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  • the production thread

I have experience in writing “club” tracks and ambient works.. but mainly the former could no longer interest me much the past two years or so to a point where I could just not be bothered to make one.

About a month or two ago I sat down to write a more “electronic” pop of the EDM persuasion (I guess.. I’ll leave the pigeon-holing up to others). I’m leaning more to the pop side for this because of the short sections and getting to the point quickly.

After it was done I let it rest for a month or so and listened back and decided there was nothing more I could do at this point in time to improve upon it (till the next track).

Side note: this is prob the worst demographic to pitch this stuff to though 😆

    Free dynamic EQ from Melda. Usually £49 or something. I had been waiting for Track Spacer to drop in price, but this looks like it does something similar, when trying to deal with frequency masking issues etc

    If you haven’t installed any of the Melda stuff before, the install is something like 600Mb. But you basically toggle off everything you don’t need so it’s not really bloatware.

    https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/16-EQ/1102-MDynamicEq

    Morty-C-137 I’ve been working on shorter 4/5mins style tracks, with perhaps a more traditional ‘songwriting’ sytle arrangement. All helpful to grow the arrangement muscle.

        and ..

        released the album I’ve been mentioning for a while. Still not got to 303s latest yet (but I will!).

        Should probably mention that the arrangement of a couple of tracks were ‘mentored’ by Funk D’Void during lockdowns - tracks 4 and 7.

          apyssjw Congratulation on the album. 😀
          Really enjoyed that. I imagine Mr Lieb enjoyed mastering it as well.

              Henry

              mono-stereo

              Cheers both. Definitely think its my best / most interesting. Am laying the groundwork for the next one - no doubt coming 2025 at the earliest 🙂

                    apyssjw I hope you’re proud of the album, it’s really well done. I enjoyed the breaks, the leads are cool, it’s all put together very nicely.

                        apyssjw That seems like good value. What are the main differences you notice after mastering?

                            apyssjw …congrats man, no mean feat getting an album’s worth of material together.

                            Liking the intricate perc on ‘Dimensions..’ and ‘High Hyper Sonic’… good work!

                                Unbroken1 Thanks. Really enjoy working with breakbeats and feel I’ve made a lot of progress in the last few years. ‘Dimensions…’ beats are predominantly cut up audio samples, whereas ‘High Hyper Sonic’ is midi based (albeit with the patterns pulled from samples). 🙂

                                  mono-stereo I ask the mastering engineer to tell me whats he thinks needs correcting before they do their job. You hope you are getting better when there are less and less requested amends.

                                  The your confident you can ask for a specific character for the master. There’s a little blurb on it here

                                  https://begin.lhaudio.com/mastering

                                  You do sometimes hear elements which you didn’t actively hear post master which you then want to either remove or drop in the mix.

                                  Probably the most positive difference, for my ear, is a widening of the stereo spread.

                                    14 days later

                                    All my factory pack files are missing in Ableton - they’re listed in the collection element on the left hand side, but says “The file could not be read. It may be corrupt or not licensed”. I’ve re-authorised at Ableton.com, but that didn’t work. Everything worked fine a little while ago, I’m currently working on a project with files from the factory pack like 909 Core Kit (and they all work fine), but it won’t let me start a new track with the 909 Core Kit, or anything else. I’ve sent a ticket to Ableton, but if anyone has any ideas, I’d appreciate it. Really annoyed.

                                      5 days later
                                      2 months later

                                      apyssjw

                                      Snag the Focusrite FAST Reveal/Bundle instead. It’s more expensive than TrackSpacer, but it’s easier to use and does a better job. You can rent to own them over a year.

                                      Focusrite Balancer has taken up all of my sidechain processing duties for me and allows things to breathe properly in the mix because it only ducks the offending frequencies of what you’re sidechaining it from.

                                          loopdokter I’ve had trackspacer since the turn of the year. Does exactly what it says on the tin, only criticism is that it’s a bit resource heavy. Can believe other bits do just as good if not better job.

                                          What, if anything, have people got their eye on for black Friday etc?

                                              I’ll watch for the ableton sale, may upgrade to 11 finally. Looking at morph 2 maybe, but I can’t say there’s too much I need for plugins. Synplant 2 looks really interesting, I just can’t justify spending that much for something I don’t really need.

                                                Still thinking of reasons baseline generator.

                                                303abuser I can’t say there’s too much I need for plugins

                                                Boo that man (but yes) 🙂

                                                    apyssjw

                                                    Nothing. I’m officially plugin-in’ed out. Unless something absolutely ground breaking and earth shattering comes along, realistically speaking I don’t need another plugin until the day I die. I’ve bought certain plugins that I thought I’d use and haven’t used them once.

                                                    It kind of helps that I beta test for Universal Audio and get all of the Spark plugins gratis. Check them out if you haven’t already. They’re rapidly porting everything over to be AAX, VST3, AU ready.

                                                    I would love for FabFilter’s multiband compressor to go on a steep discount, but that’s a pipe dream. Considering what they charge for their stuff, I’m starting to find equally if not better tools for a much better price.

                                                      apyssjw I have more soft synths, compressors, eqs, delays, reverbs, saturators, colour tools, and tape emulations than I’ll ever need. If I can’t make music with what I have, there’s something seriously wrong. But new plugins are fun. 😅

                                                        apyssjw …I jumped through hoops to get that working, bought a full copy of Reason 12, waited ages for the native non-Rosetta version to come out etc. Think I’ve used it twice 😆

                                                            …fancy the Synplant 2 upgrade, the original synth is so cool, but this looks mental

                                                            If I needed another sound design tool, I’d be all over it.

                                                            Unbroken1 that’s the spirit🙂

                                                            I’ve bought a number of things, not used them for years and then come back to them. Spectrasonics stylus is in that bucket. It feels probably like old technology imho, but am using it loads.

                                                            That said there’s other bits which are still on the shelf. I bought a copy of melodyne when it came out and haven’t found a use for it.

                                                                apyssjw That said there’s other bits which are still on the shelf. I bought a copy of melodyne when it came out and haven’t found a use for it.

                                                                I used to use Melodyne loads but I probably haven’t touched it in two years. That said, about a year ago I snagged it on on a deep discount. It’s a good thing to have in your arsenal. I tend to use it more for pitch correction on vocals - which clearly I don’t work a lot with - than its time stretching capabilities.

                                                                    loopdokter yeah, I used it a little to make time stretched noises - but not much more.

                                                                      9 days later

                                                                      ArchimedesQ not sure I’d be able to turn it around in a month. I feel like these comps would do much better if they put a longer time frame on things.

                                                                      But will be messing around with them.

                                                                        16 days later

                                                                        So, I’ve gone and bought a Syntakt. 303abuser was right all along, it is absolutely fantastic. Never really got on with creating drum patterns in either Ableton/Push or with Maschine. And this little box of tricks is really what I needed to kick start the old creative process again. We’ll see….
                                                                        I understand that I am talking to myself and no-one will read this. But for anyone thinking of getting a drum machine, then this thing is very easy to learn. Overbridge linking to Ableton was almost a doddle, as I needed to install a previous version due to some issues with the M1 chips. Other than that a massive thumbs up.