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Season 3 ·

S3E06 – The Process of Music Production

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Today we talk about the whole process of music production TARGETED FROM A BEATMAKER’S POINT OF VIEW.

You must understand that being the music producer who makes the beat, you want to be in full control of the song. And in order to do this, it’s very important to understand each step of the music production process.

We cover the BEATMAKING, ARRANGEMENT, MIXING, MASTERING and AUDIO PAINTING stages of the music production process, and explain that SOUND DESIGN is actually a separate industry!

Here’s some of the products/resources mentioned:

Arrangement Audio Painting Custom Music Folder Drum Kits Mastering Melodies Mixing Music Producer Tips Sound Design

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Transcript

S3E06 – The Process of Music Production

  1. Season three, episode six, the process of music production.
  2. It's really important you understand the full music production process, all the
  3. different steps that are included, because a lot of times when you're learning how
  4. to make beats and learning the full process of music production, you can get really
  5. overwhelmed because you kind of get confused on the different industries that
  6. overlap each other. For example, are you making the beat?
  7. Are you arranging the beat? Are you mixing the beat?
  8. Are you mastering the beat? Are you doing audio painting?
  9. Which is what I kind of talk about, which is like the final touches of the song.
  10. You're kind of listening to the song from the listener's point of view, preparing
  11. them for what's next in the song.
  12. And then there's sound design, which is in its own category.
  13. You have to understand that each of these steps that I just explained are different
  14. industries within the music production industry.
  15. There's making the beat. Within that, there's like the drum loops and the melodies.
  16. Then you have the arranging of the beat, you have mixing the beat, you have
  17. mastering the beat. Audio painting is my own term, and it just breaks down how we
  18. prepare the listener for what's next in the song.
  19. And then again, there is sound design, which is in its own category.
  20. And no, you do not need to learn sound design if you want to be a good beat maker.
  21. Alright, so I talk about this quite a bit to people who are part of my platform, and
  22. it's all about the process of music production.
  23. It's really, really easy to get confused that you have to learn all these different
  24. industries, but there are a couple of them that you have to learn, otherwise, you're
  25. going to be spending a lot of money sending out your music to somebody else.
  26. And you know, kind of like the pride and joy of making your own music is doing just
  27. that making your own music, making your own EQ. decisions, your own compression
  28. decisions, all of those things
  29. You want to be able to do it yourself, otherwise, you have to hire it out.
  30. Because if you can't do it, and if you want your music to sound really, really good,
  31. then you're gonna have to get other people involved.
  32. When other people are involved, typically, not always, but a lot of times, there's
  33. money involved, changing hands to hire them, or someone else is working on your
  34. music. And as a music producer, typically we are kind of like, hey, that's my music,
  35. I want to do my own thing with my music.
  36. Okay, so let's talk about the very first one here, and that is making the beat.
  37. Not everybody can make a beat.
  38. If you can make a beat, you are kind of in a special category, okay?
  39. Because when we talk about arranging a beat, mixing a beat, mastering a beat, a lot
  40. of people can kind of get in there and have fun and kind of start moving a little
  41. bit. Because essentially in the mixing stage, you are just opening up your plugins
  42. and you're just trying to adjust it to the way you want.
  43. Obviously, mixing a good beat takes a lot of skill, a lot of practice, a lot of
  44. reading, a lot of hours. But when you make a beat, that's where it all
  45. starts from. Okay. And in order to mix the beat, the you know, you actually
  46. have to make the beat. Now, when we talk about making the beat, what does that
  47. include? Like I always say around here, everything's from scratch.
  48. So when we talk about drum loops, that is programming drum loops with one-shot drum
  49. samples, melodies, that is using MIDI.
  50. So our MIDI keyboard to program our melodies, and we're using virtual instruments,
  51. right? We're not using pre-made MIDI packs or any pre-made drum loops that we're
  52. just simply dragging in, and you guys are just time stretching.ing
  53. If you are do that stuff, you guys probably will not enjoy this podcast, all right?.
  54. Because everything around here is custom
  55. We like to do that for one, it's the it's the most reward in your music.
  56. You can feel truly confident that you made the music yourself, okay.
  57. So that is in one category itself.
  58. We make the beat, there's the drum loops, there's the melodies.
  59. Takes a lot of practice, a lot of skills, and don't get tricked into thinking that
  60. you need all these different virtual instruments, because number one, they're
  61. expensive. Number two, you have to learn them, which takes a long time.
  62. And number three, in my opinion, the easiest way to get started.
  63. And even at my level, I still always recommend a rompler.
  64. I really like using Nexus by ReFX, super simple rompler.
  65. It's actually super lightweight.
  66. That's another reason I really like it.
  67. Another reason I like ReFX Nexus, and I was talking to a Vander
  68. in the platform. Is if you guys do not know who Manual is, he is the
  69. creator of Vengeance Sound. In the early years of all this online tutorials of
  70. FL Studio and you know, music production tutorials, a lot of his sounds were always
  71. in tutorials, a lot of dance music, okay?
  72. Vengeance sound, okay. And he is actually a big part of ReFX
  73. Nexus. He was one of the main sound designers, and that is another reason why
  74. I really like using Nexus because he has extremely high quality
  75. expert level skills when it comes to sound design.
  76. When you are purchasing all of these different third party virtual synths, sure,
  77. they might be. be high quality, but the actual presets are not typically
  78. designed forat makers And that's one thing I will tell you guys over and over and
  79. over. Just because there's a sound doesn't mean it is designed for the beatmaker.
  80. What does that mean? It means that it works really good to make beats easily, such
  81. as easy for chords, easy for lead sounds, easy for bass lines.
  82. Within making a composition, right?
  83. You can have film music, you can have game music, you can have sound design effects
  84. and stuff. You know, so those sounds can be really useful for those industries.
  85. But as a beatmaker, we need to have sounds that are super powerful for chords, super
  86. full sounding, super rich, high quality, super easy to use, and that is what
  87. you're getting in ReFX Nexus. Okay.
  88. I can only speak from years and years of experience.
  89. It was one of my first purchases, one of my first big purchases when it comes to
  90. this music production world, all right.
  91. Okay, so we have making the beat.
  92. There is the melodies. You're gonna need a nice MIDI keyboard.
  93. At the moment, I am recommending the MAudio Oxygen Pro.
  94. You guys can visit my website, it's gratuitous.com forward slash oxygenpro.
  95. I have tons of free training there for you guys.
  96. I have a free MIDI script. There's also a premium add-on for really cool workflow
  97. off of the drum pads. Now for the drum loops, I want to talk about drum samples.
  98. All right. This is something that's really been skewed in recent years of the music
  99. production industry. So companies like Splice have come into the market.
  100. The new generation is seeing this company and they're like, oh, that's so
  101. innovative. It's so simple, it's affordable.
  102. But in my opinion, I have always liked to just purchase a sound kit that has tons of
  103. sounds in it. It allows you to go through it nice and easy, nice and quick.
  104. It's also on your computer, which means it's local, which means it doesn't have to
  105. be connected to the internet, and it allows you to find sounds quick.
  106. A lot of people, they want to try to favorite their sounds.
  107. So they take a sound, they tag it as a favorite, or they try to categorize it.
  108. In my opinion, if you are trying to favorite your sounds, you are going to get into
  109. beat block. And what that is is just you get stuck.
  110. You don't know how to be creative anymore.
  111. You know, just like writer's block, you get into beat block.
  112. And if you are favoriting your sounds, that's what's going to happen.
  113. And this is for both drum samples and your virtual instruments.
  114. I do not favorite anything. Okay.
  115. I just organize my sounds as they come.
  116. So for example, I explain this in my free training.
  117. This is if you just go to it'sgratuitous.com forward slash fl studio and sign up.
  118. It's the second video I explain custom music folder as well as how to organize your
  119. sounds. So when we have a virtual instrument, typically we are installing a bank of
  120. sounds. But for me, I always like when it's really simple, and they either have
  121. labeled it with L D for lead, P N for piano, B A for bass,
  122. S Y for synth, P L for plucked.
  123. It's a really, really nice naming convention.
  124. And once you experience that, it's like that is super organized as is.
  125. You just have all your plucked sounds, and then you just keep going through them.
  126. When it comes to your drum samples, if you try to use these sample manager
  127. plugins, I don't enjoy that workflow.
  128. Number one, you're bringing in an unnecessary plugin.
  129. Number two, if you're doing that, you are not organizing your drum samples in a way
  130. that allows you to flow super easy.
  131. The way how I like to do it, you create a custom music folder.
  132. Within the custom music folder, you create a sounds folder.
  133. In the sounds folder, you create a folder for your drum kits, you create a folder
  134. for your virtual instruments. In the drum kits folder, you just organize your drum
  135. kits by vendor. For example, a company I use very often within my trainings is
  136. exclusive audio. I talk about the drum bundle trio a lot.
  137. And so, for example, if I wanted to use exclusive audio drum samples, that is in the
  138. drum kits folder under exclusive audio.
  139. Now, if exclusive audio has a bunch of drum kits, and let's say they come out with a
  140. new drum kit, and let's say I was like, Oh, I want to purchase that, that goes in
  141. the exclusive audio folder. Now, if you purchase a good drum kit, the sound
  142. kit designer or the vendor has already organized it for you super easy.
  143. And if they haven't, if you're purchasing a drum kit that only has like 27 sounds
  144. and you've paid like $30 for it, you are getting ripped off.
  145. Okay. In this industry for drum samples, a good drum kit will have at least a
  146. hundred plus sounds. Okay. Now there is no really kind of, you know, price to ratio,
  147. but the drum bundle trio does have 2300 drum samples.
  148. So, what I'm trying to say is if you purchase high quality drum samples from a
  149. reputable vendor, it simply goes in your drum kits folder and you organize it by
  150. vendor. All right.. So let's just keep talking about exclusive audio
  151. Exclusive audio has a folder in the drum kits folder.
  152. If they come out with a new drum kit, you simply just drag and drop that drum kit
  153. into exclusive audio, you're done.
  154. Now, the next thing to understand is you don't just add sounds into your music
  155. folder. You make sure to test them to make sure that you like them.
  156. Okay. You go through the sounds, you say, yes, I like these or no, I don't like
  157. these. And why that's important is because this is your sound kit folder that's
  158. going to be carried with you for the rest of your production career, whether you
  159. know it or not. If you're just doing this for fun at the moment and you're, you
  160. know, maybe three months in, what you're gonna realize is your sounds carry on with
  161. you. And you shouldn't just be bringing in any sounds to your drum kits folder.
  162. If you acquire a new drum kit, try it out, see if you like it.
  163. If it passes your test for a quality drum kit, sounds that you enjoy to use, then it
  164. can go into your drum kit folder.
  165. Again, create a folder for that particular vendor.
  166. Whenever you acquire new sounds from them, it just goes into that folder.
  167. Now, in their particular folder for let's say they have a drum kit, exclusive audio
  168. has organic drum kit. They should be organizing this by kick drum, clap, snare, hi
  169. hat, and some of the really good vendors even break it down to, for example, you
  170. would click kick drums, you would have long tailed kicks and short tailed kicks.
  171. Again, I can't tell you how important that is for a fast workflow.
  172. Anything past that, you guys are what's called overorganizing, which is a thing.
  173. And if you overorganize, it's just not going to make things fun.
  174. You have to have it at a point where you go through things and you screw up
  175. sometimes. And if you screw up sometimes, you can be super creative by screwing
  176. up. So that's all I'm gonna say there for the sounds.
  177. We have the melodies, which is your virtual instruments.
  178. I told you reaffects Nexus because Manual has done
  179. his sound design there. You guys are getting extremely premium quality presets.
  180. All right. So in addition to yes, it's a rompler, you're actually getting his sound
  181. design skills, which you will not find in many other products, right?
  182. For the drum loops, again, I like to create custom drum loops with one shot drum
  183. samples. It's tricky, all right?
  184. Takes a lot of practice, a lot of time.
  185. But once you get past that learning curve, I can't tell you guys enough how much fun
  186. creating your own custom drum loops is.
  187. You can make your drums hit hard, you can layer your sounds, and it all starts from
  188. having high quality drum samples.
  189. Okay. To learn more, again, just visit it'sgratuitous.com, visit the shop.
  190. You will see the exclusive audio drum bundle trio there, and I explained how to
  191. organize the sounds for the best workflow.
  192. All right, so that was only making the beat.
  193. Look how much information there is, and that was just about organizing sounds.
  194. We didn't talk about chords, melodies, you know, how keys and scales work.
  195. Now, after you make the beat, and at this point, it's like the beat in my case
  196. isn't really finished. In other words, I have made the beat where I have made the
  197. chorus essentially. And from that chorus, now I break apart the
  198. song. We go into what's called. the arrangement stage
  199. Now, audio painting actually comes near the end of the song, which kind of
  200. correlates with the arrangement, but the audio painting prepares the listener.
  201. So, for example, if you have created the chorus of the beat, you're like, hey, this
  202. is the full beat, this is the chorus.
  203. Now you have to break apart the beat.
  204. You have to arrange the track.
  205. You have to figure out what's verse one, what's the chorus, what's verse two.
  206. If your song has a pre-chorus or bridge, you have to figure out where you want to
  207. put them, how you want to approach your song.
  208. Every song is different, and that's what makes music so much fun is there's really
  209. no rules, even though there kind of is.
  210. Okay. That's the arranging of the beat.
  211. And I'll tell you here a pro tip.
  212. The arrangement is what takes an amateur beat or even just a good beat to a
  213. professional beat to a super good beat.
  214. You can just have a loop, right?
  215. But a loop is not a song, it's not a catchy song.
  216. And the arrangement is where you take the idea and it just shines,
  217. okay. The arrangement is has a lot of patience.
  218. And another pro tip there when you're arranging a beat.
  219. If you're arranging the song and you're starting to get tired working on the track,
  220. my suggestion to you is to go and open another project, start working around a
  221. little bit, and then you can come back to that project and you will find that you'll
  222. have fresh ears, a fresh mindset, and then you might be able to work for another
  223. five, 10, 15 minutes on it, and then you can wrap it up for the day, okay?
  224. All right, so let's move on to the mixing the beat.
  225. Not gonna go too much in depth here because the episode's getting a little bit long.
  226. Mixing the beat is really what makes your beat sound beautiful, right?
  227. But all I will tell you here that you have to understand that when people talk about
  228. mixing, there's really two I guess, situations for mixing.
  229. If I'm speaking into this microphone talking to you, when we do EQ at this
  230. situation, we are kind of fixing problems maybe from the room, or maybe I wasn't
  231. close enough to the mic, for example, like I'm gonna come back really far, and if I
  232. talk like this, those are problems that we can kind of fix with EQ and compression
  233. and other audio tools. But when we're making beats, our sounds are at like the
  234. industry's highest quality that you can possibly get.
  235. So when we're using EQ and compression, there is like two ways you can approach your
  236. mixing. First of all, we can just be fixing things, like kind of just enhancing, I
  237. think is a better word, right?
  238. We already have the beat. Maybe we just need to maybe cut a little bit, maybe we
  239. need to boost a little bit here there on some EQ.
  240. And all that's gonna do is it's just gonna allow some instruments to stand out just
  241. a little bit more. But you just have to understand that if you're gonna mix your own
  242. beat that you just made with super high quality sounds, typically you only have to
  243. do very, very light moves to get a half decent mix.
  244. If you want to take your mix to the next level, then you're gonna start getting into
  245. kind of heavier processing, more plugins, parallel processing, all that kind of
  246. stuff. But just know that the mixing again is another process of the music
  247. production industry. So we have making the beat, arranging the beat.
  248. We have now mixing the beat, mastering the beat is the very final stage of that
  249. song, and essentially, what most people know mastering for is just pushing that
  250. volume up loud, making sure that it translates very well across all audio
  251. systems.ing And for me, in the master stage, I'm also listening for
  252. completeness of the song. And this is where the audio painting comes in.
  253. So I kind of master the beat and do audio painting at the same time.
  254. So, in other words, yes, I'm bringing up the loudness of the track, but as I am
  255. mastering the track, I am playing for the beginning of the song and I'm letting it
  256. play all the way to the end of the song, and then I am doing what's called audio
  257. painting. I'm trying to listen from the listener's perspective, and I think to
  258. myself, like, does this sound boring here?
  259. Does it need to have a transition?
  260. That is essentially what I call audio painting.
  261. And I have a book on this, and in the book, I talk about it's kind of like you're
  262. putting somebody on an emotional roller coaster ride.
  263. What happens on a roller coaster?
  264. It brings you all the way to the top, right?
  265. And then what happens is it has the drop, which is essentially like the chorus of
  266. the song, and you, as the music producer are in full control of that listener's
  267. emotions as they're listening to your song, and that is essentially what audio
  268. painting is. We have to prepare the listener at each stage of the ride of the
  269. song. We do that through transitions, essentially.
  270. And once you can really listen to your song from that perspective, you will listen.
  271. Every single song has this audio painting in it, essentially, right?
  272. Whether it's like a tom roll, a snare roll, even silence.
  273. Sometimes, you know, producers totally remove all audio, and then they bring all the
  274. audio back in. That is audio painting.
  275. It's preparing the listener for that next stage of the song.
  276. If you don't have a transition, I promise you., your beats will sound very amateur,
  277. very weak There are times where no transition is needed, but the majority of the
  278. time a transition is going to significantly polish up your track and make it sound
  279. way more professional. Okay. Now, the last one I want to talk about is sound
  280. design. This is something that really gets people.
  281. They start making a beat, they start seeing all these other tutorials, and they are
  282. sharing all these different virtual instruments.
  283. And the thing is, it's really deceiving because you think, oh, maybe I need that
  284. sound, this synth to get this sound or whatever.
  285. What I can tell you here is I used Nexus for most of my
  286. beat making years. In my later years, I started to use more synthesizers like Silent
  287. One, Serum, Pigments. And what I want to really get across to you here is
  288. sound design is a different industry than beat making.
  289. Now, when we use a preset, such as let's say we have Nexus again, and you select
  290. a piano preset, and then now you go to make your beat, that is not the same thing as
  291. using a pre made MIDI pack or a pre made drum loop.
  292. Okay, that's like done for you.
  293. In this situation, sound design is a totally different industry, and it's actually
  294. very tiring, in my opinion. Like when I try to do sound design, I just find it's
  295. tiring. It's and to me, it's kind of boring.
  296. But as a beat maker, I need to have sounds that allow me to play my chords,
  297. create my own custom melodies.
  298. Okay. And so if you are trying to learn the sound design think,ing that that that's
  299. what you need to be a good beat maker, is a different industry.
  300. Now there is a difference between understanding how the tool works, how to tweak the
  301. tool to get the exact sound that you're wanting, compared to actually knowing how to
  302. create these popular sounds. And another thing I will say here, too, is if you are
  303. a sound designer, always creating, you know, whatever the popular songs are, and
  304. you're creating your sound design off of that.
  305. That is also something that I do not enjoy because I always like to find my own
  306. sound, do my own thing. When I go through the you know, in Nexus, all the different
  307. random sounds, like I like finding super random sounds, like they have cool like
  308. love flute sections and like piccolo sections and all this random stuff, and then
  309. you go and you throw some distortion on it, or you throw a chorus on it or a
  310. flanger, and it's just like you get a totally different unique sound, and it's like
  311. exactly what I need for my style of beats.
  312. So just understand that when I'm speaking to you, I'm trying to come from the point
  313. of view of I do not like copying trends, I like always doing my own thing, and
  314. I hope all this information has helped you out.
  315. Okay, so again, we have making the beat in there, you have drum loops, you have
  316. melodies, right? You have arranging the beat, you have mixing the beat, you have
  317. mastering the beat, and then audio painting is also in that process, which is
  318. essentially like the very final touches of the song, listening from the listener's
  319. point of view. Sound design is actually not a part of the music production process
  320. unless you are trying to create all your own custom melodies as you're making a
  321. beat, but if you're doing that, I'm telling you right now, your beat making process
  322. is going to take way longer.m And as a beataker, it's all about speed, fast,
  323. now. And when you use a rompler, you already have very, very high quality sounds
  324. available to you right away, and you can get up and running if you know how to play
  325. the piano and how to make your drum loops and stuff like that.
  326. You could just start rolling so fast.
  327. So that's it for this episode.
  328. If you guys want to learn the piano, if you guys want to learn how to set up a
  329. custom drum loop, if you guys are brand new to making beats with FL Studio, visit me
  330. over at it'sgratuitous.com. There's so much training on my website.
  331. There's over 30 beat making courses.
  332. Thanks for listening. I hope this one helps you out and gives you some clear
  333. direction. Always feel free to send me an email or request an episode if you are
  334. struggling in a certain topic and just can't find your
  335. answer.
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