Basics of Music Production

Whether exchanging lyrics to better song or editing loops you are producing. Sometimes it seems the producers are almost spooky, faceless names on an album. Those strange names that sit behind the studio desk and make magic happen. They can make a band bigger, give them a new sound that they needed, and take you to another level you never thought you could get to. However there’s nothing spooky about it, nothing creepy or spooky or magical. Like everything else in life it’s all talent and skill. Trust me, it’s more skill than talent, as for everything else practice makes perfect, or at least better.

The art of production is simply a part of the act of making music. Producing for your own band can be a good idea, but having a fresh unbiased pair of ears never hurts. The same can be said of other bands. In this article I will cover producing from the point of view of an outsider. By which I mean producing for someone else, I will also cover producing for your own work. The reason having fresh ears available is the artist tend to think of songs as children, it is often difficult to tell the worst from the best. Some songs just aren’t meant to be and that’s where the producer comes in.

The first step with any project is getting to know the band and the material. Whether it’s your own or someone else’s. If it is your music don’t start by thanking you know it already. See what you have and play around with it. Listen to it in different places, have people listen and give you their honest opinions. Get to know it as best as you can, figure out what the weaknesses are with the songs. Listen to everything you’ve done old, new and the stuff you’re working on now. Really get an idea of what you’ve done, and where you’re going with your art.

This pre-production will allow you to really understand where it is you are going. If you’re producing for someone else do the same things. Talk with them, listen to all their old material, listen to any rough material they may have, eat with them, and hang out with them, do your best to get to know them.

You need to understand their image, style, and overall band concept. If they are true virgin band you still need to understand who they are so you can help form them into the band they want to be. That may sound like the job of their manager (if they have one yet), but realistically; as their producer, you are the one guiding their music. A manager will no doubt have input at times, but they will never be as intimate with the music like you will be. Doing a good production job can take weeks, even months for some. You will be in a position to know the music almost better than the band/artist.

The next step is to choose what you’ll be working with. At this point the idea is to pick out the best material they have so it can be made better, this is a collaborative effort with everyone involved in the project. This may seem difficult but most songs will say “I’m good”, or at least “work with me”. You and the artists will also have favorite songs you want to work with. The production is all about taking the bad or mediocre and making it good to awesome, and taking the awesome and making it pure gold(or platinum;), there is no wrong move to make. Just keep in mind the image and style that you wish to show.

It is also a good idea to keep in mind egos. Be respectful if it is not your work, your job is to help make it sound good not to take over their project. Having said that being a pushover doesn’t help anyone either. You must balance between taking over and being a tyrant, and just letting them run all over you. Being strict but fair is a huge part of the job.

Next you must plan. How much time in the studio can everyone stand? How much money can be spent? Do you have a time frame you need to keep to? Even if this is a simple open-ended home recording project with you, a band, or just you and some friends coming up with a few guidelines is never a bad thing. It prevents wasting time, it helps keep things on track. If you’re doing this more as a hobby this probably isn’t as important.

Finally we get to the bulk of the work. Writing, rewriting, arrangement, and recording. This is the point where you craft the songs. Whether it is your work or producing for someone else, this is a time when you get creative and really work out the songs. It’s when you write new songs, rewrite old songs, decide what instruments will be used in the recording, and how the songs will be arranged. Arrangement is the layout of the song. For example the most used arrangement is

opening — verse — chorus — verse — chorus — middle riff — verse — chorus — chorus — Finish

This arrangement is used in pretty much every style. They use minor changes here and there but it is the same basic arrangement. Think of any pop rock song even rap songs.

You have a lead in the opening, which goes into the first verse, you can either have another verse or it goes right into the chorus. This repeats then you have a riff or break depending on the music style, then another verse and chorus sometimes with a repeat of various elements of the song then the ending or usually a fade out, often repeating an element of the song or the main riff. This is an over simplification, but it is the basic way most pop music is arranged.

When a young band/artist gets into professional production, rehearsing is a very big element. Recording studio time is expensive. Unless you have a big-name band or a real home studio, as in someone who can afford to spend weeks in a studio because they have lots of money, you must rehearse ahead of time. Of course the problem with this is by rehearsing everything to death ahead of time you risk losing happy accidents, and just fun jam sessions. However with a little knowledge, the right software, patience, and inexpensive equipment you can get good results at home.

I will cover recording in another article, here are some other Little bits to consider. During a recording and mixing time frame part of your job; either for yourself or others, is making the sessions fun and comfortable for everyone involved. You will not just be sitting at your computer playing with FX and EQ (that effects and equalization).

Make sure it’s a pleasant creative place to work, most of what you will end up using is likely to be created while you are doing recording, and someone does something different. Those happy accidents and jam sessions I was speaking about earlier. You are the diplomat between bandmates, the man or woman in charge of setting up, the go to person for everything that might be needed. On top of that you need to be the head decision maker and mixer for the project.
Welcome to production work.

Mastering, or… why bother. Mastering is the reason why a CD sounds the same volume no matter what track its own. Why some songs blend together and others have space in between. Basically it’s getting music ready to go on to disk. With the wide use of the Internet this is no longer a real issue. I will cover mastering in more depth in a later article.

As a final note I will say when you are working on your own it may seem easier

to just do everything yourself. But you should get other people to help you even if it’s just to listen at various stages of the work. Good criticism is very helpful. When you’re doing your own production work you have to act as if you are someone else listening to your work. This of course can be very difficult.

Having other people help you make decisions and listen to your work at various stages of the creation process takes you out of picture briefly. When you’re making music the idea is to please yourself, but you also want to be able to please other people. The idea is to make good music that you, and other people will like. If you are the only one listening to your work this becomes more difficult, perhaps impossible. We all treat our songs by children as I said at the beginning. Just like in real life having other people to help shape our children makes it more likely they will be accepted by others.

So There you have it. Music production is equel parts art, science and controlled chaos, have fun:)

In this article I'm going to go into hardware; or analog, versus acid music studio. Even today there is a tendency towards a preference of hardware or analog equipment over computers. Some people will say the use of the computer is not really making music. This is usually from people that have spent years and years studying music and/or an instrument. They feel that since anyone can just use a computer to make up their own music; without really needing years of study, it's not real. However using a computer to create music does take years of practice and experimentation. While a computer does allow a person to overcome a lack of knowledge in music education, or ability with an instrument it is not going to turn garbage into a platinum album.

In this article I'm going to go over how useful a computer actually is. I'm going to compare old-school analog equipment to modern computers, and the programs used by them. To start off with the absolute essential analog recording device, a multi track tape deck. A multi track tape deck allows you to make multiple recordings and play them back at the same time. This lets you take two, three, or more recordings and combine them into one. This lets you record vocals, drums, guitars, keyboards and whatever other instruments being used as separate tracks. Then using the recorder you combine them into one. These multi track tape decks are expensive, and can take up a lot of space. They are also limited in the number of tracks they can use at once. Acid music studio has a number of tracks only limited by your computer's ability to handle them. The same tracks you would use for loops can be used as a multi track recorder.

Next I'm going to go over effects. There is a vast amount of effects available. In old-school analog recording you needed a rack full of various effect modules. These effects can cause lots of different changes to your music, or the sounds that you use to make it. I will go into all the various effects in a different article. Let me simply say that there are dozens of effects used both with instruments and recording. From the pedals guitar players use, to the reverb effect there are many available. And with traditional hardware each one takes up room, lots of room. If you've ever seen footage of the band recording studio you have probably seen what I'm talking about. All those shelves of black boxes with the knobs and switches, with cords leading together. Furthermore most of these effects would be used while recording. Taking away the freedom to apply them later. And on top of all that you have the massive equalization control panel. That's the big desk with all the sliders and knobs.

A home recording studio using the computer combines all of this equipment into one tool. As long as your computer can handle them it can use as many effects as you want. Including all the traditional effects as well as plenty of very weird ones that you will only find for computers. Including EQ panels. Best of all you can apply these at any time. While the best effects processors do cost money plenty can be found for free. Most of these will plug in directly to your program. Acid music studio has built-in effects. I have also found a number of free ones I have downloaded to use.

The same thing that can be said about effects can be said about MIDI and drum machines. Hardware versions of these machines, and old-school synthesizers which were also modular take up a large amount of space. Certain models would have their own sound just like any instruments, and with any enthusiasts there would be a tendency to collect them. A computer takes all of these tools and gives them to you in a single package. Again the best ones do cost money. However many very nice MIDI, drum machines, and synthesizer programs/plug-ins can be gotten for free.

When you sing in the bathroom, or any other small space it tends to sound good.
It sounds good even if youre a terrible singer anywhere else. The reason for this, is that your singing; the sound waves, are bouncing off those tighter walls and creating lots of depth to your voice. Depth it normally lacks. You are ;more or less, sing harmony with yourself.

This is also why music or Singing in a concert hall sounds so good, the room has been optimized for that effect. This added depth of tone gives vocals a nice quality, it also makes music played in a bathroom sound hollow. The reason is that your vocal sounds are not  traveling as fast. The Album music has already been optimized for large spaces, by putting it into a small space the sound waves are bouncing around so fast they are canceling each other out and creating a flat; or hollow, sound.

This effect is called Reverberation.

The Audio effect Reverb mimics that natural effect. By “echoing” whats put through it, it creates that depth of sound artificially. most; if not all, singers use it to some degree. As you heard on the audio track from the reverb video, Reverb can do some odd thing to audio when used at high levels. It is mostly used to add a little depth and color to a recording, allowing the
environment its played in to do the rest.

For vocals I recommend a 5/95 - 10/90 Dry/Wet with Reverb. But theres no reason to not be creative with it. In Music production dry/wet refers to how much of the sound(s) are affected by the effect. 10/90 means only 10% of the sound (such as your singing) is being proccessed. Again the idea; in most cases, is to add depth, and “color” with the effect, not overpower the sounds.

One last and important thing, the reverb on each part of a recording should match up if used on anything other than vocals. using reverb On vocals alone is fine, but if you want the whole song to use them, either render out the track and put the reverb on top of the whole thing, or make sure to put the same level on each track in the song.

Ok, that is me doing all the Dalek vocals on the Song (as a note this is not for sale, I did it just for fun).

I used several effects to get the general feeling I wanted. First off, as a fan I know how they tend to talk. The way they say things, so I recorded the two phrases Channeling the Daleks as best I could.

Then I used a Low-Fi effect to give it the more mechanical feeling. I used a distortion to really give it that crunchy sound, then I used a pitch shift to make it much higher.

As you can hear I got pretty close.

This is just one small (but rather fun) example of the things you can do once you get used to effects and the things they do.

With early Music Players you only got Mono sound. That is sound from one speaker. This is not a very lifelike way to hear sound.
With The invention of stereo, music and movie soundtracks became much more rich and dynamic. Sending the sound waves out in two directions.
With Surround Sound music, and movies became much more lifelike.

The reason for this is simple.
When you hear something in the real world, you hear it in a full radius around you, not from one or two directions. Footsteps coming toward you will cause echos, and a concert has sound everywhere.

Stereo presents Sounds to you with two speakers, right and left. Also called Right and Left Channels. This gives a more life like experience than mono sound, because it mimics the placement of the ears on our heads.

Surround sound add a center speaker for increased “in your face” ability, rear speakers, to provide realistic sensations of far away noises and movement of noises. That’s 5 point surround. 7 point surround sound adds two more speakers directly on either side, this increases the ability of the system to give you a full 360 degree area of sound movement. Watch a movie like Live Free or Die Hard with Surround sound. There is a scene where a car hits two other cars barely missing the main characters.

In mono, you would only hear the noises coming from one center speaker. In addition to being more flat, and unreal it also causes the sounds to “clump up” and sound messy. Stereo fixes that problem. By having som sounds stay in the left or right speaker channel, it gives a sense of space in what you are hearing. By moving sounds from left to right; or panning them, it gives a sense of movement.
Now in surround sound they take it to the next level. Giving some sounds placement in the back, front, or side speaker channels, giving a greater sense of space. By also being able to move sounds withen that space, you also get a more lifelike sense of movement. In Live Free or Die Hard; with surround sound, you hear the car coming toward the heros, hitting the cars above them, then crashing off away from them. As if you were right ther wigh them.

In Acid Music Studio you will be working with stereo sound. Acid pro can work with 5 point surround.

When creating a song the most important tools you have are Volume and Pan. As I said beore, Pan is the ability to move sounds from the right speaker channel to the left.
By panning any element more to one side than the other, you create both separation from the other tracks and the illusion of position for that element.
When creating music the ability to move elements of the song from side to side, can help create depth and color.

For example I have a dance track I created. I use one main synth loop for the majority of the track. By using Pitch shifting and effects I made the one loop sound different, while keeping the same rhythm.

On some of the instances of the loop, I went in and used the Pan envelope tool in acid music studio, to bounce parts of the loop from one speaker channel to the other.

Like this: dunt(left), dunt-dunt(right), dun-dunt-ti-dunt(left), dunt-dunt-dunt(right), duh-dunt(left).

You can also use it to create the illusion of sitting right in front of a band while they play.
For example: Pan the guitar off slightly to one side, the bass and keyboards to the other, with the vocals in the center. Maybe with additional vocals off to the side where the backup would be standing.

For drums you can keep the kick drum centered, with the snare and tom drums arranged around the kick in an arc. Say… snare 1 is 5% left, snare 2 is 5% right, snare 3 is 10%left, snare 4 is 10% right, Tom 1 is 20%left, tom 2 is 20% right, and the big tom they only use toward the end is 40% (either way, but you should get what i mean by now). Then lets say there’s a Cowbell in the center of the drum kit, so that stays centered. Lets say the band has a hi-hat and 4 crash cymbals. the first two crash cymbals are between the snare drums and snare and tom drums. So put them at 7-8% left and right, and the other two at 15% left and right. We will say the Hi-Hat is on the other side from the big tom, so we put it at 40% on the other side.

By using Pan to arrange the position of the drums in the song to match what it would be like to sit right in front while the band is playing, you create a life like feeling.

You can also do things like using volume to create the illusion of distance. Softer things sound further away than loud ones.
In my track Demonic, there is a little beat that joins the kick beat very slowly getting louder, creating the effect of something creeping up on the listener.

If you Pan Hard to one side and slowly bring it centered, while increasing volume, it sounds like something is coming closer from one side.

Here’s your Home Work Assignment for this article. Ive just been Putting these up with no exercises for you to do. If you want to learn how to Produce Music, you need to think like a Producer.

Listen to a song you like.

listen to it 3 or 4 times, and pay close attention to where you are hearing things coming from.

Then come back and put a comment on this post or the forum post about the song, and how you could hear them using the Stereo Field.

Where are the drum hits coming from?
The Keyboards?
The Guitars?
Whatever the instruments; or sounds, being used they will be panned to create seperation in the song. The first step to music production, is in training your ears.

If you dont know what loops are, they are audio samples. Sounds, drum beats, bass lines, etc. Piece of sound, that can either be played, or 'looped' through a song. Its the old practice of sampling from albums, taken to another level.

There are loop libraries made by some very famous musicians, and a whole horde of producers.

Ok now you know what they are, you are asking what are they for.

Well...you can use them to make your own songs, with nothing but loops. You can also use them to add touches to songs you have recorded. Since using them to add "color" to songs is common in music production, im not going to focus on that. Im going to talk about producing loop based songs.

The pro's of making music based on loops:

First is that you dont need to learn all the instruments or hire people to record with. You do need to learn how to make them into something people will listen to, in essence the computer and your software becomes your instrument.

Second is comparative cost. You can buy loop collections for as little as 10 dollars, all the way up to a couple hundred for the superior quality collections. That may seem expensive; especially since there is a tendancy to collect loops, but compared to the cost of hiring musicians, its far cheaper.

Third is that it gives you a whole world of sounds, styles and effects to work with, right on your computer.

Now the con's

Mainly the problem with loops is they are repetative. All the tricks in the world wont make up for the fact, that you cant really improve with loops the way a real musician can. With a little laerning, and some tricks you can fake it pretty well, but it still removes the wonderful human element, and the chance for happy accidents during jam sessions.

It can also become difficult; even impossible, to get the sound you want. You might have an amazing drum track lined up, you found a bass loop that is killer, you even found an awesome rhythm guitar loop that works. You spent hours cutting, pasting and tweaking it to get a realistic rock sound, and arrangement. Only one things missing, and its the one thing loops cant do. Give you lead guitar that matches everything else perfectly.

The same can be said of any genre of music.

So making songs with just loops is fun, its cheaper, it makes a great hobby and its got a pretty smooth learning curve, but not having any skill with an instrument, or musicians to work with limits what you can do.

I still would recommend using loops as a way to learn music production. Then you can increase the scope of your knowlage over time to include instruments, recording other people, and all the other fun stuff producers do.