So you make dance music, its music that’s meant to be played at insanely loud volume levels at clubs and festivals around the world.So why not crank it up while you’re making it? One big mistake newbie (and in some cases experienced) engineers and producers make is they feel they have to pound the heck out of the speakers all day to get a loud mix. Wrong! This is not true, in fact, mixing at loud monitoring levels only increases the chances of missing important details and can somewhat disable you from getting a perfect balance. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe in turning it up every now and then while I’m mixing just to get a vibe and hear how my mixes will actually sound loud but I also know, if I’m constantly monitoring at a loud db level in my studio, I’m probably going to miss important details in my mix. When you mix at lower levels, you actually hear things more accurately. Here are a couple of reasons its good practice to mix at lower levels.
Ear fatigue
Simple concept, the louder you listen, the faster your ears get tired. If you start your day by mixing at loud levels, you’ll find yourself 30 minutes into the mix session asking yourself questions like “why is the kick so low?” or “I can’t hear the hi hats” and soon after, you’ll be turning up your kick and hats amongst other elements of your track and before you know it you’ll end up with a noisy mess. Mixing at lower levels allows your ears to work for longer periods of time and still maintain a well balanced mix.
Turn it down! (Till you hear almost nothing)
A simple and effective trick I learnt when I started creating music was that by turning the studio volume control down to a point where I could hardly hear any sound coming from the speakers, resulted in me getting a better balance between every single element in my track. At this point, you might be asking yourself, how can you mix a piece of music if you can hardly hear it? WellI can only speak from personal experience but I find, to get a proper balance; mixing at hardly audible levels is key. To do this, all you have to do is turn all your faders down and bring up the kick about half way. Now reach for your volume control and turn it down to where you can barely hear the kick, now start bringing in things like the hi hat, snare, bass line etc. Do this for every element of your mix. Take a short break, come back into the studio and play your mix at a louder level and there you have it, a well balanced mix now ready for processing. This trick also works if you have a good balance but you still feel something isn’t quite sitting right, say the vocal, just turn the volume down again, listen to the vocal track and adjust till it sits right with the rest of the music. Then turn up the volume again.
Did this remix for DBR Recordings. I really liked the grooving bassline and overall funky vibe of the original mix so I decided to put my own touch of deeper, tech house influences to the track. Been getting great feedback so far. The track is now out on beatport!
Monty Python legend and comedic genius, John Cleese shares his thoughts on the creative process, writing, interruptions and getting in “the mood”. A must watch for bloggers and anybody who expresses themselves creatively.
July has been a very busy month at SLM and what better way to spend a summer then producing a bunch of fresh projects.Here’s a short recap of some of the projects I’ve been working on over the last month.
Toronto Pop/Electro artist Thane came back into the sub level studios this month to record his follow up single to last summer’s smash “London Town”. We’re currently working on his second club track and so far the demo sounds amazing! When Thane comes to me to produce his songs he brings in the song completely written with chords/melody/lyrics I then produce, arrange, record, mix and master the entire song. Watch out for Thane’s new single “Diamonds in the Rain” coming soon.
I recently finished one single for up and coming Pop/Dance artist Lolatronica. She is an independent artist living in Niagara, Ontario. The process we use to create her songs is slightly different from the “traditional way” of building songs (not that there is one). Since she lives in Niagara, it would be hard for her to come all the way down to Toronto just to record her rough ideas so the system we developed for creating songs is that she will record a very rough vocal from her home on her laptop and send it to me via email. I load up the vocal in Ableton, listen carefully to her lyrics and melody and start the musical foundation. From there an instrumental is born and she then comes into the studio to track all the vocals. The end result….remarkable! Her newest single “Boys with the Cash” is complete and will be available for Free Promo Download soon so watch out! She is also looking to release two more songs this summer produced by yours truly.
I produced a beat for Toronto Urban/Pop Singer/Writer Young A-Boateng last month. After taking the beat home and listening to it vigilantly, he came back to me early this month with the entire song (lyrics, melody) written to the beat I produced for him. Over the month of July I’ve been recording the vocals and producing the song as well as mixing it. His single “Won’t Let You Go” will be available for promo soon. Young is currently working towards finishing an EP that will be out later this year.
THE psychologist Gregory Feist found that many of the most creative people in a range of fields are introverts who are comfortable working in solitary conditions in which they can focus attention inward. Steve Wozniak, the engineer who founded Apple with Steve Jobs, is a prime example: Mr. Wozniak describes his creative process as an exercise in solitude. “Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me,” he writes in “iWoz,” his autobiography. “They’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone … Not on a committee. Not on a team.
Mixing isn’t something that can be learned by overnight. I’ve been making electronic music over 10 years now and even though I can make decent sounding tracks, I still feel that I have a lot to learn.
Myth #1 – Introverts don’t like to talk. This is not true. Introverts just don’t talk unless they have something to say. They hate small talk. Get an introvert talking about something they are interested in, and they won’t shut up for days.
Myth #2 – Introverts are shy. Shyness has nothing to…
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For many of us, the dream is not to get our tracks on the radio, but played in the clubs. However, if you want DJs to pick up your tunes, you need to ensure that they’re dancefloor friendly.
If you’re struggling to create tracks that can get a crowd going, check out these ten mix and arrangement tips.
1. Dance tunes generally progress in 16-bar sections. Within each of these sections, elements may consist of 1-, 2-, 4- or 8-bar repeating phrases, and elements tend to be changed (added, removed or altered) every four or eight bars.
2. For a quick logically laid-out arrangement, place the main breakdown in the middle at the 129th bar and then split each side of this in half again – so, a first mini breakdown might occur at the 65th bar and a drop to the outro beats could come at the 193rd bar.
3. The first three quarters of a track generally consists of ‘build-ups’ (with intermittent breaks) and dance tracks are all about what might come next. You can increase the sense of anticipation with use of rising or falling sound FX, reverse cymbals and automated delay or reverb effects.
4. Filtering a whole mix or groups of elements in a track (such as the drums or synths) is a great way of building interest and anticipation. Removing the entire bottom end with a high-pass filter (HPF) just before a new section works a treat, and opening up a low-pass filter during a breakdown can put the crowd into a frenzy, without having much change in the music.
5. Breakdowns should strip the track back to basics – removing the kick drum and bass is a good place to start. Consider dropping high-frequency rhythmic elements such as hats and shakers – these give the track extra energy and are best saved for when it’s really ‘pumping’.
6. A breakdown is all about anticipation. You are toying with the listener – but if what comes after the breakdown doesn’t hit the mark and make them dance, or the transition is forced, then something is amiss. You don’t always have to come in with all guns blazing. You could also try lowering the level of everything in the breakdown by a few dB.
“Breakdowns should strip the track back to basics – removing the kick drum and bass is a good place to start.”
7. Remember that your target audience is initially the DJ. Make the arrangement DJ-friendly – something that will make them look good and want to play it. Avoid overly melodic elements at the beginning or end of a track. This makes the record easy to mix.
8. Use silence to enable the listener to ‘take a breath’. For example, when coming out of a breakdown, try muting all the parts apart from a snare hit on the downbeat just before everything comes back. Leave the reverbs engaged though, so you get a nice bit of ambience hanging over. Leaving a gap of silence also lets the compressors and limiters in the club rig reset themselves and the lets the speaker cones retract, resulting in a drop with much more impact as the compressor kicks in fresh.
9. One advantage of recording your whole tune (or grouped elements) to a single audio track is the ability to chop, change, pitch, stretch and reverse whole sections. Chopping beats and repeating them can be great way of adding more interest to a fairly simple arrangement.
10. Rules are there to be broken. It’s good to have some tried-and-tested arrangement tricks, but some great club tracks throw all the rules out of the window, so be prepared to experiment. However, you should always keep in mind that it’s all about the dancefloor.
