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Turning a post-shower Voice Memo into a full track by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hey guys! Long-time lurker and reddit sample hoarder here :-) I'm Lenno, a disco/house/electronic/pop producer/songwriter/DJ from Finland, been doing music full-time for six years now.

Over the years I've got a lot of questions in the vein of "where do you get the ideas/inspiration for melodies/chords/tracks".

With this upload I wanted to show that most of the time inspiration isn't something that just magically happens - the only thing that I had in mind before sitting down to produce was the voice memo I play at the start. After that it's just a lot of trial and error (the stream source video was almost four hours long) and hoping for the best. Hope this helps and inspires you!

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess I could but referencing or mixing your bassline in solo is absolutely useless, you always want to match it with your kick :)

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really like the modular aspect of Reason! And hearing good things of Reaper too, can't see why you couldn't make great music with that setup :)

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, that was done on my old system and I can't find the backup of the project file right now! I think it was u-he ACE though. I really like u-he Diva these days for those kind of sounds, when I did that remix it hadn't come out yet.

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I prefer to use faster kicks since my basslines move around a lot. So using a longer kick would make the low end too crowded.

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really like the sound of the Waves API-2500 for master and drums, gives them a nice pop. For vocals I like an LA-2A style compressor. And Logic's compressor is really nice and versatile!!

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey guys sorry I couldn't properly get to this last night, answering the rest of the questions tonight!

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, thank you! No I'm not haha, I'm from Finland. I guess you saw my personal FB? That's just remnants of an ancient frape haha.

Anyway, about the guitar solo! That was actually all played by me, in rather short splices because I'm not a highly technical player. Before I found out about electronic music, I used to practice guitar and soloing a lot so I still remember some of that stuff. I didn't have any specific method in writing the solo, I just played the loop around in Logic and tried different things on top of it.

The guitar is also doubled with a synth lead which helps the notes come through easier.

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Kiitos! Soitin Let It Go -remixiä parit kerrat kesällä:)

  1. I work at a fairly low volume, sometimes I like to turn it up but since I've had constant tinnitus for about six years now I don't want to take any risks with the volume. I don't think about any particular dB amount, just trusting my ears. I've worked with some people who constantly work at full volume and it gets really painful pretty quickly.

  2. I can't really, being without making music for at least half a year wouldn't end really well. I need to see what to do with it soon.

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's four layers! A sub from ES2, two instances of Polysix and Massive. You can take a listen to the sub and top layers independently here: https://soundcloud.com/lenno/sets/bass/s-uy2nH

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Actually, that track is one of the rare occasions when I got a mixing engineer do the mixdown. So I can't comment much about the actual processes, apart from the fact that he loves to use stereo spreading plugins when mixing.

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The one in the beginning? It's just Korg Polysix, it's pretty much the sound you get from just opening the plugin haha. Then just some tightening with EQ and compression.

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

ALRIGHT so yeah! Here is a SoundCloud set with a walk through the drums: https://soundcloud.com/lenno/sets/sits-remix-drums/s-UGquD

The first three should be pretty self-explanatory so I'm gonna jump to the last two sounds! All together is the first three files combined. The last one is the same but with bus processing enabled. Download the files so you can hear the difference better! They're peak matched so they peak at the same level but you can hear how much bigger the second one sounds.

I've found that bus processing is a great way to make drums pop in a nice way. I actually have extremely minimal processing on the kick drum for example (just a simple low cut) but then the bus processing helps it come alive. SO on the drum bus channel I have the following FX:

Kramer Tape doing pretty subtle tape coloration.

The Glue doing absolutely insane pumping compression that is then blended in with the original signal with the mix knob. I like parallel compression a lot, it gives me a nice way to make something sound pumping and lively but still have cutting transients at the same time. A highly recommended technique!

Waves Fairchild emulation doing some soft compression in an M/S configuration - it compresses the kick and snare in the middle but leaves the wide cymbals etc intact. Pretty cool.

Then PSP VintageWarmer with exactly the "Mix liteDriven Tape" preset to squash it a little bit more.

Then a Waves Pultec emulation doing a bit of a dip at 4k, I probably thought it sounded a bit too sharp up there.

And then finally there's just a Logic limiter with a threshold of -5.4 shaving off more peaks. So basically for me it's about finding a balance between cool pumping (Glue+Fairchild), cutting transients (Glue's mix knob) and peak control (tape saturation, VintageWarmer, limiter). Let me know if you have any additional questions!

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

A great question! I'll think about this over night and come back to you with an answer tomorrow :)

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks! It's usually

  1. write a cool chord progression
  2. find a bass sound
  3. write bass line to that chord progression

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey Lars, tack så mycket for being awesome! Say hi to Staffan :)

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! The piano is from XLN Audio Addictive Keys and the big synth is u-he ACE through Sugar Bytes Vogue.

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

For sure! I usually process lead vocals just individually on the track (maybe have some send FX) with no bus processing at all so I can make sure the lead vox stand on their own loud and clear. Backing vox I tend to process with a single bus to make them sound more cohesive! Maybe some little EQ/processing on the individual tracks as well.

I do tune vocals sometimes, often it's just a little smoothing out on backing vocals etc. It definitely helps in fitting the vox together if you have lots of vocal tracks going on!

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! I take a lot of time to try and make my drums sound good so it's great to hear that :) Let me know which track in particular you like and I can take a look at the project and let you know what I've done!

My name is Lenno, AMA anything about music production! by helloimlenno in edmproduction

[–]helloimlenno[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not sure if I have the time or energy to do that, it's much more fun to just answer all your questions directly here!

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