Undiscovered

Hi everyone, I was thinking in how I make my music, how I produce It, sound by sound comparing it with other's peoples ways of produce music.

Some people have asked me about how I produce My music so I hope this will help somebody or just kills my free time or wathever... Hope you write something...

So Gow I produce...

Let's say I have an idea, usually I record something with my guitar in a cassette for remembering how it was or there’s a Jam recorded in my sequencer software (fruity) or something in my mind... This topic is not about composing, is about production so I will not deepen on that....

I start with the main melody. Looking for a sound that comes nearly to what I want to express, kinda piano, kinda synth, mellow, etc... and get the sound shape attack, decay, duration of what I want. Those sounds are not the finals, are just something to structure the song, I let the dedicated job looking for a sound for later when there's something working. (If you look for hours for "that" sound maybe you'll lost all the producer inspiration of the moment...).

I then look for some drum loops that defines the genre of the song and helps me to record and arrange the tracks.

When I have both It's easier to add something to fill the gaps.. How many gaps? It depends of the fullness that I'm looking for, or that sound in my mind.

I make my music as a hobby, and as a way to relieve the stress... so I produce freely...

I wait for the sounds in my mind, listening to that melody and beat sometimes comes a rhythm section or a bass section in mind... So I start the bass VSTi or maybe plug my bass and start looking for the bass notes and the rhythm. I mostly work with a bass VSTi because I can edit the result after the work. When I record live bass composing it's very bored to overdo and edit the live recording, or just punch in the record... this kills inspiration... so I work mostly in the digital domain and if I wanna a live bass I copy the composition of my VSTi bass and record it with the bass guitar. Same for guitars and drums (I don't have a real drum but in the 80% of my songs I play drums live using battery).

Now I have the basics, the beat, the Main melody and the rhythm, only I have to "decorate" the song.
For composition issues I don't dig in the sounds, only I use something closer to what I want so I look for a sound, and start to make arranges to the song. Maybe a full live part or something with an arpeggiator, or simple "bips" in the song.... all depends of the style and the people who know my music knows that I don't have a much defined style.

I'm bored so I'm writing a lot but I guess this will be useful to someone... hehe

When the composition is somewhere nearly to ready, it comes the marvelous digital advantage: editing.

Now the sounds can be changed, editing the notes, tempos, duration, accents, sounds or effects...
Here comes a search for a more detailed sound now I have something coherent about the song, It's like equalize, It's not the same to do a eq job on a single track than listening to all the mix... The same comes with the sounds in the tracks... when you have all maybe you realize that the marvelous oddity kills the rhythm so you'll have to replace that sound.... that’s why I let dedicated work on sounds to the stage where the song have a body and face.

I think here comes the stage of adding and/or fine tuning effects... mostly I use reverbs... the delays and choruses are added with the synths I use, in general every synth and preset comes with his variety of effects... so when I sculpture a sound I do the fx process too.

Obviously this is not that methodical, and is not a mathematical process because there are many jumps between stages and sounds, but in general it's the way I do my music.

Once I've get the tracks I work as I was in an studio. I render all my tracks separately and get it into audition for mixing.

What I usually do is to check and prepare track by track doing some compression to get the most of each track and light after effects, then I cut the end tails and when all of this is done I load all the tracks (usally 8 to 18) on the multitrack view and reorganize the tracks.

I put the names on the tracks (bass, main perc, guitar, etc...), then I put them in order of appearance in the song form top to bottom... then I adjust the boundaries of the track and make some cuts to the silent parts, that helps with the amount of CPU usage in passages where maybe the CPU is computing 7 tracks of silence....

Now I adjust the overall volume, leveling all to -14 db and starting to adjust general volumes.

When I finally have some good and appropriate volumes for each track, that's where mixing begins.

My method is simple, I work with the levels envelopes as a compressor, trying to get always a 100% of the bits. So if there's only a instrument it will be a 100% of the volume, if there is 10 instruments they all have to total that 100%.... that's my way in a resume but obviously is not that mathematical because I don't want to kill the dynamics of my songs... but mainly I work with this sentence : "in this moment of the song I have X tracks so what’s the desired presence of each one in the song?" This makes me evaluate the song in many aspects, because you can have your house bass leading everything but then you like the kick leading everything too... and then the lead.. so what do you really want in that desired moment? That helps me with the flow of the song and the debut of each instrument in the track going in and out in desired moments.

I work on post production FXs, pan, the ducking bass with the sidechain compressor (if I want to), and those things, and finally I check my levels to obtain a master level near to 0 without moving the master level, I raise or down the individuals tracks levels equally to maintain the relative levels, then I mixdown to a file.

This file is the one that goes to another stage to mastering where the process is all in Ozone, doing in that order EQ, MASTER REVERB (not much), STERO IMAGE, EXITERS, COMPRESSION and LIMITING.

When I have my final monitor good sound Master. I listen then In my stereo and in a boom box and my sisters stereo. I do some changes to the master (generally 2 or 3) and That's my master of the song.

That's in a "few" words my way of produce. I hope this helps other to have a vision of how I get my sounds specially beginners.

Now, I wanna know how do you produce... I don't know if you have the same free time like me to write a monograph like this, hehe, today I didn't work!, but a few details and process description will help.

See ya!.