TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Production Studio
-- Sound Designer or Musician?
Pages (2): [1] 2 »

Sound Designer or Musician?

I've noticed, that different producers come from different background, and they often have different focus in their music.




Sound Designer
The first type, is, more often than not, the one without a musical background, and is often involved in maybe DJing or sound engineering.

This type tends to focus more on the sound design, the quality of the sound, synth designing, and etc...

Pros: Produces cleaner tracks, sounds more "professional"
Cons: Lack of power melodically, tends to be unoriginal

I find these type of producers tend to produce more cleaner more well-mixed tracks with less emphasis on melody, but this may not be true for all cases.




Musician
The second type, is, more often than not, one with some musical background, and has often played an instrument before maybe. This type likes to jump into producing and get right into the meat of things.

I find these type of producers tend to produce tracks with stronger melodies and their tracks seem to have more style, with less emphasis on the sound quality, but this may not be true for all cases.

Pros: Powerful sounding melodies, tends to be more original sounding
Cons: Has more weaker mix usually, tends to neglect quality in favour of style

I find this is actually pretty important for each producer to step back and evaluate themselves because it lets them see more where their strong points stand and where they could work on more towards.





So, which one do you believe yourself to be more??

For me, personally, I am the second type.

I guess I'm somewhere between.

neither, i cant compose I cant program synths

I'm definatley a sound designer.. I allmost never finish my tracks but I allways finish my heap of synth patches

yeah it is quite true and more often than not when there are two (or more) producers like gabriel and dresden for example, one may be mostly involved in the sound design and mixing while the other has the strong musical mind and does the sequencing and arrangement, of course there are exceptions

I guess I'd be more of a sound designer... I can rarely come up with any decent melodies of my own but I always have tons of ideas on how to improve the work of others...

i'm obviously a musician since i'm about to graduate university with an honours degree in music.

my musicality is awesome, but most of the sound design field i've had to learn on my own with the exception of a few classes that helped a bit. to bad its a world where you gotta learn most things on your own to make it anywhere. ohwell, i'm starting ot get a bit better in the latter department too.

musician pianist.

quote:

Originally posted by Mr.Mystery I guess I'd be more of a sound designer... I can rarely come up with any decent melodies of my own but I always have tons of ideas on how to improve the work of others...

goes for me also

designer here too....with a hint of family musical background thrown in for flavour.

Neither. I wasn't interrested in music to the slightest until I started listening to trance. For the first few years of playing around in programs making simple tracks and melodies, I didn't even know what EQ or mastering was. It wasn't until recently that I started reading about it, and learned that "sound tech" aspect.

sound designer for me
i have no musical backgrond.
and when it comes to melodies, well that is definetly not my best point, i struggle alot with melodies.
other parts of the tracks though im fine with, its just melodies thats holding me back i think.

Musician.. I feel like I can write decent melodies, but I lack the ability to create appropriate sounds to compliment them. :/

Re: Sound Designer or Musician?

quote:

Originally posted by J.L. Cons: Lack of power melodically, tends to be unoriginal

I have no musical theory knowledge.
I'm not producing melodic trance.
Acid/Dark Trance are my speiclas triats.
I think you are wrong with this statement about the originality.

Re: Re: Sound Designer or Musician?

quote:

Originally posted by The Drow I have no musical theory knowledge. I'm not producing melodic trance. Acid/Dark Trance are my speiclas triats. I think you are wrong with this statement about the originality.

You don't have to know theory or produce melodic trance to be musical. To me it seems that the most unoriginal tracks are almost always produced by someone with lot's of hardware... Those guys love to collect synths and are good on the technical side. But they don't make tracks often. And when they do, they do it because they feel a need to put their gear in use. The result is often unoriginal.

That is the extreme end. But I feel I have some of the symptoms also. I'd love to have hardware synths, and I like tweaking sounds for sometimes hours. And composing melodies makes me often stressful, cause I can't settle to something that doesn't sound really good. It feels pointless to finish a track with average/bad melody (or some other hook). Anyways, I see it the same way as J.L. Good composers are usually not so good technically, and the other way around. But both skills can be improved, and you must be good at both if you're going to make it to the top.

Musician. Classically-trained, too. I do struggle in the production end a little, something Nik could attest to But I make up for it with perfect pitch

Musician I quess. Played 4 years keyboards/guitar before I started producing trance which I've done 6 years now. I don't have that much patience to build my own patches, so usually I end up tweaking the factory presets that already sounds ok. I do know the basics of synths programming but I'm nowhere near the pro guys. Same thing with production: mixing/mastering. Needs lot's of improvements.

Yeah, so personal engineer would be great

I'm definately a Sound Designer, I somewhat am reading about the music theory right now but I still know very little about it, but the tutorials I worry about more when I want to learn about producing is more on the quality of the sound (EQing/Compressing/etc...)

add "both" and I'll participate in this poll

I don't think it's exclusively either-or, but the majority of producers probably do fall into one of those categories. I've been a musician since I was 6, but I'm also an engineer, so I don't find either aspect very complicated. I have less patience for technical issues, but not less understanding.

What I do find, though, is that I can only really concentrate on one aspect at a time. Once I start working on the sound quality, the creative part of my brain kind of shuts off and it's hard to contribute anything more to the music, which is why I usually do my instrumentation and composition first save the finer details until the end.

sound designer, thank god im not the only person struggling with melodys!

I'm sure that I belong to the second type...

Mastering is my weak point

Yeah, Mastering is so darn stupid ;D Hate doing it every time. Hence, I never really do it.

Sound designer here. I hardly have any musical background, never really played an instrument. Melodies are easily made, but they're not really that good hehe, most comments I get is because of the melodies.

Though it can help to have some good musical sences. I always play with melodies in my head. That doesn't make me a musician tho haha

sound designer. it sucks. not that im a pro but thats life

Powered by: vBulletin
Copyright © 2000-2021, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.