Top 10 Most Common Production Issues for starting Producers

[street]

First up, this was not written by me, and is taken from another forum but there is some amazing advice in here and it is definitely worth reading.

Disclaimer: This is not meant to be the be-all, end-all guide to making EDM. There are exceptions to all these guidelines of course, and it carries with it the limitations of my own knowledge of music production, which of course is still in development. I fully expect people to question/disagree/debate what I'll write here, hopefully this will start a good discussion that everyone can benefit from. However, since so many tracks these days are clearly lacking in the exact same areas, this should be helpful for those trying to take their tracks from the beginning stages to a more advanced level. So, if you are just starting out, as in, producing for less than a year, hopefully these pointers will help you reach that next level of production.

1. Poor drum samples.

This is still the most common problem for tracks in this forum or any other. The drum samples being used just aren’t good enough to carry the track. Specifically, I’m talking about the kick drum and the snare or clap (or snap as Ryan has aptly called it). The kick and snare are the building blocks of a dance track. With a good kick and snare, a bad track becomes listenable, a decent track becomes good, etc. Without a good kick and snare, it is nearly impossible to make anything that people will actually want to listen/dance to. There are a million ways to come up with kick and snare samples. The two simplest: the “3-layer” method, and the “grab” method. Layering 3 kicks sounds simple enough but it gives people fits, including myself until very recently. It takes practice but if you find the right samples it does indeed work. If layering kicks isn’t working for you, I URGE you to just sample a kick from a track you like. Just go buy the WAV on beatport, bring it into an audio editor, and grab a kick sample. Boom, done. It’s nothing to be proud of, but it works nonetheless. Build a library of 10 or 15 professional kicks and you’ll never need to worry about it again. Same goes for snares, though they are a bit trickier to grab as they’re usually falling on the kick in the intro or outro of a track. Try grabbing a snare and highpassing at 200-400 Hz. Layering snares also works wonders and is, in my experience, easier than layering kicks.

2. Improper understanding of EQ and frequency relationships

The basic premise is as follows: you have a constrained spectrum of available frequencies to work with. Since the ultimate goal is for everything in the mix to occupy its own space and thus, be heard clearly, it is critical to think in terms of frequency relationships when building your track. The two most common frequency clashes I hear are: (A) the relationship between the kick and the bass and ( the relationship between the chords and the lead.

Let’s first consider the kick/bass relationship. Too many beginning producers are throwing a kick and bass together, ramping up the sidechain until they don’t hear any distortion, and calling it a day. Let me suggest: before you start to work with your sidechain compressor, think EQ first. If your kick is peaking at 70hz, and your main distorted bassline is peaking at 150hz, try cutting the bass at 80hz and adding a sub layer underneath that occupies the 25-60hz range. If you find certain notes being cut off, change the key of the track so that the highpass filter isn’t cutting off the lowest notes.

Another common theme in frequency clashing is between the chords and the lead. If there are points in your track when either the chords or lead aren’t standing out like they do in professional tracks, it’s likely because they are competing over the same frequency range. If so, raise or lower one by an octave to try to get them in their own space. Or, pan one dead center and aggressively widen the other. If these two tricks don’t work, just get rid of one! It’s unlikely that, as a beginning producer, you have come up with a perfect chord sequence AND lead melody anyway, so don’t get married to your MIDI patterns. If you really love both and must preserve them, save one for another track and then delete it.

Note: more on eq at http://www.dnbscene.com/article/88-thin ... q-tutorial

3. Too little compression

This sort of speaks to the “why isn’t my track as loud/full as pro tracks?” question. The simplified answer (oversimplified probably) is a lack of proper compression. I have put this AFTER the section on EQ for a reason. Compressing a badly EQ’d channel will not give you good results. Once you have carved out a good home for your instrument using EQ, then you want to do some compression. The basic idea is to tame the unruly peaks in your channels with compression and thus, gain headroom, which you can use to raise their overall volume. If you do this properly with all the channels in your track, the end result will be a loud, full track. I, personally, am a huge proponent of stacking compressors—that is, doing a little bit of gain reduction (GR) with many compressors rather than using one compressor to do all the GR. For example, take a classic piano line. A good amount of GR to get it to sound really beefy, might be say 12 db (just an example). So, instead of really cranking the threshold down on one compressor so you have 12 db of GR, try doing 4 db of GR with 3 different compressors. Once you start playing around with the attack/release settings and ratios on the different compressors you’ll see why this is a great method for getting your sounds to have that polished feel. In addition, it’s always a good idea to route similar instruments to busses and gently compress on the buss to glue things together. My typical chord channel will look something like this:

EQ Cut

Compressor 1

Compressor 2

Compressor 3

EQ boost (if necessary)

All FX

Limiter

Sidechain

-

Send to Buss

Buss Compressor

Placing a limiter after the compressor may seem odd but I’ve found it’s in fact a great mixing tool. As long as you are not close to clipping (you shouldn’t be) you can use the limiter as a gain knob to affect the overall volume of the channel without touching the mixer fader. Then you can use the fader to mix the track, as you normally would want to. The limiter can also be used as an effect if you want to make one element really pop up to the top of the mix at certain points in the track (if you have a heavily reverberated clap just before the drop, for example).

Note: more on compression at http://www.dnbscene.com/article/1474-co ... n-tutorial

4. Too much master limiting

It’s becoming popular to limit tracks to the max in an attempt to make amateur tracks sound as loud as pro tracks. Try to avoid doing this; your master limiter should not be doing more than 2-3 db of GR if you’ve mixed properly. Much more than this and you will destroy your dynamic range. The proper way to increase your overall loudness is introduced in the above section on per-track compression and limiting. This is a controversial issue (google “Loudness war” if you want to know more) but the general consensus among serious producers is that a track without dynamic range is pretty worthless.

5. Treble is jealous of bass

A lot of beginning producers will spend 80% of their time focused on the bassy elements of their tracks. After all, this is bangin’ ass bass music right?! Well, if you actually want anyone to hear your bass, you better pay attention to those highs. Having your kick and bass present in the upper frequencies is so important…it cannot be stressed enough. I urge starting producers to check their bass’ frequency response with a frequency analyzer (there are good free ones out there). If you see a mountain at 100hz and almost nothing over 1khz, nobody is going to hear your bass—they may feel it, but it won’t appropriately “cut through the mix” which is another way of saying “be present in the upper frequencies”. To get your bass to “cut through the mix”, use an EQ boost, or, better yet, use a multiband compressor.

This is true of the overall mix as well as just the bass channel. Your mix, when viewed in a frequency analyzer, should be balanced across the 20hz-20khz spectrum. Your kick drum will likely give you a peak in the lows, but other than that you should have a nice balance from 20hz-15khz. Most pro tracks have a gentle downward slope from 15k – 20k.

6. No discernable theme or “hook”

Argh, hooks. This is probably the hardest thing to explain but I have to mention it because it’s so damn important. If you think of your favorite tracks in any genre, you’ll find that most have either a very concrete hook, or a theme that is very strong and really makes the track memorable. I’ll give you a few examples of what I consider to be great hooks or themes in popular tracks:

The organ line in Deadmau5 – Ghosts N Stuff

The piano riff in Eric Prydz – 2night

The Beethoven sample in Wolfgang’s 5th Symphony

The quick chord sequence/vocal in Wolfgang Gartner – Space Junk

The lead melody in Porter Robinson – Unison

With that said, there are plenty of great songs that don’t have such a concrete hook (although this second type of song is less likely to be a commercial success!). But usually these songs have a very strong theme that carries the track (for example, many skrillex tracks don’t have one obvious hook but rather an ongoing theme of intertwined musicality and filth). My point is, if you don’t have a hook (think of it as something someone can sing or hum easily) then you should make sure the theme of your track is super strong and holds it together. A lazy chord sequence and lead does not make a proper theme. Tracks like this are easily forgotten. Work hard on getting the musicality to shine through, and you’ll be on your way to a good, memorable theme.

7. Assorted mixing maladies

There are too many mixing issues that come up again and again but I’ll quickly list some here:

Something sounds harsh: Often comes from the snare, chords, or lead. It’s usually a problem in the mids, not the highs (despite what you may initially think). Try using a De-Esser, or sweep an EQ cut thru 5k – 7k to find the problem frequencies.

Something sounds boomy: Is there a reverb without a low cut somewhere? Is your kick way too long for the kind of track you are making? Is there no space between the kick and the bass hits? Did you cut on the master chain at 20-30hz?

Clutter/Lack of Clarity: try gently cutting between 200 and 500 Hz, or compress more aggressively the instruments occupying that range.

Lack of impact at the drop: Try automating the master volume during the break and then popping it up to maximum at the drop for added impact.

Instruments disappear at certain points: try “level-riding”, or automating the volume of certain instruments throughout the track.

Note: more great mixing advice here: http://blog.indabamusic.com/2011/01/127 ... -mistakes/

8. Dynamics and timbre relationships

Earlier, I made the oversimplified statement that if your chords and lead are competing over a small frequency range, you must change one of them. The exception to this is if you use contrasting timbres to separate the sounds. Consider a classic trance track, for example. A classic trance technique is to have massive chords playing, with a pluck-type bell lead playing the main melody theme. The reason this works is because of the contrast in dynamics between the two elements. The chords are played by synths and pads with a slow attack and long sustain, so overall very little dynamic range. The lead is a bell with a very fast attack and short decay, so, overall a large dynamic range. The overall effect is that the lead stands “on top” of the chords underneath, and even though the two parts are competing over the same frequency range, each can be heard clearly nonetheless.

I hear lots of tracks on here and on soundcloud in which the producer seemed to pay little to no attention to dynamic relationships. It’s very simple, if you just pay some attention to it. If your chords are short and stabby, use a lead with a longer attack and sustain. If your chords are long and drawn out, use a short plucked lead.

9. A word on muddiness

Muddiness can come from a lot of sources but a few common ones are:

(A) Too much reverb—either lower the wetness or high pass the reverb. Understanding when to high pass your reverb is absolutely essential in making EDM. The short answer: almost always high pass your reverbs.

( Wimpy low cuts—when you low cut a synth, make sure you are actually affecting the source signal. Cutting a piano melody at 50hz isn’t going to do much for you in the grand scheme of things. Try to be as aggressive with your cuts as possible without totally ruining the impact of the sound.

© Competition for frequency below 500 Hz. See section 2.

10. Use of stereo field

For a decent starting setup, try this (helps to play your main groove and change the width to hear the effects in real time):

Kick, Snare, Bass – all dead center with no or minimal widening.

Lead – some widening

Chords – Aggressive widening, try a stereo delay technique.

Everything else – experiment with both widening and moderate panning L/R. You don’t hear a ton of aggressive panning in dance tracks these days but it still does work in moderation. Just panning two similar instruments 20% left and 20% right will improve clarity a lot.

Note: I also urge starting producers to get Ozone or a similar plugin with the ability to meter the stereo field and listen to some of your favorite tracks with the stereo meter engaged. You will learn a ton about how wide their tracks really are, which elements are center and which are wide, etc. Turn the mono switch on and off and see what cancels out and what remains. Keep in mind that most club systems run in mono, so if you want your track to be played by dj’s it’s essential to check your mix in mono to see what phasing issues you have and try to remedy them as much as possible. I'd like to write more about this, but I could go on for pages and this is long as hell already. Perhaps another write-up on stereo field later.

Hopefully that was a worthwhile read for some of you. Let me know if you have questions or want to debate anything I've said here, don't be shy!

Daniel (Meyerson)

Taken from: http://www.ryanenzed.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1628

[Tomy]

3. Too little compression

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm not sure about that.

I hardly use any compression on our pre-masters. maybe kick and layers synths but even then very very small amounts.

maybe thats what we are doing wrong..... mind. blown.

[street]

yeah, i mainly just use compression for sidechaining purposes.

[dflux4]

Nice info Street thanks mate!

[MelodyIlliterate]

deffinately going to read this when i get home man... good find

[SweetIshDub]

I thought this was a great read, and the linked EQing/compressing inside the box article was pretty sick too

[ChevChelios]

3. Too little compression

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm not sure about that.

I'm with you on that, I think compressors are relatively useless for most things in EDM, cause unless you're playing things in live from a keyboard or audio source, there isn't going to be any crazy spikes in dynamic range cause there is no human error when drawing MIDI shit out.

Bus compression is a good thing though.

[Tomy]

yeah i agreed with you 100% there chev.

also this is from a book i have called, Mixing with your mind by Michael Paul Stavrou. Ithink its probably one of the single most important things to remember when using compression

Most engineers do not realize that Ratios are multiplicative, not additive. If you compress your mix 10:1 and then the mastering engineer compress it 10:1 you effectively achieve, not a 20:1 but a 100:1 texture. Ouch! Consider yourself warned. this applies to all compression. If you compress a voice during a recording at 10:1 and then in the mix again at 4:1 you don't get 14:1 but 40:1. next time you compress your mix, consider the ratios likely to be used at the radio stations that provide the finishing touch. Ask yourself, "how small a sound can i bear to hear on the air?"

[jbeard]

One of the best posts I have read on here. Got me on track with my beats again. Been a long long time since posting or trying anything new Thanks Street!

[legunner]

great read also good points from chev and tomy really helpful for us amateurs