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-- Kim Lajoie Blog: Don’t make better mixes. Make better music.
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Kim Lajoie Blog: Don’t make better mixes. Make better music.

Nice post on Kim Lajoie's blog today that seems particularly relevant to many EDM producers these days. Oh and if you are not a regular reader of his work, bookmark it. Its surprisingly relevant, especially to newer producers.

http://kimlajoie.wordpress.com/2010...e-better-music/

Where can I hear this guys work?

i believe he is all bark, no bite

He says

"Oh yeah. That sounds like a lot of work. Making music is a lot of work. Cry me a river."

I'm definitely not going to argue that statement. But there are people like me who bust their asses trying to make their music sound better. I'm not a closeminded person and understood 90% of that blog before I even read it.

The problem is I have no frame of reference for ANYTHING. I've never met a competent producer in my life, not a lot of people in my area even really like trance, and when you have to learn everything on your own you wind up wasting too many valuable hours learning nothing. Going through youtube it seems 95% of the shit on there is utter garbage. I just got done watching a "professional mastering video" that said to throw soundgoodizer on your master. That was the ENTIRE video.

I have to stream through endless heaps of garbage just to find 1 jewel. It seems logical in one respect but it doesn't seem right when you look at the bigger picture.

I found an article on here a few days ago about layering bass sounds and it was EXACTLY what I was looking for. In depth, concise, comprehensible, and to the point. I found another article I think beatflux posted about "hit factors" or w/e. ANOTHER great read. But I NEVER find these articles searching the internet on my own. I dont even find these articles in the master tut list. I find endless hours of video that don't apply to me. And you have to watch the entire video before you realize it was a complete waste of time.

And I don't even think its about a certain blog or tut being relevant to a select group of producers, it seems that theres just sooo much information out there thats outright irrelevant no matter what group you fit into. Whether your a newbie or vet, the tuts have no SUBSTANCE to offer.

I've learned everything I know by tuts, time, and practice. The better tuts that I can find, the better I can practice, and the quicker I can learn. But because the internet is full of SO MUCH garbage, it feels like I have to learn at a slower rate simply due to the amount of morons out there. Like how is a tut about layering basses not relevant to everyone? There was pieces of information in that tut that could be used by almost everyone because it had a certain frequency of useful information. I just feel a lot of my problem is not finding information, but finding quality information.

Like that blog was good, I understood what he was saying. But its still at the end of the day a waste of a read. He merely provided examples in an almost freestyle fashion.

Focus on melodies more
Focus on rythm more
Focus on harmony more

really? NO SHIT. What the hell does this guy think I do all day? Are producers REALLY that bad... or is he just blowing it out of proportion and providing no real useful information himself?

That entire blog could have been written in 2 words. "Be creative". He really didn't provide one original way to do it. Like please, "alternate between shuffle and straight" "vary syncopation" like does anyone NOT try that in their first year of production?

And the funny thing is I myself don't know shit about music, but I know enough to realize that so much information out there is just useless. And THAT is truely sad.
Great I'll go do something spectacular now cause I'll focus on preproduction.

I already focus on enough, the last thing I need is more shit to focus on. I need to sit down with Aly & Fila for one day and just watch them make a track. Its funny that I can prob spend about 3 years reading tuts and still not learn as much from one day with a competent producer. Thats what pisses me off the most about music, is I always feel like I'm on my own and don't have a quick enough way to get the answers I want.

Re: Kim Lajoie Blog: Don’t make better mixes. Make better music.

quote:

Originally posted by Eric J Nice post on Kim Lajoie's blog today that seems particularly relevant to many EDM producers these days. Oh and if you are not a regular reader of his work, bookmark it. Its surprisingly relevant, especially to newer producers.

No,no,no. I rather do the Sean Tyas thing and keep making the same song over and over. LOL

Yeah, that blog was really nothing new. The problem in my personal observations is that too many bedroom producers don't want to learn an instrument or music theory because they have this wild notion that it will burden them with a bunch of "rules" that will stifle their creativity. Also, I think that many amateur producers seem to wear it as a badge of of honor that they can create compositions despite having no formal musical training or education - nothing wrong with that per se, but I can say with a good deal of certainty that the vast majority who have taken the extra steps to further their musical training/education don't regret it. And, finally, how many times have we all read threads in which the majority of respondents claims that EDM is 70-90% (or, pick your own majority) technical/mixing and only 10-30% musical. Not coincidentally, how many threads on the same pages of those same forums have topics complaining about all the crap that is saturating the EDM market?

Bottom line is that, like the blogger, I prefer tracks that have strong melodic and harmonic components and think that those characteristics are far more important aspects of a quality song than the technical side is, but I feel like I'm very much in the minority. Oh well.

Or just become friends with a producer you respect (popular or not) and try to get him to mentor you. Eventually he'll send you project files where you can really start to learn and then ask him questions related to the projects. That's what I did anyway. I'd say who it was but I'm not sure they would appreciate it as they post here sometimes.

It has been by far the most effective and time saving process. If I could go back to the beginning I would be offering certain producers hundreds of dollars just to see their old projects so I could see how they worked, what they did, and then adapted it into my own style. Would have saved hours upon hours of time along with $$$ spent on books and what not.

quote:

Originally posted by Stephen Wiley ...see their old projects so I could see how they worked, what they did, and then adapted it into my own style. Would have saved hours upon hours of time along with $$$ spent on books and what not.

Well, no offense intended, but it sounds like you guys missed the point and are talking about exactly what the blogger was saying NOT to do. Reading tutorials on layering basses and studying old project files, etc. isn't going to improve your ability to write good melodies/hooks, etc. Learning an instrument and/or improving your musical knowledge will, and will open doors in your creative mind that you probably wouldn't have even imagined or stumbled upon by clicking notes in the piano roll while following someone else's youtube tutorial.

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik Well, no offense intended, but it sounds like you guys missed the point and are talking about exactly what the blogger was saying NOT to do. Reading tutorials on layering basses and studying old project files, etc. isn't going to improve your ability to write good melodies/hooks, etc. Learning an instrument and/or improving your musical knowledge will, and will open doors in your creative mind that you probably wouldn't have even imagined or stumbled upon by clicking notes in the piano roll while following someone else's youtube tutorial.

This

quote:

Originally posted by cryophonik Well, no offense intended, but it sounds like you guys missed the point and are talking about exactly what the blogger was saying NOT to do. Reading tutorials on layering basses and studying old project files, etc. isn't going to improve your ability to write good melodies/hooks, etc. Learning an instrument and/or improving your musical knowledge will, and will open doors in your creative mind that you probably wouldn't have even imagined or stumbled upon by clicking notes in the piano roll while following someone else's youtube tutorial.

I suppose I should have elaborated more. Simply put, what the author has stated is a "no duh" blog. Of course composition comes first, but composition can be greatly enhanced by looking at old project files to see how the instruments talk to each other (chords, melody, bass) as a good start, and then develop your own unique style from there.

Quite frankly I thought this blog was......not needed. Everybody with a brain knows what he/she stated. (And not everybody in Beatport's top 100 has a brain, so don't measure yourself with a chart as much as you'd like to be on one)

IMO what the problem is is that too many people are trying to produce, period. Just like college/university is not for everyone, well neither is music production and instead of people facing reality they force the issue and thus we are where we are. That's where you get these imbeciles cranking out one generic trance tune after the other with fruity loops & sample packs.

Any serious artists, or serious blogger for that matter, shouldn't have to be told what was written. It goes without saying.

quote:

Originally posted by Stephen Wiley I suppose I should have elaborated more. Simply put, what the author has stated is a "no duh" blog.

I gotcha - and, yeah, I agree.

Interpreting that I could be far more musical by using ie Reason. Sitting and jamming by the piano doesn't really fix anything if you use FL, right?

I personally think "trance" is in such a silly phase right now, it makes people that don't even listen to trance much say it's dead. But the day you have that perfect musical concept in your hands and you know nothing about mixing? What are you gonna do? If you're producing electronic music, they go hand to hand I say. There's just too much shit flying in the air to even breath anymore. Either trance progresses to be something new and all the uplifters (sorry) follow along and ruin that glimpse of gold by numbers. I like progressive but it has become such a fashion thing just like uplifting, it will be ruined eventually too.
The new people that get to know certain genres as they are the moment they get to know it, they learn to like it that way. And those who like it the old way will eventually be flamed as purists, old etc..

It's only natural, not that I'd appreciate it, allthough I'm young too.

Well one interesting thing I have noticed is the smaller portal sites that sell music & sometimes sample packs are going out of business. Resonant Vibes would be a good example. I've received emails about others, but can't recall their exact names (there are so many)

I think this is a very small step in the right direction. Obviously we're not going to be able to go back to the 90's where you had to walk into a music store for a CD, but this is a small, small start. All of these rogue distributors are just as toxic as the music and label flooding taking place. Eventually, the cream will rise to the top. The people who are in it for money will leave like they're doing now. Why do you think Tiesto ditched Blackhole? It turned into a red ink operation.

I hope that it doesn't come down to purists but if people don't start buying music there are going to be a lot of labels and artists saying F this. This is a double edged sword, because dance music does need a cleansing, however; it shouldn't just be a bunch of hobbyists. There has to be some capital generated for anybody to take the music seriously, and the more capital generated, the more serious the music gets.

Lately I just produce for fun. Havn't released anything in a long time because I just don't see it as a good idea. I'd rather save my work for a future album, etc, and hope for change.

In all my blatantly presented cynicism I was saying edm will never turn to gold anymore imo. The more "golden" stuff will remain in the underground, and at the moment I think it's a good place for it.

Believe it or not, I started listening to rap music at age six (1995), and I prefer that to be the golden-age of rap music. Unfortunately I saw it all turn to absolute fucking bullshit in my teens. But those years searching for something more original I discovered the power of true underground. And I hope it will be a salvation for good edm as it turned out to be for good rap music.

And now I feel I'm in the same place for the second time, witnessing music I really used to like turn to

quote:

absolute fucking bullshit

Basically all I'm saying is that this has happened to much much more genres than just trance, but I guess you know it all better than me already.

And how I got to know trance was isos 2, and it has changed a lot from that. My sister was fortunate enough to travel a lot in europe during trance music's golden-age (born in 1970) and older trance is one of the few things we have in common in music generally. I wish I could trade places with her and shift back in time.

One thing I have no clue about is how business will affect trance and dance music in general in the future. All I know is money has made it much worse and disposable than it used to be even when I started listening to it.

edit. I may have turned a bit too emotional there and I'll get me coat.

edit 2. And since I haven't really found the true trance / progressive underground yet am having major trouble trying to dive in, I'd appreciate pm's simply listing me some good artists whose tracks to begin with.

There is a lot of truth in what Kim said in his blog, which I like to read weekly beside Sound-on-Sound, KVR and TA.

I remember the times when I was sitting around on a 8 bar loop and already tried to "master" it perfectly, tweaking on EQs and comps like forever, till the music started to turn crap.

If beginners start trying to produce and there go any forum to show their first tunes, what are the normal reactions? "Its too loud / quiet" "Use more delay / reverb" "U know what an EQ is?" "Choose better sounds!" etc. 99% of the time, any feedback is about sound, as EDM is more about sound as most of the producers wanna have "that" sound.

The thing is, as EDM is more about sound, most of the new guys get spammed over and over with all these phrases and topics about mixing and processing because they not yet have that sound and this is when mostly everyone gets into all this delusion about effects, mixing and mastering.

My best friend stopped making music. He had it all. He spent a lot of money on two UAD cards, a room with full acoustic treament (which happend to be the most expensive part). He read all those articles about acoustic treatments and how it would work in his studio, using all these tools to measure the room. A whole science I never understand and probably will never understand. He was getting much more. After like a year after he was finished with the room he quit making music, because he couldnt get any advance of all the stuff he bought. His music still suffered from always the same structure and harmony.

What I want to say, for the most part the producers that I would call successful are the ones who can combine a fairly simple idea together with a modern sound. The producers that I like the most, have much more complex themes, with not so worn out sounds and an exciting arrangement. I would say these people are different then the regular EDM producer because they just not focus on just one style and the "rules" that comes with that. Listening to a lot of different music, use different progressions along with sounds. Different music works different. A guitar + vocal duo needs to focus on so much more else as someone with unlimited audio tracks and loads of synths in his back.

But the regular, new producers? They get Nexus and some VEC samples by recommendations OUT OF ALL THESE NONSENSE TUTORIALS and try to sound like Jorn van Deynhoven...

Gear hunt + lazyness + a not heatlhy genre atm = nowadays trance with all these 17 yrs old "stars" from eastern europe with cracked FL and a bunch of presets... yippie yeah!

Funny you mention guitar and vocal duo. I have been listening to almost nothing but '60s rock the past few days and comparing it to modern electronic music. Kind of a weird thing to do, but perhaps instructive.

I dunno, sometimes I think modern trends in production really suck. All this tarting our music up with novel effects for the sake of it, or because we just downloaded a new toy. Delay and reverb on all these lifeless sounds to give them some sense of reality. EQing and compressing out the wazoo. Trying to enliven things that are not all that interesting to start with. Then make things as loud as possible to get people to pay attention to our mindless beats instead of the slightly quieter ones on the next MySpace page.

Blah.

make both

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Funny you mention guitar and vocal duo. I have been listening to almost nothing but '60s rock the past few days and comparing it to modern electronic music. Kind of a weird thing to do, but perhaps instructive. I dunno, sometimes I think modern trends in production really suck. All this tarting our music up with novel effects for the sake of it, or because we just downloaded a new toy. Delay and reverb on all these lifeless sounds to give them some sense of reality. EQing and compressing out the wazoo. Trying to enliven things that are not all that interesting to start with. Then make things as loud as possible to get people to pay attention to our mindless beats instead of the slightly quieter ones on the next MySpace page. Blah.

There is an "art" in synthesizers. Stuff that seems to have his own life. Yes, this might be more about old vintage gear that has a certain "life" to it, like a Minimoog or something. It aint that lifeless as some of the stuff around now. Maybe because its all about the computer environment. Music making is also about expression, moving along, doing something with your hands, give life to it. But look how successful some instruments become just because they aint lifeless even if they are electronic. If you can get some life into those OSCs, thats when you create something beyond just EDM. I love synthesizers, but my favorite instruments to jam with and express emotions in my freestyle modes are piano, cello and mellotron and for the synth I like stuff like the imperfect Ensoniq SQ-80.

So lets start a revolution, while we all leave 20db RMS, start all sounds from init patches and record ourselves beatboxing our own drums.

The most weird thing about all this. As much as possibilities we got nowawadys, its funny how many producers just sound and do the same.

quote:

Originally posted by Coyke Yes, this might be more about old vintage gear that has a certain "life" to it, like a Minimoog or something.

JBJ knows all about the Moog.

This is what ive been doing for the last couple of years.

Then i got obsessed with having a supertight mix and cant get anything done. Time to go back i guess, cause he has a good point thats for sure.

quote:

Originally posted by Subtle This is what ive been doing for the last couple of years. Then i got obsessed with having a supertight mix and cant get anything done. Time to go back i guess, cause he has a good point thats for sure.

+ 1

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox He says "Oh yeah. That sounds like a lot of work. Making music is a lot of work. Cry me a river." I'm definitely not going to argue that statement. But there are people like me who bust their asses trying to make their music sound better. I'm not a closeminded person and understood 90% of that blog before I even read it. The problem is I have no frame of reference for ANYTHING. I've never met a competent producer in my life, not a lot of people in my area even really like trance, and when you have to learn everything on your own you wind up wasting too many valuable hours learning nothing. Going through youtube it seems 95% of the shit on there is utter garbage. I just got done watching a "professional mastering video" that said to throw soundgoodizer on your master. That was the ENTIRE video. I have to stream through endless heaps of garbage just to find 1 jewel. It seems logical in one respect but it doesn't seem right when you look at the bigger picture. I found an article on here a few days ago about layering bass sounds and it was EXACTLY what I was looking for. In depth, concise, comprehensible, and to the point. I found another article I think beatflux posted about "hit factors" or w/e. ANOTHER great read. But I NEVER find these articles searching the internet on my own. I dont even find these articles in the master tut list. I find endless hours of video that don't apply to me. And you have to watch the entire video before you realize it was a complete waste of time. And I don't even think its about a certain blog or tut being relevant to a select group of producers, it seems that theres just sooo much information out there thats outright irrelevant no matter what group you fit into. Whether your a newbie or vet, the tuts have no SUBSTANCE to offer. I've learned everything I know by tuts, time, and practice. The better tuts that I can find, the better I can practice, and the quicker I can learn. But because the internet is full of SO MUCH garbage, it feels like I have to learn at a slower rate simply due to the amount of morons out there. Like how is a tut about layering basses not relevant to everyone? There was pieces of information in that tut that could be used by almost everyone because it had a certain frequency of useful information. I just feel a lot of my problem is not finding information, but finding quality information. Like that blog was good, I understood what he was saying. But its still at the end of the day a waste of a read. He merely provided examples in an almost freestyle fashion. Focus on melodies more Focus on rythm more Focus on harmony more really? NO SHIT. What the hell does this guy think I do all day? Are producers REALLY that bad... or is he just blowing it out of proportion and providing no real useful information himself? That entire blog could have been written in 2 words. "Be creative". He really didn't provide one original way to do it. Like please, "alternate between shuffle and straight" "vary syncopation" like does anyone NOT try that in their first year of production? And the funny thing is I myself don't know shit about music, but I know enough to realize that so much information out there is just useless. And THAT is truely sad. Great I'll go do something spectacular now cause I'll focus on preproduction. I already focus on enough, the last thing I need is more shit to focus on. I need to sit down with Aly & Fila for one day and just watch them make a track. Its funny that I can prob spend about 3 years reading tuts and still not learn as much from one day with a competent producer. Thats what pisses me off the most about music, is I always feel like I'm on my own and don't have a quick enough way to get the answers I want.

I think you've missed the point of his blog. You say you spend hours trawling through the internet looking for tutorials, how you found one on bass which was really good, how you'd love to see how a pro makes a track etc etc. He is suggesting that you stop with all that shit and focus on composition/song-writing.

Spending hours upon hours trying to get that bass line to be "just right" (after having already spent hours looking at bass tutorials) is time that you should be spending being creative and composing songs.

You might not agree with that sentiment but this is the point he is trying to make.

Music is an art before it is a science~

quote:

Originally posted by Stephen Wiley Quite frankly I thought this blog was......not needed. Everybody with a brain knows what he/she stated. (And not everybody in Beatport's top 100 has a brain, so don't measure yourself with a chart as much as you'd like to be on one) Any serious artists, or serious blogger for that matter, shouldn't have to be told what was written. It goes without saying.

It's really easy to say "No Duh," but the production culture acts otherwise. All of the mixing talk has a subtle effect on our psyches: it makes people think it's really important.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Funny you mention guitar and vocal duo. I have been listening to almost nothing but '60s rock the past few days and comparing it to modern electronic music. Kind of a weird thing to do, but perhaps instructive. I dunno, sometimes I think modern trends in production really suck. All this tarting our music up with novel effects for the sake of it, or because we just downloaded a new toy. Delay and reverb on all these lifeless sounds to give them some sense of reality. EQing and compressing out the wazoo. Trying to enliven things that are not all that interesting to start with. Then make things as loud as possible to get people to pay attention to our mindless beats instead of the slightly quieter ones on the next MySpace page. Blah.

Cynical and inspiring.

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