after 10 11. Tease The Listener – With-Holding Elements To Build Anticipation Build a Compelling Structure and Arrangement: Making A Track Is Like Telling A Story You need to begin and develop a track with just enough excitement to grab your listeners attention, but not so much that you leave yourself with nowhere to build to as the track progresses. Remember you have the rest of the track over which to space out the stunning moments, effects and hooks, so don’t pile it all up in the first section. Gradually opening filters on synth parts over a 4-, 8- or 16-bar phrase is a great way of teasingly introducing new sections. I sometimes think of my hooks, effects and really impressive parts of a track as currency: I want to spend them wisely, and only at the points in the track when I’ll have maximum bang for my buck – that is, maximum impact on the listener. 12. Learn The Psycho-Acoustic Effects Of Different Frequencies There is an interesting relationship between the perceived level of excitement in a track at a given moment, and how many/which sections of the frequency spectrum are being filled. Consider what happens on a dancefloor when the bass and drums are dropped out, leaving just a soaring lead synth: people stop dancing and instinctively put their hands in the air. They just know it’s a breakdown. Conversely, if you strip everything back to just a driving bassline and simple drum pattern, dancers will tend to hook into the groove and concentrate on their footwork. Mix up your arrangements by emphasizing – and just as significantly, dropping out or de-emphasizing – different parts of the frequency spectrum in different sections. 13. Master Loud/Quiet Dynamics There doesn’t have to be any relation between the level at which an element is played back in your mix compared with how loud the original sound was recorded. This simple aspect of recording and mixing opens up all kinds of sound design possibilities that can add excitement to your tracks. For example, you could record someone really screaming out a chorus at the top of their voice, and then mix it quite low and distant-sounding in the context of the complete mix. It will still sound like it’s being belted out, but because it’s much quieter in relation to the other elements, you’ve created a lot more depth and interest in your mix. Similarly, if you record a whisper and turn it up really loud, it will still sound like a whisper – just a very intense one, giving the impression of great intimacy between the music and the listener. Of course this technique can be applied to any instrument or effect, not just vocals, and it’s almost guaranteed to increase a feeling of straining tension or great atmosphere within the track – listen to any Massive Attack album for some great examples. 14. Listen, Listen, Listen: Analyse & Deconstruct Your Favourite Tracks This is one tip I come back to time and again. There’s absolutely no substitute for experience, so be sure to analyse the arrangements of all your favourite tracks. Listen to what other producers have done and try to figure out why it works (or why it doesn’t work, as the case may be…). The more you listen, the better you’ll get at picking out the oh-so-important minor details. You can get into massive depth here: bring an mp3 of the track into your DAW, chop or add markers at the beginnings of each new section; note which elements appear in which section, and eventually you can build a picture of how the producers arrange window would have looked. If you’re really anal about it like me, you can actually make dummy parts, colour-coded, each on their own channel, to represent each part that you hear in your analysis track. I have found this massively helpful for really tearing apart the components of my favourite tracks and seeing what makes them tick. In fact it is like taking apart a precision clock, seeing how all the cogs and gears fit together. 15. Cross-Pollenation: Listen Beyond Your Own Genre Look much further than your own chosen genre for inspiration. The best Pro Sound Producers are Musicologists – they don’t distinguish between good and bad styles or genres, only good and bad music. Also, if you’re writing songs rather than club/dance tracks, study the structures used in electronic and loop-based music for some habit-breaking inspiration. And vice versa: if you’re used to making very grid-based music, listen to classical music and rock or pop for the structural idiosyncrasies that impart them with real human interest and excitement – for example, I noticed that it’s surprising how many odd bars or extra beats you can incorporate into what sounds like very grid-like system music, after noticing how in rock and metal they often make unexpected stops, starts and pauses for extra excitement and anticipation. Keep listeners on their toes, surprise them, and they’ll remain engaged. There’s A Lot To Be Learned From Classical Music. It’s hard to specify any one thing that you’ll pick up from listening to and studying classical music, but if you use a lot of samples of real instruments in your work (and even if you don’t), listening to the work of a wide range of composers will provide plenty of ideas with regard to new textures and instrumental combinations. I remember Aphex Twin talking in an interview about getting inspiration from the ‘evil bass’ parts created by 20th Century classical composer Gyorgy Ligeti.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 23:59:08 +0000
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