Will i ever learn it?

Hardada

New member
Hi guys, im starting to get real frustrated, and i hoped you guys could help me out.
So i have been going at it with FL studio for quite some time now, i would say about 1.5 year. And think im okay at, until! I compare my songs to other producers song... Then im just sitting here like ''im shit''... I can make my music, but the problem is, it doesn't sound professional at all, and i know what it doesn't.
I don't know anything about mastering and how to use those tools to make it sound professional... All i can do is throw some fruity reverb op on it, and some soundgoodizer, and that's pretty much it.
I don't know how to use synthesizers either, im pretty much living off presets...
It has really started to bothering me, because i don't want to give up, its my dream to become a music producer!

So i wanted to know, how did you guys learn all this from, just youtube videos, or have you takin' some kind of education with this stuff?

Thank you for reading.
 
Ask yourself why do you want to be a producer, this is important as every aspect of the music industry is oversaturated with wannabes. Best thing to do is to not worry about what does and doesn't sound professional. Worst thing to do is to compare yourself to producers as many were active before you were born while the ones after you were born are in a whole 'nother class.
 
Last edited:
I understand your point, and thank you very much for your reply.
But i do not myself want to be a ''wannabe'', i want to create my own sound, build up my own reputation, but to reach that you gotta know what the h*ll you are doing.
I'm currently 19 years old, and i have no plans on quitting now.
 
I stress the wannabe thing 'cause many come to FP claiming to want to create music but want everything spoon-fed to them. I'm an old head so while I will encourage someone to do what they believe in, I also am all about realistic advice.
 
Change your approach. Here's what I'm doing - I made a stretch goal - 5k followers on soundcloud (currently at 160) by the end of 2017. I broke down where I needed to improve (mastering, synthesizing, marketing, overall health, the list goes on) and then I went into each category and figured out if it's realistic, how to go about doing it, and a timeline (each goal will be measured over a period of one month). Now I've spent ~10 years messing around, producing, just having fun and I feel comfortable with my style and sound, but I need to improve and I need to be honest with myself. I need to change my approach and be more objective.

production is a passion of mine and for the past ten years, it's been a coping mechanism, a dream, an expression of who I am. But like you, I want to take it to the next level.

My cousin wanted to learn guitar, he started with what he wanted to learn the most, Jimi Hendrix. He obviously didn't "master" the song, but he got it down to be really impressive, and he started at the top tier of guitar. "sounding professional" is somewhat vague. I'd try and pinpoint which professional mix you aspire to and then dive into figuring out how they produce, you'll need to learn all about mastering, all about filters, compression, mixing, their techniques, the list goes on. But you'll be able to break down the steps necessary to accomplishing your stretch goal of "sounding like ______" and along the way you'll likely pick up unique techniques that will help towards people saying "I want to sound like Hardada".
 
Just focus on producing and getting better at your craft, because complaining won't get you there.
I'm a Reason/S1 main myself and retired fl studio years ago, but kept for occasional opens.
 
I might have expressed myself badly, and i understand you might see me as a crybaby who wants my parents to deal with my problem.
But my intention with this was just, ''where do i start''. When you are writing down words like, 'compression' i don't even know what that is... (English ain't my first language, if that is an okay excuse)
All i want to is to keep gathering infomation, and how to improve when im working with my software.
I really hope that we are on same page, when it comes to what my wish is with this thread.

But thank you very much for the respond, i appreciate it. :-)
 
Just MAKE sure you are constantly reading about all aspects of music. Not only does it give you knowledge but it will motivate you. Gives a true north from the greats if you know what I mean.
 
Hi guys, im starting to get real frustrated, and i hoped you guys could help me out.
So i have been going at it with FL studio for quite some time now, i would say about 1.5 year. And think im okay at, until! I compare my songs to other producers song... Then im just sitting here like ''im shit''... I can make my music, but the problem is, it doesn't sound professional at all

It's not only you that end up with "shit" using software, everybody does. It is impossible to end up with anything else with a strict modern software based approach to music creation. That is what somebody should have told you 1.5 years ago and that somebody should have told others maybe 11.5 years ago... It does not matter if you have 1.5 years or 11.5 years of experience with a strict software based approach, you are both subject to the same limitations.

Why so few say that, is kind of beyond me, my conclusion has been that some know it but keep it a trade secret, but most others are kind of in the dark with this...

Sometimes I watch the Pensado's Place show and I think he really wants to help and that to some degree it is helping, I like him and the show a lot, but the truth is that it is also a lot about advertising software and that pros don't achieve great mixes with software, so all in all it kind of becomes this perception yeah this is how you do it, when in fact it's only a small portion of it, it is about everything that is not told that is how they do it, most of his sound comes from the hardware on his desk/racks and from the hardware engaged at mastering... But that is behind their NDAs I think, so therefore it kind of ends up a bit thin, but those that are not pros don't understand that, it takes experience to understand it... So if you are serious I think you need to get past the various illusions on YouTube that are to a great degree there to create video plays, likes etc. and to make ads pay them. It is a bit false and can create false expectations too.

Please note though it is not black and white, here is an example of some really great stuff on Pensado's Place that will improve any mix:

 
Last edited:
@Sir I stated what I did as many people forget that the main thing people have no control of in any field is their milieu, and this is the era where people think they can go from 0 to 100 real quick without considering that the in between is always how and with whom they spend their time.
 
Drop the soundgoodizer plugins and magic "mastering" effects and all that crap.

You're thinking that mixing and mastering a where magic happens that makes things sound "professional".

Everything that's normal started as freakish. It's a cyclical joke. Classical music breaches baroque counterpoint rules. Jazz breached the rules. Rock music breached the rules. Punk breached the rules. Dubstep breaches the rules. FFS a guitar amps are used to recreate what was originally a design flaw.

People talk about abstract ideas of quality...

...meanwhile Skrillex is selling brickwall limited distortion hand over fist. Aphex Twin is one of the most influential artists in EDM, have you even heard Aphex Twin?? World class mix engineers like Tchad Blake, Andrew Schepps, mix only in the box and have real results to show for it (unlike some on this forum).

The trick is to enjoy the process. If you enjoy making music and you are true to yourself (i.e. stop trying to imitate) you'll create something genuinely new and unique, which is far more important and compelling than attaining some other, less inventive, person's idea of what's "professional". Everyone is clambering to copy things that exist because someone at some point didn't copy.

1) If you are a producer / mixer, then most mixing is going to be avoidance. Avoiding mix problems by knowing what issues you have run into in the past.

2) Part of the process is developing your hearing. This takes actual time. At first you can't hear what the issues are, but it will click eventually. Your mixes might sound, overall, muddy. This is likely because the track is out of balance and something is taking up all the room, maxing out the meters, but your untrained ears are not used to objectively identifying what's out of place. We usually listen to music emotionally, you have to listen objectively. That's a skill that you have to train.

3) There is no "right" mix.
 
It's not only you that end up with "shit" using software, everybody does. It is impossible to end up with anything else with a strict modern software based approach to music creation. That is what somebody should have told you 1.5 years ago and that somebody should have told others maybe 11.5 years ago... It does not matter if you have 1.5 years or 11.5 years of experience with a strict software based approach, you are both subject to the same limitations.

Why so few say that, is kind of beyond me, my conclusion has been that some know it but keep it a trade secret, but most others are kind of in the dark with this...

Sometimes I watch the Pensado's Place show and I think he really wants to help and that to some degree it is helping, I like him and the show a lot, but the truth is that it is also a lot about advertising software and that pros don't achieve great mixes with software, so all in all it kind of becomes this perception yeah this is how you do it, when in fact it's only a small portion of it, it is about everything that is not told that is how they do it, most of his sound comes from the hardware on his desk/racks and from the hardware engaged at mastering... But that is behind their NDAs I think, so therefore it kind of ends up a bit thin, but those that are not pros don't understand that, it takes experience to understand it... So if you are serious I think you need to get past the various illusions on YouTube that are to a great degree there to create video plays, likes etc. and to make ads pay them. It is a bit false and can create false expectations too.

Please note though it is not black and white, here is an example of some really great stuff on Pensado's Place that will improve any mix:



Software has come leaps and bounds Dark Master.. some synths these days have enough density in the information that sound cleaner than analogue...

Density in the 'packets' is what creates deep rich sounding synths... like differential unison sound engines... written by God's chosen people....

Synapse Audio Software DUNE 2 VST/AU

You see, coding software is like coding matter... if your a weapon at coding in the virtual domain... your a weapon that should not be fucked with.. like Richard Hoffman, who created these thick, amazing synths... that are rich, and amazingly deep....

Digital audio production also has one more bonus.. no noise... I heard one great master of engineering say.. Analogue is great, though there is always fog at the bottom of the canyon, where digital you can see clearly all the way to the bottom...

I see what your saying about software based recording in general... though these days.. with the more power pc's have, the more density the information for digital synths can be allowed... have a look at the amount of oscillators that beast has...

Synapse Audio Software The Legend VST/AU

Look at the video on that one.. and tell me the difference from the analogue to the digital...

Mastering through the desk, and yes, recording through the desk, are preferable.. though desks are now digital too... 303's, 808's, 909's, digital synths have in some ways already taken over analogue... as the possibilities are endless... and digital recording allows precise modulation and correction of any notes...

You can also write music like beethoven, and hear back the results in real time... You have samplers with 27 gb of orchestra,... 27 gb... that is crazy, and they sound amazing...

limiters that oversample and are more transparent than analogue... my uni lecturer always uses digital limiters, as they look ahead and know the peaks before they come...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpnT0rt3ZJQ That would be analogue

This is digital...

https://soundcloud.com/synapsis8/chakra-8


You can get pretty good results in the box, if you know your craft, and what it is you need to achieve... :)
 
Sorry if i am starting an argument but i have to say that music producers don't have to be completely original
Making something completely new and not heard before will NOT sound pleasing

I don't think we disagree, I just wasn't clear enough.

It sounds like there is a choice between being original and copying. Actually music will be always somewhere in between.

My point is that you shouldn't set out with other peoples music as the yardstick by which you measure correctness or success.


Some people argue you have to make money... well, OK, but that argument makes no sense; if all you care about is making money then get a job in an industry where it's far easier to make money and if you enjoy making music do it a hobby. I have a well paid job and make music purely as a hobby. I have enough money to live happily and can make music however I want. Nowadays you only need a laptop and you're ready to go.


With regards to mixing: you start at the beginning with your music. You don't start at the end with someone else's.
 
There are only so many notes, and so many chords... the arrangement and harmonies of these are well spent... the chord structures, minor,major.. etc etc... we have in this age.. new sounds... sounds are the key to creating something 'new'.... I mean.. dub step, its all about the warbly distorted sound.. it has no real melody (in most cases) its just a mass of thick sound...

Though I guess you can go anywhere with harmonic frequencies and resonant oscillations that create that 'vibe'ration that feels so nice :)
 
Software has come leaps and bounds Dark Master.. some synths these days have enough density in the information that sound cleaner than analogue...

Density in the 'packets' is what creates deep rich sounding synths... like differential unison sound engines... written by God's chosen people....

Synapse Audio Software DUNE 2 VST/AU

You see, coding software is like coding matter... if your a weapon at coding in the virtual domain... your a weapon that should not be fucked with.. like Richard Hoffman, who created these thick, amazing synths... that are rich, and amazingly deep....

Digital audio production also has one more bonus.. no noise... I heard one great master of engineering say.. Analogue is great, though there is always fog at the bottom of the canyon, where digital you can see clearly all the way to the bottom...

I see what your saying about software based recording in general... though these days.. with the more power pc's have, the more density the information for digital synths can be allowed... have a look at the amount of oscillators that beast has...

Synapse Audio Software The Legend VST/AU

Look at the video on that one.. and tell me the difference from the analogue to the digital...

Mastering through the desk, and yes, recording through the desk, are preferable.. though desks are now digital too... 303's, 808's, 909's, digital synths have in some ways already taken over analogue... as the possibilities are endless... and digital recording allows precise modulation and correction of any notes...

You can also write music like beethoven, and hear back the results in real time... You have samplers with 27 gb of orchestra,... 27 gb... that is crazy, and they sound amazing...

limiters that oversample and are more transparent than analogue... my uni lecturer always uses digital limiters, as they look ahead and know the peaks before they come...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpnT0rt3ZJQ That would be analogue

This is digital...

https://soundcloud.com/synapsis8/chakra-8


You can get pretty good results in the box, if you know your craft, and what it is you need to achieve... :)

Synapsis, thanks for this good knowledge sharing. While it is true that yes in deed many modern sample packages today offer a quite authentic sound that you can create rich music with and it is true that those packages that emulate acoustic or analog sounds do not have as much information across the velocity range as the real sounds and hence end up having their own more dense signature frequency, it is to a great degree about knowing how to introduce which ones of these in what production context to what extent.

When you make EDM music (I'm more into acoustic music although I have mixed a lot of pop and EDM, but I also mean when you produce with acoustic sound sources...), if you truly want a pro sound, you should stay in the recording process when you are working with software. This means you feed the arrangement and your choice of sound sources into the software for the purpose of capturing the sound, but you don't do anything else. Let me repeat that - you don't do anything else - so no mixing, no mastering. So what does this mean. It means that you feed the original raw unmodified sound out from the software straight out to the hardware in the software's original state. The same about any real sound sources you have fed into the production as well, all of them end up in a recorded state in the software domain. Software is good at "storing" data in an unmodified condition. But that should be it, the software should not do anything with the recorded data other than storing and forwarding it in the music production pipeline, forwarding it out to hardware.

You should have one DAW for ingesting data into the hardware and one DAW for ingesting data back into the software. If you mix and master separately, the second DAW should ingest the data in its original sample rate and bit depth, so that the mastering engineer can feed that data back out to his/her hardware at maximum quality.

Once you have the signal out in the hardware domain ready for analog processing, it's all about headroom. The converter on DAW1 and DAW2, both should have great headroom. (+28 dBu or more)

BTW. This post is worth millions...
 
Last edited:
Don't worry about being good or bad at music. Just have fun. My advice is don't listen to other peoples music if it makes you feel bad and enjoy your own music less.
 
Synapsis, thanks for this good knowledge sharing. While it is true that yes in deed many modern sample packages today offer a quite authentic sound that you can create rich music with and it is true that those packages that emulate acoustic or analog sounds do not have as much information across the velocity range as the real sounds and hence end up having their own more dense signature frequency, it is to a great degree about knowing how to introduce which ones of these in what production context to what extent.

When you make EDM music (I'm more into acoustic music although I have mixed a lot of pop and EDM, but I also mean when you produce with acoustic sound sources...), if you truly want a pro sound, you should stay in the recording process when you are working with software. This means you feed the arrangement and your choice of sound sources into the software for the purpose of capturing the sound, but you don't do anything else. Let me repeat that - you don't do anything else - so no mixing, no mastering. So what does this mean. It means that you feed the original raw unmodified sound out from the software straight out to the hardware in the software's original state. The same about any real sound sources you have fed into the production as well, all of them end up in a recorded state in the software domain. Software is good at "storing" data in an unmodified condition. But that should be it, the software should not do anything with the recorded data other than storing and forwarding it in the music production pipeline, forwarding it out to hardware.

You should have one DAW for ingesting data into the hardware and one DAW for ingesting data back into the software. If you mix and master separately, the second DAW should ingest the data in its original sample rate and bit depth, so that the mastering engineer can feed that data back out to his/her hardware at maximum quality.

Once you have the signal out in the hardware domain ready for analog processing, it's all about headroom. The converter on DAW1 and DAW2, both should have great headroom. (+28 dBu or more)

BTW. This post is worth millions...

100% I mean, they used to have studios wall to wall with synths, all controlled by midi, everything you speak is correct mate, that is what they teach in advanced music production at a tertiary level, though people with limited resources must make do with the in the box processing....

If u have not learned how things work, what they do, or any kind of reference to what is going on, the result will not be close to what is trying to be achieved ?
 
Hi guys, im starting to get real frustrated, and i hoped you guys could help me out.
So i have been going at it with FL studio for quite some time now, i would say about 1.5 year. And think im okay at, until! I compare my songs to other producers song... Then im just sitting here like ''im shit''... I can make my music, but the problem is, it doesn't sound professional at all, and i know what it doesn't.
I don't know anything about mastering and how to use those tools to make it sound professional... All i can do is throw some fruity reverb op on it, and some soundgoodizer, and that's pretty much it.
I don't know how to use synthesizers either, im pretty much living off presets...
It has really started to bothering me, because i don't want to give up, its my dream to become a music producer!

So i wanted to know, how did you guys learn all this from, just youtube videos, or have you takin' some kind of education with this stuff?

Thank you for reading.
Hi,
If you think you need better mixes, focus on this. Youtube may be helpful, bits of information... but books are better. Use google, and you will discover best books to your liking.

I can't say about education something meaningful. Of course, it is very big amount of knowledge. You meet new friends... and etc. etc..... But I'm a drop-out. So I have to learn everything using other methods. I read Sound on Sound magazine - I love it.

You need time to learn, of course. of course it would be ideal ( and I always wanted that) if someone mixed and mastered for you hehehe. An engineer who will fix some mistakes. Free of charge, preferably.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top