, they’re going to unlock a richer sound, and a more intuitive, instrumental interface. They believe they will be liberated, able to just jam out compositions without having to rely on an “unnatural” mouse click or MIDI mapping inside a DAW. 

The truth is that once they make this leap, and ditch Ableton for an Electron Octatrak, and a modular, they often find themselves being even more limited by the foreign user interface and the fact that modular doesn’t have an “undo” button, or patch saves.

That’s why I always recommend that they use an Ableton-hardware hybrid setup that incorporates the best of both worlds, where the tactile, plug and play nature of hardware meets the convenience of being able to easily save, and revert back to settings on the computer. 

Over the years, I think I have a pretty rounded philosophy of how to tackle this integration, which I would like to share with you in this post.

However, let’s talk about hardware first, so that you can understand its strengths and weaknesses. 

A photo of a simple example of an Ableton-hardware hybrid setup.

 

Myths About Hardware

It automatically Sounds Better

Just because something is hardware, doesn’t mean that it’s going to mythically sound better. In some cases, analog summing can fix some issues and enhance certain things but it can also be sounding different than digital and since our ears are used to the digital realm, it might be misleading. It’s not 2005 anymore; virtual instruments have grown leaps and bounds over the years. Even to a trained ear, it’s hard to tell the difference between an emulated TB303 and the Roland Cloud version. Analog does have charm and specific texture but it’s different than digital. Some people get confused once in front of certain pieces of gear.

However, there are things that happen with the sound in hardware that is difficult to emulate in software. For instance, the “ghost in the sound’ – that almost invisible hand that creates random, happy accidents due to the fact that you are working with pure electrical current, rather than a binary representation of it. 

This “hand” often results in sounds that are impossible to replicate, existing for only as long as they project from the speakers. To me, this is the magic of hardware – that unpredictability that exists for a fleeting moment, until it’s gone, never to be heard again, unless you capture it. 

In other words, analog has a sound that digital doesn’t have and that’s an aesthetic that pleases many people. Believe it or not, some people really do prefer the digital sound, mostly because our ears have got used to it.

However, what is this capability worth, if you can’t capture it properly? That’s why it’s imperative when buying hardware that you also buy a solid audio interface to be able to record the sound at the highest fidelity. Because at the end of the day, your hardware will only sound as good as the weakest part of the chain.

It’s More Intuitive

This is another fallacy. If anything, analog hardware can create a new set of problems, with the main problem being that you can’t just pull up a setting or patch. You also can’t revert back to a previous setting if something gets all messed up. 

Instead, you have to work backward in order to figure out where it went wrong. And if it’s analog, chances are that due to the “ghost in the machine” you won’t be able to get back to where you were. This results in endless hours of fruitless tinkering.

This also poses problems for live performance as well. I remember when I was performing at MUTEK with a modular setup. I was in the middle of soundcheck, jamming on my modular, getting lost in the frequencies. Then at the end of the check, I realized that I had to repatch everything back to where I wanted it for the beginning of the set. It was frustrating, to say the least. On a computer, I could have just reloaded the project. 

If you’re allergic to the mouse and sceen, perhaps hardware might be closer to your needs but it doesn’t mean it will be easier.

It’s DAWless

What is an MPC, Octotrak, Deluge if not a Digital Audio Workstation? They are digital, process audio, and they are a workshop. If anything, you are just substituting an intuitive interface that looks like a laptop, for a complicated interface that looks like a box with buttons on it (wait, isn’t that what a laptop is; just a box with buttons?). 

If you can’t stand the aesthetic of a laptop and want something sleeker, then that is your right as a creative. Just know, it’s way harder to drop a drum sample into an MPC than Ableton assisted by a Push or Maschine. If you hate the look of a laptop on stage, disguise it in a case.

 

How To Get The Most Out Of Your Hardware

Learn One Piece At A Time

People will often buy a lot of gear all at once without understanding their needs. Unless you are copying someone’s setup exactly from a YouTube video, and want their exact same sound, chances are people want their own thing to fit their artistic vision. 

So people will often be like ok, I need a synth, a drum machine, a set of effects, and a “brain” that I can route this all into. Then they set this all up, and realize that they are totally overwhelmed and have no idea how to use it, because there is no blueprint for it.

That’s why I recommend starting out with one piece of gear and getting really good at it. Once you know how it plays, then you can start thinking about the next part of the chain. 

So, let’s say you start with an analog synth. First, you must understand where all the filters are, and what they do. Understand how the oscillators sound, and how you can route them. Then you can consider your next addition.

So if you got a synth, the next thing you’re probably going to want is a way to sequence it. That is often a drum machine with a VC gate that can signal the synth to play (or not play) certain parameters. I recommend Beatstep Pro (Arturia) or Pioneer DJ Toraiz Squid. Of course, there are many you could add but those 2 are very versatile and fast to learn.

Once you figure that out, maybe you want an effect in order to get some more character out of the synth. Make sure that the effects that you buy are exactly what you want by testing it on the sequenced synthesizer. If they don’t create exactly what you want, then get new ones. No need to move on until you figure this out. 

By moving on too soon, you may just get tangled in your new setup, and not realize how to use it. Now you’re $5,000 deep into a headache, and not any more or less creative.

However, if you understand your pieces inside and out before expanding the chain, then you will run into fewer obstacles.

Record Everything

Remember, often with analog hardware, what you made will only exist at that moment. You may never be able to record that again. Therefore, make sure that you have plenty of space on whatever device you are recording onto because you should be recording nearly everything.

This works especially well if your creative process is to create a bunch of loops, and then assemble your loops into a song.

Truth be told, hardware doesn’t require endless MIDI mappings, and clicking, and is more instrumental, in a lot of ways. The knobs are properly dialed in with the circuits, and the keys are weighted to interact with the synth in ways that a standard MIDI controller may not be. Therefore, the loops that you create may very well be more interesting than anything you could have made with a soft-synth. 

Make Sure Your Recording Is Clean

Like I mentioned before, you need a good audio interface. I recommend Focusrite Scarlett or SSL2. These record at a high sample rate, and will capture the purest representation of what’s outputting from your setup. 

Also, you have to record it properly. Therefore, the signal has to come as close as possible to 0dB because the noise floor will always be the same on hardware. So if you’re recording at -6dB as you would with digital instruments, when your hardware recording is loaded into your “brain”, it will not seem loud enough in many cases. 

That’s because -6dB in the physical world is quiet. So, naturally, you will turn it up. However, when you turn it up you add 6dB of noise to the recording. Maybe you want this noise, but it won’t be accurate to the fidelity of your original recording. Therefore, always make sure that when recording, that it is as close to 0DB as possible.  

Realize You Will Be A Noob, Again

Just because you were a proficient Ableton user, doesn’t mean you will be a proficient hardware user. You will have to pick up the user manual again and start watching copious YouTube videos in order to get back up to speed. 

Your first stuff will probably sound terrible. This may be discouraging, but this is the reality you will have to accept. Just because you made electronic music “in the box”, doesn’t mean you will be able to “out of the box”

another photo of an Ableton-hardware hybrid setup

How To Get The Most Out Of An ABleton-Hardware Hybrid Setup

 

For the sake of this article, we’re going to assume you’re proficient with your DAW. In this article, we’ll use Ableton as our primary example. 

Play To Each Other’s Strengths

The goal with a hybrid setup is to buy what the computer can’t give you, and/or compliment what you’re doing on the computer with hardware. 

As you know, the process in Ableton is pretty intuitive, and not destructive in nature. If you screw something up, you can always undo, or revert to a previous version of the project.

It’s also way easier to visualize a song’s arrangement on Ableton than it is on an MPC. 

However, perhaps you like the playability of the MPC. Well, there is a solution to that – it’s called Ableton Push. I use it for basically everything; it’s amazing. It adds that tactile instrumentation that’s missing when dealing with a mouse. Additionally, all its MIDI mappings are designed to be standardized and intuitive with Ableton. 

Use Ableton As A Band Member

A good way to use Ableton in conjunction with your hardware is to use it as a session musician/band member. Write out a basic structure of a song on Ableton, MIDI clock it with your hardware, and then route your hardware into channels, and start jamming. Inside Ableton you can also create some complex effects chains that can modulate the hardware in unexpected ways, giving you something entirely fresh.

Use Ableton To Preserve Sounds

Another way you can use Ableton to compliment your hardware in an Ableton-hardware hybrid setup is to be able to have multiple versions of the same project that contains all the hardware loops that you recorded. Since Ableton’s environment isn’t destructive to waveforms like something like the MPC would be due to its limited hard drive space, you can modify the waveforms, without having to have multiple large files. Instead, you just have individual projects for different versions of the recording. 

Split Your Time Into Technical And Creative Sessions

This kind of works whether you are pure hardware, or using an Ableton-hardware hybrid setup. The fact remains, whenever you are integrating analog gear, there will be a setup process. You can’t just load settings. So you have to get all your patches set up, your effects set up and properly bypassed, your sequencer running, and your patterns in order. You then have to make sure that everything is playing back close to 0dB to avoid the dreaded noise. 

This will consume a good amount of brainpower. 

Therefore, once this is all ready, make sure to take a break. Go drink a beer, meditate, exercise, or do whatever you do to reset your mind.

Then come back and start jamming and being creative with your Ableton-hardware hybrid setup.

MIDI Controllers Are Your Friend

MIDI mapping is really easy on Ableton. Sure, it takes a little bit of time to set up, but it’s often nothing compared to the amount of time you will be tweaking hardware to get a similar result. Therefore, get some MIDI faders and knobs to control some internal processes in Ableton. 

MIDI will create that tactile sensation that hardware provides. The Push is, once again, a great way of accomplishing this, since it’s intuitive with Ableton. However, some people don’t want to spend that much money on a MIDI controller. In that case, there are dozens of great controllers out there that allow you to essentially create your own instruments on the fly.

Some suggestions: AKAI midimix, Novation Launch Control

These mappings will also affect your hardware as well, since you can map them to different internal faders that change the sound of the hardware, such as channel volume, or surgical EQ parameters. 

 

Ultimately, do what works best for your creative process. These are just my recommendations from my experiences using both exclusively, and then integrating the two. Just remember, there is a learning curve with everything, and things that were true for one, will not be for the other. There is no magic bullet when it comes to making music. Hardware won’t make you amazing, software won’t make you amazing. Only talent and dedication will.

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How To Communicate With Audio Engineer

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how to communicate with audio engineer photoOne thing that I love doing is to work with unestablished artists. It’s why I have Pheek’s Coaching Corner, and it’s why I price my services at a reasonable price. Working with new artists is fulfilling as I often find artist’s earliest work to be their most creative, and raw. It’s in these musicians that you find stuff that can be truly seen as original, having the vestiges of being an entirely new genre. It’s this sweet spot that exists before they start to become either derivative of their own work, or pivot to fill more socially acceptable shoes. However, unestablished generally means inexperienced in the rest of the music industry. There are certain things that both artists and engineers should understand while working together, simplified by good communication. If you are able to put things in a language the engineer understands, your experience will be much smoother. In this guide, I will provide tips, tricks, and methods to make this process as seamless as possible. Therefore, here’s how to communicate with audio engineer.

First, it’s necessary to lay out what a mixing and mastering audio engineer does and does not do.

 

What An Audio Engineer Can Do

1. Their Job Is To Facilitate And Mediate

People come to someone like me to either get guidance, or have access to a set of tools that they would otherwise not invest in. At my disposal are a bunch of plugins, and hardware that are specific to making sure things sound great, and translate well across as many mediums as possible. Additionally, I have access to creative tools that artists may not even know exist, yet could be applicable to their sound.

Additionally, artists come to me to get advice on where to go with their sound. Do they need additional elements to fulfill its intended purpose? Are they having writer’s block, or their skills limit them in what they want to do next? It’s my job to find resources that will help them reach their goals. These resources are something that I will touch on later in this article.

2. Their Job Is To Understand The Genre They Are Working With

how to communicate with audio engineerNot all genres are the same, and they require different equipment. If you were to record a cowboy outlaw record, it’s probably not the best idea to go to a micro house producer. However, I have had rock bands come to me because they wanted their album to sound electronic in nature, despite it being a rock album.

If you were to come to me as a micro-house producer, I’ve been in this genre for a while, and have a lot of resources. Therefore, it’s easy for me to tap these, and find things like reference tracks, or communicate with other artists who have tricks to help your track get to the next level.

Additionally, this genre understanding allows me to reverse engineer aspects of the music, and apply it to your track. Having a problem with simulating a certain textural effect that you heard in a micro-house track? Chances are I know how we can get pretty close to that with the resources, and experience I have.

Additionally, we understand how to reign in things like low-end if you are creating a song that you expect to be spun in a club. Remember, you’re competing with common frequencies of another song, like the kick, or the hi-hat. It’s good to know how to moderate these things for a club environment, and that’s where engineers come in.

3. Audio Engineers Understand The Technical Aspects Of A Release

Do you know how many LUFS the loudness of a track bounced out of the limiter needs to be to normalize correctly on Spotify? How about SoundCloud, or Beatport? Each platform has different loudness variations in their codec, and often if your tracks aren’t uploaded with these standards in mind, then there can be translation issues. This is where audio engineers come in. We understand this boring, uncreative stuff, and how to achieve it in the mix and master, so you can concentrate on being creative. Then again, if you want to learn, we can also play the role of instructor.

4. We Help Accent The Best Parts

Let’s say that you have a killer bridge. We can recognize this, and help bring that out in the mix, or even add elements that will help it transition better into the next part of the song.

 

What An Audio Engineer Cannot Do

1. An Audio Engineer Cannot Please Everyone

Perception is reality, and some people have different perceptions on what things are supposed to be. Especially when dealing with their art. With audio, producers often get married to their sounds, thinking that they should be specifically in this spot in the mix, when, in reality, it probably won’t translate the way you want it to. This may come from hearing said sound over and over again in whatever room, or on whatever medium they were listening to while they were making it. However, in a well treated room, with calibrated equipment, or conversely, in a club with a good, or poor sound system, it may not translate exactly how you anticipate. Some people are more judicious about this, and accept the reality. However, some you just can’t please. So is the way of the artist.

Therefore, I take the approach that it’s best to do the least amount of damage possible to a track, while still allowing the frequencies to properly breathe, and translate to whatever medium the artist imagines it being listened to on.

This is why it’s important to know how to communicate with audio engineer, so we can both come to a mutual understanding through the techniques I will discuss in a bit.

2. Audio Engineers Can Never Say What Does And Does Not Sound Good, Artistically

Kind of expanding on the idea of doing as little damage to a track as possible, it needs to be noted that like all other art, music, and sound is subjective. Sure, there are best practices to get something to translate, and upload to platforms properly, but as far as the timbre, and aesthetics of a sound are concerned, that’s so subjective. There is a reason why techno fans can’t agree on all techno being good, despite it being the same genre. Where everything else is the same, it’s the sonic grade that ultimately defines a song.

Extremely, there is a reason why some prefer the frantic shouts and pounding SH101 basslines of Nitzer Ebb to the soft musings of John Prine. As a matter of fact, they might detest John Prine, and John Prine fans might detest Nitzer Ebb. Does this mean one is better than the other? No, because our realities are subjective.

It’s my job to help you get to the sound that you truly desire, using references to other tracks, or having clear, simple communication.

However, it needs to be noted that we know what sounds good, technically. Like, for instance, if you’re making pop music, or if people are casually listening to your music (alternative or pop), they like mids, because mids translate the best on common speaker systems, and headphones. Chances are that if you submit your track to a blog, it’s not going to be listened to out of a soundsystem – it may be listened to out of a phone, laying in bed, which are mid intensive.

3. Provide Critique Without Having A Solution

Talent is subjective. So is if something sounds good. Therefore, if an engineer gives feedback, or says that something could be better, it’s their professional duty to have a way to fix it. That’s what we are hired for. However, if you aren’t looking for that sort of feedback, it’s good to have that role clearly defined beforehand.

 

Tips On How To Communicate With Audio Engineer

1. Keep Things Simple

how to communicate with audio engineerEngineers get that artists have a lot of things to say about their work, and may use poetic language in order to communicate it. And this prose sometimes leads to elaboration. However, there is a saying in sales, called K.I.S.S, which stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. This is because people understand things if they are simplified. No need to get technical, or elaborate. Just say what you mean. A good way of easily communicating is to provide examples of things that already exist. Let’s be real, nothing is new under the sun, so if we can pinpoint where that idea is coming from, then maybe it can be recreated, with a flourish that makes it your own.

No need to write out a full page of diction. Instead, just Keep It Simple, Stupid. Also, don’t use vague words like, “I want it to sound tight.” That doesn’t mean anything, and is subjective. Which brings me to my next point…

2. Provide References

Expanding on what I said earlier, we are all borrowing ideas. Even if your track borrows many different ideas, and creates something new, if you think hard, you can find tracks that provide the feeling you are going for, which can give clues to the frequencies, and mastering qualities you want to match.

The references also don’t have to be sonic, instead they can be cultural. Let’s say that you imagine your song being played in an after-hours spot. This means that the song will likely be played in a place with little treatment, or in a long, narrow venue that isn’t typically used for music. This requires specific mixing, and pre-mastering to properly express its full potential.

Also, there are moments where something is created that doesn’t exist. There is no way for me to know how to create something if there is no reference to it, so don’t ask for that, since it’s impossible to know without endless tweaking.

3. Contact Us Before You Buy

This is true especially if you have doubts. You wouldn’t hire someone without vetting them normally, so why should this be any different? If you have a song that you think might fit my aesthetic, but not quite, then let me have a listen to it, and I will let you know if I think it’s worth working on. Believe me, I don’t want to work on projects that are unnecessarily difficult, just like you don’t.

You’d be surprised at what projects I have worked on. For instance, even though I make “underground” music, I worked on an EDM project, because the producer liked that I didn’t sound EDM. 

4. Know Some Basic Terms

As producers, many have at least some basic knowledge of the audio engineering spectrum. Most know what equalizers, and compressors are, as well as reverb or delay. They also know what mono and stereo means. However, there may be more specific things that they don’t know – like for instance the difference between a transparent and colored master. A transparent one is where you have a mix you’re happy with, but you want everything to be properly balanced. A colored one is where you aren’t totally satisfied with the mix, and want some more textures, and other elements, such as compression, and saturation added to bring out new elements. In other words, you don’t mind things being changed.

Other common terms used in studios to describe frequencies are:

Muddy: Too much bass.

Boxy: Too many mids.

Tinny: Upper mids or lower highs need reduction.

Bright: Similar to tinny.

Airy: The high register frequencies. The ones that can break glass.

Warm: Reducing high end, or boosting the lower mids to give it a toasty feeling.

5. Don’t Micromanage

Do you hate being micromanaged at work? Well, so does everyone. By micromanaging, you’re distracting away from the work that could be getting done on your project by pointing out things that the engineer recognizes, but hasn’t got to, or may not even be necessary once another process is done. We’re professionals; let us be professional.

 

Conclusion:

All said, if you learn how to communicate with audio engineer properly, you are making yourself better at what you do, because you are furthering your education by understanding the terms. Also, you’re making yourself easier to work with, and at professional levels, easy to work with can get you far.

This skillset will also help with other artistic undertakings, such as remote music collaboration, or doing collaborative DAW projects, or even online collaborative DAW ones.

Hopefully this proved to be a valuable guide to helping artists with how to communicate with audio engineers. Like in most things in life, solid communication, means a solid experience.

 

Find A Record Label Looking For Talent

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So, you’re looking for a record label looking for talent? We’ve been talking about collecting references for your mixes in previous posts quite a lot. By using software to help you match the tone of a track you like, with some analysis, you can now reverse engineer your favorite tracks to eventually make something similar. With this approach, eventually you’ll end up having music that you want heard and eventually published on a record label looking for talent.

There are many advantages of being on a record label. I covered this in previous articles. However, the crux of it is that being on these labels gives you access to a community of artists that you enjoy, provides social recognition by peers, and can provide accolades that artists can leverage for more gigs. Being on a credible label also allows artists to move up the ladder to larger labels, just as having a job on your resume allows people to move onto bigger, and better jobs. 

 

Independent Record Labels Vs. Major Record Labels

Finding a record label looking for talent like yours comes down to having a song that fits the aesthetic of the label. You wouldn’t release a Dubstep song on a boutique Minimal Techno label, just like you wouldn’t release a Minimal Techno song on a boutique Dubstep label. While they are both electronic music, the contacts that said label would send the song to are inherently different, since Dubstep DJ’s not usually spin Minimal, and vice versa. This is especially true for independent record labels looking for talent. 

Major record labels might have a broader approach to what genres they accept, and might sign a minimal techno track, and a Dubstep track since they have more resources to handle a diverse sound, since these genres have a place in their business model. However, to get noticed by these labels, you need marketability that a lot of smaller artists don’t have. You need a solid fan base already, a brand, and professional tunes.

Sometimes it is possible to get lucky with talent alone, and being in the right place at the right time, but this is not the norm. So if you decide to go the Atlantic Records demo submission route, and don’t have a credible foundation, then it’s really like winning the lottery. Sure, major record labels looking for new talent is a thing, but it’s a special circumstance if they get selected.

 

How Do You Find A Record Label Looking For Talent?

There are many approaches to this. A solid way is if you made a song based on a reference track, see what label they signed to. If you have a similar stature as the artist referenced, then chances are that you may be a good fit. If you aren’t on a similar tier as this artist, that doesn’t mean that they were always at this level. Go back into their catalog, and see what labels their earlier releases were on. Next, make sure they are accepting demos. They will usually say on their site, or social media if they are. Make sure they are recent posts, and releases as well. Small labels don’t last forever, just like small businesses, and the information may not be up to date, especially if they don’t exist anymore. 

Next, see if they still are curating the sound that you have produced. Labels evolve. Just because they were into Minimal in 2007, doesn’t mean that they are into Minimal in 2020. They could be into hard techno now, since that’s what sells. 

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of popular labels have smaller sub-labels that cater to up and coming artists. Make sure to pay attention to what those are. For instance, Get Physical has Poesie Musik, which caters to a melodic sound, and signs small artists.

If you’re part of a scene, and your colleagues have signed to a label that fits your sound, ask for an introduction. That is the most surefire way to get on any label. 

 

How Should You Approach A Record Label Looking for Talent

Keeping the aesthetic of a label in mind, it begs the question – should you make music with a label in mind, or find a label based on the music you make?

It’s something difficult to answer and there’s not a right answer either. It’s the chicken or the egg question. There are different options and perhaps one will suit you best. But let’s look into the different types of feedback they can provide as they could be giving you an insight on what is happening. This is where many people get confused.

In the most common scenario, people come to me for mixing and mastering with the idea of having music done. Once it is, the question that always comes is “now what?” Sometimes it happens I just did mastering of similar music and will suggest some clients of mine or in other cases, it reminds me of someone I know, so after looking up Discogs, I share a hint or 2. This is the “finding a label looking for talent that fits something already made” approach. 

The second option is to find a label that you want to be on, and design music to fit that label. You analyze the songs BPM, you take reference of its genre, you incorporate the timbre and instrumentation that you hear in the records. You make sure that your mix and master have a similar color to the ones on the label.

However, sometimes you can do all of this, and the work can come off as being derivative, because what you made has been sterilized down to elements. Not even labels with a specific sound want work to be derivative, they want it to be complementary. This is a skill that takes lots of dedication and practice to hone. The process of making something contextual, yet with its own signature is one of the hardest things that any artist can accomplish, no matter what the medium. So, if you’re going to take the “finding a record label by producing to fit the label” approach, then you have to be confident in your skills. By taking this approach, you are also diluting your potential to submit it to other labels if it’s rejected. 

Record label looking for talent

Credit: Tim Marshall

 

Key Factors When Approaching A Record Label Looking FOr talent

However, sometimes your music fits perfectly, and you have invested a lot of work into it, but the label rejects it. What does it say exactly? What it says is that you probably didn’t have one of these factors:

Dedication

The most important thing you can do to get signed to a label is to have dedication. Artists need to dedicate themselves to being the best at their art that they can possibly be. They need to dedicate  themselves to learning the best practices to succeed as a musician, whether that’s reading blog posts like this, or talking to successful peers. Remember, artists are going to fail at what they try to do, often. That’s just a fact of life. It’s what they do after they fail that defines them. As Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Marketability

Credit: Jorik Kleen

The next thing you want to do is make sure you’re marketable. Yes, just like major labels, more boutique labels want to make sure that artists have a brand. Branding can sometimes be seen as the antithesis of creativity, but it’s always been a necessity in music. Name one moderately successful musician that doesn’t have an image? Artists need to make sure their social media is in order, have an Electronic Press Kit, have a website, take some press photos, and just overall look like they care. 

Depending on the size of the record label looking for talent, artists should expect to have a fan base that is relative to said label’s stature. If an artist only has a couple releases, and a few hundred fans on Facebook, it might not be wise to go after a label like Toolroom Records, or Kompakt. Most likely their demo will just get lost in the mix, so to speak.  

Submitting Your Best Work

This next thing should be obvious, but it’s worth mentioning anyways. Artists should make sure to present their absolute best work to labels looking for demos. Make sure everything is mixed properly, and even better, it’s mastered. I can provide those services at a reasonable price, and it will go a long way to showing the labels that the music is serious. 

Having A Solid Network

Another factor that is important in getting signed to competitive labels looking for talent is networking. Artists should make sure not only to nurture themselves, but nurture everyone around them. Reciprocity goes a long way as a human being, so be helpful. Burning bridges don’t always light the way. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, this is the most surefire way of getting signed to a label of your choice. 

Personalization

Finally, when approaching a label, make sure to add a personal touch to your approach. If you can find the name of the A&R, that’s helpful. If you know someone who works for them, or is connected, get a referral in, or drop their name. Maybe mention why you think your sound fits well with the label. The more you can personalize, the better chance you have to get heard, because it shows that you’re dedicated.

 

Final Thoughts On Finding A Record Label Looking For Talent

If you follow these approaches, then you have a much higher probability of getting signed to a label. Nobody said that it would be easy though. There is a reason why many people laugh off art as being a career path. However, if you are willing to have dedication, network, and be vigilant in your craft, it can be a long, rewarding job that can jetset you around the world, and introduce you to some incredibly interesting, and talented individuals. Remember, without art, there isn’t culture, without culture there isn’t society. Don’t let anyone tell you that what you do doesn’t matter. It’s just to matter, you have to work hard. There are no shortcuts (unless you have a trust fund, and a connected family).

How can you start a song while stressed out?

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Disclaimer: this post is based on reflections resulting from the COVID pandemic.

Every other day, I exchange a few words with artists I know—friends, label partners, people I like, or anyone who wants to connect. I believe during these times, it’s important to keep social contact to divert our attention away from the madness, misery, or other constantly emerging concerns.

“How can you still make music with everything going on?” someone asked me today (and last week). I did a workshop for MUTEK and the main question was similar, something like “where do (music) ideas come from?”

Both answers overlap, in a way. If you think about where ideas come from, (let’s call it “inspiration” if you want), it can strike at random moments. For some people it’s in the shower, others while commuting, or doing yoga…etc. Basically, 90% of the time it’s happening somewhere else, rather than when you’re making music. Hence the importance of taking long breaks when you make music, and by breaks, I mean, leave the studio, go out and do something else. Your mind is still making music, but the space you create for yourself to think, will create space for you to solve problems.

I don’t know about you, but my mind is pretty much always making music, in some way. I’ll be washing dishes or walking my dog, and there goes my brain, creating patterns, imagining song structure, paying attention to ambient noises and figuring out how to translate that with a synth. So, whenever someone asks me where my ideas come from, it’s a bit tricky to give a definitive answer, because the source of some ideas emerge a long time before I sit in front of the computer. The thing is, once I sit in front of the computer, it’s like whatever I have been thinking about vanishes..I’ve forgotten everything and there I am, thinking what now?

The first good habit of sitting down to make music starts with the commitment to a 5-minute session.

The existentialist question(s) of “why make music?” sometimes strike me during this pandemic, and hard. Why am I making this? Who am I reaching out to? Why, why, why?

The answer to everything can be resolved in the 5-minute commitment. If you’re someone who’s interested in meditation, we say that the hardest step to meditate is to just sit and start. It’s the same for music making.

Another part of this challenge we face is the isolation. Most artists feed themselves events to get inspired. Now touring is hard, and that cut-off happening cold-turkey was a mental challenge. Having the resilience to be able to continue making music after months is another obstacle in-itself, as this is something that’s not only demanding, but also unusually frustrating.

If you watch that movie about The Doors, they go in the desert and try taking peyote for a spiritual experience. A lot of artists in the ’60s and ’70s had a breakthrough moment where they wanted to go beyond the rock-and-roll lifestyle to seek out answers about their life, their art, and to open new avenues of creating. There’s something that makes me wonder, when I see artists calling their art meditation or such, if there’s some sense of integrity towards the commitment of what they want to translate. Is the song just another new take on something they did before or is there a real interest to do something meaningful?

I’m sharing this because if you hit a wall with the music making, it might be directly related to a part of yourself that is either hungry for something more, or experiencing revulsion towards the repeating patterns that aren’t providing answers to your current needs. One doesn’t need a change but if your drive to create has hit a wall, then perhaps it’s time to try something else. Because you are an artist and we create just like we breathe.

How to reinvent yourself artistically has been covered on this blog in the past, as well as how to start a new song. I’m not going to cover those again, but I can share how to approach music in these difficult times, when facing stress or a feeling like abandoning it all.

What are you listening to? Connect with the new audience.

A lot of artists find inspiration in clubs and touring. Without that kind of energy in context, it doesn’t mean that music is dead, it’s just transposed. It’s been really difficult to explain to people that have never been in club to relate to the experience of loud music because that same music, out of context, is often very bizarre and sometimes, pointless. But there are other options. You can make the same kind of music for when these events will return, but you could also take the time to make music that is not aimed at those contexts. What makes an artist mature is the depth he/she has. If your music is one-dimensional, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Many of the best artists will have different monikers to explore other avenues and I would say that it’s strongly encouraged to work on different types. Start by listening to a lot of music, perhaps more than you usually do.

Focus on the effortless.

Effortlessness seems to make some people feel uncomfortable. There’s a general attitude out there that great music was made through countless hours of work. Well, yes and no. If you think that you need to work a lot to sharpen your skills, yes, that demands resilience, motivation, curiosity and a lot of discipline. That is where the hard work is. But to record a song…this is where you put to practice your acquired skills and when you compose, that should be effortless. The whole aspect of post-production, editing, arranging endlessly and click-click-clicking your music to perfection isn’t, in my book, the real deal. It’s the rabbit hole of perfection grasping attempt that kills the original, pure and raw idea. I’m more interested in ideas than perfect production. In many cases, over-produced music ages really badly.

To get into “effortless music-making”, prepare for future projects by sketching out a lot of ideas, but mostly musical ones without much of anything supportive. Start a lot of projects, make loops and motifs, build presets, macros, collect some as well. A part of that means to also put away productivity and focus on spending time making music and not finishing anything. Think of guitar players who just play with their guitar without making a song. They’ll just play whatever they just feel coming.

Collaborate, talk, and connect.

How much time do you spend talking about your music? I don’t mean plugins and techniques, but ideas, emotions, and what you are trying to share. Do you reach out to other artists and share how you feel about their music or what it gives you as imagery?

Talking about music in general is pure fuel for imagination. The idea of putting words to the abstraction of sounds is a way of getting closer to understanding techniques and helping you having more precision on whatever you want to do. If you can explain it, you’ll understand it more. Plus the idea of sharing with another artist is a way of also getting technical feedback on parts that remain obscure and confusing.

One of the things I used to do, and still love doing, is to invite a few people to share our favourite music of the moment with one another, listening actively, commenting, getting lost in it. This is for musicians, quite a critical activity as the idea of how others perceive music is a very essential understanding of what people are looking for in the music, just as much as what is the music they’re willing to listen and share. This should fill up your references and study for future projects.

Making a collaborative playlist on streaming sites allows you to be also more connected. That’s the beauty of streaming even though it gets a lot of hate. Plus in time of Covid, this is possible even remotely.

Purpose, Passion, and Your Natural Gift

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Maybe you’ve been using music as a way to get through the pandemic—you wouldn’t be the only one. When the pandemic first took hold, I started getting an unusually high number of requests for mixing and mastering. I saw about 25% more work than I would have in the similar time years before. At some point, my work load doubled. Mainly because everyone is making music right now that there are less things to do.

One question that I’ve encountered multiple times keeps coming up—is there a way to turn my hobby, what I love doing, into something that can be my day job? Can you really make a living as an artist? Many of us chase the idea of finishing a song, releasing an album, and seeing out there online with other artists we love. There must be some money coming back from that which would support me day-to-day, right?

Sorry, but the truth is money that comes back from sales, streaming and other exposure is really low.

So how can one make money then and making a living from a passion?

I fumbled upon an interesting article based on a study that you’ll find more happiness if you chase your purpose rather than your passion. It’s also quite known that making your passion a job can also kill it. I’ve been a musician full-time, run a label and tour…I can tell you that if you find yourself making a bad investment, it can completely scrap your career that you’ve been building for a decade. It hasn’t happened to me, but I did see a scene I was relying on, die out after a long stretch of golden years. What followed that genre wasn’t inspiring to me, and I never felt like jumping on the bandwagon like most of my peers did. Instead, I went low profile for a while, got some random jobs that could pay the bills and with some distance, I can see that I learned a lot from doing something else than just making music all day. You can lose perspective of yourself, of your direction, of your initial vision.

Maybe you’ve already seen or read about it in this blog, but I started 2020 with a challenge of making one track per week for the entire year. I thought initially it could be a good way of attracting people to what I do while learning more about production, revise/reinvent my own method and of course, hatch a bunch of tracks to release, eventually. That experience really brought me back to circa 2006-2008, when I was producing madly and had a lot of releases. Some people had been saying they wanted me to do techno like back then, but I felt that what was said then didn’t need to be said again, and wanted to bring something new to the table.

Adding this challenge alongside my daily work almost burnt me out, which is a really bad thing to happen if you’re an artist. With that in mind, I started dosing my music making and other insights came to me:

  • How to efficiently do I know my tools to do exactly what I need to be doing.
  • How to quickly spot obstacles and know the technique(s) to overcome them.
  • Know my limits, both creative, personal energy, and also technically.
  • Try to identify things I don’t know and not overlook them.
  • Remain humble.
  • Know what I love doing and/vs what I do best.

Just looking back at the last few weeks, there are a few things that became clear also—if you start doing something in order to get attention, you’ll get tired of it quite fast, especially if the reaction doesn’t meet your expectations. In my case, I quickly saw (I had foreseen it!) that after the 8th week, people didn’t really care anymore about the music posted. I sort of stopped posting and decided to share to a handful of people who I knew would listen. Eventually, I started making music for myself alone and even stopped uploading them on Weeklybeats, the website of the challenge. What’s pretty fascinating is to look at the first 8 tracks and what I do now and it’s completely different. Stuff I do for myself is purely experimental, either incredibly weird or very repetitive as I made some sonic moments for my loft, to be played on my Sonos.

How is this bringing me closer to my purpose or to my passion?

It’s not a secret that I found my passion many years back when I discovered I’m pretty solid teacher. Now it pays off. To teach, you need to know your craft inside out and be able to explain it properly. So exploring different techniques and reverse engineering music that I and others love is a way to teach people who want to know. This is why our coaching group is precious; we are collectively trying to understand certain techniques. What’s amazing about music is, you can understand a technique, teach it to 10 people and all of them will apply it in their own way, which will make 10 different results. The funny thing though, is that 50% will not like not being able to do what others can already do; which is a topic I work a lot in coaching: control.

Anyway, if what you do best might not be music-related, is there some hope? Well, maybe more than you think, if you have a bit of imagination. Here are a few other types of work that are more relate to music that you might think:

  • If you’re good at writing, you can work with artists on their bios, press kits, song descriptions, online presence and so on.
  • Graphic design is often a skill musician have. You have no idea how many designers are also musicians and in a world where image is crucial, you could really find work in the music industry for sure.
  • Web skills? There are so many aspects that you can tackle that as well.
  • Gear skills? If you have electronic based skills, maybe you can help assemble gear such as modular who come in kits and need assembling.
  • Networking is your thing? You have no idea how we need people that can connect people all together or create bridges between parts who need one another.

You might be thinking that musicians have no money to pay anyone, so how can that generate anything? If you’re really good at something, people will want to pay. Maybe not much at first but if you do a great job, it eventually it gets noticed. When I started this site and full time services, it started slow and I did a lot of free work (or highly discounted). I took a lot of time to build relationships with clients, and eventually happy clients referred in others. It became my purpose to make sure my clients can grow at what they do, both with the music making but also as artists that can shine in their community.

This is why I took a bunch of people under my wing with the idea to push them as if they were me. What can I do for this person that can make a difference in their career? Is it teaching them something? Is it connecting them with promoters or labels?

That’s when I understood that another skill I personally had is networking and establishing contacts. I’m a natural social butterfly at events and that is something that can pay off on the long run, especially in what I do.

The pandemic affecting events is making it really difficult to not only make that happen effectively, but also for the global inspiration to make music. Being in isolation confronts you to make music based on memories without having much (or any) of a chance to test it on a crowd…forcing you to do what you love and to simply be patient.

Sound Design and Arrangements Series Pt. 4: Emphasis and Proportion

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This post is part of a series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

In this post I thought I’d dive into two principles that I find go hand-in-hand: emphasis and proportion. Let’s start by defining what they mean, then how we can use them in what we love doing—music production.

In past articles I’ve talked about how to start a song. While there’s no right or wrong answer here, we can agree on certain points for the core of a song. Let me ask you a straight-up question to start with, which is, when you think of your all-time favourite song, what automatically comes to your mind as its most memorable part?

All kind of answers can come up, and perhaps you’re hearing the song in your mind while reading this. Maybe you remember the chorus, the main riff (motif), or have a part of the song where a specific emotion is evoked in you; you might even be thinking about a purely technical part.

Whatever you remember from that song was your point of focus. The focal point of the listener is what grabs attention and keeps it engaged.

Emphasis is a strategy that aims to draw the listener’s attention to a specific design element or an element in question. You could have emphasis on multiple focal points, but the more you have, the less emphasis impact you’ll have.

When producing a song, I like to ask, what is the star of this song? What is the motif, the main idea? What’s going to catch your attention first and keep you engaged? When listening to a song, you might have different layers and ideas succeeding one another, but of course, they can’t all grab a listener’s attention, as you can only really focus on 1-2 elements at a time. As explained in past articles, the listener will follow the arrangements exactly like one would follow the story line of a movie.

I see emphasis is from two perspectives: from the tonic side and/or from the storytelling part.

The tonic part is where you have your phrase (melody) and there is a part that is “louder” than the others. So, let’s say we take one sentence and change the tonic accent, it will change it’s meaning (caps represents the tonic):

  • I like carrots.
  • I LIKE carrots.
  • I like CARROTS.
  • but also, I LIke carROTS!

We have here 3 different tonic emphases, and in each, the focal point of the listener is shifted to a specific word. When we talk, we change the tonic naturally—emphasis on a specific word is to put importance on it for the listener. It can be used as weight, on insisting your position about a topic, or to clarify one word.

The same is also true for timing:

  • I like… carrots.
  • I… like carrots.

Or spacing perhaps the syllables to create another type of tonic:

  • I li..ke carrots.
  • I like car…rots.

Pausing creates tension as you wait. If you can focus on one idea and articulate it in various ways, you can imagine that your motif will keep the interest of the listener.

Now imagine these ideas transposed to your melodic phrase; you can play with the velocity, but also create emphasis by pausing, delaying, and accentuating it.

Potential solutions to add emphasis: velocity, swing, randomness.

In our coaching group on Facebook, I often see people try to focus on everything a song should have, but without a main idea and therefore without emphasis, listeners have a hard time getting hooked on any part of it. You can do anything you want in music, yes, but perhaps if you listen to your favourite songs, you might notice that they usually have a strong hook or something to suck you in.

Tip: Strip down your track to the bare minimum but so that it’s still recognizable as the same song. Are you left with the melody or is it something else? What’s unique about your song?

While this post is not going to discuss motifs and hooks in detail, since it was previously covered multiple times on this blog, I’d like discuss how emphasis can be used to bring a hook/motif to life.

To emphasize a specific sound, hook, or motif, you can use any of these techniques:

  1. Amplitude: One sound is 25-75% lower or higher in gain than another. Think of different drum sounds in a kit.
  2. Brightness: Brightness mostly starts at around 8khz. A filter or EQ boost around that area and higher will feel like magic. Same for multi-band saturation. This is why cutting or taming sounds compared to the one you want brighter will help contribute to emphasis.
  3. Thickness: If you take multiple samples, percussive for example, and compress some in parallel (eg. 50% wet) very aggressively with a ratio of 8:1, you will definitely see a difference.
  4. Dynamics: Using an envelope, map it to some parameters of your plugins to have them interact with the incoming signal.

However, all of these techniques depend on one thing: whatever you put emphasis on must have an “edge” in comparison to the other sounds. In ambient or techno with multiple sounds, you’ll want to make sure to setup routing in your production even before mixing your song. I like to group all elements that are decorative so they are treated as if they’d be a bit more distant. For example, for that group you could start by cutting most of the highs at around 10k with a gentle filter curve, then control the transients with a transient shaper by making them less aggressive and then have a reverb that focuses on a late response, which will create a distance. You can then lower the gain of the entire group to taste to get more of a background feel from all those sounds. Something like Trackspacer could also very useful here to create space between the main idea and your other sounds.

To support emphasis, you need proportion. In sound design, I like to think of proportion as an element of design more than a pragmatic thing. If you think of a drum set, all hits are really at different volume levels—you never see a drummer hit everything at the same volume level; they probably wouldn’t even if they could because it just doesn’t sound right. This is a version of proportion that can be applied to any of your sequences, percussion, and other ideas—it’s often related to velocity.

I also see proportion in the wet/dry knob of your effects. How much do you want to add or remove?

For the listener to understand the importance and emphasis of an effect, you’ll need to counter-balance it with something proportionally lower. If you want the listener to hear how powerful a sound is, try using another one that is very weak; the contrast will amplify it.

Proportion comes from different aspects. Arrangements take over from the mix in a dynamic way. So, if you think of your song as having an introduction, middle, and ending, proportion can also be address from a time-based perspective in arrangements. While there’s nothing wrong with linear arrangements, which are some of the friendliest DJ tools possible, they are perhaps not strongest example of proportion in music.

Here are just a few examples of how you can address proportion in your productions with some simple little tweaks:

  • When mixing your elements, look at the volume metering on the Master channel. You want your main element to be coming the loudest and then you’ll mix in the other ones. You can group all your other elements besides the main element and have them slightly ducking with a compressor. I’ve been really enjoying the Smart Compressor by Sonimus. It does a great job at ducking frequencies, a bit like Track Spacer but, cleaner since it provides a internal assistant.
  • If you’ve missed past articles, one technique I’ve outlined is the 75-50-25 technique, as I’ve named it. Once you have your main element coming in, you’ll want other channels to be either a bit lower (75%), half of the main (50%), or in the back (25%). This will really shape a spatial mix to really provide space and proportion for the main element.
  • I find that if you want emphasis, there’s nothing better to bring in some life in it and I’d recommend you use a tool like Shaperbox 2. I would automate the volume over 4 bars. I find that 4 bars is the main target for electronic music, mostly for the organization and variation it needs to keep the listener engaged. If it changes every 2 bars, the listener will notice, but every 4 bars, with a progression, it will create the idea that there’s always a variation. Also, I like to create fades in different plateaus of automation. You can have a slant between bar 1 and 2, then jump to a different level on 3 and a slow move for 4. This is very exciting for the ear. Pair that with filtering automation, and you’ll have real action. Emphasis will work well if this type of automation is happening on your main element, but it’s hard to do on all channels because it becomes distracting.
  • Supporting elements can share similar reverb or effects with the main idea for unity.
  • Dynamics are helpful for articulation and emphasis. The new Saturn 2 is pretty incredible for this—it can tweak the saturation based on an incoming signal.

Can you trust yourself to judge your own music?

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This has been a popular topic recently—I think that because of the pandemic and the isolation that comes with it, people rely a lot on online contacts to get feedback on their music. The lack of in-person music testing as well as and lack of being able to go to clubs has changed the way we are able to analyze our own music.

I was a part of an organized live stream recently to support a friend named Denis Kaznacheev, who has been held in prison for something we all think is impossible (but that’s another topic). Being in a room with 4 people, playing live, and getting feedback after months of isolation was a weird experience. The first thing that came to my mind was, that my music sucked. Yeah, I also go through it once in a while, and I had forgotten how playing music for and in front of people changes the dynamic of a song. In studio, it sounds a specific way but add one listener and it’s all of a sudden, different.

Some song, different context, completely different mood. Was there something I could do to predict this?

Technically, there was absolutely nothing wrong with what I did. People who tuned in loved it. The thing that clashed was the mood, the feel of the track, compared to what I had in mind. In past articles I’ve discussed the importance of a reference track, and this could have helped me in this particular situation, and could have helped better classify my music as well. But as you know, there’s no do-it-all plugin that can prevent this. This is why many people struggle with judging their own music.

Technical Validation

When it comes to technical items, you can self-validate using some handy tools.

See if your track is, compared to a reference, feeling like the same tone and balanced, I’d recommend using Reference. This tool is my go-to plugin whenever a client insists that the track I’m working on doesn’t sound like a particular song. I’ll load up the reference song and then, after volume matching, I can see if the lows, mids, highs are adjusted in a similar way than my mix. It also shows you if you have, per band, the same level of compression or wideness. It doesn’t lie and you can match it to have something similar. But how do you raise one band to match the reference?

I use a multi-band compressor to compress and, or EQ. A shelving EQ, with 3 bands can be helpful to adjust, but a multi-band compressor really can set the tone. You’ll set the crossovers of each band to match Reference and by adjusting, you’ll see it react to your gain or reduction. While you could use any multi-band compressors, I’d highly recommend the Fabfilter MB.

The same company that makes Reference also made a plugin named Mixroom which, with the same idea as reference, focuses on everything in the mids and highs. It’s a bit tricky to use at first, but once I found reference songs that were analyzed properly, it gave me some interesting pointers on what to push or remove. I thought it was pretty interesting to reverse-engineer some complicated mixes.

Many times people will tell me they don’t like to compare to anyone or that they’re going for their own style but that’s like trying to draw your grandmother from your memory. Some people might do better than others, but audio is abstract and you need to compare yourself to someone else to know what’s lacking or overflowing. I mean, even within a mix, I compare my channels to see their peaks, densities, and panning to make sure one doesn’t cross another, unless to create something as a whole.

People struggle with loudness, but it’s is a bit easier to manage. You’ll need a metering tool such as the IKmultimedia TR5 Metering or the lovely Hawkeye from Plugin Alliance. They are costly but necessary. For a mix, you have to keep in mind a few details: the loudest peak should be -6dB, the RMS (more or less the density) around -13 to -20dB, in LUFS, I’d suggest to be around -15dB and dynamic range to be above 10. A plugin such as Reference will also indicate loudness, and that can be really useful to see if you’re in the same ballpark.

Please consider these are numbers I deal with, and that for certain genres, it can be completely different.

If you come to struggle with the low end, the guys from Mastering The Mix also have a low-end validation/enhancement with the excellent Bassroom plugin. Again, you’ll need a quality reference to do the trick, but once loaded and with some practice, a muddy, weak low end will be a thing of the the past.

These are the best technical validation tools I’ve used in the last few years. They’re efficient, affordable and very useful in whatever I do.

Self-Mastering and Mixing

Pretty much anyone who’s been making music for a while or has studied audio engineering will agree that mixing or mastering yourself isn’t the real deal. It’s doable, understand me right, but you’re not winning. With the previous listing of all the technical tools I shared, you can make some really efficient mixes, but perhaps sometimes that’s not enough.

As an engineer, the main thing I’ll say is that someone else might spot things that are in your blind spots, plus that person is also emotionally detached from the music itself, so making decisions feels like less of a risk in itself. If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, you know I often refer to our duality as humans to have a analytical side and a creative side. When I work with musicians, I invite them to see this duality as a muscle. Your creative side needs to be exercised; it needs to constantly be fed because it’s a sponge. You want to find the perfect routine and be efficient at it, then break it to pieces to reinvent your new way of making music by re-combining them for a new version of yourself.

The way I see music-making isn’t about trying to be in full possession of your potential, but more about always putting yourself into a state of instability and risk, so new creative ideas emerge. You’ll connect the dots of the past to create a path in the now.

This state of mind is one that is not always technical, and it’s raw. I would invite you not to tame it, but to create spontaneous ideas and raw projects.

This approach is basically the exact opposite of sitting in front of your computer to design and fix a snare. There’s nothing wrong with that if you like, it but like I say to people, artists should become experts at flow, not perfection. They want to be artists, not craftsmen. But I won’t stop you from being both—I just often feel that technical production doesn’t age as well as solid creative ideas. The only thing that stands the test of time is simplicity, and that comes with a mastery of both flow and technical expertise.

If you want to be a master at everything, you’ll be very average at everything as well for quite some time, or potentially forever.

So, imagine you have an amazing idea that you made but you are very average at mixing and new to mastering—you’ll probably be butchering your idea when you try to do either. Yes, you save money and learn by doing it yourself, but I think if you’re aspiring to release something on a good label, to get attention, it might be a good thing to have someone look into your mix, even a friend. But if you really want to do it all yourself, get yourself solid tools to make sure you get the most out of them.

If you want to practice mixing, I suggest trying to find what I call, a swap buddy who can send you their mixes and vice-versa. You both learn by tweaking each other’s work, and going back to your own music after will feel easier, and clearer as well.

Psychological Validation

Now, psychology is an area where don’t get any tools to help that we all have to deal with. It’s that limbo where you maybe made a few different mixes and feel unsure which one is best. You know technically everything is there and in order, but in the last bit you’ll try to label your song into one of these buckets: Good, Not Good, Still needs work, Ready for mastering…etc.

Are advanced, experienced, and veteran producers exempt from this state of mind? Not at all. After decades of making music, I still have no idea if my music is “good” or not, even if got in the top 10 on Beatport or if my friends all love it. Deep inside, sometimes, I’ll doubt myself. However, I came up with some personal rules to help me judge if I think my own work is decent or not.

Deal with technical points first: This is why I started this post with technical stuff. I see in our Facebook group, people giving feedback, and my observation is that it is often biased by their mood or listening situation. What has become clear to me is that when giving feedback, you need a common reference. I can tell you that your kick is too loud, but compared to what? I have clients sometimes who complain about the low end being overpowering but in the same mastering session on that day I had another client who loved really, really loud kicks. The difference was laughable and both had the exact opposite feedback: one had weak low end but he felt it was too much while the opposite was a bass orgy but he wanted more. Could it just be what they hear? Yes, probably, and this is why you need to be able to use a FFT to check, but also, listen to you music in the middle of a playlist that has other songs of the same genre to know if it sounds right.

A client was telling me “It sounds right in the studio, wrong in the car and at home, its a different song… which one is right?”

The one that is right should be your studio version, but it should be cross-validated technically with other songs. If it doesn’t sound right at home, then find a song that sounds good there and then study it at the studio to see what that song has that yours don’t.

Know that you’ll never really have a permanent opinion about your music. Each day your mood might change and affect how you appreciate your music. Down the road, you’ll learn new techniques and then hear mistakes in your song, you’ll hear a better song than yours… all these points will make you doubt yourself. You’ll always want to go fix something. Since you know you’ll never be really satisfied with it, then you can accept to move on faster. Just start another song, apply what you learned, use your new influences and try something new.

Nothing exterior will validate your music. No matter what you think or do with your song, you might doubt it. This means, you don’t need the latest synth or to be on that specific label. “...and then I’ll be happy.” is a fallacy. Knowing that, it re-centres you to count on a handful of friends for feedback.

4. Let things age. Nothing better than taking a few weeks off before listening to know how you feel about it.

What’s interesting is that, whenever I receive criticism, I start see a perspective I didn’t look into enough—super important. Music production and audio engineering is often discouraging and that’s the reality of the art. That said, I don’t think there’s a day where I make music that I don’t learn something new. Accept that everything is work in progress. This is why songs that take too long to finish are often because my perfectionist side took over, and that’s not where I can make magic happen—it’s often the other way around.

Sound Design and Arrangements Series Pt. 3: Repetition

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This post is part of a series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

This post focuses on how I approach repetition in my music, as well as how I perceive it when working on clients’ music. While this is a very obvious topic for electronic music oriented towards dance, where patterns repeat, I understand that as an artist, it can be a very personal topic. Each genre has a way of approaching repetition, and if you’ve been browsing this blog, you will recognize some concepts previously covered that I’d encourage you to look into in more detail. I’d like to approach repetition in music by reviewing your workflow to avoid wasting time on things that can be automated.

Tempo

Using tempo to deliver a message is a very delicate subject. Often before I played live in a venue, I would spend some time on the dancefloor and analyze the mood and the dancers’ needs. I’d check out what speed a DJ’s set was, how fast he’s mix in and out, and the reaction of the crowd. It has always surprised me how playing at 122 BPM vs 123 BPM can shift the mood; I really can’t explain why. But when I’d make a song, I’d keep in mind that DJs could speed it up or slow it down—an important factor affecting energy. I find that increments of 5 make a huge change in the density of the sound in the club. If you slow down very complex patterns, the sounds have room between themselves which also gives the listeners to perceive the sound differently.

Whatever tempo you’ll be using, I highly recommend that you look into using gating for your short percussion or use an envelope maker like Shaperbox 2 to really shape the space between your sounds and have some “white space” between each of them. If you go for a dense atmosphere, I would recommend that you use very fast release compression and make use of parallel compression as well to make sure you’re not over crowding your song.

Sound Repetition

Once we find something we love, we tend to want to repeat it for the entire length of a song. This is, of course, a bit much for someone who listens to it. People expect change—for sounds to have variants and to be sucked in with perhaps something unexpected from the sound. Also, John Cage would disagree and suggest that an idea could be repeated for 10 minutes and the listener would be liking it, but I honestly haven’t heard many songs (through experience or work) that kept me that interested for that long.

The question is, how frequently can an idea be repeated?

It depends of a lot of factors, and while I don’t claim to know the truth, there are techniques to keep in mind. I’d like to teach you how to learn the best way for your music. Let me explain some of my own personal rules—my “reality check” for the validity of a song and the questions around repetition.

First impressions never fail: This is really important. 99% of people I work with start losing perspective and trust in their song’s potential by doing extended sessions on production. This means, when you first open a project you worked on, what hits you at first is what you should fix in that session. Once this is done, save it under another name and then close it. If you can space your sessions out by a few days or weeks (best option), then you can check your first impression of the song again and see if there’s something new clashing.

Hunting for problems will haunt you: There’s always something to fix in your song. Even when you think it’s done, there will always be something. At one point, you have to let go an embrace imperfection. Many people fall into the mindset of searching for problems because they think they missed something. Chances are, they’ll be fixing unnecessary things. What you actually think you’re missing will be details that are technically out of your current knowledge. Usually I do what I call a “stupid check” on my music which is to verify levels, phase issues, clipping and resonances. The rest is detail tweaking that I do in one session only. After that, I pass it to a friend to have his impression. Usually, this will do it.

Listen with your eyes closed: Are you able to listen to all of your song with your eyes closed upon first listen? If yes, your repetition is working, otherwise, fix, then move on.

Generating Supportive Content and Variations

In music production mode, if you want to be efficient and creative, you need to have a lot of different options. So let’s say that your motif/hook is a synth pattern you’ve made, what I would suggest is to have multiple variations of that.

In this video, Tom showcases a way of working that is really similar to how I work (and how many other people work). It’s something that is a bit long to do but once you switch to create mode, it becomes really fun and efficient. The only thing is, I personally find that he’s not using repetition enough, and while this is super useful for making short, slower songs that have a pop drive like in the video, it is not great for building tension. Too much change is entertaining, but you really have to flex your creative muscles to keep it engaging. I would rather have a loop playing to the point where the listener goes from “it should change now” to “I want this to change now.” So perhaps there will be a change after 3-4 bars in your loop. This is up to you to explore.

How do you create variations?

There’s no fast way or shortcut, creating good variations takes time and patience. It also take a few sound design sessions to come up with interesting results. To do this, randomizing effects is pretty much the best starting point and then you tweak to taste.

  1. MIDI Tools – The best way to start editing, is to start by tweaking your MIDI signal with different options. The MIDI tools included in Ableton at first are really useful. Dropping an arpeggio, note length change, or random notes and chords are pretty amazing to just change a simple 2-note melody into something with substance. One plugin that came out recently I’ve been very impressed with is Scaler 2. I like how deep it goes with all the different scales, artist presets (useful for a non-academic musician like me) and all the different ways to take melodies and have templates ready to be tweaked for your song. One way to commit to what you have is to resample everything like Tom did in his video. Eventually, I like to scrap the MIDI channel because otherwise I’ll keep going with new ideas and they’ll probably never be used. If you resample everything, you have your sound frozen in time, you can cut and arrange it to fit in the song at the moment it fits best.
  2. Audio Mangling – Once you have your MIDI idea bounced, it’s time to play with it for even more ideas. There are two kind of ideas you can use to approach your movement: fast tweaks or slow. When it comes to fast event, like a filter sweeping or reverb send, I used to do it all by hand; it would take ages. The fastest way out there is to take a muti-effect plugin and then randomize everything, while resampling it. The one that I found to be the most useful for that is Looperator by Sugar Bytes. Internally you can have random ideas generated, quick adjusting, wet/dry control and easily go from very wild to mellow. It’s possible to make fast effect tweaks (common to EDM or dubstep) but slower too. Combine this with the Texture plugin to add layers of content to anything. For instance, instead of simply having a background noise, you melt it into some omnipresence in the song so it can react to it, making your constant noise alive and reactive. The background is a good way to make anything repetitive, feel less repetitive because the ears detect it as something changing but it constantly moves its focus from foreground to background.
  3. Editing – This is the most painful step for me but luckily I found a way to make it more interesting thanks to the Serato Sampler. This amazing tool allows, like the Ableton sampler, to slice and map, and rearrange. You can combine it with a sequencer like Riffer or Rozzler (Free Max patch) to create new combinations. Why Serato instead of the stock plugin? Well, it’s just easy—I just want to “snap and go”, if you know what I mean, and this demands no adjustments.

Editing is really where it you can differentiate veteran from rookie producers. My suggestion to new comers would be a simple list of different ideas.

  • Decide on internal rules: Some people like to have precise rules that are set early in the song and then that will be respected through the song. I do it because it helps me understand the song’s idea. If you change too much, it may fall in the realm of “experimental” and maybe this isn’t what you had in mind. Every now and then, when booked for track finalization, people have a problem with the last third or quarter of their song. They lose focus and try to extrapolate or create new ideas. If you create enough material in the beginning, you’re going to make the last stretch easier. But when people are lost, I usually listen to the first minute of the song and go “let’s see what you had in mind at first” as a way to wrap it up around that logic. Basic rules can be created by deciding on a pattern and a series of effects that happen, more or less, at the same time, or a sequence of elements or sections. Pop has very precise rules for sections, while techno “rules” are more related to the selection of sounds and the patterns created.
  • Process, process, process: If I have one channel of claps or a different sound, I want to have variations of it, from subtle to extreme. Why? Because even simple ones are going to make a difference. It’s what makes a real human drummer feel captivating (if he or she is good!), because their playing slightly changes each time, even when playing a loop. Looperator is a good tool but you could also use the stock plugins and just use the presets to start with and resample, move knobs as you process and you can get some nice effects already.
  • Duplicate everything: Each channel should have duplicates where you can drop all your wet takes. You can put them all on mute and test unmuting to see how it goes.
  • MIDI controllers for the win: Map everything that you want to tweak and then record the movements of yourself playing. Usually will give you a bit of of a human feel compared to something created by a mouse click. You want to break that habit.
  • Use your eyes: I find that working with the clips visually and making patterns is a good way to see if you are using your internal rules and see if you use too many sounds.

Now, after all this, how do we know if a song’s repetition is good enough, and how do we know if it’s linear?

Validating with a reference is quick way to check, but if you take breaks and distance your sessions, that would be effective too. But the internal rules are, to me, what makes this work properly. I think the biggest challenge people face is that in spending too much time on a track they get bored and want to push things, add layers, change the rules and what perhaps felt fresh at first will be changed to a point where you’re not using the repetition principle to its full potential. The best example of someone being a master of repetition is Steve Reich and his masterpiece Music for 18 Musicians. There’s nothing more captivating of how one can create so much by playing with repetition.

Some effects in here would be reproduced with delays, phasers, the delay on the channel and such. You can also use the humanize patch to add a bit of delay randomly. I would strongly encourage you to listen to this a few times to fill yourself up with inspiration.

Sound Design and Arrangements Series Pt.1: Contrast

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

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

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

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

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

How is Contrast Used in Sound Design?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How is Contrast Used in Arrangements?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some examples of contrast use within arrangements could be:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t know where to start.”

Category: Technical Issue & Mindset

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Category: Mindset

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

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

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

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

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

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

Category: Mindset

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

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

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

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

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

Category: Technical

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

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

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

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

Category: Technical

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

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

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

Category: Technical

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

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

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

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

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

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

Category: Technical

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

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

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

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

Category: Technical

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

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

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

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

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

Category: Mindset

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

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

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

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

“I don’t know how to finish a song.”

Category: Technical

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

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

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

Bass Line and Low-End Mixing Tips

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

The Theory

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

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

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

Low-End Frequency Bands

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

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

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

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

The Challenges of Mixing Low-End

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

Monitoring

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

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

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

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

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

Shared Frequency Ranges

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

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

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

Density

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

Practice Mixing Low-End

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

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

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

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

Writing Bass Lines

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

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

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

Oscillators

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

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

It’s Time for Musicians to be Inclusive

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

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

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

Where Does Arrogance Among Artists Come From?

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

Sharing knowledge doesn’t make you lose it.

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

Seeing someone succeed doesn’t mean you failed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOBMO: The Fear Of Being Missed Out

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If you examine the history of an artist, often you will find that an artist’s first releases are pretty different from those they release later in their career(s). In many cases, it’s the effect of maturation, but sometimes it’s the result of the artist trying to maintain a following by adjusting the music he or she makes to be more like what sells. Many artists try to centre their music output on what “worked” and others are try to chase attention by jumping from one bandwagon to another. It’s no surprise then that newcomers to music-making will try to copy artists they love, in attempting to generate attention for their own work.

No matter how long you make music, at one time or another you’ll experience the existential crisis that leads to questioning why you make music at all, and who you should be making it for. When artists feel this way, I see a number of habits that start to emerge in their work:

  • Mimicking another artist’s path
  • Changing genres or styles
  • Aiming to be featured in charts
  • Making music with the goal being “to get more plays”

Is there anything wrong with doing any of these things? No, not at all. But if you’re trying to do something and expect control over the outcome, then you might feel frustrated and eventually develop a love/hate relationship with your music. This is a pattern I often see in coaching and it’s difficult to reverse.

Fundamentally, many artists have a fear of being missed out (FOBMO)—they begin to equate certain things in how they make music with “success”, which can mean they worry they’re being “missing out” on as a result of things like:

  • Not making music that’s “good” enough. Belief: “My music needs to sound in a specific way to be good.”
  • Not being signed to a label. Belief: “If I’m on the label X, then I will see success because people will hear/see me.”
  • Not having enough plays on tracks posted. Belief:”If people aren’t listening to my music, it’s because I’m not doing things properly.”
  • Not having the chance to be heard playing in a club. Belief:”My music isn’t getting me gigs.”
  • Not releasing on a vinyl. Belief: “Vinyl is consecration.”

“Artist X got to where I hope to be. Therefore, I will try to follow his steps because it seems like they worked.”

If one of these things aren’t happening, or not happening fast enough, some artists feel like everything they’ve worked on will slip away and that they will never get any recognition. Honestly, I know a lot about it because I’ve been there, but mostly after being very much in demand. Most of the time, I see this more in people before their breakthrough. But in both cases, its the same thought flow that goes on in this attention-seeking process. This carousel repeatedly demands an artist consider one important question: how much of what you do is just for yourself, and what should be released?

To have an appetite to be heard or seen, and to succeed is what is needed to help you answer this question. If you persist, there are chances success will happen—but you need to invest a lot of work in your craft first.

Does Every Song Need to be Released?

No, obviously. Let’s go one step further—does every song needs to be polished? Perfect? Good? Again, no. But for many, answering “no” to these questions isn’t debatable, as they put all their energy into polishing and finishing songs to ensure they’re ready to be sent as a demo to a label.

For me, 2020 has seen a new working style where I’m making one song per week. I try to push it as far as possible; I try to make music every day. It’s completely changed my perspective on how to approach my music. There are days where my inspiration is off and others where my energy isn’t there—it’s hard for everything to line-up and have that perfect moment. But more importantly, this approach has taught me that sitting in front of my computer to make music has to come with a very clear intention as of what I want to do with my time and the emotion I’m about to channel into the music. Everything changes when the intention is clear.

If you have a hard time re-opening an older project and getting into it, it’s mostly because your intention behind what you’re doing probably isn’t clear, and your mind is really elsewhere. This is why the idea of copying or emulating other artists or songs becomes a bit problematic, as you can’t really replicate novel emotional intention.

Should You Try to Copy or Imitate a Song or Artist?

If you’re copying with the intention to learning a process, yes. But if you’re copying to try and capitalize on public attention with expectations to be appreciated, signed, booked, seen as cool…or anything attention related, please don’t.

If I Don’t Release Anything, won’t I be Forgotten?

Not really. Some artists have been successful without releasing much. Release quality is obviously very important, and for me personally, releasing often provided me with some momentum and attention. But besides all the music I make today, many people still remember me for the music I made 10 years ago.

In conclusion, if you’re making music in reacting, you might be seeing yourself in this FOBMO. I invite you to create now more than ever as people are going through this quarantine episode and need art more than ever. You won’t be forgotten or missed, you’ll be appreciated.

Tips for better clarity in your mixes

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Clarity in mixes is not something people understand or perceive well when they first start mixing, but it’s a magical part of a song that often distinguishes professional mixes from amateur mixes. Clear-sounding mixes instantly grab your attention because they feel precise, open, airy and easy to understand. While clarity in a mix might seem easy to create, it’s actually very difficult to achieve.

I can say that I’m starting to better understand clarity myself. If you’re familiar with my music, you know I like busy music and my songs are generally quite full, with multiple layers of sounds. It’s a challenge for me to get a clear mix because of the number of sounds I use, but for me this is also the best way to practice mixing clearly, as it’s more difficult than if I were only using a minimal amount of sounds.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned when creating clarity in my own mixes.

Less is more, and less is clearer

The less you have going on, the clearer your song will be. Nothing clashes and there’s less to try to find an appropriate spot for. When mixing, you need to find a fitting place for every sound you use. If you have 5 hihats, 3 claps, and 5 melodies, this can become quite a challenge.

How can you clean up a mix and make it clearer?

I see a lot of clients struggle with cleaning up their mixes. Most artists suffer from a strange thought process that goes something like “I’m afraid the listener is going to get bored, therefore I will fill my mix with as much as possible so the listener never feels let down.” To this I would reply that there’s a remedy in your DAW…the mute button! Let me explain:

1 – Loop a section of your song, the part where it’s the busiest.

2 – Mute everything, then start by un-muting your essential sounds. What are the fewest number of sounds that can communicate your song’s idea clearly? Toggling mute on parts of a song sometimes create interesting perspectives and can reveal things you didn’t realize about your arrangements—it often takes fewer sounds to create a clear mix. This can mean no fills, no decorations, no backgrounds, just the essentials.

3 – Are your essential sounds sharing space in the frequency spectrum?

Technically, if you have less, sounds are most likely to occupy less space and clash with one another less frequently. Generally, there are a few areas where your sounds can clash:

  • Frequency: If you divide the spectrum into 4 or 5 bands, you want each band to have the same number of sounds. Low-end would be under 100hz, then 100 to 1k for mids, 1k to 3k for high mids and then 3k to 10k for highs, then 10k+ for the air/transients. If you have a hard time muting your sounds, you can also isolate a few different sounds in different bands.
  • Amplitude: Also known as volume, amplitude is often not understood properly. People want everything LOUD and are afraid that secondary sounds won’t be heard. Everything gets heard in a mix and sometimes, things that are less loud are way better. Some sounds should be the loudest, then the others should be mixed in relation to those. The greater the amplitude distance you have between your sounds, the more they’ll feel like they’re breathing instead of fighting. This is your dynamic range, a concept that’s often misunderstood. I would recommend playing with levels here and there as well. Having modulation on the amplitude of a sound is a good way to create a breath of fresh air in a mix. You can use a tool like MTremolo to give you a hand with that.
  • Sample length: This is something many overlook but is very important when it comes to samples. In many cases, samples people use are too long (too much decay) and that can cause a lot of noise, especially once compressed. Take kicks, for instance; people love big, badass kicks but don’t realize how problematic a long kick is in the low-end, especially in mastering. It bleeds in the bass and everything becomes mushy. I often use Transient Shaper (by Softubes) to shorten kicks or other percussive elements. You’d push the attack if you want and reduce the decay. You can also reduce the decay of a sample in Ableton if you go in the “Preserve” to be switched to “Trans” and then make sure it’s one-way, and play with the percentage to remove the decay.
  • Stereo space: I’ve explained this before and will refrain from repeating myself, but stereo clarity is crucial. If your sounds are spread wildly, you might get into phasing issues which means, you’ll end up with holes and sounds ghosting when they should be heard. I know that discovering phasing issues might be a bit of a mystery to many new producers, but with a good metering, you can see them. You can also listen to part of your song in mono to see if everything is coming out properly.

Chaos-inducing mixing errors

There are a number of tools and habits that can create chaos in a mix—I run into them often, and here are a few I see regularly that I can provide some advice for:

1- Using loop samples: There’s nothing wrong with using a pre-made loop or sampling something from source, but you won’t be able to access the loop’s sounds individually, and can get trapped dealing with issues that already exist within the loop or sample. If you’re using a loop, make it the centre of your song and make sure that you work the other samples around it. Tip: Using busy loops can be a bit of a problem, but you can use a multi-band compressor to control them, or put them in mono and use a multi-band stereo tool like the Shaperbox 2 to decide on the position of each sound.

2- Auto-panning nightmares: Making things move can feel exciting, but it doesn’t help mix clarity if you overdo it. Using multiple auto-pan effects on sounds can be cool, but the human ear can only handle a certain number of complex things going on. If on the first listen, one can’t understand the movement clearly, there are chances the modulation isn’t helping. TIP: Use just one auto-panning effect per song, max.

3- Delays and reverb: Reverb and delay multiply or make sounds longer, songs busier, and therefore, potentially more confusing. Reverb can be useful, but a type like Hall can make things sound a bit messy. I would recommend to have your reverb set to a short decay and low wet/dry. Darker reverb can also help preserve the highs in your song. Tip: Using reverb with a Chamber/Room at the beginning can help to know how much you should use. Also, if you can use a delay instead of reverb for creating wider sounds, use an EQ to tame the clashing frequencies.

4- Intense compression: Compression glues and adds body to sounds, but a compressor with a slow release and high ratio can also mess up the precision of a sound. Keeping some transients intact can really help a sound to pop out of a mix. If you compress, perhaps using the magic 1:1.5 ratio with slow attack to help the transient snap. TIP: Parallel compression is always useful for clarity.

My last general tip is to always check your mix in mono…it really helps!

I hope this was useful.