Newbie Producer
Hey guys, lately I started to experiment in Logic X, but so far i have not made it past the intro of the songs. So i would like to know tips and tricks to producing for example Future House, Big Room , Electro, etc…
- Reading the manual. Yes.
- YouTube has TONS of good material. Don’t be afraid to type “Logic X” + a genre or tecnique.
- There are some good books on this topic. It really depends on your current knowledge, but Dance Music Manual generally is a good point to start with.
- Don’t get fooled that you need to spend more money on software and hardware. If you know your stuff you can make a hit with a computer, a DAW and some headphones.
- Focus as much as you can on actually making music.
- If you want progress you got to work on that. Fiddling around is fun and will get you a little further too. However if you want to step up the game some day you got to learn music theory, learn how to play at least one instrument and also don’t be afraid to learn a bit of the physics side of things.
- Have fun. There should be no other reason to make music.
- Don’t pirate.
Thank you very much, I also had a doubt about the usage of loops, is it good to use some or it would be best to create my own sounds?
-don’t be afraid to work with samples
-listen to music to all types of music
-don’t worry about focusing on one element to make it sound perfect (it never will)
-also be ready for everything that you make to suck. I’ve been making music for nearly two years now, and i still haven’t made anything that i’m satisfied with.
Thank you for the advice, another thing i would like to ask (very basic but anyways) what should every song have for example sub bass, bass, kick etc…
I have to concur on refraining from pirating software. You will just get lost in a dark labyrinth that leads to lots of outdated software and nothing to show for you’re time acquiring it.. Plus if your not tech savvy you may run into a big bucket of malware.
Id say yes to an extent, my productions are all very different in nature and of course every genre of music has different methods of utilizing basslines and such. Dubstep is a good example of that. Just mess around with different bpms/tempos. Every song should have some bass in it in my opinion. Bass is the flavor that gives music such good appeal
I would also add don’t start with the intro, start with the main bulk of the track. Start at say bar 72 for example. This way once you have your main meet of your track you can work backwards.
Also since your new dont put to much pressure on writing tune, work on learning the software, techniques and various other elements of making music.
This is good advice I start by getting an 8 bar loop on the go, get the groove going then add or strip elements so im working backwards and forwards from the middle then its just a case of nailing down my breakdown elements and effects before i know it I have got a good 5 minutes of audio to take into the arrangement.
Its easier to know the road to take when you know where you are heading to, if you drive blind to a destination you are not sure of you end up getting lost
As a Newbie Producer myself, I saw a lot of videos on youtube learning how to do this and that. Every project that a make, I make it straight forward to the end and then begin another project… I know that the first things that come out always suck but in the future you can look back and realize that you’ve grown and things are getting better track after track. That’s my point of view, dunno how you guys think.
Cheers
My favorite advice I have received is to do a lot of “active” listening.
This is where you sit down and listen to the song and dissect each part, figure out the movements, how the song is building up energy or bringing it down. Active listening is where you put all your focus on listening to the song and try and figure out how certain parts click.
Also for a lot of house tracks, you’ll notice the intro drums are the same as the drums played in the “drop” and the outro. So don’t start with the intro, spend your time building the meat of the song, that way your intro you can just copy and paste your main drums and add a little creative atmosphere here and there
watch for sonic academy courses. 
+1 for active listening! Very valuable exercise!
See if you can get your hands on a completed project file for Logic. Then you can study it and see how everything was produced. I know Splice had some projects up. Once you understand how to use your DAW, and the other essential things like eq-ing, leaving space in your mix, using side-chain, etc… Then you can start letting your creative mind go. I started by using my creativity and trying to make projects, but they ended up all sounding awful cause I didn’t have the first clue why my kicks weren’t loud, why my bass was getting washed out, why everything sounded muddy, and whatever else I can’t remember. It was frustrating. If I could restart, I wish I would have studied the production aspect first. Once you get a grasp on that, I would study some music theory, all the different scales as well as chord progressions. Hope that helps!
active listening works best for me. I also listen to all types of music when I am not producing or mixing.
I used active listening to better my mixing skills. I would say to also active listen to your own productions.
production process may vary per individual, this works different for everybody but the thing i just learned sounds very helpfull.
The process is like this (this is done in ableton but applies to any daw) Load a track you really like in an audio track in the arrangement window, set the tempo of you daw the same as the song so the bars(or warp) align and start adding markers with explanation to the parts you see and hear mapping the song structure.
if done correctly you will end up with a layout of the song , you will have markers like intro, drums, start hihat,start bassline, break, buildup, drop etc etc. If you then delete the wav file of the song the markers are still there and you will end up with the skeleton of the reference song and you can start building your own song on this skeleton to have some help, you can always change things but its helpful and you have an idea how a song is build, try this for different genres to see the difference of song structure between techno, drum & bass, Electro etc etc for instance you will notice that with techno you see chances in the song every 4 bars or a sum of this ie 8,16,32 bars adding or taking away a element of the song
also try to find a decent workflow, for me its building a beat and adding melody and bass line, for some one else its making a melody and adding the beat etc etc .
read up on masking, phasing and how sound works, important things to know when producing
Google is your friend
thank u for sharing you experient
I think manipulating samples is a great way to start.
Eases the pressure of sound design and you can go right into writing!
Welcome to the world of music producing! It’s an endless road to go. For me, it has been a lot of fun and I really enjoy making music.