When I started producing several years ago, I was pondering the same questions over and over. The quality of my tracks was just not satisfactory, let alone comparable to pro tunes. I agree with all the people that replied. Everybody mentioned something important in the music making process, and what it comes down to is the fact that music making is a multifaceted approach, especially electronic music making.
Now days you're faced with not only having to compose but to completely engineer, mix and master your tracks. Therefore you chose a hobby/job that's much more complicated than others. You burden yourself with an unbelievable amount of information that you need to grasp, remember and use in order to sound good. Many people do not understand and do not appreciate the amount of work and being anal about every little detail in your productions. I'm telling you all this because the key for making good music (at least for me) was work, work and more work. Initially there was a thought that some kind of plug-in or an audio sweetening tool will make my music awesome only to realize later that no piece of hardware or software will save me. What counts and what worked was long hours of practice to make sure that everything fits tight and sounds well. And even now, I feel there is much more room for improvement. But the best thing is that if you persist one day you will be able to turn around and proudly say-'I made this'. It's a great and irreplaceable feeling of satisfaction. Now, it looks like I did not give you the facts and specific pointers. Maybe I could, but the point is practice will make you perfect and it's the only thing that works.
PS
I started realizing all this when applying a compressor to every instrument in my songs and didn't even know how to set-up attack and release times properly.

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entranced

STEREO!

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design great post, I think I might get a new view of producing if I think like that

and again, as I said before...it's up to you as a person, not your tools

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quote:

Originally posted by davedresden i suggest getting the gabriel & dresden prog-a-minute. in 3 easy steps you too could change the face of dance music. batteries not included. - dave

quote:

Originally posted by Bondor STEREO!

seriously, a lot of people neglect this point sometimes entirely. Panning the drums is good ... but im talking about seriously tweeking the stereo image of the synths, in reason the subtractor is not a stereo device, and once you double it and addust the phase ... BAM-O! it sounds so much fuller. if stereo does one thing it adds that massive full bodied sound to your track. if you have anything that isnt stereo in your track, do something about it. hard pan the reverb, delay, background noise, whatever... mono tracks within a stereo mix stand out as dull. im not saying that this is the secret, its far from it, but it will most likly help out ten fold to achieve that profetional sound. But, like Design said, the true defining qualities of a profesional sounding song are the person + hard work + time.

bondor

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person + hard work + hardware* + time


* There are good professional productions done with software only, but hardware makes things easier. It's something you must have heard...1000 words can't show you the pressure andclearness of nord lead bass sound without having applied any eq, fx, whatever...


Trancevision

quote:

Originally posted by CynepMeH What's the secret of extracting the "3rd dimension" from your sounds?

Time and experience. Or a professional sound engineer, like a lot of the "big names" use.

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http://www.aponaut.com

quote:

Originally posted by xls Time and experience. Or a professional sound engineer, like a lot of the "big names" use.

but it's still not needed if you just devote yourself to what you doo...

take armin as an example, he produces his stuff totally on his own...
he creates the arrangement, he mixes it and he masters it...

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quote:

Originally posted by davedresden i suggest getting the gabriel & dresden prog-a-minute. in 3 easy steps you too could change the face of dance music. batteries not included. - dave

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Originally posted by Vizay but it's still not needed if you just devote yourself to what you doo... take armin as an example, he produces his stuff totally on his own... he creates the arrangement, he mixes it and he masters it...

That's where the time & experience come in

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http://www.aponaut.com

quote:

take armin as an example, he produces his stuff totally on his own...

Agreed

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Business is very food.

quote:

Originally posted by xls That's where the time & experience come in

sry, don't know why but I ignored that part for some reason when I posted that post

well still armin is a very good example of what one can achieve with lots of money and dedication

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quote:

Originally posted by davedresden i suggest getting the gabriel & dresden prog-a-minute. in 3 easy steps you too could change the face of dance music. batteries not included. - dave

quote:

Originally posted by Trancevision hardware makes things easier

I think that's a matter of opinion based on how you're used to working. I would never go back to sequencing on hardware. It's not visual enough. Same goes for sampling. Trimming and setting loop points are way easier on your computer than they are on the small display of an external sampler. As for synths, it's gotten to the point that softsynths are so good, that the deciding factor for me basically comes down to interface design. Some hardware synths are so simple there's no reason to want a software version over the hardware version. There's still a few that are so distinct sounding that software just can't replace them all the time. But some softsynths can do things that would be next to impossible in hardware (Reaktor for example). And other softsynths make stuff like modulation matrix assignment dumb-ass simple (check out the LinPlug stuff - no scrolling through pages of menus on a 4-inch long LCD). There's an interesting series in one of the big music publications (can't remember if it was SOS or Future Music) comparing classic Analogue synths to their new software counterparts. The FM7 softsynth destroyed the original Yamaha DX7 because it was so much easier to use, and the sound quality was virtually indistinguishable. Softsynths also solve the problem of recording. Don't have to worry about noise in your system, or faulty cables or anything like that.

Don't get me wrong, I still use my 303 and my Virus all the time, but in the past couple of years, more and more of my synths have been replaced by software!

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http://www.aponaut.com

Uh watch out people, hardware/software discussion here again

I don't have experiences with hardware, don't have the money for it. Would love to let my ideas go on hardware in a studio and see what comes out and if it sounds better than software.

So I use software, and what I learned these months here was:

Compression - but for me it makes little differences

EQ-ing - all sounds waaaAAAAaay clearer and more crisp, big improvement. There are whole tables available on what you should remove from a sound. Listen while you change it and feel for yourself tho.

Panning - i was an idiot, i never used it, but it helps both clarity and dimension

With panning, so making stereo, comes stereo enhancing. I think every pro tune has it on the instruments in the higher spectrum, so hihats, lead synths, fx. The FX should be panned the most IMO. Give the listeners the idea that... an airplane flies over!

Chorus, phasing and flanging help to create dimension too (they use panning). Don't forget reverb, but watch out for muddiness.

My tracks improved a damn whole lot with these points. Hope it helps you too. This is IMO far more important than large synth sounds, cause these days very easy sines and sawes are still used to create pro tracks.

I was already familiar with layering, dynamics (volume and filters), buildup structure, the basic things actually.

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- Yarune-Music.com - Click to visit website -
Productions:
Airballoon [Intuition] | The Book Of The Water | Sands Of Time | Terraphonic - Ad Hoc Havoc | Muse - Uprising (Yarune Remix)
Also visit my soundcloud and Twitter

Last edited by Jay M on Apr-16-2004 at 02:06