10 Music Production Tips You NEED to Know

so you're a home studio musician and you want to make pro sounding tracks i got you let's do it what's up everybody nathan larsen here back at you with another video for those of you guys who make music at home whether you're a producer artist songwriter if you write and record your own music at home this is the channel for you and if that sounds like you at all may i present the subscribe button to you it is something you can click with your own mouse or something i'm gonna be showing 10 production tips that you should definitely know to make your production sound a lot better basically more pro that's what we're going to do and here's the thing you should watch this video all the way till the end i'm going to pack this so full of value if you only watch half of it you're basically only getting half the value so make sure you watch all the way till the end number one getting great source is absolutely 100 something you have to do if you're not getting great source you really can't be asking me why your stuff doesn't sound very good because that's why so in the very simple terms getting great source has to do with recording actual audio whether that's with a direct line in or a microphone recording some sort of audio into your daw you want to make sure that you are not peaking or at the loudest point you do not want to be over minus 6 db at the lowest point you want to be shooting for minus 18 db this is going to give you headroom it's going to give you space to work with and digital signals tend to sound the best in those areas the biggest mistake people make is recording too loud or too hot this is going to cause clipping and distortion which is not fixable so there you go number one number two getting great performance is a necessity you could record with the nicest most fancy microphone into the most fanciest of all preamps and record it perfectly with the greatest of all sorceries let's see what i did there oh so cheesy basically you could record it with the greatest of source and still have a very meh performance so if we're talking about instrumental performance obviously rhythm is super important playing the right notes obviously super important but getting good expression good dynamic and actually just being a good musician is super important when it comes to vocals vocals are way way way more nuanced and it becomes a lot more complicated and more difficult to get great performances with a vocalist and the reason is because vocals have all of this kind of complexity of anatomy happening how you breathe how much breath support you give the shape of your vowels are you singing more forward are you singing a little bit further back in the throat for a darker tone are you singing in pitch are you singing rhythmically in time are you being expressive and dynamic are you singing in a way where you're allowing your audience to believe that you're going through whatever it is that the lyrics are saying all of those things matter in getting a really great performance there's a whole lot there i can't talk about all of it but the point here is that if you get really great source but not a very good performance not super great if you can get both those together magic number three editing isn't a suggestion you have got to edit if you want pro signing tracks i can pretty much promise you not pretty much i promise you no professional level productions that are on the radio that are on spotify that are getting sync licensing deals and things like that none of them are like not edited at all trust me now the extent at which you edit that can kind of be up to you you don't need to edit everything like 100 to the grid and stuff like that but if you're not spending time editing you are not doing it right period and story and here's the deal editing actually is not that fun it's like my least favorite part of the process but you have got to do it and it makes a huge difference now you're probably saying well nathan i thought you should get a great performance so just get a great performance and then boom like you don't have to edit no that's not how this works i think that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what editing actually is editing isn't taking a bad performance and making it into a great performance editing is taking a great performance and simply enhancing it and making it fit in the pocket whether that's doing some fine tuning on your vocals for pitch or making sure your guitars and drums and bass and all that other stuff that you're recording is sitting in the pocket that's what editing is this isn't adding tutorials so but editing is super important number four this is more of a workflow thing but you should be starting with the big wins when you're actually producing your music so when you're actually working in the dawn when you actually start producing and recording and creating the track that you're actually going to have at the end don't start in an area that you don't even know what you want to do start in the place that you feel the best about and then work your way backwards so say for example verse one you don't actually really know what you want your instrumental arrangement to be at that point but the hook or the chorus you have a pretty good idea of what you want you want drums you want bass you want strings you want whatever the case it may be start building there start to get the kind of good feeling of momentum to start building and then go backwards and work on that verse if you're starting with the areas that are going to give you a headache first then guess what you're probably gonna have a headache throughout the entire production if you start in the areas that get you excited first it's gonna be way way easier to stay excited throughout the entire thing and actually feel more inspired once you actually come back to that first to start working on it so start with the big wins it's really simple it really is and that's all i have to say about that moving on so number five eq is not just a mixing tool eq is absolutely a sound shaping tool so as a producer i use eq all the time to radically transform the actual sound of whatever it is i'm working with in the first place so here's an example of kind of a cynthia plucky sound now this sound to me is really really bright and let's say i'm working on something where i don't want that to be so bright and shimmery instead i want it to be a little bit more dark and muted and kind of in the background now instead of going and finding a completely new sound which could take me a pretty significant amount of time potentially instead what i'm going to do is i'm going to pull up eq i'm going to start making very big sweeping decisions with eq to change that sound i might use a filter to roll off all that high end or i could use a shelf or just a very very wide cut to make it sound more like this [Music] that sounds completely different an eq can be used to do even more than just that what i just showed you you could do way more than just that but it's not just a mixing tool eq can absolutely be used to completely transform an entire sound boom that was that was another fast one number six this is such an important one arrange with the mix in mind you might be saying nathan what on earth does that mean arranging with the mix of mind is actually pretty simple let's say you're working on a chorus and you want this super super big chorus right so you've got your bass and you start recording like a guitar and you do another guitar and another guitar you're like oh my gosh let's throw all this stuff out and you just throw all this junk at it it's like whoa that's pretty cool but then you realize this sounds really muddy like there's there's this is kind of muddy what the amateur is going to say is dude we can totes fix that later like eq man the pro is gonna say we have too much going on let's actually get rid of a bunch of this stuff we can always make the other thing sound bigger so arranging with the mix in mind is the idea of never overloading frequencies during the arrangement process so in other words if you want something to sound bigger rather than just chucking a bunch of different things at it instead realize that you can make those sounds that you already have be bigger later on instead of basically just piling all that junk in there to start out with now same thing on the flip side let's say you want something to sound bigger instead of just saying oh i've got this one guitar part we can just make that thing sound huge instead maybe you do want to double that guitar part and then pan them to make them super big we're going to talk about that later the main thing here is that you never want to be saying hey let's just fix that later we can just fix that later the main thing is actually just go ahead and arrange those things that way what you need to understand is that pro level productions already sound really good as a rough mix before they ever get sent to a mixing engineer or before they ever make it to the mixing stage in the case that you're mixing your own stuff so a range with the mix in mind number seven vocal production has the power to make or break your productions plain and simple you could have the most incredible instrumental production and if your vocal is this kind of meh guess what the whole track will be meh so for me personally whenever i'm producing vocals i'm always looking for how can i accentuate and enhance whatever it is that i've got going on vocally i want the lyrics to be inspiring me as far as what am i doing with my background vocals what kind of harmonies am i doing am i doing doubled vocals am i doing vocals an octave higher an octave lower when am i doing those things and actually coming up with a really amazing vocal arrangement there's very very very few examples of music in the modern era today that is just one vocal all the way through with nothing else there are examples of course but it's not common in most music that we're going to be listening to that is going to be at a professional or pro level so to speak whatever that even means then that is going to typically have a lot more going on vocally than just one league vocal i have videos on this on my channel that you can really dig into to learn more about that number eight what was that number eight the law of diminishing returns this is something you need to be aware of and this kind of comes down to some opinion but i want to bring it up because it is important at the end of the day there is a point at which you start over producing things and i have been guilty of this myself for sure 100 i've done it i don't know anyone who hasn't done it and yes there is definitely some similarity between arranging with the mix and the mind and also kind of this law of diminishing return but there are some differentiations here let's say for example you have some really cool stuff going on the high frequencies and some mid frequencies where you're not necessarily overloading things but you just have a lot of different ideas going on at a certain point you do absolutely throw too much on the wall where it might make sense to just kind of dial it back and take a little bit of that stuff out so this is more something for you to think about in the back your mind are you doing things very intentionally or are you just throwing crap on the wall and hoping that everything sticks so just be intentional when it comes to the choices that you're making number nine getting super wide sounds by doubling them and panning them i mentioned this a little bit earlier but this is something you can use in so many different scenarios so let's take for example an acoustic guitar you could have a guitar that sounds like this [Music] [Applause] which doesn't sound bad but we could go ahead and turn that into this [Music] now if you're just using your laptop or your computer speakers and not having headphones or whatever you might not be able to tell the difference but the difference is that i doubled those in other words i record them two separate times and pan one all the way to the left one all the way to the right that's going to give it a much wider sound you can do this with vocals you can do this with guitars electric guitars acoustic guitars you can do with strings you can do it with different synth instruments all sorts of different things that you can use this with now if you're gonna be using midi instruments or synthesizers and things i do recommend that you actually change the character of the sound before you do that if you just go ahead and copy two tracks or whatever and then two two performances it's gonna sound a little funky you might wanna add some saturation distortion maybe a filter or something to change those sounds a little bit so they don't sound like exactly the same but that's how you can get super wide stuff and it's super awesome and real quick before we jump into the last one i do want to let you guys know that i'm giving away a free module of my new course the producer accelerator which is launching at the end of this month january 2021 if you want that it's in the description down below it's a free session breakdown of one of my own songs i will rise there's a ton of value and i've already gotten some people that have said that they've been pretty surprised i just gave this away because most people would charge money for it so go get that down below while you can and finally number 10 number 10 is that you should be investing in sounds over effects so when it comes to investing in equipment and gear and all this stuff i get so many people asking me questions like what plugin should i buy what effect should i buy the waves model should i buy the sound toys bundle all this stuff and my typical response is that if you're focused on actually producing music like actually writing music and actually creating music in your daw and actually you know making music you should be focused on investing in sound not effects there is a point at which you just kind of have so much stuff effects wise where you're never even going to use all of that most daws are going to have quite a lot of options of just stock effects and if you buy sample library bundles you're probably going to get effects thrown in there like the native instruments bundle the complete ultimate bundle has tons of awesome effects that you can use as well that's come with it so all in all getting access to new sounds is going to make a much much bigger difference on your productions than getting access to new effects plug-ins so i do think that when it comes to investing in yourself and investing in your studio unless you're looking at microphones and you know other things like that if you're looking at software my recommendation is focus on buying sound not effects my go-to sample library is definitely native instruments i love east west spitfire is pretty good and i love everything that i've used by output those are the four of my favorites i have a link all the way down the bottom of the description of all the gear that i use in my studio as well if you ever want to check that out and hey if you found value in this video i would ask that you subscribe to the channel i have so much amazing new content coming out in 2021 i'm super super super super excited about it drop a comment give the video a like and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Nathan James Larsen

Views: 49,854

Keywords: nathan larsen, 10 productions tips you need to know, production tips you need to know, how to produce great music, music production tips you need to know, 10 music production tips you need to know, music production tips, music production tricks, music production tutorial, music production tips tutorial, nathan larsen music production, music production, home studio production tips, home studio tips, home studio tutorial

Id: PpJeWUbFwG4

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 06 2021

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