The Blue Print | Creating Tracks
Oct 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Mo Volans
EVERYBODY HAS THEIR OWN WAY OF CREATING THE PERFECT TRACK, BUT FOR THOSE OF YOU EAGER TO IMPROVE YOUR WORKFLOW AND ENSURE YOUR IDEAS BECOME FINISHED SONGS, THIS SIMPLE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE WILL HELP YOU ON YOUR WAY
STEP 1: CONCEPT AND INSPIRATION
Often the hardest part of creating a track is finding inspiration, which can come from listening to a favorite artist or a cool new sample; before you know it, you can have the majority of a track in front of you. The really hard work begins when your creativity simply refuses to flow.
To avoid falling into creative ruts, have a concept or style for your track in mind as a guideline before you begin the construction process. You can even decide what style of arrangement to try beforehand. This is a less spontaneous style of writing music, but you'll still be able to lay down some valid ideas when taking this route.
Once things are starting to work, you can change concepts as you go and create new parts on the fly, but there's no doubt that a certain amount of thought and planning can work wonders for even the worst case of writer's block.
Remember to keep all your ideas well organized; naming your project folder and files clearly will give you quick access to older tracks. A project that may seem lacking today could turn out to be just the thing you're looking for in a month's time.
STEP 2: SOURCING AND PREPARING SOUNDS
Another way to prepare before actually starting to write is to gather and inspect any sounds or samples you wish to use. Again, this is quite a controlled way of going about things, but in some situations it can really pay off.
For instance, in a really vocal-heavy mix, spending a little time doing some preproduction can help avoid work when you are in full creative flow. Some simple de-essing, filtering and gating can make your workflow much more enjoyable as you progress through the project and improve your overall sound as well. Trimming and filtering drum samples, for example, also can be extremely effective and lead to a more defined drum sound.
Such preparation succeeds as a workflow tool and can greatly reduce your CPU overhead if it leads to less processing during mixing. That then lets you focus your resources on running more virtual instruments and effects buses.
STEP 3: THE DRUM TRACK
With most types of electronic music, the drum track is all-important. Not only is it usually the most predominant feature in the mix, but it also supplies attitude and pace to your arrangements.
Knowing how critical drums are to the overall quality of the track, it's really worth spending some time here. Don't rush things, and try to shy away from preconstructed loops for the main body of the rhythm section. You'll achieve a much more original and diverse sound by taking the time to program your own beats.
Split each percussion sound onto its own channel and switch back and forth between processing each individual sound and the entire pattern in the mix. You can then group or bus all of the percussion tracks together to give you more control over the whole drum level.
Try using techniques such as parallel compression, multiband processing and transient design on your drum group to attain more punch and clarity. Whether you're using drum machines, samplers or raw audio to create drum tracks, taking this approach should lead to a better mix.
STEP 4: BASS AND LOW-END MANAGEMENT
Once you're happy your drum track, it's time to look at the rest of the rhythm section and add your bass parts. Bass is often the hardest instrument to perfect in electronic music, but if you've spent a good amount of time building an interesting drum track, you ought to be more inspired when it comes to playing instrumental parts.
Unless you're recording a real bass, you can program bass lines in a MIDI piano roll editor or play it on a MIDI keyboard. A good compromise between the two is to play a basic pattern using a keyboard and fine-tune in your MIDI editor. This way the basis of your pattern should have a human feel, with obvious mistakes quantized and extra notes added for interest.
With a pattern in place, you can concentrate on your bass sound and its placement in the mix. Layering two or three parts or sounds can be an excellent way of fattening up the part; using sounds you don't usually associate with bass can create interesting effects when married with more traditional synth-bass patches. You can then feed these layers into one group in your DAW so you can process them as one to add some “glue.”
It's extremely important that any parts containing low frequencies are managed correctly, so the mix remains coherent. Correct bass management will also make mixing and mastering easier. Tools such as multiband compression, highpass filtering and sidechaining can not only make sure your low-end dynamics behave, but they also enable your drum track to cut through the new bottom-heavy parts.
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