Category Archives: Production Techniques

Production Techniques

Speakers or Headphones?

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Over the past few weeks, people have been asking me what is better: Mixing on headphones or mixing on speakers?

Now I have already created a blog post about the pros and cons of mixing on headphones, but I don’t believe I ever gave an answer as to what the best headphones are, and what the best speakers are. Today, I am here to clear the air about this issue.

After much research and many hours testing headphones, I have found that the AudioTechnica ATH M50 studio headphones are the best at an affordable price of under $200 MSRP.  Most AudioTechnica ATH M50 studio headphones can be found for around $139, and are a great bargain for the price.

I personally have a pair of AudioTechnica ATH M50 studio headphones and have had them for almost two years.

Using AudioTechnica ATH M50 headphones to mix on CDJ’s

These headphones are built like tanks: they withstand being stepped on, dropped, and whatever else you can manage to do to them. As their name suggests, these are studio headphones, which means they are specifically manufactured for studio settings. The specifications can be read here, but they have a great frequency response. The range that these headphones are capable of are, for the most part, out of the human ear’s range. The human ear’s range is from around 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, while these headphones are capable of 15 hz to around 28,000 hz, which makes these headphones great for mixing.

Of course, there are also cons to any product, and some of the inherent flaws in the design of these headphones is the weight. While the headphones are designed to be as comfortable as possible, (and they are for a while), the weight on your head causes you to have a headache after a while. I have also found that the headphones can cause your ears to bend a little, causing discomfort after an extended period of time wearing them.

In recent years, scientists have also found that wearing headphones for more than an hour at a time can increase the amount of bacteria in your ear by eleven times. This leads to pain in your ears, and can eventually lead to hearing loss (which is a producer’s worst nightmare!). If you use these headphones periodically and carefully, they are extremely well-rounded and exceptional headphones.

Now on to speakers. For almost three years, I had no speakers, which was extremely detrimental to my development as a producer. When I did get speakers, I got very bad ones from one of my friends, which was even worse because they didn’t balance the bass or highs and made my music sound worse than before. The only thing worse than having no speakers is having bad speakers.

This was how I happened to come across the KRK Rokit G3 series. They are the most popular and well-liked studio monitors in the production world at the moment. While there are many, many other studio monitors out there that are worth looking at, (the PreSonus Eris E5 series are REALLY good), I will be talking about the KRK Rokit G3 series since I personally have these speakers.

The KRK Rokit G3 5-inch studio monitors I have in my dorm room. Don’t mind the goofy-looking guy on the right.

The KRK Rokit G3 studio monitors have a great frequency response for studio monitors below $300. A pair of these monitors are usually around $250, but that also depends on the size of the monitors. The series consists of 5″ monitors (what I have), 6″ monitors, and 8″ monitors, and their prices go up respectively.

The frequency response of these monitors is about 40-45 Hz to about 35,000 Hz, which is not as wide a range as the AudioTechnica studio headphones I mentioned earlier. But, one thing that monitors are able to do that headphones can not do, is let you hear what your music sounds like after it passes through air, bounces off walls, and any other objects in your room. With headphones, you don’t allow the sound to pass through air or bounce off the walls, giving you a distorted view of your music.

One of the best things that you can do for your music is to do a combination of both: use your studio headphones for reference, and then switch to your monitors to mix on there, and then switch again. Learn how your equipment responds to different frequencies, how it sounds in different environments, and what things you can do to fix these problems that you have with your equipment.

Hope this all helps! Cheers!

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ADSRsounds Promos, EDM Tutorial Promotions, Production Techniques

New Sound Packs for EDM on Sale

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Today, I’d like to tell you guys about some great sound packs that are on sale at ADSRsounds.com. Tunecraft has put 6 of their packs for Massive on sale with 30% off. Tunecraft Sounds is a sound design company, supplying a wide range of 100% royalty free LEGAL downloads for Producers, Musicians, and Recording Studios.

Here are all six of the soundpacks you can download from ADSRsounds.com:

Tunecraft Psy Trance Toolkit Demo       Tunecraft Glitch Funk Toolkits

EDM Signature Series       Tunecraft Electro Dubstation For NI Massive

TuneCraft Growl Arsenal       Tunecraft Techno Essentials Vol 1 - Techno/Progressive/Trance/Minimal/House Presets For Massive

Now go out there and make some awesome music!

Cheers!

*Disclosure*

 ProducingElectronicMusic.com is an affiliate of ADSRsounds.com. By purchasing this/these soundpacks/tutorials through this website, producingelectronicmusic.com gets 20% of the sale! Thank you for your contribution!

P.S. If you have any questions at all about affiliate links, what they are, or how they are used by ProducingElectronicMusic.com, leave a comment below, or email me at: [email protected]

Production Techniques, YouTube Videos on Music Production

How To Create Growls With Sytrus in FL Studio

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Today I teach you guys how to create growls with Sytrus, a subtractive synthesizer that comes standard with FL Studio. Many producers tend to overlook the power that this synthesizer has because: 1. They think it is inferior to more popular synths like Massive, or 2. They don’t understand how it works.

I bring you through the steps to understand how Sytrus works and how to create growls comparable to Massive and other synthesizers. While the audio isn’t the best, it still covers all the basics and will create a great sound even though my audio isn’t great.

The link to the YouTube video has been posted below. Hope you learn a lot from it!

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  • Music Software (chrysalismusicfm.wordpress.com)
  • FL Studio Producer Edition v11.0.3 Signature Bundle (ifstbd.wordpress.com)
EDM Tutorial Promotions, Production Techniques

How to Mix and Master Electronic Music From Home!

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In my everlasting search for the next big breakthrough in teaching electronic music tips and tricks, I have found it.

An EDM artist by the name of Kid Zero has made a tutorial on how to mix and master your own electronic music straight from home. I have watched many tutorials, (in case you couldn’t tell), and this one is the best by far in teaching you how to mix and master songs.

While it does cost money, the mere $37 to download it is worth the money. This is nothing compared to the amount of money you might waste on new, useless plugins that won’t improve your sound, never mind the amount of time you might waste finding out everything you will learn in these few hours.

Kid Zero manages to take apart all the steps you need to do in order to create mixes that will sound good on any speaker system and the mastering tips to make your song sound club-ready.

Now before you get ahead of yourself, I do have to say that while this tutorial has many great tips and tricks for improving your sound, it is also all video with minimal text. If you are a visual learner, this video will be great for you. If you are much better at reading than learning through video, this may not be right for you. He also lays out many great concepts and shows you step by step how to create better mixes and masters. Unfortunately, this takes a lot of time (just the percussion section is over an hour long!) and he doesn’t go into much detail about how the plugins work. You must be willing to invest several hours into this tutorial in order to get the full experience (I recommend taking breaks in between each section.) The plugins, except for the CamelCrusher Distortion Plugin (which is FREE!), all cost over $100, which, in my opinion, is quite expensive for a beginning/intermediate producer. My recommendation would be to get the CamelCrusher plugin and see how well you can mix with that one recommended plugin.

This tutorial is also a little tough to pick up on if you aren’t familiar with compression and eq’ing, which is a significant part of mixing and mastering tracks.

While he does his tutorial on Ableton, you are able to use the techniques he uses on any DAW of your choosing, including my favorite, FL Studio. If people are having trouble switching between the two programs, I may make a tutorial myself of the same techniques on FL Studio.

Here is the download for the mixing and mastering tutorial!

Cheers!

*Disclosure*

 ProducingElectronicMusic.com is an affiliate of ADSRsounds.com. By purchasing this/these soundpacks/tutorials through this website, producingelectronicmusic.com gets 20% of the sale! Thank you for your contribution!

P.S. If you have any questions at all about affiliate links, what they are, or how they are used by ProducingElectronicMusic.com, leave a comment below, or email me at: [email protected]

Production Techniques, YouTube Videos on Music Production

Useful Tutorials and Tips on Creating Dubstep, Drumstep, and DnB

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In my last post, I admitted that while I listen to plenty of dubstep, drumstep, and dnb, I am not very skilled in making these types of EDM. In order to keep up and allow you to start creating your own dubstep, drumstep, and dnb, I will post links to various websites that will explain and guide you through these processes much more effectively than I could.

While it was hard trying to find videos best suited for you, I chose the best videos that I deemed fit to help teach these style in FL Studio.

Dubstep is created using wobbles and syncopated beats. An effective video to watch on dubstep production is made by howtomakeelectronicmusic.com. It shows the basics on how to create a dubstep beat that hopefully you can elaborate on.

The drumstep tutorial was especially hard to find because it is a generally new genre of EDM. One of the only good videos I could find just demonstrates how to create a drumstep beat. Hopefully later on I can find a better tutorial about this type of EDM.

DnB turned up more favorable results, with a great tutorial and tips and tricks for drum and bass. Another great tutorial on drum and bass is how to create a great piano riff to get ready for a drop in the track. The rest of KevWillow7‘s tutorials are also very helpful in getting started with production and learning tips and tricks in FL Studio.

Once I have gathered more knowledge and the skill set necessary to create my own tutorials, I will post them here. Until then, enjoy these helpful tutorials.

Cheers!

Production Techniques, Random Blurbs

The Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Mixing on Headphones

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Headphones have taken on a large role in our society today, ranging from huge, bulky headphones to ear buds that can be hidden from sight. While headphones are great for listening to music, they are not the best option for mixing or mastering your tracks.

One reason why headphones are not the best option is because they can cause a wide range of problems while listening to your mix, including ear fatigue and not being able to listen to your mix for long periods. Also, the majority of your audience will listen on speakers instead of headphones.

While mixing on headphones can be acceptable in certain situations, it is best to listen to your mix in a wide variety of environments. Listen to your mix on studio speakers, laptop speakers, even your car speakers. You could even try listening on bad speakers just to get a reference.

Headphones also tend to give the false impression that your mix is better than it really is. Good headphones give the impression that the bass and higher frequencies are more clear and crisp than they are on normal studio speakers.

You may have noticed this dilemma (as I have many times) when listening to your mix in the car. It sounded great on your headphones, but after playing it on speakers, it sounded absolutely terrible! This is because our ears don’t take into account the atmosphere of the natural outside environment when we have headphones since the sound from headphones reaches our eardrums much sooner than with speakers.

When your mix is played from speakers, though, we hear what the sound is like after it has bounced off walls and been absorbed or reflected by the floor or curtains (or whatever else is in your room). While you can hear certain imperfections such as clicks, pops, and improper panning in your mix, it is generally recommended that you create your final mix on speakers.

If you absolutely have to mix on headphones, such as, you are working at night, then you obviously have to mix on headphones. If you are going to mix on headphones for certain reasons, you might as well have some information on what headphones to get for mixing. It is also recommended that you get headphones with replaceable parts so you don’t have to buy a completely new set each time you break something.

Hope this helps you on your mixing adventures!

Production Techniques, YouTube Videos on Music Production

Mixing and Sidechain Compression Tutorial

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I finally got my screen recording software to work, so I was finally able to make a video on mixing and sidechain comnpression. Since I am only able to record 15 minutes of video, I tried to cover as much as possible in that time frame.

Audio could be better, but hopefully it will show just enough to help you start mixing and using sidechain compression.

Remember, the best way to get good at something is practice, practice, and practice.

*Tip* – Make a song to fool around with, no boundaries or holding back. Don’t worry about creating a song out of it, just mess with sidechain compression and mixing in order to see what sounds you can create. You’ll never know what you can do until you expand your horizons and learn what all the different VSTs and effects do to your song.

Sometimes, the best music comes from mistakes and luck.

Cheers!