Workflow...

Hola

Whats your work flow?

Finished up a sound engineering production course recently. Was reasonably interesting, but mainly unrelated to what I wanted to do. Good general background reading.

But it did highlight the problem with making electronic music that Ive found anyway - you tend to do everything at once.

So I'm learning about the best way to record each instrument, top tricks for tracking, then sections on how to approach mixing once the tracking stage is all done, then mixing down with the prescience to know what the mastering engineer needs....

.... and at every step there's a sort of implied understanding of what the next stage needs. Tracking stage needs to be as good as possible so that the mixing stage can take over. Mixing stage needs to be tip top so that the mastering dude can do his job.

How do you know what to do at each stage, and where to stop?

So If I spend ages designing a synth sound and automating all the variables it goes through and writing the midi part for it, how much attention to I need to pay to its sound? Because I have the choice to engineer the synth so that it fits into my mix, but am I supposed to just make it sound lush, then fit it into the mix later?

And given all this how do you know where to stop given that a lot of the time with dance music you need to know how the master compression is going to affect the groove and swing of everything?

Soo......

Whats your work flow? Do you do everything at once, or do you write everything in midi, then work on each track, then work on the mix, then set it up for mastering?

Doing my head in at the moment. Never sure how far to go at each stage, what to cut, what to keep etc.

my workflow:

1. compose - including musical fx, stuff like delays etc

2. record everything seperatly to audio and import into a new project.

3. engineering - render down track.

4. edits.

5. mastering.

My work flow- some what disorganised...

1) Mess around with sounds samples in .wav form. (kicks, hats, percs, shakers, toms and snares)- running them through fx and layering- what works and what doesn't etc...

2) Cutting up vocals from movies, tv shows, songs etc...

3) Farting around with bass lines- appregios, stabs etc...

4) Melody. What do I want this peice of music to say, am I happy, sad and what would I like to convey.

5) Discover a shiney pebble on my bedroom floor that is unlike anything I have ever seen and forget music for 30 minutes (at least) while I inspect it.

6) shiney pebble inspected and put in my draw with the rest I set about making my loops- 4x4's, breaks, elements and bass.

7) Export loops as .wav's and construct a 2 minute mock up of what the track will sound like.

8) Decide that I'm crap at music, hate myself for 40-45 minutes and sulk, have a good whinge to either RDR or Baz Techniologies, get over it and set about constructing it.

9) Save it for mastering at a later date when I have learnt how to do it properly.

Rinse and repeat.

Yeah that pretty much sums up my approach, except that I don't find shiny pebbles on the floor, just fungal toenail clippings....

Usually,

1. Work on kick + bass at the same time.
2. Build single hits and loops around kick+bass
3. Add synthlines and vocals
4. I mix as I go usually
5. Dissapear for a few days and then listen to the track and quickly make changes to levels and eq.
6. Export
7. Do a really bad mastering job:lol:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jay Pace

So If I spend ages designing a synth sound and automating all the variables it goes through and writing the midi part for it, how much attention to I need to pay to its sound? Because I have the choice to engineer the synth so that it fits into my mix, but am I supposed to just make it sound lush, then fit it into the mix later?

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That's the eternal question isn't it.

From my point of view, with electronic music, I don't think that the various stages are as discrete as if you were recording a band.

My rule of thumb is do always do as little as possible to get what you want, which I immediately throw out of the window and go crazy with DSP.

I wouldn't listen to me though, I never finish anything. I've got a HD full of loops crying out to be made into tunes and I can't make any progress with any of them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DannyBlack

My work flow- some what disorganised...

1) Mess around with sounds samples in .wav form. (kicks, hats, percs, shakers, toms and snares)- running them through fx and layering- what works and what doesn't etc...

2) Cutting up vocals from movies, tv shows, songs etc...

3) Farting around with bass lines- appregios, stabs etc...

4) Melody. What do I want this peice of music to say, am I happy, sad and what would I like to convey.

5) Discover a shiney pebble on my bedroom floor that is unlike anything I have ever seen and forget music for 30 minutes (at least) while I inspect it.

6) shiney pebble inspected and put in my draw with the rest I set about making my loops- 4x4's, breaks, elements and bass.

7) Export loops as .wav's and construct a 2 minute mock up of what the track will sound like.

8) Decide that I'm crap at music, hate myself for 40-45 minutes and sulk, have a good whinge to either RDR or Baz Techniologies, get over it and set about constructing it.

9) Save it for mastering at a later date when I have learnt how to do it properly.

Rinse and repeat.

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haha funny, that cheered up my afternoon :)

I usually start from the bottom,working my way up....get the majority of the trk playing over 32-64 bars....then start arranging it.

I tend to mix as im going along then tweak bits at the end as well as any edit work.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TechMouse

I've got a HD full of loops crying out to be made into tunes and I can't make any progress with any of them.

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thats me all over. find it real hard to finish anything, think my main problem is i spend a lot of time eqing/mixing as i go so pretty soon things start to sound repetitive and i loose the vibe that pushes me along when structuring a track.

as far as designing sounds go, sometimes i'll need a sound to fit in with a certain track so will lean towards making it right for that particular mix, more often though i'll make sounds separately and then make them right when they are used in a tune. or build a track around them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TechMouse

From my point of view, with electronic music, I don't think that the various stages are as discrete as if you were recording a band.

My rule of thumb is do always do as little as possible to get what you want, which I immediately throw out of the window and go crazy with DSP.

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Yeah, definitely not as discrete.

But I think there's a danger to doing everything at once, I usually get distracted by synth design or DSP, then start trying to change the design or the DSP to fit the sound into the mix.

I'm fairly certain my mixes would be a lot tighter if I exported parts and mixed them together, instead of trying to do everything at once.

Seem to have developed a phobia of exporting parts and mixing them. Something about it seems too final....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jay Pace

Yeah, definitely not as discrete.

But I think there's a danger to doing everything at once, I usually get distracted by synth design or DSP, then start trying to change the design or the DSP to fit the sound into the mix.

I'm fairly certain my mixes would be a lot tighter if I exported parts and mixed them together, instead of trying to do everything at once.

Seem to have developed a phobia of exporting parts and mixing them. Something about it seems too final....

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you could always render them back into the track and make the original midi parts disabled (i find putting them in a folder group keeps them nicely out of the way)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Siege

I usually start from the bottom,working my way up....get the majority of the trk playing over 32-64 bars....then start arranging it.

I tend to mix as im going along then tweak bits at the end as well as any edit work.

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Exactly how I work! Wise minds and all that. ;)

create a basic loop.....


and listen to that loop non stop for 3 days straight until I get bored of it... :)

as above but tweaking the cutoff / res

repetition is good for you