Positive Feedback Loop

So my recent track Five Years in Singapore came out on Subtraxx recently - here it is on Beatport.

This was big track for me, as I spent a long time working on it trying to break out of some bad habits that I had as a producer, and trying to get back towards the big, uplifting sound I'd always wanted to create.

I thought I'd write a bit about what it's like to be a fairly low-ranking producer in the trance scene at the moment - it's an interesting place to be!

Goals

My goals for dance music production have always been the following:

1.)  Find a consistent outlet for the music I want to write

I wanted my music to get out there and get the widest distribution possible, whether it was free or otherwise - I just simply wanted the biggest audience I could get.

Interestingly, because of the way promos work, it's actually better to get your music released by a label even if you would happily put it out for free: this is the only way of getting serious attention.

2.)  Align my productions with what DJ's are willing to play

I've always come at dance music from a melodic perspective - that's why I'm a trance producer, and not an electro house producer.  I loved the big, emotive melodies coupled with powerful percussion; it's why I tend to skew towards "uplifting" in the kind of music I produce.

I actually think this is a fairly disastrous direction to come from if you want to be successful!  DJ's are looking for records that will motivate a dancefloor - strong melodies are an added bonus and trance records that go stratospheric within the scene tend to have them - but the bread and butter of most sets is tracks that have tightly-produced grooves; this has always been secondary for me.

I've always been praised for the melodic content of the music I make - in the past I've done abstract electronica, silly mash-up things, hardcore and various other things - but I'm only just starting to get the rest of the elements up to scratch, and I'm getting much more interested in that elusive "groove" factor.

With every track I make, things get slicker, but I know I have a long way to go.  I've only been seriously producing trance without working with an engineer for two years, so I'm fairly happy with the stage I've reached so far, but my ultimate goal is to get my tracks playlisted as widely as possible.

3.)  Get a track played by Gareth Emery on his podcast

This is a very obscure and specific goal but it's still something I'd like to happen.  Hearing Miikka Leinonen's "Washed Away by Rain" played by Mr. Emery convinced me to learn to produce my own dance music in a serious way, so it's all bound up together.

The keen-eyed among you may have noticed that I've now had a track remixed by Miikka, which was an awesome experience!  Each little milestone or experience I chalk up is the whole reason I'm doing this - getting my remix of Miika Kuisma's One Step Behind the Mankind played by Mark Pledger on Anjunabeats Worldwide; getting support from Graham Gold; meeting Miika himself in Singapore; playing a full set of trance stuff at Truck this year; these all contribute to the fun factor; scoring some 10's from DJ's in far-flung places and knowing that my records have been deployed on dancefloors in places like Finland and Japan.  I'm just hungry for more things!  Like everyone, I'd love to get played on some of the big podcasts, or hear one of my tracks come in at a massive event.

So, that's what I'm aiming for.  Notice I don't have "make money" or "be a famous DJ" on the list!  Both money and live bookings are great when they do come along, but my "day job" provides the former, and the latter is something I do as a hobby rather than a career - I don't have the time or stamina!

By the way, if you are keen on a career in this industry, I suggest reading Marcus Schossow's post over at Innotune - insightful stuff.

Labels

I've been lucky enough to get involved with Subtraxx, who are brilliant at supporting new artists, and that has enabled me to start getting tracks out there into the public domain.

Now, personally, I do recommend signing tracks to a small label to start wtih.  A lot of people will tell you to send tracks to big labels first, but actually I've found the process of working with Subtraxx to be very encouraging.  It's not like Subtraxx is an unknown label, but as they'd freely admit they're certainly not Anjunabeats!  They do get promos out to a lot of key DJ's though, so it's certainly a valid place to build your career as a producer.

In this interview, Gareth Emery talks a bit about how new producers come across to DJ's - beware the giant quote...

 As DJs we get sent a lot of records, like 400 a week, and there's a lot to go and listen through. Occasionally there are records with same name week in and week out. People that are releasing so many records and none of them are quite up to scratch. You see a lot of potential in these guys and after a while you kind of stop listening to their records and you think it didn't really excite me like the last twenty I've heard so why should this be any different.

    Back when they still did vinyl, when I first started making records, I would send out about twenty-five demos and get no response. Went back and worked harder and six months later send out another twenty-five and one replied. It was probably about two or three years of sending out demos before I got a good deal. That was because releasing vinyl is expensive; to press these records would cost a lot of money. Generally you didn’t get a record deal until you were good and ready for it.

    Now a day, that's not the case. Nothing to releasing a record because it's all done digitally and it's quite easy to not get a response from sending your first twenty-five demos. By then you're like I can do it by myself, promote myself. Not always the best way to do a demo. Hold back until you can get a quality label, someone who has like a pedigree of releasing good records, going "yeah we think you're good we wanna release your music". That way when you're name gets first introduced to people like me, who are going to be playing your records it's for like a really good track and people are going to be excited about you. It's longer and it's harder but it most defiantly could work.

When you look at people you came from no where like Deadmau5 or Sander van Doorn, they weren't sending out crappy demos for years. Those guys kind of came out of something massive and they became really big out of that. They've been making records for a really long time but just not putting them out there.

This is very important to bear in mind for new producers - if you're not doing something to stand out, then your tracks won't get played.  If your tracks aren't produced in as slick a manner as big-name stuff, they won't get played either.

It's tough to 1.)  be original 2.) be as good as something conventional 3.) compete in a market where there's hundreds of other releases each week!  This is just something you'll have to deal with if you want to produce dance music - it's the nature of the beast.

Now, here's what happens when you put out your first record...

1.)  It gets the living daylights torrented out of it

I was really surprised at the volume of torrents that appear for a track the second it hits promo.  The internet just devours all trance music - you'll see hundreds of sites all with links to torrents of your track, but you'll receive absolutely no feedback from them.

I'm not going to get moralistic about torrents here, save to say that if you like a track from a small label then it's worth buying it to support the label and the artist.

It's not the money aspect of this that irritates me, it's the fact that a lot of people have heard your track and you have no idea what they think of it.  Nobody really reviews tracks that consistently, so it's hard to get feedback.

2.)  It comes out on the download stores

It's nice having things on Beatport!  That was one of my old goals that I've now satisfied.  Having a means where people can buy your stuff is great.

3.) You get the promo sheet back

This is, to be honest, a fairly gut-wrenching experience.  Without offending anyone's status (!), it's fair to say that at the moment, more famous DJ's tend to rate my tracks lower without leaving comments.  This isn't always the case, and there are some very notable exceptions.

My point here is that the people who you most need feedback from don't tend to have time to give it.  This isn't a criticism of anyone, it's just simply how the world is, and I accept it, but it is frustrating.

As with all feedback, the negative stuff is the most useful.  Here, I've collated all of the negative feedback that was actually left for Five Years in Singapore...

"Original its a bit average"

" Both of the version sound a bit messy"

"Orig mix has potential until it goes a little bit too fluffy...I'll listen a few more times...shame on the fluff front though"

"not my style anymore..."

" not for me guys"

If we remove the "this isn't for me" stuff, which will happen readily because of the mix of styles that DJ's in the promo pool play we're left with...

Average, messy, fluffy.

Now, I'm pleased with this, because it confirms my own suspicions.  Here is my own personal negatives on the track, listening back to it...

-  Hats a bit shrill and thin-sounding
-  Bit-crushed "pow" and other percussion effects sound a bit messy and unnecessary
-  Mid-range bass sounds need to be compressed tighter and sound fuller
-  Open hat a bit shrill and and hissy
-  Bass elements and kick compete a bit
-  Square wave stab sounds too thin
-  Mix generally needs to have less stuff in it - vox get a bit lost in the intro - square wave lead isn't powerful enough
-  Not enough low-end bass in the breakdown
-  Breakdown could use some percussion through it
-  Lead sound not forward enough in the mix, not wide enough, not full enough
-  Un-gated pads over the main riff tend to bog things down a bit

"Average" is fairly pointless feedback because it's non-descriptive, but I think that takes care of "messy" and "fluffy".  Here's some of the positive feedback for the track:

"This is trance at its best."
" I like the test pilot!"
 "without many words a hot one"
"The original mix is astoundingly good."
 etc etc.

Naturally, it's lovely to get bombarded with praise like this - thanks to everyone who left that stuff!  I was proud of the 7/10 from the immensely experienced John 00 Fleming (who also left the "fluffy" comment), and I just sent him a message on Twitter to thank him for leaving some constructive feedback.

That all contrasts with some of the other ratings - a 5/10 from Gareth Emery and a 6/10 from Menno de Jong.  I'm sure if I were able to ask those guys about it, they'd just say it wasn't a great track and they'd already moved on to listening to the next promo without really thinking about it.

It's those scores that tell me that I still have a lot of work to do, despite the fantastic support and feedback from a lot of the promo pool community.  I do want to be hitting those targets and getting support from DJ's across the board.

So, here's how I'm going to do it...

The Plan

Direction


I've decided that I'm going to whole-heartedly pursue the uplifting direction: I tried experimenting with a darker, more bass-driven sound, but I realised I was just doing that to try and get attention!  That's always a terrible motivator for writing a track.  When I came to that realisation, I actually totally scrapped a track I was working on - that's the first time I've ever done that with a trance record.

So, it's going to be strong melodies all the way.  I do have faith in the melodic content of my tracks  - I think that's its some of the more technical aspects that are holding me back.

Also, I genuinely believe you can only produce top quality music if you passionately care about it.  Inspiration is over-rated in music compared to hard work, but equally you can't mess with the origin of your motivations.

I sat down and worked out what I actually like in a dance record: an emotional or "driving" melody fused with a brilliant groove.

Let's look at the "emotional" melody first - here's a good example...



This track got criticised for being too "generic" (personally I love it), but you swiftly learn that this doesn't mean anything.  The plucks here work brilliantly well; Miikka manages to have pads, AND supersaw stabs, AND plucks working simultaneously.  No mean feat!

I don't tend to use supersaw-style sounds in my tracks - I'm not against them per se, I just find them difficult to work with!

Now, how about a "driving" melody?



This has been doing the rounds a lot recently, and I think it typifies a certain kind of melody; it's a very simple riff on a punchy sound.  I love it!  Also, Ben Gold's production is phenomenal - distinctive and powerful but still easy to imagine slotting easily into certain kinds of DJ set.

Obviously, I'm not going to run off and copy either record, and they're so massively different you could hardly create a hybrid of them!

What this boils down to is that I need to really focus on creating melodies that work with grooves rather than focussing overly on them in their own right.

 Technical stuff

I've found that the best thing to do to come up with a strong groove is to focus extensively on each individual element in isolation.  Here are some of the things I'm struggling with right now...

- Kick

A lot of producers are using two-part kicks - a high/mid "thip" kick and a low boomy kick layered together.  When I've done this, I've tended to produce kicks that are a bit too short and snappy - I don't think the kicks on some of my older tracks are particularly strong.  I'm now working to try and get them sounding a bit more solid and punchy.

- Open hi-hat

Two things with this - people seem to be EQing these very aggressively.  To get the sharpness of the hats in most tracks, I have to use two of Live's built-in EQ's together!  This tends to just result in a horrible, shreddy hi-hat, which I then have to tweak back into shape.  I've started to use different EQ's, like those from my Focusrite Liquid Mix and this seems to be helping, but sample choice is difficult.

Most of the samples I have are either layered 909 open hats or horrible aerosol-sounding things!  It could be that I just need to look for more samples and work on my layering a bit more.

- Loops

I've been making some progress on this by combining Leon Bolier's technique of building loops out of individual percussion hits, and Airbase's re-purposing of existing loops.  Also I've been tuning things more and paying more attention to getting loops to gel.

-  Bass

I've tried various bass styles in all of the tracks I've done, but I'm settling on a "rolling" bass style as my favourite.  Every track I hear that has a more stereotypical "classic" style rolling bassline tends to grab me more readily - I don't care that it's cliched!  There are plenty of producers bringing heavier, single-note driven basslines into trance, and of course there's the Sander van Doorn style epic rumble, so I feel that side of things is best left to those guys.

That's not to say that I'm really working on upping the game with bass.  I'm currently working on a track that has three bass elements

- Low end

For this, I'm currently using either the Arturia Moog VST or V-station.  I add a PSP Vintagewarmer, sidechain with the kick and use a rolling 16th note style pattern, keeping it very simple.  I then trim off a tiny bit of the extra Vintagewarmer low end with an EQ, monitoring at different places in my room and A/Bing with the low end of other tracks.

I'm not desperate to go for an epically heavy low end, just something warm and powerful enough to do the business.

- Mid-range

I think I've been getting this wrong and using sounds that are too muddy - the mid-range bass in trance tends to actually have quite a lot of frequency content.  Using more distortion, nice punchy compression and layering to get this nice and tight is helping.

-  High-mids

In uplifting trance, there tends to be quite a fast, stabby sound on top of the mids - again, I haven't been doing this as much or giving it enough attention.  On Five Years in Singapore, I just kept adding bass sounds on top of each other when I should have concentrated on just one or two.  Now, if I add more than one layer to the, I tend to really thin it out and make sure it doesn't phase.

I'd say bass is working better now and it's time for me to put more emphasis on things like loops and getting all of the groove to gel together.  Adding more Vintagewarmers and using limiters to control dynamics a bit better is helping.

Overall, I want the groove to excite me on its own, so that it sounds fantastic when it all locks together after the bass hits.  I do have a tendency to add too much small percussion, but I'm slowly stamping that out!

Some other minor things I'm working on...

-  I need more vocal samples for "ahh" and "ooh" style stabs and little vocal edits!  If anyone knows a good source of these then please let me know.

-  I really sorely need a good VST stereo spread plugin - I still haven't found a good PC-based one that isn't terrible, and I'm endlessly jealous of Logic's built-in one.  Any tips?  I still think parts of my tracks sound a bit too mono.

-  Reverb has been a bit too cautious in the past - I need to not be afraid of deploying massive reverb and also using more room-type stuff.  Finally, I've never really come up with a nice reverb to use on open hats, so I may need to investigate some more reverb plugins.

Finally for this section, I thought I'd list some of the tutorials I've been watching in case they help anyone out:





This is pretty interesting in parts...(not the part with the cheese sandwich)!  I've just noticed he has a more recent one so will also take a look.  It's interesting to see what he does with low end bass - I've always been impressed by that very Dutch "rumbly" bass that seems to be all sub!





This is quite an epically long series for CM from J00F himself.  I found this more useful for "philsophy" than anything particularly practical, but the idea of tuning percussion and listening more sensitively to loops rather than just bunging them together were really helpful.  Also, this made me think that I need to get a bit more heavily into my EQ plugins and figure out what's doing what.

There was a good Darren Tate tutorial that CM had as well, but I can't find it on YouTube.  Hmm.

Finally, I'm sure everyone in the world has seen these, but here's Jezper...




I love how Jezper is able to come up with brilliant results in such a minimal way - there's very little complex stuff going on here, apart from the use of Izotope Trash on the mid-range bass, which I wouldn't have expected.

Also, if any other big-name producers are watching, I would pay through the nose to see similar videos - screencap with commentary going through every element of a certain track.  This really is one of the best way to learn techniques from other producers.

Time

I've added this as a separate section, because no matter how much research you do and how much you think about it, the single thing that will improve your production the most is producing.

Actually spending dedicated time working on stuff is very difficult if you're not full-time.  Most pro DJ's work at the weekend and then have a good three or four solid days to concentrate on production each week.

I run an indie game development business for which I often have to do audio and soundtrack work - I can't really work on more than one track simultaneously, so dance production tends to stop when I'm doing soundtrack work.  Also, I often have to be away from home working with the other guys in my company, so the time I have to dedicate to music is a bit limited.

I've decided to be much more committed to production in the time I do have available, and re-arrange my schedule a bit to allow for more solid time.

I'd like to get three to four really strong original tracks out a year, as well as dealing with any remixes that come my way.

Labels

Here's another reason it's worth signing with Subtraxx - they've actualy encouraged me to go out and get tracks signed to other labels to build my profile!  This is something I'm definitely planning to do, as it's a direct route to the feedback I really need to get.

The End?

Some things I think I should say to conclude - thanks so much to all of the DJ's who have supported my tracks so far.  It's brilliant to know that as I'm improving, my tracks are still getting out there and working for people.  If you ever get one of my tracks on promo and think, "If only this guy would do x, y and z in his productions" then just shoot me an email!  It would really help me out.

With all this focus on what other trance producers are doing and the technical side of things, it's sometimes easy to forget that every producer needs to forge their own path and try things nobody has done before.  I hope that as I level up technically I'll be able to introduce more experimental elements.  I really look up to producers like Marcus Schossow, Mat Zo and Leon Bolier who have crafted uniquely identifiable production styles and that's what I hope to do as I figure out the elements that are most important to me.

I hope you didn't mind the overly introspective tone of this - personally,  I wish more producers would blog about their thoughts and motivations - maybe I can encourage some of you reading this to do that-  I'd love to read it!