Post your production tips

[Anomaly]

Post your production tips. They should be hardware or software nuetral.

1. use eq and panning to make your drums sound less cluttered
2. If you have to put delay on your melodies or bassline to make them sound good, go back to the drawing board.
3. 909 drum samples should be used in extreme moderation.


Post yours!!

[Blake]

Originally Posted by Anomaly

1. use eq and panning to make your drums sound less cluttered

i agree, this is one of those "must do" things in my book.

[sealvl]

duplicate ambient tracks, and pan one all the way to the left, and one all teh way to the right

[Stefan Anion]

1. Keep your drums mono and pan percussion left and right.
2. Use compression, but use it right, it will do magic with drumsounds.
3. Basslines: If it's big, keep it mono, you don't wandle the needle to skip. A little bit of Chorus can do wonders to a boring Bass Sound.
4. Take your copy of "BT Breaks from the Nu Skool" and burn it. I admit, i've used a few bits of it, but after hearing 8,933,955 tracks with the same BT Loop i've decided to not ever use it again for anything.
5. Make your own Synth Sounds. There's nothing cooler than having your own textures and blips and blops than sampling stuff that's already been sampled a thousand times.
6. Experiment: build weird synths combined of TapeDecks and Guitar Effects or Crosswire old Casio's and Yamaha Toy Keyboards...the results are a library of original sounds that will make your sound more unique.

[Stefan Anion]

oh and one more:

make sure to have a window in your studio. fresh air r gud for creativity

[Stefan Anion]

thanks man. inbetween projects i'll usually spend a week or so and just sit there and make sounds. if you're using software only take this advice: BUY A REAL SYNTH. you'll never know what you're missing if you don't. software is cool, but hardware is just better. it's more involved, you can fiddle with 3 or 4 knobs at once and creating sounds on a piece of hardware really teaches you a thing or two about dynamics and synthesis. plus having a limitation (like the small LED screens on most gear) really teaches to make the most out of that piece of gear....instead of having a hundred billion confusing options in software....

[ZipperCream]

I agree with making your own sounds. I just recently bought a portable recording device to record ambient sounds. I'll take the samples, tweak them out, and layer with others. The end result can be amazing.

[Eddie Archive]

I said it in a thread before.........











































SAVE YOUR WORK REGULARLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[tekloid]

more cowbell

[datguy]

Listen on a bunch of different sound systems, if you can make it sound good on a bad system, it will sound great on a tight one (most of the time)

Beats and Basslines are the most important things in a dance track, get those right or it will never feel solid

Layer, Layer, Layer, layer the same patterns with different sounds to phatten it up, then smash all the layers down into one sound and apply the same compression, fx, and eq to tie it together (works great with beats too)

Be Original

[datguy]

more cowbell

I got a perscription

[The Nudist Buddhist]

Live instrumentation/vocals are your friend. And yeah, fresh air cleanses the mind & soul.

PS - Mashups are great for when you get bored w/ making your own stuff.

Aite... Here we go:

Stack 'em and Pack 'em - Stack your Snare's and Kicks 3 or 4 deep. Doing so can create a thick 'snap' and 'punch' that you'd be hard pressed to create using a single one-hit. Compress (Tastefully) these drums through their own BUS for Easy EQing.

Kick a Hole in it - Toss a Parametric EQ onto your kick drum and set the Q really high. Move the Freq back and forth until you can get a good feel for what frequency range is represented in your kick drum. Once that's established, write it on the a piece of paper, remove the ParaEQ and notch down those frequencies on your bassline. This will allow for your Kick to punch through the that thick slab of bass you've created. Much more effected then trying to gain the kickdrum up to clipping point so that you can hear it. Wanna have a little more fun. Stick a gate onto the bassline, sidechain it and have it trigger when your kick drum happens. This will cause a hole to get created each time your kick punches.

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right - You've got four directions to work with in your tracks stereoscape. Low Freq - High Freq / Left Pan to Right Pan. Listen to your track in a pair of headphones and pay attention to locations where an 'area' might sound empty. Spread your sounds wide so that they don't step on each others feet. Roll off freq's that do not add to your track. That really thick pad doesn't need to dig down to 30Hz. Roll it off right as the bassline is starting to become audible. Lots of stuff sounds -really- good right at 2Khz. Make sure your not stacking everything in this frequency range, pan it out filter it down a little. Drawing with too many 'colors' in one area tends to make black mud.

More cush'n for the push'n - I tend to make my drums 3db louder than the rest of my track. Set the levels of your drums and then arrange the remaining levels accordingly. This will help keep the groove of your track solid rather than getting lost as you add more and more stuff.

Less is more (Unless your purchasing Whores) - Make each one of your sounds count. You've got ~5 minutes to tell an auditory story, don't waste your time or the time of your listener with extra fluff. If you find yourself adding tons of reverb to 'fill up space' - start over. Keep your pieces interesting make them have purpose. Buying more Equipment doesn't make your track better. Adding more 'sounds' doesn't make your track better. Doing more with the Equipment you have makes your track better. Doing more with the 'sounds' in your track makes your track better.

I'll write more later... =)

[Anomaly]

Good post.

Originally Posted by DJ^3

Kick a Hole in it - Toss a Parametric EQ onto your kick drum and set the Q really high. Move the Freq back and forth until you can get a good feel for what frequency range is represented in your kick drum. Once that's established, write it on the a piece of paper, remove the ParaEQ and notch down those frequencies on your bassline. This will allow for your Kick to punch through the that thick slab of bass you've created. Much more effected then trying to gain the kickdrum up to clipping point so that you can hear it. Wanna have a little more fun. Stick a gate onto the bassline, sidechain it and have it trigger when your kick drum happens. This will cause a hole to get created each time your kick punches.

I wish you could show me I understand the concept and the result, I need to figure out how to make it happen.

[PointBender]

I have two many tips, I dont have time to write them all down. Chorus on basslines? Thats a new one!

I advocate buying a synth as well, way more control!