Mafoo's Music Production Thread

[Mafoo]

Well, i know there are at least a handful of us producing tunes here at Yahooka, so i thought we could discuss producing and swap techniques/tips/samples/tracks etc. i focus on dance music mostly, but im sure alot of these techniques would be pretty good in all genres of music.

when mastering drums you can fatten up your sounds by using a compressor as a send effect (attach the compressor to the auxillary inputs on your mixer). it helps if your drums are already mixed down and sound pretty good to begin with, so this might be a final step in the drum producing process.

set the compressor so that its compressing quite a bit, you want it to be more compressed than you would normally for drums(play with attack and release until you can hear how the compression is affecting the drums). you can get away with the extreme compression because the compressed drum sound will be mixed with the original dry soud. play with the send ammount and return level until you are hearing more punch. this shouldnt change the overall volume too much.

this technique helps to emphasize the transients of each drum sound. [transients are the lowest part of the sound which have alot to do with how our brain percieves sound.] this can also be applied to other sounds. i like to use it on basses that are rhythmic, it helps emphasize the punchy attack. and also on mid range stuff which can easily get lost in a mix.


another tip would be to put a lo pass and hi pass filter on your master out. i like to set the lo pass to about 300hz and the hi to 300hz as well. enabling one filter will allow you to focus just on the low end or hi end of your track, this is huge in dance music and will help you get tight pro sounding interplay between a huge kick drum and a thick sub line.

one last tip for now, human hearing cannot differentiate left from right below around 250hz. so you can use a stereo imager and set all frequencies below 250 to mono. this will help keep the low end nice n tidy.


now post up some of your tips/tricks/techniques and whatever else you want!!!

[Mafoo]

another tip/technique.

when working on the low end sounds of a track, try thinking about which frequencies will be coming through the subwoofer and which frequencies will be going out through the speakers. alot of dance music has really interesting kind of texturey bass sounds. often this bass sound is really 2 seperate synths(or 2 voices on one synth), one generating the top end textures and the other generating just sub bass to give the bass more power.

seperating the sounds(especially in dubstep and electro where the basses are really distorted) allows you to go really heavy with the distortion on the top end without losing power in the low end. you can also use band splitting instead of using two seperate synths.

[Mafoo]

cutting the lows off all sounds beside basses and low drums frees up alot of room and makes a mix sound more clear.

same thing with hi's. human hearing goes up to 20khz so you can cut everything above that. you can actually cut down to 12-15khz because most sound systems wont really reproduce those tones, but they will still be taking up space.


id love to hear techniques from some other members, i know alot of you guys have more experience than i do!

[The Don]

Just give me a sec damnit!

A quick one: Drums: Magic EQ: 90-100Hz for the thump thump thump, 2500Hz for the snare. Don't overdo it though.

Later, I'll tell you all how to use a MATRIX as an arpeggiator in reason. But I have to open the reason file first.

I also made a ping pong delay device lol. I'll put them up when I get home.

Good thread Mafoo!

[farmergiles]

I too applaud this thread.

[Mafoo]

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"reaching"

[vanilla]

mafoo whats youre soundcloud name?

[the-who?]

I tried to make a thread for people to post their home made tunes but no one wanted to participate.

Let's hear more of your stuff

[Mafoo]

Mafoo on Soundcloud

i have some new stuff im working on with a lyricist, ill post those up when i get the finals tracks back from the vocals being recorded.

[Mafoo]

when making dance music, you can tune your kick drum to your bassline. i mean actually adjust the pitch of the kick drum so that it sounds like a note in the bassline. this helps get a really thick and heavy sounding low end.

[my_scatterheart]

Originally Posted by Mafoo

Mafoo on Soundcloud

i have some new stuff im working on with a lyricist, ill post those up when i get the finals tracks back from the vocals being recorded.

Love the two most recent tracks youve put up

[Mafoo]

using tape distortion on the master mix can help "desterilize" the sound. adds a bit of warm compression that brings out alot of the moe subtle parts of each sound. helps bring out textures on sounds where distortion is being applied.

[Mafoo]

hello friends, this is a work in progress. its a remix im planning on entering in a competition. my friend wanted to hear it so i uploaded it for them, but i figure while its uploaded perhaps i could get some criticism from the yahookans?
i need some input with regard to audio fidelity/ musicality/ enjoyment etc. anything you hear that sounds off

no need to be nice if it blows(not that id expect niceness ), i just started it over the weekend and i plan on putting alot more time into the mix.

lucky date- veyron (mafoo remix 1st render)

[Jonas]

Super cool synth/sample pack for FREE until the end of October. PEEP THIS SHIT!~

Ableton - Free Retro Synths from Puremagnetik