Tag Archive for: experience

The Three Pillars of Musical Expression

August 13, 2026/in Blog/by pheek

Recently, I came to a conclusion about what creates expressiveness in instrumental electronic music—and perhaps in music in general. From my experience working with different artists, I see three key elements that influence how clearly someone can express themselves through music:

Experience
Technique
Taste

I think of these as the three pillars of musical expression. They affect the decisions we make, the problems we encounter, and ultimately the music we produce. Looking at them separately has helped me understand why both newcomers and experienced musicians can feel stuck, even when they appear to have everything they need.

These ideas are personal observations, not fixed rules. They come from making music, working with other producers, and coaching people through their creative difficulties. My interpretation may change over time. The purpose of this article is to document how I currently understand these pillars and offer a framework you can use to examine your own process.

The point is not to achieve a perfect balance. Every artist develops these areas differently. Someone may have excellent taste but lack the technique to realize their ideas. Another person may be technically advanced but make music that feels impersonal. A producer can also understand what they want and know how to create it, yet struggle to move through a session or finish a track.

When something is not working, we often assume that we need another technique, another tutorial, or another piece of equipment. But the real limitation may be elsewhere. Understanding the three pillars can help you identify what is actually missing.

People have suggested adding consistency or skill as additional pillars. To me, these are not separate. Skills develop through technique and experience, while consistency creates the conditions that allow both to grow. You can be skilled at a task and still lack experience completing music.

In this first part, I will focus on experience and technique. The second part will explore taste and how the three pillars interact.

Experience: learning how to move through the process (with acquired skills)

Experience is perhaps the most complex pillar because it is easy to confuse it with age, talent, or the number of years someone has owned a studio. Time matters, but time alone does not guarantee useful experience. In this context, experience refers to the practical knowledge acquired through repeated engagement in the process of making music. It is what helps you recognize where you are in a project, understand what might come next, and make decisions without having to reconsider everything from the beginning.

Through repetition, you develop better navigation and intuition. You begin to recognize familiar problems, estimate how long a task might take, and recover more easily when an idea does not work. Eventually, this accumulated knowledge makes expression easier because less energy is spent on understanding the process itself. But experience does not always make someone faster or more creative. Sometimes, the more you know, the slower you become. An experienced engineer may notice technical details a beginner misses and spend a long time correcting them. Meanwhile, someone with little production experience may ignore those details, follow an intuitive idea, and make something surprisingly fresh.

This is one of the paradoxes of experience: it gives you more options, but more options can create hesitation. Experience becomes useful when it helps you decide—not when it forces you to examine every possible decision. A newcomer can sometimes produce excellent music because they are focused on a clear idea and are not yet restricted by everything they think they should do. An experienced producer must learn how to keep that directness while using their knowledge selectively.

Focus, commitment, and organization are not experience themselves. They are conditions that determine whether useful experience can accumulate. If you plan to work on music but spend the session checking social media, troubleshooting an avoidable studio problem, or jumping between unrelated tasks, you have technically spent time in the studio—but you have gained less practical experience than you might think.

For the people I coach, one useful step is to structure studio time in advance. This means adding the session to the agenda, deciding what kind of work it is for, and removing obvious sources of friction before beginning. The intention does not need to be complicated. It might be to create several rhythmic ideas, arrange one section, test a sound-design process, or finish a rough version of a track.

I also encourage people to repeat one task many times. Repetition can feel less exciting than beginning a new project, but it is one of the strongest ways to build practical knowledge. If you repeatedly make transitions, arrange short sketches, program drums, or finish rough mixes, you stop treating each attempt as an entirely new problem. You begin to recognize patterns.

Experience is not simply the number of hours you put in. It is what those hours teach you.

Signs that experience may be the missing pillar

You regularly do not know what the next step in a track should be.
You return to a project and cannot remember its intention.
You begin many projects but rarely move them through later stages.
Every session feels as if you are starting from zero.
Your studio setup causes recurring interruptions and troubleshooting issues.
You understand individual production tasks but struggle to connect them into a complete process.

These signs usually mean that you need more repeated contact with a specific part of the process. The solution may be to finish more rough tracks, simplify your sessions, document your next step before stopping, or practise the same stage across several projects.

Technique: translating intention into sound

Technique is where many producers get caught. It is the practical ability to use your tools and your understanding of sound to achieve a result.

It begins with orientation: knowing your digital audio workstation well enough that it does not constantly interrupt your thinking. You should know where the main functions are, understand the basic purpose of your effects, and have a working mental model of signal flow. You do not need to memorize every menu or master every device. You need sufficient familiarity to navigate the environment without losing your musical intention.

From there, technique develops into more specific abilities, such as:

using sidechain compression
creating a transition or swoosh
reducing masking in a mix
increasing the intensity of a section
controlling dynamics without removing movement
routing signals efficiently

These techniques depend on a basic understanding of your environment and the production vocabulary. Once you can name a problem, you can research it precisely instead of hoping that a new plug-in will somehow improve the track.

Learning how something is done is only the first step. The next step is to practise it in different contexts. If you learn a method for reducing frequency masking, try it across several of your tracks. Listen to how the problem changes when the instruments, arrangement, and sound palette are different. A technique becomes useful when it can adapt to the situation rather than being repeated as a recipe.

One sign that you are acquiring a technique is that you begin to hear the relevant problem everywhere. Once you identify masking, poor gain staging, an uncontrolled low end, or an overly sharp transient, it becomes difficult to ignore. You may hear the issue clearly and still need time to solve it. With practice, the connection between hearing and acting becomes more direct.

A common mistake is trying to bypass this process by buying more plug-ins or hardware. A producer may purchase a new compressor without understanding the one already available in their DAW. The new tool may be useful, but it also introduces another interface and more decisions.

Redundancy is especially tempting when someone does not understand their original tools. Marketing suggests that a product will solve a problem that is actually rooted in missing knowledge. In that situation, acquiring more equipment can delay the deeper learning that would make all the tools more useful.

Reading manuals and watching in-depth tutorials can help, but information is not yet technique. Watching countless videos without practising is not skill stacking. It can become a sophisticated form of distraction.

A better approach is to separate practice from songwriting. Dedicate a few short sessions each week to one mechanism. Watch a focused explanation, then reproduce it without trying to make a finished track. Change the source material, push the settings too far, and listen to where the method stops working. The purpose is to understand cause and effect.

The basics remain important even at an advanced level. The more clearly you understand sound, signal flow, levels, frequency, dynamics, and the behaviour of your environment, the less dependent you become on specialized solutions. Many complex problems can be handled with basic tools when you understand exactly what those tools are doing.

Signs that technique may be the missing pillar

You can hear that something is wrong but have no idea what controls it.
You freeze when a technical problem interrupts a creative session.
You depend on presets without understanding why they work.
You repeatedly buy tools hoping they will solve the same unresolved issue.
You know production terms from tutorials but cannot apply them in your own projects.
You can reproduce a technique in one situation but not adapt it to another.

Technique grows through curiosity, focused repetition, and close listening. Its purpose is not technical perfection. Its purpose is to reduce the distance between what you imagine and what you can create.

Experience teaches you how to move through the process. Technique gives you ways to act inside it. But neither one decides which possibilities are worth pursuing. That brings us to the third and most confusing pillar: taste.

Taste and Balance

In the first part of this article, I introduced three pillars that influence musical expression: experience, technique, and taste. Experience helps you move through the creative process, while technique helps you translate an intention into sound. The third pillar, taste, helps you decide which intentions are worth following.

Taste may be the most confusing of the three because it is difficult to measure and impossible to separate completely from personal history. We often describe music as emotional, powerful, or simply good, but these words are subjective. A track that deeply affects one person may leave someone else completely indifferent.

Production, mixing, and mastering all involve taste. Technical knowledge gives you options, but it does not make the decisions for you. How loud should the kick be? How dry should the vocal feel? Should the arrangement resolve its tension or remain uncomfortable? There may be technical limits, but there is rarely only one correct answer.

This explains why someone can have years of experience and excellent technical skills while producing results that do not connect with you. Their decisions may be coherent, but their taste is not aligned with yours—or with the audience they are trying to reach. In that situation, more technical precision will not necessarily improve the music.

Taste can sometimes be the most important pillar. Some artists have a powerful vision before they possess the skills needed to realize it. They may collaborate with producers, engineers, and musicians who can translate that vision into reality. Their role is not less valuable because they did not operate every tool. Knowing what the work should become is a real ability.

Taste is personal, but it can be cultivated

Taste is strongly influenced by our early experiences. The music our parents played, the culture surrounding us, and the music shared by friends all leave their traces. Later, communities, parties, radio, films, clubs, and the internet continue shaping what feels familiar or exciting. Because of this history, taste cannot be installed like a production technique. You cannot watch one tutorial and suddenly acquire someone else’s sensitivity. But this does not mean taste is fixed. It can be cultivated through curiosity, attention, exposure, and reflection.

People who actively research music tend to develop a larger vocabulary of possibilities. They dig through the work of artists and DJs they admire, follow labels, compare different periods, and listen beyond what an algorithm places in front of them. This does not automatically give them better taste, but it gives their taste more material to work with. Curiosity matters because it prevents your preferences from becoming a closed system. If you only listen to music that already confirms what you like, your decisions can become predictable. Discovering unfamiliar work does not mean that you must enjoy all of it. Even a strong negative reaction can teach you something if you ask what caused it.

Going to concerts, clubs, and performances is especially valuable. In a studio, we can imagine how music might affect listeners. In a public space, we see the response directly. We notice when attention shifts, when energy rises, when a quiet moment becomes powerful, or when a technically impressive passage loses the room.

This real-world contact helps develop an understanding of musical psychology. A street musician can show how a simple song stops people in motion. A live performer can demonstrate how repetition creates anticipation. A DJ can reveal that the impact of a track depends not only on the track itself, but also on what happened before it and when it appears.

For producers making dance music, learning to DJ can be particularly useful. Playing music for people changes your relationship with arrangement, timing, density, and energy. You feel which introductions are functional, which breakdowns are too long, and which details disappear on a sound system. You also learn that a track does not exist alone. It enters a sequence and performs a role.

This experience can influence your taste because it connects preference to context. You may love a track at home but discover that it behaves differently in a club. Neither reaction is negative. They reveal different functions of the music.

References are tools for understanding taste

Using references while making a track is one of the most effective ways to understand your own decisions. A reference is not only a target for loudness or frequency balance. It can help you study how another artist organizes time, creates contrast, introduces elements, and manages expectations.

Choose a track that creates an effect you want to understand. Instead of asking how to copy it, ask more precise questions:

When does the main idea first appear?
How long does the artist wait before changing it?
What disappears when a new element arrives?
Where does the energy actually come from?
Which sounds carry emotion, and which ones provide support?
What makes the track feel finished?

This type of listening shapes your vocabulary. It gives you names and structures for things you may previously have understood only as a feeling. Once you recognize the mechanism, you can reinterpret it through your own tools and experience.

It is also worth studying popular music, even if your work is experimental or underground. Popular music demonstrates how arrangements communicate quickly, how repetition creates familiarity, and how certain ideas survive in distracted listening environments. Studying it does not mean imitating it or judging success only through sales. It means being curious about why large groups of people respond to particular musical decisions.

Listening itself can therefore be part of making music. I sometimes invite producers to dedicate a phase of their practice strictly to listening. This is not passive background music. It means listening with intention through headphones, studio monitors, a car system, or a large sound system, and then observing the changes across environments.

Podcasts, radio shows, and DJ sets can also help develop taste by providing context. A good selector does more than collect strong individual tracks. They create relationships between them. Hearing those relationships can teach you about pacing, contrast, surprise, and timing.

Signs that taste may be the missing pillar

Your music is technically controlled but feels generic or emotionally unclear.
You struggle to decide which version of an idea is more convincing.
You add details because the track feels empty, but cannot define what it needs.
Your references are vague, inconsistent, or chosen only for sound quality.
You rarely listen outside the narrow style you produce.
You can explain how you made the track but not why you made those choices.
You imitate surface features without understanding the underlying effect.

Developing taste does not require replacing your preferences with someone else’s. It requires becoming more aware of what moves you, why it moves you, and how that response connects to the music you make.

How the three pillars interact

The pillars are separated here to make them easier to examine, but they constantly influence one another. Experience changes how you use technique. Technique changes what you are able to hear and imagine. Taste determines which technical possibilities matter to you. At the same time, new experiences can expose you to music that changes your taste, while improved technique can reveal details in music that you previously could not perceive.

This is why creative development rarely follows a straight line. Improving one pillar can expose a weakness in another.

You may develop enough technique to create a clean mix, then realize that cleanliness was never the most interesting quality of the track. You may discover an artist who completely changes your taste, then feel frustrated because your technique cannot yet produce similar complexity. You may know what you want and how to make it, but lack the experience to organize the process and finish reliably.

Different imbalances produce different problems:

Taste without technique: You have a strong vision but struggle to translate it into sound.
Technique without taste: Your work is polished, but the decisions feel generic or disconnected.
Experience without curiosity: You work efficiently but repeatedly arrive at familiar results.
Technique without experience: You understand individual methods but freeze when they must work together in a real project.
Taste without experience: You recognize powerful music but struggle to develop and complete your own ideas.

These are not permanent identities. They are descriptions of where your attention may be needed now.

Identifying the pillar that needs attention

When a track is not working, try to avoid solving the problem immediately. First, describe it as clearly as possible. If you know what you want but cannot create it, the limitation is probably technical. Choose one relevant mechanism and practise it outside the project. If you can operate the tools but cannot decide what the track should become, spend time with references. Listen, compare, and define the emotional or functional role you want the music to have.

If you understand the intention and the tools but repeatedly lose direction, look at experience and process. Reduce the scope, plan the session, leave notes for your next step, and practise moving smaller projects from beginning to end.

Sometimes more than one pillar needs attention. The goal is not to label yourself accurately forever. It is to choose a useful next action instead of treating every creative difficulty as a reason to buy something, consume more information, or abandon the project.

Conclusion

Expression does not come only from having ideas, mastering equipment, or spending years in a studio. It emerges from the relationship between experience, technique, and taste.

Experience helps you navigate. Technique helps you act. Taste helps you choose.

An imbalance between them is normal. It may even be productive: limitations can create unusual decisions, and a strong pillar can temporarily compensate for a weaker one. Problems begin when you do not recognize the imbalance and keep applying the wrong solution.

The next time you feel stuck, ask yourself three questions:

Do I know where I am in the process and what should happen next?
Do I know how to create the result I am hearing in my head?
Do I know why this result matters to me?

The answers will not judge the quality of your music. They will show you where to work next. Over time, each pillar can support the others, making the process more fluid and the result more personal. The objective is not perfect balance. It is to become increasingly capable of recognizing an intention, turning it into sound, and knowing when the music finally says what you wanted it to say.

Find Your Own Sound in Electronic Music

June 29, 2026/in Blog/by pheek

Over the past few years of teaching electronic music, I’ve noticed a recurring pattern.

Someone books a consultation because they feel their music isn’t at the same level as that of the artists they admire. They’ve watched tutorials, invested in the plugins everyone recommends, and spent hundreds—sometimes thousands—of hours learning their DAW. They understand how compression works, know what EQ does, and’ve learned enough mixing tricks to produce something that sounds respectable. Yet every time they compare one of their tracks to a professional release, they feel that something is still missing.

Most of the time, that missing piece isn’t another plugin or another production trick. It’s vocabulary.

Whenever I hear someone ask, “How do I find my own sound?”, I almost never start by talking about originality. Instead, I recommend something that often surprises people: study reference tracks.

At first, that advice seems contradictory. If the goal is to become original, why spend time analyzing someone else’s music? Shouldn’t we avoid influence if we want to develop our own artistic identity?

After years of coaching producers, I’ve come to believe the opposite is true. The fastest way to develop your own musical language is to first understand the language spoken by the artists you admire.

Learning Music Isn’t the Same as Learning a DAW

One thing I genuinely admire about electronic musicians is that many of us are self-taught.

Unlike someone studying classical piano or jazz trumpet, we usually don’t have a teacher guiding us every step of the way. We open Ableton, Bitwig, FL Studio, Logic, or another DAW and start experimenting. We press buttons, make mistakes, discover happy accidents, and slowly build our understanding through curiosity.

That freedom is one of the reasons electronic music has evolved so quickly over the past few decades. There are very few rules telling us where to begin, and even fewer telling us how a track should be made. Every producer is free to invent their own workflow.

There is something beautiful about that. Unfortunately, that freedom also creates one of the biggest obstacles I see among newer producers.

Many people are not only improvising their music. They’re improvising the way they learn music.

Every new track begins from zero. Every arrangement becomes another experiment. Every mix is another attempt to solve problems that have already been solved hundreds of times. At first, this feels exciting because everything is an exploration. You’re constantly discovering something new. But after a while, that freedom starts working against you because every decision demands mental energy.

Should the bass enter here?

Should I add another percussion loop?

Do I need another synth?

Does the arrangement need a breakdown?

Should this transition last four bars or eight?

Without a framework, every one of those questions feels equally important. I’ve met producers who have been making music for years and still approach every project exactly the same way they did their first. Every session is another attempt to reinvent the wheel. While that might sound creative, it often leads to frustration because there is no system to help them make decisions.

That is exactly where reference tracks become invaluable.

References Build Vocabulary

When I ask someone to analyze a reference track, I’m not asking them to copy it. In fact, copying is probably the least interesting thing you can do with a reference. What I’m really trying to teach is vocabulary. Think about learning a foreign language.

Before writing a novel, you need words.

Before developing a writing style, you need grammar.

Before breaking the rules, you first need to understand how those rules work.

Music follows a very similar process. When we analyze songs we love, we begin to notice patterns we never paid attention to before. We stop listening only as fans and start listening as producers.

Why does this breakdown create tension?

Why does this groove feel effortless?

Why does this arrangement stay interesting even though very little changes?

Why does one bassline feel powerful while another one sounds busy?

How many sounds are actually playing simultaneously? How often does something genuinely new happen?

Those questions gradually shift the way we think about production. Instead of chasing random ideas, we begin recognizing relationships. We notice that tension often comes from removing elements rather than adding them. We realize that many memorable arrangements rely more on restraint than on complexity. We discover that great producers often repeat ideas much more than we initially thought.

Those observations slowly become part of our own vocabulary. That vocabulary gives us something incredibly valuable. It gives us a model.

Understanding the Architecture Behind Music

One word I often use during consultations is architecture. When you first hear an incredible record, it feels almost magical. Everything simply works. The groove feels alive, the transitions seem effortless, and every sound appears to exist exactly where it belongs. It’s tempting to think that this comes purely from talent.

I don’t believe that’s true.

What I think we’re hearing is the result of hundreds of small decisions supporting one another. The breakdown isn’t emotional because of one beautiful reverb. It’s emotional because tension has been building for the previous minute. The bassline isn’t effective because it’s technically complicated. It’s effective because of its relationship with the kick and the surrounding space.

The arrangement doesn’t feel exciting because something new happens every four bars. Quite often, it’s the opposite. It feels exciting because the producer knew when not to introduce another idea. Studying references slowly reveals this architecture. Instead of hearing mystery, we begin hearing intention.

That changes everything. I’ve watched producers who had been stuck for years suddenly become productive after only a few weeks of analyzing references with this mindset. Their music becomes clearer. Their arrangements become more focused. Friends begin noticing the improvement almost immediately.

Nothing magical happened. They simply stopped guessing.

The Downside Nobody Talks About

This is where things become interesting. As much as I believe reference tracks are one of the fastest ways to learn music production, I also believe they come with a hidden danger. And I don’t think enough people talk about it. References are extremely useful while you’re building vocabulary.

But after a while, they can start replacing your own voice. I’ve seen producers become so good at recreating the aesthetics of their favourite artists that they slowly lose sight of what originally attracted them to making music. Every decision becomes another comparison.

Would this artist do that?

Would this label release this?

Would this fit into this playlist?

Instead of expressing ideas, they’re seeking validation. At first, this seems harmless because everyone learns through imitation. Painters copy paintings. Jazz musicians transcribe solos. Writers imitate the authors they admire. There is nothing wrong with influence. The problem begins when influence becomes dependency. At some point, your references should stop functioning as a destination and start functioning as a foundation.

The goal isn’t to sound like the artists you admire forever. The goal is to understand why their music works well enough that you can eventually express your own ideas using the same vocabulary.

That’s a very different mindset.

Familiarity Is Comfortable

I think one reason this happens is that listeners naturally enjoy familiarity. Music isn’t only about discovering something new. Most of the time, we listen because we’re looking for a particular emotional state. Sometimes we want something energetic for the gym. Sometimes we want ambient music while working. Sometimes we want Detroit Techno because that’s exactly the feeling we’re craving that day.

That familiarity creates comfort.

Discovering completely unfamiliar music requires effort. The listener has to learn a new language. That’s one reason why genres exist in the first place. They provide shared expectations between the artist and the audience.

There is nothing wrong with that. Where I think we need to be careful is confusing familiarity with originality. Learning from references should help us understand musical language. It shouldn’t stop us from eventually speaking in our own voice.

That, at least from what I’ve observed over years of mentoring producers, is where finding your own sound truly begins.

References Are Only the Beginning

The challenge, however, is knowing when references have fulfilled their purpose.

For a beginner, references are incredibly valuable because they provide a framework for making decisions. They help answer questions that otherwise require years of trial and error. They teach arrangement, pacing, sound selection, dynamics, and countless details that are difficult to discover in isolation. I still recommend them to almost everyone I work with because I’ve seen how quickly they can help someone move past creative uncertainty.

At some point, though, something interesting happens. The references stop teaching you how music works and start telling you how your music should sound.

That transition is subtle, and because it happens gradually, many producers don’t notice it. Instead of asking themselves whether an idea feels exciting, they begin asking whether it resembles something they’ve heard before. Instead of trusting their intuition, they compare every decision against an imaginary checklist created by the artists they admire.

I’ve seen this happen more than once. A producer who was once playful and curious slowly becomes cautious. Every new idea is measured against an existing standard. Every sound is judged according to whether it fits a certain label, a certain playlist, or the expectations of a specific audience. The music may become technically stronger, but it often becomes less personal at the same time.

I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with influence. Every artist learns through influence. Painters study other painters. Writers imitate authors they admire before eventually developing their own style. Jazz musicians spend years transcribing solos because it teaches them the language of improvisation. Electronic music is no different.

The important distinction is that influence should eventually become invisible. The artists who inspired you don’t disappear from your music; they become integrated into something uniquely yours. That’s very different from constantly asking yourself what another producer would have done.

The Search for Validation

One reason I think this happens is that making original music is surprisingly uncomfortable.

It’s much easier to make something that already belongs somewhere. If your track clearly sounds like Detroit Techno, Dub Techno or Minimal, listeners immediately know how to approach it. They already understand the language. They recognize familiar sounds, structures, and emotions. There is a sense of comfort in hearing something from a world they already know.

Making something genuinely personal is much riskier. Sometimes people simply don’t understand it. They need time before they connect with it.

Sometimes they don’t connect with it at all.

That uncertainty can be difficult to accept, especially when we naturally seek validation from people we respect. Whether we admit it or not, most of us want our peers to appreciate our work. We want labels to sign our music. We want DJs to play our tracks. We want listeners to tell us that what we’ve created matters.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting those things. The problem begins when validation becomes the reason we’re making music in the first place.

I’ve had conversations with producers who spend enormous amounts of time studying the latest successful releases on streaming platforms. They analyze what is trending, what is going viral, and which track types recur in popular playlists. Their hope is that, by understanding the formula, they’ll increase the chances of their own music being discovered.

I understand the logic behind that approach. From a marketing perspective, it makes perfect sense. Artistically, though, I find it much less convincing.

If your creative decisions are constantly being shaped by an algorithm that you don’t control, then your relationship with music slowly changes. You’re no longer exploring ideas because they excite you. You’re exploring ideas because you hope they’ll perform well within a system whose rules are constantly evolving.

That creates a fragile foundation.

If the song succeeds, you might attribute the success to following the formula.

If it doesn’t succeed, you’re left wondering what you did wrong.

In both cases, your own artistic voice becomes secondary.

Algorithms Prefer Familiarity

Streaming platforms have changed the way many people discover music. Albums are no longer the primary experience for many listeners. Instead, playlists have become the entry point. Whether they’re editorial playlists, algorithmic recommendations or playlists created by other users, they encourage music that sits comfortably alongside similar songs.

From the listener’s perspective, this is incredibly convenient. If someone enjoys a certain atmosphere while working, exercising or driving, they can find hours of music that satisfies that particular mood.

From the artist’s perspective, however, the situation becomes more complicated.

Music that fits neatly into existing categories is generally easier to recommend than music that refuses to fit into any category. While none of us truly knows how recommendation systems make every decision, it’s difficult to ignore that familiarity usually travels more easily through algorithms than unpredictability does.

This doesn’t mean artists should deliberately make strange music simply to be different. Being original isn’t about rejecting every convention.

It’s about knowing which conventions genuinely serve your ideas and which ones you’re following simply because everyone else is doing the same thing. I sometimes wonder whether we’re reaching a point where authenticity itself becomes a form of innovation.

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable of generating convincing music, and as streaming platforms continue encouraging familiarity, perhaps listeners will begin valuing something less predictable.

I’m not saying this as a certainty.

It might simply be a romantic idea on my part.

But I do have the feeling that people will eventually become more interested in hearing music that carries evidence of an individual behind it rather than music that feels like it could have been generated by analyzing millions of existing songs.

Whether I’m right or wrong isn’t really the point.

The more important question is this:

What kind of relationship do you want to have with your own music?

Finding Your Own Voice

When I think about artists whose music immediately feels recognizable, one thing stands out above everything else.

They developed fluency before they developed originality. Take Miles Davis as an example.

The trumpet isn’t a unique instrument. Thousands of musicians have played it before and after him. Yet after only a few notes, most listeners immediately recognize that it’s Miles Davis.

That’s an extraordinary achievement. The same can be said of John Coltrane, Brian Eno, or many of the electronic artists we admire. Their tools weren’t unique. Their equipment wasn’t necessarily rare. What became unique was their relationship with those tools.

Electronic music presents an interesting challenge because we’re surrounded by abundance. Every week, there are new synthesizers, new plugins, new sample packs and new workflows promising to unlock creativity. While those options are exciting, they also make it easy to mistake novelty for progress.

One observation I’ve made this year is that the opposite often produces better results.

Instead of constantly looking for another instrument, I’ve found it much more rewarding to spend longer with the same one. Learning one synthesizer deeply teaches me more than briefly owning twenty different ones. The limitations become familiar, and familiarity creates fluency. Once that fluency develops, I stop thinking about the tool itself and begin thinking about the music.

The same principle applies to direction.

If you’re fascinated by Detroit Techno, explore it in depth before moving on. Write twenty tracks instead of two. Explore different tempos, moods and arrangements while remaining inside the same language. You aren’t limiting yourself—you are giving yourself enough time to become fluent.

One exercise that has transformed my productivity this year is something I simply call “Stop Searching.”

(This year I’ve been focusing on using the Minifreak deeply. The more I dig, the crazier it gets)

For years, I would sit in front of my computer with an ideal sound already imagined in my head. Then I would spend an hour trying to find it or recreate it. Most of those sessions ended with frustration because I was chasing an idea that didn’t yet exist.

Now I do the opposite.

I begin with whatever sound is already in front of me.

Sometimes I even pretend it’s the only sound available in my entire library. Instead of asking what other sound I need, I ask what this one can become. That simple change has completely transformed the way I write music because it shifts my attention away from searching and toward listening.

Limitation, I’ve realized, isn’t the opposite of creativity.

It’s often the condition that allows creativity to emerge.

The same philosophy applies to daily practice. I don’t believe that waiting for a free weekend to make music is as productive as working a little every day. Momentum matters. I’d much rather spend thirty focused minutes on several different ideas than eight hours trying to force a single track into existence. That’s also why my nonlinear workflow continues to make sense to me. I need distance between sessions. I need to return with fresh ears before I understand what a piece of music is actually trying to become.

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned over the years, it’s that finding your own sound isn’t something you decide one afternoon.

It happens gradually. You study the music you love. You build a vocabulary.

You become fluent.

Then, almost without noticing, your instincts begin taking over. You stop asking what your references would do and start asking what feels right to you. Looking back, that’s usually the moment when people around you begin saying something every artist hopes to hear:

“This sounds like you.”

The Beginner’s Edge: Turning Constraints into Creative Leap

April 23, 2026/in Blog/by pheek

In recent weeks, I have done some workshops with artists, and a question has come up a few times about limitations in music production. That question was:

How can I deal with the fact that my imagination and ideas are not following the technical capacity that I have?

In other words, the artist has a lot of imagination about what they would like to do with their music, but they feel that the learning curve, or the current skills they have in music production, are too limited to express what they think and envision. This is a common problem for beginners, but you might be surprised to learn that even experienced producers face it from time to time. It just appears in different forms depending on where they are in their development.

In past articles, I discussed how what we have in mind is often more or less a proof of concept of something that could be done. But extracting these ideas is not simple. Sometimes, those ideas are not even that interesting once they are translated into a technical context, even if they seemed exciting in our imagination. There is often a gap between the fantasy of the idea and the reality of executing it.

In this blog post, I want to explain how to deal with that situation. But beyond that, I also want to explain why limitations in music production can actually become a leverage for more creativity than you think. What many beginners see as a weakness can become a direction. What feels like a lack can become a framework. And what seems frustrating at first can end up being the exact thing that helps you build your skills, your taste, and even your artistic identity.

The Frustration of Not Knowing Enough

What I often see is artists who really connect with music and have good taste—or rather, a more refined taste. They listen carefully. They know what moves them. They hear things in tracks that excite them emotionally and aesthetically. But when they start making music themselves, they immediately find themselves in a position where they realize that, at first glance, whatever they do sounds amateurish to them.

That part is underwhelming for someone who sees their favourite artists making music and assumes that, after watching multiple YouTube tutorials, they can achieve similar results. The internet makes everything look accessible. It gives the impression that knowledge is available, so execution should be quick. But that is not how art works, nor how craft develops.

For many people, music is not just a hobby. It is a way to find validation in a community, but it is also a way to express emotions in their own language. They want to communicate something that they feel. They want to create something that sounds personal and meaningful. So when they try and the result does not match their taste, that gap feels painful.

Especially at the beginning, there is often this persistent inner voice saying, “I don’t know enough.” Then that voice nourishes another one that feels it must find a solution for this ongoing problem. Most of the time, people identify the solution as needing more plugins, more skills, more knowledge, more theory, more tutorials, more gear. Many believe that freedom will come from knowing everything.

This is not a new behaviour. People often respond to uncertainty by accumulating tools. In music production, that often becomes digital hoarding: collecting plugins, sample packs, courses, templates, YouTube videos, bookmarks, PDFs, and all the potential resources they might need someday.

It is a bit like going camping for the first time. Before you have ever done it, you go to the store and buy every possible thing you imagine you might need. Then you arrive at the camping site and realize you will probably use about 20% of what you bought. Music production works the same way. You often need less than what you have.

The problem is not limitation. The limitations are actually a direction for you to take.

See it as poetry. If you write poetry in a language that you do not really master, or if you read poetry from someone who is trying to express themselves in your language, you will quickly notice that the person may have limited grammar and vocabulary. But that does not stop them from expressing something real. It may not be as elaborate as what a professional poet can do, but it can still be touching, direct, and honest.

More than that, you also notice that when someone is trying too hard to say something beyond what they can really handle, it shows. There is strain. There is awkwardness. There is often a distance between the intention and the execution.

Music is often the same. If you remain within what you can do, you can sometimes sound more solid than if you try to accomplish something you do not yet master. That does not mean you should never challenge yourself. It means that trying to speak clearly with the vocabulary you have can often be more effective than trying to imitate fluency you do not yet possess.

This is one of the first lessons about limitations in music production: limitations not only reduce your options but can also protect the strength of your expression.

The Illusion of Unlimited Possibilities

As someone coming from the 90s, when resources and tools for music production were far more limited, today feels like the exact opposite. Now we have tutorials for almost everything we can imagine. There are music schools, online courses, coaching programs, sample libraries, synth plugins for every taste, AI assistants, and endless content explaining how to fix any problem.

For each challenge you run into, there are multiple possible solutions. On paper, that sounds ideal. It looks like abundance, and abundance gives the illusion of power.

But this abundance often creates a different problem: infinite choice.

An infinite number of choices can result in creative paralysis before someone even starts. People have loads of ideas, but they cannot manage to find a workflow. They struggle to finish projects. The exploration remains shallow. Even with all the assistance they have, they get lost in the details. Precious ideas that initially felt alive end up being scrapped because they were diluted by too many options.

An example of limitations in music production using minimal tools – Music lovers feel underwhelmed when making their first song.

Too many options dilute intention.

This is one of the biggest hidden problems of our era. Beginners often believe the issue is that they do not have enough. But very often, the issue is that they are facing too much. Too many tools, too many possible directions, too many solutions, too many reference points, too many voices telling them what the “right” way is.

In my own technique of work, where I explain how a non-linear workflow can be used to produce music, one thing I insist on is that projects have to come from the same core or seed. It is important to have branches, yes, but it is equally important to keep them connected to a center. If everything branches endlessly, you lose the essence of the track.

That is why it is useful to limit yourself to a set of tools. For example, if you want a specific sound as an artist, choose one synth or one sound generator and work from there. It gives you enough material to explore without constantly shifting your foundation.

The main issue with unlimited possibilities is that they create the impression that you have everything under control because solutions are available. But having access to solutions is not the same thing as knowing how to express yourself. The tools do not automatically solve the problem of meaning. The tools do not express your idea for you. They are only there to help you shape it.

You still need to tie the knots and connect the dots yourself.

In other words, the tools do not express you; you express the ideas.

That is why limitations in music production can be so useful. They dispel the illusion that the answer lies elsewhere. They bring you back to what matters: taste, decisions, execution, and repetition.

What a Limitation Actually Does

A limitation can be a tool. It can even become a way of expressing yourself.

One of the first exercises in limitation that I give to students is to work with a reference track. Many people resist this idea at first because they think a reference will somehow remove originality. But once they start using one, they often realize that the reference itself gives them limitations on arbitrary decisions such as:

the length of the track
its energy
its speed
its tone
the root key

All these things are what I call soft limitations. You can still move around them, but as a starting point, they give a direction. They help you avoid spending energy on superficial decisions that can otherwise drain your focus before the real work even begins.

This is one of the hidden strengths of constraints: they reduce decision fatigue. Instead of asking yourself a hundred open questions at once, you narrow the field and move.

A limitation also creates identity.

A good example is Detroit Techno or Acid House. In the early days, many artists had extremely limited studios. They bought gear they could afford, sometimes even things people discarded, and they made music using only two or three machines. Those limitations forged a sound. Even now, with all the plugins and possibilities we have, people still want to recreate music that comes from those same few ingredients: a TB-303, a Roland 909, a drum machine, a couple of synths, minimal effects, and a direct workflow.

That is a perfect example of how limitation can create an identity for an artist or for a whole genre. When you have fewer tools, you tend to use them more deeply. You learn their character. You repeat certain gestures. You build taste through habit. That consistency becomes style.

Another limitation beginners often resist, but that can be an excellent starting point, is limiting yourself to samples—or, preferably, loops and ideas made by someone else. Many people reject this because they think using someone else’s material is less creative. But it can actually be a powerful way to focus your learning.

If you use samples, you can spend more energy on arrangement, mixing, editing, chopping, and transformation. The creativity then comes from how you organize and reinterpret the material. There is nothing wrong with learning one layer of the craft at a time.

Personally, the kinds of limitations I like to set for an album or a series of tracks can be things like:

one preset in a synth
eight channels maximum
one type of reverb
one palette of drum sounds
one sound source across multiple sketches

If I take one preset and make eight songs from it, they will all sound a bit similar. I can still change the mood, key, speed, density, or tweak some parameters, and each one will feel different. But there will be coherence.

This is something you hear often in Dub Techno. Producers use very similar sonic material from one track to another, but by changing timing, mood, layering, and space, they build variety. Dub Techno has sounded related to itself for decades, and yet people continue to love it because that consistency created a culture and a recognizable direction.

This is worth remembering: limitations in music production do not only help you finish tracks. They can also help you sound like yourself.

The Skill Loop: Why Constraints Make You Better Faster

When I host artists’ retreats, and people are impressed by some of the knowledge I have, they often tell me they wish they knew as much because they feel it would make them faster.

Then I tell them something that usually surprises them:

Sometimes, the more you know, the slower you get.

The more knowledge you have, the more details you become aware of. You hear more flaws. You notice more possibilities. You recognize more potential improvements. All that awareness can become a burden if it interrupts momentum. In some cases, knowing more means spending more time fixing things that a less experienced version of yourself might have simply let pass.

Sometimes, when you know less, you move faster because you pay less attention to all the little problems that could stop you. That can actually be an advantage. It can even create charm.

I remember that when I knew less than I do now, I would sometimes work much faster because I did not bother fixing certain things that, today, I might identify as mistakes. Yet some of those older imperfections had a beauty to them. They had spontaneity. They had life.

In a time where so much is moving toward artificial perfection—and now increasingly toward AI-generated smoothness—mistakes become one of the last visible traces of the human hand. Imperfection can create character. There is charm in a result that feels lived, unstable, slightly uneven, but expressive.

One of the biggest strengths of having a limitation is that you repeat the same tools more often. Because of that repetition, you begin to notice details faster. You refine instead of constantly restarting. You start building an internal map of what works and what does not.

This is why beginners should not underestimate the value of reuse. Saving your own presets, making your own macros, building your own templates—these are often more useful than learning a hundred scattered techniques. The things you reuse become part of your language. Technique matters, but reusable systems support consistency and speed.

Once you have a limitation and focus on certain details, this creates:

deeper listening
muscle memory
faster decisions
better pattern recognition

The basic cycle becomes simple:

Try → Repeat → Refine → Improve

That is the skill loop.

And that is one reason limitations in music production can accelerate growth. They keep you close to the same terrain long enough for you to actually learn it.

Without limitation, many beginners end up starting over all the time. New plugin, new genre, new workflow, new tutorial, new approach. They remain in exploration mode forever, but do not stay in one place long enough to develop depth.

With constraints, depth becomes almost unavoidable.

Expression Within Limits

Working with limitations is, to me, very similar to what happens in poetry. You accept that you cannot say certain things beyond a certain scale or spectrum. That forces you to become creative with the words you do have.

If I do not speak much Japanese and try to write a haiku, it might follow the rules of poetry, but the language I use will be limited. It might sound childish in places, but that does not mean it cannot still be touching or beautiful. I can still express something. The limitation might even create a form of sincerity.

Poets work within what they can express.

This is also how some classically trained musicians listen to very simple electronic music. Even if they understand that the complexity is low compared to classical forms, they can still appreciate that expression is happening at another level. The idea is not wrong simply because it is simple. There is still emotion, tension, personality, and intention in it.

Quite often, simplicity can take the artist very far because simplicity forces synthesis. You summarize your idea. You remove what is not needed. You retain what is essential.

When you only master certain concepts, that can actually work to your advantage because clarity becomes more important than complexity. And with music, that matters a lot. It is often easier to be complex than to be clear. Complexity can hide uncertainty. It can create the illusion of depth. But too much complexity can also create chaos, confusion, and a lack of impact.

Simple ideas, well expressed, often feel stronger than complex ideas that are poorly executed.

Execution is always possible, no matter what your technical level is. What becomes difficult is the impulse to impress. Many artists start adding complexity because they are worried they will not be taken seriously, or because they fear people will find their work boring. But what often makes music feel boring is not simplicity—it is a lack of conviction, a lack of movement, or a lack of spontaneity.

There is something powerful in fully owning the level you are at and expressing yourself clearly from there. That is another lesson beginners can learn from limitations in music production: having less can actually force stronger communication.

How Limitations Create Style

One thing that is often underestimated is that limitations can help create style long before an artist consciously “finds” their sound.

Many producers imagine that style appears once they have mastered enough tools to fully choose who they want to be. But often, style appears much earlier, through repetition under constraint.

When you use the same synth often, rely on the same group of samples, prefer a narrow BPM range, build tracks around similar kinds of contrast, or keep reaching for the same reverb or the same chord shapes, you are already forming a style. It may not be fully conscious yet, but it is there.

This is one reason so many artists who had limited means ended up sounding unique. They did not have the luxury of reinventing their entire setup every month. They learned their few tools deeply. Their recurring choices became a language.

And that is still true now.

A producer working with one instrument for six months may develop a far more recognizable voice than someone working with thirty plugins in a scattered way. The first person will accumulate behaviour. The second may accumulate options.

There is a tendency among beginners to think that identity comes after mastery. But identity often comes from adaptation. It emerges from the relationship between what you want to do and what you are currently able to do. That friction creates choices. Those choices repeat. Repetition creates a fingerprint.

So when you feel limited, remember that limitations may not only be helping you improve technically—they may also be shaping what others will eventually recognize as your sound.

Practical Ways to Use Limitations in the Studio

Coming back to the initial problem—when people feel their ideas are not matching their skills, or when they have a sound in their head that they cannot reproduce—there are different ways to work with that.

A simple way to reproduce a sound you hear in your mind is to first learn how to describe it. Try to vocalize how it is built:

Is it short or long?
Is it high-pitched or low-pitched?
Is it stable or dynamic?
Is it bright or dark?
Is it dry or spacious?

Then you can go through the samples or presets and try to find something close. This may seem basic, but learning how to translate vague imagination into a few concrete characteristics is already a huge step forward.

Another way to deal with your limitations is through collaboration. Teaming up with a friend or fellow musician who has strengths where you feel weak can help you express yourself more clearly. Sometimes the gap between your idea and your current skill can be bridged by someone else’s practical knowledge. That is not cheating. That is one of the oldest ways artists learn.

But if you want to actively practice using limitations in music production in a creative way, here are a few suggestions you can explore today.

One Tool Only

Try making a track using only one synth, and that alone.

This can be surprisingly rich. Restricting yourself to one instrument forces you to learn sound design, arrangement, contrast, and variation from inside a single vocabulary instead of escaping into new tools each time you hit a wall.

Recently, during a retreat, I did an exercise in which I built an entire song from a single MIDI clip. It was challenging, but it turned out to be very interesting. More importantly, it led me to build other ideas quite fast afterward because it shifted my attention from hunting for material to transforming what was already there.

Use a Time Constraint

A second idea is a time constraint, which I practice almost every time I go to the studio. I impose a time limit on what I am going to do.

In my case, I often like sessions of around 20 minutes. I find that the quality of my ideas drops after that, and I prefer to keep the best of myself for each track rather than pushing through long sessions where the signal weakens.

Another indication that I need a break is when something starts to feel slightly difficult while I am in the flow. Friction is a very useful cue. Yes, sometimes you need to work through it, but sometimes it is simply a sign that the session has reached its natural end. After around 20 minutes, my tolerance to friction often diminishes, and it becomes harder to get the best out of my ideas.

Limit the Track Count

A third limitation you can explore is track count.

I personally like working with between four and eight tracks as a starting point. When clients send me projects with 70 or more stems, I often find it overwhelming. Most of my songs rarely have more than 20 or 30 channels, and even then, I usually feel some could be removed.

Reducing the track count forces organization. It makes you think in terms of function and priority. It also encourages habits and techniques that lead to unexpected results because you stop solving problems by adding more and more layers.

Use a Sound Source Rule

Another strong constraint is the sound source rule. You can decide to work only with samples and avoid MIDI entirely. Or you can decide all your samples must come from one record, one field recording session, one drum machine, one synthesizer, or one pack.

In hip-hop, producers have long made entire worlds out of one sampled record. Sometimes even the drums come from that same source. That kind of minimalism often creates a richness that a huge pile of unrelated samples cannot provide.

Separate Intentions by Session

This one is not exactly a limitation but rather an approach that functions like one.

Try to have one intention per session.

One thing I like to do is prepare sessions in the morning without trying to make music. I just set things up. I choose samples, presets, instruments, and templates, fix routing issues, and remove anything that could cause technical problems later.

Then, later in the day, I reopen the project. At that point, my mind is not in problem-solving mode anymore. It is available for expression.

Sometimes I even dedicate an entire session to choosing material for a future track. I will pick all the sounds and tools I want to use, but I will not compose yet. I will compose later with what I prepared.

This is a very useful discipline because it prevents you from trying to be both a technician and an artist at the same time. You are limiting yourself to one action. And as I explain in my non-linear technique, you can divide studio work into phases such as:

R&D
hook finding
mock-up
arrangement

Then you limit yourself to one phase at a time.

That kind of structure is deeply helpful for beginners because it gives their minds something realistic to do. It narrows the scope and removes the pressure to solve everything at once.

The Paradox: Freedom Comes After Constraint

Beginners and professional producers both want freedom. But freedom without control often brings chaos. Constraint, on the other hand, builds control, taste, and confidence. Once those are in place, freedom becomes meaningful.

This is the paradox: what first appears to reduce your possibilities is often what gives your creativity shape.

You do not need more tools or more tutorials as much as you need to use what you already know more deeply. You need intimacy with a smaller set of possibilities. You need repetition. You need to practice expression inside a narrower frame until that frame becomes second nature.

Your limitations are not a wall. They are a path.

The more you embrace limitations in music production, the clearer you begin to see how to express yourself within your current vocabulary. From there, your vocabulary expands naturally—not because you forced it, but because practice made it grow.

There is also something deeply reassuring in this. You do not have to wait until you are “ready” to make meaningful music. You do not need perfect fluency to say something worth hearing. You can work with what you have now. You can focus on what you can do, and by doing so, you become better at it. Over time, that focused practice increases your capacity.

And that is really the beginner’s edge.

A beginner often believes their lack of mastery is only a weakness. But when they accept constraints, they gain something many more advanced artists sometimes lose: directness. Hunger. Simplicity. A willingness to work with what is there. Fewer habits. Fewer layers of second-guessing. Less temptation to hide behind complexity.

So if your ideas feel bigger than your skills, do not only see that as a frustration. See it as the beginning of a relationship. Your role is not to eliminate all limits at once. Your role is to build with the ones you have.

Because in the end, limitation is not the opposite of creativity.

Very often, it is where creativity begins.

Creating Depth in Music

November 11, 2019/in Blog, Production, Sound Design/by pheek

I don’t know many people who took theatre in school, or aspired to become an actor or comedian. For me, having a background in theatre has shaped my vision of music, performance, and storytelling. In Québec, we have a “theatre sport” called Improvisation, where teams meet in a rink to create stories and characters, out of the blue. After practicing this for 20 years or so, it’s shaped how I perceive songs and sets. There are so many parallels to music in theatre: how a story develops, the use of a main character, supporting roles, etc., all of which can be applied to the use of sounds in a track.

A story is never great without quality supporting roles. Support adds depth to any story, and richness to the main character. Think of all the evil nemeses James Bond has faced—the more colorful they were, the more memorable the story, and the same goes for songs.

You might have a strong idea for your song, but if it has a good supporting idea or two, then you’ll end up with a song that keeps you engaged until the end.

I’ve been really into minimalist music lately; I like music that has a solid core idea that evolves. I was reading a really nice post on Reddit about Dub Techno where one of the main criterion discussed was the importance of simplicity. Simplicity doesn’t make something dull or dumb—in music it can be a reduction of all unnecessary elements, in dub techno resulting in a conversation between the deep bass and the pads and other layers.

If you’re immersed in electronic music, you’re generally used hearing multiple layers and often multiple conversations between sounds. Percussion layers will be often related to themselves, but the main idea is usually supported by a second layer. I often hear this in some indie rock songs too, especially ones that have some electronic elements in them. The way the human ear works, is that we will always hear the main component of a song as the centre of attention, but attention will shift back-and-forth between different layers. The advantage of having depth in music is that it encourages repeat listening. For a listener to replay a song and hear something new is exciting; some songs will grow on them even though they may have felt overwhelming during the first listen.

How can you create secondary ideas and “supporting roles”?

There are multiple ways to do to add depth to your songs.

Negative Space

The most important part when you program or write a melody, is to leave some empty space in it, which I call “negative spacing.” This space is where your secondary ideas can appear, supporting or replying to the main idea. I usually start by writing a complex melody, and then will remove some notes that I will use elsewhere, either in a second synth, bass, or percussive elements. Here are some suggestions as to what you can do with the MIDI notes you remove from the first draft of your melody:

Use the same MIDI notes from your melody, but apply them to multiple synths or other sounds to create variations and multiple layers that all work together.
Use the MIDI tool chords and arpeggios to build evolving ideas that come from the same root.
Look into some MIDI-generating Max for Live patches that can give you alternative ideas. I’ve had some fun with patches like Magenta, but also with the VST Riffer or Random Riff Generator which are really interesting.

The “Fruit of the Tree” Exercise

This is an exercise that is a bit time-consuming that I have a love/hate relationship with. You spend time playing the main idea through intense sound altering plugins. So, if your main idea is a melody, imagine you send it through granular synthesis, pitch-shifting, a harmonizer, random amplitude modulation, etc.—you’ll end up with a bunch of messed up material that can be shaped into a secondary idea while still being related to your original idea. The idea is to transform what you have into something slightly different. There are multiple plugins you can look into for achieving this:

Vocoders, mTransform, mHarmonizer, mMorph: These all work by merging an incoming signal and with a second signal. So, let’s say you have your main idea or melody—you can feed it into something completely different, such as a voice, some forest sounds, textures, or percussion, and you’ll obtain pretty original results.
Shaperbox 2 is the ultimate toolbox to completely transform your sound by slicing, gating, and filtering it, with the help of LFOs. This is pretty much my go-to to create alternative tools quickly. One thing I like to do a lot, is to run two side-by-side on different channels, and then use them to create movement that answers one another. For instance, one will duck while the other plays. You can also use side-chaining in the newest version, which can create lovely reactivity, if you use it along with the filter to shape the tone by an incoming sound. This allows you to do low-pass gating, for instance, which isn’t really in Ableton’s basic tools.

Background Sounds

The lack of background sounds, or noise-floor, always leaves people with the impression that there’s something missing in a track. This can be resolved with a reverb at low volume that leaves a nice overall roundness if you keep it pretty dark in its tone. Low reverb creates an impression that a song is also doubled, or wide. Another good way to make background sounds is to load up a bunch of sounds that can be played multiple times in different sections of your song, at very low volume. I was checking out this producer who does EDM/festival music, and he would use sounds of people cheering at a very low volume in moments where the chorus of the song would hit, to create more density and excitement. However, at a high volume, this approach can conversely create a “wall of noise”, so it should be crafted carefully.

If you simply drop a background sound into a project, such as forest sounds, you’re missing out on one of the most enjoyable activities in making music, which is to create your own live sounds. A forest has a bunch of—what seems like—random sounds. You can alter this, and say have a basic 5-second background of noise-floor and then decide when the bird chirping comes in via automation and perhaps have them sync to the tempo. This creates a bit of a groove too. A good exercise is to try to create sounds that emulate nature as you’ll have a bit more control over the sounds (and you’ll learn more about sound design in the process).

Ghost Notes

Ghost notes are mostly discussed as they relate to percussion, but they can be used, as a technique, with anything. A common example of ghost notes is their use in hi-hats, as a bunch of in-between hats at a very low volume to fill up space, which stretches the groove and but avoids too much negative space. Aside from using this technique on the low end—where sounds need a lot of space and room to breathe—make sure everything doesn’t sound mushy. The use of a delay in 16th or 32th notes can be a good way to create ghost notes.

A tap delay, where you can program where the delays fall, is also super fun in terms of creating ghost notes, as you can use one to make complex poly-rhythms. However, I suggest cutting some part of the high-end from the delays to avoid clashing with the main transients, and make sure the volume is very low. Using a AUX/Send bus for delays can be quite useful.

Our First Music Retreat

May 3, 2018/in Blog/by pheek

The idea for a music retreat came from a discussion I was having with my friend Fred about the need to just flee the city with some fellow music producers to spend a weekend making music. I mean, being in the country, being with friends, and then be able to make music seems like a recipe for something very special, right? Well, since returning from our retreat, I can only say it was beyond all my expectations; I believe it might even be something worth repeating on a regular basis.

When I first posted about my intentions to organize a music retreat on Facebook, I was mind-blown by the reaction and enthusiasm it generated. I think the excitement about a retreat comes from a need to be with others who share the same passion, but also to be in a context where we can connect about it.

We ended up having 13 people signing (note: we even had people from France who wanted to come but we didn’t posted the dates soon enough for them to prepare) and we found a beautiful manor outside of Montreal with the views of fields and hills as the place for the retreat. The setting was perfect. Fred organized two separate studios and we had plenty of room to be with our laptops to get in our bubble.

I had planned to do some workshops but after talking and deciding on the plan for the weekend, we didn’t really want to follow any structure. This first experience would determine our needs and how to deal with anything happening.

What came out was pure magic!

Imagine being in a room where everyone is making music, has gear and is focused on working on their own music, where you can show others what you’re working on to get feedback, to get answers to questions you have regarding technical issues, to observe everyone’s workflow and use of plugins…it really felt like a need was being met by everyone present: being part of a community, and getting instant validation and experience being in a creative environment.

We traded Soundcloud and Facebook for real human contact. Hanging out in clubs to find like-minds felt awkward; being around people who share the same interests, and working at the same time as others really responded to a common need we all shared: connecting physically.

No matter how the internet is developing and the tools it offers, there’s nothing like physical closeness. Even myself, I felt overwhelmed with the desire to make sounds and also to comment on other’s or to answer questions people would share out loud. It’s pretty common for music producers to meet in bars and clubs but you can’t really talk because the context is loud and not appropriate, plus you can’t really share your tech set up or how you work. It seems like a retreat is creates a proper space to co-create and see everyone’s game get upgraded. I am under the impression that this could be the best way to shape the sound of a community all together.

As we’re preparing to already organize more retreats, we are also planning to gather music producers in cafes, on a Saturday afternoon. I think that is also something we would love to explore, elsewhere in the world as well.

How I used the Music retreat for my creative flow

I wanted to do exactly what I do with my days in the city but to really concentrate it in a short period of time to see what would come out. My usual routine is to take my sound generators such as synths and then jam. I did that intensively until Saturday afternoon, but then I had a mental crash. It usually happens at some point but it was pretty interesting to see it happen like that. But the cool part was to be around people, talking and exchanging about anything coming. I wasn’t home on Netflix waiting for my energy to come back.

Later, I realized there were some ways I could have improved our productivity on the retreat. Below are some ideas I’m noting down for next time, as well as to give you some suggestions in case you plan to embark on a music retreat yourself:

Make samples as a team. Since everyone has a different background and inspirations, we could analyze some songs to try to replicate certain sounds.
Try to finish one song where everyone is involved. Each participant could use one instrument, and one person collect them all to put them into arrangements.
Use multiple people to do complex field recordings, strange sounds and atmosphere.
Make convolution images of different spaces, such as using microphones to sample the different rooms of the place we were.
Do the relay method of music making, meaning “try to do as much as you can on this track then pass it on to the next person.”
Try to do a cadavre exquis, music related.

If you have suggestions for us to try at the next retreat, let us know as we’re already planning another one!