EDM Production: 50 Tips From The Industry’s Top Artists​

So you want to get into EDM production and start producing music. That’s great, but how do you make sure you’re not making the same mistakes as everyone else? Ignore the ubiquitous misinformation circling around on YouTube and forums – take your advice from people who know exactly what they’re doing.

These 50 tips come straight from some of the top artists in the production industry. If you want to take your music to the next level, pay attention.​

Madeon

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1. “I mix my snares quite oddly in anticipation of my mastering. I’ll always test my drums with a mastering chain on to make sure they still feel punchy and snappy.” – Madeon

2. “Avoid redundancy – There’s no need to have two simultaneous chorded instruments with loud highs… having snappy, fast decaying highs on rhythmical elements can go a long way.” – Madeon

3. “Good engineering comes with time. Meaningful composition should come first.” – Madeon

Skrillex

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4. “You can use Ozone’s stereo imaging and take frequencies above seven thousand [7 kHz], or even a little bit lower, and you can widen everything up there, so that the mix starts to sound a lot wider.” – Skrillex

5. “It’s all about the three pieces that make a really nice drum sound. You need a nice transient in the beginning, and then the note around the 200-hertz frequency that gives it that boof, and then a tail, which can be anything.” – Skrillex

Seven Lions

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6. “working in audio and clipping your reverb and delay tails is really important, plus you get all the freedom to really manipulate the audio in cool ways… ALWAYS bounce your audio.” – Seven Lions

7. “make sure you are mixing in a proper environment. Just a small amount of treatment in your room could go a long way. Invest in some monitors (dont need to be top of the line) and get familiar with them.” – Seven Lions

8. “TAKE BREAKS. come back to it with fresh ears. thats when you will notice if things arent right. I take short breaks all the time and then listen back, sometimes I will even take notes during the first listen after a break.” – Seven Lions

Baauer

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9. “I try to work very quickly but then I listen to the project over 100,000 times” – Baauer

Porter Robinson

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10. “DEPICT THE THINGS THAT YOU LIKE. SERIOUSLY! TAKE ALL THE ASPECTS OF YOUR TASTE AND COMBINE THEM. I KNOW THAT MAY SEEM OBVIOUS OR TOO SIMPLE, BUT IT’S WORTH EMPHASIZING BECAUSE HONESTY IN ART IS SO FUNDAMENTAL THAT IT’S OFTEN OVERLOOKED.” – Porter Robinson

11. “i’m way more interested in ideas now and less in the technicals of music production. a lot of my favorite music these days is underproduced or imperfect-sounding, but if the ideas and chords and concept is there, i’ll love it.” – Porter Robinson

12. “sample selection is so so so so so much more important than any kind of post-processing. i remember being a new producer and wasting sooo much effort trying to EQ a sh*t kickdrum into sounding good and it wasn’t productive.” – Porter Robinson

13. “getting the relative volume levels of each instrument correct is a more important task than EQing. new producers often prefer a sound after it’s been EQed and in many cases it’s only because the levels have changed” – Porter Robinson

14. “don’t abide by hard mixdown rules or mix with your eyes rather than your ears. i remember abiding so strictly to the rules i got from my old music production forums and just so, so much of it was misinformation” – Porter Robinson



The M Machine

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15. “the final sound of a song is so related to mixing, and mastering is really almost an extension of that process… we use Ozone 5 almost exclusively now – it’s a really awesome plugin.” – The M Machine

16. “it’s better to fix ‘mix issues,’ too much bass, too sharp drums, etc. in the mix when they present a problem during mastering, rather than attack the whole track with EQ or other processing. Oftentimes it’s one element of the track – sub bass, or a high hat that’s too loud, that prevents a master job from working right.” – The M Machine

17. “Here’s something I like to think about concerning loudness… You have a very discrete amount of digital headroom with which to fill before you begin to clip/distort right? So as you begin to layer layer layer layer sounds, essentially you are necessarily bringing the volume of each individual noise DOWN to make room. This has a significant effect on “perceived loudness.” The easiest example to see this in action is to listen to an artist like Arojack — dude often writes tracks that are simply drums and a lead synth. As a result his music is often Noticably “louder” then someone like ours (for example) even tho we are both filling up the same amount of digital space. The rule of thumb then… Is simpler is often louder.” – The M Machine

18. “A good mix is ALL about an experienced ear. No matter how many techniques, plug ins and forums you cover… nothing replaces a seasoned ear. You just need to RECOGNIZE when you have a good sound… Practice makes perfect couldn’t be more accurate” – The M Machine


Diplo

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19. “theres nothing better then being in a room with other people that can bounce ideaas around and then somethign sticks and everyone knows it then u just go into overdirve” – Diplo

The Glitch Mob

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20. “We do tune our drums a lot of the time. It’s a personal preference – it’s not necessary, but we just like the effect it has. mainly the kicks, especially if they’re really sub heavy.” – The Glitch Mob

21. “good general advice though: spend less time on the internet and more time in the studio” – The Glitch Mob

22. “we leave the sound design tricks to the VERY end of the song. it’s the last thing we do. we focus on the melody, harmony, song structure, vibe, transitions… everything. then once that’s good we go in and work on the details to make it sonically come to life” – The Glitch Mob

23. “we spend a LOT of time on our drums. they are the meat of our mixdown. we layer them – sometimes one kick drum will be a combination or 4-5 samples.” – The Glitch Mob

24. “always solo your tracks and make sure to cut out the low frequency of stuff if it doesnt need to be there. you’d be surprised how many samples or synths have hidden low frequency noise that is mudding up your mixes.” – The Glitch Mob

25. “sometimes we will start with presets and effect them heavily into a totally different sound. Don’t let people tell you that you’re not a real producer if you use presets. That’s not true. A good sound is a good sound. It’s all about how you put it all together.” – The Glitch Mob

Nick Thayer

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26. “Every single channel in every track will have EQ, and most will have compression… Subtractive EQing is about the most powerful weapon you have in sound treatment.” – Nick Thayer

27. “parellel compression allows you to draw out different characteristics of a sound an combine them together. For instance say you want a snare to have a very snappy attack, but you also want it to have some body to it. If you parellel compress it with one of the paths set to a 10ms attack and the other set to around 150 that enables you to blend body with attack.” – Nick Thayer

28. “Most lead sounds will have a saw or square wave as a basic as these tend to cut through in a mix as that appear to take up more space. The other oscillators are what you can use to add the colour to the sound to make it unique.” – Nick Thayer

Rameses B

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29. “I spend a lot of time layering my snare so i can achieve the sound I’m going for. If you boost around 200Hz it gives it more body, boost around 10kHz for sizzle” – Rameses B

30. “It’s best not to leave unfinished projects. I always try and focus on one track at a time, that way it will have my full input and better efficiency at completing it… Don’t leave it or else you may never end up going back to it.” – Rameses B

Nitro Fun

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31. “use transient shapers! i think my music started sounding good on the moment i started using them” – Nitro Fun

Chase & Status

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32. “Often we will start with the drums and get a groove going as the drums are clearly a huge factor in the music we make. If the drums and bass sound good then that’s the fundamentals done.” – Chase & Status

33. “ for the majority of a session the speakers would be at a middle point between loud and quiet, so that it’s not hurting the ears but still creating a vibe.” – Chase & Status

What So Not (Chris Emerson)

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34. “We find to get like a really, cool sort of groove, and swaying kind of effect – you pull back like the seconds here [mouses over Ableton track delay] so it makes the hats or claps or the percussion a bit lazy, rather than having everything so regimented and right on the beat” – What So Not

35. “Generally we make… we’ll make an A and a B section, so this might be the breakdown or the general theme of the song, then we’ll make a drop as well – and the drop will be just a lot more stripped back” – What So Not

36. “Don’t force it – I mean don’t be lazy about it, but if it’s not happening, it’s probably not going to happen that day. I often just go for a surf to get in the right headspace and then come back.” – What So Not

Flume

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37. “I never write unless I’m feeling inspired. I never try and force it, unless I have a really strict deadline, which I sometimes do when doing remixes.” – Flume

38. “I usually sit down at the start with either a chord progression or drumbeat, depending on where my head is at the time. If it’s a chord progression, that means the track is probably going to be really focused around the melody of the track.” – Flume

39. “it’s really a fast process for me. Some people sit for a long time writing, but I usually try to spread it all out really quickly. The important thing is to get my ideas out of my head and into the real world as fast as possible. The best ones usually happen the fastest.” – Flume

Pegboard Nerds

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40. Everything you ever wanted to know about their production process.

41. Re: how to get crisp sounds, “a good basic sound and then some multiband compression and eq´ing” – Pegboard Nerds

42. “Once our tracks hit the master we don’t really do that much – just subtle eq’ing (highpass the side signal at 150hz ish), maybe a slight dip at 300hz, slight high end boost… Anything more than that we have to go back to the source to fix the problem.” – Pegboard Nerds

Au5​

43. “Stop listening to the music and begin feeling it. Don’t move to it, let it move you. Fully surrender yourself to the sound and break free of the ideas you attach to genre and production” – Au5

Noisia

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44. “with 90% of our tracks the drums are the backbone of the mix so this is where we usually start. But it could start from anything – a snare, a bass sound, a processed vinyl sample, a melody – as long as it sounds good.” – Noisia

45. “Headphones are nice, but I wouldn’t recommend doing final mixes on them. We usually check tunes on a laptop too, to hear if the main sounds come across without sub.” – Noisia

46. “1. The lower the frequency the more power it requires in your master bus so cut out any bass not needed. 2. Try to bring out the thing that the track is saying. It might take a while to figure out what this is exactly, but once you do you can focus your whole mixing process around that as opposed to following standard rules.” – Noisia

Pierce Fulton

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47. “Do everything you can to be different. I know it’s so generic and overused but I really mean it… I really started to be proud of my work when I was writing things that didn’t sound like someone else.” – Pierce Fulton

48. “I write a ton of ideas all the time but I have learned when to stop working on the projects that I know aren’t the best ones. I then move forward with the most promising ideas and most of the time only a few of those are actually finished.” – Pierce Fulton

49. “patience is essential. I’ve rushed a lot in my past and it always led to bad things. Not really a production tip haha, but seriously I think it’s more important than specific production tips.” – Pierce Fulton

50. “Usually 1 top main clicky sounding kick with no low end, a separate low end kick that’s relatively short (and usually pitches down sort of, so I dont worry about it being in key) so I can mix my sub bass around it. Then I sometimes have a tonal kick, like something acoustic so it doesn’t sound so digital; that can sometimes be 1 or 2 layers.” – Pierce Fulton

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Hope you like it.

 

Nice post. Most of these tips/ articles I've already read but I like the way you compiled it. Good read.

 

Thanks.Good stuff!