Page 18 – Pheek's Mixdown and Mastering

Should I Remix for Free?

August 18, 2016/in Blog, Tips/by pheek

If you’ve been hanging out on SoundCloud, uploading some of your music productions, commenting on other artists’ tracks, and exchanging a few words here and there, you may have been invited to collaborate at some point. If you haven’t invested much time in networking on SoundCloud, you’re really missing out on one of the most important hubs for music producers.

There’s been a huge emphasis in recent years placed on the number of followers producers can rack up. I even get people hitting me up every now and again to offer me 10,000 new followers, if I pay them 100$ or so.

Yet this craze over followers is nothing but a mirage.

Record labels won’t bite if they see an empty profile with two songs, but 1000 followers. And it’s not only labels who’ll see right through this. Anyone who’s even slightly curious or discerning will be struck by the awkwardness of such a hollow presentation.

Genuine connections, however, can go a long way. The more you interact with people directly (through SoundCloud’s horrible messaging system…), the more you run the chance of being invited to do a podcast or a remix. It’s even a pretty frequent occurence for active users.

Yet with this being said, if you’re at the beginning of your musical journey as a producer, you honestly shouldn’t expect to get money for this, not even if they propose royalties on sales. The truth is that the current state of sales in the industry is pretty discouraging for all but the larger record labels. Exposure and connections are thus the name of the game, and networking is the way to get you there.

It comes down to these key points:

Gain exposure, get heard. Considering that there’s not much money to be made, and that you want to expand your visibility on SoundCloud, one thing you can hope for is that the remix or podcast you make will help you reach a new audience. The music scene is composed of countless separate micro-worlds, and you’ll never manage to reach them all. Be strategic: try to reach the ones that are looking for music like yours. It’s a common mistake to assume that casting a wide net will succeed in garnering you enough people who will love what you do. But that’s actually counter-productive. You’re better off reaching one true fan than 100 people who care more or less. That one impassioned fan will spread the word and carry your music around. But you need to be exposed.

Target the right people, make your network work. Following the previous point, if you connect with people who love the same music as you, your music will find its way to the appropriate people. Again, you have to think strategically. Too often I see someone agree to do a remix without first having done research into who they are about to work with. On the other end, you could end up saying no to someone who is close friends with one of your favourite artists, or who attends a club regularly and passes music he discovers off to local DJs who love the kind of music you craft. The point is that good networking involves enlisting others to spread the wheel of music for you. And the same goes for you if you ask other DJs to remix your music productions: if someone believes in the music, they’ll pass it to people who will play it.

The rocky road. The state of DJing is pretty interesting these days. If you think about it, a lot of DJs play digital music they get for free, and will only pay for vinyls. Digital sales, at least for underground music, are somewhat stable, but haven’t evolved much at all in the last 5 years. For some reason, people have a hard time paying for underground music. They prefer to get it for free through their DJ friends. So with this in mind, accepting to remix for a label or a fellow producer is more about hoping that you’ll connect with someone who will get you closer to your goals: to release with a specific label; to be associated with a producer that inspires you; to get more gigs; or whatever they may be. This comes with a price though, and remixing for free might be one of those little discomforts that are necessary to get you closer to your destination.

So as a producer, if you’re facing the option of being invited to work for free, consider these 3 things:

Are you inspired by the original song?
Is the invitation coming from someone with an interesting reach (fans, artists, community, promo)?
Who else is involved? Is there anyone in their circle that inspires you?

Ask yourself these questions, and feel free to ask the people who are inviting you to collaborate. If you’re going to do it for free or for a few bucks, it’d better be a fun gig!

Now just one final tip: you too may at one point invite someone to remix your music, and they might be considering these same points. So if you really want to work with an artist you love, it could be worthwhile to invest some money into having that special artist remix your track. Paid artists are often a good source of promotion to get your music where you want it to be.

Deconstructing A Reference Track

August 11, 2016/in Blog, Production, Tips/by pheek

Note: This article is partly related to the Non-Linear Music Production technique explained in my previous post. It offers a complementary method for finding inspiration in your workflow.

Now that you’ve been exposed to my non-linear approach to music production, you know that the early stages of production are focused on building ideas and content. Once that has been attacked, you can start looking into creating a temporary structure for a loop. If you’ve also checked out my One Loop Per Day challenge on YouTube, then you’ll see that the following step is to build a storyline around the idea.

One of the best and fastest ways is to devote your time to carefully analyzing the work of artists you admire. This entails actively analyzing and interpreting others’ work within your DAW so as to carve out a path that you can easily implement in your own production.

But before you dive into your sources of influence and follow the process outlined below, I’d like you to consider this famous quote:

“Art is theft” – Pablo Picasso

Step 1: Finding Your Track

Pick a track that you really like and whose arrangements you would like to more or less imitate.
Make sure that the track is un-warped so that it doesn’t sync with your DAW’s BPM, and so that it’s unaffected by any transient markers you might have set.
If your track is in Ableton’s Session View, drag it into the Arrangement View by hovering over the 3 vertical lines at the top-right corner of your screen, or by simply pressing the tab key.

Step 2: Correcting Grid Settings

In order to properly match the grid with your track’s tempo so that you can use the waveform to spot what happens at what time, you need to find the BPM. You can do this in many ways, by:
- Finding your track on Beatport. The track information should include its key and BPM.
- Accessing the track’s metadata by right-clicking on it in Windows and then clicking on “Properties>Details” (if it’s available).
- Finding the BPM on your own using Ableton’s Tempo Tap.
  - Make sure to tap “tempo” in the Session View or else it will fall out of sync in the Arrangement View.
- Type in the appropriate BPM.
  - Manually adjust the track with Ableton’s grid so that the sections of your track begin on beat.

You will notice this will help you to analyze your track’s arrangements by determining at which bar a section will start.e.g.: The breakdown starts at 80 bars.
- Feel free to cut out any elements such as silence,noise, or “pre-intros” before the actual intro, as in my example above.

Step 3: Placing Markers and Locators

If your sections are starting on beat and are properly aligned with Ableton’s grid, this is where you will be able to start learning how tracks are arranged.
Listen to the track a couple of times, and mark its waveform with appropriate section locators. To do this:
- Right-click in the Scrub Area.
- Click on “Add Locator.”
Mark all relevant sections with locators throughout the whole song. It should look like this:
- Note that you can label your sections however you wish, depending on the style of music you’re writing. You don’t need to call a section a chorus, for example, if you just want to call it A or B.

Step 4: Analyzing

Now for the important part…

Pull out Ableton’s Loop Brace in the Scrub Area above the track’s waveform, and stretch it from the beginning of a musical section to its end (from verse to chorus).
Count the amount of bars there are within that section by subtracting the last bar of the section from its first.
- Example: If your section starts at 61 and ends at 93, do 93-61. That’s 32 bars.
Count the amount of bars for each section and you’ll start to notice when new elements emerge: sections and themes begin and end every 8 to 32 bars. That’s just how dance music works.
For example:
- Everything works in multiples of 4.
- You won’t hear a new section begin on bar 5 unless you’re not writing in 4/4.
Once you analyze how many bars are within a section,it becomes easy to understand how long your instrumental arrangements should be and where to place them in your own track.
- Example: “My reference track has a chorus that lasts 16 bars. It also has a pad for that entire section. I can apply this to my own productions by placing a pad in my chorus for 16 bars only and making sure that it doesn’t overlap with the bridge.”

Step 5: Taking Notes

Once you map the structure of the track with locators, it’s important to take note of all the musical elements that come into play for each section. This is how you’ll get to understand what to place and when within the sections of your own track.

You can take notes down on a piece of paper, or even simpler, directly into Ableton’s clips. Here’s how:
- Split the waveform into multiple clips by clicking on it and pressing [CTRL+E/CMD+E], or right-clicking on it and then selecting “Split.”
- Once you’ve split the waveform into multiple clips, write down the most important elements for each section.
- Then right-click on the Ableton clip and select “Edit info text.”
For the build-up section, you can write things like “white noise sweeps, risers, automated filter cut-off, percussion repeating faster and faster,” etc.

Bonus Tip: Creating Ghost MIDI Clips

The last trick I want to show you for deconstructing your reference tracks element by element is to create ghost MIDI clips for every instrument. This is the best way to learn from other people’s tracks, because it will allow you to break them down layer by layer.

Create MIDI channels for every instrument you hear in a section, and label them.
Make sure there’s nothing in them.

Using this method, you can even go as far as deleting your chosen reference track and just filling in the MIDI skeleton with your own synths, pads, drums, effects and more! You’ll have the same arrangements as the artist you chose to mimic, but it will be your sound!

Non-Linear Music Production

August 3, 2016/in Blog, Tips/by pheek

One of my goals is to help people be more productive and finish more tracks. I’ve learned that for many people out there, getting a project done can seem overwhelming. Many will never complete them, because the sole thought of finishing it to perfection stalls the whole process. We could even call this a form of writer’s block, even though the blockage occurs mid-project instead of at the start.

But starting new projects is and should be fun. That’s why I’ve even been encouraging people I coach to try to start one project a day.

Having multiple projects on the go is not only a great investment in your own potential, but it also forces you to practice, learn new techniques, and get outside of your comfort zone.

I swear, it will even become addictive.

So you might be wondering: how does this help you finish tracks if you just keep starting new ones?

Have a look at my Discogs page and you’ll see that I’ve released many EPs and albums. This is the technique that I’ve been using, which I call Non-linear Music Production (NLMP). And I can honestly say that I couldn’t have done it any other way.

The main mistake many producers make is to tackle a project from start to finish in a single sequence. This is how they operate:

Find a hook, idea, main loop.
Develop the idea into a structure.
Do the arrangements.
Do the mixdown.
Finalize the track.

The problem here is that producers also tend to move back and forth between the steps as adjustments are required. This often results in artists hearing their own track so many times that they can’t even tell what’s working or not anymore – and they start to go a little crazy! This way of organizing your production workflow might be motivated by your love for the idea you found, and by your desire to finish up the project so you can share it with your friends. But it forces it too much.

By comparison, Non-linear music production, or NLMP, works very differently. But after introducing it to people, I started seeing them improve.

The first thing that’s different is the introduction of what I call “rounds.“ A round is an iteration of the same work process. But to define your round, first you need to decide how many tracks you need in your project. Usually, an EP will be 4 tracks and an album, 8 to 10. The number of tracks will decide the number of rounds.

Let me explain.

Once you have decided on the number of tracks, here’s how to work rounds:

Find a hook, idea, main loop. Try to spend less than an hour on this at once.
Save the project and close it.
Create a new project, then repeat step 1.

Now, you will repeat this for each track on your EP or album, and each of them will evolve in parallel instead of one after the next. It will give you the impression that you’re not going fast enough, but you are actually farming your tracks all at once. Once you have your X number of tracks, all with an idea/hook, then you can move to the next stage of rounds.

Develop the idea into a structure.
Add more elements as needed.
Save the project and close it.
Open the next project, then repeat step 1.

Again, try to not spend too much time at once on each project. Plus you should try to space out each of your sessions by at least 24 hours. Rested ears know better. Then the final stage will follow:

Arrangements.
Add more elements as needed.
Save the project and close it.
Open the next project, repeat step 1.

As you can see, whenever you start a new round, you then repeat it for all of the other tracks. This goes as well for the mixing and such. You can develop your own workflow too, but in the end, what matters is that each track evolves in parallel.

What’s really exciting about this technique is when you get to the last week and finish all the tracks. You’ll see the end results all together, then you’ll just have some final touches to make, and boom, your project is done.

I’m currently working on a document that describes the whole process in detail. If you subscribe to my free coaching service, you’ll get the training and more news as it comes.

When Do You Know A Track Is Finished?

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

Are you one of those perfectionists that has a hard time finishing a project because they feel there’s always one more detail that needs fixing? I’ve published a few posts with tips on how to finish tracks, but maybe you’re still spending countless hours on minor tweaks. You’re not alone. I’ve long been like that too, but with time I’ve learned to find a happy balance between embracing my perfectionist side and staying spontaneous.

I remember seeing a very inspiring video about Fellini, who felt that the only art possible was that which emerged from spontaneity, not from trying to control the uncontrollable. In other words, if you try to control your initial impulses, you might ruin what your instincts had naturally proposed. Overworking your production, after all, often comes from being excessively concerned with others’ feedback, but that’s completely out of your hands.

For all you know, people might love the exact things you were trying to suppress.

Here’s where it can become a problem:

You’ve been adjusting (and readjusting) the same project for months. Each time you listen to your track, you hear some new detail that you’d forgotten about or hadn’t noticed before.

This might be because:

You’re spending too much time on your track in one sitting. If you spend 4 hours in a row on a track, you’ll lose the perspective you need to hear things properly. I’ve stressed this before, but I always recommend taking tons of breaks, and to space out your sessions too. Letting your project sit for a few days before opening it again can really help. A week is even better. Months can do magic.

Your listening environment might not be perfect. This is why listening outside can help you figure out what needs tweaking. Try to always refer back to tracks that you know sound right, and insert your track into the same playlist. You can then put your player on shuffle to discover if your track sounds like it fits in.

But remember: achieving perfection is an illusion. What you hear on the 1000th listen is only what someone who has been listening to a track on non-stop repeat will hear. The chances are very low that anyone on earth will listen to your track as much as you do. And even if they did, by that point there’s actually a mental mechanism that kicks in, where people’s brains will adapt their perceptions to the track so as to accept it as it is. This might be a bit hard to swallow at first, but it is factual.

To cite a good example, every time I play live, I’ll spend innumerable hours preparing my sounds in advance. But then as I’m juggling with them live, they’re only being played for a few minutes each. The ones I think don’t sound so great are often perceived as really cool by the crowds. People will think that the sound, as they heard it, was made that way for a reason. They’re not totally wrong. You’ve created your music in a specific environment, and that is how your music sounds — there. Even if you get a mastering engineer to look over it all and make sure it sounds right, it’s honestly very rare that they’ll adjust more than 3 or 4 things at most.

Which is all to say that spending countless hours on that snare just might be a bit overkill.

In conclusion, you never really know if your track will be done. It is just a matter of accepting to move on and leave that track living it’s own, watching where it will end and accomplish. Go focus on the next work. You can always leave a track sleeping for a few months and get back to it later. That is always a way to see what’s left to be done.

SEE MORE: What Is A Mature Sounding Track?

Where to Get Fresh New Ideas for Tracks

July 25, 2016/in Blog, Production, Tips/by pheek

One of the questions I used to get the most from my students was how to come up with new ideas when making music. Unlike with jazz or rock, the options for creating electronic sounds are limitless, and so the range of electronic music genres and sub-genres is vast. Because of this, it becomes particularly easy to get lost in the innumerable possibilities and directions your music could take.

For many, just the pressure of trying to come up with new ideas can generate a writer’s block. And asking someone like me for tips on where to start could also lead to more questions, since I’ve developed my own ways of approaching the process over the years. With that said, I’ve personally found it essential to bear these 3 things in mind:

Music is a shared experience. The more you live your music, the clearer your ideas get.
Your experience of the music may not be the same as the listener’s. Let go of your desire for people to “get it,” and accept that they might see or feel something you don’t.
Creativity starts with embracing the endless recycling of sounds and ideas. Don’t think you’ll reinvent the wheel, if you know what I mean. Expectations kill creativity.

While you might have an intellectual understanding of the whole process of making music, there’s another dimension, that of intuition and feelings. So this involves two things:

Jamming. Play with gear, softwares.
Recycling. Inspiration from other songs, samples, presets, artists.

Everyone’s different, but if you think of bands for example, they jam together for a while until they uncover an idea they like. Then they will nail it down or record it to make it into a song. But before they can get there, they need to just let loose, go wild, and explore. In jazz, it’s well known that the masters would play for hours on end in little clubs, pushing themselves beyond the point of exhaustion until they reached a level of pure creativity, discovering new paths that they never would have found in a short session.

Basically, your brain needs a little push. You can’t just sit there and think you’ll have something fresh and innovative by opening your DAW and tweaking for 30 minutes. It demands patience, and giving yourself the permission to get a bit wild and break your own rules.

Many people find that jamming isn’t really their thing, and they’ll get great ideas if they already have material to work from. This is why sampling has become so popular in the last 30 years. Musicians take something they love, and then change the context to give it a whole new life. Using other people’s music can a bit of a legal nightmare though, so thankfully, as you know, there are tons of options out there — but maybe the best way is to learn to make your own sounds.

Fact: Doing arrangements in your DAW isn’t really “playing your music.” Have you developed the skill of playing it?

This is why learning to jam can be really useful. But how do you do it?

Try this simple exercise:

Open any soft synth in your DAW, and pick a preset or make yourself one.
Write a few few notes, but keep it simple. Play it in a loop.
Play with the parameters and record everything. Also, record the midi in case you’ll be changing that.
Listen to what you recorded, isolate the best parts, and then jam over it some more.
Repeat.

That’s it. You’re jamming. You have no idea how many people don’t realize how easy it is until they try it. And how fun. Just do it and PLAY your music.

On a final note, remember that inspiration also comes from listening to music, and lots of it — whether it’s music in the genre you want to make or something completely different, since you can translate ideas into your own world. One thing people sometimes forget is how listening to music with friends or in another context (walking, driving, commuting) can be especially useful, since it provides perspective on how the sound feels when doing daily activities. Ideas will then sprout.

SEE MORE: Recycling Your Tracks Into Fresh New Ideas

The Rule Of 10: Production in Rotation for Big Results

June 14, 2016/in Blog, Production, Tips/by pheek

I was speaking with a friend about my approach to making music, and I explained my rule of 10. Most people, especially new producers, will work a song until it’s done. But this is actually a huge mistake. The reason is simple:

after working hours on the same track, these guys have a hard time knowing if it’s still good or making any sense at all.

Plus they fall into the trap of tweaking things endlessly for that one track.

You might already see how this can be quite limiting from a learning perspective. Or maybe you don’t agree. So let me throw a few ideas out there that could help you jumpstart your inspiration.

Let’s compare making music to planting vegetables. You’re not going to plant one tomato plant and then wait for it to produce a tomato before planting something else, are you? To get big crops, you’ll need to plant a whole bunch at once, and nurture them all at the same time. Then you harvest.

The same goes for your songs. Start multiple at a time, and while one is progressing, don’t hesitate to stop yourself and let it sleep for a week or two, especially when you’re entering a very productive phase. This is to make sure you’re always fresh when you open a project and know exactly what needs to be done next. You’ll observe that your perspective on your work will be more accurate. If you open your project and it’s a mess, leave it to rest some more, or maybe recycle it into another, ongoing project.

There are two approaches to the rule of 10:

10 different projects.

Create 10 folders, and drop an Ableton project that you want to develop into each. Also, take the time to insert reference tracks that you love. This is music that you’d like your project to sound like but not necessarily mimic. Don’t hesitate to drop anything in there — get some classical or jazz, record some field recordings, anything. No rules should limit you.

You should also do some careful sample hunting on a site like Splice, for instance. Drop various sounds in there you like, along with presets you want to use. Save some in there in a specific folder.

1 project, 10 songs.

This one might surprise you, but I love this trick.

Open one project and build your 10 songs inside it, one after the next. They will all share the same number of channels, effects, and so on.

This is also an excellent way to keep a particular mood from one song to another.

You will run into interesting results by having some sounds go through the effect chain from the previous song. You can also be creative and not use all the same hi-hats in the same channel. For example, one song could use channel 3 for claps, then the same channel for toms. Don’t alter the EQ and compression on the other tracks. Try instead to take advantage of the settings from the previous track to see how to tweak the following one.

It’s rare that you’ll think you can create multiple songs in one project, but the idea came to me while I was turning parts of a live set into various songs. I thought it was really interesting to try a different way of working.

For me, two things have always enabled new ideas: limitations, and being forced to work or think in a new way. Both go hand in hand. I know that most people feel like the more gear and gizmos they have, the more productive they’ll be. Yet getting more usually leads to procrastination, since you feel confident that you can do it in the end. I call that the runner’s syndrome: you bought your running shoes and shorts, so you feel you can run. But are you, really?

SEE MORE: Spending Long Hours in the Studio

Find a track tester for your productions

June 10, 2016/in Blog, Production, Tips/by pheek

This might be one important post, so consider taking 5 minutes to go through it carefully. You probably already know how important it is to test the music you’re creating, but the big question is, how do you test your music effectively?

First, there are a few traps people fall into. I’ve said it many times, but succumbing to the myth that your music isn’t important if it isn’t signed to a label is a very common mistake — even for experienced producers. No joke. The truth is that your music is important simply because it’s yours. It deserves real love and attention, and that means proper treatment.

So how do you make sure to test your music properly?

In a word: you need beta-testers.

Track testers are experienced DJs who regularly play in all kinds of events, both big and small. The fact that someone plays often will ensure that your music gets inserted into their sets alongside other tracks, and that it will be heard by live crowds. The great news is that thanks to the internet, you can work with DJs across the globe and test its reception in different countries.

Here are a few tips on how to proceed:

Follow artists/DJs on Soundcloud. I’ve said it in past posts, but the importance of connecting with people on Soundcloud can’t be overstated. If you follow artists and DJs and engage with them, you can make some great contacts that will be beneficial to you both. Find people who enjoy, support, and comment on the music you really love. This is a good way to make sure the people you invest your time and energy into genuinely share the same tastes, which is a crucial factor in finding your beta-tester.

Share music in private. If you’ve gotten into the game of sending music to labels only to have your experiences end in frustration, then working in a one-on-one setting can be much more interesting. Don’t just send a random link to a DJ though. Take the time to connect with the person first, and then share a track after you’ve made contact. It feels special to receive music privately after a nice introduction — and even more so if the music fits.

Get feedback and tweak. This part is a bit trickier. If you want the DJ to play your song in a club, you’ll need to let them download it first. Be sure your mixdown is right, and it’s even better if the track is mastered too. Once the track is played, try to follow up to get some feedback. Be clear that you’re not fishing for compliments, but that you’re genuinely seeking constructive criticism. This is the only way to improve your track.

And very importantly, make sure the person will not share the track with their DJ friends!

You have no control over this of course, and that’s why you need to be extra careful about whom you share your music with. I’ve seen some really awkward situations where unreleased material accidentally got into the hands of a vast network of people. There are even online groups where members create pools of music to be shared abroad. If your music finds it way into one of these groups, the good news is that you’ll be known by a lot of music collectors (who for the most part aren’t DJs). The bad news, though, is that your track will have been burned, and there’s basically no way to release it after that.

So sometimes, a smart strategy could be to sacrifice a great track you feel could get you attention, even if it means giving it away. If it works, then the benefit in the end could be much higher than the loss. I myself have done this multiple times with netlabels, and it often paid off.

SEE MORE: Guide to shameless self-promotion

Wisdom From Experienced Producers

May 29, 2016/in Blog/by pheek

So you’ve decided to make music, bought the minimum to get going, and started to learn. But now you have this internal voice that keeps popping up, telling you that you’ll soon need to look for a label to get signed. No matter what you do, that little voice just keeps coming back. One of the reasons you welcome it and listen to it is because it opens the door to the dream of a release.

Well, not so fast. Before making music seriously or getting signed comes a very important step, which is to spend time with established producers. We admire artists who make music we love, and we want to meet them to see how they are in real life.

Just by listening to their music, we often get the feeling of knowing and understanding them, and even of connecting with them on a deeper level than with close peers.

But above all, we can also learn a lot from them, no matter what stage of your career you’re at.

So how do you approach an artist?

Volunteer for events or labels. This is a great way to encourage encounters. It’s hard to be around tons of people, so by volunteering, you get to help your community, support something that’s important to you, and meet experienced producers, all at once. Plus it’s a lot of fun.

Befriend them. Artists love company in general, but are sometimes socially awkward. Being warm and friendly to someone really is a good starting point. I’m saying this because sometimes people approach artists in the most bizarre way, as if trying to impress them or something.

Avoid being starstruck. It’s hard not to be impressed by someone you admire, but if you feel intimidated, try to focus on asking questions, and then enjoy the moment just listening. The important thing to realize is that some heroes you meet won’t actually fit who you are (any more than when you meet random people), so it’s nice to first see who you’re dealing with.

It’s not to brag, but for me, being involved at MUTEK was a great example of this. Aside from performing, I also got to drive artists around as a volunteer, which is how I made some really remarkable encounters. Some of the discussions we had were so interesting and enriching that they had a lasting influence on my career. Like I explained before, meeting Richie Hawtin was a very positive experience for me, and we got to talk a lot about career choices. But one of the most influential people I met was without a doubt Ricardo Villalobos.

While I don’t necessarily approve of his lifestyle, it always breaks my heart when I read some trashy comments about it, because hanging out with him gave me the privilege of discovering a truly unique and sensitive soul. The first time I met him was at MUTEK 2002, where I had the chance to drive him to his gig. I went to his hotel room to find him running around getting ready, clothes everywhere. Imagine this 6′ 6″ giant, a total goofball, chuckling like a kid as he tried to find all his cables and personal things. It was the first meeting of many to follow. Whenever he would see me, he would remember our hilarious time hanging out. One time I caught him on the street while he was shopping, and we spent an afternoon discussing life, music, careers, creativity, and the philosophies behind our common passion.

I’d like to share with you some of his thoughts that have stayed with me to this day. Often, I pass them on to others when I teach or coach.

“Music should be effortless.” As in, you should aim to achieve a state of flow while performing or producing.

“Events are about being with friends, tracks are messages being exchanged.” Rich has a very personal view about music, and for him, each track he plays has a story. Learn it before playing it.

“Be different, be personal, be bold and subtle, all at once.”

“Take the time to listen. To music, to people, to situations.” If you have ever seen him play in front of a crowd, it’s quite something to see him read it and control it.

So before dealing with labels, try getting involved in the community and meeting people you love. And whether it’s a Hawtin, a Villalobos, or just an experienced local you admire, you’ll find a good dose of inspiration, knowledge, and wisdom — and if you’re lucky, a new friend.

SEE ALSO: Creating Timeless Music

Conversations with Clients: Luis Rivera

May 19, 2016/in Blog, Mastering, Production, Products, Song Finalizing and Arrangements/by pheek

In Conversations with Clients, we bring you an honest and unfiltered look at Pheek’s services, straight from the mouths of those who know — and want you to know too! For this second piece in our series, I spoke with Luis Rivera (artist name LRb), a minimal techno producer based in Puebla, Mexico.

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Hi Luis, thanks for taking the time to chat with us! To start off, why don’t you tell us how long you’ve been producing music for?

Well electronic music I’ve been producing in Ableton for 5 years now, but I started making songs with my sister when I was very young. I played the guitar and my sister sang and we used to record it on an old tape recorder my dad has. So I’ve been making songs and music all my life, but producing electronic music for 5 years.

Now tell me a bit about your projects. Do you have any releases yet or are you working on that?

No, actually I’m working with Pheek because we want to release an EP. That’s the idea behind me using his services, the song finalization and analog mastering services. There’s an app, a KORG app, and I started making songs with it, and I won a contest they had 4 years ago, which led to a release on a compilation of tracks. But I’m working right now on my first EP.

When did you realize that you wanted help with your EP?

Well the thing is, if you start making one kind of music, in my case it’s techno minimal, you tend to repeat the same things. Like in your workflow, you always start, in my case, with drum groove, and even with the drum groove, you always start with a perfect kick, then some hi-hats, then some claps, and you start doing things methodically. You can hear your tracks, and you think they’re all different, but if you leave them for 2 or 3 days and you hear them again, you’re like, “This sounds exactly the same as the track I made a month ago.” So to try to do things differently, you need help, somebody from the outside, an educated ear. I realized that I had 10 tracks that were pretty good for me, I had stuff that I really liked, but – I didn’t know if it needed polishing or what – but I didn’t want to leave the songs as they were. I thought I could improve them. So that was the point where I knew I needed help, but you need help that is very specialized in this type of music.

How long have you been working on the tracks that you’ll be releasing?

There are tracks that I’ve made in the past 2 to 3 years. When I started talking with Pheek, he suggested one thing. He told me, “You know, you should get those tracks out of the closet and listen to them again, with all the knowledge you have right now, with everything you’ve learned through the years, you’re gonna listen to them differently. Maybe you can combine your current drums or groove with a bass you really like from a song you did 3 years ago.” So I did exactly that, I spent 2 to 3 weeks listening to tracks I remember I liked – you don’t remember anything though, you don’t even remember making the track!

We’re looking right now at 8 tracks – the idea is to release 4 – but 80% of these are tracks that I did 3 years ago, and we’re reinventing and smashing things up, et cetera.

How did you find out about Pheek’s services?

I am really a fan of his music. I had an album that was released by Minus and I really liked the tracks. Actually, they were very inspiring for me at the beginning of my work in electronic music, because I was more oriented towards dubstep and drum ‘n’ bass, and then eventually I started listening to house and techno music – I mean, I loved techno from when I was very little – but there was a track from Pheek on the record, and I started following him on Soundcloud and Facebook. I saw that he posted about his services, so I checked them out on his website, and I just sent him an email. It was super fast and easy. So it was very easy for me to establish contact with him.

Had you ever heard of song finalization services before or was this something new to you?

No, it was something completely new for me. And it was very attractive, but also very scary for me at the beginning. It was very attractive, because I thought I have an opportunity to have an artist, a real artist, whose music I really like, in the same genre I produce – and he has so many years of experience, et cetera, et cetera – so I thought it would be very, very productive for me to have someone like him hear my songs. But at the same time I was very scared, because I still want the songs to be my songs. I don’t want them to be completely changed or anything like that.

And what led you to decide in the end to book him?

Well you know, I simply said “okay, let’s try it.” I talked to Pheek two times before I sent him tracks. We were very clear on the idea I had for the EP, we talked about the general idea, the theme behind the EP. And then I just sent him the track, and he works very fast. Two or three days after he sent me his version, his arrangements, and I immediately loved them.

So it has been a very productive and very easy working relationship. I like to say to him – he laughs, but I like to tell him, “I’m not your client, I’m your friend, and let’s do this like we’re friends.” And it has been flow, flow, flow from there.

What was the thing that struck you the most about working with Pheek, was there anything that surprised you?

Well first of all, he’s always available. You would imagine that a person with his record label, with his mastering work – he does a lot of mastering for a lot of producers – you’re gonna think, “well he has a very busy agenda.” But he’s always available. That was the first thing that really connected with me, that I know I can ask him for advice on many other subjects, not just, “Okay, what arrangement did you do on this or that track?” I can ask him, “What are you listening to right now?” and stuff like that.

And second, definitely the arrangements, the things he sends back to me, they’re things you can only do with experience, with all those years you have working in the studio, mastering, hearing music. All those little things, in the end, they make a huge difference on your tracks. Like for example, I had a song that was driven with very dark synths, it has a very heavy bass, but I didn’t know where to put the percussions. I sent it to him, and 3 days later he sent me a song with just a ride on the percussion, just a cymbal, and it was amazing. He did 2 or 3 things there that were amazing, that completely changed the vibe of the song, and I really liked it. You know, those kinds of things, only a person with experience can really give you.

So in the longer term, what do you think you’ve gained from this experience of working with Pheek? What has it brought to your music production in a lasting way?

Oh a lot of stuff, it’s definitely a lot. Well actually, first, I hope I can continue working with him. He’s very active in other things too. Like right now we’re preparing the EP – we have some labels in mind – but the idea is to make this kind of big. He offers you help in that aspect too. So first of all I don’t wan’t this to be a one-time experience, I am definitely going to continue working with him. The mastering he does – his studio is filled with analog stuff, I produce mainly with analog instruments, and the sound is amazing when he sends back the songs.

But you know, those little pieces of advice, the way he sees things musically speaking, you learn a lot, you learn very very much, in very short conversations, and you can soak up all the knowledge he gives you. It’s like a graduate course!

Check out Luis Rivera (LRb) on Soundcloud here.

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This interview has been edited.

Learn Mixing At MUTEK’s Panel Workshop

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

Learn more about the workshop here!

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can register here.

Music Production And Studio Tips

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plugin Review: Circle 2 VSTi

April 27, 2016/in Review/by pheek

Okay guys, this is a first. I’ve been thinking about writing reviews for a little while now, mainly because I get asked sometimes what I use to make my sounds. So I thought I’d share some feedback about the tools I appreciate most and why.

Here’s the important thing for me though: I usually hate reading reviews. So this is my chance to find a way to talk about my experience as a user without focusing necessarily on the overly technical aspects, which are all covered in the product description anyway.

First up: the Circle 2 VSTi plugin.

Opening Circle 2: First impressions

I got a good feeling the minute I opened this plugin for the first time, which is a rare pleasure for me. With all my years of experience, I’ve grown pretty grumpy about the interface of synths. I often find them counter-intuitive and frustrating to learn, which frequently results in me never using them. With all the options available, it’s clear that you need your VST synth to be giving you what you want as quickly as possible.

Circle 2 delivers right away by getting you excited to play with it fresh out of the box.

Layout

The synth has 3 columns, each with its own functionality. From left to right, you have the oscillators, then the effects/mixer, and finally the modulation. Personally, I’d swap the columns, since I figure that it’s the modulation that goes through effects and mixing on the way to affecting the oscillators, rather than it the other way around. But that’s just my own preference, and it was not in any way a problem to work with once I got into the logic of the synth.

Presets

Although I avoid using presets, I still give them a quick listen when I first get a new plugin. This allows me to get a scope of the sound potential and to learn how to use the knobs/gizmos by getting a feel for how they move. Circle 2’s presets are named Sounds, and the presentation is simply outstanding. By using Class/Type/Style, you can apply filters that will help you see all the options available. It reminds me a bit of Omnisphere’s classification, but way more slick. This will really be useful later when I save my own sounds.

The sound

Whenever I test a new synth, I’ll immediately check how it manages bass and low-end sounds, as well as extremely high-pitched ones, mainly by using a sine oscillator. For Circle 2, I used a preset named “Deep Bass” and heard right away that the low end was very warm and heavy. My kind of sound! The slight modulation for a high pitched sound gave the impression of a modular rack that you paid tons of money for.

You see, the first 2 things that make Circle 2 stand out as a wonderful sound design tool are its wavetable oscillator design and its modular approach for shaping sounds. You’ll notice that the modulators have a little circle that you can drag to what you want to modulate. Think of Reason, but minus the graphical cables.

The sound is eloquent and beautiful. And one practical thing about the interface is that it lets you see the envelope and LFO being animated. It’s nothing too fancy, but just enough to orient you.

The wavetable oscillator is mind-blowing. You can select from a vast amount of shapes, combine it with another one, and then decide the amount of mutation between the two to produce something completely new. Very well done.

To finish off

Now that you’re getting excited about the sounds you can make, the last thing you’ll want to try is to play a bit with the randomization options. You’ll find these in the lower menu. You can control the amount applied too, so this is a great way to take a chance on unexpected discoveries. In a few clicks, I went from a nice bass to something abrasive, while still keeping it under control. You could use this feature as a way to create a sound that’s complementary to your previous one.

Overall appreciation

I’d say that this plugin is certain to remain a favourite in my production routine. I’ve been using it for 2 weeks now and have already become addicted to its powers of sound design. Its sounds are thick and solid.

The only downside I found was the lack of GUI control over the filters. I had to use knobs to control the frequency or resonance. That is an irritant to me because I like to make quick changes, and so I prefer to use my mouse. Oddly enough, the envelope can be controlled in this way, so I don’t know why the feature wasn’t included for the filters as well.

You can get your copy of the Circle 2 VSTi plugin here.

Create Your Own Concept Album

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

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

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

Some notable mentions:

The famous TR-909

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

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

Step 1: Build your sound bank

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

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

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

Step 2: Pick your effects

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

Romanian techno is a great example of a specific sound style

Image courtesy from Nightclubber.ro

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

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

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

Step 3: Design your song structure

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

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

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

SEE ALSO : Creating Beauty Out of Ugly Sounds

Mindfulness for Creatives

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

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

What is mindfulness?

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

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

How do you practice mindfulness?

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

So, how does this come into play with creatives?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Create an Ableton Live Session Template

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simple Sound Design Tips

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

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

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

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

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

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

So here are a few tips.

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

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

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

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

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

Bring your designed sounds into your mix.

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

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

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

Your kick drum should be the last sound you design.

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

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

SEE ALSO : Dynamic Sound Layering and Design

Make the Leap from DJ to Producer

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

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

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

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

Channel your ideas into making your own music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shortcuts to make the leap into production

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

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

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

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

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