Which production concepts/techniques have improved your production the most?

[BONES]

d'oh! OMG. my tunes haven't been visible! updating now! LOL

You don't see how it's helpful? Listening to your music, I am impressed with how punchy your mixes are. I don't like the music itself much, but the production values are quite high. So, having heard what you do, I am now far more likely to give credence to what you have to say about production. I also have some idea of what advice might be helpful in making your music sound even better. (Off the top of my head, maybe the balance between different sounds isn't always as good as it could be. The basslines, in particular, seem a smidge too prominent in a few of your tunes. Instead of things bubbling to the surface, they sometimes feel more like they are being thrust to the front, if you know what I mean?) I'm quite enjoying Get SERIOUS now.

[mjolnir]

d'oh! OMG. my tunes haven't been visible! updating now! LOL

You don't see how it's helpful? Listening to your music, I am impressed with how punchy your mixes are. I don't like the music itself much, but the production values are quite high. So, having heard what you do, I am now far more likely to give credence to what you have to say about production. I also have some idea of what advice might be helpful in making your music sound even better. (Off the top of my head, maybe the balance between different sounds isn't always as good as it could be. The basslines, in particular, seem a smidge too prominent in a few of your tunes. Instead of things bubbling to the surface, they sometimes feel more like they are being thrust to the front, if you know what I mean?) I'm quite enjoying Get SERIOUS now.

I do think this thread is helpful.

I really appreciate your honesty and opinions on this. It kind of gives me a boost, too.
I had thought that my mixes were crappy as can be and so my confidence was draining and then I had trouble following through with some musical ideas. (But also, I have trouble creating melodies and harmonies lately due to concentration problems).

I think I might know what you mean about the basslines being too prominent. I have to dial down some of my own cultural biases and try to ditch some of my musical habits. Also, I have some specific technical gear issues where my USB MIDI controller is too sensitive--I might get a different one, or find some kind of MIDI filter that can "compress" the MIDI velocities. If anybody knows of such MIDI VST effect utilities, please let me know.

I will try to keep improving.
Also, I think the separation problem is very real. Using hardware made it much easier to achieve with separation without huge struggles. It was actually harder to blend in some ways. But one thing I will admit, is that too many times I settled for plain mono or near mono instead of doing tricks to get or enhance stereo.

Just recently, however I realised something GOOD: CREATE SYNTH LAYERS PER INSTRUMENT

So instead of just loading up one sound per instrument, load up 2-10, and layer them.
I haven't been doing this yet, but it's on my mind as such that I might actually devote a whole separate computer to just being a Synth rack with layers, and then just perform into a recorder to a click track and quit quantizing entirely (except for drums). It's much harder to play that way, but I hate f**king around with Reaper's quantization anyhow and I need better results.

Thanks for this thread, guys.
Peace and respect to y'all.

[mjolnir]

Ah, different topic: GHOST SNARES (awesome)
Production tip: don't forget (to use) the ghost snares.

That is all.

[legendCNCD]

As a drummer I know 'em

[mjolnir]

I remembered recently that a common way to record drums is to have separate overhead mics than the close mics near each individual drum component.

To get some mix variety, emulating that setup with mixing tools can help a lot. The overheads usually have the room sound as well as a lot of cymbals and just a mess of everything else. But mixed into the background of close mic kick and snare (or one shot samples) you can get some really nice power. It's fun especially if you DON'T want a fully realistic sound but want the flavour of acoustic drums. Sometimes the reverb on the drums as a kit sounds like almost the whole kit, so use that if you can.

I have forgotten to use this technique lately, but it's fun and can help when combined with other techniques such as high pass filtering the cymbals (gut the cymbals to be almost nothing) if you really want super crisp cymbals.

[Opaque]

When I was just starting out, one very simple thing, but also very important, is sound/instrument separation in terms of frequency, at the creation stage, not later in mixing (then it's too late). It clicked for me when I realized how it developed within the orchestra throughout centuries - e.g. within the string section, with divided ranges that naturally fit each instrument, which results in a beautiful and full sound.

Again, this seems simple, but I can hear often people playing harsh sounding lead instruments simultaneously, or bass presets and asking for mixing advice, and I used to do that too initially. Of course, artistic concept and aesthetic intention will always trump this, but the principle mostly applies to anything, from electroacoustic/acousmatic music to dua lipa productions.

[Lerian]

committing parts to audio

This was the best advice I ever had and the main reason for the most fun I have making music. It gives me the sense of evolving, not staying in the same place, and this comes with even more fun and inspiration. I think is the most productive technique someone can have in this day and age, with all the live plugins, modular, and midi options.

[crimsonwarlock]

My mixes got much better since I started to implement certain techniques from Andrew Scheps, specifically his rear-bus technique. Setting that up and then switching it on and off is a real wow-moment.

committing parts to audio

This was the best advice I ever had and the main reason for the most fun I have making music. It gives me the sense of evolving, not staying in the same place, and this comes with even more fun and inspiration. I think is the most productive technique someone can have in this day and age, with all the live plugins, modular, and midi options.

I have separate projects for composing/tracking, mixing, and mastering. After tracking, I export all channels to audio and import that into a new mixing project. Committing your multitracks to audio makes you decide things before mixing and then focus purely on the mixing aspect of your project.

[Uncle E]

This was the best advice I ever had and the main reason for the most fun I have making music. It gives me the sense of evolving, not staying in the same place, and this comes with even more fun and inspiration. I think is the most productive technique someone can have in this day and age, with all the live plugins, modular, and midi options.

Agreed. Freezing isn't good enough because you need to be able to manipulate the audio file.

[mjolnir]

I like freezing so I can SEE the amplitude curve of the audio and notice certain problems right away.
Also, if I can see the audio file, then stutter edits are much easier.

[kritikon]

I definitely second rendering to audio. I have a shitload of hw but get easily stuck in changing things around and fiddling too much away from what works - basically still in the ideas stage. So commitment to recording is what gets me to finish anything.

I'll echo a common BONES theme too: keep it simple, leave the fancy endless plug-in options alone. Coming back to music a 2nd time after quite a few years break and I deliberately avoided collecting loads of sw, especially things like comps, Eq, limiters etc. I barely use Eq and my mixes are better than they used to be. I've seen opinions from the odd "pundit" who I trust that say: if you're going to use Eq then be bold and commit, Eq heavily so it is audible - if you can't
hear it then why are you doing it? And if you can't hear it IT DOESN'T NEED IT. I think we often Eq because we think we ought to, not because it makes it better. Obvs I use compression but again - simple. Most of the time it's stock Cubase comps or TDR Kotelnikov - clean, no nonsense. I used to dick around with fancy sw comps and hundreds of different modes and esoteric settings and tbh I just don't hear the difference coming at it nowadays, yet I used to spend hours on that nonsense. I do still use an old LA4C hw, but only occasionally and for in-yer face compression that is almost an FX.

Also I know I'm a sucker for putting too much in, too many instruments, too many lines. It's part of the fun for me, but the tracks I listen to and like the most are far sparse than my own mostly. Good tracks can have as little as drums, bass and lead. As opposed to my 10 synth lines. Then I wonder why those commercial tracks are clearer than mine.

But as ever, depends what your aim is. Mine is not end product for others. Take out the fun and I wouldn't do it, and the process is fun for me. Still, it's too easy to complicate it imo. My mixes done decades ago on a mixer, 2 or 3 synths, 2 FX boxes without even a compressor were better than plenty I did in 2000-2015 that I did with a computer full of 100s of plug-ins on every channel and every softsynth I could think of and then some, with literally everything Eqd and filtered and gated and normalized and enhanced then butchered to the nth degree on the master channel. My master channel now has compressor, limiter. That's it. I finally learnt that if I can't effectively say I know what I'm doing with all these esoteric Eqs and automated Eqs and levellers and multiband this and that...then don't use them. I used to multiband the shit out of some old tracks and now they sound so grating and flat and irritating to my ears.

[Uncle E]

Same. Surgically taming every stray frequency wasn’t fun and I got so “good” at it that all my mixes started sounding alike. Now I let the tape plugins take care of smoothing things out.

[BONES]

Also I know I'm a sucker for putting too much in, too many instruments, too many lines. It's part of the fun for me...

That's definitely not a problem I have. To me that's just piling misery upon misery so I have no problem keeping it ultra-simple.

Still, it's too easy to complicate it imo. My mixes done decades ago on a mixer, 2 or 3 synths, 2 FX boxes without even a compressor were better than plenty I did in 2000-2015 that I did with a computer full of 100s of plug-ins on every channel and every softsynth I could think of and then some, with literally everything Eqd and filtered and gated and normalized and enhanced then butchered to the nth degree on the master channel.

That's interesting because I've always thought it was coming from hardware that kept me from doing all that. When we moved to software I just kept doing what I'd always done in hardware - using my resources very frugally, assessing everything to decide if it was worth doing or not and being ruthless when it came to chucking parts out that weren't pulling their weight in the mix. Even when I had the O1/W and Trinity, I'd try to keep everything to just 8 tracks, even though they had 16, because that's all you could see on the screen at once.

[kritikon]

Even when I had the O1/W and Trinity, I'd try to keep everything to just 8 tracks, even though they had 16, because that's all you could see on the screen at once.

Oh yeah, too true. Very recently hit that epiphany moment on a track. I had to scroll across to see all my channels, so I made myself stop and count them. 37 channels. I said to myself "krit, you cnt, if you can't see them you don't need them." One screen should be enough. I think I've made tracks in the past where a whole mixer screen is taken up with FX channels. I called myself a cnt then too....

[BONES]

Yeah, I'm working on a song at the moment and it annoys the shit out of me that I can't get it down to less than 8 tracks. By the time I add vocals it will be into double-figures, which is just ridiculous!