Some Music Production Tips to Help You Out

Hey guys, in this short article I’m going to go over some tips on how to greatly improve your music production skills. Before I begin however you may interested in reading my dubturbo review. It’s a great piece of software and I recommend you check out my thoughts on it. Anyway back to music production tips

Use your equalizer more!

An equalizer is used primarily to remove unwanted frequencies from an instrument or sample. This is what you should be using it for. Most amateur producers do not use this tool nearly enough. For example with everything other than your kick and bass you should be rolling off the low end. Also try to keep your mid bass clean as it can quite muddy when adding multiple synths and other instruments.

Ensure your beats are not too robotic

I have seen so many people repeat the same 4 bar beat for 64 bars. A hat hitting on every beat for the majority of a song is boring and the ear gets tired of hearing it. Ensure you vary each bar up slightly and especially every 4 bars. The change doesn’t have to be significant, maybe a blip or sound effect added or a kick or snare removed or added. It all makes a huge difference and keeps your beats interesting.

Use some reverb!

Most samples are very dry in that they have no effects added. It’s up to you to add your own and usually this begins with adding some reverb. The effect should be slight. For example adding a small amount of reverb to your snare can make it sound much more interesting. Adding some reverb to your synths in a high register can make the sound more full and complete. Final mixing should involve heavy use of reverb as well to fill the spaces created by your sounds.

Vary up your hats

I have mentioned this before but hats are important. Ensure your hats do not continually repeat without variation and be sure to use all hats including closed, semi closed and open. Add some reverb and spatial separation to ensure you hats are not front and centre. Another good tip is to remove the low end of your hats with and equalizer this ensure they don’t muddy up your mix.

Use all the frequencies

Modern tracks are extremely full. By this I mean they cover the entire frequency range with different sounds. For example the beat and bass cover the low end. The bass and low end instruments cover the mids and high end synths, hats and cymbal cover the high end. All this put together makes your track feel full and will realty improve the quality and enjoyment of your track.