CONTEXT IS KEYIn its most basic form, an 808 kick / bass sound is just a sine wave with some pitch modulation to create a transient or “click”. So 808s are best defined as kick drums made from sine waves, focused on the very low frequencies.Since...

Who Should I Send My Music To?From my experience this has been practiced with independent dance music labels however the concepts are universal. Not only that, but a lot of labels have the same types of goals you do. They are building somet...

You know when your favourite song sounds wide and deep, enveloping and immersive, on a pair of headphones or speakers? When you can pinpoint sounds coming from the left and right channels, or somewhere in between? Or when a sound or instrument appear...

LAYERINGThe first secret to impactful bass is layering. Many of the contemporary bass sounds that stick out to your ears in your favourite releases are made up of layers.Usually, there is a sub-oscillator, with at least another oscillator an octave a...

Why enter a remix competition?Remix competitions offer a great opportunity for exposure and networking.The remix usually will get the green light to post to Soundcloud and YouTube, which nets you extra exposure from your production.You get access to ...

Equalizers are one of the most powerful tools we have as producers and engineers. We can use them to adjust the frequency response of our audio, shaping the sound until we get the tone we want.When we boost or cut a frequency band with EQ, the phase ...

When it comes to mixing, the stereo image of a track often takes a backseat to EQ, compression, and volume. This makes sense for club tracks that might be heard over a mono system, though this is becoming less common, and the stereo image of your tra...

There’s no doubt about it; compression and EQ are absolutely essential tools for any audio engineer. Learning how to use each of them correctly is crucial, but learning how to use them together is just as important.Why? Simply because swi...

A major element of a mix is dimension, which is the ambient field that the track or tracks sits in. Dimension can be captured while recording, but it’s usually created or enhanced when mixing by adding effects such as reverb, delay, or modulation. ...

Most reverb plugins concentrate on the 3 parameters that count the most; type (hall, room, plate, etc), predelay and decay. If you really want to get tweaky with your effect though, there’s often another parameter that can be as important, and that...

First off, congratulations! I’m pumped that you’ve decided to look into how to produce music. Learning how to produce music is a rewarding, challenging, frustrating, and liberating endeavour.By the time you're finished reading this, you'll have t...

What is active listening?The definition of active listening is simple—it’s what happens when all you’re doing is listening. You’re not doing or thinking about anything else, and there are no other stimuli or distractions around you.This kind ...

Analyse the timbreWhen we’re making music, we’re often drawing from an array of sources—different sample packs, software instruments, live recordings, etc.—and it’s our job to arrange all of these things so they feel like they’re a part o...

Having a signature sound as an artist, singer, or producer is an absolute must in today’s world. With tens of thousands of new songs released every day, you don’t want your music to sound just like everyone else’s—you want it to be memorable ...

The principles of synthesis are basically the same between modular and non-modular. In fact, a lot of software synthesizers, (Serum, Astra, and Massive, to name a few) are somewhat modular in their design.That said, one of the core differences that m...