Fills and transitions

Previously we talked about the most crucial aspect of professionally-made tracks, sound design. In this second part, I’d like to highlight one of the most underrated ingredients of production, the things I call fills and transitions.

Part 1. Sound design
Part 2. Fills and transitions
Part 3. DJ-friendly arrangement

Let’s assume you’ve made an amazing sound design, each and every element sounds perfect. What’s next? You go out to the level above and start building up a track as a whole. You making some loop, then another loop, that’s how your track is getting progression.

The things I call “fills” is made to build a connection between those loops and parts of a track to ensure smooth transitions. I’m not good at writing, so let’s just compare these two:

It’s not about sweeps and “woosh” effects, but about those couple of extra sounds in the middle at 4~5 second. Have you noticed it? Or here:

You see, these are very tiny tweaks, but it makes a huge difference, never underestimate it. It’s a sort of finishing touch that turns your track from “work in progress” feel to the finished product. Here are some more examples:

Some longer transitions between major parts of the tracks:

As more nicely you work on and polish these parts, the stronger connection your tracks gets, it literally tightens things up together like glue.

There is no hidden secrets or shortcuts, behind every professionally-made track is hours and hours of hard work. just make sure to work on these transitions too — they really make a tremendous difference. Listen to how other producers do this job. Experiment and be creative.

Sound design

Being a DJ and A&R guy, I receive a lot of promos and demos regularly. Some tracks are great, and some are... well, not really. Some producers ask for my opinion, and if I honestly tell them, «sorry, the quality of production is not good enough», it brings debates about professional vs amateurish tracks, which leads to even more questions than answers. I’d like to help all up-and-coming producers out there by defining the main components of professional tracks from the technical side of things.

After thinking about it, I came up with the three main criteria: sound design, transitions/fills, and DJ-friendly arrangement. I’ll tell you about each criterion in detail in this series, and today’s talk is about sound design.

Part 1. Sound design
Part 2. Fills and transitions
Part 3. DJ-friendly arrangement

What is sound design

Sound design is a broad term, so let me define it to avoid confusion. By sound design I mean the timbre, the shape, the feel of each and every sound in the track individually and their matching together, which in turn includes equalization, compression, effects, and other post-processing. At some point mixing and mastering also could be named “sound design”, but I prefer to put it separately as it’s a pretty distinctive field of work.

The thing is, in electronic dance music, it’s not that important what sounds, but how does it sound. Although personally, I love musical content, there is plenty of professionally made and successful tracks with literally just one or few notes, so bear with me.

For example, here’s a simple kick and bass:

Which of these audio examples is better? Right off the bat, this is a tricky question: “better” or “worse” are not the right words to use when comparing sounds. The first example seems outdated, as if from the 2000s. The second example seems more modern-sounding, given the current subgenre’s standards. When I was working on the album, I wanted to convey a sense of futurism, so the second example suited me better in this context.

Read also about music standards and album behind the scenes

Or here’s a more melodic example:

Note that in both examples, nothing has changed regardingcontent: here are all the same notes and the same instrument groups — bass, acid, pad, and one more melody. But the timbres and processing, that is, how all these instruments sound, differ significantly.

Binary Star

I believe sound design is the main criterion of professionally-made tracks. Even if your track has some amazing ideas and musical content (which I’m not talking about in this article), but if the sound design doesn’t match the sub-standard, it sounds poor. Keep in mind that vice versa isn’t necessarily true: a musically poor but professionally-made track can be a dancefloor hit.

in electronic dance music, it’s not that important what sounds, but how does it sound

What to do

Here is some advice:

Learn the basics. I’m talking about synthesis, sampling techniques, processing, modulation and other fundamental aspects of music production in general, which are also essential for sound design.

Keep learning. When you think you’ve learned enough, learn more. Make sure to invest your time in learning new things, technologies, and tricks. In fact, as a music producer and as a professional, you should never stop learning. Luckily, the internet opens huge possibilities for education — you can easily find courses, online schools, master classes, communities, blogs, and millions of free tutorials.

Be creative. There is nothing wrong with using sample packs or presets, but use them wisely. Rather than use it as it is, do some clever processing: tweak, resample, reverse, chop, and do more weird things. Watch the video on how John 00 Fleming turns an ordinary guitar sample sound into a lush trance pad:

In the next instalment, we’ll talk about transitions between parts of the track.

Initial gear discussions and costs calculation for beginners

I got asked about basic music production studio many times, and the questions are usually like:

“How to set up a home studio?”
“What cost-effective equipment should I get?”
“Should I go analogue or digital?”

These questions are very basic, thus very important. And I’ll try to answer them.

You need a studio to produce music. Imagine a huge console with hundreds of faders, knobs, and buttons. Imagined? Well, that is what you don’t need.

The core

It might sound surprising, but first thing off, I advise you to buy a desk. Seriously. A wide, long and reliable table where you can work comfortably. At the beginning of my career, I had a desk 60 cm wide (approximately, it is the width between the elbows while typing), so take my word. The size depends on available space in your room, of course, but something about 160 cm wide and 80 cm long would be quite enough. Also, it’s a matter from the psychological point of view — this will be your workplace. Set a proper mindset to aim for productivity.

Galant / Bekant Desk in IKEA

The heart of the production ecosystem is obviously a computer. Don’t ask me “Mac or PC”, as in this case it wouldn’t be fair — I’m on a Mac side. Although I know many successful music producers from both camps, so buy a Mac it’s fully up to you. Speaking of configurations, I’ll say an aphorism: “We are not so rich to buy cheap things”. I advise you to buy a computer with maximum parameters in order not to change it in a year when it starts freezing. When choosing a computer, I recommend you to focus on the following three parameters: SSD, CPU, and RAM. These things directly affect music production performance.

“A laptop or a desktop” is one more controversial topic. Laptops seem to be attractive: they are mobile and almost of the same performance. Earlier I used to think that I would have to buy a laptop for my gigs anyway, that’s why it would be better to buy it at once, not a desktop computer. It seems to be quite logical. But actually, it is not really like this.

“In searching for inspiration” on Instagram. Don’t take it as serious work, it’s just for fun

Here’s why. By the moment you get gigs, your laptop will be out-of-date already. You will be able to afford a more powerful model later, and probably even cheaper.

Another topic is the size of the screen. For the first two years of my career I had worked on a 13-inch laptop and even produced tracks successfully. Later, I’ve bought a 27-inch desktop and realized: whatever people say, the size does matter. With a large screen, the work is done faster and more efficiently, especially when you have hundreds of channels. If you are going to buy a computer and hesitate which to choose, then buy a desktop.

My studio in 2012 back in the days when I lived in Moscow: 60cm wide table and 13-inch MacBook Pro. I’ve managed to write about ten of my first released tracks with this setup

Output

“Headphones or monitors” is yet another controversial topic. I recommend using headphones for the late stage of production when you need attention to small details and balance polishing. If you can’t afford both headphones and monitors, buy only monitors then. But don’t rush to get one of the top models, like Focal Twin6 for instance. To make such monitors really shine, they have to be used in perfect conditions: a proper geometry of the room, acoustic treatment, and high-quality sound card. If you miss any of these, you probably won’t hear the difference.

A neighbor’s conflict. Headphones or monitors

Start with some budget model with a price range of $400~600 for a pair. In fact, I’m still using budget monitors, too! I won’t recommend specific models after all do some research — there are plenty of good reviews out there. But here are some brands to keep an eye on: Adam, KRK, Yamaha, Mackie, Focal.

Sound card is a must-have intermediate layer between your computer and monitors. But the potential of top quality sound cards can be achieved only through the top monitors, which in turn, depend on the surrounding conditions very much as said above. So basically sound card and monitors should work in tandem: it’s not worth buying a $1000 sound card while using $200 monitors, same as a $50 sound card if you have $1000 monitors. You can get a pretty decent sound card in a price range of $200~300, you’ll be fine with it for at least a few years for sure. You can laugh aloud, but I’m still using a $99 card. Actually, that’s a number one in change list for my studio setup.

My studio in 2015 in Israel. Now with a wide desk, 27-inch display, monitor stands, and bass traps

Input

To be clear: analogue and digital synthesizers/plugins have no difference in terms of sound quality. Period. They sound different for sure, but the quality is not a question for today’s digital synthesizers. I am the software guy and I believe it has advantages over physical equipment for the following reasons: its distribution method (digital downloads), free space in your room, and usually price.

My biggest advice on equipment, whether you’d chose – analogue or digital, – would be the following: don’t rush on quantity, less is more. You don’t need hundreds of plugins to make a good track. In fact, most of my tracks are made literally with just two-three 3rd party plugins, sometimes even with just a single one — the rest are built-in DAW devices. Perhaps, your DAW has everything built-in, too, so don’t you have to buy any 3rd party plugin at all? Think about it in this way: “what am I trying to achieve with this particular track or sound?”. Let’s say, you want to make a Psytrance bassline. Maybe you already have all the necessary tools to make that? I believe that in-depth knowledge about a single plugin and its usage nearly 100% of its potential is much better than having 10 synths and use them only at 10%. It’s more effective and cheaper after all.

Less is more

Choosing a DAW

Here are a few software companies I’d like to highlight: U-He, Reveal Sound, FabFilter, Xfer, iZotope, Spectrasonics, Rob Papen, Cableguys, Native Instruments. The list could be continued much more, but I recommend only the ones which I tried myself and was satisfied with. They all do great products for music productions, whatever it’s synths or effects. Make sure to try before buying: most plugins are available in a trial version, thus you can be sure if it fits your needs. Actually, this is one more benefit of digital software over analogue.

Options

Few more things that are not really necessary, but which can improve your production experience dramatically: midi-controller and monitor stands.

Midi-keyboard/controller is the device which can control almost any parameter of your DAW, synths or other plugins through midi-mapping. It is much easier and pleasant to record automation curves by touching the knobs on a physical device rather than moving a mouse cursor. You can focus more on the process itself rather than think how to do this process. It makes a huge difference for melodies composing and sound tweaking.

Automation curves

Read also about modulation

Today’s market offers a big variety of different controllers, but don’t fall into this trap: not every controller is good for productions; some of them are made to focus on a live performance, which is not our case. Also, controllers have a various amount of different knobs, faders, keys and other stuff. I’d recommend getting a device with at least 25 keys (49 better), rotary encoders and pitch control. Stuff you probably won’t need: 61 keys (unless you have a classic musical background), drum pads and faders, although the last one could be pretty useful. Keep that in mind.

As for monitor stands, the point is to make speaker’s tweeters on the same level as your ears. Usually, they are about 20-30 cm lower if your monitors just stand on the surface of the table, unless your own height is 1,5 meters. Monitor stands are the best way to elevate them, although you can even use books for this purpose. Once you do this, your entire perception of sound will be different.

Tweaking the sound with Novation midi-controller

Cost

And now we’re able to answer the question of initial studio cost:

Notes: for «desk» and «computer» I’ve written none only assuming that you already have good ones. The cost mentioned in «3rd party plugins» is based on average prices of 2-4 synths or effects that you’d probably want to get. All numbers are a pretty rough estimate and may vary depending on the region, but it’s pretty fine enough to understand the picture.

So, you need around $500—1000 just to try out what music production is. And from $2700 to $6100 if have a serious intention to go deeper in music as a profession. And of course, all of these are just basics as the headline says: we’ve not even talked about high-end equipment, acoustic treatment, and much more.

I’m not sure if these numbers will motivate or demotivate you, and I did not want either one or the other. I’ve just answered the questions and showed things as they are.

On cover image: a picture of Crescent Recording Studio in Tokyo, Japan. When I was a teen I thought that the music producer’s studio should look like this. All those hundreds of faders and knobs, exactly that’s how I imagined it when was thinking about “the studio”. Luckily, later I got to know that such equipment isn’t necessary for music production at all.

Raul, I don’t know how exactly these artists making their snare drums, the best thing you can do is to ask them personally. But yes, most likely such snares made of few layers.

A snare drum sound consists of three parts: the transient, the body, and the tail. The transient is a hit that occurs roughly at the first 10~20 milliseconds of the sound, while everything else is the body and the tail.

If you look at any snare drum waveform, you can clearly see these parts:

Snare drum structure: the transient, the body, and the tail

Knowing this, you can manipulate with snare samples and layer them on top of each other, like a layered cake.

Now let’s try to recreate a snare drum sound from “Royal Rumble”. First things off, I’ll take one of the classic 909 snare samples as I feel it works well for this job, and transpose it to a few semitones down just to make the sound a bit lower.

Percussion sounds: buy samples or make your own

Then I’ll add one more similar sound on top, but with some brighter transient, and make this sound a bit shorter:

Then I’d add some raw white noise just to give more sustain to the body part, you can make it any synthesizers you have. I’m doing it in Massive just because there is a separate noise oscillator, it’s super quick to turn it on:

Also, I would add a clap sound, but just a middle part of it. That really adds some extra character and lovely dirty crunch:

And at last but not least, I’ll group all these layers and put two the most important devices: an equalizer and a compressor. On EQ, you definitely want to cut some unnecessary low-end, I would say under 250 Hz, and also boost some high frequencies with a wide bandwidth for a few decibels. As for compression, the point is to glue all our layers to make them sounds like a single piece.

Make sure your volume levels are in the green zone, which means you have no clipping on both input and output on this chain:

And here is how our snare sounds like on top of the reference track:

Sounds fine enough to me. Obviously, it’s not exactly the same sound as in the reference track, but we don’t have a goal to simply blind copy it. I just shared a method of how I do snare drums for myself, so feel free to use your creativity and try different variations of different layers to give it extra flavour and unique feelings.

Train your ears using a reference track

“Royal Rumble” is a track by Ace Ventura & Lifeforms, released on Iono Music in 2015. An absolutely stunning track, love it.

A question of choice for beginners

Digital audio workstation, or simply DAW, is a question of choice of many beginners. There are so many DAWs out there! I bet you read many forums, but everyone suggests what they love and the “holy war” never ends. So which one to choose?

Here is the hint: you can achieve the same results in any DAW, like Cubase, Logic, Ableton, Fruity Loops and more. I repeat: you can achieve the same result — a quality produced track — in any software. But nevertheless, programs differ by four criteria.

The difference

• Platform. Ones only for Mac, ones for Windows, the others – for both.
• Price. Keep in mind It doesn’t affect either the process or the result. The cheaper doesn’t mean the worse, and vice versa.
• Built-in plugins. There are different numbers of built-in instruments, plugins, and effects with various functionality.
• User interface. Buttons, windows, menus — all that stuff. Ones look like the space operation center, the others much simpler. There are no good or bad interfaces, its perception is subjective. As for me, this is the most important criterion.

Odd one out

The program choice is not important in the sense of music production. However, when it comes to live performances, one software stands out – Ableton Live.

Ableton developers made up such a unique system that doesn’t exist in other programs. I know the musicians who write music in Cubase due to preference or habit but still perform with Ableton. If someday you are planning to go beyond the walls of your house with your music, I recommend considering Ableton as the main program – both for writing and performing. It’s easier and plus cheaper.

Trial version

Fortunately, these programs are available as trial versions (except Logic Pro), so you can try before buying. Demo-versions usually have a 30-days period and may have limited functionality, but these are enough to understand whether you like it or not.

For me, one day was enough to test out Cubase and FL Studio: I just run them, horrified, and closed. On the contrary, 30 days were not enough with Ableton: I installed it on three different PCs to make a final decision. The choice of the program is subjective, that’s why I recommend trying all of them.

License

I wrote above «buy» purposely as I know in this digital era many prefer to download «cracked» software, and beginners especially. I recommend to actually buy DAWs not just because it’s right, not because of legal things, and not because it’s a very complex product and developers deserve to be rewarded. I recommend buying software because you’ll feel different about it: something that took you efforts to get, in the end, will get more attention rather than something you’ve got for free, play around for a week and then forget.

Buy licensed software if you have serious intention to begin a music producer’s career.