Month: July 2021

When moving from composing your 8-bar loops to a track, you need to get comfortable building up tension and release. The most elementary way to do that is called a “break”, and in this video we show 2 simple types of break you can use in your own music production, no matter what DAW you…

In this video I show you: – A quick overview of how ALL synthesizers work – A simple workout on how to familiarize yourself with with any synth you get – Some simple synth recipes – An example of this process using the Roland SH-101 – A sound design technique called “self-oscillating” filters, to create…

Let’s discuss acoustic treatment. I get a lot of questions about my acoustic panels, so let me tell you what they are, why they are probably not enough, and where to find all the info you need on treating your own room. As mentioned, Jesco from Acoustics Insider: – www.acousticsinsider.com – www.youtube.com/acousticsinsider I then also…

Here’s a little video for those of you who wonder what concepts underlie simple & effective hihat lines. It’s elementary drum programming for the top end of your track, and in Ableton Live we show the most simple controls to pay attention to to make it all work together. Next week we’ll look at part…

In last week’s video we looked at strategies for programming hihat lines in dance music, and this week we look at the technical treatment of those hihats! We learn some equalisation basics (notching resonances & achieving tonal balance), some reverb techniques (adding reverb without muddiness), and some volume shaping (subtle LFO pumping). All together these…

In this video we explore the lessons learned from recreating Tale of Us – Heart of Darkness in Ableton Live. This is a classic minimalist deep house style track with 4 signature synthesizer approaches that we can analyse and learn from. Link to the original track: https://youtu.be/i1lcaNYf8aI (we can’t play the original in the video…