Hi, my name is mike and i recently moved here to costa mesa. I found your email through searching google for becoming a music producer and found your site. I had a couple of questions
I have cubase and Reason 3. I use reason to make beats. I like the production in Bone thugs n harmonys E. 1999 Eternal CD Its very clean and well rounded… Anyways, one of my problems is most of reasons sounds are not that clean or nice as most professionally done resords, like bone thugs or Dr. Dre. are thier sites that have good reason samples.A better program..??
Im serious about becomming a professional music producer / engineer for both movies and songs. I would really benefit from information on how to become a better producer from how to arrange songs to know which sounds sound best with other ones. Do you think I need to go to a school or classes or is thier any online information…I know like one trick which is when you have a slow song addind a bit of reverb to the snare to open the mix up a bit… but more tricks that help you achieve a certain sound is what im looking for. Any information is very much appreciated – mike
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Hi Mike,
Big question…….hope I can be a little help. I did production for an Aftermath artist last year, and my style is very similiar to Dr. Dre in some aspects (No, I am not saying I’m as good as Dr. Dre) – The other producer told me when Dre heard the track he said “This sounds just like what I produce, you need to bring me something I can’t already do. I’ve already got this sound.” Really bummed me out, because it was a great open door for me to get involved with Aftermath. (For the record, I think if I could have met with Dre personally I’d be working at Aftermath right now, but that’s another story. Yo Dre, you reading this? Call me) – Now if I was knee deep in Aftermath productions, I would focus on tweaking elements to distinguish my sound more, but since that’s not the case, I keep learning everything I can – and continue using my own judgement for my sound.
You mention you have one ear candy trick. You need more. How do you get them? I can tell you what I’ve done. I highly recommend the Mix Bookshelf series as a whole – great books on mic techniques for different instruments, mixing, mastering, etc. I have easily a thousand music books in different styles, study tools for mixing techniques, tutorials, videos etc on every aspect of mixing and mastering I can get. At one point I even spent six months working with the Golden Ear training method.
Any time I meet an engineer I try to learn something from them – most people are happy to share their knowledge in little bits and pieces. I don’t try to impress, I try to listen and pick up everything I can – to me that’s the secret. Walk away smarter.
I’ve also spent a lot of time listening to reference CD’s of similiar mixes to the styles I’m working on. If I’m producing a punk band, I’ll have a major commercial release of a similar punk band style to reference for my mix. This alone has been the biggest single help in my mixes. Need to listen to a MAJOR COMMERCIAL RELEASE and listen to it on the SAME SPEAKERS YOU ARE MIXING ON. This approach is helpful to learn the rules before you get your own foundation.
I’ve seen a lot of bad info online – like a mix by the numbers program. Like anything online, make sure you’re getting your info from a good solid source. MIX magazine is great, I suggest you subscribe to it. Anything MIX puts out in it’s book series or recommendations is usually rock solid. The more knowledge you have, the larger palette of ideas you have to pull from, the more flexibility and creativity you’ll have in the studio. Keep in mind you never arrive at a final destination in your understanding of music production – it’s a constant evolution. The day you think you’ve “arrived” – is the day to quit.
You mentioned the reverb on the snare for a ballad – it’s important to understand the reasoning behind that. A ballad typically has a lot more space in the audio spectrum – so it lends itself better to effects. There is a great book on the Art of Mixing that can show you how to visualize audio mixes as a three dimensional environment. Panning is left to right, audio frequency up to down, volume and effects is back to front and width. This concept is also very powerful in bringing a quick visualization to your mixes. When you can see the mix in you mind’s eye like this, let’s say for a ballad, then you would see there is more space to use if you want, like reverb on a snare drum. Want to kick it up a bit more? Time the reverb so the tail closes in time with the beat, and put a delay on the verb so it doesn’t wash out the snare attack.
Turn it around – see that there’s a lot of space open in your mix, and just leave it that way. Purposefully leave out effects, have the vocal bone dry. The idea to internalize is that you need to have control of where you want to go – so the snare reverb bit you brought up is something that might work on one song, but not another. Intuition and experience will dictate to you what to do.
I have 15 years working at a public commercial studio with clients of all styles and walks of life – this was a great training ground for me. A producer is not a dictator to stomp on everyone’s ideas, with paying clients you need to accomplish what they want. When you’re in this environment, you HAVE to learn to do new things. So I’d suggest you get in that environment if you can.
For music schools, real and serious music schools – I recommend North Texas State, UCLA or Berklee. For a real deal education. There are a ton of recording schools out there, but I don’t personally know a lot of people working full time from those, might exist, I just don’t know about them. But I used to have like one person a WEEK come into the studio and want a job because they just graduated from a recording engineer school. But none of them understood music. To me, a music producer at a busy project studio is worthless without an understanding of music. So that’s my next piece of advice – learn music theory. It will keep you working when other people are looking for jobs.
For clean samples, you really should get them from the actual source if you can – otherwise there are lots of great libraries out there. Sony, Big Fish, ProSessions, ACID, to name a few. When I worked with the co-producer on the Aftermath project, all his samples were directly from an MPC. Another common trick is to run directly from the unit into a high end tube mic pre to fatten the sound, even if you’re dumping directly to a digital format.
Next piece of advice, think long term in your career if you’re really serious about it. For instance, I closed my studio in California last year – but I’m taking the down time to learn more about orchestras. I’m doing a lot of conducting with orchestral and choral groups. I could cry in my beer about the studio being closed, but once it’s open again, I’ll have a whole new set of skillz conducting orchestras – so when Dr. Dre calls me to produce a hip hop album with a real orchestra I won’t just be able to say I’m ready – I WILL be ready.
Hope that helps. Keep the faith.