Less than amateur producers...assemble!

[miscreant]

One piece of advice I have for people struggling to write tunes is to give up and start again after an hour if your not really getting anywhere. I have wasted days of my life trying to make a tune work that just isnt working.

Since imposing this rule I have finished so many more tunes, just by scrappng everything and starting again (maybe saving patches I liked or keeping certain parts in to work around).

[kidshuffle]

What are some decent free piano emulators anyways? I wanna get back on some old rave business

Most DAWs come with a piano plugin as standard. Cubase & FL do for sure. FL it's called Keys (I think), can't remember the name of it in Cubase.

I suck and use reaper tho

[Sheff]

i never understood reaper for the ten minutes i used it

[nowaysj]

I started to reply to you sheff, but this is turning into a 10 pager. If you have the wherewithal to read, I will make this information available to you at a later date. It really isn't production focused. More about self awareness and the creative process.

Thanks though for posting this. I've been looking for the seed to build this crystal around. THX

[collige]

have fun
finish songs
don't use tutorials
RTFM
don't produce when you don't want to

[nowaysj]

have fun
finish songs

A lot of times, these two are mutually exclusive, for me.

[christophera]

don't dick around trying to make sounds all day. do some youtube tutorials and get a collection of sounds you really like working with. then when you're sitting around not doing anything, it's those sounds that are swirling around in your head, and when you sit down you can make it happen smoothly

[Brian Oblivion]

also i tend to mix as i go, but for some people who are just starting out but don't have the ears they spend time overly tweaking and engineering when they should be getting their ideas down before they forget them.

definatly. I got about a day, maybe 2 of working on a track before I start to switch off to it, if I dont have the structure down by then the chances of it getting finished go down drasticly. If you still dont have a tried and tested technique for getting each of the elements right, drums, bass, pads etc, then youre probably going to spend ages experimenting with eqs/compressors/distortions etc and still fail to get a couple of the elements sitting right. You really want to get the track fleshed out before you go down that road because once you start fiddling the likelyhood is youre going to be there untill youre sick of the tune and cant get creative with it again.

People have said about limiting yourself, its the best way to go. Work out what you need, an eq, distortion, reverb etc and find the best one you have of each, use it till you know it inside out, when it starts to piss you off that its not doing what you want it to then youll know what you are looking for when upgrading it. Make a folder and go through your sample horde, pick out things that are cool and you think 'fuck yeah, this has to be used in something', get a good range of stuff. Maybe even do it with the synths too, go and cherry pick a bunch of patches and add them to your favourites/write them down/group them somehow so they are easy to get back to. Nothing is worse than flicking through samples, effects, patches endlessly to find something that works, ruins your momentum. Get your bag of goodies together and say ok, Im gonna make a few tracks just using these and then just focus on putting it together.

when you've got it 90% there you can start experimenting with different ways of mixing it down with various effects and go back to your samples and say 'ok I need a swishy thing to go here and a little vocal to go here' and have a good hunt for specific things you now feel it needs, but the tricks to get over that tipping point while the idea is still hot.

[Sheff]

I started to reply to you sheff, but this is turning into a 10 pager. If you have the wherewithal to read, I will make this information available to you at a later date. It really isn't production focused. More about self awareness and the creative process.

Thanks though for posting this. I've been looking for the seed to build this crystal around. THX

this is intriguing...and yes i love reading

[weedlefruit]

Totally know about having trouble finishing and coming up with ideas! Ive tried a few different angles to get around being stuck for ideas, Ive found literally trying to do something I would never do helps alot. For example making a tune that is real real real simple. My favourite tune I have made called sleeper on my soundcloud if your interested, is literally kick and snare and simple as fuck bassline that has a slow cutoff/LFO pattern thats pretty standard really. Nothing exciting, no bells or whistles but I found challening myself to simplify the process helped me hone it all in.

Something else I had noticed helps is I am a logic user, and on logic there are alot of basic simple instrument presets which I normally would hate to use, But sometimes i'll just browse through, ton of reverb and a maybe a bit of distortion on say a tribal marimba style sound or something, play out a real simple thoughtess melody and work around that. Might not make a good tune, but helps me get creative and since doing these things i've found it alot easier to get into something more complex.

Another thing that helped me not only in creativity but in general mixing and production is doing remixes, preferably with full stems of instrument tracks. If you dont normally use vocals in a track as I never do, Ive found mixing a vocal track so that its clear and listenable with everything else helps you hear how the levels of everything else need to change, another element to use as a base.

This may all sound ridiculous as im not at work, therefore high haha but yeah definately starting to use vocals in tracks and simplifying i've noticed improvements in alot of areas! Great thread by the way, im getting loads of ideas already

[pain]

This was already said better in kaiori breathe's thread : http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=176281 but basicly keep on keeping on and something will come. And finish your tracks no matter how bad they sound. The experience you get will pay off in the long run. The limiting of plug ins someone mentioned earlier is also a good idea as it forces you to be creative.

[Sheff]

some great reads in here, brian, weedle, pain big up and to everyone else before the mentioned posters
it may sound like the simplest of advice to some people but its a huge help to me, thanks

[hifi]

what i do which is pretty easy for me is i would just open up a bunch of saved presets i have made or have and in one project just get down a nice melody and have a bunch of different melodies of main leads I would use in a track in one project so when I want to start a track i would go in that project and pull one out and work from there. it would just be a starting point i wouldn't compose many whole intros in one project that would be too complicated aha but that helps me

[test_recordings]

There's a website dedicated to facilitating collaborations, it was mentioned in Harmony Central's newsletter so it's probably worth checking out. I apologise for I cannot find the link right now! You might be able to work it out, it was named something 'groove' or some other such

[deesee]

best piece of advice ever passed to me is make sure your samples are decent. you can polish a turd but its still a turd. also my problem was I always used to EQ everything wayyyy to much then everything ended up sounding weak, just because i thought i needed to EQ that much. now i try EQ as little as possible and use decent samples.

also i always have a seperate track for your sub and one for your mids and make sure everything else in ur mix isn't clashing with the sub.

just keep making tunes it just comes to you after a while you get comfortable with what your doing. also don't get too many VSTs at first cos ull just end up tweaking for ages find one you like and get to know it.

[laurent__duval]

one of my best mates is a hardcore roland collector and makes acid at home. he's got so many synths and drum machines its ridiculous and he must spend 5 hours a day playing with them. knows that shit like the back of his hand, its beautiful to watch. but can he make a song or put together a whole set? can he bollocks. he makes a sick main theme, fucks about with it for an hour or so tweaking the synths and making beats then stops it all and starts on something else. so frustrating that he's got the potential and ideas to make some incredible music but never finishes anything off. GRRR!

[circleofpsy]

My best bits of advice are...

1) Give yourself permission to suck for a while. Seriously. I spent the my first year of production miserable because i could hear amazing, vivid music in my head & couldn't get it out. Its fine to write Mala/Skream clones starting out, you'll get much further in long run if you're enjoying the whole process. When you're skydiving, you don't jump out of the plane just get back to the ground.

2) Start out with sampling. Sound design is a motherfucker to learn, i still struggle. Sampled 808 kick = instant weighty sub, Sample a few synths from tunes you love, you can make drums out of pretty much anything, chop up a few acapellas & you're sorted. Start laying down some ideas... technical skiil will come with time

3) Ableton is a great tool for getting over that "ive got loops but not songs" hump. Buy a launch pad & play your ideas as a live session. Over time, tracks seem to develop a flow of their own

4) Don't piss away you're money on gear you don't need. Scratch only had a reel2reel 4 track in the BLack ARK, Burial builds his beats with Soundforge.... get me?
(Edit*** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Stcf_8H_ ... QL&index=6)

5) Don't force it. Everyone has a few off days. If you're coming out with gash, go have a fuckin picnic or whatever

Close internet explorer... Launch DAW

[test_recordings]

My best bits of advice are...

1) Give yourself permission to suck for a while. Seriously. I spent the my first year of production miserable because i could hear amazing, vivid music in my head & couldn't get it out. Its fine to write Mala/Skream clones starting out, you'll get much further in long run if you're enjoying the whole process. When you're skydiving, you don't jump out of the plane just get back to the ground.

On this, make suer you're aware you suck. My mate refused to listen to good dubstep just because he'd know how bad he really was in comparison Lose the delusion of "Wow I can make dubstep with just a kick, snare and LFO set to filter cut-off"

[.onelove.]

Could really do with a beginners thread in the production forum really. It's a bit intimidating posting supposedly obvious questions or really shabby first attempts when a lot of people in there have been doing it for years.

[wub]

Could really do with a beginners thread in the production forum really. It's a bit intimidating posting supposedly obvious questions or really shabby first attempts when a lot of people in there have been doing it for years.

There are three of them as Stickies at the top of the board. One is even called "Want to make Dubstep? Start here..."