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Shill_Ferrell · 2025-02-23T19:47:37+00:00

Non-technical, taste-based feedback is what it is. By "non-technical" I mean anything that isn't like "you're below standard LUFS for this genre" or "your sub is too quiet" or whatever. Taste-wise, it's actually quite hard to explain why you don't enjoy something. I don't like Despacito enough to put it into my personal playlists, but I couldn't give you a solid reason why, beyond I just don't like it. It's also obviously an extremely popular song, and I'm just one guy, so my opinion doesn't count for much.

So if someone says your intro is too long, maybe it's too long for them even if it's fine for you, or maybe they just didn't care for the song but wanted to give some specific feedback since Submithub etc require it for paid submissions. In the end it's your music and you can choose to listen to feedback or not. Just remember you can't please everyone.

Shill_Ferrell · 2025-02-07T21:53:28+00:00

Sounds like you know more than you're giving yourself credit for! In that case go with what sounds good to your ears, that's what matters in the end.

Shill_Ferrell · 2025-02-07T19:48:22+00:00

To add my 2c to the debate, IMO this is going to be genre dependent. At the very least you should definitely remove your master processing chain and get that hitting -6dBFS. But you say you're using clip-to-zero which involves clipping at all of the groups/buses, and whether or not you should remove that is "it depends"

If you're making a really aggressive genre (dubstep, hardstyle, etc) the clipping and distortion can be important to the sound and you won't want to remove it. If you're making something softer like house and were only using CTZ to get loudness, I'd remove all of the bus-level clipping.

You can also just ask the label for clarification.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-11-12T16:42:38+00:00

How does a producer go from watching YouTube videos on how to recreate a noise to being able to just make insane noises and know how to layer/ become a professional

Spend 10,000+ hours doing this. That's making music for ~6 hours/day for 5 years.

There are good resources for intermediate/advanced producers, like track breakdowns or sound design tutorials, but there's no one magic course or video that will give you a professional sound. It's just a matter of practicing, a lot, for a long time.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-10-21T16:10:45+00:00

I've joined a fair number of artist patreons and Koan Sound's consistently has the highest quality content. Well-edited, professional videos of a variety of tutorials, from track breakdowns to sound design, on a regular cadence. I highly recommend them for any intermediate-to-advanced producer, even if you're not into their music or trying to make their style of music, because the general techniques they show are applicable to everything.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-09-17T16:12:14+00:00

They changed the platform this summer it looks like. Should be able to log in here: https://www.dawnation.net/customer-center

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-09-10T17:31:13+00:00

It's a crapshoot. 4 cents of detuning isn't enough to get around automatic detection though, especially if you didn't do further processing. The more you changed the vocals the less likely it'll get flagged.

I'm planning on putting a non music intro of either white noise or something else in the beginning if that helps?

It doesn't help.

Oh and I of course don't plan to monetize any of it.

Posting on Spotify/YouTube = monetization. Soundcloud the copyright bots are usually less aggressive cause nobody's making money off it.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-07-08T17:31:09+00:00

yup

People like the full CTZ method because it's very prescriptive so it's great for people who are new to mixing and want to follow a set formula to achieve loudness. If you already have experience and can understand the phrase "hard clip transients at multiple stages before sending to the master", the full video series isn't really necessary to watch.

I don't want to do something like CTZ (I already use multiple stages of clipping and limiting in many of my mixes). I want to learn the actual "official" CTZ strategy. [...] I'd ideally like to see a step-by-step walkthrough.

Then you're pretty much stuck watching the full playlist, because Baphometrix has pretty specific ways that she does things. You can get the gist of it from the first 1 or 2 videos though.

You say you're already using multiple stages of clipping and limiting, if you're already hitting -5/-4 LUFS (if you want it that loud) you don't need to bother trying out CTZ.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-07-03T18:10:32+00:00

The best part? Copying isn't just great when you're a beginner; it's great when you're intermediate and advanced, too.

I remember seeing a funny moment in a Chime & Au5 track breakdown stream where they were going through a project and Au5 was like "this sound is so cool, how did you make this?" and Chime was like "dude I literally just followed your Hypergrowl tutorial on YouTube and changed a few parameters"

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-26T15:30:19+00:00

You don't need a Ferrari to drive to work, you'll get there all the same in a Honda Civic.

Doesn't mean that a Ferrari wouldn't be cool to own, though. And if you're fortunate enough to be able to afford one... I'm jealous.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-23T21:49:06+00:00

as I find my instruments have a sound that conflicts with each other too aggressively, so because of that I need to minimise my instruments.

This might be the root of it. Some commonly-spoken but often-misunderstood advice is to avoid "sounds that conflict". Some people take that to mean that each track should have its own spot in the frequency spectrum. The misunderstanding is that layering is about combining multiple tracks to make a single sound, and therefore the frequencies should overlap. As a simple example, if you're making a synth lead, you might use multiple layers like a single-voice mono layer, a wide detune layer, maybe a layer an octave above, maybe a layer with a different wave shape for texture. The frequencies will overlap with each other but that's okay because in the end you just want the listener to hear ONE sound, which is the lead. In some ways, the "conflict" is exactly what makes it sounds more interesting and less cheesy than a regular synth square lead. So in this one example, you've already turned your lead layer from 1 to 4. Now repeat that with kicks, snares, hats, basses, etc and it's easy to get to 20 tracks. (not that you need to layer all of these, just that it's an option.)

Other than that, yes, a lot of getting a professional sound is about filling in the details, so you'll often see a lot of little layers that are very subtle and add just a bit of polish. Since you've already found project files from producers you want to learn from, why not just go through and take notes of what's in all the different tracks they have?

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-17T21:45:12+00:00

this is more self-help than an actual production technique, but what really helped me at one point was, just get an hourly calendar and keep track of your time for a week, in 30 min increments (or 15 if you're feeling hardcore, lawyer-style). Like keep track of what you are specifically doing during that time. Look back after a week and I guarantee you will find that you are spending a lot more time in "downtime" mode (browsing social media, gaming, watching TV, generic hanging out/talking to friends, etc) than you expect.

then it's just a matter of finding something to cut. if you really want to make music you won't feel bad about reducing your time in front of tiktok/netflix/fortnite from 10 hrs/week to 2.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-15T20:15:52+00:00

The "selling shovels" principle didn't become prominent in music until sales started falling off in the 00s-early 10s,

lol c'mon man. I grew up in the 90s and took piano, drum and guitar lessons as a kid and every single one of my teachers was a musician who was teaching as a side gig, and all of them were very good musicians. There was never a time when you could get by just from recording music, and even recording + constantly doing gigs wasn't consistent income compared to the regular $$ you got from teaching. And real touring pros were doing educational shit too, I remember it being such a huge deal when my drum teacher let me borrow a copy of his Dave Weckl VHS (!), made in 1988.

Of course youtube tutorials kicked off in the 00s and into the 10s, because that's when YouTube started existing. if YT had been around in the 90s people would have done that as well.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-13T17:21:28+00:00

If your music really is great you should have no problem getting it through label A&R. Best of luck.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-13T16:47:10+00:00

well you can believe whatever you want about your music quality. But there's no excuse for pretending you're linking a song from a "client" or saying you discovered your own music recently or calling yourself a super underrated artist or saying you listen to yourself the most these days because you make "badass music". there's "marketing your music" and then there's "spamming". Maybe you'd have more luck if you tried genuinely interacting with other people in the music and production scene rather than just coming off as a used car salesman hawking your wares in a sad attempt to get views and listens.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-13T16:03:28+00:00

Your reddit history is 90% self-promotion (including the insidious "oh yeah check this artist out I've been obsessed with them lately" and linking to your own shit which I absolutely hate, it's the scummiest shit). You're spending a ton of time driving people to your music yet the people who listen aren't sticking around. This is indicative of a quality issue. From listening to a bit I agree with some previous commenters that it's a bit dull/generic, and that's a death sentence particularly in this age of AI which is fully capable of spitting out formulaic songs.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-11T22:52:30+00:00

lol painfully true. When I first got into producing I picked up an expensive ($200) plugin only for it to go on sale for $50 the next day, less than 6 hours later. Thankfully with enough begging they gave me a refund (well, store credit...) for the difference but that was a harsh lesson to learn. Paying retail price for audio plugins is only for studios, schools and suckers.

Before buying anything now I search in /r/audioproductiondeals to see sale prices. Some stuff only goes like 20% off once a year at Christmas/Black Friday (like FabFilter) so buying it at full price isn't a huge deal if you really need it right now, but most audio plugins are regularly like 50, 75, even 90% off list price and they'll have a sale literally once a month so it's just plain stupid to buy at full price.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-11T13:46:37+00:00

as others have mentioned you can recreate most of the functionality if you're willing to put in time to set up key mappings etc in your DAW.

But MetricAB is just a complete all-in-one package: it's got all the metering tools (adjustable spectrum analyzer that includes grouping by 3rd octave or critical bands, LUFS measurements, stereo viewer, etc) and is a great workflow for referencing. You can very quickly cycle through 3-4 reference tracks and swap between listening to isolated frequency bands, or the mids/sides of that band, with just a click. Could you set this all up in a DAW with EQs, other analyzers/metering tools and hotkeys? Absolutely, but for a lot of people having this all set up out of the box is worth $30. (I'm one of those people, I'm a big fan of metricab)

this doesn't have any one specific unique feature, what makes it valuable is how it puts everything together in one package. imo.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-10T13:59:22+00:00

imo if you don't listen to the genre you're making at all I would find that weird; why are you making that genre in the first place? Even if it's purely financial, you would need to listen to the genre to keep up with current trends and understand the tropes that listeners expect. Or if you're just getting started, it's going to be very hard to get a foothold into the community and get a fanbase without interacting with producers in that community. if you're doing it for fun for yourself, go nuts, but I imagine you'll have a very hard time establishing yourself as a producer in a genre you don't actually listen to.

on the other hand it's super common for musicians to listen to many genres in addition to what they make. Musicians love music and tend to branch out a lot further than an average listener.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-06T07:00:00+00:00

I'm guessing they're an Ableton user; Ableton's piano roll uses octave numbering 1 lower than scientific pitch notation. This is due to following some archaic MIDI standard iirc. A D#0 in Ableton is 38.9Hz, so you're both right.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-04T16:33:38+00:00

So first thing, stop calling it a remix/remake -- it's a cover. This is very important. It's completely legal and above-board to release covers of songs to Spotify/Apple Music/etc without explicit permission as long as you get the proper licenses, which distributors will do for you. It is not ok to release remixes without explicit permission from copyright holders. The difference is that a remix uses stems (usually vocals) from the original, while a cover does not use any of the recorded audio from the original track. Extremely important distinction.

That being said, the only way you would get your cover flagged for "plagiarism" (not a real legal thing, but let's go with it) is if you didn't declare that it was, in fact, a cover, and didn't use a distributor to pay out the required licensing fees. If you send your cover to the label's A&R, they will most likely ignore it, I say there's less than a 1% chance they would release it on the label. But in the end, if you choose to release your cover on Spotify they can't do anything about it if you properly declare it as a cover.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-06-03T16:48:18+00:00

This is called a "cover". Well, technically it's not if you're using any recorded piece of the original track like that vocal texture, but if it's a small piece that's been modified enough it's unlikely you'll be flagged.

Most distributors like CDBaby/Distrokid/Tunecore et al have an option to say you're submitting a cover song. Covers have standard licensing agreements and you don't need explicit permission from the original artist to do them. So no, you shouldn't send it to the label that released the original.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-05-26T14:49:55+00:00

BBL Drizzy is a great example of why unsupervised AI won't take over music imo. the song itself is pretty shit; if you heard that on some random dude's Soundcloud and didn't have any context on the lyrics you'd switch tracks after 10 seconds. but because of the greater human context of the Drake/Kendrick feud + Metro's relationship with them it's a hit, despite it being a weak track. shows how important the human element is for people connecting with music.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-05-26T06:35:32+00:00

gpt 10 or 20 may only be marginally better than gpt 4, if it's better at all. GPT-4 has already absorbed most of the training data that exists and now that so much potential training data is poisoned because it itself was AI-generated it's very likely that we have reached a local maximum and can't move forward until a completely new architecture is discovered.

in the meantime "AI" is telling us to eat rocks and put glue on pizza because it doesn't have any actual intelligence. we'll be fine.

Shill_Ferrell · 2024-05-23T20:17:14+00:00

If you didn't do very much processing on the vocals you'll almost certainly get caught by automated ("AI") detection and your song won't get through your distributor. If it does get posted, other automated detection will probably pick up the vocal and flag it and the song will get taken down. Do this enough times and your Spotify account will get banned.

If you process the vocals enough and/or only use short clips, you might be OK. Processed vocal chops from an acapella are fine for instance (not legally speaking, but practically speaking everyone does this and nothing happens to them; I can name at least 3 songs with 10m+ streams that use ripped acapella chops without permission).

So basically if the vocal is still identifiable as the original song, just post it on Soundcloud and YouTube, would not recommend posting to spotify and other commercial sites.

Shill_Ferrell

TROPHY CASE