Making music - your method! (Axwell included)

[philinho]

Hey all,

I'd be interested to see how those of you who produce dance/house/trance/etc music go about it i.e. your methods.
Do you start by making a drum beat then build on that?
Do you sit with your keyboard playing melodies until something sticks?
Do you map out how you want the song to build and drop or do you just go with the flow? etc. etc.

Which program(s) are/is everyone using as well?

Thanks a lot,

Phil.

[esquire]

mainly when i start a remix or prodution most of the times i will start with making the bassline, most of the stuff i do is vocally so the vocal can kind of give ya an idea on how the basslines gonna go and what chords your gonna use, i find having other remixes/versions of the tracks help too

will normally build the chorus of the track up first then just build around that

i use a lot of sample cds, mainly the vengeance ones for loops, but for basslines, pianos and synth sounds i use vsts like sampletank, hypersonic 2, minimoog, zeta and nexus, i compress alot of things too, espically piano sounds

for fxs on the tracks the waves plugins are always useful and the ultrafunk stuff gets used quite alot, been using t-racks lately to master stuff, got some great presets a friend passed onto me

im using sx3 at the moment, along with sound forge as my wave editor, dont have any hardware except a midi keyboard, got two 22inch lcds which are a massive advantage too

www.myspace.com/esquireuk

philinho said:

Hey all,

I'd be interested to see how those of you who produce dance/house/trance/etc music go about it i.e. your methods.
Do you start by making a drum beat then build on that?
Do you sit with your keyboard playing melodies until something sticks?
Do you map out how you want the song to build and drop or do you just go with the flow? etc. etc.

Which program(s) are/is everyone using as well?

Thanks a lot,

Phil.

[cantgetright]

i woudlnt say i have a set way i start off with my tunes.

I rarely start work on a tune with drums as the stem for the track. in fact i dont.
Usually ill start with a melody, a bassline or program and arpeggiator. then theres stuff liike pads and strings and FX etc which i add in later depending on the mood or presence i want the track to give.

i use Ableton with an abundance of Plug-Ins.

www.myspace.com/mikerishmusic

[Alonso Gonzalez]

Beat and music production in Logic 8..

[axwell]

i will share a bit of knowledge that i learned that i find quite interesting.

If i start with the drums of the track the track will be more rhythm orientated, like all the other instruments tend to complement the drums and follow the rhythm and it will be a very clubby track (like my remix of dirty south let it go)

If i start with chords and harmonies and melodies, the track tends to be more mellow but also more musical, but some times it can be hard to get the "club edge" to it since i started with the musical elements rather than the drums.

[iammesol]

very good point! My tracks are the same way.

[da:herbst]

Very interesting...

Now it would be interesting which of tracks of Ax's are produced in which way...

Creating a good bassline seems to be very diffcult - that's why I love Axwells work... each track sounds very diffrent. Also, the baseline seems to determine the whole style of the track - whether it's more commercial, oder tribal etc... and it determines wheter the track is dynamic or boring.

I really love the point at "It's true" when the bass starts the first time... actually quite driving for me...
This list is almost endless: transatlantic flight. hard to beat.slipping away... the all have really great baselines...

Besindes: I'm not a producer (intentional)

[jan]

Once in production stage...First the beats, then the chords, then the bassline...I compose a bassline derived from the groove of the beats but of course should complement the chords. So when I go about the bassline I almost always mute the chords to set the rhythm of the bassline and the turn on the chords to tweak the bassline some more. I do so because the bassline must be killer even when the chords aren't playing...

[philinho]

Thanks for all the answers guys, really interesting to see how other people work.

I'm currently getting to grips with Reason, just starting out in music production - is this a good enough program to make some tunes? I've read a lot of pro's saying they use this for ideas then move onto logic or ableton to make the "proper" version - surely this is possible in Reason as well?

[jeanp]

u should finde some very cool and helpful stuff here :
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4619970965349067140
Stonebridge is doing an remix here and shares some techniques he uses
//

[davidsouza]

I usually start from a basic drumbeat (kick and hats) and then i try to produce a cool melody.. After that i elaborate the beat (snares, cymbals, hats, claps, etc) and the melody and for last i build the bassline.. It's not a unique rule, but i guess that's the way i work..

[jan]

IMHO....

Start with an IDEA! Then produce it! Let the idea take yoiu through the production and hold on to the original idea! Try not to wander off...

[marqs2pm]

my fav software is emagic logic platinum - thats` why i want to by used power mac g5 to continue with the latest version of this software (its called apple logic 8 pro).This sequencer is absolutelly flexible- nice & easy midi, automatics and great mixer.Now i switched to cubase sx3 becouse it uses my pc alot better and it has some new options like freezing and intelligent quantize (logic 16c is nice too-but sometimes i want more gaps between notes).My fav vst are:
reverb (Arts Acoustic Reverb-space designer from new logic is even worse in my opinion and it kills your processor faster ) i use waves and urs series for dynamics- some of them have nice algorithms from virtual analogue ssl systems- the quality of urs classic compressors and eq are very similiar to uad-1 plugins.Im still in search of nice chorus to make those panoramas on some elements-Ive checked "dimension d" demo from uad-1-it seems to be really good to add some stereo effect.

I start to make track from creating an idea, sometimes its just some notes in piano roll -sometimes i use keyboard to make some nice chords.I constantly experiment with drums-comp & eq sometimes i use several kicks mixed alltogether-i wonder is it good ? But most important thing in making music is to have good speaker set (i like to use sub-bass speaker too) and quality studio room to hear what you do-thats why at home im only making ideas on da headphones.Also i use nice sample sets and virtual synths (nexus, massive, trilogy, atmosphere are big and tight vst-u all should check).For more info mail me.
myspace.com/2pm2