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S1E12 – Creating Melodies with Sound Selection

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Did you know the secret to an amazing mix is actually in wise sound selection?

Wise sound selection is the foundation of your song’s frequency spectrum, and in this episode, we discuss how to think in terms of your lows, mids, highs, and how to use certain instruments powerfully in your music.

Additionally, the main course I wanted to share in this episode is called Creating Organic Beats. I record a single guitar note with you, and show you how to create a whole composition out of that single guitar note! You’ll learn sound design, and learn to think in terms of your song’s frequency space in the course.

Frequency Analyzer Melodies Piano Sound Selection

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S1E12 – Creating Melodies with Sound Selection

  1. Hey, this is Gratuitous. Welcome to Music Production Made Simple, the show that
  2. focuses on best practices about music production, which is based on FL Studio.
  3. If you're wanting to become the best producer you can be, subscribe and listen
  4. weekly. You can also check out my courses which teach you the principles and basics
  5. of music production. They'll get you up and running quickly.
  6. In addition, I also have books on Amazon and tons of music on Spotify.
  7. Always feel free to hit me up at Hi at it'sgratuitous.com.
  8. So let's get into the episode.
  9. Alright, hey, what's everybody?
  10. Welcome to episode number 12. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about creating
  11. melodies with sound selection in mind.
  12. Okay. So here's something to think about.
  13. When we think about mixing, yes, you know, we need to use our EQ, our compression
  14. and everything to get our mix sounding how we want.
  15. However, many times it's the sound selection, which is the real foundation to an
  16. awesome mix, okay. So for myself, you know, because I make beat tapes, so each beat
  17. tape has about you know 11 tracks, and as I mix these beat tapes, some tracks are
  18. easier to mix than others, and that's just because of the sound selection.
  19. Everything's clear, you know, you're able to get pretty good loudness out of that
  20. track. And then there's some tracks where it's just like no matter what you're
  21. doing, you know, you have to be more aggressive on your EQ.
  22. And again, like if you're pushing loudness, sometimes you know, like it's hitting
  23. audible distortion. Your sound selection is like the foundation to a good mix.
  24. And in this episode, we're gonna be talking about how do you go about sound
  25. selection when you choose your sounds and just thinking in terms of your whole
  26. frequency space, okay? So the first section I want to talk about is mixing helps in
  27. many areas, but sound selection is the true foundation to a good mix.
  28. We have to think in terms of our lows, our mids, and our highs when we're selecting
  29. sounds, okay. We're I'm talking about like your whole frequency spectrum.
  30. And now, in terms of like music theory, some kind of cool tricks that you can be
  31. doing to kind of play around with this frequency spectrum, is you can be using tools
  32. like inversions. So if you have checked out my course, it's called Learn Piano for
  33. Beatmakers and Producers. I explained to you you know how to play the piano from
  34. from like a beatmaker's perspective, but I share with you in that course about
  35. inversions, okay. So if you play the different inversions of a chord, you can kind
  36. of manipulate the frequency spectrum by playing up a little bit or even down a
  37. little bit. And what that is gonna do is it's going to allow your instruments to fit
  38. in the mix a little bit better, maybe add a little bit more fullness and get away
  39. from this frequency clashing. You can also do this with octaves and stuff too, okay.
  40. Another point here is if you want to add fullness into your actual song, you can
  41. also be layering. So don't forget about layering, it's really really powerful.
  42. And then kind of like as a bonus tip, you could be using parallel compression for
  43. thickness too, okay. And layering is just if you have one instrument, it would just
  44. be a matter of getting two or three instruments and playing like those same
  45. melodies, and now you have you know a layered sound for fuller sound.
  46. So I'm just gonna take a little detour here, then we're gonna come back to you know,
  47. selecting what sounds and and what you know mindset that way, but I'm just want to
  48. talk about certain instruments, and when you select these certain instruments, you
  49. know what you can kind of do with them, okay.
  50. So, what I want to talk about here is like so when you are actually about to make a
  51. song, when you go to select a sound, what sound are you choosing?
  52. Why are you choosing it, and where should you use that sound?
  53. Okay, this is kind of like what you got to think about.
  54. And just to kind of go a little off topic here, I've also created a course it's
  55. called musical rhythms, and I actually had a student ask me, they kept getting stuck
  56. with like you know, producer's block and they didn't know you know how to proceed.
  57. And my answer to them was well, you have to know like kind of like the common
  58. patterns, and by knowing these patterns, you can essentially like force your music
  59. to work because it's just a matter of like mix and matching.
  60. For example, if we're talking about like short chords, you know, like stabs or like
  61. like a filler instruments, arpiggios, things to do with like your bass line and
  62. stuff that, okay. So that's kind of more about what what we're gonna be talking
  63. about here. That course is called musical rhythms.
  64. So, what type of sounds are good for what types of rhythms?
  65. So, we're gonna be talking about pads first, okay?
  66. So, pads are super awesome, you know, the they're full of emotion, they're amazing
  67. sounds, they're typically really slow, swelling, long, sustaining notes, and you
  68. know, tons and tons of emotion, and they're typically held down for like long
  69. periods of time. If you do have fast chord changes, sometimes I just allow like the
  70. chords to kind of play over like those root notes.
  71. So if it is kind of changing like the fast chords, sometimes I don't change my
  72. chords on the pad, I'll just change it up on like the chord progression.
  73. if you do want your pad to change with these faster chord changes, you may have to
  74. adjust your ADSR, so your attack and release, especially on the attack side, because
  75. that's gonna allow your notes to play faster.
  76. Because typically, like I was saying, like a pad is really slow swelling, and if you
  77. have these fast chord changes, you're not really gonna be able to hear that pad very
  78. audibly, okay. So, again, if you kind of make that attack a little bit faster on
  79. your ADSR envelope, you're gonna be able to hear that pad on these fast chord
  80. changes, okay. one thing to think about with a pad is they can typically clog up a
  81. mix really fast, and the reason for that is because a pad has tons of frequencies,
  82. you know, it pretty much has like the full frequency spectrum, you know, has the
  83. lows, the mids, and you know, typically, you know, has very, very, you know, a lot
  84. of highs. but they're really full sounding.
  85. And a little cool trick when it comes to your mixing here.
  86. So if you're trying to mix your track and there's like that one kind of problem
  87. instrument, but you really can't really find what it is.
  88. What you could be doing is. is you can mute an instrument, and that is gonna allow
  89. you to kind of treasure hunt to figure out what the problem instrument
  90. Once you've found it, then you can solo out that instrument, apply your quick EQ and
  91. compression kind of settings, but then you always want to bring it back into the mix
  92. to reference in context of the whole mix because mixing in solo is very dangerous.
  93. Now, for our next point with this pad here, so it's pretty similar to what I was
  94. just talking about in terms of it can clog up a mix.
  95. This is a little bit different.
  96. So certain instruments, not just pads, but a pad is a good example here.
  97. Is sometimes it's hard to make a pad stand out.
  98. But the thing is if you do mute that sound, you'll instantly hear that like your
  99. song's fullness you know is gone.
  100. But as soon as you add that pad back in, now you hear like the fullness in your
  101. song. So one thing I always try to tell you is you always have to be thinking about
  102. your song in context of a song.
  103. So when you go to mix your music, when you're done your mix, does your mix actually
  104. sound like a song? That's probably the most important thing because when you're
  105. first getting started up mixing, you know, what you're trying to achieve is like
  106. you're trying to get all the instruments to sound super clear, you're being really
  107. really aggressive on your EQ. but what you can be doing is you can actually be
  108. taking away from like your original song, the original groove, and how these
  109. frequencies all kind of gel together.
  110. Now, yes, you do want clarity and you want like instruments to stand out.
  111. However, like I'm trying to say here, some instruments, you know, you may not be
  112. able to hear them super audibly or super clear, but when you mute them, now you can
  113. actually hear that your song's fullness is gone, but you add that instrument back
  114. in, and now your song sounds like a song, okay.
  115. So that's just one thing to think about.
  116. One other point, a little bonus point I want to talk about with pads is pads are
  117. extremely powerful when you use side chain compression.
  118. For example, you take your kick drum to reduce the volume of that pad to get like
  119. that kind of pump sound. Really, really popular for that..
  120. let's talk about pianos Okay, so pianos are amazing for emotion, same with a guitar.
  121. how you could be using these you know, these pianos is you can be using like a
  122. one-tap note, just kind of create like a little melody up high.
  123. you could be using like chords, just tap chords.
  124. syncopation is really powerful, so that's just like playing you know, chords off
  125. beat. Again, I cover all this stuff with you in my course called Learn Piano for
  126. Beatmakers and Producers. We learn the piano from a beat maker's perspective.
  127. You're gonna learn how to improvise and stuff like that.
  128. Now, in terms of the sound selection with this piano, I always kind of think in
  129. terms of like lows, mids, and highs.
  130. If I have instruments in like the mids, maybe I want to start working in like the
  131. highs now, just to kind of spread my instruments, you know, to allow my mixing to be
  132. easier. So, in terms of sound selection and the frequency spectrum with the piano,
  133. so in the middle frequencies, okay.
  134. So, with the piano, if you play like the middle frequencies, you know, that'd be
  135. kind of more like A4 and like C5 and you know that kind of area.
  136. you know, this is really really power powerful for like emotion and fullness in your
  137. music, okay. But now for like the high end, the high end is typically for like a
  138. melody, okay. It's often what like the listeners are kind of like waiting for, and
  139. it's kind of like the catchiest part of like the song.
  140. The low end, the really, really low end on a piano is really powerful.
  141. For example, in like hip hop, many times they just play like one single note, and it
  142. again it's just such a powerful sound.
  143. many times you can even use like an EQ, kind of filter out like the low end on that
  144. piano because sometimes it can it can kind of have like some rumble, and you can
  145. even layer that with like another hit.
  146. But when it comes to the piano, that's how you you can kind of be playing with that
  147. frequency spectrum and your mindset when you're you know selecting sounds.
  148. The last category here that we're gonna be talking about with the sound is leads,
  149. okay. So leads are aggressive and again really really emotional.
  150. You have to remember when you select a sound, like not all sounds can hold their
  151. own. Okay. So when we're talking about sound selection, this is kind of due to do
  152. with like that layering stuff I was talking about.
  153. So when you have a sound, and now let's say you want to build out the arrangement,
  154. sometimes the sound cannot play on its own.
  155. And the reason for that is it just doesn't sound full enough.
  156. maybe the actual melody or like the rhythm of that instrument isn't engaging enough.
  157. Many times some instruments always need some type of supporting layer, or it always
  158. has to play with another instrument, or sometimes you know, like they only suit like
  159. the chorus, because maybe they're they're too powerful for the track, but it's a
  160. really catchy melody. But again, you only want to play it like in the chorus or
  161. something like that. One little workaround you can do for that is if you do want to
  162. kind of start building it up. So, for example, let's say you played the chorus with
  163. this lead. Now it goes into verse one.
  164. You know, now you've kind of slowed down the song.
  165. But let's say now verse one starting to build up into like that next chorus.
  166. If you want to add this lead in, typically what I would do is I might use some type
  167. of filter, typically like a high cut filter, which is kind of cutting out like the
  168. high frequencies, and you can kind of build it up that way.
  169. And typically these sounds you can usually only play like one note at a time, so
  170. like they're monophonic. and many times these VSTs have a button that allow you to
  171. enable that, and that means that you can only play one note at a time.
  172. And if you play in between notes, sometimes you can get like that slide depending on
  173. how much of your portamento knob that you've dialed in.
  174. When you are playing your lead, just think in terms of frequen.cy space
  175. Like when you play that lead, does it sound too thin?
  176. Well, then maybe you want a layer so that you add just a little bit of fullness onto
  177. that, or maybe you have to have another instrument which is kind of it's different
  178. from your lead, but when you play them together, you know, your track sounds full.
  179. So our next point is how to select sounds for the ultimate sounding mix, okay?
  180. So, as you'll discover, you know, some tracks are just easier to mix than others,
  181. but this comes down to your sound selection, and sometimes you know you really just
  182. can't plan it, it just happens.
  183. So, just like I said, when I had my beat tape, I had my like 11 tracks, and on that
  184. beat tape, there might be like two tracks which are just extremely easy to mix and
  185. compare to the other ones. For some reason, the kick drums just blend super good
  186. with like the bass. then you know, if I had like a pad and let's say like a piano or
  187. whatever, it's just you know, the sound selection that I've just chosen for that
  188. song, and you know, there was no real formula for it.
  189. It was just a matter of as I was building the track, you know, I wanted some chords,
  190. so it was like okay, I want maybe some emotion.
  191. Let's select a pad, and then it's like, okay, well, piano is really good for emotion
  192. too. Maybe I'm gonna play a little bit higher up in the frequencies because that
  193. pad, you know, maybe it's like kind of like the lows and like like the mids, okay.
  194. And as you start building out this track, all of a sudden these sounds that you
  195. selected just go together, and when it happens, it's just amazing.
  196. When it happens to you, you know, you're gonna you're gonna understand what I'm
  197. trying to say. It just makes the mix so easy.
  198. Your sound selection is like the foundation to an awesome mix, okay.
  199. So, how do you know if you have good sound selection?
  200. So when you go to mix your track, it's super easy to achieve clarity, punch as well
  201. as loudness in the mix and master.
  202. Sometimes when a track has a lot of frequencies which are kind of clashing and stuff
  203. like that, in order to push your loudness, sometimes it's like you just can't. get
  204. it as loud as another track No matter how loud you're pushing it, you know, all of a
  205. sudden you start hearing audible distortion and compare to a track that just had
  206. awesome sound selection. Okay, that's kind of a reference for you when you select
  207. sounds to kind of give you a little indicator of have you chosen good sound
  208. selection and stuff like that.
  209. Again, there's no real formula, but again, you just kind of think in the back of
  210. your mind the lows, the mids and the highs, and if you kind of space out your
  211. instruments in such a way, again, even using tools like the inversions and octaves
  212. to kind of manipulate like the frequency spectrum, you can you can kind of achieve a
  213. really good sound selection almost every time.
  214. Now, here's something to think about if sounds are not standing out, okay.
  215. So is frequency masking going on.
  216. So when sounds cancel each other out and it kind of causes like a hollow kind of
  217. sound, you can maybe like flip the phase of certain instruments, or it just might be
  218. a matter of selecting a different sound, or are they kind of fighting for like the
  219. same space? So, for example, let's say you have two lead sounds, they're both you
  220. know, kind of in like that 2k, 5k kind of area, you know, 5000 hertz kind of area.
  221. And if they're clashing, sometimes what you have to do is you know, you might have
  222. to cut space for these other instruments.
  223. So you take out an EQ, you can kind of you know cut a little bit around let's say
  224. like 4K in one instrument, and then maybe cut the like 2k in like the other
  225. instrument, just to kind of give space for each other.
  226. And a really powerful thing to do here is to use a multi band compressor.
  227. I'll keep this simple. Okay, so you have these two instruments, and what you can be
  228. using is like side chain compression, but again, you want to be using like a
  229. multi-band compressor, that way you can kind of hone in on certain frequencies, and
  230. so when they both play, you can kind of reduce the volume of certain frequencies.
  231. However, if they play by themselves, then those frequencies are not reduced.
  232. and that's just a really powerful thing as you start getting more advanced in your
  233. music production, and it allows your music to be a little bit more dynamic because
  234. again, when you use EQ, it's static.
  235. So, what that means is that you've adjusted your EQ and it's staying there forever
  236. unless you've used automation.
  237. And again, the easiest way to approach it is just to use side chain compression with
  238. a multi-band compressor. That way, when both instruments play, you can reduce
  239. whatever frequencies you want out of each instrument.
  240. And then when they're not playing together, then it's not reducing those
  241. frequencies. It just allows your music to be dynamic and allow clarity and fullness,
  242. and it's just a really powerful tool.
  243. It's not just used for that, but that's just one, you know, kind of advanced trick
  244. that you can be using. Okay, so just to wrap up this podcast, so one thing I want to
  245. talk about is if you are interested in learning how to you know think in terms of
  246. your lows, your mids, your highs, as well as learn, you know, how to sound design
  247. and how to add frequencies and you know remove frequencies from from certain sounds.
  248. I've actually created a course, okay?
  249. It's called creating organic beats, and it's probably one of my coolest courses I've
  250. created. So, what I do with you is I actually record a single guitar note with you.
  251. Okay, so in the course, I actually have a video of me with a guitar and a
  252. microphone. I record the single note.
  253. What we do is we bring that single note into FL Studio, and then I show you how to
  254. create a whole composition out of that single note.
  255. It's a super cool course because the thing is that single note, it's like those are
  256. always the same frequencies that you're using, so it's kind of you know, you really
  257. have to think in terms of your frequency spectrum when it comes to your low end,
  258. your mids, and your highs. If you want to create a whole composition out of that
  259. single note. you know, again, your lows is like your kind of like bass line, or if
  260. you want to create like a pad out of the single guitar note, or if you want to
  261. create like a lead. And then a really cool approach too is you know, using tools
  262. like distortion and stuff to add frequencies onto the sound to allow it to stand out
  263. differently from you know the other instruments because again, the guitar note is
  264. all the same frequencies. it's just kind of a cool mindset, and it's a really,
  265. really cool course. It's helped a lot of people out.
  266. Again, it's called creating organic beats.
  267. I will leave the link in the show notes in the you know, you know, like in the
  268. resource section on this episode page on my actual website, it's gratuitous.com.
  269. Okay. So let's wrap up this episode.
  270. So sound selection is the foundation for an awesome sounding song.
  271. It makes arrangement, mixing, and mastering much easier to accomplish.
  272. Without good sound selection, you'll find yourself tweaking more often.
  273. For example, like your EQ and compressor, and again, it's hard to kind of achieve
  274. like that loudness in comparison to a song which has good sound selection.
  275. when choosing sounds, you want to think in terms of lows, mids, and highs.
  276. Is your song lacking in the mids?
  277. You know, add an instrument for fullness either as a layer or like a new melody, or
  278. you can use your current instruments, but you can take a different, you know,
  279. inversion or octave or whatever, just to kind of manipulate like that frequency
  280. spectrum and kind of spread your notes around if you want to go up a little bit or
  281. down a little bit while still playing like the same notes, but you are allowing
  282. other instruments to stand out and allow more clarity, more fullness and stuff like
  283. that. So if you choose sounds while making beats like this, it's gonna make like the
  284. process easier. It eventually kind of becomes like second nature.
  285. You know, again, when I sit to make my beat, I might start with like a pad or
  286. something like that. Have like my drum loop.
  287. Now I'm always thinking in terms of like my lows, my mids, and my highs, especially
  288. as I get later on into the song.
  289. I start thinking about you know where is my song lacking in terms of frequencies,
  290. and then I'll simply select a sound and start playing within like that kind of
  291. octave in that area of the frequency spectrum.
  292. Okay. So hopefully that kind of gets you going in a sense of sound selection.
  293. So if you guys have any questions, feel free to reach out.
  294. I always have an ask gratuitous section on each page on my actual website.
  295. And if you guys like this podcast, I've also left a button there.
  296. If you guys want to support this podcast for five dollars a month, I'd really
  297. appreciate that. So hopefully you guys enjoyed, and I'll talk to you guys in the
  298. next one. Thanks for checking out the episode.
  299. If you had any questions, visit it'sgratuitous.com slash podcast, select an episode
  300. and submit your question at the bottom of the page to the contact form.
  301. If you'd like to take my FL Studio courses, see my current studio and podcasting
  302. gear, read my books, or are interested in lessons.
  303. Visit the link it's gratuitous.com slash learning.
  304. That page will redirect you to more info and resources.
  305. I hope the best with your productions.
  306. I'm gratuitous, and I'll see you in the next
  307. episode.
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