Tag Archive for: Ableton Live

Live Recording Of Electronic Music

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It’s one thing to make songs by assembling them in the arranger of your DAW but playing your song to life is another thing. I have nothing against spending time in the arranger to make your song, but when I got interested in playing my music, I realized it was a totally different energy. When Ableton Live came out, we were crazy about using the given software in a live context. The software was still in BETA at version 0.5b. It was stable because it was pretty simple, but still, I feel it was a side of myself that was more adventurous than I am now.

In the early 2000s, I played live a few times a month, and I had this way of working that involved not doing the same set twice. I decided to force myself to find ways to be swift enough and count on my improvisational skills to juggle what I had into spontaneous performances. It wasn’t always the best, but it was impressive for that period. This meant that when we first realized we could play live from a laptop, that was a game changer.

Portability was one of the challenges we had. Imagine carrying a table full of gear to each gig. It was impossible without owning a car, and there wasn’t a single event where we forgot something or something went wrong. But it was part of the performance: if something was off or not working, that was a self-imposed limitation we had to cope with.

But that made me fluent at expressing myself out of the blue. If at one moment, at home, you’d figure out a nice loop, you’d stop for a minute, arm the recorder and then jam the song away. Sometimes 2-3 times but the first would always be the best.

Recording jams as songs was a way of creating, and much later in life, I rediscovered the pleasure of working that way. With the current state of technology, it’s easy to have too much gear, ideas, and material. All you need is a loop to start with.

 

I’ll cover a guide to how I prepare my sessions as well as my favorite piece of gear and soft tools.

 

Preparation, Organization, And Idea Gathering

 

This section is critical for the success of the recording and also for the fun aspect of the exercise. Some people don’t like organizing and prefer being spontaneous and wild, but good preparation will make things more fluid. There’s also the argument that organization comes as you rehearse, and I have to say this will happen indeed, but having a minimum done in advance will be a leap forward. One of the critical points related to recording your live song is that you kill two birds with one stone: by the end of the activity, your song will exist as a performance set and a song. I have many clients who only make songs in the arranger, and having in mind to do a live set makes it a bit unintuitive as you’ll need to deconstruct your song into a performance setup, which might not help. The solution people take is to play live with the side launcher, playing one scene at a time and basically replying to their song as it is.

I like to spend my studio time by always starting with a live jam that leads to a song. This way, you’re in the moment and’ll play the music as you feel it. The limitations of playing only certain things all at once help make the song focused and help you avoid adding too many elements and layers.

 

If I would guide you like a step-by-step method based on how I do it, here how it would go:

1- Focus on creating a 1 bar loop idea from MIDI material as your hook

 

Recently, I’ve been having a lot of fun with Navigator, a tool from Manifest Audio that lets you browse various MIDI phrases. I usually load a synth and browse various ideas that work with that sound. This usually turns into multiple ideas that are fun to work with and add content to support. From one bar, you can after duplicate it to 4 where bar 2 and 4 have variations, while bars 1 and 3 are the foundation. This is a suggestion, and you can explore combinations, but this method is an approach I see in multiple songs.

 

Navigator allows you to browse midi patterns

Duplicate it to 4 bars

2- Driving and Rolling Idea

 

The problem with Navigator is that it might generate random ideas that help find a sound or sound sequence, but since it’s a bit random, there might not be much rolling feeling. By rolling, I mean that it doesn’t naturally groove on its own, so adding a supportive idea for this works best if you have a percussive/rhythmic idea that can go on its own.

 

Either you punch it in, or you can use Euclidean patterns to have solid energy. If you want that idea to be expressive, you can start by putting down where you want the notes and then use a tool like Draw or Fluctuator to randomize the note values. This would be translated into a modular setup by having a sequence set to a step programmed like the ADDR.

3- Lower support

 

Once you have your main ideas programmed, you can add the steps in the lower end to fill that void. This can be done by adding a sub-oscillator to your main synth, which will then result in using the main melody but pitched down. But if you want your low end to not follow the main melody, you may have two choices: use the rolling method for energy or invert the main idea to create an answer.

 

4- Percussion

 

You can get carried away by adding too many layers here, so I usually approach it from two sides: Define the foundation and then set the decoration. You may not be used to these terms, so I will explain them. Your foundation should be the kick, snare/clap and hats. Depending of the genre and time signature, the foundation of a kick within one bar might also be where the accents are. The snare, which, for instance, typically falls on beat 2 and 4, will consolidate the groove and accent of the kick. The hihat might follow 1/4th of notes to 1/16th, where you can add a swing to give it a flowing or broken flow.

 

 

The interaction of these 3 can be seen as the foundational elements of your song. In other words, you define precisely how you want your first idea and the rolling one to flow on the given percussion that can help with the articulation.

Decorations are sporadic and sparse interventions that don’t take over the foundation but create subtle movements and accents by following it or embellishing it. They are also helpful for marking transitions, marking the end of sections, or filling space.

 

5 – Working with loops

 

If you have started your core making using some premade loop, you can start with the same approach as explained. I wouldn’t hesitate to follow the order of the previous steps. But once you have worked on your idea, you should now have a row of ideas that can be played. You will want to duplicate this row 3-4 times to have variations of the main loop. The idea is to alternate between variations to give depth and excitement to the initial core.

Some variation ideas:

  • Different loop length.
  • Introducing silences to create space.
  • Altering the rhythm by changing the position of certain sounds.
  • Changing pitch.
  • Use the envelopes of the various parameters with or without the clip’s length link option, which allows clips to feel longer than their current duration (e.g., it will break the loopiness).

 

You can also slice your loop or idea in a sampler and reorganize. I recommend that before jamming your idea, you have some main ideas and not get lost in fixing them while playing.

You might want to avoid following the session’s primary quantizing mode regarding variations. This setup means that when you press play on a loop, it will start at the beginning of the quantized position. By default, it should be 1 bar, which is helpful because it resets the loop’s position to the beginning of the bar, helping you have coherence should you be slightly lost. But for the variations, you could switch that to 1/4th, 1/2 or other, which means that when you press play on that clip, it will start on the following quantized note. This means that if you have a fill-as-one variation, you can introduce interventions that aren’t going to be starting at the beginning of the loop. But to do this effectively, you’ll need to activate the Legato mode. This means the loop’s playing point will continue where the previous clip was. It will give continuity.

The way I set this up is to define my base loop. That loop is where you will come back to as the core idea of your song or should things get too silly. Ideally, that base loop should follow the session’s global quantization at 1 bar. The variations will be set depending on your needs.

 

6- Modulations

 

This is my favorite part of the preparation. It consists of activating the modulation record button and then clicking on the arm button on the channel you wish to modulate.

This will allow you to manually record movements on some effects such as EQ, Utility, chorus or anything you want. The record option will pick up your movement and then loop it so you can boost sequences with the EQ, and then this will play in a loop, which can add a whole new range of variation to the original idea. You’ll need to unlink the envelope for a longer modulation duration.

I will then add modulation to every channel and clip, but I will also have one clip without any so it doesn’t get too crazy.

Another option is resampling. This means you can solo one channel and then apply all the changes you want while resampling. This will give you longer clips you can play as is or chop them into smaller clips for variations to jam with.

 

 

7- Follow Actions as Randomizer

 

This technique is quite known and fun. Take a clip (audio or midi) and duplicate it multiple times with a different play position or changes. You can then benefit from having follow actions on all of them to play randomly between the batches. By recording the results, you’ll have the same idea but arranged differently. This method is a way to remix clips or discover new hooks through a simple concept.

The Follow Action is fun when jamming or just when preparing. One way I like it is to have fills or melodies that play independently (aka generative melodies).

If you want your clips to remain short and play briefly before jumping, you’ll need to turn off the link and set the duration to something like 0.1.0 so that it plays only a note or so.

5- The Exciting Loop Method

 

The EL Method is about finding the simplest loop possible that excites you. Press the record button, then start jamming without a goal other than seeing if it’s fun. The recorded jam will be helpful as you can jam with the jam as if you have a partner leading the song, and then you can add new layers.

One suggestion is to start with your foundation, main idea and low end. This is the core of your song, and you can add the other layers after.

The idea is to jam your idea multiple times, recording every moment. You can then keep the best parts and edit the less-than-best.

That’s pretty much how you do it.

 

Bonus part: Gear

It’s common that when I teach beginners how to play electronic music, they think that it is only possible if they have a lot of gear and expensive material. Not having much often proves to be more productive, as you can focus on what matters. Even when performing live, I tend to focus on having as little as possible so I don’t lose myself, but if something goes wrong, I won’t have to look through a list of potential issues.

After performing live for almost 30 years using multiple setups, I would say that if you don’t have much, one good MIDI controller I recommend is the Novation Launch XL. This compact controller represents a mixing board where you can fade in and out elements or play with effects. As you jam using this, you’ll soon feel that automation and modulation with that tool give a much more organic movement than a mouse will. DJs who dive in production often miss the hands-on option that DJ mixing gives them. This is an excellent option for them to be able to add movement or play with levels, in a human way.

Guide To Templates

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Some links will provide a commission to maintain this blog free, so consider supporting this way. I have not been requested to make this blog and all suggestions are based on what I use for my work.

 

I’ve recently finished an album. The tracklist has 19 tracks, which means I had about 40 songs and discarded half of them. For some, this feels like much, but when I work on an album, there’s a point where the more I make songs, the more new potential ideas emerge. This motion feels like a force where all falls in place with ease, and the efforts become less intense.

But there’s a secret weapon that makes it all easier and fun. Well, a few tricks come together when I work on multiple tracks at once because, speeding through the ideas, I have to save macros that fix an issue; the same goes for presets and eventually, I create templates where I can pick up tools.

I thought I’d write a post about templates. People overlook this tool and don’t see the point of exploring it. It deserves some attention because it could bring you speed and efficiency.

 

Productivity, Speed and Organization in Creation

 

I’m not sure where I read this, but this person said something like:

 

“I don’t believe in efficiency while creating because it is normal to be messy, lost. and chaotic; it is the core of troubleshooting, which is what creativity is about.”

 

While I understand and relate to it, I also see the benefits of having some tricks when working on more significant projects, whether mine or a client’s. There are things in art where your intuition will guide you to make decisions, and that will get you to take steps towards zones that aren’t controllable. However, regarding electronic music, we have multiple steps towards the end of the projects, and some are purely technical. Frequently, I get clients who come to me because they’re on the verge of giving up. Once you go through the multiple layers of everything to be handled, you get to overhear your music and, perhaps, start changing things that were working in the first place. This is why if you can use some tricks, tools and organization, you’ll cut out some time from the wrapping part.

That said, you can have the best of both worlds: You want to remain intuitive and explorative, but you want to achieve results rapidly when it is time to conclude.

Being organized solves multiple issues, such as:

  • Time saving. One challenge electronic musicians face is digital hoarding, which means they constantly get free or bought plugins, tools, and macros more than they use them. This results in having more options than one can easily integrate into a solid workflow. Organizing this will give you quick decision-making.
  • Better understanding of technical needs. Having templates helps you separate your workflow into modules, where you will already know what tasks to do next.
  • More energy. A challenge that new electronic musicians face is mental exhaustion from exploring music. This is partly due to decision fatigue. The more you have to make decisions, the more you’ll feel exhausted quickly.
  • Effective validation process. When you have a process that is also a checklist of all the elements you need to decide if your song is done, you will rely less on others to know if you’re finished.

 

Regarding templates, if I look at what I do, I have multiple templates categorized according to the tasks and needs. There are also various ways to use them, which I will cover. Let’s go through the categories and how they can be done and review the tools I use regularly.

 

One Template Per Need

 

The point of making a template is to turn something that worked into a tool you can reuse. If you think of any tool you have, such as a stove, hammer, drill, or MIDI controller, they are all the results of people having to solve an issue they wanted to address and turn it into something that can be used repeatedly. Using someone else’s template could be a shortcut for your workflow but it’s essential to keep in mind that it was made from someone else’s trial and failures. I believe it’s essential that you develop your templates so you can learn and tweak tools to your needs. Other people’s needs will never be precisely adapted to what you do.

I want to share some template ideas and tips for turning your work into future shortcuts. My work approach involves multiple phases, so I have made my templates based on that to avoid having to redo the same repetitive tasks.

 

Default Template

The Default template in Ableton is where your day starts. It’s helpful to have a few things ready, so you don’t have to prepare your environment each time you open your DAW. There are a few things I want to set up my Master/Main channel, the default audio and midi channels, and organize your sidebar properly to avoid searching.

 

Master/Main Channel:

  • EQ: Handling garbage low frequencies means you want to have a high pass at 20Hz. You can leave it with a smooth curve, but if you do this, you’re already solving many issues beginners have with their mixes. I would suggest not doing many changes and keeping it flat but if you have tendencies to compensate for your listening environment, you could do a default EQ to fix that problem. Compensating implies that your listening environment might be badly treated with acoustic padding, making you push or cut frequencies that don’t need changes. People who don’t have a sub in their studio tend to push the lows too much or completely miss it.
  • Utility: This simple stock plugin is probably the most useful of all your plugins. Having one on the main channel lets you sum your low end to mono, which fixes most phasing issues and solidifies the mess that stereo low end can create. Some songs have a stereo low end, but this is not something I would encourage newcomers to explore. The width is also a good way to balance your mono versus stereo ratio. Then, the gain allows you to compensate for too much or too little volume coming in.
  • Limiter: When we make music, we might lose track of the main channel, and the signal might overflow. The limiter is your friend to control that. It’s that policing tool that can also scrap a mix if you leave it as is when exporting.
  • Metering: While experienced musicians tell others to use their ears to know what’s wrong, I still rely on visual representation of what I do to validate what’s happening quickly. Working on a mix for a while, you will lose sense of flatness in the frequency distribution. You can look at a visualizer to see what’s happening.

 

While stock plugins will do for a while, you can get some third-party plugins, some for free.

The King of Metering is free and offered by Voxengo as SPAN. It covers everything you need to understand what’s happening. Make sure to configure it properly using Dan’s tutorial. I also love T-Rack Meter. It is visually appealing and has a waterfall/spectrogram analyzer. You can also use this one for free if you want to add it.

For Utility, you can also look into other plugins, such as Track control by DMG and Melda’s own MUtility. Both are free.

For Limiters, the one in Ableton got a lovely upgrade with v12 and is now very powerful. You can achieve solid results with it. If you’re looking for something with a bit more bells and whistles, you could check Smart Limit, which is not too expensive, versatile and easy to use.

 

Send/Returns

I’m always baffled by how people don’t use return channels that much, but they’re efficient in many ways. One of those is global effects, which means you can route multiple channels towards them and have a more coherent result. It also saves CPU. I believe the default ones in Ableton are a reverb and a delay. Those 2 effects are common in electronic music production and other genres, so it makes sense. The stock plugins usually do the trick; you don’t need much more. But there are an extra 2 return channels I would encourage you to add:

  • Stereo/Sides: You may add a utility plugin sent to be in Sides Mode only on this channel. I’d pair that with the EQ and set it in Mid/Side mode.
  • Mono sum: This would be the opposite of the previous one. This means you put a utility plugin in mono mode.

 

Why do this?

Some sounds might need to be sent towards the stereo return to increase presence in that zone. You can also add “side” effects, where the effects will only affect the side part of the channels routed there. The mono channel is in the same logic, but this one is focused on the mono signal. Many clients focus on getting width for their music and forget the importance of the mono signal, which is critical to impact multiple contexts (e.g. phone, car sound system, headphones, etc.). If you use premade loops, there may be some imbalance between the stereo and mono. Using sends is a fun way to control that because once you have multiple channels routed there, you can adjust the entire track simultaneously.

 

Default Audio

Some plugins can be added automatically each time you open an audio channel. This saves some time, but if you add many, it will hog your CPU drastically. In theory, you don’t need much but if you think of general needs to its bare minimum, I would recommend adding the Channel EQ as well a Utility. These will let you control the tone of your signal and its input gain and stereo adjustment. If your CPU can handle a bit more, I would also suggest a few:

  • ConsoleX8056: This suite is badass. It’s an analog emulation suite with a console emulation, vintage EQ and compressor, and a coloured gain staging utility. When mixing, I’ve been ditching my pricy Universal Audio VSTs for these. Using the console on all your channels will bring some non-linearity to your mix, blurring the lines of a digital signal. The Gain unit is not transparent; you’ll get some crunch if you push it.
  • Envelope Follower: This is undoubtedly my favourite tool in Ableton. It will read the amplitude envelope of your incoming signal, allowing you to control the channel’s parameters or any other channel, which opens the door for creative sidechaining.
  • EQ8: The advanced EQ in Ableton with more filters than the channel EQ.
  • Compressor: If you want to control the density of your incoming signal.
  • Channel strip: If you want to turn your channels into an analog console with a similar look and feel, these aren’t available in Ableton. My favourite option is to turn to Brainworx with their numerous emulation of legendary consoles. I have a preference for the Neve (AMEK)‘s sound, and therefore, the 9099 is my default option.

 

Pheek's Default Audio chain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Default MIDI

This one comes with a few options that I would recommend.

  • Scale: You want your midi signal to have the option to follow the global key/scale of the project, so scale allows you to handle that easily.
  • Expression Control: This tool intercepts the signal’s characteristics (Velocity, aftertouch, slide, etc.) and can map them to the parameters of the synth in the channel or something else in the project.
  • Velocity: Useful for tweaking the velocity to taste, including randomization and midi compression.
  • Note Lenght: Allowing you to tweak the length of your incoming notes
  • MFA S&H Pro: Reading the incoming notes will generate random information, which helps modify your instrument in the channel. This pro version of a simple S&H is very powerful in the numerous options to control the random signal.
  • Chance Engine: This allows you to add probability to the notes with the option to modify the notes. It’s convenient when you want to deconstruct a repetitive melody.

 

Pheek's Default Midi chain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sidebar

Organizing your sidebar will speed up your searches. You can use the colours to tag anything and have quick access. Mine has been a bit of a mess until I discovered a new feature on Ableton v12. You can now add custom folders on your sidebar with any content you have, but it will be essential to tag your plugins properly. To add a custom folder, you need to search and then click on the “+” to add that search as a dynamic folder. If you made a side folder for compressors, the folder will be automatically updated each time you add a new compressor to your library.

 

R&D Template

 

I have a template dedicated to research and development (ideas, theories, concepts, tutorial exploration, etc.). This template aims to have quick tools to test whatever is on my mind. The way my mind works is perhaps similar to other people’s. I often have an idea of a sound based on something I heard in a song playing (maybe I’m driving or walking and not in my studio), and then I reverse-engineer what it could be. Being on the Mac ecosystem, I either use Notes or Voice Memos to write down what I have in mind and then I will try ideas in the studio later on.

Here are some ideas for an Ableton template dedicated to research and development. You could start with the default template and then build this one since some needs overlap.

Signal Analysis & Visualization

 

The first channel would be for sound inspection, and the second for testing. Therefore, these analysis tools are needed for both channels.

Visual feedback is key since the goal is to deconstruct and understand sounds.

  • Spectrogram & Frequency Analyzer → To see how harmonics evolve, check the previous link to the free Spectrogram and SPAN. I also love Fabfilter ProQ4, which has a beautiful Frequency Analyzer. One thing I like about this EQ is the matching EQ option, which will be useful for understanding the frequency shape.
  • Oscilloscope → To analyze waveform shapes. I love using the one in Shaperbox because it can pair with some signal modification tools. Otherwise, Melda has a free tool that can be helpful.
  • Envelope Follower → To extract dynamics from a reference sound and apply them elsewhere. I’d use the one in Ableton.
  • Peak & RMS Meter → To monitor amplitude behaviour. SPAN can convert this.

I would drop Shaperbox on both channels to modify and analyze. That alone will be very useful.

 

Sound Deconstruction Track

The third track will be about making tests from a song.

  • Reference Track → Load in the sound you want to analyze.
  • Sampler & EQ Matching Track → Use an EQ Match or Sampler to isolate key frequencies.
  • Transient Isolation Track → Use gates or transient designers to extract attack portions. While you can do a fair job with Ableton’s gate plugin, my favourite gate comes from Oxford Drum Gate.
  • Sustain Analysis Track → Loop specific sections to analyze their behavior.

 

Reverse-Engineering Tools

 

This channel will explore some sounds from your reference or sound to analyze. This one is optional and not necessarily one to use de facto. Instead, you could prepare this as a series of macros you import when needed.

  • Granular Sampler Rack → A Simpler/Sampler preset pre-loaded for quick granulation. The Granulator III is pretty impressive for exploring.
  • Resonator Bank → A rack with multiple resonators (Corpus, Collision, EQ) to extract tonal characteristics. Again, you can see notes from what you hear using Pro-Q4 paired with a stereoscope.
  • Modulation Extractor → A chain with an LFO, Envelope Follower, and Sidechain Compressor to mimic movement in the reference sound.

 

Synthesis & Rebuilding Section

 

This channel is also optional but comes in handy.

  • Oscillator Matching → A synth (like Operator or Wavetable) to manually match the tonal structure.
  • Noise & Texture Layering → A track that adds noise, static, or other micro-details. Melda has a noise generator that is free and very useful.
  • Dynamic Modulation Rack → LFO + Envelope tools to reconstruct movement.
  • Harmonic Enhancer → Using Saturators, Waveshapers, or FM techniques to match reference overtones.

 

 

Possible Enhancements

  • Randomization Macros → To introduce variations while testing.
  • MIDI Note Extractor → A MIDI effect chain that converts audio to MIDI for better tonal deconstruction.
  • Spectral Freezer → A track that can “freeze” spectral snapshots for close inspection.

 

Song Structure Template

 

These templates are from a different mindset, and they’ve been explored in my blog numerous times, but it comes down to deconstructing a song you love for its arrangements. This implies dragging the song in Ableton’s arranger side, matching the tempo to the project, and then looking at the waveform.

  1. Listen to the song and pay attention to all the sounds.
  2. Add a MIDI channel per sound that you can hear. For example, one channel named Kick, one bass, clap, synth, etc. These ghost midi channels don’t have any instruments loaded and are there as references alone.
  3. Once you have listened to the song and noted all sounds with a MIDI channel, you listen again and add MIDI clips to the timeline when you hear the sound coming in.
  4. By the end, you should have the song’s structure in MIDI clips, indicating the order of all sound appearances.
  5. You can go beyond by putting midi notes in the clips to see when the sounds appear precisely.
  6. Group the reference with the midi channels, then drag and drop it in your sidebar within a folder for your structures.

 

 

This can be saved as a template for later use. Once you have a solid loop and want to turn it into a song, you could import a structure you previously made and know works. This can validate a structure and the number of sounds you need to complete a song. Some people can never pinpoint whether they have enough or too many sounds.

Mixing Template

 

While I offer a mixing template here for you to check, I can explain how to create one.

The logic of a mixing template is to rely on groups you can import into an ongoing project. Then, you can drag your project channels into the imported group. I would do a group per family of sounds:

  • Kick (on its own): I’ve been enjoying Cableguys’ new tool for percussion. Pair it with Shaperbox, and you will have your compression, transient shaper, and overall volume adjustment tools all in one.
  • Low End: Bass or whatever bleeds under 100hz. An EQ like Pro-Q4 or TrackSpacer will do for clean ducking, but you could also use a simple stock EQ from your DAW.
  • Percussion: Percussion potentially needs a bunch of tools, but Neutron will cover that for you. Tools that are useful here are an EQ, Gate, Transient shaper, Compression for glueing and some saturation.
  • Melodic elements: This one is tricky because it could combine synth stabs and more extended notes like pads. Some compression can help glue them together gently, and I love using a leveller for that. The LA-3A is perfect for that. EQing and stereo control are going to be essential. Please don’t overdo it with the width enhancements.
  • Background: This is low in presence. Compression and EQing, as well as the track spacer, are useful here once more for clean results.
  • Vocals: This is a tricky one, but I would say the LA-3A is going to be your best friend and a vocal rider like Melda. Pair this with your favourite reverb, delay, and chorus for cosmetics.

 

I hope these were useful!

 

 

Electronic Music Is More Than Making Tracks

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People have become increasingly interested in making electronic music in the last decade. I find it more exciting than people getting into DJing. It’s clear to me that one or the other is a hobby that everyone who enjoys electronic music should explore. As you explore the art of DJ, you learn how to dig, get familiar with the roots of artists you love, discover music you didn’t know you loved, and build some obsession over tracks. It’s a fun hobby that fuels the scene, supporting artists and labels and feeding more energy into what you believe in.

Making music is a pretty deep activity. I mean it. Some people get curious about making beats, and before they know it, they’re engaged in an inner journey where they rediscover parts of themselves and create sounds they never thought possible. Making music mirrors its creator’s psyche, reflecting subconscious emotions and triggering memories.

Photo by James Kovin on Unsplash

Maybe you’ll think I’m crazy, but most people who have been exploring the art for a while will confirm that it’s not so silly. This is why I get it when someone wants to make songs first, but I am also excited to tell the newcomer that there is more to explore than making tracks. What’s a bit tricky to explain is that to make tracks, you need to do multiple activities first. Making a song is like writing a story or a novel. You need to live some adventures first to share a story. Or perhaps you have a lot of imagination, but real stories always bring substance.

I like to see songs as stories from the studio. They are a collection of moments built into a more cohesive narrative. Sometimes, a few related stories can also be paired into a conversation.

Regarding categories of songs, in my case, I have two main buckets:

  • Reference-inspired music: This refers to songs that are built with a precise purpose, such as making music for DJs, and is built to fit sets.
  • Personal agenda: collecting moments and miniatures and finding sounds that I would love to put into a live performance where I record the outcome.

 

The issue I see for people who start making electronic music is that they focus on creating a song but lack the experience, tools, and general workflow to get things done. They will then compare themselves, and the gap between what they made and other people’s music will be significant. Many want to make a personal song combining the two categories I mentioned. This is even more difficult because the person will lack one of the primary essential music skills: vocabulary. That skill comes with playing, rehearsing and repeating the techniques.

I found many tutorials on making songs and known artists showing how they made music or how to make one from scratch, but this is a steep activity for a newcomer. We could relate to that kind of video, such as sharing how to build a house. It is helpful, but you’ll practice someone else’s way of working, and it won’t show all the learning they’ve been going through, which includes failing, dealing with various issues and how they resolved them. Electronic music is supposed to be a playground where you play with all those toys and software to see what comes out of it, and then, down the road, you record something you want to share.

 

To record something without exploration is the equivalent of sharing a made-up story that you haven’t lived: it lacks the essence. Memorable stories are partly inspired by personal experience.

 

Making sounds without a purpose might not be romantic or exciting, but it is an activity that develops deep listening. That skill is essential for understanding sound, reverse engineering what you imagine, and mixing. Sitting there and listening to sounds you make or have found is valuable.

 

Besides making music, sound activities that have to be added to your rotation of studio sessions should include:

  • Listening to music.
  • Listening to samples, videos, non-related sounds.
  • Update plugins and gear.
  • Learn a specific effect by testing all the knobs/options.
  • Backup projects.
  • Rename and organize past projects and ongoing ones.
  • Use MIDI controllers paired with plugins and play with them.
  • Design one sound at a time: ex. Bass hit or percussion.
  • Turn loops into structures
  • Create Mood boards and fill them with samples, designs, and sounds.
  • Analyze Reference tracks and create templates for them.
  • Modular patching.
  • Create grooves alone
  • Create Hooks alone
  • Create beats alone
  • Design an arpeggio.
  • Try chord progressions.
  • Deconstruct the song structure of a project of yours and see what are the different alternatives.
  • Practice playing an instrument or a keyboard.
  • etc.

 

 

I will share some activities and exercises I do daily that you can also do. These provide me with some ideas and remind me that electronic music is more than just making songs; it’s just spending time tweaking, listening, and adjusting.

 

Studio Activities to Try

 

Here are eight studio activities that mix challenge, logic, and analysis. Each is designed to be a focused exercise in sound exploration that lets you practice a new skill and gives you material to play with at the end. These exercises allow you to treat individual sound elements as mini-compositions (miniature) while keeping things structured enough to evolve into a conclusive five-minute segment.

 

Focus: Parameter Modulation Mapping

 

Challenge: Explore manual modulation with the 2-hands Technique

 

Activity: This requires a MIDI controller and mapping some parameters to a plugin instrument or effect. One of the most straightforward yet most potent explorations you can do is to map two knobs to 2 parameters. Then, using your hands, you’ll explore the different results when one hand does something while the other does something else. As a starter, if you need an idea, you’d control the frequency cutoff of a filter, and the other parameter would be the resonance.

 

What happens when you move slowly one parameter while the other squiggles quickly?

What does it sound like when the two move in opposite directions, quickly vs slowly?

You could ask yourself many questions, but being curious is the best guide.

 

Outcome: This transformative manipulation can drastically shape sound. You might want to add a limiter immediately to avoid hurting your ears. Recording the movement can test various sound sources through your effect. Resample everything.

 

 

Focus: Layered Texture Sculpting

 

Challenge: Create layers for a sound to make it more complex or richer.

 

Activity: You can layer textures to a simple-sounding sample using an envelope follower and a few filters. If the sound is mostly a mi-oriented synth, you can layer higher-pitched texture by putting a filter in highpass mode. Since many sounds have content in various areas of the frequency spectrum, you can explore parts of it with an EQ that isolates a section. You can also practice FM modulation to make the sound richer and then have fun with multi-band processing (eg. compression or saturation) to blend it.

 

Outcome: Practice adding layers to sounds, which gives you options when exploring new hooks. You can use previous experiments,, or if you build macros while exploring, you can create them on the fly.

 

 

Focus: Micro-Rhythm Manipulation

 

Challenge: Explore a sound when repitched, stretched or sequenced.

 

Activity: There’s this interesting fact that a sound in a library can have multiple lives, just like a cat. You can use the same sample multiple times, and to avoid repeating yourself, you’ll change it so it feels anew. Changing pitch is one way of exploring a sound’s potentially new outcome. Pitch it down for darker moods and high for exciting overtones. Explore the sound in a different scale, as a chord or reversed. Changing its length and sequencing can also turn it into an unpredictable turnout.

 

Outcome: After resampling the new ideas, you can save them as new hooks or post them on mood boards that need fresh air.

 

 

Focus: Algorithmic Sequencing Experiment (Or any sequencing that isn’t usual to you)

 

Challenge: Use an algorithmic sequencer or generative tool to create evolving note sequences or parameter changes.

 

Activity: You can record the MIDI output to new clips using a complex sequencer or MIDI clips with probabilities on some triggers. Recording multiple new clips allows you to save practical and fun sequences to reuse. In Ableton v12, you can make a drum kit and then shuffle the sounds with similar ones. Shuffling sequences and drum selections allow you to preview sounds with a specific sequence. Sometimes, we have a melody we love, but the sound doesn’t fit, and vice versa. Exploring one or the other lets you see a broad palette for a selection. Algorithmic sequencing is a powerful tool to spit out ideas from your habits since you’re not in control of the sequence.g

 

Outcome: If you save them, the result is in 3 spheres with new drum kits, midi clips, and audio clips.

 

Focus: Resampling and Transformation

 

Challenge: Reshape a sound entirely

 

Activity: Using the option to record modulation to clip in session view, add multiple effects of your choice on the channel of the sample and then record yourself moving parameters. Tieing your modulation recording to a loop-based time creates a lot of change to the initial sample. When we play with effects, we rarely automate multiple parameters at once, so this activity is about exploring exaggeration and going to places you might not explore. Once you have some action going, resample the entire playful session.

 

Outcome: Recording a long exploration as this will always offer alternatives to the original idea. Those recordings can be new hooks or extra material to support the initial sound.

 

Focus: One-Plugin Challenge

 

Challenge: Choose a single instrument plugin and use it exclusively to sculpt your sound for 5 minutes.

 

Activity: Similar to making a miniature, this activity is about taking enough time not to achieve anything other than using your curiosity and seeing what comes out of it. Very often, we are task-driven with something in mind, which narrows the outcome of what your tools can do. Set your root key to C to resample the exploration in those moments. Being in C will let you import the recording to a sampler for easy manipulation.

 

Outcome: Limiting your tools forces you to explore every nook and cranny of a plugin, and not having a goal keeps you open to finding sounds you aren’t usually going far.

 

 

Focus: Dynamic Arrangement via Automation

 

Challenge: Turn a simple loop into multiple versions of itself using generative techniques.

 

Activity: Use the follow-action option in the session view to select multiple clips with a hook and create variations. The idea is to start with a simple loop, but the outcome will be different each time you play it. The record button allows you to save the order of the clips played, creating new hooks and unexpected arrangements.

 

Outcome: Either you resample the session or record the clip launching activity, but the outcome will provide a way of exploding the initial loop trap one can fall into. You can also revisit old projects and apply the same activity to recycle solid ideas in alternate versions of themselves.

 

 

Focus: Spatial Field Exploration

 

Challenge: Explore using space through panning, reverb and filters

 

Activity: Using a few samples from a new project or idea, spend time meticulously positioning them in space using panning. Quite often, that production phase is overlooked and left to be done at the end, either in the mixing phase or at some other point. Taking the time to explore what a sound can be like in the panning distribution can reveal potential flaws or strengths of a sound.

 

Outcome: The recorded performance might inspire spatial arrangements in larger tracks and help you consider sound positioning as a compositional element. Sometimes, moving around a sound will help make sense when paired with another. It’s a nice activity to listen to how sounds relate to each other, but from a spatial perspective. Also, exploring reverb use can give a new mood to the most straightforward sound.

 

Focus: Preset Owning

 

Challenge: Explore all the presets of your plugins and tweak them.

 

Activity: It is an enjoyable experience to go through all the presets of a plugin or synth and modify them to taste. You can, after that, either save them over the original preset or as a new one. Electronic musicians often disdain using presets, but you can see them as a starting point. You can also make them yours by changing them to your needs. Going through multiple presets helps you understand how a specific plugin works and how to configure it to achieve a particular result.

Alternative: My friend Jason likes to try to “break” plugins by pushing them to extreme settings to see what happens. By pushing them far, you can then roll back to less intense results.

 

Outcome: An expansion of your presets and a better understanding of your tools.

 

If you have suggestions, please share!

 

 

 

The Success Trap

/in /by

I went to a local club to hear a visiting friend from Romania for an all-night of music that was more aligned with my tastes, and while the DJ before him was a bit linear and predictable, my friend opened up with fresh-sounding music. He didn’t drop the Beatport top 10 music or anything directly linked to the previous DJ, not even an introduction to please the crowd. He dropped some obscure techno, which was a bit audacious, and he quickly followed it with a song from the 90s. The main idea of that track was a vocal saying, “Get House,” which was this song by Caliesto. Beautiful contrast.

 

 

Just hearing the sample, I had flashbacks of raves, lasers, glow sticks, and people dancing and sweating, just from a single sample that I heard, which brought me back to a specific era. In contrast to the previous DJ, where all songs blended well together in a seamless flow, there was unfortunately nothing memorable or tangible to grasp from it. I don’t remember a single moment, just a week after. This is not a criticism of someone’s music, but more to say that solid ideas age well because they create intense moments. If you listen to the Caliesto song, you’ll realize it’s relatively simple. Still, the hook is catchy enough for anyone to tell their friends later on about the primary sample, which others can probably remember easily.

It occurred to me that the definition of success has changed since the 1990s. Of course.

 

Back to DJs

 

As I got back into DJing, I’m exploring the options available, as numerous tools are now available. For instance, I got a professional account on Rekordbox and paired it with an experienced account on Beatport. This allows me to sync my playlist from the store directly to my Rekordbox, add any songs I want and then have this endless catalogue on hand. It’s basically like having Spotify, where your limitation is your music knowledge or culture. But even if you are new to it or limited, there are discovery tools to help you search what others like and play.

After synchronizing Beatport to Rekordbox and opening the music section related to it, I got overwhelmed. If you know me, you’d know that technology rarely overwhelms me. It took me a lot to get there, but I was staring at the selection and feeling lost. I wasn’t overwhelmed with possibilities; I was confused by how much junk was out there.

I’m not here to criticize the music again, but more from a meta-level, stepping back as a global view.

The number of songs that sound exactly like the previous one was blatant. Some of my favourite artists suddenly make songs with questionable sounds or presets, and many new artists create music with strange, unusable arrangements.

Am I too old for this?

Nah, don’t worry. Once I start digging, I still find a lot of fantastic music. So what happened exactly?

 

Music Democratization and Open Business Opportunities

 

In the 90s, electronic music software aimed to allow more and more people to make music by making it more accessible and affordable. This opened the path to countless music lovers interested in making music. I’d be a hypocrite to complain because I was one of those people with no music background; technology was my saviour. Jump 30 years later, add YouTube for knowledge sharing (fueled with the motivation of popularity of likes), and add aggregators who allow anyone with a finished song to access all online stores and streaming platforms. You’ll get albums of barking dogs, techno EPs made by eight years old, fart-fueled drone music and whatever you can think of, you can probably find it.

Is that bad?

It’s not me to judge, but the advantage of people being solid selectors is probably what can make a DJ stand out from their colleagues. But as a producer, I think the question is, can one escape the appeal of the mass wave of music similarity and perhaps be irrelevant?

Absolutely, but this is a tad complicated to cover because it is defined by multiple aspects, such as your Definition of done (DoD), your culture, your community, and what you consider success.

 

Success Trap

 

Whatever you see or identify as a “problem” is directly related to a micro-culture of habits that created that situation. For instance, if your bedroom is messy, you have a terrible habit of not keeping it tidy. If you want to clean it, once you have cleaned it, it will remain that way for a day or two until it gets dirty again. The real goal behind this is not to organize your room; it’s to develop cleanliness habits so it remains clean.

We can translate this to the music business as well. A considerable amount of people who consult me in private wish to finish more music because their goal is to be successful, which they translate by having:

  • Music being finished
  • Signed to a label

Labels see success by releasing music that eventually gets attention and sales. DJs see success with gigs, and Instagram reels with loads of likes.

While there’s nothing wrong with these, the focus is set on something that defines the success of an external party. You might never feel like it’s enough because there will always be options for better, and while it can become addictive, it can also feel depressing. But the appeal of seeing people having many likes, playing on the big stage, and having many streams is an image we might all crave; I can get it.

Seeing success in others as an end goal is a trap because it doesn’t focus on the habits that successful artists built.

 

Behind the successful DJ is daily research of old and new music, rehearsals, and research, but also many failures. Behind the successful release is the habit of the producer making music every day and making 23 different versions of each song. Behind the successful label is a team that spends time daily networking with media, DJs, and festivals. Behind each role model, there is a lot hidden, and that is where success lies.

While everyone is debating AI music (or images) generating tools, I rarely see anyone talk about how this is aimed at results and bypassing the creation processes and habit forming.

If you focus on having solid habits, results will follow. This starts with keeping your bedroom tidy, making your bed every day, and washing the sheets once a week. In the end, your room will be clean and remain clean.

This is not my pure invention. It comes from a book called Atomic Habits. I discovered that book years ago, and it made such an impact.

Breaking The Standards

 

In my last post, where I gave points on speeding up your work process, someone asked how this can flood the market with more unnecessary copycat music when I posted on social media. I asked him if my music was, and he said no (I know the person, so it was a good chat). It came down to how you use your speed and the aim of your intentions. But yes, if you work fast and aimlessly, you may get in the queue to make another version of the best seller on Beatport, which has probably already existed 200 times.

But how can one break standards, routines, clichés?

 

Forming Habits Based Around Originality

 

This is where it should all start. That implies recognizing what makes a song original, unique, and memorable.

 

 

Being more personal in your expression

 

There are two popular types of producers: those who want to sound like everyone and those who don’t want to sound like the rest. Each faces some issues:

  • Sounding like everyone else will not elevate you to the status of a leader. However, it can pay off if you find other people who quickly like the same sounds as you.
  • Sounding like no one will marginalize you, making it hard to find your community. When done right, originality can be acclaimed and turn you into an innovator.

But being more personal in your music doesn’t mean turning yourself into an alien. It means you can take known ideas but shape them into who you are. For instance, I love it when there is a melodic harmony in my music (using root keys and scales), but I have a hard time following typical chord progression that is popular in songs (progressive, lo-fi hip hop, etc.). When I make melodies, I just hit keys randomly using my ear and eventually organize my notes to make sense (to me). It’s weird for anyone into music theory because it doesn’t follow convention, but it makes sense because it is not harmonically wrong.

My friend Bryan, a jazz musician, said he preferred my weird melodies to some too-organized songs because ” they sounded more like you.”

A client used his voice to sing notes that he’d convert to midi. He felt like his voice would put to melody, something very personal.

It’s the same for percussion. You can follow conventions or play it weird with whatever you like… while remaining on the grid, so it’s playable by a DJ.

 

Master one or more music production techniques.

 

The more you master one technique, the more you can push its boundaries. Using a method on its low level is missing that zone where you can extract ideas entirely different from what everyone is doing. Thinking of J Dilla, he mastered sampling and swing groove, which brought his recognizable signature.

If you think of that Caliesto song I mentioned, it’s also about understanding execution more than just relying on the content.

 

 

Cross-pollinate genre inspiration.

 

If you read my blog, this often comes up. Songs that get attention are usually innovative, and recently, there’s been a news saying that David Guetta has done some country music, which is a good example. You might not like him, but in terms of business decisions, this guy always takes decisions that show the way. This also applies to handling sampling as a way of constantly innovating yourself. If you think you’re mastering that technique, think again.

Splice is also an excellent place to dive for inspiration. Their AI that suggests ideas to start with is pretty innovative and helpful. It allows you to break the routine and pick samples from other genres.

 

Avoid popular sample packs and presets

 

I can’t say this enough, but some genres rely on the same packs. Unlike drum and bass with the amen break, it’s a sample. We’re talking about a pack of multiple samples just used and reused to the point where it’s breaking any chances of growing as a musician. Considering the number of samples we can access, I have difficulty understanding why this is happening.

Using the same sample packs falls under wanting to sound like the others. One of the excellent features of Ableton Live 12 is the “Find similar samples” feature, which, with a click, proposes a wide array of options. So, perhaps you can start with a base of a few samples but then dive into your library to get similar-sounding ones.

 

While advocating for presets, primarily for self-education, I also encourage you to tweak them a bit so you can find various colours you didn’t know you had under your nose. While mastering and listening to a client’s music, it often happens that I’ll go, “Ah, he used this synth with that preset,” which is not a problem, but I find it a bit lazy. But that’s me, which means others might also think that. If you aspire to release it, you might not want a label to believe that of your music.

While there’s no “find similar presets” in Live, you can sort of work around it by creating a macro of your plugin by mapping parameters to knobs (as a group), then creating snapshots of your knobs. If you record yourself playing with your snapshots, you’ll see the knob’s position being recorded as well. Then, you can make a slew between the positions. There’s also a max patch that can do it here.

 

I hope this helps!

 

Photo by Matthew Moloney on Unsplash

Recycle Your Old Projects

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Sometimes I’m baffled by two things when I work with clients:

  1. They start from scratch each time they make a new song.
  2. They let finished projects asleep once over (and never reuse them).

In both cases, there’s a huge loss of time and energy. But when I explain them that each of their projects are a gold mine of opportunities sleeping on their hard drive, I see their faces lighting up. If you think about it, a song has often a lot of leftover material that won’t be used plus, think of all the common elements all your songs have, so why do one person not create a way to have the computer use resources to create that material.

The way I approach making music, ultimately speaking, is to be able to first find a very original idea and then put it in context quickly so you can work to give it a timeline.

 

Why speeding up your workflow?

 

Interestingly enough, as an artist and coach, I often teach that creativity is a super slow process and that trying to rush things might not be a best idea. But there’s also the paradox that it’s important to grasp an idea and make the most of it, then to move on. The idea of speeding your process is to ease your expression in order to not get lost in technicalities. One of the place many people loose time is in the details, clarifying technical details and such.

If a song is an idea, put on a timeline, it is also easy to get a lot of distance from this idea if you are more technical than artistic about it.

 

The strategies below are meant to ease the technical part by focusing on organization.

 

Strategies

 

The first way to speed up your process is to think forward. Just like this movement where people would pay for a coffee for a future client who would be low on cash, the best way to speed the next session is to organize it in the one you’re working on. I’ll explain habits and strategies that will be helpful down the road.

 

One effective method is to utilize the import feature from the Ableton Live browser. For example, if you’ve developed a compelling chain of effects in a previous project, save it as a macro. These macros can then be easily imported into new projects, giving you a head start with tried and tested sounds.

 

Template Creation

 

Beyond importing specific elements, consider creating templates based on your most successful projects. These templates can include your preferred routing, default effects chains, and even placeholder instruments. Starting a new project with these templates can dramatically reduce setup time, allowing you to dive straight into the creative process.

  • If you notice a routine and habit, turn it into a template where you can import what’s needed.
  • Useful arrangements or mixing templates are essentials.
  • Templates are basically like a recipe that you can reimport channels or arrangement section, adjust to taste and then, save again as a new template.
  • See them as “Global Presets.”

 

 

TIP: There are different types of templates to start with. Analyze your last 10 projects to see what’s always there de facto.

 

Creating a Channel of ‘Leftovers’

Another innovative method is to create a special channel in your DAW for ‘leftovers’ – bits and pieces from previous projects that didn’t make the final cut but still have potential. This could be a half-finished melody, an interesting sound effect, a discarded vocal pattern or a unique drum pattern. By saving these leftovers, you create a personal sound library that’s not only original but also infused with your signature style. Whenever you’re stuck or need inspiration, dive into this channel and discover elements that can spark new ideas.

There’s always been a non-written rule that one shouldn’t use presets and should re-invent themselves for each projects. While this answers a need to always have non-repetitive ideas from song to song, it can also be extremely time consuming. A good way is to use your leftovers as a starting point for a future project.

  • Leftovers are basically what you want them to be. I tend to hoard on anything unused. You’d be surprised the uses I’ve found for some sounds.
  • Instant inspiration comes from ideas you thought silly: re-pitch, stretch, slice, filter, EQ wildly… or heavily process them.
  • Decide of your own inner rules on how many times you use a sound. There’s no right or wrong.

 

TIP: Export your leftovers normalized so they sound full and ready for future projects.

 

Remixing Your Own Tracks

 

Sometimes, the best way to recycle is by revisiting your own tracks. Remixing a track you’ve previously produced can be an enlightening experience. Isolate individual elements that stood out and reimagine them in a new context. This not only breathes new life into your existing work but also expands your creative boundaries.

I always smile when a client tell me they can’t decide if one decision is best or another, regarding their track. Perhaps both ideas are good so why not make 2 versions?

You can have as many versions as you wish from your songs. In the 80’s and 90’s, some songs would sometimes have 3-4 variations which was really playful for DJs in how they could use and re-use a song.

Some ideas for new remixes could be:

  • Instrumental or with a vocal
  • Change of scale
  • Beatless or with different percussion set.
  • Collaborate with a musician for adding live take.

TIP: Try combining 3-4 songs into one.

 

Systematic Sound Design Sessions

 

Allocate specific sessions solely for sound design, separate from your songwriting or track-building sessions. During these sessions, focus on creating unique sounds, textures, or rhythms without the pressure of fitting them into a current project. Save these creations in an organized library.

Spending time organizing your sounds is also a useful way to make it easier for later on.

When working on new music, you can tap into this library for inspiration or elements to incorporate, significantly speeding up the creative process.

  • Take the time to understand complex presets on sounds you love.
  • Cross-pollinate the preset parameter of one synth to another.
  • Test demos of a synth you would love to acquire and record your tests to audio.

Collaborative Workflows

 

Encourage collaboration with other artists or sound designers. Sometimes, a fresh perspective can lead to unexpected and inspiring results. Collaborations can result in a shared library of sounds and ideas, offering a wider palette of elements to draw from when starting new projects.

  • I love to share a Dropbox folder with someone. As both of us can share projects there, you can see them being updated on each other’s sides.
  • Ask someone who has musical knowledge to revise and reinterprete a melody of yours with an acoustic instrument.
  • Befriend producers from other genres and see what they can provide for feedback.

 

TIP: Share a Dropbox or Google drive with friends.

 

Regular Review and Curation of Existing Projects

 

Schedule regular sessions to review your past projects that aren’t released. This is not just to reminisce but to actively search for reusable elements – be it a catchy hook, a unique synth sound, or an effective drum pattern. By doing this, you not only remind yourself of your past work but also build a readily accessible repository of ideas and sounds.

People who work with me knows I love to bring all my projects to 90% of completion instead of 100%. The logic behind this is simple: I like to gather a bunch of songs on a specific day or upon a need and then wrap them all up at once. This resolves multiple issues: coherence across a release, avoiding repetitive structures, better originality, etc.

  • Revise the kick of a project for a whole new approach on the direction of a song: harder, smoother.
  • Mute all channels that aren’t part of the hook to avoid clutter. This is easier to do if you are emotionally distant from your project.
  • Try a shorter version of your song to keep it straight to the essential (eg. radio ready mixes are 3 min long).

 

Incorporating Field Recordings and Unconventional Sound Sources

 

Sometimes, the most inspiring sounds come from the world around us. Regularly record sounds from your environment – these can be anything from street noises to natural ambience. These unique sounds can spark new ideas or add an original flavor to your music. There’s a beautiful plugin named Life which comes with a mobile app that sync up with the software on your computer. Not only you can grab sounds from everywhere but the software will chop it, while giving it a structure. The results are impressive.

  • When you are someone public such as a restaurant, pay attention to the music in the background. What do you hear when in a new context? Think of how your music would translate.
  • Try to listen to melodies from your environment. There can be hidden melodies from a street performer, from people talking around you or from a car passing by.
  • Explore noise and shape them to percussion.

 

 

Routine Exploration of New Tools and Habits

 

While it’s important to have a familiar toolkit, regularly experimenting with new plugins, instruments, or software can bring a fresh perspective to your work. This doesn’t mean always buying the latest gear, but rather exploring different tools, perhaps through demos or free versions, to keep your creative approach dynamic.

Exploring new tools means, perhaps, exploring mobile apps that can do sounds. There’s a large myth over those as many things they’re not good enough but you’d be surprised how many of them are extremely solid enough to make ideas. Not only the interface is lovely but the fact that you’re not in front of your computer is a different outlook on what you do. You can explore on your mobile shop to check apps that are tagged as music related and you’ll see synths, drum machines or weird DAWs. You can also check on VR headsets for the same kind of tools to explore.

 

 

Mind Mapping and Conceptual Workflows

 

Sometimes, the block isn’t in the production but in the conceptual phase. Employ techniques like mind mapping to outline the themes, emotions, or stories you want to convey in your music. This pre-production step can provide a clear direction and help in choosing or creating elements that align with your vision.

For this year, Mind Mapping is all rage for me. I’ve been starting to put down to image concepts, how I work in audio. Sometimes to mind map what you do gives you some insights you can’t think of when you only always do music on it’s own.

One method I learned is named “Sticky Steps.” Basically you start with the end and then roll back with little steps on how to get there. I like to think of it as a reverse engineering method. It’s possible that some steps, you will lack the knowledge to explain or know how to do it which is why you can contact me for instance, or ask friends.

 

I hope this kickstarts your new year in good manner. Don’t hesitate to leave comments or questions below.

Turning Efficiency Into Art With Ableton Templates

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DOWNLOAD MY ABLETON TEMPLATES:

Production template here

Mixing template here.

Every musician, regardless of their experience level, has felt the excitement of sudden inspiration. It’s an ethereal sensation, demanding immediate translation into audible reality. Yet, how often do we find ourselves navigating from scratch through our Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), struggling to set up the basics when all we want to do is create?

Here, the power of templates in DAWs like Ableton Live becomes apparent.

If you haven’t started using templates, I would like to encourage you to do adopt them into your routine. At first, this might be difficult to master, but with some practice, this routine will pay off.

 

So, what’s a template (if you aren’t familiar)?

It is a project with or without material, that can be used as a starting point. Instead of starting with a new project, which would be 0% in a scale of work out of 100%, a template would be more like 10% or even 40% towards the completed piece of music. This may be confusing because 40% done usually means having a lot of material in a project. However, when everything is organized properly, you are way farther ahead than you imagine.

Creating an Ableton template

To create a template, all you have to do is open a project, go to the File Menu, and select “Save As Template.”

This will allow you to have your finished project as a starting point to start new projects, vastly speeding up the process and giving you a consistent sound.

Two ways to organize an Ableton template:

Two ways I usually organize a template is to either create a project where I organize in advance everything I need like channels with plugins and settings already set to what I usually do, macros, return channels, and master bus ready. Once this is all prepared, I save it as a template.

The other way is to take a successful project, remove all clips, audio, and automation, and then save it as a template.

However, this isn’t an exact science. It’s also fun to save projects with automations and or other weird settings and save it as a template, as inspired by Matthew Herbert Manifesto.

Starting Fresh vs. Jump-Starting with Ableton Templates

 

There are pros and cons when staring fresh vs jump starting a project with template.

Many musicians will start fresh every time, perhaps because they don’t know about the idea of using templates or perhaps because they just know that way. Starting fresh offers valuable practice, fostering familiarity with their DAW tools, and enabling a tailored approach to every project. However, there’s a flip side: it’s time-consuming.

Imagine being a painter and having to craft your brush every time you felt the urge to paint. While understanding your tools is essential, it’s equally crucial to be ready when inspiration strikes.

The solution? Find a balance.

By all means, start fresh when the situation permits. But also arm yourself with templates to expedite the process when needed.

Template Idea: Create a project where you add multiple midi channels with each armed with your favourite synths. For each synth, hit cmd+G to turn it into a macro (Group) and map your favourite synth parameters to each knobs. This will ease hands-on control or hit randomize for some new inspiration.

TIP: I would encourage you to grab this selection of free modulators named Mod Squad 2. This has so many useful, essential tools to add to your template.

 

Ableton Templates: More Than Just a Shortcut

 

At first glance, a template might seem like just a preset, a way to save time. But there’s no problem with presets and trust me, it is not cheating!

While templates are certainly is a time-saver, it’s actually much more. Think of a template as a supporting musician friend, always ready to jam when you are. With templates, you can:

  • Create Macros: Setting up macros that you frequently use ensures you have immediate access to your preferred settings and controls.
  • Organize Routing: Advanced routing configurations, once set, can be easily replicated across projects.
  • Form Groups: Grouping tracks or instruments that often go together saves time and offers a clearer view of your project.
  • Pre-set Effects and Plugins: Having your go-to effects and plugins already loaded lets you dive straight into tweaking sounds.

Ableton Template Idea: Create your own mixing template by creating 5 groups that will host your project’s channels. You can then drag and drop them in each groups. Those can have multiple plugins of your choice. You can even create a mixing template with multiple channel presets and then you can drag and drop them from your browser.

The Art of Crafting Abelton Templates

It’s not just about having templates but about having effective templates. An ideal template should inspire creativity, not box it. Here’s how:

  • Diverse Templates for Diverse Needs: Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, consider multiple templates for various purposes: mixing, sound design, production, and perhaps a comprehensive one, like my “mothership” concept.
  • Incorporate Modulation Elements: Add pre-configured modulation tools that respond and interact with what you introduce. Tools like envelope followers or audio scrubbers, such as the ones Manifest Audio offers, can automatically detect and modulate sounds, adding depth and dynamics to your music.
  • Think Support, Not Supplant: A template should never feel like it’s directing your music. Instead, it should feel like a base on which you can build. The best templates enhance creativity, not limit it.

When Ableton Templates Truly Shine

The true test of a template’s efficacy is in its ability to enhance creativity. If using a template feels like you’ve brought an extra pair of hands into your studio, aiding and elevating your music, then you’ve hit the sweet spot. It’s not about replacing the organic process of music creation but about having tools that streamline it.

In the world of digital music production, where the landscape is vast and the tools are many, templates emerge as a beacon of efficiency. They are not just about speeding up the process but about enhancing the very essence of creativity. They ensure that when inspiration strikes, you’re not just ready but equipped to let your ideas soar. Embrace the power of templates, and watch as your music production process transforms from mere creation to pure artistry.

 

DOWNLOAD MY ABLETON TEMPLATES:

Production template here

Mixing template here.

Noise In Music

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In the realm of digital music production, there exists a fundamental concept known as the “noise floor.” It represents the level of background noise present in any audio system or recording environment. Interestingly, our world is never entirely silent; there is always a gentle hum of ambient noise surrounding us. Human hearing has evolved to appreciate and find comfort in these subtle noises, making them an integral part of our daily lives. 

 

If you record with your phone or a handheld device some sounds on the street, you’ll hear this smooth white noise in the background. Listening to the recording afterwards will have this reality with a blanket of noise that we get familiar with. Through the history of music recording, depending on the era and medium, the noise differed. If you grew up with a certain sound, there might have been a typical noise you associate with it.

 

Noise in music can be nostalgic.

 

Not to forget that some people actually love sleeping with noise in the background as it blocks outside sounds. With ADHD, some noise (like Brown) can help with focus.

 

The concept of noise finds a captivating application in the world of modular synthesizers. Modular synths offer a playground of endless possibilities, where musicians and sound designers can manipulate and harness different types of noise to create lush and music landscapes. In this blog post, we will go through the world of noise in modular synths, exploring the different types of noise available and the creative opportunities they offer.

 

White Noise – A Hissing Foundation:

 

White noise, resembling a gentle hiss, is one of the most common types of noise found in modular synthesizers. It features a consistent amplitude across all frequencies within the audible range. Embracing white noise in your patches can introduce exciting possibilities. For an exercise, patch a white noise generator to trigger an envelope, and use it to create rhythmic bursts of noise at irregular intervals. This technique can produce percussive and glitchy elements in your music, adding a touch of randomness to your compositions.

 

I also like to introduce a noise floor of white noise, slightly filtered, to create a feeling of proximity. It’s hard to explain, but sometimes clients feel their music is empty and will drown everything in reverb. Adding some white noise is a good alternative to that as reverb can also introduce various mixing issues.

 

Pink Noise – A Softer Alternative:

 

Pink noise, also known as 1/f noise, is characterized by equal energy in each octave. Unlike white noise, pink noise contains more low-frequency energy, resulting in a warmer and softer sound. To explore pink noise, connect it to a filter module and use an envelope or an LFO to sweep through the filter’s frequency cutoff. This exercise will help you understand how pink noise can add depth and character to your sounds, particularly in filter sweeps and ambient textures.

 

There’s also some theories about mixing with noise. Some people put a pink noise as a background and then will mix it over. The idea is that you want to mix each channel through the noise and when you hear it, then you know it’s levelled equally (since pink noise is full range). I’m not too keen of that approach but it can be useful to try it.

 

Gaussian Noise – Emulating Natural Sounds:

 

Gaussian noise, also known as normal distribution noise, features a bell-shaped amplitude distribution, mimicking natural sounds found in our environment. It is particularly useful for simulating wind or water sounds. Experiment with this type of noise by using it in a sample and hold module to generate random voltages. Then, patch the random voltages to various parameters in your modular system, such as oscillator pitch or filter cutoff. This exercise will demonstrate how Gaussian noise can add an organic touch to your patches.

 

Any noises passed through a quantizer will offer random melodies. A technique to generate random melodies is to to send noise through a sample and hold, then trigger a moment where the note should be played. The sample and hold will pick a note from the noise, which then you can pass through a quantizer to make sure it is set to a scale. The result will be musical.

 

 

 

Digital Noise – Infinite Possibilities

In the context of modular synths, digital noise refers to the generation of noise using digital algorithms and processes, as opposed to analog noise generated by analog circuits. The term “infinite possibilities” refers to the vast range of creative and unconventional sounds that digital noise sources can produce. Unlike traditional analog noise sources like white or pink noise, digital noise allows for extensive manipulation and sculpting, leading to unique and experimental textures.

Digital noise generators in modular synthesizers often provide various types of noise algorithms that can emulate natural or chaotic phenomena, simulate environmental sounds, or create entirely new sonic landscapes. Here are some examples of what digital noise can offer:

  • Granular Noise: Granular synthesis is a technique where sound is broken down into tiny grains, and these grains can be randomly rearranged and manipulated. Digital noise sources can implement granular synthesis algorithms, producing a vast array of grain-based noises that can range from glitchy textures to ethereal pads.
  • Custom Noise Algorithms: Some digital noise modules allow users to upload or create custom algorithms. This feature empowers sound designers to craft noise with specific characteristics, opening up possibilities for entirely novel soundscapes that push the boundaries of conventional synthesis.
  • Sampled Noise: Digital noise sources can incorporate sampled noise recordings, allowing for the recreation of real-world environmental sounds, machinery, or other interesting textures. These sampled noise sources can be creatively combined with other elements in the modular setup to create evocative and immersive sonic experiences.
  • Noise Modifiers: Digital noise modules often come with various modifiers and processing options. These may include waveshaping, filtering, amplitude modulation, and more, giving you the tools to sculpt the digital noise in unique ways and tailor it to fit your artistic vision.
  • Randomized Algorithms: Some digital noise sources have algorithms that introduce a degree of randomness into the sound generation. This stochastic nature can lead to unpredictable and evolving textures, which can add an element of surprise and excitement to your patches.

As you experiment with digital noise in modular synthesizers, you’ll discover a wide range of creative possibilities. Whether you seek to create atmospheric soundscapes, experimental textures, or unique percussion elements, digital noise sources offer a playground of sonic exploration. The ability to customize and manipulate noise algorithms within the digital domain gives you unparalleled control over the sounds you generate, making digital noise a powerful and indispensable tool for innovative sound design.

 

Noise as a Modulation Source – Adding Life to Your Patches

 

Noise can be a versatile modulation source in modular synthesizers. Use a noise source to modulate parameters like oscillator pitch, filter cutoff, or LFO rate. Adjust the amount of modulation to understand how noise affects the timbre and movement of your sound. This exercise will demonstrate how noise as a modulation source can introduce dynamics and unpredictability into your patches, bringing them to life.

This is not something you can do with Ableton Live, sadly and this is why sound design in modular contexts open up new options that are complementary to Live.

 

Noise-Based Percussion – Unconventional Drum Sounds

 

Create unique and unconventional percussion sounds by utilizing noise sources to trigger envelopes that control VCAs or other sound generators. This exercise will help you craft snare drum-like sounds, hi-hats, and other percussive elements with a distinctive character, setting your compositions apart from traditional drum kits. From a Pink Noise, you can easily build percussions with all octaves being covered so if you pair it with a filter or two, there can be very powerful results coming from that.

 

Noise in Feedback Loops – Chaos and Creativity

Create feedback loops involving noise sources and various modules. By adjusting the gain and routing of the feedback, you can explore chaotic and unpredictable sounds. Be cautious with the volume levels to prevent potential damage to your speakers or hearing. This exercise will challenge your creativity and inspire you to push the boundaries of sonic exploration. 

  1. Feedback Loops in Modular Synthesis: In a modular synthesizer, feedback loops occur when the output of a module is routed back into its own input. This setup creates a self-sustaining loop where the output continually feeds back into the input, generating a chain reaction of sound. Feedback loops are known for their potential to generate unique and evolving sounds, often characterized by self-modulation, harmonics, and sonic complexity.
  2. Noise in Feedback Loops – Unpredictable Oscillation: Introducing noise sources into feedback loops can lead to chaotic and unpredictable behavior. When noise is fed into the loop, it injects random variations into the signal chain. As the noise interacts with other elements in the loop, it produces intricate patterns of oscillation and modulation. This generates a sonic landscape that is ever-changing, with an array of dynamic textures and tonalities.
  3. Harnessing Chaos – Musicality from Disorder: While noise in feedback loops may seem disorderly, skilled sound designers and musicians can find musicality within the chaos. By carefully adjusting parameters, such as gain, frequency, or filtering, you can sculpt the noise-induced feedback to create musical tones, harmonics, and rhythms. This process requires experimentation and an intuitive understanding of your modular setup.
  4. Non-Repeating Patterns – Endless Exploration: One of the most intriguing aspects of noise in feedback loops is the creation of non-repeating patterns. Due to the chaotic nature of the feedback system, the resulting sounds may never repeat in the same way twice. This opens the door to endless exploration, where every patch becomes a unique sonic journey, allowing you to discover new sounds and compositions with each iteration.
  5. Sonically Evolving Patches: Noise in feedback loops can lead to sonically evolving patches that morph and transform over time. These patches are akin to living organisms, constantly changing and adapting. By letting your patches run and evolve, you can uncover unexpected and inspiring sonic discoveries that may serve as foundations for your musical compositions.
  6. Creating Textures and Soundscapes: Beyond musical tones, noise in feedback loops is an excellent tool for generating rich sound textures and atmospheric soundscapes. By tweaking the feedback parameters and manipulating the noise source, you can create immersive sonic environments that add depth and complexity to your music.
  7. Cautions and Limitations: While noise in feedback loops can lead to exciting results, it’s essential to be mindful of potential pitfalls. Excessive feedback or high gain settings can lead to uncontrollable and overwhelming sounds that might damage speakers or cause discomfort to listeners. It’s advisable to approach feedback patching with care and gradually increase parameters to explore the sonic boundaries safely.

 

In the world of modular synths, noise is a captivating element that adds depth, complexity, and a touch of unpredictability to your compositions. From white noise’s rhythmic bursts to pink noise’s warm textures, and the experimental possibilities of digital noise, each type of noise serves as a powerful tool for sound design and artistic expression. Embrace noise in your modular synth patches, and let it take you on a sonic adventure where creativity knows no bounds. Remember, in a world that is never truly silent, noise holds the key to unlocking your unique musical voice.

 

References From Clients And Exercises

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When it comes to making music or mixing, you sort of need to start somewhere and to get inspired by others if often a good way to get started. There’s a lot of misconception on how to use references. While I covered that in a past article, I thought I’d go deeper on the topic. 

 

While there’s no right or wrong way to use references, I often use references for one thing in it. It can be a sound that intrigues me, a type of sequence, rhythm or concept that tickles my brain into trying to reverse engineer it. While I can most of the time understand what is going on, it doesn’t mean I can reproduce it as is. Some clients that I coach became really good at reproducing what they hear, sometimes with my help or not.

 

But the idea is to try something out and be open to where that will bring you next.

 

While I do a lot of production from clients, sometimes people wonder what others are into, who are the artists to follow but also, who are the artists that I personally follow for my own inspiration.

 

Many times, I have clients who start an idea based on a reference but they struggle to get it “right” as they want. I give here a few things to check first in order to get things started properly (in other words, this is where clients fail).

 

Load your reference song in Ableton (or other DAW) and you may solo it at first to be able to compare it to your project. I would advise to lower the volume of your reference as it may be mastered while yours isn’t.

 

There are a few initial points to consider:

 

  1. The tone: Use either an FFT analyzer (SPAN from Voxengo is free or Fabfilter ProQ3) on the master to see if the tone is similar. Is the curve similar or different from you

 

  1. Root Key/Scale: You can use a Key detector on your reference to see what is the root key and scale, then check if yours is set properly. While you don’t need to have the same as your reference, some clients don’t realize that their different elements are not in the same key. This will often translate with the feeling that the song doesn’t feel one or perhaps, that is sounds off. Note that it might sound off if you were overexposed and then you got used to it but for a fresh pair of ears, it might be awkward sounding.

 

  1. Speed and rhythm: Find the BPM of your reference and try to match it to yours. What is the time signature.

 

Lately I’ve been enjoying Decoda as a full analysis software. You can do so much with it as well as extract melodies in midi. I find it essential to work with demanding clients.

 

When it comes to artists my clients love the most, I compiled a few and will drop a few words why they are loved.

 

Ricardo Villalobos

Not a surprise here since he’s one of my favorite artists and a lot of people come to me know that I spent decades understanding his unorthodox style and can explain how certain of his songs are made. Love or hate him, that guy has certainly develop his own persona when it comes to production and his music composition is always opening new grounds to what you can do in music.

 

 

Things he has inspired us: 

 

  • Making super long tracks with more or less structure can be fun.
  • Leaving your songs sloppy has a more human side.
  • Combining really weird sounds all together can work if you keep some elements one can refer to.
  • Not afraid to sample obscure records as the main idea of his songs.

 

Ricardo is known to have a huge collection of modular synths but compared to many people who have a lot, he records new tests weekly so you can see the wide array of his tools. 

 

Exercises related to studying to his music:

 

– Use VCV to try the modular thinking he use and randomize some elements for madness.

– Polyrhythms are the key here with uneven time signature. Also look into Euclidean rhythms.

– Ric uses a lot of granular synthesis on percussion instruments or synths.

 

Vid

 

 

This is another that is often referred to as a reference. People love the simplicity and yet complex songs he makes. As opposed to Villalobos, his songs are quite polished and organized.

 

Things he has inspired us: 

 

  • Atmospheric techno is quite fun to make and is both exciting, while meditative.
  • Lush pads over field recordings are hypnotizing.
  • Dark tone gives a more mysterious vibe.

 

Exercises related to studying to his music:

 

  • Collect field recordings and ambient space sounds such as a restaurant or a church inside.
  • Grooves and beats that are groovy are worth being studied and I often recommend looking into pre-made loops and then copycat them. Removing a lot of the sustain of percussion to keep them short really helps having a minimal house feel.
  • He often doesn’t have bright elements and keeping sounds low will give a mysterious vibe.

 

Pablo Bolivar (Or Dub Techno)

 

Since I have a long background in dub techno, I get a lot of questions on how those pads are made. While it is not necessarily complicated, it still needs a bit of tweaking because what makes the dub techno pads captivating is the always moving side of them. That is coming from modulation or automation. Pablo does a great job of picking some nice sounds, pads and beautiful, lush melodies which makes him a reference for a lot of clients.

 

Things he has inspired us: 

  • A lot of classic dub techno has a 1 or 2 notes melodies, going full on minimal. Pablo brings in simple melodies but more complex than 2 notes which gives it memorable moments. 
  • Super clean production and mixes. Nothing unnecessary is ever added.
  • Just like Vid, his approach to have dynamic ambient makes it enjoyable for relaxation or dancing.

 

Exercises related to studying to his music:

 

  • Use a key root with a minor scale. Minor chords as well to complement the melody. Most of his melodies are 4-5 notes maximum. Consider doing chord progressions.
  • Use field recordings to complement the melodies.
  • Percussion are fairly straightforward here and repetitive. It does a fine job.

 

J Dilla

I wouldn’t say that anyone contacted me to make music exactly like him but I do have some clients into lofi hip hop, which in my opinion, is a derivative from J Dilla. He’s from the MPC generation where people would sample records and then play with it. His album “Donuts” is considered an innovative album for hip hop and is worth listening to it.

 

Things he has inspired us: 

 

  • Sampling blatantly and being bold about it. Sample some music from any source and use short notes of it, either to make your hook or to put an accent on whatever is happening. 
  • Go short. Learn to make songs that are under 3 minutes long. A challenge for techno but for electronic music, it’s an exercise that forces you to be straight to the point.
  • Exaggerate on swing for your percussion. Try to push it to the max to see what happens. 

 

Exercises related to studying to his music:

 

  • As stated above, those learning are also things to try. But I would recommend digging some records at a second hand shop and sample obscure parts.
  • Use a midi controller like the PUSH or with pads and try to manually punch in your beats.
  • Within a clip, play with the warp points to create weird stretches and elastic beats.
  • Slice up beats and reprogram them into a new patterns.

 

Fred Again

I’ve lost interest in pop music years ago and commercial electronic music has always been something I stay away from. But Fred Again has been impressing me for how he makes music and of course, for the end results. The thing about his music is that it’s basically the typical approach from any commercial, standard structure music that is made and good tastes is what matters here.

 

This means understanding chord progressions and working with key/scale is going to be the main focus. Using plugins like Captain Plugins suite will make a huge difference unless you have a lot of patience to learn music theory.

 

There are no shortcuts to this kind of music. But the tools you can use will make it easier.

 

His recent album with Brian Eno is what made me appreciate him. 

 

Daft Punk

 

I’ve been following the pair from 1995 until their separation. I don’t think there’s been many music acts that had the impact over their career like these guys did. It’s mostly due to their desire to innovate but also to take ideas that work really well and pull out some solid ideas to give it a new twist. 

 

In a past article, I was stating that there are 2 main modes when it comes to working on a project: you might want to repeat an idea you love from a song or artists vs you might want to innovate something from what you do.

 

The things I’ve learned from working with clients who want to get inspiration from them are mostly about, once more, digging for samples and then play with them. It’s sort of like what we covered from Dilla, but with a faster pace and 4/4 time signature. There was a point where the French Touch house/disco was all rage. That music was about using a sample with heavy filtering and the classic pumping/ducking effect. This technique is still used nowadays but with a bit more control where you perceive it less.

 

Besides filtering, some notable effects they use that you can explore today: Bit crushing, tape saturation, vocoder, heavy chorus/phaser. They also love a good 909 kit.

 

And to finish up, who are my personal references?

 

Ada Kaleh, Gigi Masin, Jan Jelinek, Rhythm and Sound, Vladislav Delay, Ricardo Villalobos, Matt Dear, Lawrence… but way too many to name.

 

Max For Live Gems For Ableton

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(Updated June 23rd 2023)

I’ve been wanting to cover some of my favorite Max patches for a while. There are so many and sometimes, some are just meh and others, will be quite amazing. Since I’m basically hoarding digital tools for my studio, I thought I’d compile a list of some patches that feels like it’s hacking the production flow to the point where it’s like cheating.

 

Every now and then, I’ll be making music and whenever it feels too easy (it doesn’t happen enough though), I always the impression that it’s wrong. 

 

In coaching, I teach that it’s never a problem. My take on this is to harvest ideas when it feels too easy because you might have found a hack and if it sounds good, then it means you found a way to express yourself.

 

This is why I never have enough tools that ease my creativity but I don’t rely on them as a quick fix for something I can normally do. If there’s a shortcut to something that takes a long time, which provides the same results, I’ll always go with the shortcut. Decision fatigue is something that ruins many studio sessions, and the meter goes down whenever you need to fix something or run into a complicated workflow.

 

In terms of tools, I have a few categories and I’ll present them based on a need or problem.

 

I like to think of the different needs related to music coming from different spheres. 

 

Melodies: Sequencing, hook building, not harmonies, slicing/rearranging, generating.

 

Sounds: Design, harmonic/inharmonic, quantized, envelopes.

 

Effects: to be paired with sound sources so there can be variation and alteration.

 

Rhythms: generating, rearranging, unorthodox patterns, familiar patterns, ratcheting.

 

If you read my article about VCV and how the brain, the heart work, you’ll have one central source of sequences in one channel and then, you’ll have other channels that are the sounds who will receive the signal from. This is why I separate my sources and receivers. When you hunt for new ideas, you might have a nice melody but not the right sound or vice versa, so you want to be able to swap between them.

 

This is why I love VCV and modular because you can have built systems of melodies generating tools that send to multiple sound sources.

 

1- Sequencing : I want to create different rhythms or find patterns out of my usual flow

 

When it comes to sequencing, there are multiple ways to do it. You can use a note pattern from a midi clip if you want precise ideas. This is useful to lay the main idea of a song and to have direct control over the development of a pattern. But when it comes to generating ideas, I find that step sequencers that have random options, probabilities, phrase length adjustments to name a few, are super useful. It turns your machine into an idea maker and then you can cherry pick what suits your idea.

 

Drum sequencers that come top of the list for me are XO by XLN and Atlas. Both are quite similar but they offer in-context sample swapping, as well as sample organization, so it becomes really easy and fast to swap a sound to see what it would be like. Both offer different complementary ideas which is why I often use both but they’re not cheap.

 

Otherwise, if you want a quick fix, the Alexkid Instant Haus max patch is a free alternative. It will create some different rhythms for all your percussion instruments but you can use it to sequence notes or swap percussive for musical elements. Sadly there is no Max patch to hear percussions in context like Xo does. If you like that one, he also made other bundles that are pretty badass here, with more generating ideas for percussion.

 

I saw this patch here that is quite interesting. It is there to generate ideas so there are some nice potential. Also super powerful, comes Polyrhythm by Encoder audio, which is one of my favorite developers.

 

I also like Eucledean Pro because it uses the classic Euclidean approach to create beats.

 

Not long ago, a new max sequencer came out and it’s named Opal. It’s very influenced by Elektron machines. It’s really dope and can achieve so much for drums but also just for textures and even melodies. Powerful.

 

2 – Sequencing Melodies : Generate hooks, phrases and musical ideas

 

There are many ways to create a hook. You can use sampling (we’ll get there later), play melodies, extract melodies, combine sounds to make something catchy, record instruments or sounds… All those pretty much cover the main ways to find a hook. Depending on a specific genre, a technique might be used more frequently. 

 

For ambient and electronic music, in general, sequencing ideas/notes to a synth or sound source is quite popular. Basslines, pads, chords and melodies are often coming from the piano roll. But you could use a melodic sequencer to do so.

 

I’m obsessed with melody sequencers. They’re fun but they also feel like you have a partner which you can tap endless ideas from.

 

Here are some of my favorites:

 

Pattern Generator by Manifest audio. Solid for creating complex or simple melodies as well as can be used for drums.

 

Snake: Brilliant patch for quick sequences.

 

Ask and answer: Works for creating call and answer hooks.

 

Turing Machine: inspired by Allan Turing, this device spits out sequences randomly and then you can loop the parts you like.

 

Aisle: This complex generating tool finds original sequences and patterns based on repetition. I find that this is excellent for percussions and evolutive percussive melodies.

 

On the more experimental flavor, Dillon Bastian has been a hero. It’s hard to explain in a few words what they do but he’s basically creating patterns and sounds through a visual context. For instance, with Rhythmorphic, he uses visual maps that shape how the patterns happen and what notes are triggered. It’s a bit hard to explain but it’s something quite unique and you can shape some very unique patterns. This can be very organic sounding, sort of like a chime. Or you can also use it to trigger percussion.

 

3- Sounds: I want to have sounds that are new to me but still not too crazy (or not).

 

When it comes to making sounds, I often deal with 2 kinds of mindset. On one hand I often find myself wanting to emulate sounds from songs or artists that I really like. I will try to reverse engineer how it sounds and will noodle around a bunch of different presets, pick the one that is the closest and then try to tweak it to something close to the target. 

 

This is where “instruments” get handy. While you have a lot of options already with Ableton’s internal synths which are excellent, I compile a few ones here for you.

 

Chiral: Named holographic synth, it creates unreal sounds, based on multiple synthesis approaches. Hard to describe, these textures will sound very artificial, in a good way. Think of the ultimate synth for scifi score.

 

Iridescence: This is a delay unit that turns simple sounds into arpeggios. You can basically turn any sounds into a melody.

 

Grain Forest: The opposite of Chiral. It creates super organic sounds and environment. Bastian built an evolutive instruments with visuals of wind, seeds, trees that grow and die. It’s very relaxing and mesmerizing on its own.

 

poly-Plaits: The Plaits module is from Mutable Instruments and while this is an open source synth, it made its way to Max for live. It’s a synth with models. It sounds lovely.

 

Rings: Another take on Mutable instruments but this one is with the module of the same name. It’s a resonant synth with beautiful chime, bells sounds.

 

Copy Machine: This sampler takes a sample you pick and creates copies of it. The results are a bit mind boggling. Imagine you take a clap sample and turn it into a bunch of people who clap at the same time.

 

Fortrek: Inspired by the 4 tracker tapes of the 70’s and 80’s, this takes multiple recordings and scrubs through them. Really lovely for lofi feelings.

4 – Effects: Adding spices and colors

 

Never judge a boring sound as not useful because sometimes, adding the right effects can bring a whole amount of fun to it.

 

Granular Mirror Maze: A granulator that spits out super nice textures out of percussion or synths. Ideal for pads and backgrounds.

 

Maze: A looper, tape style with pitch. It is quite fun for creating off the grid ideas and have more of a musique concrète style.

 

Nube: a take on Clouds, an all time legendary modular effect that is a combination of delay, reverb and granulation.

 

Muse Concrète: This super advanced tool is not for everyone. It’s the ultimate tool to record and mangle sounds around. Big ups to my bro Offthesky for that one.

 

All effects from Encoder Audio are amazing.

 

I recently discovered the work of Robert K / Groov Mekanik and his vast collection of patches impressed me. Not only most of them are free and those who are for sale are at super low price, but the tools he has covers some needs that new and experienced producers want. I was appealed by the High Frequencies limiter that many artists should use as many often boost the highs too much. One patch I’d recommend getting right away is the Note Probability that is super useful for generative patches, adding flow and performances. It simply remove out some notes due to probability. Go have a look, there are some lovely tools in there.

 

But honestly, I think the most of what you have is by adding modulation to what you already have. This is why modulation options are useful. Here are some of my favorites:

 

Auto-Slider: Another brilliant essential tool from Offthesky. It records your movement and make turn it into a LFO or super long function signal.

 

Strange Mod: Dillon Bastian drops this amazing modulator that I use everywhere. Ideal for unusual random modulation.

 

Source: Inspired by the Buchla 266, it creates random signals.

 

All LFOs by Kentaro: Advanced and sophisticated, these can bring any modulation to the twilight zone…

 

I will update this page when I find new things so you might want to bookmark it. If you have suggestions, please share them!

 

Getting Started in VCV

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Modular synthesis has been around for decades, but with the rise of digital technology, it’s become more accessible than ever. Then came VCV, Cardinal, Mirack to name a few. VCV Rack is a free and open-source software that allows you to explore the world of modular synthesis in a virtual environment. In this post, we’ll discuss the three types of modules in modular synthesis, the differences between VCV Rack and VCV Rack Pro, how to use VCV Rack in Ableton Live, essential free modules, and the benefits of using master sequences and modulations.

 

Creating sounds, then modulate them

 

Modular synthesis involves building a sound-generating system out of individual modules. 

 

There are three types of modules: sound generators, sound modifiers, and signal movers. 

Sound generators create the initial sound, sound modifiers shape the sound, and signal movers control the flow of the sound through the system. By combining these modules in different ways, you can create complex and unique sounds that would be difficult to achieve with traditional synthesizers.

 

VCV Rack is a popular modular synthesizer software that emulates a modular synthesizer system. It offers a vast library of modules, including sound generators, sound modifiers, and signal movers. While VCV Rack is a free and open-source software, VCV Rack Pro offers additional modules and features for a fee. These additional modules and features can enhance your sound design capabilities and workflow, but the free version of VCV Rack is still a powerful tool that can be used to create amazing sounds.

 

If you’re an Ableton Live user, you can use VCV Rack as a plugin in Ableton Live. This allows you to control and record VCV Rack within the Ableton Live environment. You can use Ableton Live’s MIDI clips to trigger VCV Rack modules and automate parameters in real-time. This integration makes it easy to incorporate VCV Rack into your production workflow.

 

Essential modules

 

When it comes to essential free modules, there are a few that every modular synthesizer enthusiast should have. For sequencers, the SEQ-3 module is a great starting point. It offers three independent sequencers with up to 16 steps each. The reason why you want to have a sequencer with 3 built in sequences is because you can use them for not only melody making but also for other types of modulations like velocity.

The VCO-1 (VCV) module is a simple yet powerful oscillator that can produce a wide range of 4 different wave shapes: sine, triangular, saw and square.The idea is usually to pair this with the 4 input mixer from VCV where you can decide how much of each sources you want to use to create your own signal. I would encourage you to add a noise source (VCV again) and have a bigger mixer such as the 8 inputs by Bog Audio and then add some noise to it. Noise seems to gel all of it together and also add harmonic content.

 

 

 

For filters, the VCF-1 (VCV) module is a great choice. It offers low-pass, high-pass, and band-pass filter modes, as well as a resonance control for shaping the filter’s frequency response. But I would also high recommend the simple VCF from Bog audio because it has more options (filter curve slope and v/oct) which is super useful for shaping your sound.

 

The heart and the brain

 

One of the biggest benefits of using VCV Rack is the ability to use master sequences and modulations. Master sequences are sequences that control multiple modules at once. This allows you to create complex patterns that evolve over time. Modulations are similar to master sequences, but they can be used to control any parameter in any module. This allows you to create dynamic and evolving compositions that change over time.

 

I put them into 2 categories:

 

The heart: Anything related to the tempo of the song. Is it constant or broken? Everything will be in sync or not, some might be following the tempo but perhaps double speed or half.

 

The Brain: This is for modulations that will be affecting multiple parameters across the patch such as scaling, transition, melodies/hooks, velocity, accent and even mixing.

 

Starting kit for a patch:

 

I’d recommend building a template patch to start with that has the essentials to get started. Then you can start adding to it. I think it’s important to start fairly simple too because it can easily get complicated.

 

Main tempo (Brain): 

  • Simply use a LFO. I love the 4FO from Bog Audio because it features 4 of them at different phases. 
  • Then I’d add a divider to have a different multiple and speed from the heart. You could use Clocked by Impromptu both for tempo and divider but I prefer an LFO for tempo because the modulation is easier.
  • I love to have multiple dividers so my full sequence is offering 1/4th, 1/8th, 1/16th steps covered so I can decide what to populate and where.

 

Hook (heart): 

  • This is where you could SEQ-3. It has 3 lanes so you could also have 3 variations.
  • Quantizer for global scale: use the VCV one.
  • I’d use a sequential switch to go through the lanes. Count Modula has a few but I also like the switch by ML Module because of the various options it has.

 

Voices:

  • Use samples or oscillators of your choice but you’ll need an ADSR, a VCA and 2 filters so you can properly control the signal. I’d add an octave shifter so you can have one voice per octave.
  • I find Bog audio has everything you need here or you can use the default modules by VCV.
  • You’ll need a mixer for all those voices. I’d recommend the one by MindMeld. It is perfect.

 

Percussions:

  • Using the SEQ 3’s sequencing, you can use that as triggers for your percussion.
  • I’d use a Bernoulli Gate to add probabilities to your percussion or switch between sounds. The one by Audible Instruments will do the trick.

 

Modulation: 

  • One master LFO. Again, a 4FO would do.
  • One master random. Use the random module from VCV.

 

Conclusion and Using VCV Rack In Ableton

 

In conclusion, VCV Rack is a powerful tool for exploring the world of modular synthesis. It offers a vast library of modules, including sound generators, sound modifiers, and signal movers. The free version of VCV Rack is a great starting point, but the pro version offers additional modules and features that can enhance your sound design capabilities and workflow. If you’re an Ableton Live user, you can easily integrate VCV Rack into your production workflow. Essential free modules like the SEQ-3, VCO-1, and VCF-1 can help you get started with creating complex and unique sounds. Master sequences and modulations allow you to create dynamic and evolving compositions that change over time. With VCV Rack, the possibilities are endless, and the only limit is your imagination.

 

How I Classify My Projects and Files

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

The different stages I label with are these:

 

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

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

3- Arrangements.

4- Mixing.

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

 

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

 

Stages 1 and 2 can overlap

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Arrangements, the full story of Stage 3

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Mixing as 4th stage

 

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

 

Stage 5 is when your song is 90% done

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

In conclusion

 

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

Photo by Amy Shamblen on Unsplash

Generating Ideas and the Listener’s Attention Span

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(photo credit Photo by Avi Richards on Unsplash)

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

Attention Is Competitive

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Don’t Fall Into Extremes

 

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

 

You Have No Control Over The Listener

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

How To Keep People Interested In Your Song

 

Here are ways to keep someone interested in your song:

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Music techniques to find new ideas

 

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

 

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

 

Randomize effects, modules, and macros. 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then you can link parameters to macros.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

 

Randomize Melodies

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

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

 

I hope this helps.

 

How To Use Hooks To Finish Songs

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

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

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

The Hook Is Your Song

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

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

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

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

Making Non-Pop Hooks

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

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

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

Hook Modifiers

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

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

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

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

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

Build Everything Around The Hook

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

Make Something New

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

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

 

How To Prepare To Make Music

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

 

Your Tools Aren’t That Important

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

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

 

Come Up With Your Own System When Preparing To Make Music

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

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

 

Actively Listen To Music To Prepare To Make Music

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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


DJing To Help Prepare To Make Music

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

 

Build Categorized Playlists To Help Prepare To Make Music

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

 

Take Inspiration From Your Inspiration’s Inspirations

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

 

There Are Many Ways To Prepare Your Brain

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

 

Ableton-Hardware Hybrid Setup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Myths About Hardware

It automatically Sounds Better

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

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

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

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

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

It’s More Intuitive

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

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

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

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

It’s DAWless

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

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

 

How To Get The Most Out Of Your Hardware

Learn One Piece At A Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Record Everything

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

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

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

Make Sure Your Recording Is Clean

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

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

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

Realize You Will Be A Noob, Again

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

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

another photo of an Ableton-hardware hybrid setup

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

 

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

Play To Each Other’s Strengths

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

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

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

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

Use Ableton As A Band Member

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

Use Ableton To Preserve Sounds

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

Split Your Time Into Technical And Creative Sessions

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

This will consume a good amount of brainpower. 

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

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

MIDI Controllers Are Your Friend

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

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

Some suggestions: AKAI midimix, Novation Launch Control

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

 

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

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Improving Your Workflow to Prevent Decision Fatigue

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What makes on 30-minute block of music making painful versus some other 30-minute block where everything flows organically? The choices you make can make a huge difference in how you use energy. If you use all your energy in the first 30 minutes of a session, you likely faced too many decisions and ran out of gas.

This overwhelming feeling often comes about when you’ve worked on a loop and mess around with arrangements for a moment before getting discouraged. You’re pretty much burning your brain out and then expect a second wind, but that doesn’t happen right away so easily.

What I’ll advocate throughout this post is a reminder of multiple things explained on my blog that push people to dive into music production and thrive in how they make music instead of being stuck. Strategies to facilitate an easier flow of your music-making are fairly easy, too.

Let’s dive right into the 5 different prerequisites to reach a state of flow.

  1. Risk
  2. Novelty
  3. Complexity
  4. Unpredictability
  5. Pattern recognition

One of the things that I didn’t list here which is important to focus on is the intention to spend a moment making something you know well. By venturing too deeply into something that is difficult (something that is, however, sometimes necessary for self-education), you’re acquiring some new information and achieving a good state of flow is not possible. Once you’ve learned a new concept/theory by practicing it multiple times, you’ll get good at it.

Hence the importance of making yourself:

  • Start a lot of new projects.
  • See most of your songs as lessons where you practice. Forget the aim to create masterpieces or to release all of your songs.
  • Spike time where you actively rehearse something you love doing.

When I teach music production, I explain to people that I can teach them everything their DAW can do, but then they’d sit in front of their computer with the idea of making a song and they’d be lost. The approach I encourage is to start by creating a strong base and then modulating each new skill into lessons. The idea is to focus on what’s useful to get from A to B in order to go to C and not try to go from A to Z in one shot.

A strong base means that you know some essentials, but beyond that, you know what you enjoy doing and what you seem to do naturally.

Once this is set and clear, we can approach the first take in my list above—taking risks. To know what taking a risk means, you need to be at ease with something. By risk-taking, I mean to try something in a different way. This can’t be really done if you can’t do the thing first. For example, you can’t take beat programming risks if you don’t know the basics of how your sequencer works (well, you can actually, but just diving in, chances are, your beat may come out with too much risk).

What’s a Risk in Music-Making?

Is it trying a new technique? Is it finishing a song? Is it learning a new software?

Let’s classify it as a single question: “What if?” This can and often imply a notion of risk. So let’s say you’re making loops, perhaps you can ask “what if I extend it to a whole minute instead of 2-bar loops?”

If you observe how we live, we often will do something we love doing and that usually is because we’re flowing in it; we don’t think—things just roll. You don’t have to make a lot of choices because you already know what you have to do. Taking a risk is a way of elevating what you’re doing a notch.

It’s a personal affair, and it’s something to be asked once in a while. But this gives rise to a second point which is novelty.

Self-Learning, Novelty & Complexity

Another thing I’ve been advocating for in past articles is the importance to see the majority of your music projects as lessons. A cycle I often notice is:

  1. Getting interested in a specific sound, aesthetic, idea, genre direction.
  2. Research and exploration on how to reproduce or imitate it.
  3. Struggle.
  4. Acknowledging a new concept.
  5. Practice and expression.
  6. Perfect it.

Each time I’m interested in something specific for music, I spend a lot of time trying to acquire the knowledge and techniques behind it. I spend a lot of time on YouTube on several How-tos, read some blogs and forums, and then test what I have. For instance, when I was obsessed with Dub Techno, I was searching a lot about it, which led me to acquire a lot of information about filters, reverb, chorus and delay, but also something I didn’t expect—noise. When you dig for information, you’ll find one thing you didn’t know or may not have been searching for, which is the novelty that is precious. In the state of flow, the exploration, in a context where you already feel comfortable but are on a quest of expanding, feeds you with a lot of creative energy that makes you get lost in what you do. But usually just before this happens, you’ll have a moment of struggle and it’s important to go over it to really get to the plateau of full creative force.

Once you practice and work on really handling a new skill, you’ll perfect what you do more and more. You’ll be more able to express yourself properly and eventually, you’ll want to perfect things. To get back to my example of Dub, I started to learn about delay techniques, tried many delay plugins and started understanding their personality and types. Same for reverbs, where I really got into plates and how they sound. The new trick I learned was about noise and started to get very much into the different types of noise: pink, white, blue, brown and red. Which then led me to get really interested in random generators, LFOs and modulation. Always adding a layer of information, precision and personality was a way to feed myself with novelty and complexity hand in hand. They’d play ping pong together.

Imperfection and Unpredictability

Choice fatigue roots in the quest of perfection. When you have more than two choices, you have a moment of not knowing. This clicked one day as I was reading a silly article that a lot of CEO in Silicon Valley will start the day with simplifying how they’d dress to make the least number of decisions possible. They’d have a work wardrobe of only a few things and they’d pick one without thinking. I find that flow starts with the yes-man attitude, as well as the why not. So it’s enemy would be a no, without trying.

Being in the flow, in a certain way, is almost the straight opposite of searching perfection. That is, you’re in the moment and you’re grasping something real and spontaneous. In a way, that is a form of perfection. When you begin searching for problems and feel doubtful about your work, I usually suspect you’re not in the flow, at all. You’re trapped in your analytical mind, the ones that questions and doubts. That part is really important much later, but I don’t give it too much importance in how to improve your flow.

A good routine for improving flow includes the following music-making tasks:

  • Explore, play, improvise.
  • Record everything.
  • Tweak to improve, not to perfect.
  • Consider the future of what was done. Release or not?

I find that I prefer to record 2 or 3 new songs instead of trying to give one a new life by working on it for 10 hours. I could even recycle the best part of a song that’s not working. Making more tracks makes you practice being more spontaneous but also more accurate in what you do, just like a DJ would get better at mixing, transitioning or doing tricks. As you go, your results need less polishing. For years, I left some imperfections in my work as I felt it was part of what made my music unique and human. It received a lot of positive comments and with time, if I listen to my older tracks, there will be things I don’t like, but I don’t know what was left there purposely or should be considered as a problem. That issue is itself, is part of the soul of the song.

As a mixing engineer, I do get in the zone as well. This is why my first mix of the day is crucial for the rest of the day. I usually start with all corrections, and try to do them in one shot, otherwise I start fixing stuff that clients like. I noticed that with time that if it works, don’t change it.

Now, unpredictability is something that feeds all the other ideas I’ve listed above that help to improve flow:

  • Taking risks by not knowing what will happen.
  • Discover new ideas you maybe have filtered out.
  • Making your routine more complex by including new items.

To me, adding a dose of unpredictability starts by making all your elements dynamic with your sounds and effects used. For EQs, I would make sure they’re dynamic (like the Pro-Q3). Compression is dynamic, but I’d link an LFO on the threshold. Adding LFOs, randomizers, and reacting envelopes to the incoming signal would make everything reactive, yet you never are really sure of where it’s going. This is partly explaining how people get addictive to modular synths because it’s all about modulation and unpredictability. A good way to check that is by trying VCV (free) or Softubes’ Modular that is a lot of fun. Reaktor is also an excellent platform to experiment.

Having separate sessions where you prepare an environment for making music is quite encouraged. By opening Ableton Live and launch a starting template that doesn’t take an hour to setup, you’re allowing yourself to be in the zone. Types of “setup” sessions include:

  • Sessions for setting up your future sessions. I’d encourage you to make themes instead of having templates that have all the bells and whistles.
  • Record sessions and sound design moments. These will be precious if you want to make music later.
  • Tweak, arranging and polishing sessions are helpful, but do them later.

The last aspect of improved workflow I’d like to discuss in more detail is pattern recognition—the moment where you realize that you’ve had a good or bad session, and are able to reconcile what happened in order to prepare the next session.

I like to tell my students that if you struggle in a session, it’s mostly because your preparation wasn’t adequate. If you struggle to arrange your session, start small…like, really small. Start from bottom to top: low end, percussion, mids, highs.

If you also fail to finish a jam, maybe you get distracted—a crucial thing to fix. Try to mute all notifications on your phone. Close social media, have snacks and water nearby. Avoid anything that can make your body and mind leave the moment to be elsewhere. If your session lasted at least 20 minutes, you’ve succeeded. Sometimes people feel sessions have to be long, but 20 minutes is sort of the key to get in the zone (unrelated, but this is also why I believe 1 hour DJ sets aren’t fair for the artist).

Personal Rules and Studio Attitude

  1. Be a yes-man to any idea that comes up until tried in context.
  2. Avoid maybes. It’s either a hell yes, or no. A maybe is a no, by default.
  3. Save all rejected ideas for future use.
  4. If it doesn’t feel good, stop everything. After a pause resume, or change tasks.
  5. If something feels like a lot of effort, take a pause and come back later.
  6. If you only have negative points of view, do something else.
  7. If an inner voice insists that you can’t do this or that (music-wise), I suggest you do it anyway to see what happens. Sometimes we stop ourselves from doing things that are creative.
  8. Collaborate as much as possible.
  9. Each session should have a session of listening before or after.
  10. Stay curious and open!

Let me know your experiences with decision fatigue and improving your own workflow!

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