Monday 12 May 2014

10 music production tips (For Beginners)…

Hi Guys!

It's been a long time since my last post  I am conscious of the fact that I should post more! Sorry for the lack of activity. I do think about posting things but actually never get round to it or ideas just fizzle out my head but not today!

After having a conversation with a teenager (about 16/17 yrs old) I was really inspired to write a blog post today. It all came about after a bright eyed, energetic, & enthusiastic teenager asked me if I could give him some production tips. Bearing in mind this kid is sitting his GCSE's at the moment and the fact that he doesn't know much about music production, I did not want to blow his mind away with parallel compression techniques and how he should be eqing his drums so he sort of stumped me a little bit. The spoken of teenager who shall remain nameless is fairly new to music production, he is using FL Studio at the moment and knows about Ableton  & Logic but has never used them. However, I am fairly familiar with Ableton & Logic but not with FL Studio so unfortunately I could not give him any secret tips on Fruity Loops so off the top of my head I rolled off 10 music production tips that were quite vague but appropriate to new music productions and which can be used on all music DAWs. So if you are new to production here are a few tips that hopefully will help you out a little:

# 1 Don't worry about what DAW you use. It's not what you use, it's how to use it. Pay no attention the snobs who all race to get the latest update of Logic. Shiny doesn't always mean better. Logic X (at this moment of writing) has a few bugs i.e alignment guides… (studio robots will certainly know what I mean here!)

# 2 Use the best quality sounds that you can. Put it like this, you can't polish a turd! That's easy to  remember or SISO
s̶h̶i̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶t̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ 
# 3 Take it easy & have fun. Don't put too much pressure on yourself, it's going to take a little bit of time until your churning out hits

# 4 Stay organised. I'm not the most organised person in the world but I do try and keep my sample banks and music in order just so that I know where everything is. It'll save you loads of time & it'll help your work flow.

# 5 Take breaks. OK you want to develop your skills and spend as much time as you can making music but you ears will need the rest and it'll help you with creativity too.

# 6 Don't be afraid of using sample packs. The big boys get paid lots of money to make them, if you're still scared that people will notice - be shrewd with them.

# 7 Sample a kick drum off a track you like. Everybody does it. Don't spend too much time fanny around looking for the right kick. Be Bold

# 8 Reference your tracks. This is not copying. There's a difference between wanting to use every single sound from your favourite track and referencing. Use several tracks to get an idea of what sort volume, arrangement & EQ you should be using.

# 9 Try and finish what you started. OK so it might be a big ask at the start but if you can get used to writing intros, outros, drops and build ups this will help your work flow in the future. All the top producers in the world know how to make a great intro, build up, drop and outro and that's because they have finished loads of tracks.

#10 The best is yet to come. You will get better. Practice practice practice. It might seems like you'll never sound like your favourite DJ/Producer but remember the expert in anything was always a beginner - just like you!

So there are 10 tip quick music production tips for music production beginners!

I hope they help, good luck & great choice choosing to make music - it's so much fun! You'll love it

Be sure to let me know how you get on making & producing music - I wanna hear your productions ;)

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Thursday 27 February 2014

Just a general observation...

Just sitting here on a random thursday night and my mind is wandering and thinking about music as it generally is and I was thinking about the 'deep house' scene here in the UK at the minute.

I find it funny that music seems to be getting slower with pitched down vocals and big heavy baselines and I find it ironic that the early rave scene circa 1990 consisted of pitched up vocals and high synths and early rave music was quite fast, you know it was 'that' music the older generation considered 'BOOM BOOM BOOM' music.

So the rave music of today is quite slow with pitched down vocals and deep baselines which is the complete the opposite of the rave music which started it all.

Quite ironic I think, don't you?