Where can I learn how to make my music sound professional?

[Barnelby]

So I have been making music for a few years now, and while my skills improve all the time, when I listen to pro quality material and read about some of the techniques and processes involved in making high quality audio I can see that there is still a long way to go.

I feel like I'm probably not the only person who has felt a little overwhelmed at times with the seemingly infinite amount of knowledge and skill it takes to create music using DAWs, synths, compressors, EQs, limiters, nuts, bolts, etc... :shock: I have become comfortable using individual components such as these; tying it all together neatly is where I think I am still lacking.

With forums like these there is a wealth of information readily available for anyone, but being a musician as well as a producer, I know that I wouldn't have learned how to play piano without someone to work with one on one. Does anyone know of any schools or even private studios that offer comprehensive courses in music production? Has anyone here done anything like that?

I have a friend who went to full sail to learn Logic and really enjoyed it. Has anyone here gone to full sail for music production?

Thanks!!

[feedingear]

maybe check out sonicacademy.com - it could provide you with a lot of tidbits of knowledge and help fill in some missing gaps in your knowledge. I've got a subscription but still havent got into it too deeply, but theres plenty you can pick up, and it goes from start to finish for a variety of genres.

i'm doing some private one on one lessons at the moment with a producer in perth called Qbik, and it is really helping to be able to sit down, watch what they do, and be able to ask immediately - why? As well as working on your songs together and being able to discuss why elements are working, what you are doing incorrectly, and how to make life easier in your DAW so you can write faster and get your ideas out.

If you can find a one on one tutor you get along with and value their musical and techincal expertise, I would highly recommend it. By the time you do a course online, you could spend a comparable amount, and due to course structures and requirements as well as the delivery method, you may end up with as many questions unanswered and the same gaps in your knowledge.

[FSTZ]

My advice is similar to Sensoona's

Read articles, explore techniques, watch how to videos

I'd like to recommend a website called audiotuts+ (http://audio.tutsplus.com/)

loads of nice walk through tutorials for audio on there.

Most of all, it comes down to this: how much time can you devote to learning production?

The more time you devote, the faster your skills will develop.

[nutrinoland]

Pointblank has a mixing dance music course, but make sure you go through what they offer cause you might already know a lot of the stuff..yet it can be helpful.
It helped me even after studying engineering at SAE . It focuses more on electronic music rather than recording and mixing acoustic instruments..
take a look

[Old Vantaa Man]

My advice is learn how to mix on headphones, then check the mix on the oldest, crappiest speakers you can find.
You DON'T need Genelecs.
Mix down at the lowest possible level. If you can hear everything it's ok.

[Innovine]

I bought a few hours at a local music school studio just to polish off a track. I brought in most of the song on a usb stick, just added some simple guitar bits in the studio, and just spend most of the time in the booth with the engineer, mixing and discussing things. I learned a lot. Might be worth a look if you find a nice place that'll sell you a couple of hours for an ok price. Try looking at schools/universities or community projects, or a cheap professional place.

[feedingear]

be careful learning to mix purely on phones as itll give you a false sense of stereo image. referencing at different volumes is certainly a fine idea, very low and very high. try leaving a track on, and walking into various rooms of your house, and hearing if anything sticks out or sounds out of place, its probably a nice indicator to back it off in the mix or do some rebalancing. id recommend mixing at a steady volume most of the time so you get used to the actual energy coming out of your monitors and the way your monitors sound at that energy level, then when you feel good about the mix, start listening higher and lower.

and as always, reference, reference, reference!

[FSTZ]

be careful learning to mix purely on phones as itll give you a false sense of stereo image. referencing at different volumes is certainly a fine idea, very low and very high. try leaving a track on, and walking into various rooms of your house, and hearing if anything sticks out or sounds out of place, its probably a nice indicator to back it off in the mix or do some rebalancing. id recommend mixing at a steady volume most of the time so you get used to the actual energy coming out of your monitors and the way your monitors sound at that energy level, then when you feel good about the mix, start listening higher and lower.

and as always, reference, reference, reference!

^^^agree

mixing on headphones has never worked for me personally

[Old Vantaa Man]

It's true mate.
Learn to mix on headphones and then mix final on crap speakers.
I speak proudly as one who has had a record out which sold thousands.
So there.

[Old Vantaa Man]

It's true mate.
Learn to mix on headphones and then mix final on crap speakers.
I speak proudly as one who has had a record out which sold thousands.
So there.

[Old Vantaa Man]

^^^^
And that's a true fucking story.

You dicks what believe what you're told about monitoring. FUCK THAT SHIT.

[feedingear]

I didnt say dont mix on phones, i said be careful of false stereo image/width. I mix on phones regularly and reference between them. Translation to bad speakers is important as well.

[FSTZ]

LOL

yeah

[DIGITAL SCREAMS]

Depends on how much you wish to invest in aquiring this knowledge. If your serious about obtaining the knowledge and skills then you should use these: http://www.dancemusicproduction.com/

If your not so serious...then you can spend years trawling through mis-informed articles on various forums and blogging sites.

DS

[DIGITAL SCREAMS]

Some of you TI owners might like to look into this: http://www.dancemusicproduction.com/?news=sessions-05-access-virus-ti

DS

[namnibor]

Yes, I am reviving an older thread, sometimes people call it "NecroThreading"...anyway, wanted to just share here there's some really affordable 'how-to' videos on every aspect of music production and even DAW-specific and vsti-specific on http://www.groove3.com/str/ and aside from individual dvd's one can also get access to watching as many as you want online.
My DAW of choice is Reaper and it's via an excellent dvd I purchased done by a very knowledgeable man, covering invaluable information. When you purchase a hard copy of any title you immediately also have access to watch it on their website. They even sent me a free comprehensive dvd on "Songwriting Theory Explained". They have various notable engineers that have inexpensive resources to help with "Mastering" to different types of synthesis programming tutorials.
If this revived thread helps even one other person then was worth resurrection, as learning a DAW can be quite daunting and when it's not pragmatic to attend aforementioned schools, where more times than not one would need to take prerequisite classes as in college, getting "straight to the meat and potatoes" of what you need to learn is an excellent option with this suggested website.

[TweakHead]

There's a bad advice here. You should have proper monitoring and a proper room to mix in. If you're not aware of what's going on, how can you fix it? A mix made with proper monitoring will sound good anywhere, headphones included - and that's the whole point!

You should take your time to perfect your mixing skills better. Don't even worry about "mastering" until you have a lush sounding mix in your hands. The mix is where the gold is. I think it really helps to have a grasp of such things as: gain structure, mixing with groups, parallel processing (much needed in any EM genre), mid and side processing. It's good you had piano lessons, you don't need to worry much about music theory, right? Learn your synthesis, make sounds while having in mind where do you want them to sit on the spectrum and on the stereo stage. Think 3d.

Take your time to really learn your DAW to.

EDIT

It's easier if you'd place a sample of one of your tracks for us to listen to. I'm sure there's some good ears round here that can give your more specific tips :twisted:

I have this subscribed on youtube: dubspot.com. there's some good production techniques on display there (that's why I subscribed it) and they sell courses to.

[namnibor]

Actually, was only meaning to post the fact there's tutorials available mainly for help with DAW program, thinking it might help someone learning as I am and only mentioned some other subjects available as FYI...I am nowhere near learning "mastering", et al. Learning a DAW can be pretty daunting and this resource has helped tremendously.

[MBTC]

Actually, was only meaning to post the fact there's tutorials available mainly for help with DAW program, thinking it might help someone learning as I am and only mentioned some other subjects available as FYI...I am nowhere near learning "mastering", et al. Learning a DAW can be pretty daunting and this resource has helped tremendously.

One suggestion to lessen the learning curve of any DAW. Don't feel like you need to learn everything about it right away. Try to just jump in and start recording some simple tracks, and every time you run into something that you don't know how to do, look up how to do it in the documentation, forums, online videos, etc. Then after you know how to do most of the things you need to do in order to make music, start looking into more advanced features on a curiosity basis.

That's actually the opposite advice I give to folks learning software development. In programming, it's so important to lay down the fundamentals and theory before just jumping in, and difficult to go back and patch the holes in knowledge later because too many bad habits have already been learned.

But with making music with DAWs, the way a DAW accomplishes a particular task is usually the choice of one or two designers who decided to make it work that way -- it's not science, and there's no right or wrong way even though it might seem as arcane as science at times. In every DAW I've ever used, I see some features that strike me as brilliant then I see other things implemented that are a complete what-the-fuck. It's just a matter of wrapping your head around that particular software package, and getting used to it by using it hands-on.

[TweakHead]

Yep, there's plenty of resources on the web! And some dedicated magazines are cool to: there's even issues dedicated to any software out there: logic, cubase, reaper, ableton! And the same goes for Eq, compressors, mixing, synthesis, so forth and so on! Highly recommend those issues. And focusing in one thing at a time. Groove 3 is also very good! I know about them because of the same magazines.

[TweakHead]

MTBC is right. I've used Logic for many years now. And I bought all the magazines dedicated to it, doesn't hurt to look and see if there's something I've missed to fill the holes. After a couple experiments, you're able to integrate some handy stuff into your work flow. Later you find yourself doing stuff really fast and intuitively. It comes with time and no one should stress it to much, I think.

People usually take a long time to get a rock solid Kick and Bass combo, for example. Usually comparing the material with mastered tracks is a big factor in producing frustration. Takes some time to train the ear. I highly recommend you get the sounds as close to what you want on the synthesizers (or other sources) before applying any sort of post processing to them. That's also where the gold is.

Then it's just a matter of making things play right together: for kick and bass, there's a couple of solutions available. Side-chain compressor on the Bass channel triggered by the Kick (used as input for the compressor) is probably one of the most used tricks for Electronic Music.

Still on the bass chapter, it's easy to go wrong on many stages, some related to synthesis, some to mix and processing. For example: if you want it to be steady and rock solid, you need to take away what's called the "drift" on some synthesizers, in others it's named such things as: "free" [running oscillators], on others you need to select "retrig", on the Virus you'd need to select a Phase value for the oscillators to recycle the wave for each note played. This gives you phase consistency (very much needed on many electronic music genres and easier to handle for mixing the bottom end). Something to look at on the synthesizer before going anywhere else. Also good idea to have an oscilloscope (there's some free ones) and see if the notes have their own space or colliding with each other - while adjusting the amp envelope.

If your patch is using an envelope assigned to the filter's frequency (which many times it does in a lot of music) and you feel your sub energy is lost with that, you can always add another oscillator tuned 12 semitones bellow the first with a triangle or square wave and mix it with the original. Some synthesizers have their own sub oscillator tuned one octave or two bellow. You can layer two bass instruments, one covering the sub part, the other one with a high pass filter leaving room for the first, and covering the mid range area. I'm ranting about this, just as an example of how you can go one route or the other for the same problem - one is solved inside the synthesizer and the other makes use of two instruments and careful mixing technique. In the case of the layer option, you can send both signals to a bus/aux channel and process them together - which will make them sound as one sound. Probably a good idea to shave off some frequencies from the kick in the mids for the bass's snappy tone to come through. You EQ a sound while listening to how if affects the others, in context.

For other sounds, depending on how much the Bass comes into the Mids, it's probably a good idea to use a low cut/high pass filter on those. But it they're programmed right, and played on the right octaves, not much cut is needed. But EQ here is used to reserve space, so as to preserve clarity. On breaks you probably don't need to cut the low end from the Leads, you can even benefit from it... This is an example of how mixing interacts with composition. :cool:

[namnibor]

Thanks a lot for the advice! For me, reaper seems more the intuitive route and yeah, the way you train people with software development is very much the analytical method the military engraved in me. Makes so much sense to learn by running into 'road blocks', tackle them, move on, at al.

[TweakHead]

About Reaper. Never got to try it, but saw some very good reviews on specialized magazines and have an idea of how it looks like. Looks very organized to me and actually know of some pro producers who have moved from cubase to reaper and swear they're never going back.

There's a couple of things I feel software does better these days: one of them is Bass. I know that hardware synthesizers can put out huge bass sound, specially if we're talking analogue. But having free running oscillators playing the bass isn't ideal imo. In order to use those great sounding basses from non-digital hardware, most people tend to go through the tedious process of re-sample, so as to build a sampler instrument from the "good" notes. You then need to zoom in on those waves and choose the notes with the best transients - which is related to the initial phase of the notes - for each note.

There's plenty of good sampled bass instruments from famous instruments in such things as Spectrasonics Trillian, and even some Moog notes (at least) in EXS24 (logic's own sampler) and certainly a loot of good sounding sample instruments for Kontakt (that's Native Instrument's super sampler).

But if you're like me, you really don't mind using software synthesizers for Bass. Digital synthesizers are more precise and software saves you the trouble of having to adjust timing issues by hand - so it's a no brainer for me: either software or sampled instruments.

The other thing I think software handles much better nowadays is drums. Sure there's the good old drum machines still around, and even new ones. But I honestly feel one is better off using samples inside some dedicated software or even arrange the samples on audio tracks (which I do often). Or make use of a lot of options to synthesize your own from different sources, layer them... Again, no timing issues and the ability to process the sound very fast to your liking.

Also think that one's better of mixing inside-the-box these days. There's plenty of high-end tools out there, and you're able to use many instances at once. Honestly feel that with good enough ears, one doesn't really need to waste a awful lot of money on expensive hardware equalizers and effects.

So, why do we need the expensive hardware gear - and I mean mostly synthesizers here. The sound and the interaction with the instruments, of course.

Composing today is different I think from what it used to be. Many musicians make some arrangement decisions thinking like producers - the frontier between the two is more ambiguous now then ever before - but if you know your synthesis and your music theory, all it takes to sound good is to develop some mixing skills.

Of course there's some daw specific stuff people do often nowadays: such as fading in and out on the audio recordings, applying time-stretch, reversing pieces of audio, tunning and transposing pieces of audio, inserting silence by cutting pieces...

This is the stuff there's to know about a daw software. Where and how to do such stuff. Once you're good with that, ideas flow more quicly.

[namnibor]

About Reaper. Never got to try it, but saw some very good reviews on specialized magazines and have an idea of how it looks like. Looks very organized to me and actually know of some pro producers who have moved from cubase to reaper and swear they're never going back.

There's a couple of things I feel software does better these days: one of them is Bass. I know that hardware synthesizers can put out huge bass sound, specially if we're talking analogue. But having free running oscillators playing the bass isn't ideal imo. In order to use those great sounding basses from non-digital hardware, most people tend to go through the tedious process of re-sample, so as to build a sampler instrument from the "good" notes. You then need to zoom in on those waves and choose the notes with the best transients - which is related to the initial phase of the notes - for each note.

There's plenty of good sampled bass instruments from famous instruments in such things as Spectrasonics Trillian, and even some Moog notes (at least) in EXS24 (logic's own sampler) and certainly a loot of good sounding sample instruments for Kontakt (that's Native Instrument's super sampler).

But if you're like me, you really don't mind using software synthesizers for Bass. Digital synthesizers are more precise and software saves you the trouble of having to adjust timing issues by hand - so it's a no brainer for me: either software or sampled instruments.

The other thing I think software handles much better nowadays is drums. Sure there's the good old drum machines still around, and even new ones. But I honestly feel one is better off using samples inside some dedicated software or even arrange the samples on audio tracks (which I do often). Or make use of a lot of options to synthesize your own from different sources, layer them... Again, no timing issues and the ability to process the sound very fast to your liking.

Also think that one's better of mixing inside-the-box these days. There's plenty of high-end tools out there, and you're able to use many instances at once. Honestly feel that with good enough ears, one doesn't really need to waste a awful lot of money on expensive hardware equalizers and effects.

So, why do we need the expensive hardware gear - and I mean mostly synthesizers here. The sound and the interaction with the instruments, of course.

Composing today is different I think from what it used to be. Many musicians make some arrangement decisions thinking like producers - the frontier between the two is more ambiguous now then ever before - but if you know your synthesis and your music theory, all it takes to sound good is to develop some mixing skills.

Of course there's some daw specific stuff people do often nowadays: such as fading in and out on the audio recordings, applying time-stretch, reversing pieces of audio, tunning and transposing pieces of audio, inserting silence by cutting pieces...

This is the stuff there's to know about a daw software. Where and how to do such stuff. Once you're good with that, ideas flow more quicly.

All great stuff. Interestingly, I have this copy of Novation Bass Station vst that came with the Remote SL61mk2 and wondered what you thought about that? (I have not installed it yet, and have another health issue "speed-bump" going on right now, but this will be a life-long ongoing affair and indeed disabled military veteran...I tend to be in denial of this a lot)

Definitely agree with drums as well.

[MBTC]

All great stuff. Interestingly, I have this copy of Novation Bass Station vst that came with the Remote SL61mk2 and wondered what you thought about that?

I know the question was for Tweakhead but I'll chime in anyway... the Bass Station plugin was a pack-in with my Remote SL as well, and I'd say as a freebie pack-in it's okay I guess but I didn't see anything special about it, or it never made it's way into my music I should say. Your mileage may vary of course -- I don't recall there being anything objectionable about the sound, but I guess I didn't like the UI, or maybe it's that bass sounds are easy enough to make with other plug-ins that just offered more. I figured maybe the UI was designed to look like older hardware and thus had some appeal there?