How I produce my songs

Music production?

 

 

Hi everyone, clea leshlick here. In this post, I will talk about my music making routines. I do it in my bedroom, which is soundproofed(although not perfectly). I use FL Studio as DAW and Tascam US-122 mkII as the interface. Sometime I'd use my midi keyboard, which is a humble M-Audio Oxygen61, and sometime I would only use mouse and the typing keyboard.

My speaker is a good old 2.1 Altec Lansing. Bought it around 8 years ago, and it's still in good shape! Headphone is Philips SHP8500, not too expensive or high quality, but it's decent. I use both of them as I play PC games, watch videos, listen to music, and of course, mix my own songs.

A bit about FL Studio

 

 

I've been using them for years, since FL 5. The distinctive GUI and the demo projects got me hooked. Liked the step sequencer, playlist-mode with pattern blocks, and easy to use mixer. If you are thinking of purchasing FL or any other image line products, you can use my discount link here. It will give you a 10% discount, and give me a small percentage of your purchase, I don't remember how much lol.

Ok, I'll break the steps/processes and explain each one of them. I hope that they are not too technical or geeky. I want to share the joy of music production to you, even if you are no musician. It's not as hard as you think, and it's crazily fun ^ ^

Idea/Inspiration

 

 

Most of the time, I already know what type or mood of the song I'm going to write, so I play/fool around with instruments, sounds, chords, or sequences until I find something interesting or 'cool'.

There are also times where I lay down, turn off the lights, and just listen/imagine. Usually I will hear something nice in my head. From there, I can observe passively and let it go free, or I can actively change or alter that song. Song tempo is decided here, and yes, I always use metronome/fixed tempo.

Song Structure

 

 

Most of the time, I start with a sequence of chords. 2, 3 or 4 chords in 4 or 8 bar. After that, I would add the bass, the beat(drums and or percussion), then finally the lead. For me, the lead doesn't have to be a melody. It can be rhythmic. It can even be an ambiance.

As I add or try out instruments and samples, I assign them a different/new mixer track each. It will help me to maintain volume balance, use effects independently, control panning and so on.

After that, I lay out the structure for 30-60 seconds of song length, consisting of 2 or 3 parts. Intro-Verse-Riff or Verse-Riff, usually it's one of them. The song genre and style is decided here.

Filling in the holes

 

 

Holes, yup. There will be holes everywhere in the song structure. Fills at the end of a bar, accompanies, sound layers, harmonies, intro, ending, looped/not looped. If you have good sense of musical details, you will know or feel where these holes are. Sudden changes, rough passages, bad sounding instrument, squeaky treble and muddy bass are what you'd normally want to avoid.

Usually I will add several new instruments or sounds to fill in the areas where I feel is lacking. Could be a synth, piano, guitar, percussion, even a drumloop or an effect. If I were to record or insert a recorded live performance track, this is the time to do it. Could be a vocal, guitar, or a bass.

Polishing and Finishing

 

Here is the stage where I do lots of balancing and mixing. Volume, panning, EQ, compression, automations, etc. I listen to them repeatedly, often isolating each mixer track with solo function, and make sure that each track sounds good as a solo. This method, I find to be rewarding because it will save me much time from digging/finding out who sounds bad, at later stage when the song will be full and crowded.

Song structure and arrangement is also revisited in this stage. Removing boring patterns, adding variations, improving and smoothing expressions.


When I feel that everything is good, I stop for a bit. Then I listen to the song from start to finish, checking if there are any artifacts/problems, checking if the song was enjoyable, and checking if it flows or loops smoothly.

Meanwhile, I turn on my mastering plugin and tweak it around. I aim for a clean and polished sound, setting it to be loud enough without participating in the loudness war. I want every instrument to have their own place and be heard clearly without eating up each other.

Ending

Finally, I render the song to a wav, mp3 or ogg file, check the graphical waveform on FL and play it on winamp. Why bother checking the graphical waveform? Because it's a fetish of mine. Not only the song have to sound good on ears, it must also be good looking, waveform-wise! Look at this:

 

If you ask me, track A looks so much better than B. The highest peaks do not touch the bottom/ceiling. Now look at track B, ewww... so brutal, so inartistic. These days, there are many songs with even higher gain/compression than B. Not only they look fat and ugly, they SOUND fat and ugly as well.You can hear them getting crammed in a place that's about to explode.

I once heard a saying: "If I like the music I hear and I want it to sound louder, I will turn up my speaker."
This, is a striking truth for me. Music should be an art, not a sound pollution. Same goes to audio/video advertisement.

Well, this concludes my post about music production. If you have any questions, requests, or comments, feel free to express it below. Thanks a lot for reading, clea leshlick out~