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[KimyReizeger]

Has anyone got any tips for making Chris Lake / Deadmau5 / trentemoeller style songs? As far as I can make out, it's all about relentless side-chain compression...See Aqualight:

MySpace.com - Sebastien Leger & Chris Lake - House / Electro - www.myspace.com/legerlake

Anyone making stuff in this vein? (longshot, I know )

[Stripey]

try and get a copy of Amazon.com: Production Mixing Mastering with Waves: Anthony Eqizii: Books if you can, theres a chapter on dance music/rnb music that's got some good techniques for getting that pumping loud as hell effect but is also full of generally quite useful stuff to know.

[KimyReizeger]

Cheers, I will get a copy of that; can't believe how radically my music making process has changed over the past two or three days, chain reaction influenced entirely by those artists mentioned above and a few myspace tunes...

Really want to start producing (for want of a better word) more formulaic music, as opposed to just diddying around experimental things that don't really go anywhere. I find it pretty easy to come up with short sections; stretching out 4 minute tunes without a copy-paste effect is the difficulty just now.

[Stripey]

Originally Posted by KimyReizeger

Cheers, I will get a copy of that; can't believe how radically my music making process has changed over the past two or three days, chain reaction influenced entirely by those artists mentioned above and a few myspace tunes...

Really want to start producing (for want of a better word) more formulaic music, as opposed to just diddying around experimental things that don't really go anywhere. I find it pretty easy to come up with short sections; stretching out 4 minute tunes without a copy-paste effect is the difficulty just now.

It's a good idea to sit down with pen and paper and note down the structure of some commercial tracks in the genre your writing for, just basic stuff like x bars intro, bassline comes in after x bars, is x bars long and lasts for x bars, melody comes in after x bars and so on. I do this in fruity loops just using empty patterns, this is a portishead tune for example



You can build up a nice collection of ready to use basic structural templates this way, that you can adapt to your tune, and obviously as you do this you start to get a good understanding of how structure works in the first place.

Nothing wrong with the short experimental bits that don't seem to go anywhere, look at them as sample fodder for the future.

[KimyReizeger]

Yeah, looking at representative tunes - good place to start

I can see this technique working for me. There literally is no point in trying to create unique structures every time you sit down to make music - in fact, I'd probably say that's what's been hampering me for a long time / been the most potent cause of frustration.

Great tip, cheers!

[RockAustin]

Me and my friend used that technique for a Daft Punk cover, a series of empty fruity loops parts. We then went through the song to recreate the drum patterns as closely as possible. Really helped to break the song down and after doing that it made coming up with other structures easier... although I'm still pretty crap at it ha ha. I think you will still have to adapt them depending on how your song is developing, that's where the variation will appear.

I like the way you've been writing your tunes so far but maybe you could remix some of them using the structures you work out? Would be interesting to hear the comparison.

[KimyReizeger]

Snap! Worked through a tune using a daft punk structure last night. Admittedly because that's the only music I actually have on the work computer but yes, it eventually resembled less and less the copied form. My process now runs something like this: create about five basic grooves representing stages of the song with drums / bass / harm. / mel, get them as perfect as possible (whilst trying to foresee how they will sit later on (tricky)), mix them down into one audio file, whack in a side-chained kick drum, then structure and master. The structuring / mastering stage is the least defined because I'm continually getting new ideas concerning the former stages, which is an ironic pain in the arse.

[RockAustin]

Definitely a good start. What structure you use will depend on what you are wanting to achieve with your song. I think Homework is a great album to study structure.

I was actually debating or more trying to decide what my way of writing and structuring was going to be over the last week as well. The way I have favoured lately is taking a really basic beat on a loop and mucking around with different sounds trying to find my melodic hook. Decide what arpeggiators and effects I want to use, think about if I want a moving bass line or a more tense tone based line (last couple of songs have used this). Once these things are starting to fall into place, sounding like they compliment one another, start working on a drums pattern to equally compliment and enhance the dynamics. Structure is usually dictated by the feel of where these point should be rather than the structure directing this. I quite like it this way, throws up lots of challenges. I've also just started trying to get vocals into my songs, pretty keen on this.

[KimyReizeger]

Just put up a track in which I've incorporated the stuff we talked about on here...it's half-finished admittedly, but has an intro, verse and a stomping chorus. Been listening to all sorts of house music the past two weeks or so...this one is comes across a bit like more recent electro-house, but I pretty much got all my drum ideas from listening to older tunes by Todd Terry, A Guy Called Gerald, other bits and pieces (Robin S 'Show me Love' for example - absolutely love the organ sound on a lot of early house tracks).

It's still rough and I actually made it in about 4 hours today, but I hope you enjoy (and critique!); feel like I'm getting closer to the realisation of a complete track

Makeshift House
MySpace.com - KimyReizeger - Aberdeen, UK - Electronica / Experimental / Jazz - www.myspace.com/kimyreizeger

[Alex]

Bryn that's fucking ace man. What synths've you got in there? Been getting horrible basslines out of operator using oscillators as weird fm filters. Hooking up a mic just to control sidechain compressing is fun. Take it easy, Alex

Bangface! two days!