The Friday Share A Production Tip Thread™

[Manic Harmonic]

He's referring to a noise gate, pretty much any DAW should have one.

[cmgoodman1226]

He's referring to a noise gate, pretty much any DAW should have one.

Once again, I understand exactly WHAT he's doing, am asking HOW he does it.

[Reamz]

When creating high hat patterns if your struggling use REX breaks. Take out the kicks and snares then E.Q the remaining hats and hits. Layer up several of these and you can create really good hat patterns.

Also (stealing this off icicle), when panning stuff out use a sample delay (logic) instead of panning. It delays the sound slightly in either L or R speakers and sounds like it's being panned but keeps the full stereo effect.

[dublerium]

3) Never upload something to the internet without having listened to it on at least 3 different systems, and preferably a few days apart.

Amazing tip.

Does this still totally apply to people who don't have pro monitors and use headphones to mix?

I'd say yes, but only because I remember making tunes waaaaay back when I first had FL5 and getting them to sound "good" on my computer speakers, then listening back to them in my car and them sounding like complete arse.

Agreed on this! basically I spent ages EQ'ing and fiddeling with levels on the second track I made and got it to a standard I was content with, this was using my senheiser hd sp 25 headphones, then played it through my rokit 8s (when i'd found my lost cable) and it sounded like complete arse as Wub quite rightly put it. I then EQ'd it and set levels on the rokit 8s till it sounded good again and then when listened back through the headphones it still sounded good. I'm not uploading anything I make for a long old while I don't think

[dublerium]

^^^ that was just my account though, when I knew very little on the world of production, I know there will be accounts where it is fine to just use cans so if anyone else has a headphone fable lets hear it...

[Manic Harmonic]

He's referring to a noise gate, pretty much any DAW should have one.

Once again, I understand exactly WHAT he's doing, am asking HOW he does it.

I don't know if I understand what you're asking then, When he says "insert a gate" he just means using it as a plugin on the track. what daw are you using?

[Sine69]

Keep your shit organized.

With the project I'm working on right now, there are random little audio and midi snippets everywhere, the tracks aren't organized in any logical manner, and none of them are named. It's a clusterfuck to say the least You'll save yourself a lot of time if you organize everything from the start. (Unless you prefer something like the aforementioned clusterfuck, then more power to you haha)

[Ldizzy]

here's my tip :

ive spent years trying to make music that meant something. once ive read a cat say the most important thing was to live and love.

lately ive been going out and returning the calls of my people who ended up not inviting me anywhere anymore because i was always the choking one...

tonight i went out,, i had a couple drinks and i did something incredible. ive met at least 10 dudes and 15 chicks, dancing with several ... got kisses on the cheek from unknown shortys and seen some people i didnt see in ages.. plus ive spent some time with the two djs who are good friends ofmine...

at the end of the night i didnt hang around with my dj friends because theyre my friends, i just went up to them and (ive mixed with these guys).. i said Thank you, simply cause i had a great time...

ive done this a couple times and i can say that ive NEVER been so confident of my musicality...

just live, meet people... have fun, grind with dimes while ur a 7... and ANYONE could do this if u go in the club, geta drink and focus on THAT KICK DRUM.. do what u do in ur bedroom when u feel so good about music... but ... surrounded by other human beings...

im not kidding, this is the single most genuine piece of advice ive given on this forum..

drunk posting, maybe...

but ive never been happier and ive been that caught up music nerd... now im a smiling nerd. and that means a lot when i make a beat.

[Manic Harmonic]

here's my tip :

ive spent years trying to make music that meant something. once ive read a cat say the most important thing was to live and love.

lately ive been going out and returning the calls of my people who ended up not inviting me anywhere anymore because i was always the choking one...

tonight i went out,, i had a couple drinks and i did something incredible. ive met at least 10 dudes and 15 chicks, dancing with several ... got kisses on the cheek from unknown shortys and seen some people i didnt see in ages.. plus ive spent some time with the two djs who are good friends ofmine...

at the end of the night i didnt hang around with my dj friends because theyre my friends, i just went up to them and (ive mixed with these guys).. i said Thank you, simply cause i had a great time...

ive done this a couple times and i can say that ive NEVER been so confident of my musicality...

just live, meet people... have fun, grind with dimes while ur a 7... and ANYONE could do this if u go in the club, geta drink and focus on THAT KICK DRUM.. do what u do in ur bedroom when u feel so good about music... but ... surrounded by other human beings...

im not kidding, this is the single most genuine piece of advice ive given on this forum..

drunk posting, maybe...

but ive never been happier and ive been that caught up music nerd... now im a smiling nerd. and that means a lot when i make a beat.

Amen man, surrounded by other human beings, connected with people, friends... best source of inspiration there is.

[Ldizzy]

yuuup.

[Manic Harmonic]

yuuup.

FUUUUCK YEAAHHHH

[Earjax]

Nice thread wub! Its sunday but wth, to easy control of all the frequencies in your lead, make three copies of your chosen synth and put one above an octave, one below and one in the middle, EQ them so that the lower octave controls all the lower frequencies, the middle one all the mids and the high one all the highs. This is insanely useful since you can then experiment with changing the waveforms of the different octaves to get some really awesome sounds that you otherwise wouldn't be able to make

[masterjr]

Try a bit of new york compression on your drums and it makes the whole drum track much easier to manage when working on a final mix down. Just my 2p

[Ldizzy]

Nice thread wub! Its sunday but wth, to easy control of all the frequencies in your lead, make three copies of your chosen synth and put one above an octave, one below and one in the middle, EQ them so that the lower octave controls all the lower frequencies, the middle one all the mids and the high one all the highs. This is insanely useful since you can then experiment with changing the waveforms of the different octaves to get some really awesome sounds that you otherwise wouldn't be able to make

yo this is extremely good my computer is going to hate me.

reminds me of another, easy tip.

when u write lines, especially with low sounds. like melodic 808 lines .. try to duplicate ur track and segregate the higher sounds from the lower... then eq them so they sound more alike.. push more bass in the higher ones and shit... i remember doing this when i made hip hop beats... and seeing claude von stroke doing the same last year it gave me a huge confidence boost.

[IC0N]

Listen to more music. Any and all types and genres. You might get new and interesting ideas from different genres of music.

[hasezwei]

invest in libraries for your sampler of choice, chances are good you'll even find bits used in your favorite tunes by producers you've never imagined using plain out-of-the-box samples (i'm talking specifically about the deeper more techno/idm-ish end of dubstep here)

look for emotionally extreme moments in your life, preferrably before producing. having a fight with an ex-girlfriend today was really inspiring.
sadness/depression is not a good state to make music in though, it kills your productivity.

[hutyluty]

every hour get up and dance to your tune

if you cant then you need more drums and stuff if you can it gives you a break from sitting down and a bit of exercise and dancing practice

[ChadDub]

For FL users, and possibly other DAW users, idk.

If you want to stereo expand your hi hats to make them more stereo and filling, go to the Function tab and turn the voicings down to 1, put the time to like 0:06, and put the feedback and pan to where you want it. This is much easier than cloning shit and doing it manually and shit.

[Mixe3y]

for ableton users:
if you want to split your channels to three ways instead of eqing try using the multiband dynamics and solo the channels in it

[Ldizzy]

not ableton exclusive...

using multiband dynamics plugins will prevent u from introducing "non linear phase artifacts" if i may say... thing is its a lot less cpu friendly