Maarten Vorwerk is EDM's favorite ghost producer. Just recently Maarten began posting a series of music production tips for his Facebook called “#Tipoftheweek.” While a lot of these tips and tutorials are short, they do bring up some interesting points.
Also Read: How To Become an EDM Producer
#10:
Making music is like cooking. It’s all about the chef and not the kitchen. No matter where you live or how poor you are. It’s still posible to make that one hit in your bedroom. All you need is a good idea which will define you and make you stand out against others. The rest will follow automatically!
#9:
Kicks:
Find a basic kick which sounds good. 909, sample it, whatever. Make sure you have it at the right volume. Not to soft, not to loud . Then Instead of compressing it try to put on top of your excisting kick a part “see below” of another kick or tom or cowbell or bass Synth or whatever suits your liking, which you would like to accentuate in your kick mix. Now that super small part you can mix as well. Try distortion, Eq, filter and see what happens.
Part:
‘Attack (gives more tok) / Decay (
Gives more presence) / Sustain & Release (gives more lowend and longer tail)'.
Also Read: Best Sample Packs
#8:
When EQ'ing sounds. It's more important how they sound in the mix then solo'd. Cut out all the freq you don't wanna hear. Even if you don't hear them
#7:
If you want to create more presence on a sound. Put a reverb on it with a short pre-delay and short reverb time.
#6:
Try to misuse a multiband compressor as an equalizer on your lead sound and discover what happens!
#5:
Many Eq vst's allow you to give the L and R channel seperate eq. This done right it widens up your sound.
#4:
When mixing a track to a certain loudness. Take a track you like, set your volume knob/fader to a fixed point. Remember how loud that track sounded and try to mix your track towards it. In my case I know how loud a track should sound when my volume knob is at 5 past 12. Mixing towards that is a different story but it is a great guideline.
#3:
If you use reverbs & delay. Try to make 2 or 3 good ones and only use those in the track. So mute the effects from your vst synthesizers. This will make the track less blurry.
#2:
Take a sub kick. Stretch it by half the tempo, 4 times over. Add a down pitchbend. There's your subboom. Reverse it to get a low sweep riser type effect. Adjust with filters and eq and fade ins to your liking.
#1:
Try to sidechain a gate on your lead sound to get more control on the tail of your sound.
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