This involves taking a favorite piece of music and meticulously analyzing everything about it - tempo, harmony, melody, instrumentation, form, processing, etc. In the excellent book, Making Music - 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers, Dennis DeSantis mentions the idea of making a catalog of attributes (DeSantis 22). If you are working in specific genres you should be aware of some common characteristics that identify the musical category: tempo, texture, instrumentation, form & structure, idiosyncratic audio processing techniques and major artists. Think of this kind of work as aural calisthenics. There are several apps and resources for musical ear training such as: Writing a simple lead sheet can communicate a piece of music to a trained musician in literally seconds, as opposed to painstakingly describing every note you’re playing chord to chord. But once you find the chord, being able to identify it takes things to the next level. Sometimes a little free improvisation can yield amazing results. Poking around a keyboard to find a nice voicing that works is fine. In the same way that technical ear training helps you communicate with an engineer, musical ear training can significantly speed up the creative process. The more advanced your understanding of theory, the more engaging your work will be since you will have more tools and ideas in your musical mindset. At a bare minimum, you should be able to distinguish basic chord qualities, intervals, common chord progressions, meters and rhythms. Traditional musical ear training is equally important for a music producer. Pro Audio Files On Demand offers over 20+ multitrack sessions to accompany tutorial videos for members 2. Here are a couple of resources for unmixed session tracks:ģ. Of course, the very best way to practice is by doing, so find as many mixing resources as you can to get practice working with raw session recordings. They will also fine-tune your sensitivity and ability to identify frequency ranges and subtle changes in amplitude. In as little as 10 minutes a day, these handy little apps will get you familiar with the effects of processes like EQing/filtering, compression, reverb, delay, saturation, etc. So it is crucial for producers to know the effect of the tools at their disposal and one way to improve these type of skills is by using technical ear training apps such as: Without this knowledge, the production process would be an everlasting hunt for the perfect sound through blind trial and error. Put simply, this refers to the idea of knowing the ramifications of a parameter change or a specific process before it occurs. Jason Corey speaks of the term isomorphic mapping as a means of connecting “technical and engineering parameters to perceptual attributes.” (Corey 6) Knowing how a particular process or parameter tweak will affect the sound before implementation is key. But knowing how to refer to the particulars of a process like filtering or compression is just one-half of the issue. But knowing the specific language of audio is crucial for effectively communicating with artists, musicians and engineers. Anyone can claim an opinion about music and there are many common adjectives that people use every day. Knowing when something sounds good and knowing why it sounds good are two completely different ideas. Below are several areas to consider in your personal quest to become a successful music producer. Every great producer has spent significant time and energy perfecting their craft and creative approach.
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