My Music Production Methodology Pt. III: Depth and spatial shaping tips

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This post about music production methods is an important one. In the group I work with on Facebook, I give feedback to people and I’d say that while for many, the part they strugg le with the most is to nail down a proper mixdown, and for the majority there are issues with the stereo field. I have a bunch of tricks that can help turn a 2D pattern into a 3D realm to get lost in. Let’s start by discussing a few things regarding making music 2D, and then how you can slowly shape it.

One thing that is essential for music to sound clear, loud, and powerful in a club is to have the majority of your sounds “in mono”, or in engineering terms, to have your mids solid. This is why many people will tell that doing a mono test on your mix to see if everything is heard is a good way to know. Why? Because if the sounds are moved randomly around, they might phase with others, which will end up cancelling out once in mono.

While this might sound like voodoo magic if you make music as a hobby, you can drop a tool into your DAW to make the signal mono so you can check. (hint: in Ableton Live, it is the Utility effect that will let you do that)

Ableton’s Utility tool

This is why you want your low end (under 100hz) to be in mono; to make sure there are no conflicts and that it will be sounding fat and strong. Again, in Ableton Live 10, you can activate the “Mono bass” option on the Utility tool.

Why I’m saying this is clear and simple: depth is a fun thing to have on your music but if you go too crazy with it, it might end up being a problem. So, first and foremost, when you program your patterns and music, try starting in mono. Make sure everything is heard and clear.

Once you have created the arrangements and are pretty much done but before you get to mixing, start spreading your sounds around to occupy the space in front of you. You don’t want to have everything in the middle, it will feel narrow and lifeless. There are multiple ways to get this done and it goes a bit beyond than simple panning which might be a bit boring. (Note: many mixes I get have everything in mono!)

Tips to give your mix more space

Mid/Side is a great way to use space in a mix, but is often misunderstood.

Here are a few tips to give you mix space and life, and if you google this topic, you’ll find multiple others too:

  • If the sound/sample is in mono: Try doubling it by duplicating the channel a few times, then pan and experiment. In pop, soul, R&B, the producers often do that and have up to 4 duplicates, spread around and or pitched to different tones to give sounds textures. You can use a VST Doubler to do the same but there’s something exciting about doing it manually. Keep in mind, a clap is actually 4 layers and so on for your percussion. Try to create something wild.
  • Panning around your sounds can do but it will feel bland if you don’t couple it with a quality reverb. Even at very low levels, a reverb will create space around the panned sound. This is why I group percussion into families (ex. all organic, all metals, all wood, etc) then have a reverb per family, not per sound.
  • Use stereo effects: These will be super useful to help things around and for instance an auto-pan will help give life and movement. These include: chorus, delay, phase, flanger and wideners (of course). These should be applied to a sound, not a family. Only one of these effects per song to avoid issues.
  • Quality reverbs: as described above, a quality reverb is a game changer. Stock plugins are never as good as a whole team that work on making something special. For instance, all the plugins from Valhalla are now recognized as some of the best in the industry and for a reason, they sound just as good as some hardware units. Tip Top who make modular synths has licensed their reverb for their z-Dsp 2. If you can, always go for convolution reverb for your music and use only one, in a AUX/Send. So if you really a 3D sounding song, keep in mind that a reverb will do 80% of the job. The rest is about lowering the volume of certain sounds to give the impression they’re further away. Also, filtering out the low can give that impression. Mixed with a quality reverb, you will have a lovely space.
  • MID/Side: This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of mixing because it’s hard to really understand it. Keep it simple, this term refers to how your space is shaped as what you have in front of you is the mid and the sides are located where are the speakers/monitors are. If you misuse the sides too much, it will make your music phase (you’ll hear it in the mono-check). But it’s really interesting to play with the Mid/Side (Aka MS) of your groups to open them, a bit.

Last tip: Low end should always be in mono and I usually make sure that some part of the melody is also, while it can partly be spread around. The main hihat and percussion should also be strong in the mid but then you can have support sound of the same family be spread around to give room.

 SEE ALSO :   The “sous-chef” experience 

My Electronic Music Production Methodology: The Mothership (Part II)

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I don’t know if you’re a fan of sci-fi movies, but I am. One thing I really like from those types of movies is alien invasions, where the aliens drop from the sky after jumping from a huge spaceship, where all the bad guys are assembled and dispatched. I apply a similar concept to my music production methods and overall methodology in music-making.  Ever since I’ve passed this idea down to people I coach, I see them do really cool things using the concept of the “mothership“. They adapt this method to their way of making music, and when they show it to me, I learn a thing or two on how to upgrade my music production methods.

This post is about the mothership concepts, and I will share an empty Ableton LIve set you can reuse for your own work. I’ll also cover a few features in Ableton that can help speed up your idea-making.

The Mothership: Where Do I Start?

First, know your music. Whatever genres you listen to, please get to know what it has and needs. If you read this blog regularly, you know that I always insist on knowing and using references. The mothership method also starts with references. There are a few essential questions you need to ask yourself when you listen to your references:

  • What are the predominant sounds? For instance, in techno, the kick, hats, and snare are pretty much always there and for most of the song’s duration. There are percussion and effects often but they’re not the main players.
  • What is the melody composed of? Is the melody only one sound (ex. synth) or 2-3 different sounds talking to each other?
  • Is there more to it? Sometimes, we can get lost in a reference track because there seems to be a lot going on, perhaps little sounds in the background or swirling swooshes. Those are what I call distractions. If you want to analyze a song truly, make a two-bar loop right in the middle or when the song is at its busiest. Then, start counting each sound and making sense of what you hear.

Once your song has been analyzed, you’re ready to build a template.

Building an empty mothership

If you feel like seeing what an “empty mothership” Ableton Live template could look like, you can download one here:

Get the Mothership template for free

It might not meet your needs out of the box, but it’s a great starter nonetheless.

ROOM323, who I’ve been coaching for almost 2 years, created this empty template. His starting template is great – perhaps even better than mine – so I’ll explain why I think it can be really useful.

  • Each sound has its own channel.
  • There are just enough channels to cover everything, and limiting yourself to them makes you stay focused.
  • The background and effects channels are a good reminder. Sometimes, we forget that one aspect of the song has been overused, especially for details like a background. It’s also a reminder not to overdo it.
  • Storing your loops gives you an outside view of all the potential you have.
  • There’s nothing better to help make decisions with regard to your different songs.
  • It can be turned into a live performance set!

How to use THE TEMPLATE

The first part of using this template starts by collecting “main ingredients” (see part one of this series). This can be done by scavenging YouTube, jamming a new demo VST synth, or hanging out with friends and recording them playing randomly with instruments. Anything can be potentially good, but how you use it will make a difference.

“It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note – it’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong” – Miles Davis

  1. Put each different idea in the appropriate channel of the Mothership.
  2. You’ll have perhaps 5 strong ideas. Now you can fill the channels that are missing content. If you have a nice guitar melody, then you need percussion, kick, etc.
  3. For each idea, try to have different variations. Perhaps your first loop was good but if you rework some elements, maybe you’ll find another option that is pretty cool too. Those variations can also be different scenes of the first loop.
  4. Jam away!

That’s about it!

When I work with ROOM323, I will have 20 different ideas from him, then I can select the best 5. From there, I’ll pick a row and drop it in the arrangement section to start building a song. In terms of productivity, this method is way more effective than canning one idea in a project that is then turned into a song. One important thing to have in the back of your mind is, if during your song, you run out of ideas, then you can just jump back into your original 20 loops to pick something complementary.

One fantastic thing about Ableton 10 is that you can drop a song/sample from it’s browser and drop it in your song. It will import your idea as you left it. This means that you can build your Mothership today by dropping in all your unfinished loops!

 

SEE ALSO :

My Music Production Methodology Pt. III: Depth and spatial shaping tips

My Electronic Music Production Methodology (Pt. I)

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I’ had been thinking about recently how I should consolidate the many values, observations and principles I share regularly on this blog into a summary of music production methods and methodology. I regularly give feedback in our Facebook group and I find that I’m often repeating myself with regards to certain details and points that seem like basics. Not long ago, I wrote a post with a checklist to see if everything had been covered in order to know if your song is done, but what about a todo list to start? And what are the big points you should consider beforehand in order to avoid getting lost?

Let me describe my own mindset before I get to work on music in the early stages; it helps me greatly and I think I could also give you a boost in productivity.

The intention

Have you ever had sessions that were magical or others where you felt you did the same things, went horrible where you started to doubting what you’re doing? Making music seems like it should be as straight forward as playing a sport but it can’t be predicted or controlled, which can be frustrating. I’ve started noting down a common denominator in all my good sessions: they all had been started with a precise intention. What I mean by an intention is that beforehand – even before opening the session to work with – I’d spend some time developing a precise idea of what I wanted to do in that session. It could be simple sound design, mixing, arranging, or working on a client’s session.

I’d sum it by saying to myself “today, by the end of the day, I should have done X.” The X is a sort of a goal I can quantify easily, such as finishing the polishing of a track.

I also start sessions with something I do well and love doing; this important habit puts me in a good mood, helps my brain focus, and preparesme for bigger challenges.

The mood board

The term “mood board” is often used in visual design. It’s basically a pin board with all kind of images: the mood, aesthetics, concepts. Sometimes it can be a texture or drawing, but it can be also a few pictures; it becomes a reference for all the members of the team.

A example of a graphic mood board (image courtesy of https://www.sophierobinson.co.uk)

It’s basically the same in audio. I have a huge folder with music I like for use as references. I have also playlists on Youtube of each reference per client. I have yet another one on Soundcloud for ideas, inspiration, and arrangements. The audio quality of Soundcloud being not so great makes me use it more for ideas than anything mix/mastering related. Sometimes it’s songs, sometimes it’s just simple atmospheres or a weird tune just for its reverb (which I can use for convolution). There are new, amazing songs I see in my feed everyday and I really want to tag the ones I see. I honestly even have a mood board on Instagram/Pinterest. Some images help me generate sound ideas too. Yeah, I’m weird like that.

The main ingredient

In risotto for example, rice is the main ingredient but this dish can be altered in many different ways; audio works in the same way.

This main ingredient is the core of your next project. I often compare making music to making food; I find that relying on a first important ingredient helps to develop a theme for a song. The more you work on something, the more you’ll want to add. Remember that songs are split in sections and my rule is to have either one major change or one sound added per section. Songs have, in general, 3-4 sections. Some only have 2!

So, this means that your main ingredient could – in theory – have major changes 2-3 times maximum in a song  to remain understandable. Of course, this is my personal rule. You might have totally other views and that’s alright. The main ingredient will also have brothers and sisters. I usually form a family of 3 sounds per song. The main ingredients will have 1 brother and 1 sister. The brother will be a similar to the main ingredient as a way to complete it. For example, a higher pitched note. The sister sound will be in opposition to the main ingredient. For example, if the main ingredient has a fast attack, the sister would have a slow attack.

Setting up these ideas really helps me see what I need quickly. But knowing this method doesn’t help find the actual sounds though. Sounds come to me in many ways: sampling something you love, using jams you did on some machine that you recorded, recycling older ideas, browsing Youtube’s infinite possibilities, going to a local store and buy the weirdest record you can find, learning a new way to design sound from a tutorial you watched, etc. The idea is to make material to manipulate.

FACT: When I hit a wall, I usually do a remix for someone I know, for fun. Remixing is easy and fun. You try to juggle the elements and keep some of them true to the original to make the remix recognizable in a way. In remixes, you’re given the main ingredient already, and then it’s up to creativity to do the rest.

The foundation of the house

I invite you to view your song as a dish, but now let’s also picture it as a house. To build one, you need a solid foundation. Solid is not about making it loud or big. It’s about being clear. In musical terms, we refer to the foundation as its fundamental note, it’s lowest part. Therefore, I find that setting a few notes in the bass/sub will give ideas, support for the melody to come in the mids. But if it’s muddy in the lows, the whole song will suffer.

TIP: Try to keep it to only 1-2 elements under 80hz.

A hook

Your song will be memorable for others if they can actually sing it back to someone who has never heard it. Ask a friend to see if that’s possible. If not, your song would be categorized as “intentional music” (in the same vein as percussive African music) where you can’t sing it. In techno, the whole movement of Romanian music is partly built around a combination of hook-songs vs no-hook-song. What makes it addictive is that you feel you can sing it back but not, and then when mixed, the interaction of 2 songs makes it reveal something you didn’t expect.

Do you need a hook? No. But if you never use hooks in your music, try to make one. Or if you only do music with hooks, try to make one that feels… empty. it’s a pretty difficult challenge to go out of your comfort zone but it can also make you discover things you didn’t know you could do.

David Lynch said:”Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.”

That’s all it for the first part on music production methods and methodology – I will provide more insights next week.

 

SEE ALSO :

My Electronic Music Production Methodology: The Mothership (Part II)

Resisting the lust to be famous

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While music fame and the desire to “get famous” might seem comical to some, I’m sure that if it doesn’t apply to you, perhaps there are some people in your network who have expectations to build a career in music production. It’s one thing to leave your mark, but it’s another when you have a very strong expectation to be famous. Why do I address this? Mainly because working with people I’ve noticed that many have this cyclical pattern of ups and downs, all based on how productive or successful they’ve been. The thing is, when you’re up, things are great of course, but the issue is how to deal with the lows.

In my career, I’ve learned a few things regarding how to deal with the lows. It comes down to perception mostly, but also to how you approach things. The thing is, no matter if you’re riding a high or a low, you are exactly the same. External factors can trigger frustrations but they’re not responsible of your emotions. While it is known that physically, making music can release some internal hormones that give pleasure just as a drug, on the flip side not being able to do music can also be hurtful.

Let’s debunk a few things that can help you surf more positive waves.

If you’re in music production to chase success, you’re in for a nightmare.

What is a successful release?

This is a good question; the definition of success can be based on multiple factors:

  • Sales. As you know, what might seem like a catastrophic release for one market could be a crazy success for another, with the same numbers. I can tell you that I had a time where 200 vinyl sales was a moment to open up a champagne bottle.
  • Reach. It’s so strange how some releases will have all the same amount of effort in marketing but one will pop on social medias and charts. It’s basically impossible to predict what will work and how much it will spread out. But sometimes, something that reaches out more than usual, might have next to no sales.
  • Media feedback. So you know, if you pay for PR, it will be between 150 to 1000 euros or more for a company to pass the music to medias, DJs, blogs and journalists. It doesn’t guarantee anything at all. But one thing you want is the music to gain momentum and if you start seeing comebacks here and there, that can be seen as a form of success.
  • Other artists’ appreciation. Charts, thumbs up, DJs dropping music in an event are all a form of success.

The thing is, these factors are all linked as you can see, in one way or the other. As a label owner, sometimes it becomes pretty frustrating to deal with artists who complain that you didn’t push hard enough because the previous release did better. Explaining it like a lottery might be the best way to put it out. The strangest thing is, sometimes some of the most talented artists I know make music that is exceptionally beautiful but it just doesn’t sell, reach or get any feedback; it’s as if people completely missed it. I’ve seen some releases on Archipel pop 7 years later because a known DJ played a track in an event, randomly. Thank you Shazam!

In the end, you are the one that can define your own success. Using numbers will help you greatly. “Being famous or known” can’t be measured, but selling 200 vinyls can. And since sometimes things move really slowly; sometimes patience can make a difference.

Over 20+ years of releasing music, I’ve come up with my own set of success measurements. One of them is based on a very tight circle of friends I share my music with once I’m done with a new song. If they all like it, then I know I have something I’ll be happy with down the road. Because one of the main issues with music making is to know if you’ll love your music later on. While you’re in it, you often lose perspective of its true potential

So what does success come down to?

1 – Create personal projects that matter: This is something really important here. Make music, finish your songs, make albums and share them with your friends. Hire someone to make a kickass artwork, make sure it sounds top notch and have something that makes you proud, even years later. Why? Because that is success, honestly. To have your own collection of homemade music is something that creates a portfolio and later on, if anyone looks back at your past work, they can see the dedication and work you put into it.

2- The 1/20 ratio: Keep in mind that one song out of 20 might get attention. Perhaps less. Keeping that ratio in mind, it really brings you down to earth and keeps you humble. Is it worth making music? Hell yes. Make tons of it. Don’t spend forever on that one song you believe will make you famous. Make tons of them, record daily at least one thing, one sound design, one loop… keep yourself engaged in what you love, because you love it, not because it will lead you anywhere.

3- Create your circle of validation: This will take time and patience but if you can find a circle of 5 people you love and that you know have similar tastes to you, then you can broadly share with them. Expect to be frustrated at times but be there to validate their work as well, and remain honest, diplomatic and constructive in any feedback. Make sure that some people of that circle are DJs that often play out so they can test your music in context, if that’s you’re goal. Bonus points if one of those DJs is a social media magician; he might refer you around. I also like to have someone that is very knowledgeable so I can bounce ideas of him/her regarding labels to send my music to.

And have fun!

The rule of thirds in arrangements and mixing

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One of my favorite aspects of music making is to use proportional ratios regularly. While this seems perhaps counter-productive when compared with the artistic side of producing music, I use it to eliminate a bunch of technical roadblocks that emerge in the process of decision making. Because making decisions can sometimes end up in roadblocks, you can use this technique as a general rule that you always refer to whenever you have to.

Let me explain how this rule of thirds can give you wings.

The first time I familiarized myself with this concept was when I used the iPhone grid to take pictures. I had read that a tip to take better pictures was to use that grid to “place” your content. To compose your photos according to the rule of thirds, you must imagine your photo divided into nine equal parts using two vertical lines and two horizontal lines. For example, the square in the middle should have the subject of your picture, so it’s perfectly centered, it is also recommended to have something like a detail where the lines cross.

When I practiced this, I immediately saw a parallel with musical arrangements. For instance, any song will have three distinct sections when it comes to the story line (intro, main section, outro). Where each section meets, there must be a pivot, an element of transition. When I work, I always start by dividing the song into equal thirds, then, I’ll divide again so I have nine sections total. Starting with arrangements, they have equal parts, but this will then change as I dive in details of arrangements; some of the “lines” of the grid will be moved around.

TIP: Use markers in Ableton and give names to each section.

What you want in arrangements, is a good balance between expected and unexpected elements.

Using the rule of thirds helps achieve this balance: while you center the main idea of your song right in the middle of your timeline, you can have an overview of where the listener will sort of expect something to happen. Then you can play with that. Either you give the listener something where they expect it, or move it slightly to create a surprise.

The rule of thirds can also help in a few other aspect of your work:

  • Tonal balance: We covered this topic recently and this means splitting your song’s frequency range in three areas (low, mid, high). You can use a shelving EQ to help you with this or you could re-route your sounds into three busses that are per-band. This will allow you to control the tone using the mixer of your DAW. In this case, by simply splitting in 3 bands, you minimize the work of deciding which tone to take.
  • Sound design: We’ve discussed sound design before but I’d like to pinpoint how you can apply the rule here. For instance, think of how a kick is made. There will be the mid punch of the kick, supported by a bit (or a lot) of sub, then a transient on top. Most of my percussion are layered with three sounds. One will occupy most of the space, another will add add body, and the last one will be adding transients or texture. I also find that shuffling with three sounds often makes it difficult to get bored of a sound. The rule of thirds – where you have sound variations – pretty much always works for me. The question to ask is, is there a balance or is there a dominant?
  • Mixing: When I do a mixdown, I always have multiple categories for my sounds. Part of this is that – since I really don’t want all my sounds to be front forward – I’ll have some that are intentionally low, others in the middle, and the loudest one are the ones that are meant to be right in front of me. It’s very soothing for the ear to have these three areas of sound levels because it help creates dynamic range and creates an acoustic feeling of tangible spacing; putting some sounds in the back will give support to the ones who need to be heard. Just like sound design, if you always keep in mind that you’re layering in thirds, this can give your mixes a lot of depth.
  • 1, 2, PUNCH!  This is a technique that I’ve learned in my theater classes, consisting of creating expectations to then mess with the expectations. Basically, you want to introduce a fun sound, and in the pattern introduce it again later, but at the exact same place, then the listener will expect it to come a third time. This is where you can surprise them by either not playing the sound or by bringing something different. Simple, but very effective.
  • AUX/Sends. This might sound a bit much, but I limit myself to not use more than 3 aux/sends. I find that an overflow of effects will make your song messy and unnecessary busy. One of my starting templates has only three sends by default: reverb, delay, compression (or another sound modulation effect such as chorus).
  • Stereo spectrum. I like to see the placement of my sounds in a grid of 3 x 3 zones. It will go as: right, middle, left then, low middle and high. Some of the main sounds will have to be right in the middle (ex. clap, melody), some in the low-middle (ex, bass) and then some elements that are decorative, around. A healthy mix is sort of shaped like a tree: middle low should be strong with bass/kick, then middle left-right and middle-middle are strong too, then some content in the middle-high, with a little presence in the high left-right. You want to be very careful with the zones of low left or right as this could create phasing issues. You want your low end to be in mono, therefore, centered.

There are other examples, but these are the main ones that come to me!

How to get the right tonal balance for a mix

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One of the biggest challenge of finishing a song is to properly adjust the tonal balance. There’s no doubt this part of track-making is puzzling; many people – even experienced producers – are still going to have some issues with tonal balance some days. There are tools and methods to correct tonal balance, but it’s always a challenge; I feel that it’s important to share some tips on how you can make adjusting tonal balance easier.

What is tonal balance?

I’ll keep this as simple as possible: tonal balance, from my perspective, is dividing your song into three frequency sections and figuring out how to adjust them. For instance, in certain genres, you want the tone to be totally balanced, while for dance oriented, electronic music, you’d want the lower end louder in the mix. While this sounds extremely simple to achieve, in reality, it can be a nightmare.

The biggest issue with tonal balance is that if your tone is wrong, your work when played in a specific context (ex. in a club) will sound completely off compared to similar songs of the same genre.

Common problems with tonal balance include:

Lower end anemic: The song will feel weak, energy less and hollow.

Lower end too loud: The song will feel muddy and lacking in body.

Mids lacking: The song will feel empty, no punch or body, far off.

Mids too loud: The song becomes unnecessarily aggressive and obnoxious.

Highs lacking: The song lacks definition and precision in the sounds.

Highs too loud: The song is fatiguing and harsh.

Using the right tools for tonal balance adjustments

Monitoring is of course, crucial to adjusting the tonal balance of a song. I’d say 75% of the time I get a file for mastering and the tonal balance is completely off, mostly because of the artist’s listening environment. While we don’t all have the budget or space to have a fully treated studio, there are some things you can still do:

  1. Cross-validating. With my speakers, I’ll always check a mix periodically with headphones as I work. I like to have a different perspective and I find that the sound I have between the two often reveals a perspective I missed.
  2. Mixing at a low volume. You’d be surprised at how you’ll automatically hear what’s wrong. Reduce by half the volume level you’re working with and listen to how the kick comes through, then the melody compared to it, then the high end, etc. Cross-validate with a reference track.
  3. Using a subwoofer. Many people will tell you that you don’t need a sub to do a good mix but it certainly helps to have an idea of what’s happening down there. Many of us will have issues with the neighbors so I suggest to only use sparingly just to check your mix. A good alternative is getting a Subpac.

There are also tools you can use in your productions to help you. I use many but here are some of my favorites:

Reference

Learn how to achieve the right tonal balance in your mix. Practical mixing techniques for clarity, depth and balanced frequency spectrum.

This plugin is a life-saver, no doubt. You load in your reference track, adjust the volume to match and then you can swap between your mix and the reference. There are even some dynamic graphics to show you what part of your mix is too loud or lacking in comparison to the reference track.

If the track is already mastered, you won’t be able to rely on the compression meter but the levels will be used the same way. For 60$, this is certainly an essential to have in anyone’s collection.

Shelving/Band EQ

When I first started to make music, I really didn’t like shelving EQs as I felt they weren’t useful, but once I started looking into them, I have to say that it almost became one of those obsessions one can have for a plugin. There are many of them, so I’ll name a few and then explain how to get the best out of them.

  • Tonelux (Softubes): One of the most recognized and acclaimed tools out there. It gets things done, quickly. Often on sale too.
  • Solid EQ (Native Instruments): I love this one because you have some precision on what you do and it is a good mix between being a musical EQ and a transparent one.
  • Maag Audio EQ4: This one is great for highs. It’s one of the most used in the industry in mastering to get the proper “air” sound, right.
  • Hammer DSP (Kush Audio): Crazy musical, warm and outstanding all the time. Often something to just play with on the master bus to see all the different moods one song can have.
  • Sie-Q (Sound Toys): A bit like Hammer. Musical, and slightly magical in how it handles the mids.
  • ValvEQ (Kazrog): A good alternative to the expensive Bax EQ by Dangerous. It’s handling your tone in MS mode as well.

Using the right techniques in tonal balance

If the EQ, cross validation and other tools don’t seem to work for you, I’d recommend a very simple technique to help you nail down the tone.

Basically, we’ll limit it our tone balance to three sections but you can pull it to four or five if you want, but the lower the number, the easier it gets later on. Knowing this, I’d encourage you using Ableton Live 10 for the use of the groups in groups feature. You can make alternative groups where you push all the channels using lower end in one group, then mids, finishing with highs.

If you have only three groups or busses, you really limit your options to these 3 faders to control. The less you have in front of you, the more focused you’ll be.

The way I usually do it, I’ll start with the main, loudest channel and put it as the loudest one, then mix the 2 others accordingly. Pretty often I feel like knowing the level of the low end first will greatly help settle the rest.

Basic tips for writing melodies
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In our Facebook group, I was asked to share some tips about writing melodies and how to approach this process while arranging. In electronic music, many artists are self-taught and the concept of music from a melodic and harmonic perspective is often built over intuitive understandings and reading online tutorials, which is helpful, but perhaps lacking guidance for making techno or ambient music. Here are a some simple but useful tips for writing melodies that you can do using Ableton:

Find the root key

Each song has a root key. If you look on Beatport for instance, it will indicate the root key so DJs who mix in key will be able to know what they’re dealing with.

A track in G minor on Beatport.

DJ’ing in key is something I love to do once I have a bunch of really interesting sounds I want to bring into a song. Basically, if you follow my non-linear production technique, you’ll work on sound design for a while and when things get shaped into a pattern, you might want to introduce some melodic elements which will help everything come together. This is often where self-taught producers start to experience problems because their song feels like it’s all over the place and lacks an overall direction.

With writing melodies, where should you start?

First, you should decide on the root key. For instance, let’s say you choose C on your keyboard; I would leave that note playing through the entire song at first and then work around it. This means that the fundamental note of your song will be in C, as well as your bass and the other elements you’ll develop around it.

Tip: Use the Fixed grid of 8 bars to make it easier to make longer notes.

Scales, chords

I’m not going to dive into music theory so perhaps you want to do a bit of reading on the subject of scales if you’re not familiar with them, but after picking up your root key, I strongly suggest you use scales and/or chords to decide on how to develop your melodies. Using scales in Ableton will limit the notes you play to the ones that are included in the scaling – this really helps to make sure your melodies don’t sound “off” while building the overall emotion of your song.

Once you get comfortable with scales, you can have them change throughout the song to change emotion and give modal color to the melodies.

As for chords, it’s the same sort of thing. Fore example, if you pick a minor chord (three notes played simultaneously) with a root of C, you’ll immediately have a choice of a three notes to include in your melody. If you keep the song in that key/chord, you don’t have to play all three notes at once to have the chord itself.

How can I determine the notes of a chord or scale?

Insert the scale tool to Ableton or any equivalent plugin (note: there are many alternatives online if you google it). Then you can reference the notes that are from the chord by inserting phantom notes from your sequence, then you can play hit play. The beauty of using Ableton Scales is that if you place a note that is outside of the chord triad, the plugin will re-align it to where it should be, keeping you from sounding off.

The 1 octave, 1 bar motif technique

This method no secret to anyone, but still a truly personal way to write a melody. I usually create a three-note motif to start with, make sure it’s only using one octave, and not longer than one bar. Honestly, I can listen to this motif for a long time and – for myself – just while listening to it new ideas will emerge, pretty much automatically.

What I like about Ableton’s MIDI tools is how easy it makes it to build evolving ideas. The “Duplicate loop” tool makes it easy to create evolving patterns.

My initial loop will be duplicated and in the second bar, I’ll add new notes that came into my mind.

…and so on until your motif evolves to have your chorus, verse, etc. Basic melody writing isn’t really much more than that.

I usually like to copy the motif to a lower octave later on to generate a bass line.

TIP: Try flipping or reversing a pattern for fun results.

ADSR, Velocity and groove

Now that your melodic sequence is built, it will be important to give it life by adding a groove template on it. This will be valuable to make the melody less mechanical and more human-like. I usually like to add other plugins:

  • Note length: play with the lengths from shorter to longer; sometimes having variations like this is also a great way to do transitions from section-to-section.
  • Velocity: complementary to the groove template, this really allows for random velocity to kick in which can create elements of surprise. Make sure to freeze/flatten your sequence so you don’t have different versions every time!
  • ADSR: Don’t forget to modulate your melody using variation in the envelop such as the attack through the release. This is a nice variation to the note length and can give a feeling the melody plays backwards.
  • Arpeggiators: useful to generate some extra ideas to the existing motif. Try it with the diverse random options.
  • Melodic Steps: quite a power horse tool to generate ideas. Try it and see how it evolves.

Let me know of your own techniques for writing melodies and perhaps I can add more ideas here!

Alternative music arranging techniques

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Music arranging techniques are a topic I’ve been asked about most in the last few weeks. For many people, this is the part of music-making that causes issues. And rightfully so; arranging is all about storytelling. In past posts, I’ve said that even though your sound and production might be awesome, if you have nothing to say or if you can’t express your ideas properly, the song will feel shallow and will be quickly forgotten.

In this post, I will explain a few things you can do to create exciting, original arrangements – mainly tips on how to work on transitions, which is one of the most important parts of electronic music.

The “perspective” method

One of the most important aspects of arranging are something I’ve explained in past posts, which I call “perspectives”. A quick summary of what I mean by perspectives: split your song in sections using the Markers in Ableton (or your DAW). I usually put a marker at the end of the song, then one in the middle, then others so the song has four similar sections of the same length. Basically, you need an intro, an outro, and the middle part of your song, which is now split in two.

These marker points are critical moments where you could lose the listener’s attention. They are critical pivots for where you want something to happen to keep the flow going and to roll into the next section of the song. Each section should have a surprise and some development or an element to relieve the tension. These points are also moments where the tension can rise or be released; with a proper transitional approach, this can be done easily.

TIP: Find your main idea and try to see if you can create two different developments of it as well as add supporting sounds/melodies. Try to distribute your melodic content across all the sections so the song feels like it evolves.

The jamming method

Recently, I was trying to explain to my son movies are made. He thought a movie was shot as-is, continuously, and didn’t understand the editing aspect of the process. A lot of people think the same way about songs; they’ll grab material and spread it across the song linearly.

I like the idea that making a song is like a movie, or a bit like how songs were recorded in the 70s/80s. You need many, many, takes and jams to find all the possible ideas for your motif. Here are some methods to jam withing your project to help it evolve further:

Jam the clips of your project in the session view of Ableton Live and record the results after the original song structure so you have alternative ideas on how your song could evolve next to your original idea. Many artists jam the clips, then add effects and such while recording for a good 30 minutes to see what comes out. You might be heading down a totally new arrangement path after this way jamming once or twice.

Stop making the song in a linear fashion from start-to-finish and try to chop up your sections and move them around within the timeline. Writing a song is not like writing a story; in the era of DAWs you always have the option to chop out a section and move it to other points in your arrangement. Personally, I like to jam for about an hour so I can really capture the best moments, but this also means I have to chop out a lot of crap out afterwards.

Use re-sampling on a loop. This is my favorite technique in sound design and arranging which is about taking every single loop I have in my project and passing it through a lot of effects, while recording in a channel that re-samples the master. You’ll end up with long files filled with many alterations of your sounds.

  • Add 100% wet reverb to create intense, transitional, swoosh moments.
  • Use LFOs from Max for live to add movement and life to certain parameters.
  • Map your effects to a controller and record yourself physically turning knobs – you can fine tune the automation later.

Use new material in the transitional, focal points of the song. This is a powerful way of re-inserting your recordings into your arrangements and will ignite creativity; your song will get a huge dose of vitality and movement from doing this. This technique can provide you with a lot of ideas for making original transitions, but also spice up your arrangements in sections that fall flat.

Other types of transitions you can try which rely on this technique include:

  • Programing alternative patterns using a controller like PUSH.
  • Slicing certain MIDI sequences and then rearranging them.
  • Punching in and out of certain channels in real time and recording yourself. All your gestures, and work can be recorded by engaging the recording button in the upper part of the window.

Most importantly though, use references! Try to analyze your favorite songs and see how they are arranged in terms of transitions, and then try to replicate them. Music arranging is not rocket science; you’ll learn by copying and eventually by practicing, you will develop your own tricks.

How To Reinvent Your Sound

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If you’re finding that all your tracks are starting to sound too similar, there are a number of ways you can reinvent your sound. A while back, I wrote an article about how sometimes we feel that our music always ends up sounding the same. I did a test with friends and asked them to import their last 10 tracks into Ableton Live to compare each of the tracks’ wave forms. Visually, this immediately reveals if their track structures are the same. For instance, some people always introduce the hi-hats after 4 bars and will pause the kick just before. Others will put a first break after 2 minutes, then another one pretty much at the same place every time. We have habits and preferences in music; it’s possible to end up going down the same road with each track.

If you take music production seriously, you’ll want to pay extra attention to how you present your art. If you always stick with the same routines and habits, you might have difficulty keeping things interesting, especially if multiple labels want to work with you. Let’s discuss a few important points improve your sound, without losing the sound signature you might have already developed.

Know yourself first

You can’t change or reinvent yourself if you aren’t aware of your routines. What do you want to change or upgrade in your sound? Sometimes you know easily, but other times it’s important to answer this question. There are two major ways you can answer this question, but first you’ll need to gather all the tracks you’ve made in the last months and listen to them (or have a friend listen to them which can be better as there will be no bias) to determine what commonalities they share.

Another way, which is what I do, is to open your last bunch of project files and look at the arrangements. There will be something you might be doing regularly that needs to change. Once you know, the best thing to do is to start taking notes in the project itself by putting markers where you tend to do a specific thing. Put as many markers as possible then delete the content and make that new project your starting template for your future projects.

Are you always using the same kick? The same samples? The same synth? Reverb? If you’re always using the main effects that are included in your DAW, don’t forget that thousands of other people are also using those effects, and perhaps it’s time for an upgrade to new VSTs. Some are very affordable too. What’s very interesting is how sometimes we don’t realize we use the same samples. If you use analog gear, this might end up becoming an issue unless you add a bit of color or personality to your sounds somehow. Machines are often limited to what they can do and will depend on outside help.

For instance, if you always use the same type of kick or clap, perhaps you can start layering it with something else.

TIP: This is the longest part of the process but it will pay off – use friends to collect intensive feedback or our Facebook group.

Seek inspiration

This is the fun part and it demands a bit of an open mind. I would encourage you to do these things:

  • Who are your main inspirations in music? which artists do you like? Try to find out what/who inspire them. Perhaps it’s an unknown artist or something completely different. For instance, Bruno Pronsato is an ex-rock drummer and that has been a big influence on him. Pretty often you’ll find that some artists do get inspiration very different from the type of music they themselves make.
  • Try to listen to randomly selected music. This can be from the radio that you swipe around or from Spotify. There’s also a plugin VST named Radio that is pretty cool for that. It allows you to stream the radio directly in your DAW, and record it – an endless source of ideas. It also offers random channels to listen to.
  • Go back to oldies. If you lack ideas, try exploring different eras such as the 80s, 70s, etc. You can also dive in the vast world of jazz, hip hop, folk, world music, or indie rock to name a few. Create yourself a playlist and note down some ideas you like and see in them.

The most important question to ask when you listen to other music is to ask yourself what made that song famous. Is it the quality of the voice of the singer? Some innovating technique? Some use of effect? Every song has a story and it can be very insightful to understand what it is.

TIP: If you lack ideas, dive into electro-acoustics, Musique Concrète or Free Jazz. It’s not for the faint of heart but it’s full of ground-breaking ideas.

Think Modular

Reaktor by Native Instruments

I don’t mean modular synths here – when I say “think modular“, I mean that it’s time to become a crafting master in Ableton. Here are a few tool suggestions that can help you improve:

  • Reaktor. Reaktor is a monster. If you’re not already into it, check out Native Instruments’ demo to try it. It will be intimidating at first but it pays off, creatively speaking. There’s a huge community exchanging patches made with it and the blocks series is a good alternative and introduction to modular synths. The cool part is finding free tools that can be tied together and rebuilt into an instruments of your own. Many artists like to build one patch which becomes the tool in their next 5-10 tracks, then it evolves into something else. The strength of Reaktor is that it can be used as a synth or as effects.
  • MXXX.

    MXXX By Melda Production

    MXXX is for effects. It is very, very powerful as you can create complex chain of effects into one space, then automate multiple at once. I’m pretty addicted to this tool for sound design but also for mixing where I can fix some issues.

  • Reason. Reason (a DAW) has a more visual approach and sounds incredibly amazing. There’s something very playful about it by plunging virtual cables in the UI. The last version is simply outstanding and won awards in 2017. Link it to Ableton to combine forces. Ableton can send notes to Reason and you rewire the sound back into your project.
  • Bitwig. I find this DAW is very advanced and if you’re new to music production, it will be a challenge to learn. Since it’s very similar to Ableton, the transition is pretty fluid. I find the way the plugins work together is extremely creative and easy, without killing CPU. You can add randomizers and LFOs to pretty much anything and for that alone, it’s worth using. I often come to Bitwig for advanced sound design.
  • Goodheartz. Goodheartz is a collection of super nice plugins. There are many modular options but I like these because of their high quality and the fact that they don’t push CPU too hard.
  • Modular by Softubes. This plugin is the most impressive take on real modular synths out there. You have software equivalent of real hardware, a bit like Universal Audio’s version of hardware mixing tools.
  • VCV.

    VCV Rack (credit: VCV website)

    VCV is all the new hype – a free, open source environment and also an interpretation of hardware components. It does have a learning curve but the results are fun and it will certainly get you out of your comfort zone.

TIP: Abuse demos and trials! Try everything, record all your sessions and use them as wave files in a project. The plugins that are the most exciting should be considered to be added to your shopping list.

Collaborate

Collaboration is the most important in order to help you break from your habits. If you can find someone who lives close by that you can visit to produce in someone’s studio, hang out, listen to music and talk production, it will bring you a lot of fresh ideas. Don’t limit yourself to people who make the same music as you. It can be a guitar player or a singer. Sometimes if you can try to work on a new song with someone else, it will work your creative mind and force it to explore techniques you might have never been exposed to. Collaborating online is also very refreshing. Find people on Soundcloud and see if you can befriend them to eventually work with them, or remix them. It can be someone in a field that is totally out of your “normal”.

SEE ALSO : Where to Get Fresh New Ideas for Tracks

Important Music Production Principles

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As a label manager or as a teacher who regularly gives feedback (join our facebook group if you’re interested to participate!), I’ve realized I don’t listen to music like the average person; I listen for certain music production principles. There are a number of things that will get my attention that most people won’t really notice; I’m listen for a number of principles that make – according to my tastes – music that feels full, mature and deep. Many labels are after music that will sell, but I’m more interested in music that innovates, which to me comes from the design work involved in the song.

Why innovation first? I prefer treading new ground than releasing something vanilla. It might not pay, but the delayed gratification is more powerful and I can attract creative minds, which are my favorite kind of people.

I was reading about visual design and I was pretty interested in how it’s similar to audio production. I’ve compiled some basic music production principles that applies to both the audio and visual spheres.

Balance

Balance can be achieved in a variety of ways: from the stereo field being occupied, to the mid/side balance, or the balance between low end vs high end. I like to hear how balance has been designed and exaggerated – the emphasis of a zone that moves towards another. I want to feel the artist is playing with balance, or shows that he can propose balance shift during the whole timeline of his/her song. Balance is to me, the umami of audio, and I want to experience something that feels full.

TIP: In the final stage of arranging, try to check each zone (left/right, mid/side, lows, mids, highs) to see how they relate to each other.

Contrast

This one is a bit tricky. How do you apply contrast in audio? It can be in how you select your sounds for instance. Perhaps having a number of sounds that have very sharp attack compared to others that are soft. Maybe a contrast in volume, compression, harmonics or dull vs very detailed. As you bring in a number of sounds or melodies, think of how each of them can be different. This is useful as it can broaden up your palette of sounds or have them evolve into something else. One of my favorite contrasts is between textured sounds vs some that are smooth.Another type of contrast that I love to hear is a distinction between bold and subtle on certain elements.

TIP: Try to import two samples at a time that are very different. Ex. 2 claps, one bright and the other fat, then go from one to another to create contrast.

Emphasis

Which element that should grab your attention first? This is, in design, the focal point of your artwork and in audio, putting one sound forward will have the listener engage with it. This is usually in the mid frequencies, right in front of you. It’s rare that your key element will be panned to the right and if so, it will be really confusing to get something there through the entire song. A good way to create a focal point will be to decide what will be in front and what’s in the back.

TIP: Use one main element in mono and EQ the mids up to push it front forward. Group all sounds to be put in the back where you slightly remove mids in mid/side mode.

Movement

This one is all over this blog and if you haven’t consulted some of the past articles on how to get more movement in your tracks, I invite you to check some out. Movement is one of the most important parts of music arrangements. Movement is life, nothing less. When music is static, it feels dead, dull, redundant, synthetic in a bad way, and terribly alienating. You need to have your sound move in the space, in the stereo field as well as up and down – there are so many ways to achieve movement.

TIP: EQ, auto-pan, compression, filters are your best friends for movement.

Pattern

Ideas and hooks always are dependent on a precise pattern. Next time you listen to your favorite song, try to determine the pattern of the song. Sometimes it’s simple, sometimes it’s multiple patterns that are layered. Now, the pattern is more than just the percussion; it’s the order of elements that are also reappearing throughout the song. In techno, there’s a micro pattern (eg. within one bar) that is part of a much bigger pattern. Decoding it is a bit like reading morse code. But one of the key points of patterns, as explained by Miles Davis, is understanding the importance of silence because that’s what creates them.

TIP: When creating a pattern, try adding random additional ideas by using Ableton’s MIDI effect, “Random.” Having a developing pattern can do wonders to the timeline of a very simple song.

Rhythm

This is the perfect follow-up from the pattern principle as they go hand-in-hand but are slightly different. I like to see the rhythm as everything that amplifies the flow of the pattern you created. Groove templates in Ableton are particularly tied to rhythm as well as swing. But importantly, one thing to understand is the transition from section to section, as well as what’s regular vs irregular. You can have a very simple, almost boring pattern but with a great rhythm, you can make it very engaging for the listener. However, this doesn’t work the other way around; a poor rhythm will turn a great pattern to garbage.

TIP: Try to DJ your tracks at different stages of production. You can stretch your idea/concept to 5-6 min and see how it feels, mixed as a DJ. Of course, mix it with something you love the rhythm of and see how yours fits in.

Unity

This is the final touch to a song; “making sure all elements feel like they’re working together.”  Sometimes I hear music and I feel there are a few sounds that don’t fit in at all. Perhaps this has happened to you and you’re not sure exactly what it is. Here’s a quick list of things to consider while developing a new idea:

  • Make sure all melodies are in the same scale or in compatible keys.
  • Use the tuner to make sure the most important elements are in key.
  • Always have some sounds that are in the “call/answer” relation with some other.
  • Certain sounds should either be working together or complementing one another (eg. played at same time or shuffling).
  • Use a global swing/groove for main sounds.
  • Stick to just 1-2 reverbs for creating a common space.

Final principle: Make your work understandable, long lasting, and detailed

Here’s a personal motto that I apply to the analysis of my own work:

  1. “Is this song understandable?” If I ask a person to sing it, can he/she relate to one element?
  2. “Is this song based on a trend or will it age well?” I like to analyze songs that I still love after 20 years and try to see what I still love about them. I then try to apply concept with my current knowledge. It can be a concept or a technique too.
  3. “Did I cover all details?” The last round of arrangements I do will be to cautiously pass through my song, one bar at a time to see if I am aware of all details, such as volume, tails, attacks, position, etc. If I don’t do that, the song isn’t done.

I hope this helps you to perceive your music differently and create your music more efficiently!

The musician’s double life: making money from music

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I’ve been working with musicians for quite a while, and it’s no secret that making money from music alone is huge undertaking because we all know that revenue streams are hard to come by. In many cases, I’ve observed how many musicians often have a double life that they’re trying to deal with. I’d like to share how this is often an aspect of being an artist that can be misinterpreted by the artist him/herself.

I’ll start with my own background.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been interested in anything art related. In the early 80’s, I convinced my dad to rent a camera so I could direct my own movies with my friends. We made cowboy movies and later on, in high school, I was really interested in theatre. When I was in college I was getting more serious about theatre but to secure my future, I decided to go in Social Science and Psychology.

This is the case for many people I work with: they live the double life of having another job because making music won’t pay the bills. I often see people who believe that because they do music, they should be able to automatically make a living from it, but making a living from music takes a long, long time. I find that if you want to live off music, it’s better not to do it full time for a while. There are multiple benefits in avoiding music as a full-time job, even though that might be your dream. Let me explain:

You may run in a creative burnout. This is something I explained in a past post and it becomes a problem when pursuing music full-time. If music is really important and fun for you, turning it into a job will completely change how you approach it. You’ll have to put aside a good part of your creativity to find ways to monetize it, and then you’re sort of stuck again in that you’re not making music full time. One thing I realized when I made this jump is, for the quantity of music you need to make to gather enough money to make a living, you need to not only make tons, but you’ll need to reinvent yourself every year. If you don’t want to saturate your market, it is recommended not to release more than 3 times a year. So then, yeah, you need to DJ or perform, and then, again, you’ll spend you time dealing with all the business aspects of that, plus dealing with a very competitive live music market.

TIP: Living off music full time is possible if you have a very solid basis and money saved up beforehand.

You need money for your studio. It’s no secret, electronic music is probably the most expensive music to create. Technology keeps evolving, as well as sound, plus computers quickly become old so you’ll have to allow yourself a budget for constant research and investment. If you count on hacked software to provide you with this solution, you’ll likely have to deal with the loss of your productions at some point because something goes wrong.

Some of the best ideas don’t come up in studio. How many times have you been washing dishes or on a walk, and then have a really amazing idea for a song? Taking distance from what you do is one of the best, most valuable ways to see your craft from a different angle. In my post about Non-Linear Production, I suggested taking many breaks and days off. Working on other things (like a blog), gives my brain a break to regenerate and come up with new ideas for making new songs.

Convert your other abilities into something creative. Every side-skill you have can be used in relation to your music or art hobby. This is one thing I approach in coaching, where I see how a person can combine both music skills and non-music skills. For instance, someone in finance can help other musicians making budgets or find ways they ignore to generate financial income. All you need to do is to see where you can contribute to your community and to surround yourself with other artists – a good way to be immersed into your music world.

What’s mostly important to realize however, is how many artists have this feeling that they’re in the “wrong place” when they’re not in the studio working on music. Some of the people I have worked with were working in schools, IT, restaurants, design, architecture, networking, or writing to name a few. The area where your more traditional career skills overlap with making music is a great place to start thinking about how you can make money from music.

Basic Song Arrangements Tips

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Given the quantity of hours of mixing I do regularly, I work on lot of projects from a wide variety of clients. I also have to do a lot of “cleaning up” before I get to work on the actual mixing of a song. I wanted to share with you basic song arrangement tips that you can do which will speed up song construction and help make it sound better in the end.

Cleaning a project for clarity

“Cleaning” is something many people overlook, but it will help you better understand what’s happening in a song. I strongly encourage people to work on multiple projects at once with my non-linear production technique; a clean project will help you understand where you left off on your last session.

Here are some tips for a cleaner, clearer project:

  • Name your channels/samples something simple. For example, rename that loop “rolling_AD252” to “percussion”. Keep things simple and clear as well as have your own vocabulary.
  • Color each channel based on content. For instance, red for kick, brown for bass, blue for melody, etc. On Live v10, you can then apply that color to the clips.
  • Create a comprehensive timeline in your arrangement. This is where 90% fail! The first sounds in your song should be moved way up to the front and top, and as sounds come in, they should be dropped in below. Since the arranger moves from left to right, you will sounds appear in order of appearance, just like how they make it for movies.
  • Drop markers to see the key points. Markers on the timeline help you see how things are repeating in a logical matter as well as for you to see where to drop in your transitions.
  • Consolidate blocks of sounds, change color if there are changes. Consolidate all the little blocks so you can duplicate them easily and see your arrangements more clearly.
  • Arrangements aren’t mixing. Don’t add all your effects and compression yet, focus on the timeline of things, then you can easily group and do your mixing if everything has been labeled and colored properly.

Before consolidation

Clips consolidated

And duplicated

Think Balance

When you make a song, you have to think of a few key points to keep people interested:

  • Keep things moving to avoid redundancy.
  • Have logical development.
  • Bring in some surprises.
  • Have solid transitions.

All this can be seen visually if your project is clean and clear. Here’s how:

The image above is a good clean start. You can see these blocks are pretty straight-forward and repetitive. Usually when I hear a song like that, I will automatically visualize the blocks coming in and out; I call that type of arrangement “blocky.” There’s not much happening, nothing is too exciting, and the balancing of “blocky” songs is extremely rigid, dull.

However, having a “blocky” song can easily be fixed.

  • A sound can be appreciated agan if you “reset” it. You can “reset” a sound by turning it off, removing it, then bringing it back at a key point. This is a good way for the listener to appreciate different combinations of sounds all together. If you leave all your clips playing all the time, you can’t appreciate if X plays with Y alone. This is why I find that a song with 3 hats and or 3 percussion tracks gives you a really broad range of combinations, but you’ll need to be creative to have them all explored in a song. That can be done by occasionally muting certain sounds.
  • Transitions, transitions, transitions. Did I say this enough? You can make nice transitions with en effect, a silence, a flam (rolling, repeating sounds), a swap of sound(s), a volume automation, etc. Explore!
  • Automation, fade-ins. If your sounds all come in at once, try having some fade-ins from time to time.
  • Create variations. If the sounds were programmed in a specific way in a section, have them varied in the following section.
  • Varied patterns length. If you have multiple patterns that are one bar long, try having some that are 2 bars long, others 4, some half a bar. The richness of the combinations where sounds shuffle over time will be exciting to listen to.
  • Don’t drop all of your musical assets right at the start. Try to keep new sounds appearing per sections.

This last image shows what a project like with some holes added, which will add a lot more dynamism and surprise to your song. Take your time! You can trust the listener by letting things go and let things evolve. If you’re not into ever-evolving songs and more into stripped-down, tracky arrangements, its pretty much the same thing: take your time to get things come in and use automation.

I hope this helps!

Starting a label for the right reasons (Part 2)

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Our last post was about deciding on the right reasons to start a label, and before you go on reading this post on starting a label yourself, I’d invite you to go back and read the first part of this series. If Part 1 was a bit of a reality check for you, or perhaps was a bit of a disappointment, Part 2 will be more positive and help you get in touch with your entrepreneur-self.

So, let’s get things straightened up and go over the “I want a label” checklist.

The name of the game is networking

If there is one thing that is essential to run a label, it’s to know the right people and to make good connections; this alone will make a tremendous difference. Believe it or not, I know a few people who have previously decided out of the blue to start a label because they had access to all the resources online to do it, but no network; no surprise then that the outcome of a these endeavors were very few sales.

But how does one network?

I’ve discussed this previously in past posts; I believe it starts on Soundcloud, where it’s important to connect with people who have similar tastes…these people will be supporters of your projects if you connect with them. People will be interested if they see some action on your music and profile. If you don’t mention, like, or reshare anything you’re going to be caught in a downward spiral.

Other ways to network include:

  • Connect with local DJs, clubs.
  • Follow labels you love and release music like you want to release. Connect with the artists.
  • Leave comments on podcast and music you like.
  • Go out, try to attend festivals and be social. Making physical contacts is incredibly empowering and important.
  • Tip: Investing 1-2h per day in networking will bring huge benefits down the road.

Be present

A long time ago, I read an article stating that humans get curious or engaged after a series of 3 notifications prompting them to buy a product. In other words, you need 3 ads or 3 different sources to get people’s attention or a sale. This article was current, but I still believe there’s some truth to that. This means that for your music, you want to get people’s attention multiple times so they get interested enough to listen to you. However, people are constantly submerged with solicitation so a no-solicitation approach might even be better. This means you want people to talk about your music but you don’t want your approach to be “Hear me! Buy this!”, but instead a “This is a great track!” kind of comment. People are way more likely to be curious if there’s no “call to action” to do something. This means that you need to be present, and have a web of contacts to share the news for you; this will only happen if your network is solid.

Have solid contributors

You can’t expect to have a solid label if you can’t consistently release great music. To do that, you need some solid artists and releases. You need a balance of new artists mixed with known artists, either through remixes or full releases. But to get artists on board, you need to create a safe ground and attractive platform to have people wanting to jump in.

But once you have artists on board, you need to keep them. Having ways to keep them stimulated such as with label nights in a club, a podcast series, or pushing their music to get reviews, promoted, etc. – these things are very exciting for anyone.

TIP: A new label will have a hard time getting a PR agent to do publishing and advertising but this is something you can slowly do yourself. Perhaps we can discuss that in a future article.

Think of your branding

Branding is also exciting for an artist, but also for fans. People love finding a community that makes music that speaks to them. That’s probably the most difficult part of starting a label because a branding will stick with you until the label’s over. You need to be sure of what image, values, sound, aesthetic you want to project. You’ll attract people in as a consequence.

TIP: You can totally find someone on Fiverr for a logo.

Be innovative

Innovation is about watching what trends are happening in the music world, and trying to fulfill the needs of people who support what you do. If people prefer to buy music on a certain store, try to focus your promo there. Nowadays, the main trend is to go through Bandcamp for selling and promoting the music. But you might want to work with an aggregator to have your music be on 100+ online stores plus streaming sites. There are many aggregators out there you can work with. They all do the same things, but have different fees so you might want to shop around.

TIP: Start small, grow as you go.

Be ready to invest

Running a label has nothing to do with making money out of it, seriously. Trust me, you pay to have a label and sometimes, there are moments where you get some money back in the process.

If labels don’t really make money, why start one?

Starting a label opens doors. It will become your platform of expression, a hub to connect and attract people who share the same tastes as you and who can grow together into a place where you can all spread the music you believe in. Running a label is not about doing anything yourself. I’ve started enjoying running my own when I started delegating tasks to people who wanted to participate in helping doing something they liked doing. To surround yourself properly takes time but is also fun.

To finish up, starting a label also requires some technical items. You’ll need to cover these if you want your label to be selling.

  • ISRC codes. These are necessary for selling and are a way to create a single number for each song.
  • Have a website, a Soundcloud account, a Facebook fan page, and a Paypal account for payments.
  • Create a Bandcamp account.
  • Get an online shop aggregator.
  • Have someone do artwork if you’re not good at it. You can find someone on Fiverr and use Canva for little needs.

Playing Electronic Music Live (Part 6, final)

/in /by

I recently played a live set at StereoBar in Montreal for the launch of my album Returning Home and it was very interesting to create a live set from scratch, following the advice of this series I’ve written over the past few months about playing electronic music live. I’d like to share with you a bit about how it went, as well as some personal notes I took for future performances.

Notes about preparation of my set

Returning Home has many tracks; I wasn’t sure how I’d approach them in a live context considering they are all pretty intricate, full of details, and pretty much impossible to execute as the recorded version(s). I decided to go through all the songs and export the stems for each group of sounds – plus making sure the kick and bass would be isolated – so I could control how they would come and go in the set.

Exporting stems took me a while. I had also exported stems from certain songs that weren’t included in the album but that I wanted to play. I had a good 17 tracks ready, with about 8 channels exported per track. I imported everything into my new live set, and added everything in the right columns and with the colors I needed. I also started chopping the stems into sections so I could trigger some parts spontaneously.

After a few days of geeking out, I started playing the tracks to see how the flow felt and to see if the transitions were going well. I played with effects; trying to spice up the main ideas to surprise people. As I kept rehearsing and trying to see how to play the songs, I found myself becoming very bored out of what I was hearing. The thing is, when you spent months making an album, you get to a point where you can’t listen to your own music anymore – and playing it as is felt too safe, too simple.

Live at MUTEK Chile 2006

Live in Zurich 2005

I scrapped everything. I remember thinking that this whole series advising people on how to play live was crap but I realized that after going through it myself again, it still had a lot of value, but even I had done the preparations wrong. I remembered then how I used to LOVE playing live, 15 years ago and had a flashback excited me: pure improvisation. I realized that using stems wasn’t improvising enough and that my music is in itself, pure chaos.

I went back to my pool of sounds which didn’t make the cut originally and started chopping sounds, deconstructing stems, and re-exporting new parts. Then I started creating a space where I could remix the whole album on the spot, plus adding unexpected, unused sounds. Basically, it was combining the bass of track 2 with the melody of track 7, then percussion of track 4…pure remixing. I found a core idea for each moment of my set, and left a lot of space for reinterpretation. It worked and I was having a lot of fun.

My setup for this Set

I was using Ableton Push and 2 Novation Launch XLs, as mixers for all the channels (I ended up using 10). For some reason, each time I’ve tried using PUSH live, it has never really helped, but I felt this time I wanted to use it. I love the Novations so using 2 felt really amazing.

Limitations: My Macbook pro only has 2 USB ports so I needed a port to accommodate multiple items.

Soundcheck at Stereo

Soundcheck

Arriving at the venue, I felt really confident; perhaps too confident. The soundcheck went so smoothly that – in my experience – when that happens it gives you the feeling that something will go wrong later.

I had spent time in the studio carefully tweaking each channel with EQs to make sure the sound wasn’t to harsh or piercing. I also decided to use a Manley compression from UAD on the master which made everything really smooth. It was important to use a reference track as an EQ curve. It really paid off in Soundcheck so I didn’t have to do much; everything went so smooth.

TIP: Listen to your reference track before soundchecking, then play it to adjust an EQ on the master.

The show/performance

After a great start, shit started to hit the fan. As a track was playing, I noticed my mixer wasn’t responding and realized it had rebooted. By rebooting, it made the second mixer crash and the PUSH too. I wasn’t even 5 minutes in and the wheel of death was spinning on my Mac. I waited patiently and luckily it went back to normal. But after this glitch, I disconnected one of the Novations to plug it directly in my computer instead of the USB-Hub I had bought the same day (cheap connectors are always a big mistake!). PUSH was frozen and not doing anything, I had to activate clips with my mouse. Luckily from my experience playing live for so many years, I was able to do this in a way so that people didn’t notice. The Novations kept crashing one after the other. Each time I had to unplug them patiently to restart them, and then the wheel would go off on my computer; for some reason they would work for a good 20 minutes but then crash again.

Luckily, no one noticed anything! I could have really played a great show that night if everything had worked properly because Stereobar has the perfect setup for me…it was a bit disappointing, but I still received a lot of good feedback.

MUTEK Montreal 2006

Live in London 2005

After the show

Despite the technical issues, it was great show and fun nonetheless.

To summarize, a few tips here based on this live experience:

  • Don’t buy gear the same day without testing. Soundcheck are never 100% of what a show will be and can never be a real test.
  • Deactivate Ableton Live’s auto-update feature. It actually upgraded to a version the day before with a bug in it – a pretty big one. I had to reinstall the software and that was stressful. Thanks for the swift reply from Ableton tech support on that one.
  • Never panic when problems arise. Most of the time, people don’t notice.
  • Try to avoid shitty USB hubs! I’m still trying to find a better alternative.

I hope this series was helpful!

Storytelling through arrangements and song arrangement techniques

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When it comes to mixing and mastering, my work involves to listening to many, many songs. Some are great, while others need more love, but from the numerous songs I hear daily I can pinpoint one important thing that makes a song stand out the most: arrangements. I believe your arrangements and your song arrangement techniques are what really show your maturity as an artist.

Your track can have amazing sounds, a crazy good kick, and a really lovely mix, but if you have nothing to say, your song will not be memorable. Although, paradoxically, some songs are also memorable because they have no arrangements at all; no arrangements can also be a form of storytelling.

In this post, I’ll approach arrangements in two ways: the “technical” and “total”; a philosophical point of view. While so many people have different opinions about arrangements, there’s one thing that I feel is important to highlight: to invite you to step outside of the box of anything “commercial” sounding; so many articles at the moment are pointing out how every song sounds the same. I’ll also explain why.

Keep in mind: there is no magic wand recipe or solution for arrangements.

So fundamentally, how can we explain storytelling in electronic music? There are two critical points to keep in mind:

  1. Arrangements start with a simple idea that evolves. The clearer the idea, the more it becomes understandable from the listener. The catchier it is, the most memorable it is. Catchiness comes from being able to make something that people can have an emotional connection with. It is also known that, if we examine at the last 50 years of pop music, there are always songs trends through time. What makes a song “a hit” is usually when someone understand the current trend (which is “in demand”) and adds their own, personal twist to give it a “same old but different” feeling.
  2. Technical arrangements aim at creating music for DJs. One of the most exciting thing about making music for DJs is about being able to architect music that creates a structure that will find a logical place to move into another song, or to create a new song (as in 1+1=3, track 1, track 2 and the mix of both).

These two types of arrangements are different but can also be combined. They have different goals. The reason I find it important to relate this is, as a listener, you don’t listen to them in the same way. The first type, is what makes a track be a song. In terms of vocabulary, a track is music more oriented for DJs, that you can layer while a song is more about music that can be listened on its own and have its own story. Too often, I find that people who listen to tracks will go “something’s missing” but in theory, if that music is made to be layered, it’s because it has space for another song to be layered over it. I like to say that the track is part of a story that will be created by others and it’s important to let go of adding more and more layers. If you leave no space, how can another DJ use it?

So let’s talk about arrangements for tracks and what is useful to do/use.

  • Use a motif: For anything, always use a motif which can be a few notes or a loop. Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. If for instance, your motif is a simple two note melody repeating (note: Batman’s powerful motif was just two simple notes too!), then keep in mind that those two notes are simply the core, then add variants or supporting notes; ideas.
  • Define your logic and stick to it: Usually the first 1/3 of your song will define the logic of the rest of your song. For instance, if you mute the kick after 4 bars, keep that logic for the entire song. So, whatever you define in terms of muting,  or adding, stick to it until the end of the song.
  • Divide your song in thirds (1st third is the intro, 2nd is core, 3rd is the outro): Keep in mind that each section has a purpose and demands balance. It should have a surprise, some coherence, a punch and a transition.
  • Leave space: Miles Davis loved the silence between notes and often said they were what would give the true meaning of any phrase. If you find your entire hook for the middle part of your song, make sure you have variants of that idea, with holes/silence.

The importance of defining your own language in your music is important to create your own persona. We all know music is a form of communication and therefore, certain codes can be used in order to create phrases in your music. Everyone has a different view, but I’d like to share my personal lexicon. But let’s consider this: techno is 4/4 music which means a “round” is basically 4 bars long; this is also where DJs try to mix in/out. Each of your songs based on this premise will have better coherence if you keep to a similar logic, and the music will be understood faster by DJs.

  • A phrase is basically a bar long (4 beats). A paragraph is 4 or 8 bars long.
  • Making sounds repeat, is a period (“.”). You usually want to do it at the end of a bar if you are doing a long phrase, but you can also have a period to underline a sound that needs to express something. Rolling sounds help move on to the other bar as it creates energy.
  • Muting the kick or multiple sounds at once is a comma (“,”), it can also mark the end of portion and prepare for another. Muting creates a mini tension and creates anticipation.

Now, these are the basics we can play with.

  • You can slice your entire song structure to clearly see all of your 4 bars in distinctive blocks. This crucial action really helps see the outline of your song and see the organization.
  • I usually go sound by sound (channel by channel) and decide that some sounds will have a change at some point, let’s say X number of bars. For example: hi-hats have a tiny change (a period) every 4 bars, toms will have one every 2 and claps, every bars. Then you slice all the bars in shorter one to be able to edit in details.
  • Add decoration if needed in the same logic. If you started muting and creating space here and there, those areas can be good spaces to insert effects; little, subtle blurbs of sounds.
  • Be very aware of where your song has its main elements, and if it is respecting the logic you have set in the first third of your song.

A song that has balance and repeating events will never feel empty, boring, or pointless because people will consciously (or not) understand the language behind it.

Now look at how it repeats and also, I will try to keep sequences of blocks repeating. For instance, if I have 4 blocks repeating and then there’s a 2 bar silence, I will repeat that through the song.

This is a good example of what I call arrangement logic. You decide of how things happen then follow through.

TIP: Always vary how sound come in and out. You have 2 choices: the sound starts playing or fades-in. Try to have variation between the sounds and how to come in and out later on as well.

The most important part – and I’ll finish with this – is to keep in mind that you should always have a surprise for the listener, and if you surprise him/her, he/she will want to listen to your song again; so be audacious and sometimes, unpredictable. I love the 1-2 punch method: do something, repeat it so the listener goes “ah yes!” then when the listener expects it again, punch him/her with something he/she didn’t see coming.

I hope this helps!

Starting a label for the right reasons (Part 1)

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Every now and then, someone comes to me for mixing or mastering and will ask if I can introduce them to a label. In some cases, I do, but I can’t guarantee it will lead to anything in the end; sometimes it works and when it doesn’t. I often hear that in a reaction to this sort of rejection, people want to start a label. While I’m all for new labels, in this particular case starting a label might not be the right thing to do. Let me explain in a bit more detail:

Before we begin, let’s clarify two things:

  1. The main purpose of running a label is about commercializing your music because there’s a demand.
  2. An active label’s goal is to provide an aesthetic that has a correlation to the direction of the label, and to reach a target market.

Now, the main misconception people have about labels, which is reinforced by the fact that they are so easy to start nowadays, is that if you work with a label you’ll finally have the exposure you were hoping for. However, often times this is not what happens. “Yeah but it’s good music!”, I hear you say. Sure, it might be, but how will people know you exist?

“OK then, so how about I release on a respected label?”

Yes, you can try to do this, but you need to understand the effort required from the label to work on promoting you so you sell. Labels with reputations don’t jump on unknown artists that easily. It’s not a coincidence you see labels paying a fortune for PR to make sure the track is played by DJs so they say: “Supported by …”.

Often artists feel entitled and that their music should be known, and even popularized because they made a great song. Sadly though, when it comes to “music marketing” having a great song doesn’t even accomplish anything. You can compare it to a guy/girl who makes amazing food at home, then decides to open a restaurant. In both cases, the artist is in for quite a reality check.

That said, I know I sound perhaps negative here, but this is the kind of discussion I have on a weekly basis with people who start labels that end up resulting in a substantial loss of money, or artists that are focused on building one without having any network whatsoever.

Let’s reconsider the situation from a different angle. Let’s say you produce music, have a network of people liking it, playing it (eg. podcast, DJ sets) and talking about it. If you have a bit of capital to invest, you might be interested in commercializing yourself. But before starting a label, I would highly recommend doing something many start-ups do, which they call “guerilla marketing.”

guerilla marketing, musicGuerilla Marketing can be defined as a “low cost and sometimes disruptive marketing strategy to see the viability of an idea.” But mainly, it’s about doing something unusual to get attention. The best example I can share from my own experience would be one marketing blast I was part of in the early 2000s when Netlabels emerged, giving away music for free online and through any other possible channels. Giving away quality music was disruptive but also in tune with people who, back then, were also interested in getting music for free (note: it was in the golden age of music piracy and illegal downloads). In Montreal, in 2017, when it was said cannabis was going to be legalized, there was a guy who illegally opened four stores to sell it. He knew it was illegal and once it was shut down, everyone understood it was a publicity stunt for when it would be legal.

So then, how should you act?

Think of making your music a personal project

Don’t think about starting a label until you’re 100% sure you can get sales. In the meantime, what you can do is make a personal project that you can then promote with the technique I explained. One thing people often do is print themselves 100 copies where they give away most of them to all DJs they can get in touch with and sell some via a Bandcamp page, where you can sell your merchandise. I know some people that also use Discogs to sell.

Make sure that:

  • Your product sounds good with a quality mix and mastering.
  • Your project looks appealing. Although some people love going low key, using white label records for minimal costs and stamp them manually. You may ask a bunch of friends to help spray pain them with a template.

Find a channel of disruption

Where will you try to cause a stir of attention? There are a few options on the table:

  • Soundcloud: If you’re mainly digital, test the market by sharing your music with DJs. I regularly have some guys that send me music to play. No questions asked, they just want me to enjoy their music and I like that. Personally I think this rocks. This guy Loxique is extremely prolific and sends me music as well to other DJs and then posts videos of them when they play his tracks. He’s building his presence out there without even asking for a release because he knows eventually it will simply come to him, in due time. The logic is, if DJs play it and people see that, more people will ask to play it, creating a demand.
  • Social Media: the “me! me! look at me!” approach has become so overdone that it just annoys the hell out of everyone. This will sound weird but the best way to promote yourself is by promoting… others! Creating waves of support attracts people’s attention to what you do, without you having to talk about it. Let your music speak for yourself while you talk about others.
  • Festivals: Go to a festival with the idea you’re going to a golf course for business meetings. Stay sober and try to meet people without being aggressive. Be yourself, passionate and interested in others. When people ask about you, show your records you made or USB keys you prepared. Watch them be interested in return. That can establish contacts.
  • Stores: A bit like festivals, you can go and bring some records to the store. Some will agree to take them to sell them. But mostly, try to go when it’s busy and and to show that you have your own records; you’ll be surrounded by DJs. There might be a few in there interested in listening and who knows, maybe even asking you for a copy.

Have a backup voice

When we had the netlabels, we had a label managers that would be in charge of the website and online promotion channels. You don’t have to do everything yourself. Some people are really excited to be part of the adventure, and interested in doing something you don’t want to. It can be someone who is more gifted at communications, marketing, or social media. Teaming up now is sort of a rehearsal for when you might turn your project into a label (which will be covered in Part 2). But honestly, any successful labels have always been something of a few minds all together and not just a single one.

The reason why you want a second person to help you is simple: it’s easier to sell yourself if someone else does it for you. Find that person or find a few people who can do it for you. That will really be useful for your project.

In the next article, I’ll explain the steps to turn your project into a label. I will also explain how I started a label dedicated to help my clients.

Music Goals: Using Signposts instead of Goals

/in , /by

You often hear about setting music goals to keep your drive going and to get you pointed in the right direction. I’ve previously discussed the best ways to set goals and reach them, but as time has gone on, I’m not totally sure if setting goals is still the most efficient way to get yourself going.

However, some goals on your bucket list still might be relevant; but this depends on how you set them. For instance, whenever I have people in coaching, we discuss that setting goals should be done in a way where you can actually quantify the success of your work. For instance, people often try to set a goal of “becoming a known artist”, which, in a way, doesn’t make sense at all compared to “finishing an album.”  The problem with the first goal involves two important things:

  • You can’t control your circle of influence. What does “becoming an known artist” mean exactly? That you’re appearing in charts or that 1,000 people have your tracks on their Spotify playlists? You can’t control that at all and being vague in your objectives will lead you to failure.
  • Becoming a known artist may or may not, happen. If it does, you might not even be aware of your reputation and some people think they’re known, when that’s actually not the case (for example, buying “likes” on Facebook doesn’t mean anything).

In the second goal, “finishing an album”, you’re in total control of that goal – you can clearly make a “definition of done.”  If this definition is reached, then you’re done, and the goal has been achieved. Working in this way can be useful, but I would also highly recommend that you also put an end date on your goal.

Now there’s another alternative to setting goals, which, for lack of better terminology, I’ll define as setting a signpost.  Why? Signposts are signs you see when you’re driving that help you be aware of the direction to go, to get you where you want, and also to reliably re-guide you when you’re lost. I like the term in French for “repères” – it’s sort of like “landmark” but not necessarily for physical places.

What is a signpost in your musical journey?

They are something you can rely on from a community you want to be part of, or a specific sound that you want to immerse your life with. I’ll give you the best examples as of how I applied the community approach to my life and why I use them in parallel to the type of goal-setting we described above.

In Montréal in the late 90s, we were really lucky to have a solid core of people and producers that gathered around the MUTEK festival which was our community but also a sort of signpost; a direction. It was a place where we could perform the music we all appreciated (arranged based on our personal tastes) and where we could also discuss music production. So back then, a goal for me was to play at MUTEK, but at the same time, it was that community that dictated how we had to sound to achieve it.

Another signpost I’ve used was a sort of music “target” I set through Ricardo Villalobos. I’d study his music, his sets, and a recurring question I had was “will he play this track of mine?” There wouldn’t be any goals attached to this besides, perhaps, having him play my music, but it was more as a reference point of how my music could be made or adapted,

I often do mixing and mastering for artists and labels, or do coaching, and one thing I often see is how people are a bit lost on determining who their music is for. Who do you want to reach exactly? Who inspires you? Which community would support and encourage you? This is the type of question to seriously consider, as I often work with people who are far from the physical community they’d like to be part of and rely heavily on the internet to be in touch. For instance, I have in mind some guys from South America who love Romanian artists – that’s quite a distance!

In past articles, I’ve about the importance of networking. Here are a few ways to help you find your own set of signposts:

  • Locally. Is there a club, a venue, or promoter that is booking and playing the music you love? Where is the closest place to you that could be your local reference? This is very important as you can get to meet people who have the same tastes as you. Perhaps it’s a festival that you can attend in another city, like MUTEK (this reminds me of a huge community from Colorado used to visit MUTEK in a group of 20! They would forge bonds and networks on their trips).
  • Online. I find it’s important to find a crew that make good podcasts, DJ sets, or music that gives you goosebumps. A trap however, would be if you aim too high, at very big artists and organizations (ex. Time Warp in Germany) where it is so big that becoming part of organization might become a huge puzzle and is very difficult. There are many smaller festivals that exist that have the same kind of music but on a smaller scale, you can grow with them. That said, try to downscale your target, or follow the bigger names but try to connect with the other, smaller guys who like that same music but are also emerging.
  • Aesthetic, genre, mood, direction. Try to find artists you like that are emerging and look stable and serious about their craft. You don’t need to contact them; it’s more about following their production and supporting them. Be a fan, someone who encourages and gives, while not expecting anything in return. Feeding people that inspire you is a good way to invest in yourself as well. I’ve supported and encouraged artists that started to go well but then have disappeared; it’s a disappointment, and sometimes I wonder what else I could have done to help. Seeing someone you love perform and do well is a great motivation for your own art!

I’d love to hear what you consider to be your own signposts!