I know we have the production bible and other stickies of wonderful info that you should be reading REGARDLESS. but i'm interested in hearing personal techniques/tips that you deem important or helped you out a lot or wish you had someone explain to you when you began making music.
I start it off with a pretty important tip which I already briefly mentioned. GAIN STRUCTURING, LEARN IT, UNDERSTAND IT, USE IT. Your mixes will improve dramatically once you learn it. Its definitely something I wish I knew from the getgo.
Definitely read up on the "gain structure and mixing aka THE MONEYSHOT THREAD" http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=74832
Obviously i'm new here and if you guys deem this not thread worthy i'll take it down.. I just thought it was a good idea.
EDIT: Decided to add most of the good tips people have said into this first post for easy reference..
Manic Harmonic wrote:-DEFINITELY compression and eq. learn as much about that as you can.
-learn music theory inside and out and then - forget all of it. (No, really)
-spend some money on good headphones or monitors.
-try to get the idea down as quick as you can before designing the sounds. (I text myself ideas and hum melodies into my phone constantly at work.)
-test your mixes on different sound systems. ipod headphones, studio monitors, laptop speakers, cell phone, car stereo, etc.
-if you feel confident in what you're making, market yourself. there's plenty of people with no talent making it big because they do that, and there's plenty of people with a lot of talent that stay in the shadows because of that. (I'm still working on that)
-stealing chord progressions from other songs is perfectly acceptable as long as it doesn't sound like that song.
-don't force yourself to finish a song. if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, you can always save it for later.
-SAVE IT FOR LATER. don't get rid of your old songs because you think they suck.
-collaborate with other people, use their equipment, computer, etc., and vice versa.
-if you know someone personally that is a talented musician/producer/artist/whatever, pick their brain as much as you can.
-just because a song is "Poppy" doesn't make it bad.
-inspiration comes from life. if you want to get musically inspired, do something fun.
-drugs don't make your music "better" or "worse," they just make it different.
-someone told me something about a year ago that changed the way i listen to and write music. this guy opened up for my uncle and did all this crazy, beautiful, almost jazzy sort of acoustic stuff, sort of a blend of about 15 different genres of music. i asked him "how do you come up with music like that?" he told me "don't listen to the same band/artist for more than a week." i don't follow that advice religiously, because that would be absurd, but i really try to switch it up a lot and listen to different kinds of music and different artists regularly. it's much easier to get inspired.
thats all i can think of right now.
Manic Harmonic wrote:I can't believe I forgot this... if you get nothing else out of this thread, BACK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE! Invest in a 1tb or more hard drive. I've been seriously depressed for weeks before because I lost EVERYTHING. And make sure you back it up right. If you're hard drive goes out, it really sucks to figure out why samples are missing, and why certain plugins wont work, why certain songs wont open, etc.
And
If you're going to buy gear, research it VERY thoroughly. Impluse buys can be expensive mistakes,
Phase Down wrote:1. Your equalizer or spectrum meter are your best friend when it comes to producing a song. If you don’t have a spectrum meter plug-in you can cross reference your song by playing it in any music program like winamp http://www.winamp.com By analyzing the EQ and its responses. Find the frequency range that is not jumping very high and fill it with sounds of the appropriate frequency. You should also use your eq to pump these missing frequencies if they are coming in too low.
2. Do not mud up your song by putting to many sounds of the same frequency range this will not produce a desirable effect, keep your song clean sounding. Take an overview of your song and what you are using to fill these specific frequency ranges. Get rid of any sounds that are causing complications in the mix they will only make it sound worse.
3. Clearly label all of your sounds, FX, and anything that you can about the song you are writing because chances are you’ll eventually come back to it without a clue of where you left off. If you work on one song at a time sticky notes and/or masking tape for your mixer and monitor will do the trick quite nicely.
4. Save your song as new versions, as it progresses, so that if it starts sounding worse than the previous work you can go back to its basic structure and re-write it.
5. Hearing the same riffs over and over can start to numb your ears of its catchy sound. Go back to what you are working on after a nights sleep its always better to have a listen with fresh ears.
6. Keep the volume at a reasonable level while you are working in your studio and only turn it up once and a while. This will help yourself from going deaf and will help maintain your interest in the song while you are producing it.
7. I have said it before and I will say it again, save a back up file of your work, hard drives randomly crash without warning, it’s better to sort through a bunch of files on CDs than to loose your song.
8. Experiment as much as you can, as long as you have back-ups you can always go back. Producing music is all about stretching the boundaries outside of the mainstream.
9. Keep all of your files in order sometimes this can help when going into the songs final mix down. and really helps when backing up all of your songs rough work for any future re mixes to come.
10. Continue to produce lots of music, you will always learn something after writing every song. Its all about finding that one good sample/sound that catches your ears attention, and sticks in your head for the rest of the day.
These are all great things to know as a beginner or for anyone who wants to better their workflow, the only point I do not fully agree on is 5, definitely take break’s and stay fresh but sometimes you really lose your feel on that song after a night’s sleep and becomes another one of many unfinished work, scattered around your hard disk.
literally just posted that somewhere else, then saw this thread and hope someone will benefit from it.
skwiggo wrote:the two main ones i wish i had known about are:
1. RETURN TRACKS and automating them - they are so useful for adding effects to multiple tracks. i used to add inserts on every channel DOH! cue cpu hogging
2. SAMPLING - i used to try and synthesize everything (including drums to a large extent) which was disasterous as im not great at synthesis. now i sample a lot more using a diverse range of sources. i feel that it has opened up a lot of opportunities for me. now i try to use a combination of both.
also obvious ones such as gain structure, eq, compression (use to overuse and underuse it - still have problems with eq and compression tbh)
--> Control your peaks. It is okay to use a limiter. The limiter police will not come crashing through your windows if you use a limiter.
