speed Archives - Pheek's Mixdown and Mastering

Tag Archive for: speed

Shortcuts And Speed Up Tricks

June 18, 2024/in Blog/by pheek

In case you missed it, I declared 2024 “my back-to-production year.” It started slowly because I had a lot on my plate, but as soon as it slowed down, I got into full force. Ironically, the last ten years of education I provided to students and people I mentored were based on my peak time experience, but I wasn’t applying my tricks to my workflow so much.

Sometimes, you need to focus on yourself; other times, focusing on others will provide insights. You can only explain what you truly understand; explaining to others often forces you to rethink your knowledge. Since time flies, it has made more sense to do a lot of music to see the real challenges in 2024 and perhaps find new approaches.

In this post, I will try to summarize the different shortcuts and hacks that have led me to be on the road to work incredibly fast, making 1-2 songs per day on top of my regular workload.

Why Work Fast

If you read this blog, you know I embrace speed in music-making for multiple reasons. The number one reason is that you get better at something with practice, and if you work fast to make music, you’ll work with techniques, face issues and learn something new with each session.

By stating this over and over, it only made sense that I would be fast myself, and at first, I felt a bit rusty, so it didn’t take much time to get back into it. The first step to speed is to understand where you lose time.

For this, there are two main spheres:

Idea generation: Melodies, bass lines, percussive patterns, sequences, chord progression, hooks, song structure, arrangements, etc.

Content: Sounds, recordings, effects, etc.

Idea generation matters when developing your song, while the content sphere is about how it sounds. You can have all the best ideas in the world, but what does it sound like? You might have all the sounds, yet how you arrange them will be what your song is about.

It’s a challenge to come up with both, and many people get lost in one part of this, hyper-focusing on making the best of it and forgetting that there are other things to address. Building speed involves delegating some parts to tools that can handle it while you focus on the ones you are the best at.

A good example is the use of a drum machine. One might want to focus on hook and song structure but will leave the percussive side to a drum machine that won’t need much programmation nor sound design, as it comes with its sound. Another example is from the acoustic genre, like folk music, where the sounds will be guitar and voice, so the artist can focus on the lyrics and perform without worrying about finding many sounds.

Finding Your Shortcuts Through Tools

Once you know where you lose time, it’s time to realize that technology exists to simplify your workflow. Regarding tools and plugins, here is a complete list of all the tools I use to enhance my music.

Idea Generation

Hooks, Melodies, riffs, motifs: After analyzing so many hooks from songs I love (you should do the exercise to see what you like), I can understand that they’re either sampling-related or short phrasing of notes. If you expect to make great melodies without understanding music, your best asset would be to become familiar with the basics. Knowledge is always the best investment before any use of the tool.

That said, writing ideas can be tricky. Plus, if you want to write melodies yourself, you might likely always come up with the same routine. I suggest starting with generators that can propose some starting point and then build on that.

Ableton Live 12 has many different seed generators for creating fresh ideas. I recently related to Phil Meyer’s Suite of Generators, but I also looked at Manifest Audio, which has its palette of tools freshly ready for Live 12.

If you’re not familiar with the various tools AlexKid made, he humbly started with a drum machine sequencer in Live, but soon after, he came up with multiple tools for generating ideas, such as Seqund and the suite bundles.

I also love AudioModern and Riffer, and Rozzer and Sting can be super powerful free tools. Snake just got a new version of Live 12, which is lovely.

Sounds and Content

If we are going to relate to samples, there are multiple options on the market. In the subscription model, there is always Splice (one-shots, loops, plugin rent-to-own and more), Loopcloud (one-shots, loops, midi), Tracklib (royalty-free song content to reuse), and Soundsnap (sound library from field recordings to one-shots, used mainly by movies). You can also explore free options with Freesound, Archive.org, and Samplette (random YouTube searcher).

The best way to generate new sounds is to create a macro where I have mapped the parameters of a sampler or Synth as a macro and then hit the macro’s randomizer to access a new sound.

Creativity comes from action and motion. You need to sit and work for ideas to come.

Collaboration

This is not a plugin, but collaboration has the most significant impact on speeding things up. It also depends on who you work with. In-person sessions can often result in distractions, chatting, smoking weed, and not doing that much. Ideally, I prefer remote sessions where each participant works when they have time, at the peak of their focus.

The other benefit of working remotely is collaborating with anyone, anywhere. In my case, my collaborators are often in different countries.

If you want to learn how to make music fast, work with someone who knows their way. When you swap projects, knowledge will be shared. You will find collaborators in people who do something you love and do something well that you don’t. Someone who complements you will do better than someone at your level or who has the same ways as you.

Now, here’s a twist. Sometimes, it’s good to work with someone with zero music-making experience who is in good spirits and will provide you with some ideas. I find it inspiring to be sitting in the studio with someone who will go, “I imagine the song to do this, and that can go there.” then you do what you can with that information, and whatever happens, it gets you to a place you would not explore on your own. A beginner is often enthusiastic about things you might be jaded about, giving you an appreciation for things you got bored with.

During a recent retreat, we did a jam with four people. While this wasn’t new to me, everyone else had never tried that before, and they were mind-blown by what we were doing. There was no preparation at all. We just improvised, and everything felt natural and fun. What felt like 10 minutes was almost 2 hours of weird music. That was energizing, and we all shared the music that we saw fit with others.

Templates and References

In my fast pace of music-making, I’m having two initial sessions. One is building a base idea, and the other is creating a skeleton song. As you have learned from this blog, fetching, developing, and organizing ideas should be the base of your work, and it takes a lot of time to find the ones you love. But that shouldn’t stop you either from advancing within your music-making.

Building songs from basic ideas is a good starting point; sometimes, the main idea appears as you work on them.

You will be creative by working it out and not by waiting to feel creative.

This is where templates are handy. I like to save a finished song as a template, but first, I remove it from all the sounds while keeping the MIDI and effects. If you think about it, in the 1970s, people organized a mixing board for an entire album recording, which kept uniformity across the project. It would also often be recorded in a unique studio.

Keeping the song as a template speeds up your organizing for the follow-up song(s).

Rekordbox

I once saw someone on Instagram saying everyone should DJ, and I agree. I don’t mean that everyone should perform as a DJ in clubs, but more for self-educational purposes and because it’s fun. It opens you up to many exciting understandings of how electronic music works. If you disagree, fair enough, so we should agree on one point: anyone who makes electronic music for DJs should at least learn and play as a DJ themselves.

In the last months, I went back into DJ mode and found a new range of inspiration. Plus, playing unfinished music in Rekordbox alone pointed out flaws in the arrangements and the mix that I initially felt were ok. It even altered my workflow, where I would make a skeleton arrangement for a song and then directly drop it in Rekordbox to play it with music I love so I could see what happens, what works, and what does not.

So, in a way, stepping out of Ableton Live and going into Rekordbox is a shortcut and also a headache saver.

Everyone should learn how to DJ. There is a lot to learn and it gives you appreciation for the art, for the music while educating you on how music is made. Just as much as everyone should learn how to play piano.

Templates

I’ve discussed this multiple times, but when you start making music, I recommend starting by making one template per studio session. From simple to complex, creating a template ensures that you structure future sessions, organize what you do each time you start a song, and store potential techniques to explore.

Here are some ideas to explore:

Mixing template: Create a template of multiple pre-made channels with effects for mixing.
Minimal (or any genre) template: Have a template with a collection of kicks, synth presets, and other sounds ready for you to put in the spirit of making one genre.
Sound scrubbing: Build a template with different tools for altering and destroying samples, such as granulators, distortion, modulators and samplers.
Complex routing: Perhaps you’d like to explore weird techniques of gating and side-chaining with some complex routing made in advance.
Pad collection: Load up a bunch of synths and samplers to have complex textures in layers.
Percussion swapper: Open multiple drum kits and send the same midi to various kits so you can preview your options.

The beauty of having options in a template means two possible points: the first is that you can open a template and start working on it or import channels from a project you are currently working on.

Macros and Systems

Quite often, when I open up the projects from clients, I see they use a chain of effects. Some make no sense, while others are interesting, but however it works, I never see them being grouped as macros. I’m always surprised how so few people miss the opportunity to use one of the most powerful aspects of Ableton. Not only is it easy to group that rig of effects, but who knows if it can be used later on in another song.

Turning multiple effects into a macro means:

You can map essential parameters of the effect to knobs so you can control them with PUSH or quickly have access to the knobs, all centralized in one place.
Save parameters as global presets to have different colours quickly.
Randomize your rack for unexpected results.
Modulate elements from one spot.

I’d encourage you to add this as a habit, as it will automatically pay off in the short term.

Systems are a bit like macros but a bit more advanced, so they are not easy for a newcomer to explore. What I refer to as a system is when you have built a macro that generates content for your music. This falls under the umbrella of generative content but uses macros. The advantage of generative tools are to create ideas to add to your music. It can be related to percussion or melodies or weird glitches. I have a lot of generative tools I always pull out when the idea “something’s missing” pops into my mind.

Photo by Marc Sendra Martorell on Unsplash

Make Music Faster: Self-Imposed Limitations for Expanding Creativity

January 20, 2020/in Blog, Production, Tips/by pheek

“I think we need to go backward now”, is what I said to a friend who was asking what was ahead for the year—referring to a view I had years back about recognizing when it’s time to go with the flow, and when it’s time to reverse or deflect it to move in another direction. I was thinking back to the mp3 revolution of 2001; geeks downloaded all the music they wanted thanks to Napster or other software. There was a continuous debate about music being copied and shared. Back then, it was mostly pop and commercial music taking the biggest hit from file-sharing. In underground culture, Netlabels became a mysterious movement, sharing music for free. Now free music is common, but back then it was really seen as a nonsense approach to a label, “backward thinking” even, and often talked down and ridiculed.

Back then, Dennis De Santis (who now works for Ableton) and I were approached to be part of a compilation for a German Netlabel called Thinner (which eventually became fairly well-known netlabel). Why did I do it? There were two main contributing factors:

I wasn’t putting releases out at that time, and I was a yes-man to whatever would come my way.
There was a huge new audience flow of people who wanted music for free…so why not just give it to them?

I decided to go with the flow. In doing this, you get pushed in a direction and accept that you might not control where you’ll end up. In my case, I’d say it only led me to great things—meeting people, getting gigs, and a lot of attention.

It was no surprise that when I started my own label, Archipel, in 2004, I kicked it off as a netlabel as well. But in 2006, I decided to go against the flow and do what many didn’t really approve of, which was sell music on Beatport. It was the beginning of digital music sales and many people thought it wouldn’t work, but it did really well.

My point is, there are times when it makes sense to keep going in a certain direction, and there are other times when changing directions is more sensible. Keeping this in mind, being flexible is something that can applied to many spheres, such as your music aesthetic, or even a song itself.

As I’ve mentioned, I recently joined Weeklybeats—a challenge to create one song per week, for the entire year, and I’ve experienced a great feeling of freedom. Normally, I impose a very rigorous workflow on myself when I make music, and often it can take me months to finish a song. Switching up my approach to a faster pace forced me to think less. Yes, there’s a risk of reduced quality with increased speed, but at the same time, with the experience I’ve gained over time, I know I can at least make sure that the production is solid.

I also realized that my number one distraction is that I’m constantly bombarded with new music tools promising tons of new features and spend a hell of a lot time going through them and waiting for a sale to buy them, but never really pushing the stuff I already own to its maximum potential. With this weekly challenge in mind, now that I have self-imposed limitations, I feel like I’ve exprienced a huge breakthrough.

Time

Deadlines make you creative and productive. A friend who is a father of two told me recently that he realized that he was creating his best ideas in moments where he’d squeeze a quick session of music, knowing that he’d be limited to maybe 10 minutes. So, let’s say he had to go to the grocery store; while people were getting ready, he’d open Ableton and would test a new macro he made, or would try to make temporary arrangements. The time-constraint made him more efficient than when he’d have a full evening to himself to make music, which often led to nothing interesting.

My theory is that with too much time, you can spoil what you make. This is why I think 5 hours of studio time spent on one song is not the best idea—a thought I have proven to be correct for myself while taking part in this weekly challenge. Now, I take a few hours to create an idea, save it, and later will expand it—the next day I add a layer, and so on. I’m limited in time and I do multiple things at once, but I’ll squeeze in 20 minutes here, 40 minutes there, then 10 minutes before going to bed.

Try this fun Max patch that will time your work and give you an idea of how much time you’ve spent on things.

Tip: Give yourself a due-date for wrapping up a song and accepting that it is what it is, once you hit it. It’s more important to move on than to try to reach some illusory perfection. Use your agenda alarm as a reminder.

I decide the length of my song before trying to speed things up. This is a tip discussed many times in the blog but I will insist that doing this is a strong limitation that clarifies a lot of things.

Tools

If you’re a reader of this blog, you’ll remember that for one song I encourage you to focus on one main idea supported by two minor ideas. It’s really easy to get lost trying to find an idea to start with. My take is to try to use what comes out fast.

Synths: Know what you have—cycle through synths that came with your DAW, and some that didn’t. I encourage people to get at least one synth that is an analog emulation of a classic model (Arturia does a great job at these) and another that is focused on a wide range of sound design options (I’m a big fan of Rob Papen and encourage you to test his products).

Samplers: Honestly, Ableton Live’s Sampler does the job for me. There are a few more alternatives out there but in the end, they all do a similar job except some have more bells and whistles. I always come back to the stock sampler because it’s simple and extremely versatile.

Once you have decided if you’ll generate a sound or use a sample, it’s time to play with it. Mapping a MIDI controller is very useful for playing different notes. Sometimes I see people in front of their keyboard and they are not sure what to do. This might sound obvious but when jamming, I test:

different pitches by playing higher and lower notes.
harder or softer hits to see how the velocity influences things.
listening to the sound a different volume. Sometimes a sound at very low volume is much more interesting than loud.
alternating between short and long notes. Depending on your preset, it can play differently.
playing fast and slow notes to see how they feel.

Keep in mind that you can make a song out of any sound if you how to use it. The reason why we discard sounds is because we’re after something else. We’re not paying attention to the sound and its potential. Limiting yourself of only one tool per song eliminates a lot of exploration time. It also forces you to do something with what you have.

Same goes for reverb, compression and EQ. I’ll only use one or two, max. When I’m in mix mode, I usually explore different compressors.

Composition

If you use a modular, or hardware, you have your gear in front of you and you’ll just start working with what you have. This limitation forces you to be creative. But on a computer, you’ll have many ways to make music.

Templates. To speed up my work, I created a main template that I use to create macros and techniques, while recording everything. I mostly jam and will not spend too much time going into detail—raw on purpose. When I have something potentially interesting, I make a channel called “ideas” and put my clips in it. Later, when I start working on a song, from the left side browser, I can open the template and import the “ideas” channel in my new song to select from it. Have multiple templates that you import your sounds to, and in that other template, create sound modifiers. For instance, I have a dub template filled with tons of reverb modulators and delays. I can drop anything through it and something dubby will emerge.

Jam. I try to invite people to jam their song as much as possible. Whenever I have a loop as a main idea, I’ll automatically start recording and will mute it, play it, change volume and try different combinations. This lets me explore ideas I couldn’t discover if I just mouse-edit the clips in arrangements.

Sound

For the longest time, we wanted to have access to as many samples as possible, but now that we have them, we’re completely lost. Try to decide which snare or clap you want. Swapping out a sound isn’t super easy but I found this amazing step sequencer that fixed this problem. It’s made by XLN and it’s called XO.

If you want to make music quickly, you need to find your favourite sounds and create drum kits. Import them whenever you start a new song. Back in the day you’d have a 909 or a 808, and that would be your drum kit, end of story. So create a good main kit, then add a few different ones, and that’s it.

And for crying out loud, stop thinking that you need to do everything from scratch, all the time! Yes, it’s cool, but it slows you down a lot.

I mentioned that I’d “go backwards” this year. What I meant by that is that all my habits have to be upgraded or changed. Habits keep me safe and comfortable, while feeling uneasy forces me to be creative and think outside-the-box. Join me in this approach; I’m sure there’s magic waiting for you too!