What's that feature or trick or skill that you learned after a lot of attempts that you feel stepped up your composing or production to a whole new level?

 

finishing music and releasing it and calling it "complete", even if you're not happy with it. finishing tracks is a skill like the others, and you need to practice it. having thousands of unfinished shit is ok, but it's also good to finish a piece sometimes, and "CLOSE" it...

technically, i would say learning not to apply an eq to every single tiny piece of sound.

 

I've stopped purchasing/watching videos/downloading about plugins since getting these thx this series of Protoculture

https://www.sonicacademy.com/courses/progressive-trance-2019-with-protoculture

except for this one

I haven't wanted to start using Bitwig just because the main feature of it (modularity/modulation) like Protoculture

 

Last edited: Aug 30, 2023

Learning the process of correctly mixing and mastering, it's a deep subject but I think it's probably one of the most important things to focus on

 

Smoking marijuana.
It's how I got into composition in the first place many years ago.
Began hearing music in my head that wasn't on any records so I started making it myself

 

- Mixing in a tiny bit of dry instead of fiddling endlessly with compressor settings for the perfect envelope
- Saturating several times / in several stages instead of cranking the drive on a single plugin
- There's almost always mud to cut

 

Last edited: Aug 30, 2023

Don't be married to every idea you try. Sometimes the song doesn't feel like it's working because you need to drop some parts back out.
I put a programmed pedal steel on a song recently, tweaked that sucker for days, it was great. I was so proud of it. Then the guitar player did a part that conflicted with it. Took me 3 days to accept both parts were great on their own but they couldn't both be there and that the guitar was better- steel had to go.

 

Building a Library to get organised

 

1) Discipline and persistency - good work ethics.
2) Choosing a handful of good plugins I like, getting to know them extremely well and using them consistently.
3) not caring about other people's opinions too much.

Cheers!

 

Stopping smoking marijuana. I was always stoned and didn't get anything done except short loops.

Now it's like an exciting challenge, like a marathon, to finish a song and arrangement and it's very rewarding.

For feature, I'd say sequencers.. Both for drums and coming up with melodies I use some third party plugins and it's nice.

 

Production: a pair of monitors, a midi controller keyboard and a vsti capable DAW.
Composing: playing/studying the guitar since I was 14 (a little alt rock and bossa nova) - I am still no good at singing, and lyrics, but I do not care.

 

Clipping buses (or limiting). Want to get loud? It's actually quite easy after you figure out how to clip buses. You clip your tracks and then one bus after the other, then you clip the premaster bus, then you clip the masterbus... suddenly you're hitting -6 lufs and it isn't sounding like crap.

Of course you won't work like that with every track but figuring out how to handle buses made everything much much much easier for me.

 

ahhh marijuana. a tool like most, it's got a double edge. can help with compisition, can hold up finishing stuff. I agree with FINISHING songs, even if theyre not great. I was guilty of telling myself "eh I know how to do that" and I DO.... but knowing versus doing it are two different things.

also, for compression I got some "good" compressors that really allowed me to hear what was going on. kush, DDMF magic death eye, nebula timp/Cupwise/alexbge.

 

LMAO agreed! and yes- a good monitor setup is a necessity so you can actually hear what you're doing. learning mixing and mastering is deep and endless but I'm glad I've learned it a (only a bit) so I can start presenting my productions as I want them to be heard.

 

Audiosciencereview, EqualizerAPO and AudioGridder. Even expensive headphones don't have a nice eq curve, or you can adjust cheaper ones to sound amazing. AudioGridder... Well, I just never have enough cpu headroom, so setting it up on the same machine just unlocks the rest of performance, since it runs through secondary DSP.

 

Region Render Matrix in Reaper,
I can't imagine going back to any DAW that doesn't support that (and I used Sonar before)

 

Isn't this just a time-saving feature to bounce selectable combinations of regions, but all at one time? I'm reading about it, but some of the posters seem pretty confused with it's use. Or is this kind of like Selection Based Processing in Logic? I use that feature all the time, but it's mostly just a timesaver. (can be a pretty big one)

It never helps with mixing. It changes how you hear things, for good or bad; but it will never make anything more accurate.

 

Last edited: Aug 30, 2023

Don't force shit. If a song isn't working for whatever reason either let it go, put it on the backburner or try something different and out of the confines of your normal experience.

A case in point..I was last week writing a song for friends that are getting married this coming weekend, to be played with the fellow from England they hired to come and perform on guitar and was pushing my idea of using DADGAD tuning on my Martin D-15M and really, really trying to make it work but was only falling into repetitious formulas that I've done so many times before, nothing unique, staid and not overly creative in regard to this specific need...until I picked up another guitar, this one in regular tuning and struck gold with what came through me. My original 4/4 idea transformed into a waltz and the lyrics flowed through that and made my wife and my friend's daughter cry from the heartfelt sentiment and the sometimes long interval jumps of the tune. It has sweet harmonies and through it all morphed into what I think of as a country song.

That's what turns me on in regards to composing...being in the moment and letting the music come through my filter and in collaboration with the aethers.

 

id have to say speedballs (IV), its a whole new level and im seeing all kinds of results