8 tips for
Music Production
in Home Studios
We are in a world where everything is digital when it comes to making music. We don’t need anything more than a laptop with
the right software and sounds. All we need is the right set of techniques for making your tracks sound good. Here are some
production tips for efficient production.
1. Layering kicks and bass 4. Side Chaining
Instead of using just one kick sample, you can even layer
kicks for example, like if you are using say an 808 kick, you
can add another layer of kick which doesn’t have the same
characteristics of the 808 but compliments the 808 and adds
to the highs of the kick. This gives you a round and fat kick
sound.
Similarly, instead of using just one bass sound, it's good to
layer a few bass sounds, this will cover more frequencies
and will make it sound sonically good and fat. You can add a
sub bass if you are not using an 808 and the add a synth bass
over it to make it sound good. Sometimes even layering an
acoustic bass sound might work out. But layering is never
wrong.
We are able to see many artists come up with amazing
records from their laptops. In this era of electronic music,
you cannot hear one track that is not side chained. By side
chain I mean when the kick and the sub bass don’t clash
or meet at the same time. This is very common in EDM
or House. My go to plugin for sidechaining is the Nicky
Romero Kickstart.
5. Track grouping
Always group tracks with similar frequencies after adding
individual effects on each track. It will be easier to add an
overall effect like reverb, sidechain or even eq them overall
to make it sound even better.
2. Quantizing 6. Using sends for effects
Quantizing is a major part of a production when you are
dealing with midi. When it comes to electronic music it's
almost fully quantized and sounds like a mechanically
produced track.
When it comes to acoustic drum production, a majority of
the times its good to quantize to almost perfect level say
90% quantized. If you are quantizing it to a 100% then it is
good to use the swing option to give it a human feel to it.
The swing option is present on all DAWs and this gives
more liveliness to the rhythm and to the melody.
3. Removing the lows
Almost for all the layers, this process is a must, go to your
favorite eq, and make sure you do a low cut for almost all
the sounds so that you can have the kick and bass setting
in properly at their frequency without having a frequency
clash with other layers. This will also clean up your song
and will remove the unnecessary low frequencies and will
not make it sound muddy. This can be done for any genre of
music and to any track that you are producing. This is one
of the golden rules of producing clean music.
Always send effects like reverb, delays through busses and
not directly on the insert of every track. By doing so, you
will reduce your CPU load by a huge margin. This gives
more tweaking opportunity to edit the wetness of the reverb
or any other effect you add. This is something I do for every
track and its super helpful.
7. Exporting & Headroom
The last stage is when your track is ready for the final mix.
This stage is when you are done adding your own effects to
your track. This is part of the production process.
It is a must to know how effects like reverb, eqs,
compressors work. This way you will know how exactly
you want your track to sound and what you need to do to
make it sound good.
It is better to have a pre mix of your song ready for the mix
engineer.
After this is when you export/bounce every track and send
it to your mix engineer. Make sure you have enough head
room for the track to be mixed and mastered. Never send
your stems for mix with hot levels.
Author: Vishal Ramakrishnan, Global peace song of the year award winning composer and
music producer. He is also a music production trainer.
For more details visit: www.vishaladitya.com
The
Score Magazine
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