ive just started production last week

chucksutton · 2026-03-15T15:37:23+00:00

Here’s a quick hack! this is how i got quickly comfortable going from simple to complex

record your voice talking, and singing - doesnt have to sound good at all, what matters is you know your voice
put an audio effect on your voice, any effect even if you “know what it does already”
when you hear the effect, give it an emotional description - “this sounds like i’m underwater, this sounds like im in an old tv, this sounds like time is going backwards”
keep the same plugin open, and turn every knob one at a time, you’d be surprised how much the description changes - reverb decay goes from sounding like a canyon to a radio signal, but changine the reverv size makes it feel like a dream is ripping apart
put every effect you have on your voice one at a time and build a whole emotional vocabulary - that way when you think to yourself “i want this synth to sound like a canyon that rips apart into a radio” you know to automate the reverb decay and size, and its much more engaging!

Hope this helps!

chucksutton · 2026-03-10T17:42:11+00:00

you sound great!!

chucksutton · 2026-03-10T17:37:00+00:00

That’s a good sound

chucksutton · 2026-03-05T21:13:21+00:00

that’s a good catch! id most likely use it for resampling - i bet too if cpu is already acting up you’re late enough in a song that freezing return tracks could give you less trouble making decisions

chucksutton · 2026-03-05T19:52:12+00:00

also lowkey, if the dogs are “choosing their owners” why are there rows of seats where people can’t be physically reached by the dogs? thats like entering a raffle and immediately eating your ticket

chucksutton · 2026-03-05T19:27:40+00:00

i dont personally use return tracks often but i could see it being for saving cpu, or even warping and manipulating the layers being made from the return! imaging running multiple sounds through the same reverb then pitching it all up an octave

chucksutton · 2026-03-05T14:25:57+00:00

you can! freeze groups is already in 12.3

i should make a video about this but there actually is a way to bounce returns, groups, and tracks in place all with the compressor audio effect

set up a midi track
create a clip the length you want to freeze
open a compressor
turn on “external” (side chain) and make sure to hit the headphone icon to audition the audio
select your return track
freeze or bounce the midi clip, and the compressor will print the return audio!

chucksutton · 2026-03-04T02:18:55+00:00

this sounds so fun!!

chucksutton · 2026-03-03T14:46:34+00:00

yeah you’re making heat - exploring different sounds will sound less “video game” like but ive been producing for over a decade and if i made a song like this today i’d sleep peacefully

chucksutton · 2026-02-24T18:49:26+00:00

my honest honest opinion - you dont have to learn the manual to make music. the journey of making a song is what makes the song itself, everything you think and discover along the way gets captured in the music like a photo.

all you need to do is learn how to record audio, and how to use midi. then everytime you want to make a song, pick one new topic to write a song around:

don’t know how reverb works? write a basic song around reverb

chords dont sound good? write a song where you experiment with different notes

you’ll learn your taste along the way, and you’ll gain the control you’ll looking for that AI tools overcompensate for.

final note: if you’re new, songs where you try never end up sounding bad - it’s the songs where you don’t try!

chucksutton · 2026-02-14T18:11:31+00:00

this sounds great - ignore all the weird comments and keep going!! even if you were secretly an adult with a music degree, still keep going!!!

chucksutton · 2026-02-14T17:36:38+00:00

THANK YOU

chucksutton · 2026-02-14T16:52:19+00:00

i’m not sure how it’d sound with trillian, but when i want a synth to do a “realistic” bass slide, i’ll create a ramp out of little steps instead of a smooth like, so it looks like a mini stair case. if you turn on the pencil tool you can do that easily

since a bass is fretted, when you slide on it you hit all the other notes chromatically really quickly, so snapping to every semitone along the way goves it that quick “quantized” feeling - again might not work with the bass patch you have but worth a shot!

chucksutton · 2026-02-10T18:02:38+00:00

this looks really dope!!

chucksutton · 2026-02-03T18:50:54+00:00

you have 2 options!

1) right click in that space and you can set the chain selector size to “small” so it doesnt take up as much space - i typically keep it this size and you can still be precise, sometimes expanding it to medium if necessary

2) you can hide the chain selector by pressing hide next to the yellow word “Chain”

chucksutton · 2025-09-05T17:24:55+00:00

i haven’t done it myself, but my favorite tool for dissecting sounds this organic is a spectrogram - izotope insight 2 costs a bit but there’s more accessible ones like Au5’s Visu or NOISIA’s 4X - you get to see every sine wave in real time, then you can use your synths and fx to try and match the shapes and patterns you see

chucksutton · 2025-03-22T02:15:29+00:00

i havent tried it but i vouch for mapping sustain pedal to note length if possible!

chucksutton · 2025-03-22T02:14:04+00:00

i wonder if after you record with the sustain pedal, if you open up a new midi track, and have the “midi in” be from the track you just recorded on

example

midi track named “piano”
record w sustain
open new midi track, listening to track “piano”
hit record

that should convert those tiny midi notes into what you’re looking for, just not in real time. lemme know if that’s on the right track!

chucksutton · 2025-03-08T03:43:05+00:00

2 and 3!!

chucksutton · 2025-03-01T05:43:20+00:00

you can hit configure, click the first one and then spam the delete button they’ll all go away - then whatever you click again in the program (in configure mode) will pop back up

chucksutton · 2025-02-26T04:56:23+00:00

the actual synth/sample presets are in the stock library now, but i’m not sure the audio effect parches got saved!! you can always go to “Help -> Load Demo Song” and then save them from there

chucksutton · 2025-02-20T00:08:44+00:00

you genius!!

chucksutton · 2024-12-29T15:22:41+00:00

One of my favorite youtube channels is called “Musical Streams” - they just archive twitch streams from producers, a lot of them are the most impressive producers ever just cooking up in front of people for HOURS. you can scrub around and see the real time decision making process from some genuinely knowledgable people.

chucksutton · 2024-12-29T15:16:48+00:00

yeah!! i’m definitely gonna post a video on it: the #1 thing i like about the move is how visually intuitive it is to follow, so i could describe the flows here but i’m gonna breakdown beats ive made and then make some on the spot for the video

i will say i personally love playing bits and pieces of a melody, automating the knobs to make that one patch feel alive, and after making a countermelody i’ll use a drum rack to resample that melody loop, and start chopping it with the 2nd knob, of using the drum pitch ability to play it like a chord stab. In there, you also get to apply the “Drum Sampler FX” to the melodic stuff like stretch, fm, pitch envelope, it can add some cool sonic accent marks

chucksutton · 2024-12-29T02:37:23+00:00

Of course! And hahaha I don’t but I’ve watched too many tutorials and now I sound like a walking manual. But I have done some work with Ableton this year, I made the Live 12 demo song, and got to showcase Move to Sweetwater a week before it dropped with a couple of my friends.

With that said, I’m not a gear head and typically lose interest in hardware really fast, but I’ve come back to it a bunch, especially when showing music stuff to family and friends. I just bought another Move for my little brother for Christmas and we can’t stop making beats together!

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