On your way to becoming the music producer? Want to hone your skills as an already established soundtrack editor or sound producer? Aside from practicing again and again, trying out new things on your sound editing programs, here are a few tips for music producers, from music producers.
Amateur sound producers looking to hone their ability in mix and mastering tracks is to learn about compression techniques. Have you ever noticed that as you layer more sounds, the audio starts to clip? As an automatic reaction, you turn the gain down but find that the sound is now too quiet—you just can seem to win. Compression helps to reduce the variation between a channel’s lowest and its highest gain levels (and throughout the track). As a result, you get your volume without the clipping.
Low frequencies (30-40Hz) can often result in a low rumble; the more sounds in this range, the worse it is—resulting in a “muddy” sound. You can’t always avoid overlapping several sounds in this frequency range, so using an EQ on each element of your track can help to remove the mud and provide you with much more clarity (and space!). To learn the process of how to do this, you can use a Spectrum Analyzer to each channel of your soundtrack to reveal where and to what extent to “roll off” or “notch out”.
Presets are tempting to use all over as a beginner, and sometimes, you can use them with great results. However, using too many can cause clashing in the frequencies—unless you personally tweak the presets. You can do this with a lot of patience and learning how to program a synth. And some more patience—spending hours turning knobs (physically or virtually) will provide you with a more custom and clearer sound.
Over processed sounds and over-use of effects is a common problem among novice sound engineers. A few effects throughout your track can enhance the sound but too much can drag it down.
One of the biggest issues of at-home music producers (novice or otherwise) is the lack of acoustics in a bedroom-converted-studio. Aside from getting yourself a top of the line studio, you can improve your home acoustics through other means (and more economical means). Simply adding or moving a rug, hanging a blanket, or moving your set up around can modify how the acoustics in the room you are using as your studio effects your sound.
Once you have your music engineering under control and are ready to take it to the next level and start selling your soundtracks to artists, TV producers, and others, contact ShinyTracks to learn how to become one of our music producers.
