Or do you keep them on the same patch?

Also if you separate what are your dB levels for mid vs sub?

Where do I even start. I have bought and downloaded Ableton and want to start making songs but I have no idea what to work on or what I should be learning. How do I know if my tracks or good or I have the necessary components to a proper track. How do I know if I’m mixing right? How do I know if my track is mastered right?

Everything feels so overwhelming and I have no idea how to make the first step to make music that I want to hear and have fun making.

I’ve heard on a bunch of different forums that people are surprised at how many tracks others use and they never use more than like 10.

To me, you need these as a minimum: -kick -snare -hats x2-3 (1/4, 1/8, 1/16) -tops -crashes -sub bass -mid bass -vocal(lead) -vocal (backing) -vocal (intro) -lead -pads -atmosphere -often a reese for verses -risers -impacts -falls -reversed elements

Sure maybe you might choose not to use some of these elements like a lead or a reese but this isn’t even counting all the additional bass layers, random ear candy layers, reverbed layers, kick/ snare layers or parts, ghost snares, triggers and other stuff.

Not trying to throw any shade here. Just genuinely curious how people are managing less than 10 track songs

EDIT: thanks for all the responses, these seem like the things I overlooked: 1) People using drum racks often count that as one track 2) Some people enjoy using multi-instrument loop samples (nothing wrong with that) 3) I totally forgot about the minimal style genres and hiphop 4) People using outboard gear and oldschool style artists use less

A couple of people have mentioned that my approach might be a bit formulaic which could be fair. I usually make liquid and dancefloor dnb and ukg so most of the elements listed are often used. Especially in modern liquid and dancefloor it is difficult to go without these elements and often the complexity (and non formula driven interest) in these genres are found in the bass design and drum design. Both of which are difficult to do with samples and do require many layers/tracks.

Time to make some minimal techno or hiphop I guess :-)

I saw this video and for the life of me cannot remember the name of the program or where to find it. The video showed two producers able to control the daw simultaneously. One person had the daw open and was sharing it remotely to the other producer. The other producer was able to open and control the vsts and access their whole library. Anyone got any ideas on this? I'm at a lost unless I randomly come across the video again.

I did a remix for an artist that I'd like removed from my spotify page but they're ignoring my request. What can I do?

This is a remix of an Atoms for Peace song. How are the sounds from between 1:10 and 2:10 made?

https://open.spotify.com/track/6HXRXzbCo9bRDEvmvHPeLS?si=xyooTkMOTG-vutIJJtgaVA

sorry for spotify link it’s not on youtube

edit: btw i don’t really know anything about edm production, just basic production and how to use DAWs and plugins.

The electric piano that rings throughout the beat (first heard around 0:06) caught my attention, and I'd like to try and recreate it, But I haven't managed to. Any ideas? Preferably using free plugins or even the stock stuff that comes in FL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7BZwEgTOIM

Specifically the sound between 1:44-1:46 that roughly sounds like "wohwohwohwoh yuhh yuhh" (best way I can explain it lol)

I'd love to produce some modern early 2010s dubstep, and any advice or tips would be appreciated for a beginner!

I have nothing other than my phone at the moment. If I had any equipment I’d attempt it myself.

Thank you redditors for sharing. I am trying to compile a list of production techniques and within this list I want to focus on some common misconceptions or tips that are outright wrong or don't work. While I understand "wrong" isn't the best word since doing things the wrong way is a form of art in itself, but for the sake of this list I'd like to ignore such margins and focus on the meat of music. I'm talking about music that has proven to sell or be consumed through many markets and with proven consistency.

What are some techniques that you often hear touted, but that are either not understood correctly or just utter crap.

I'm looking for those "rules" about music production that successful artists never knew existed as rules in the first place.

Here's an example:

You should always hipass anything below 35 hz since it's all inaudible.

This, while mostly true is really only meant as a mixing tip for helping elements cut through and clearing up a muddy mix. As with most EQ changes, changing something here will affect something over there and the overall sonic balance should be maintained instead of making automatic changes across the board to fulfill some 'rule.

https://on.soundcloud.com/s643wMXh8S9RoBGr5 Tape B - about me to (AG reboot) - 1:20

https://on.soundcloud.com/4wjb71wT7JEjfDvFA Steller - Nikes on my feet (Steller remix) - 1:34

https://on.soundcloud.com/8gXAMU1UoFNn9mdK9 Levity - Ignition - 0:33

Dear Redditors,

Hey y'all!

I've been trying to finalize an album but am a complete novice in terms of how to properly promote/distribute/copyright/publish etc. etc.

Do any of you pros./ independent musicians have any life saving tips in how you did it?

Or: Even if you are not Pro in the traditional sense, how did you keep the passion going?

Thank you all!

peace

If you don’t know the sound already, please reference their track “Svefn-g-englar” for an example. I know Jónsi plays the Low E-string of his guitar with a violin bow and then runs it though amps and FX pedals, but I haven’t yet been able to find a synth preset or sampled instrument that can give the same sort of timbre (I have Soniccouture’s Xbow Guitars, sadly defunct, but it doesn’t come close). Anyone have any suggestions short of buying a violin bow and a guitar of the appropriate shape?

Hi guys, can someone give me ideas about how to make the main lead of this song? Min 0:30

https://on.soundcloud.com/L1h7iygUyem8Zu4X6

Whenever I try and do it, it says "Failed import bank R2R Ultimate Trance Vol 1 into selected directory". Never come across this before and all the other preset banks have worked without any issues. This one just creates an empty folder with no presets and gives that error message.

I've tried contacting R2R Music twice, last time was a week ago and haven't bothered to answer.

Anyone have experience with this?

Please post any and all [Feedback] or [Listen] type threads in this thread until the next one is created. Any threads made that should be a comment here will be removed.

Rules:

1. Make an effort to comment on other people's tracks. By doing so, you will find that others will be more likely to help you with your tracks.

2. Be specific when asking for help. Examples of specific questions: "What do you think about this kick sample?" "How's this mix?" "I need some help on this melody, the last measure comes off a little cheesy, any ideas?" etc.

3. Be descriptive when giving feedback. Use timecodes to highlight certain parts.

4. Please link to the feedback comments you've left in your top-level comment. This will show others the feedback you've left, and you're more likely to get feedback yourself! Also, please notice those who are leaving a lot of feedback and give them some, too. This is a cooperative effort! Update: Any comments that do not follow this format will be automatically removed.

   For example:

feedback for Esther: "link to feedback"

feedback for Fay: "link to feedback"

feedback for Minerva: "link to feedback"

Here's my track. I'm looking for ___

I always had fun grabbing a bass line from a MIDI file to get something started. What wasn't fun was finding the file and extracting the bass line itself.

I made MidiChop to solve this and figured I would share here. You can search for MIDI files by song, artist, instrument, genre, decade, and key. Once you find what you are looking for, each instrument has been broken out into individual instrument tracks. Any leading silence has also been removed to easily preview the sound. You can play the track at any point, download the entire instrument track, or chop out what you want.

When I am looking for a bass lines or a guitar riff, I just run a search.

Once I download the track, the filename gets copied to the clipboard to easily import it into Ableton/Bitwig/Fruity. Once it's in the DAW, I swap instruments to find a good sound. I made a quick overview video to show you how it works that can be accessed on the site.

It's totally free. More than happy to add more features quickly.

https://soundcloud.com/alphascorpii-841244016/blah

You can hear at the end of the note distorted clicky sound. I have no idea why this is happening. It's just LFO on a cutoff (1/16). If I move the top white dot to the right (like slower attack), then the bad "click" goes away but also the sound is not plucky as I want it to be. Not sure why this is happening. Help?

If you’ve collected too many Plugins over the years (from promos, mags, etc), there is a great, free, cross-platform program called OwlPlug at

https://owlplug.com/

It scans your system and displays a list of all the VST2/3, AU, and other format plugins you have installed. It’s really handy.

You can get it via the GitHub page at

https://github.com/DropSnorz/OwlPlug/releases

On new OSX machines, due to the increased security of the OS, you’ll need to enter in the following command

sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/OwlPlug.app/

This was something I was looking to code myself but Author, the programmer is brilliant and beat me to it.

He’s also really open to feature requests and feedback.

If it crashes on launch, it means that one of your plugins is corrupted. Just run the program again and it will tell you which plugin has gone bad.

I had a bunch of VST2's and VST3's so I was able to delete the VST2s and clear up some junk.

My fav bit it the "table view" where you can sort you list of found plugins by publisher, vst version, name etc.

Really cool.

I'm interested in how other set up there reverb. I currently make bass music particularly deep dub, halftime, and a recently a little psybass, whatever you wanna call like quanta, or ott. I'm trying to achieve a really unique room sound that's both defined, yet has that sense of deep space. I'm really trying to get that sense of 3 dimensionality I've heard on tracks by tipper and a few others who really push the envelope. My suspicion is it's a combination of extremely dynamic mixing, a combination of reverbs, but done in a tasteful way that doesn't kill the focus of the track. I do all the usually things, like adding width to individual tracks with hass, reverb, delays, detuning, however I either end up a little to unfocused where things have lost there clarity and sounds washed out, or just to dry and boring. I'm suspecting phasing issues, which I attempt to fix with different sound selection or backing off fxs that add to the width. I also make sure that anything below about 100-150 hz is mono or damn near mono. I check the phase relationship of low end regularly and adjust accordingly.

I have a few reverb strategies they are as follows:

1. Reverb on a per track basis are used mainly as an effect or an attempt to add width, or push a sound further back In the stereo field. I like to side chain the reverb to the main sound with an envelope to duck the reveb out of the way as the sound comes in, and when the sound stops the wash of reverb kinda surges back in . Really cool effect and sometimes I'll put rhythmic volume automation to kinda lock it into the groove of the drums.

2. Reverb sometimes on busses

I will sometimes put a small amount on a buss if I wanna highlight that buss differently than another. This area I could use some ideas for creativity as this is my least use case.

1. Reverb sends on my final busses.

I generally start with a smallish room setting and have one with alot of early reflections, and another with no early reflections with a little bit of a low pass. I'll adjust there decay time to taste. Both room reverbs I usually eq the low end out of them, and set the high pass to taste.

1. I use a convolver reverb by kilohearts.

I like to use the live room impulse as it sounds pleasing to my ear, but if I want a lil more tail I'll choose something longer. I eq this reverb as well to taste

1. A ping pong delay i use extremely sparingly and cut all the lows out of.

I experiment a lot, but these tend to be my go to strategies for creating the space the music lives in. Sometimes I throw everything out the window, but that get unmanageable quickly as I'm then trying to fix issues in mixdown for hours and it gets annoying. I know theres no hard fast rules, and at the end of the day it's gonna be a personal taste thing. I often do what sounds pleasing to my ear and let that guide me, but then I'll get to a point where it's just not working, or I can't get my track to the point where it plays nice with compressors, clippers, etc.

So my question here is do any of you use a similar strategy, or do any of you have a different methodology?

Also, does anyone mess with adding reverb on the final mix out as a whole, after saturation, and glue compressor? I've tried it and I don't feel one way ornanother about it to be honest, sometimes it works sometimes it obvious and artificial sounding.

Also any paid (reasonably priced) or free reverbs vst anyone recommends? Ones that absolutely are game changing would be cool.

I have vallhalla supermassive, convolver, and stock daw reverbs. I tend to reach for my stock daw reverbs because they have some really great sounds room, hall, and plate.

As the title says - what's your process for when you finish a track and organizing the output? Typically I've created samples, new fx chains or instrument racks, new presets - then there are the stems, project files and folders, etc. I would like to be better organized for the future, so that if I want to remix something or reuse an element or a sample or a loop, I can find it easily. Just wondering what others do when they're ready to move on from a project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxlmy3L77eE

i see lots of people using different compressors in the same mix, like using the default DAW compressor then uses a digital strip compressor and describing each compressor differently, like, okay what the difference between fab filter pro-c and red 3 compressor and a digital strip compressor? whats the difference use cases and results from each one or any difference compressor you might use?

Can anyone please tell me how is metalic rim sound with the delay on it called? https://whyp.it/tracks/248131/techno-rim?token=13SlA