Random Production Tips Thread™

[grooki]

allow yourself some leeway to suck; not every tune is gonna be the one.

true.

[dequo]

hah sometimes when i have no inspiration i look around my room and us the shape of actual objects to create a sound. does this make sense?

[jobbanaught]

When you work on a tune, walk around the house/your flat and listen to it from outside your actual production room. When it sounds good sitting in the next room with your face to the wall, the mixdown is all good. Just try it with one of your tunes with a not so good mixdown and compare to a release from a big producer and you see what I mean

[Brisance]

hah sometimes when i have no inspiration i look around my room and us the shape of actual objects to create a sound. does this make sense?

only under acid...

[spire]

when introducing new elements, put it in a couple of db or so 'too loud' and fade it back to its 'normal' level to allow the next element to do it. sounds fab.

catches the ear.

thats one thing i notice all the time but never remember to implement in my own tracks.

[spire]

Sometimes its ok to NOT be picky about your drum sounds. Just pick some that sound ok, keep working on the rest of the track. About 50% of the time, by the time you get the meat of your track layed out, the drums sound fine. and also, if you pick drums you dont normally use it can spark new ideas in your head, the same old drums can lead to the same old "feeling" of a track.


kind of a lengthy "tip" (thats what she said), but it works for me.

[james fox]

for drums that smack:

use a transient shaper like sonnox transmod to bring up the transients of your drum bus so that they are really slapping you about the chops. then clip a few db off them using a soft clipper - gclip is the one i use.

bingo - instant big drums

[wub]

If you use samples, start a favourites folder to let you lay down beat patterns in now time

[calculate]

Process is more important than outcome!

If outcome drives process we will only go to where we have been before.
But if process drives outcome, we might not know where we are going but we will know we want to be there!

[paradigm_x]

In terms of work flow, one thing I can say is:

LEARN THE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

=

PRODUCTION NINJA

yup, great point. Im still learning cubase's but its so much quicker. Maccs a big fan of this too.

[notch]

lets go people its friday.. drop ur panties.. I want some tips...

[wub]

Mess around by putting your effects chain in different orders. I got some mad crazy effects last night dicking around with the order my flange/distortion/compressor were

[FSTZ1]

not so much a tip but a request

put a bass kick at bar 1 of your tune, especially if the intro is ambient and floaty

it'll make it alot easier for the dj to drop in a club

[contakt321]

In Ableton Live 7 or newer:

Create a basic drum beat using a regular drum rack or simpler.

Create a Drum Rack of just Kicks, then one of just Snares, then one of just hihats, then one of just random percussion.

Copy the clip of your basic drum beat to Kick drum rack, the Snare drum rack and the hiat hat drum rack. In each respective clip delete the midi data of all of the other instruments (example - in the clip on the Kick drum rack, delete all the hihats and snares).

Mute your original drum track

NOW: you can select all of the notes in for example the kick track, and simply hit the up or down arrow to quickly audition different kick sounds in your song, the same goes for the other instruments.

I do this to build a drum beat quickly, write the basic song, then I go back and put together the ultimate drum kit using this method.

[DZA]

Dont smoke weed

[deadly_habit]

hardware samplers sound better than soft samplers

[5-0-what]

Dont smoke weed

this might be the worst advice that you could give any up and comming producer i know without a fatty i would have thrown my laptop at a wall a few times