The road to becoming a music producer isn’t quite as simple as listening to a few tunes and making a couple of decisions. From start to finish, the production journey is a time-consuming process. But simply having a workflow and options for what to do next, will massively speed up these processes and will make all the difference.
All the time we see producers wasting time with the tiny details that more often than not end up getting canned because their workflow is out of whack.
How much time have you spent creating loops that you never finish? How many hours have you wasted not surpassing a 16-bar loop? How many great ideas have laid waste to shear boredom?
If this sounds like you, then we think it’s time to take advice on that seemingly impossible task of what to do next, and who better than one of our most popular tutors – D.Ramirez.
From one of the most talented and experienced producers in Dance Music, we’ve compiled his top 5 top tips.
Colour code and organise your tracks. It’s simple, but so damn effective! All separate elements must be colour coded in a specific colour otherwise you’ll end up with a very counterproductive mess of a project. I colour my drums red, unless it’s a high hat and then it becomes pink, bass is brown, vocals yellow, synths blue and FX green.
Placing the same reverb on all of your drums actually has an amazing homogenising effect on the overall sound of the drums as a whole. The end result gives the impression that all the drums were recorded in the same place.
Another great tip if you’re working with vocals, use Ableton’s amazing capabilities to find interesting vocal loops from your existing chunk of audio. Create small loops within the vocal samples and flick through to find something interesting and unique.
Collect your ideas in clip view. Using clip view can be a great way to use Ableton as a musical sketch pad to try things out before you commit to the arrangement.
Finally, my last tip is to be sure that you separate kick and bass with EQ. Find the fundamental frequency in your kick and take a little bit of that out with an EQ on your bass.
From one of the most talented and experienced producers in Dance Music, our very own D Ramirez shows you exactly his process for creating a remix using parts from his own track ‘Get Wrecked’. Learn how to use Ableton’s unique features to create a template that works for you and helps you speed up your track making and remix process.
