Undiscovered

Thanks for the tips.. I agree that making music is not that easy.. It's true that a decent montor will help cause I often experience the lack of sound quality when I play my mashups or remixes at clubs. It sounds great at home but I can notice the difference on a proffesional sound system. I believe that the overall flow of my tunes is a bit repetitive. I need to get some serious lessons on sound engineering in order to make some decent music..

This is where correct mixing and mastering can help a great deal. Mixing and mastering are two important stages in producing a good sound.

When you mix the different tracks eg. bass, drums, synth etc., you need to make sure all the sounds occupy separate frequency ranges (as much as possible). If they clash, this is called frequency masking and can lead to a flat mushy sound. Good contrast between the sounds is the name of the game.

Once you've got a good mix you can then get it mastered which will give it that 'polished' sound which also aids in the track sounding good on all sound systems. They say it's best to get a professional engineer to do it for you. I've seen some sites where you can upload your wavs and they'll do it for a fee.

Believe me I'm still battling with this as after I've listen to the same tune over and over, my ears get tired and I lose track of what I've done. One thing I do is listen to a track I've bought off a commercial label that I like the production quality of and compare it with mine. Then I do some more tweaking.

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Ryan you're the man!! Thanx for the info.. That's what i ment when I mentioned my music was flat. I can hear the sound clash when I listen to my final edit. I'll try to modify the frequencies and adjust the fader lavels to produce a seamless frequency flow.. I'm also checking out the opitions of getting a sound engineer to make the final cut..

I've found, that with most computer audio cards, that the default EQ is messed up.
Heres a few tips I've found very successful.

-Go buy a pair of studio monitors. Nothing expensive, just a couple 30-60watt monitors. If you're on a budget, 2.1 computer speakers will work fine (left right and subwoofer).

-Turn all EQ's on your computer off. If you have any soundblaster card, or M-Audio, there are basic treble and bass areas, but there are also advanced EQs in the submenu of your audio software. Make sure all your advanced EQs are turned off, and your basic treble/bass settings set to 0/0. This will make everything sound equally as flat, but by doing this, it will offset any flatness in final production. (Don't go overboard with adjusting your treble and bass inside your music software, just get everything to sound nice and equal/balanced,,, you can always import your final production into a third party software for EQ mastering)

-Get the following VSTs :: Equalizer, Compressor, Limiter, Maximizer, and Stereo Imager. These will make your life much easier in music production, since you can assign any one of these to any which synth/drum machine, etc...

-WALK AWAY!!! Seriously. If you are having trouble with something, just save your progress to a temporary file, and walk away. Take a break, go smoke, drink, go to the bathroom, sleep,, whatever you need to do to get a fresh head. Then tackle it once more. Most of my tracks I've written have at least 15 temporary edits, due to some frustration that made me run away screaming.

-Get a thrid party Sound Editing Software, like Soundforge, or Cool Edit. All these programs have EQ'ing goodies essential for final production (normalizing, amplitude adjustments, EQ balancing, etc...)

-Get a second opinion from anyone asides from yourself. You ARE your own worst critic, so instead of cluttering a song with samples, or sounds that it doesnt need, just because you cant get the right sound, just stop,, save a temporary draft, and upload it somewhere, like here at undiscovered.au, and ask for some honest feedback. Theres been alot of tracks that I've still got in my drafts folder, because I've messed them up or cluttered them, due to the fact that I dislike most of the music I produce,, but,, that doesnt mean that others think the same. In most cases, its quite the contrary.

-Don't get discouraged. Self explanitory.

Hope that helps a bit. Don't hesitate to PM me if you have any Questions, or are in need of some software. Im chalk full of them (over 65Gb of programs and samples)