Fine Tune Your Perfection!

We always hear about the importance of getting tracks to sound just right - spending time in the mixdown and arrangement to ensure that every detail is perfect. Everyone wants their beats to sound as good as they possibly can, of course - but can this approach work to your detriment? Join us now as we take a look at the tricky area of being a perfectionist...

Conventional wisdom would have it that we should all take whatever measures we can to make the best tunes possible. It's a reasonable starting point, but of course the meaning of this changes depending on what kind of tunes you're writing. If you're working on clinical techy D&B then the goal will be highly polished mixdowns, space-age effects and searing bass. Artists like Teebee or Reso famously spend weeks on every tune, finely tweaking every detail until the mix shimmers. If you're writing loose, jazzy beats then the mixdown will be much further down the list of priorities - but you'll need to be pretty solid with the harmonies and chords, for instance. Someone like Hyetal, known for his more lo-fi approach, spends hours perfecting his aesthetic; making sure it's lo-fi but interesting. The hiss and grunge in his tracks is by no means accidental, or a result of poor technique. It too has been slaved over, layered, re-sampled, EQ'ed and filtered.

This much may seem obvious. But in fact it's something you need to keep in mind at all times - what is the point of the track?

So, we should spend ages on every track to achieve perfection, right? Well, this is where it gets complicated. Of course, if you can see an obvious flaw in your track, then fix it - a breakdown that doesn't really grab the attention like it should, a groove that just doesn't flow nicely, a click that shouldn't be there. But it doesn't always help to go looking for things to tinker with. Some tracks simply don't benefit from endless tweaking - if it's not a great track to begin with then the world's best mixdown won't cover that up. Equally, some tracks are simply beautiful in their simplicity, and trying to overproduce, or embellish the basic idea, just makes it worse.

Many producers and songwriters will insist that their best tracks came together in a day. It's true that inspiration can strike quickly but it doesn't negate hard work! Most of these producers will go on to say that they then spent another two days trying to add to the track before deciding - and this is the crucial point - that it was best in the original incarnation. So in these cases, perfectionism is manifested in knowing how to spot when a track is at its best, and knowing when to stop adding more parts.

Of course, spending a long time on a track has other downsides. For a start, it takes ages! This goes double for those of us with day jobs or kids, for whom a track can already take weeks anyway. In this case, a great way of identifying what really needs changing is to hear the track on a club soundsystem. Add the pumelling subs and crunching tops of a big system into the recipe and you'll find that most of the fine details in the track are somewhat obscured, leaving you no choice but to focus on the main issues of groove, structure and melody. Do they work? Does the melody come through? Does that bassline need to drop out for an extra 8 bars somewhere? Get these simple factors right and the rest of the track will fall into place fairly easily.

One last aspect of perfectionism is not in the melodies or mixdowns, but simply in the methods you use to produce. Legend has it that Burial took only a fortnight to write his iconic second album. But he didn't just sit down with a blank canvas and wonder what to do; over the preceding three years he had perfected his methods of production, so that he could write quickly within certain parameters. The layers of hiss, the pitched-down R&B vocal samples, the atmospheres, the garage swing, the unquantised beats - these were developed over a long time and contributed as much to the unique ambience of the album as the melodies and basslines themselves.

So perfectionism in production is actually much more than endless fine-tuning. It's about identifying the essence of what your track is about, and then working towards that - which could mean polishing up the mixdown, leaving the production raw, or adding a huge keyboard solo. But whatever it is, make sure you're improving the track and focusing on what's important!

Give Your Voice Some Room!

One step that many producers are keen to take at some point in their career is to work with a vocalist. It's something that can give tracks an extra edge, something that can add a catchy or memorable hook, and may even provide a touch more commercial potential. But writing tracks for vocalists can be very different from writing instrumentals. So what are the things you should look out for? Read on, as we take a deeper look...

The first thing to consider is that song structures for vocalists are going to be very different to normal electronic track structures. They may, in fact, even be actual songs! This is a far cry from the standard dance arrangement which usually goes something like 'intro, beats, breakdown, beats, outro'. Instead, you'll want to be thinking more about verses and choruses. Verses and choruses don't necessarily mean you need to be writing big soaring catchy pop melodies or anything like that. Listen to many of the big RnB or hip-hop tracks out there and you'll notice that the backing tracks often don't change a lot from the verse to the chorus - sometimes it's as subtle as a couple of extra percussion sounds or a pad line - but the point here is that it's sectional and pretty straightforward. Your author once sent a lovingly crafted backing track to a well known grime crew for a vocal - lovingly crafted to the extent that it had all sorts of interesting diversions, 4-bar bridges, little switch-ups and so on, and got back an email that basically said 'sorry, we didn't understand the structure, so here are 3 verses and 3 choruses'.

So the simplest thing is to aim for a structure based around verses and choruses that are 16 bars in length. Generally you can skip the extended beats intro - nobody wants to hear two minutes of kick drum while they're waiting for a vocal to come in - and the same goes for the outro too. If you need a DJ-mixable version you can do that later, once you've got the main track sorted. A short bridge section might help add variety if your vocalist is interested, but you should make sure that this or any other part of your track can be binned (or extended) if necessary. The main thing is the vocal, and you'll be working around it where possible. If your singer only wants an eight bar chorus, or no chorus at all, or has some other ideas entirely, you should be able to be flexible enough to do this.

Equally, since the main thing is the vocal, you should be leaving plenty of space for it in the arrangement. A super-busy percussion section, a huge lead synth, a massive 'filth' bassline - all of these are largely incompatible with a full vocal. That's not to say they have no place in your track - you just need to be careful of having things competing for space. You could try having a very simple chorus vocal which could sit on top of a filthy bassline, and then drop out the bassline (or Low-pass filter it) to focus on the vocal for the verses, for instance. But be aware that a lot of those little details which in an instrumental tune add a touch of interest for the listener, can simply distract from a full vocal.

When writing synth lines and melodies then, don't be afraid to put them in your original idea, but with a view to reducing or reworking them later. They can often give a singer ideas for melodies or harmonies - but then when you record the vocal, they may be masked by the very vocal they inspired. That's fine - don't try to mash everything into the mixdown all front and centre, you can chop them so that they simply accent or answer certain vocal phrases.

The summary of all this is that you should be thinking about the singer and the vocal they will eventually provide, all the way through the writing process. Writing a full track and hoping to graft a vocal on at the end will usually end in tears - you need to consider what the vocalist needs, what the vocal will mean for your arrangement, and how you may have to compromise certain aspects of the track to really make the vocal work. Flexibility is key. If you need to change the track around once you've got the vocal then do it - nothing should be set in stone!

We've covered producing and mixing vocals in a previous article, but if you write well for a vocal, then half your job is done already. So why not take the plunge - get in touch with a local singer, borrow a microphone off a friend and get writing. Who knows where it could take you!

Stay Focussed!

A common problem in the tracks of novice producers - and it's one that is manifested in a couple of ways - is that the tune lacks any kind of clear focus. Which is unfortunate, because often there's a great track in there just waiting to be unleashed. So how can you avoid this fate, and really let your tracks shine? Read on, as we suggest ways of taking a step back to see your tune more clearly...

It's a bit like taking a photo. You can point your camera at the most beautiful landscape, but if it's out of focus, or your brother's clapped-out motor is stuck in the foreground, it won't make for much of a picture. All the ingredients are there, but the end result doesn't quite work. And so it is with music - you might have a great groove, and loads of superb musical ideas, but unless you arrange and mix the tune to show off these strengths in the best possible light, you may just end up with a mess.

So the key is to identify the best parts of your track, and push them forward into the spotlight. If they're strong enough, they will carry the vibe by themselves. Cluttering up the arrangement will only distract listeners from the main theme of the tune, or worse, obscure it completely.

Consider Todd Terje's track 'Ragysh'. One of the standout tracks of 2011, it is defined by a huge breakdown, and runs to nearly 9 minutes in total. But there are essentially only 3 sounds in the whole track, plus the simplest of drum beats. No big risers or snare rolls in the breakdown, no crazy FX or edits, no acid line or ravey strings to bolster the track in case it gets dull. It just has strong melodic ideas shown off to their fullest, and the discipline to leave them alone.

At the opposite end of the dance music spectrum there's the junglist DJ Die, famous for his rollers. He's said in interviews that his motto is 'don't over season the soup' and it shows in his tracks; usually a beat, simple bassline and couple of samples for ear candy. He identifies the essential elements and pares the track down to just these - and the results are incredibly effective.

So you need to take this into account when you're writing. Don't fall into the slacker's trap of just doing the bare minimum - make sure there are plenty of ideas in your beat before you start arranging it, and then you can pick the strongest ones, discarding most of the others. (If you really like the sounds you're losing, you can always use them in the next track!) Start thinning things out, muting channels to see what works on its own and what's just filling out the spectrum. It should be possible to get down to the essence of what the track needs to be about.

You should then build the arrangement around these important areas; dropping other elements out when your main themes come in. Indeed it's often advisable to drop one major element out of the mix when another comes in, to let the listener focus more clearly on the new factor. If the main idea on it's own doesn't quite seem to cut it sonically, then instead adding another element, consider reinforcing it with EQ, adding some FX or perhaps subtly doubling it with a synth line playing the same pattern. Often the added sonic weight will work better than cluttering up the mix with more details.

Your mixdown process should be tailored to similar ends. Anything that isn't the main focus of the track can be pretty low in the mix, and it should lean towards the main idea - just listen to the average Rihanna track for instance, and see how incredibly loud the vocal is mixed. Many novices mix vocals way too quiet, and the vocal sits amongst the various elements of the track, instead of taking pride of place at the head of the mixdown.

The same goes for EQ - while your main idea should sound full, the supporting cast of your track can be whittled down to just what is needed. It's often advisable to use subtractive EQ on some of the background sounds so that they don't clash with your main theme. If you're not sure how to start, try using a frequency analyser on the main element of the track to see where it sits in the frequency spectrum, then doing a gentle EQ cut on those frequencies in some of the other sounds.

It's not easy to stay on top of all this as you're writing your tune. But it's essential to make sure that the essence of your track is not lost in amongst all the things you put in to support it! So make sure that at every stage of the writing process, you keep asking yourself - what is the focus of this track? Is it being pushed front and centre, so that it's the thing people will remember? Do these other parts really help, and do what they're supposed to do? Make it into a habit, and you'll soon find it becomes second nature. So keep writing, and stay focussed!

How To Find Your Production Style!

One of the biggest difficulties for a lot of producers, especially those who are just starting out, is finding and developing a recognisable style of their own. How do you get there? Where does this style come from?

Styles don't just develop randomly - they are usually a combination of influences and borrowed ideas from a range of music. It can be deliberate or subconscious, but it doesn't happen without plenty of creative input from somewhere. So let's take a look at how you can take influence from other artists, scenes and genres without stepping into those dangerous territories of pastiche, or worse, just plain rip-off!

It's all very well being a scene player - as we've outlined on this blog before, writing tracks that fit neatly into a particular scene can get you a fair level of recognition in that scene - but to really stand out you need to bring something else to the table. This is what the best producers do, and you can afford to be quite open about it, so long as you approach things in an artistic way. Consider the early tracks of bass music mainstay Untold - tracks like 'Stop What You're Doing' were a welcome breath of fresh air in a scene that was looking for new sounds, as they used huge bass stomps in place of kick drums. Untold himself was very open in interviews about how this was strongly influenced by Wiley's early productions, but what made it fresh was that he took this technique and incorporated it into a dubstep-inflected scene, combining the two to bring a whole new take on an existing style. As it was also extremely well-executed, it immediately catapulted him up into the ranks of respected producers.

A 'pastiche' is copying a style completely - take the melodic styles, the same kind of synth patches, the same drum machines or patterns, and write an original track. It's not plagiarism, as you've written an original piece, but people could easily think it actually came out years ago, when that style was originally popular. Writing a pastiche is often actually a lot of fun, and you can learn a lot from it, as you try to copy production techniques and figure out how they were done, but it will never excite people in the same way as something genuinely new.

So, a better way to think about incorporating other styles into your beats, is to take what you've learned about these genres and bring it into your existing tracks. This way you can take a signature sound from a genre and bring it wholesale into your own stuff, without compromising your identity. Basement Jaxx are a classic example; their tracks pull in samples and riffs from latin, soul and early 80's boogie records all the time, but since they are then putting these in the context of a UK house music sound, the result is something fresh and original.

Or take dBridge, who saw the sparse minimalism of early dubstep and started using those clipped halfstep beats in his drum and bass tracks. It was a straightforward concept, splicing together two existing genres, but it was a fresh new sound, and simply by dint of being one of the first people to do it properly, he was rightly hailed as one of the originals in the scene.

It's something you hear constantly in the evolving field of dance music. Right now producers across the globe are taking footwork and juke sounds and throwing them into bass music structures; veteran dubstep producers are taking their soundsystem roots and using them in house tracks; classic Chicago house drum machine beats are suddenly all the rage amongst UK bass music producers.

So instead of just waiting for your productions to develop their own signature style, take them by the scruff of the neck and make one! Draw on that love you've always had for salsa music, or classic New York house, or experimental noise, and start referencing it in your garage, jungle or hip hop tunes. Take influence from wherever you can, and don't worry about being too obvious – just make something new. Be bold, make a statement!

Give Me Some Space!

Are you having trouble keeping all your sounds distinct? Are you finding that your tracks sound cluttered, with everything jostling for the same space upfront? Then read on, as we take a look into the art of creating space with reverbs, panning and dynamics...

The idea of "space" in a mixdown is a funny, and slightly nebulous concept, but basically it's about making things have their own place, and making certain groups of sounds (for example, your drums) sound coherent with each other. There are a few ways of doing this; panning is the most obvious - move a sound left or right - but there are other tools you can use too. Reverb can create an atmosphere, and move something back from the front of the mix, as can use of dynamics processing (or avoiding it!) and even delay.


But first, let's look at panning. It's the simplest way of separating sounds out, and creating a more interesting mix. Panning something to one side can be a great way to catch the ear of the listener; and is very useful for effects, percussive noises, pads, and other things that support the overall sound. In general, you should have the really important things in your mix (kick drum, snare, bass, lead vocal etc) panned centrally - you wouldn't want them to disappear on a mono club system - but after this you can shift things around subtly. It's often useful to pan fairly major sounds just off-axis, for instance 20-30% of your pan-pot's travel. This stops them contributing so much to the clutter, but won't make them seem distractingly off centre.

Less important sounds can be panned much harder; incidental bleeps and FX can safely be moved right off to the side, and certain percussive sounds like tambourines can support hard panning too. But remember to be balanced about it; if you move your tambourine to the left, move a shaker or bongo off to the right. A lop-sided mix will not only sound odd, but if one channel is significantly louder, will reduce your ability to get a decent volume from your master.

Reverb is a more complex beast but there are a few simple things you can do to help your mix. First, consider that the point of reverb is to make something sound like it's in a particular place - a room, or a hall, etc. So it's not always a great idea to have lots of different reverbs in a track - you may end up with everything sounding like it's coming from 10 different places at once. Start by setting up a short reverb (maybe around half a second) and sending certain drum sounds to this; snares, claps, maybe hihats. Mix it very quietly (and then turn it down a bit more) - you should find that it gels your percussion together subtley. In general, it's good to use a reverb on a buss instead of individual channels; it ensures that things are using the same space for coherency, and saves on CPU power.

Larger reverbs can be used for properly "placing" something rather than just gluing things together; it can work especially well on pads, strings, lush sounds, chords, and sometimes vocals. A large reverb will push a sound "back" in the mix. As such, using one on a busy part, or a part that requires impact, may just clutter the sound and stop that part having the punch it needs. Bear in mind also that another way of pushing something "back" is simply turning it down. It's qualitatively different, of course, but one can easily get into the trap of putting a large reverb on something, then turning it up because it's now so far back in the mix. So it's important to play around with the level of the reverb tail, and not go overboard with it. Sometimes the pre-delay setting on your reverb will create most of the effect you want; letting you keep the reverb level down, so try different settings here too.

Like a reverb, and in particular like the pre-delay, you can use an actual delay plugin. Use a very short delay time (tens of milliseconds), set it so that the delay signals lose some high frequencies (most delay plugins offer this function) like they would in a real room, and set the wet signal very quiet. This will give the effect of room reflections, but often without some of the muddiness you can get from a reverb.

Lastly, and it sounds simplistic, but dynamics are crucial too! As mentioned, louder things sound more towards the front the mix. This much is obvious, but the upshot is that if you compress your sounds, they lose dynamic range, and they become loud from start to finish (think of a snare that you've squashed the transients from - it's now like a block of sound). The effect is that everything is at the front of the mix, and all your hard work with delay and reverb is negated, because your tracks are squashed into one small dynamic space. So lay off the compression if you can, let your sounds breathe a little, and they'll be much easier to place.

Space in a mix is a complex beast, and it's not something you'll master straight away. But by trying some of the techniques above, you should start to make some headway into more balanced, natural sounding mixes. So give it a go!

Lessons in Compression Part 2

Still not quite sure on how and when to use a compressor in your mix? Hankering for some more details on how you can use them to sweeten up your tracks? Well, read on as we continue our introduction to the murky world of dynamics processing...

There are two main ways of using a compressor - there's "problem solving", in which you want to achieve a particular solution, and "creative" use, which involves radically changing a sound, and generally will utilise some fairly extreme settings. We'll come to creative use later - but first, let's stick with those extreme settings for a minute.

Most people know the basics of what the various things on a compressor do, so we won't dwell; attack is how long it takes to kick in, release is how long it takes to reset back to zero, threshold tells it when to start working, and ratio by how much. But it's not always easy to figure what this actually means in the real world, so here's a useful trick when putting a compressor on your channel. Set it up initially with a high ratio (let's say 15:1 or more) and then bring down the threshold so that you're taking off a large amount of volume - maybe 20dB.
This will make your channel sound like a horrible mush. So don't leave it like that. However, it will also dramatically emphasise the effect of the attack and release. Change these settings and you'll see that a long release (hundreds of ms) will track slower volume changes - like the difference between your singer's loud chorus and quieter verse – while a short release will reset rapidly between notes, evening out the level of individual hits, but leaving the larger scale stuff untouched.

At the other end, a short attack (i.e. 10ms) will cut things off sharply like a limiter, making your drums (for example) able to achieve a higher overall level, albeit at the expense of a lively, dynamic sound. A longer attack (i.e. 40 - 50 ms) will allow a transient through but may squash the body of the sound; in this way you can control the overall level while retaining a certain natural feel. Alternatively, you can use this setting to emphasise transients.

Listening to the channel like this should give you a clear view on what the compressor is really doing. So once you've tried various attack and release settings, and they're now doing exactly what you want, back off the threshold to a more moderate level. "Moderate level" is, of course, relative and depends on what you're processing, but you should alter it in conjunction with the ratio.

For something that needs to feel kind of natural, like a vocal, acoustic guitar or even an old soul sample, then it's important that your compressor isn't suddenly yanking down the volume. So a low ratio (like 1.5:1, or even less) coupled with a low threshold (such that the compressor is removing around 3dB) will mean the compressor is triggered often, and consistently nudges the volume down. This will feel more natural than a higher threshold with higher ratio; the overall effect may still be that the volume ducks by 3dB, but if it happens abruptly then the effect may not be very musical, and unsuited to a more delicate sound. It might sound great on a bass or drum track though; something with a bit more energy.

People often wonder where in the signal chain the compressor should go. As always, it depends, but as a general rule of thumb any 'fixing' should go before the compressor. For instance if you've got some hiss on your channel, then a compressor can make this sound louder - so try to remove it with EQ, gate or noise reduction before it gets to the compressor. On the other hand, if you want to boost part of your sound with an EQ, then you might find that the part you've boosted is now triggering the compressor, and being turned straight back down again. So in this case the EQ should go later.

It may sound advanced, but don't be afraid of having two compressors one after the other. If you feel you want to to tame some peaks, but also control the overall level of a part, it's no crime to have a compressor with a short attack and release followed by one with longer settings. But be careful - the more compression you use, the easier it is to accidentally squash the life out of a sound!

Creative use is a completely different kettle of fish, and you can pretty much discard the rule book. For a good example of the "extreme" settings mentioned earlier, take a listen to someone like Flying Lotus or Rustie. Check out the way pads, FX and hiss drop suddenly out of the mix and then surge back - this is created by having low thresholds, lopping off 15 or 20 dB with a heavy ratio and a long release of 200 - 400ms. For a soft sound like a pad, this can also be triggered with a sidechain input, for instance the kick or snare. Or, you may even set up a channel that has no sound output, and its only purpose is to trigger a sidechain.

Compressors driven hard like this can change the sound dramatically - try pushing a sub-bass heavily through a compressor or two, and you'll hear it create higher frequency harmonics that weren't there before, as it tries to keep up. You can also try some sound design effects - layer up some delays and reverbs on a sound, then squash them hard with heavy compression. Do this a couple of times and you'll end up with a shifting pad or drone sound full of atmosphere.

As we mentioned at the start, compressors can be confusing, and difficult to use correctly. But if you follow some of the tips above, and make sure you're definitely improving the situation with some careful A/Bing, you should find the fog starts to clear a little. So fire up that plugin and get listening!

Lessons in Compression Part 1

The compressor. Possibly one of the most mystical, misunderstood, and yet even simplest tools in the producer's arsenal. It has the power to improve or ruin any mix. Can you be sure you know when to draw for it? Join us for a quick tour of how, why, and when to use a compressor...

Although a compressor is a simple tool - Let's be honest here, it's essentially just an automatic volume knob - For many, it's something that causes a lot of confusion. Much of this is put about by forum users pushing forth received wisdom, and leads innocent people into some strange practises. We could write a whole book on when or when not to use a compressor, but let's look at a couple of basics.

Firstly, not everything needs compression! This might sound obvious to some, but I was recently teaching a student who, as step one when creating a new channel in his DAW, put a compressor on there. Just because, "you know, compressors are good". It's unfortunate that people end up in this mindset, as it will certainly hinder their mixdowns.

So it's very important to consider, then, exactly why you're putting that compressor on your channel. What problem are you trying to solve, or what effect are you trying to achieve? If you don't know, then it's probably best to leave it off for the time being. There's no inherent problem in not compressing things much, if at all. It's only a very recent development that we've been presented with the chance to have compressors on every channel anyway - Until a just few years back, a compressor was a hardware unit and most dance music producers would only have a couple. So they'd have to be a lot more considered about what gets compressed, and how to work with dynamic range otherwise.

That leads onto the other point - With audio production there are many ways to skin a cat, and often a compressor won't necessarily be the easiest way to get what you want. If you have a synth or vocal line with a couple of occasional louder parts that you want to tame, it might well be easiest to just draw in a bit of volume automation at those points, rather than trying to set up attack and release times. Similarly, if you wish to tame a transient on a snare, it might be easiest to lop off the top with some subtle overdrive, which can be configured relatively easily.

In fact, one exercise which I'd recommend to anyone, would be to write a track with no compressors at all. With transient shapers, distortion, overdrive, hard-clippers, de-essers, limiters and volume automation you can achieve more or less everything that a compressor can do, and it will get you thinking more analytically about exactly what you need a compressor for in the first place.

So then - Enough of when you shouldn't be using then, what DO you need a compressor for? There are two main ways of using one (and indeed any effect) - For creative purposes, i.e. to radically change the sound to make an interesting effect, and for fixing sonic problems, or helping things sit in the mix more comfortably. Looking at the latter, a compressor is probably best used on busy tracks when automation or other solutions would be unfeasible. If you find that you can't quite seem to find the right level for a channel – too loud in parts, too quiet in others - Then it's probably a good time to reach for one. Or, if you have a buss and you want to glue the sounds together a little, by letting some smoother sounds duck under some more vibrant ones, a compressor may help here too.

A good place to start would be with the presets on your compressor. If you're new to the compression game and wish to process your drum buss, then see if you've got a 'drum buss' preset and go from there; if you don't think it's doing exactly what you want, then try tweaking some settings (more on these later). But the key things to remember are to make sure you're not making things too complicated, and that you're actually improving the situation. Be ruthless, and make good use of the "bypass" or "compare" function on your plugin. If it's not actually helping, then go back and start again!

So, these are some general tips to get you thinking - Join us next week as we go more into the specifics of ratios, thresholds, attack and release....

It's a Take! Prime Loops Guide to Vocal Production

With the ongoing love affair between pop, hip-hop and dance music, there has never been a time when the vocal track has been so popular in underground dance music. So read on for some production tips on how to fit a vocal into your own beats...

From dubstep to deep house, from layering an acapella on your future garage track to recording a full session, everyone's looking to vocal music in 2011, and it's not hard to see why. With dubsteppers like Rusko and Benga troubling the charts, and producers like L-Vis1990 grafting R'n'B vibes onto house tracks, we may even have a genuine trend on our hands.

So what are the main points to make your vocal stand out? There are a few things that need to be addressed, but first off, the mistake that your author sees most often is that the vocal is simply too quiet. Pay attention next time you're in a busy shop, for instance, and a Rihanna or Beyonce tune comes on to the crappy house system. Over the background noise, what can you hear? Oftentimes, all that will be audible is a vocal, a hihat, maybe a little string line. The brightest elements, all pushed to the fore. If you're writing a vocal track, then the vocal will be what people latch onto, the bit that gets stuck in their brain, they'll be remembering the words. So you need to make it easy for them to pick out the vocal from the rest of the track. Err on the side of volume!

On a related note, you need to make sure the vocals are crisp and bright; plenty of top on there. This is less essential for backing vocals and harmonies, but in general you need to remember that your lead vocal will be jostling for space amongst the hihats and lead lines; so it needs to have plenty of high frequency content. In addition to vocals you've recorded yourself, I often find that acappellas downloaded from the internet can be recorded from vinyl, and lose some clarity in the process, so even with ready-recorded vocals you might need to add some top back on. Similarly, if you're working in strongly electronic fields, you'll need to compress the vocal fairly heavily. Of course, sometimes you want a natural feel to the track; but in this age of slamming basslines, searing leads, vocoders and overdubs, 'natural' tends to be restricted to Norah Jones records. You need the vocal not just to sit up front, but stay there, so get that compressor fired up. Fast attacks, medium release, hard knee, taking off anything up to 10 or even 15dB.

If you've recorded several takes, then it's good to layer them up to get a thicker, bigger sound. Pan a couple centrally, then have one to the left and one to the right for a really full atmosphere. But - and this is a big, tedious, important but - you need to make sure they're fully in time with each other. That means down to the level of individual words; even syllables - because if they're not, the result will just be a mess. Like having your drums slightly out of time, the impact will be lost. So this means you may need to go right in and edit your vocals word by word to line them up. It's a long and drawn out process, and possibly one of the most boring procedures in music production, but it's necessary.

Effects can be very useful on vocals, and used well can really bring a track to life. A good example is Magnetic Man's track 'I Need Air'. A fairly straightforward vocal, mainly on one note, is given a metallic texture in the verses with heavy use of a vocoder, and in the choruses with reverb and delay; while variety is provided with flangers, phasers, glitched edits, extreme reverb settings and so on. Without all this processing the vocal would be in danger of becoming dull; especially as it's a fairly wispy sounding recording with no backing tracks and few adlibs. Luckily, clever production techniques keep it engaging until the end.

Effects can also be used to 'rescue' a vocal somewhat - subtle use of an autotune can correct out of tune singers, chorus can beef up a thin sounding vocal track, and one of the most popular recovery tools is a good de-esser. Use these to cut out sections when your vocalist is overemphasising 'ss' sounds to create a harsh sibilance. A de-esser is essentially a frequency sensitive compressor; and getting good results is rather an inexact science.

The Sony Oxford de-esser comes highly recommended, but if you can't afford one of those then try your DAW's native option. Sibilance is usually around the 6-8kHz region, but you'll need to do some fine tuning. If it doesn't get the required result, then you can fall back on the long way - draw in some volume or EQ automation by hand. You can even try a standard compressor, set up to sidechain off a buss, where the buss contains just the vocal track tightly bandpassed around the offending frequency range. It's a convoluted solution, but if it gets the result you need, it's as valid as any other!

Production of vocals is a big subject to tackle in one article, but it's important to get to grips with if you're going to write the next chart smash. So don't wait around - dig out that microphone and get moving!

The Benefits of Referencing Your Mix

Time to think about referencing your tunes. Ever find that when you're getting your own tracks in the mix, or playing them out in a club, somehow they just don't sound quite right when you put them up against released tracks? Even though they sounded fine back at home? You're not alone! Let's dive in and look at how you can make sure you're getting the right balance...

When I say 'referencing', I'm going to be talking about two different things; there's listening to your track on different speakers and in different environments, and then there's comparing your track with others.

First though, before you even get to that stage, you should take a break. If you've been mixing down all evening, your ears will have gotten used to the track as it stands; anything you do will likely just make it sound 'wrong'. So go for a walk, listen to some completely different music, watch a bit of TV. Better still, leave it and come back tomorrow. Then, load a bounce of the track into iTunes or Winamp, and sit back. You'll be better able to appreciate what the track is actually doing if you can't see the mixer or the arrange window of your DAW; the brain has a funny way of rationalising everything, and it really helps just to listen to the file in a different program than usual.

Once you're happy with your mixdown so far, then you need to fire up some tunes that you think your track sounds similar to - or that you want it to sound similar to! Make sure you've got the volumes matched up so that they all sound the same level, and flick back and forth to compare the differences in the mix (you might find it's easiest to do this in your DAW so you can mute and unmute channels). There are some obvious things to listen out for, like the basic issues of a mixdown; is your snare much louder or quieter than another track? The vocals? On a more subtle note, you should listen out for the overall balance of the track. It could be that although everything sounds good individually, the higher frequency elements of your track are quieter, relative to the bass - which might mean they don't come through so well in a club. Or vice versa, of course.

If yours sounds somehow 'harsher' perhaps, but you can't identify which element is causing it, then it could be that you've been boosting high frequencies on several channels (again, even if they sound fine on their own), and would be well advised to go back in and tweak them.

Pay attention also to whether the other tracks use any cunning techniques with the arrangement - often you'll notice that a track may create space for a vocal by dropping out some lead lines or high frequency percussion; or will program the bassline so that it's not playing at the same time as the kick. This can be a useful way to avoid cluttering the mix, or avoid it sounding 'top heavy' for instance.

Many people find it helpful to use some kind of graphical frequency analyser when mixing down and referencing, and it can certainly help - if you look at one track which seems pretty flat, and yours has a strange spike at a certain frequency, then you may need to consider what is causing it. But equally, you don't necessarily have to go after every little peak in the spectrum - your track has to have some kind of sonic focus after all! You don't want to be mixing all the character out of your beats. And you should always try to trust your ears, rather than what you can see on the screen.

Once you're confident that you've got a balanced and comparable sound, you then need to go and take your new beat, and your reference tracks, and listen to them on other speakers. This is vitally important, as so far you're going to be working around the imperfections of your room and speaker set up. So there could be some issues you've not spotted yet.

If you can, try and listen on a small setup which doesn't have much bass, a bigger system which has plenty, and maybe in the car - car stereos can vary enormously. Some common things to look out for would be the low end - especially on the small system. Can you still hear the presence of the kick or sub on some tiny speakers? At the top end, does your lead or vocal still stand up clearly amongst the tinny rattle of the rest of the track? Is it the same with the released tracks? Similarly, on some boomy speakers, you want to make sure that the low end still has clarity, and doesn't drown out everything around it.

It's a bit of a long and often quite boring process, and one that will mean you get through plenty of blank CDs. But it's necessary if you want your tracks to hold up well against the best out there, so get a notepad and pen, and start listening closely. You may find your mixes start to improve quite quickly!

The Science of Beatmaking - Part 3

In part three of our short series on building a quality drum break, we'll be considering what to do once you get to the latter stages of the writing process - mixing down, editing and adding the final touches to your drum track.

First, to make things easy in the mixdown process, you should consider bussing your drum sounds. If you're using a lot of different elements - like with layered hits, or different types of percussion, this will help you control the overall level a lot more easily. It is often useful also, to have several 'pre' drum busses; perhaps one each for your kicks, the snares, the high end, and 'other' (bongos maybe) - which then feed into one 'main' drum buss. This will mean it's easier to change the level of the entire drum track when mixing, or quickly apply effects to the whole group.

So, once you've bussed your drums together, what to do? Oftentimes people talk about compressing everything together to help things 'gel'. The reason for this is because a busy drum beat will have to interact with the compressor - a hihat on it's own will sound loud; a hihat playing at the same time as a kick will be reduced in volume, as the compressor turns down the gain. So the various sounds in your beat will shift about in the mix, giving a movement that wasn't previously there.

Compression should be applied sparingly though; it is the quickest way to make a punchy drum track sound flat and lifeless. A fast attack and low threshold will smear all the transients from your beat, and lose all that funky feel. An envelope shaper or transient designer, placed on the buss, can help add in a little 'snap' back to your beat, but it shouldn't be used to make up for a badly used compressor. Keep that gain reduction down!

Reverb is another tool to help things sound 'together'. The point of reverb is to make something sound like it's 'in a space' and so by putting everything in the same space, it can sounds more coherent. Try applying a touch of reverb across your whole drum buss; something small, a reverb time of around 0.3s, mixed very quietly. It shouldn't really be very noticeable as reverb except when you mute and unmute it, but it will help give a cohesive sound.

Reverb can also be a creative tool - consider the huge dubstep snare sounds (long reverb, large pre-delay, just on the snare channel), or you could try experimenting with the pre-delay setting on your reverb plug to give a rhythmic effect (set it to equal one quaver, to give a pumping, off-beat sound, for instance). Remember to EQ your reverb returns though; nobody needs to hear 100Hz in a reverb tail, it doesn't add anything to the effect, but it can add muddiness. So cut things down to only that which is necessary for your track!

We did a whole article on parallel processing recently, so look out for that, but it can be most useful with drums - you can solve the issue of losing your transients through compression by sending your buss to another buss with a compressor (or limiter, tape saturator or distortion) and mixing that in quietly with your original signal. This way you can compress as hard as you like to get that smack from the drums, without losing the dynamics of your main drum track. It's an excellent tactic, when used carefully, to get more power and volume from your beats. Remember also, when parallel processing, that if you're going to EQ the new channel, you should use a linear phase EQ. The science is too complex for a short article like this, but basically, EQ's change the phase of a signal, and if you're having two drum channels playing at the same time, you could end up with phasing problems. A linear phase EQ, while not being a perfect solution, leaves the phase intact - so use these in preference on parallel processing.

Once you've got your beat sounding pretty crisp, you may even want to do a spot of resampling. This is more of a creative process, but can add interest to your overall track; bounce the drums down, and reintroduce them to your arrangement. Then you can chop things up for short fills, or go crazy with the FX, reverse a whole bar, and so on. IDM fans may want to get busy with a glitch plugin - dBlue's cunningly titled 'Glitch' is one of the industry standards - just set it up on your newly imported file, bounce the whole drum track with the plugin on it so you get 5 minutes of solid glitching, then chop that up and pick out the best bits. Easy!

Finally, then, how to mix? Well, this can't be answered from here - it depends on the kind of track you're writing. If it's a jungle track, then you want the drums to be centre stage, right up front. If you've got a vocal, poppy track on the go, then you need the drums to sit behind the vocal, while still having enough clout at the low end. So, it's hard to advise, but the main issue is that you need to consider the desired effect of the track, and mix accordingly.

As mentioned in part one, we could write for weeks on this subject and still not cover every angle. But hopefully this three-part overview has given you some inspiration to start firing up the sampler and getting busy with the beats. May the funk be with you...

Back to School: 5 Music Theory Tips... For Success!

Many producers have no formal musical education, doing their own thing by ear and not using any rules to define their melodies.

This may be working out for you, but even if it is, a basic grasp of some fundamental parts of music theory can help you know where to aim on the keyboard when looking for that perfect chord or riff!

Here are 5 quick insights if you're an absolute beginner that can help you to better understand how to write the kind of music you want...

1. Major and Minor

Changing a song's scale can drastically change a song's mood. A major scale results in a jolly, happy mood, whereas a minor scale results in a darker, more emotional sound. A quick way to test the different sounds is to play the scales on a keyboard.

Try it out:

Going from C, playing every consecutive white note until you hit the next C on the keyboard is the C Major scale, which as you can see comes across as dutifully cheery, whereas a minor scale would start to involve some of the black keys, which if you test out bringing them in things start to get much more serious!

2. Octaves

If you feel that the note you're playing is right, but it doesn't have the right tonality to it, try playing it an octave above or below. An octave is slightly confusing to define in words, but if we look at the example above with the white keys playing the C Major scale, the 8th note you play will be an octave above the 1st note.

Try it out:

Most MIDI keyboards come with "Octave up/down" buttons so you can hear the difference. It's the same note, just lower or higher in pitch. Playing two or more notes of the same key at different octaves at the same time is a great technique for making more powerful sounds.

3. Want something painful? Listen to dissonance!

If you play a chord or sequence that sounds pleasant, like it belongs, it is called "consonance". When you want to hear something less pleasant (Dubstep and other darker, heavier genres listen up!) you should be aware of "dissonance" - when some notes don't fit together.

Try it out:

For instance if you play a C at the same time as the first black key to the right of it on a keyboard at the same time, you'll hear that painful dissonant sound. It can be used to great effect in anything from Hip Hop (Dr Dre did it with pianos all the time!) to Hardstyle, Dubstep, Heavy Metal... the list goes on. Sometimes it's good to not stick to what sounds conventionally pleasant!

4. Harmony

If you feel your vocals melodies are thinner and not quite as powerful as those in pop music, maybe you should consider adding some harmonies. Harmony is usually a case of using simultaneous pitches on the same melody line, listen to the chorus of whatever is topping the charts and I bet if you listen to the vocal line, there will be another one sitting quietly above or below the main melody line, following it but hitting different notes.

Try it out:

With the C major scale, try going up playing two notes at a time - one finger on the C and one finger two white keys up. It's the same melody line, but harmonised.

5. Instant prettiness - thirds

...Which brings me nicely onto thirds. There are lots of chords out there but a quick way to make pretty sounds is what you just did when you harmonised the C major scale. Since your second finger was hitting the third note in the scale at the same time as the first, this is known as a third. A major third in fact.

Try it out:

Major thirds aren't the only ones out there though - If you moved your second finger

down to the black note closest to it when playing the C major third, it'd become a C minor third. Hear how the tone of the music becomes more tense and emotional? That's the power of minor keys for you!

There's obviously a whole world of musicality out there to understand, but hopefully these ideas will give you some ideas to try if you get stuck when making your masterpieces!

The Science of Beatmaking - Part 2

Following on from last week's deconstruction of the basic drum sounds, this time we go into some depth on how to actually use these building blocks to put together an interesting and pumping drum track.

So if you're looking for some tips, join us...

We briefly covered the concept of layering up your drum samples, and this is something a lot of people do; it can be useful for several reasons. First, you can take the characteristics of two sounds and blend them together; a snare drum with grit and space to it, underpinned by a chunky drum-machine snare, or layered with a rimshot to help shape the envelope. But on top of that, once you've achieved the sound you want, you can experiment with the layers for variation. More on which later; but in the meantime let's look at how to stack up your sounds.

For this example, let's imagine that you've got an old funk break that you want to use or build around. You've chopped it up, but because it's old (maybe off vinyl) there's not a lot of top end on there, the kick doesn't have much beef to it, perhaps the snare lacks a bit of crack. If you're going to use it in a modern sounding house, dubstep or
breaks track, it will need a correspondingly tough sound. So, the break gives you
character, now to add to that with some punchy sounds.

Remember also to pick other sounds that complement your style; so if you want some intricate Drum and Bass sounds, you won't want a huge house kick that dominates the lower end; if you're doing some heavy breaks you'll want a big meaty snare to add impact. As with any part of a mix, you need to avoid clashing sounds, so when you're stacking your drum hits, think about the EQ settings. For instance with a kick drum; if you want to use a nice subby kick with a gritty, toppy one, then it would make sense to low-pass the subby kick, and high pass the toppy one. This will make your kick easier to manage, but be careful not to be too extreme with the EQ'ing and end up scooping out the middle of your sounds.

Once you've got your sounds sitting well together (it will usually take a few attempts to find drums that complement each other) then you can start arranging the break to suit. The main hits will need to be anchoring the beat; on top of that you can sit the break you're using for character. At this point, you can start experimenting with your layered hits for fills and ghost notes, to give your beat more fluidity. If you remove the heavy sample from your snare, you can have a snare sound that keeps most of the sound, but gives a subtle dynamic shift so that you can program those 16th-note flurries without them sounding too robotic.

Be careful not to go overboard with the ghost-notes though - it's all too easy to fill a bar full of shuffling hits, which are wonderful, clever and complex, but will end up distracting the listener from the impact of the beat. Keeping your beat simple will mean people can nod their heads and enjoy the groove a bit more. One handy trick is to put as many ghost notes in there as you like - too many, it's ok, just get the right vibe - and then see how many you can remove while still keeping the feel. You'll often find that it's actually only one or two hits that are really doing the work, and the rest are essentially clutter. Strip these out and you've got more room to funk, and more space for the other elements in your track.

You can do the same with a bongo or tambourine loop; whilst a full loop might give an extra energy to your drum track, chopping it right down to the bare essentials will help leave more space for other ideas.

While on the subject of 'feel' don't forget to try pulling things off-grid. The likes of Flying Lotus or The Neptunes use this to exceptional effect; often their hits are so far away from being quantised that they're almost out of time. Cunning use of this technique can give a really funky groove, or certainly an ear-catching effect. Try it with your layered sounds, or try it with individual layers of your snare to give it a 'spread' feel. This technique is often particularly effective with clap sounds - try taking four or five claps and starting them all at different times - some slightly early and some late, to give a loose, baggy funk vibe.

You can also play around with reverb or effect sends; try sending just one of your snare layers to a reverb unit, instead of the whole sound - or just your sampled break.

It is, of course, impossible to tell you how to write your tunes, but hopefully this has sparked off a few ideas that will help you make your drum tracks more interesting, punchy and coherent. Come back next week and we'll have a look at some mixdown and later production ideas; busses, dub, saturation and more.

The Science of Beatmaking - Part 1

We're going back to basics here, and going in depth on one of the very foundations of any track; the drums. If you're going to get anywhere with electronic music, you need to start with a solid drum track. But how to get a great sound? Let's tackle this perennial issue...

This is a pretty deep one, and we could, quite frankly, be here all year chewing the fat over what makes a good beat. Indeed, just this morning your author was marvelling over a drum break on a new pop track, listening to the youtube on repeat and trying to pull apart the individual sounds. So since there's so much detail to take in, we're going to break it down over two weeks; ingredients this week, method next.

We can start by considering the basics of the sound; the aspects which everyone needs to consider, regardless of genre. There are two main areas to look at: the 'meat' of the sound, by which we mean the body of the hit, engineered and perhaps compressed for maximum impact, and the 'character' of the sound, which gives it the sonic interest. Which could be a scratchy old funk loop on a hip-hop track, or it could be some glitchy 8-bit blips on a minimal track. Either way, you need both sides to really make a good loop; weighty drums with no character will sound bland, while characterful drums with no weight behind them will lack energy. So let's go from the ground up, then, and start with the kick drum. I'll be breaking each sound into its constituent parts, and we can usually consider a kick as having three of them. You've no doubt heard about 'layering' up your drum sounds, and this is a sensible way to go, if you're having trouble finding the perfect sample!

In a kick there's the sub-bass, of course, which occupies those frequencies below 100Hz, but then there's an important element just above that, around 120-160Hz which I'll term the 'knock' of the sound. It's this part of the kick drum that gives it impact, and punch. If you want to hear these sounds in action, it's lucky that Roland have made our job a lot easier; fire up a simple 808 kick to hear that lovely sub, whilst the classic 909 kick sound is full of 140Hz punch. It's the default techno style kick that cuts through a mix with ease.

Of course, you don't always need both of these sounds in your kick - both 808 and 909 kicks sound great on their own - but you need to be aware of how they affect the overall sound. If you're writing a track with loads of space then you can have a big subby kick and not too much 'knock'; for instance a dirty-south style hip hopper, or a sparse minimal techno arrangement. If, on the other hand, you're writing a busy, hyped dubstep track with a big sub-bass line, loads of mid-range and a lot of detail, then you'll want to crank up the 140Hz area to help the sound jump out of the mix, whilst perhaps toning down the lower end, so that it

doesn't clash with your sub-line.

At the top end of the kick - fortunately there isn't too much going on in the mid-range arena - is where we find 'presence' and 'character'. This is the area to bring out if you want to make your sound more audible in the mix, and it's what (in recording terms) would be the 'tak' noise of the kick drum pedal hitting the nylon skin of the drum head. These days, it could easily be some glitch sounds you've layered on top, an embedded hihat sound, or part of the scratchy funk loop you're using.

With snare drums, we can again break them down into three broad areas. Working upwards, there's the low-mids component, which hits at around 200Hz. You don't want much below this, to avoid clashing with the kick, but this is what gives the sound its weight. Want to go for that 'stadium' sound so beloved of the likes of Pendulum or Sub Focus? Here's the key. A big weighty 200Hz smack. Want a more dexterous, agile drum pattern? Then keep this area under control. A big heavy snare may have power, but it limits the options for fluid, intricate drum programming.

Character in a snare drum tends to come in the mid-range area; roughly from 800Hz to 2K, and this is likely where the main element of that funk loop or disco clap sample will fall. Above this we have 'presence' once more, and it's where the ear is caught by those higher frequencies and transients. Again, this is traditionally stick-on-drum territory, although now it could just as easily also be a clap, rimshot, or one of those buzzy, 1980's drum machine snares. Roll some of this frequency area off for a gritty, lo-fi sound, if you so desire.

Last, we have the hi-hats, shakers, and tambourines. Once again, we can consider a 'function' and 'character' part to these. Layering a hi-hat over the top of a kick or snare can bring it forward in the mix, and hats can add sparkle to a drum pattern. Typically a hihat will have a lot of presence in the 3-5K region, and this is roughly what you'd be using to program that shuffle and swing that will sit atop your beat, giving it some funk. But beyond that, it's not unknown to hi-pass another layer of hats up at 10K, just to give a touch of almost inaudible sparkle right at

the top end (although an exciter might do the same job). Then for character you can have a much lower hat, with lots more energy around 1K - but as with weightier snares, this doesn't lend itself so well to intricate programming. Better to let it sit on the off-beat where it has space to breathe.

So - these are the basics, the constituent parts, the aspects you need to keep in mind as you juggle the various parts to your drum beat. Join us next week as we start to assemble them into a world-beating rhythm track!

Stripping the Mix - for Radio Hits

The good old 'Radio Edit' - a lost art, or something that should be left back in the major label days where it belongs? Do you need to do one, and if so, how should you go about it? Let's turn that FM dial and tune in for a closer look...

Traditionally, the radio edit was something that would take an album track of four or five minutes down to a more radio-friendly timescale - something that could get played in between standard pop tracks, so it would need to be below three and a half minutes. It also needed to remove any swearing! It was less often used for underground music, as mainstream radio never used to play much dance or electronic music (and you don't get too many cuss words in the latest Richie Hawtin blipfest). But as we roll into 2011, dance music is everywhere; from the Black Eyed Peas to Rusko, electro house to dubstep, you can't escape it on the radio - even on regional, commercial radio stations. So it's definitely worth thinking about.

It's also useful to remember that while it may be hard to get a track on a big national radio show, regional shows will often feature new and local talent, and not only will this bring in some small royalties, but they are often seen as 'feeder' shows for the bigger stations in the same company; tracks can often get picked up from a small show and taken onwards. So it's certainly worth taking into account the radio market when you're finalising your single.

The first thing you should consider is your intro and outro. Do you have a 32-bar drum track on each end? Radio DJs don't usually beatmatch, so we can lose most of those straight off. Maybe chop them down to 8 or 16 bars, and where you might previously have had new elements coming in every 8 bars (for instance), try doubling the speed at which things happen, to keep the listeners interest.

Of course, though, you're not trying to end up with something that sounds like it was made by a DJ with attention-deficit-disorder. What you really want is something that will catch the listener's ear from the first second. And a drum track that just builds up really fast won't necessarily do that. So why not think about taking one of the major elements from later in the track, and layering it over the intro? A prominent sample, a leadline, maybe some of the vocal. This will not only help catch the listener's ear, but also attract the interest of the people who make the playlists at the station too!

If your track has a verse and chorus structure, then it's often a good idea to take some of the harmonies in the chorus, and use them in the intro; as they will naturally flow nicely into the verse, this will help your intro build up to the main part of the track, and since people tend to remember the choruses of songs, they should recognise your track straight away.

A good example of this is Beyonce's track 'Crazy In Love'. Everyone knows the chorus is the best bit, it's the payoff, the bit that everyone recognises, the hands in the air moment when it comes on in the club. As such, there's basically no intro; bang, straight into the chorus. Twice! And no outro either - it's the chorus again. Or, in early 2011, Nero's dubstep track 'You And Me'. It's basically chorus from beginning to end; no drum intro, just a big build-up into a punchline of vocals. So be ruthless; identify the best bits of your track and make sure they're represented prominently, early on. Your author has even gone so far as to skip out a verse entirely if it helps the track get to the point more snappily. The singer might not be too happy, but the record label certainly will...

Don't forget to have a look at the mixdown, too. Again, this isn't something for DJs to play out in the club, so it doesn't need a tonne of sub-bass - in fact, that will probably make it sound worse, when it's coming out of an old car stereo or small transistor radio in mono (you did check the mono sum of your mix to make sure it sounds OK, right?).

Small speakers can tend to distort when confronted with a booming sub. So roll off a few dB of sub bass, and make sure the important parts - the lead melodies, any vocals - are bright and present at the front of the mix.

And that, in a nutshell, is the world of the radio edit. You can do it after the mixdown, if you're handy with the scissors it doesn't take too long, and it will give your promotion campaign a whole extra angle to go for. So don't just target the club DJs, get busy and see if you might not just have a pop hit on your hands...

Does Free Music Pay Off?

You've seen it pushed on every forum and industry blog from here to Timbuktu - give your tracks away for free and wait for the money to roll in. 'Free' is better than 'paid'. But is it really? Does it work, and should you give it a whirl? Read on.

Over the last few years, and especially recently, the idea of giving away free tracks has become very common. In fact, it's pretty much the established wisdom - you have to give something away free to the bloggers, the hungry masses, and this will help you boost your profile. People have even given away free albums, or on a 'pay what you want' basis. It's everywhere now.

So, it's everywhere, and you for that reason you shouldn't dismiss it, but don't just jump in head-first. First, it's important to think why you're giving something away for free, and what the 'angle' is. If you're just giving something away, for the love of it, then that's fine - but it won't necessarily help your profile. You can't put something up on your Soundcloud account, not really promote it, and wait for the hits to roll in; there are lots of people doing exactly the same thing. The fact that it's free doesn't really set it apart from all the other free things out there. But if you're releasing a single or EP on a label, and are prepared to give away one of the tracks, that's a different thing - you're setting yourself slightly apart from the other million releases out there, and that's something you can emphasise in your promotion campaign.

Blogs aren't always interested in mails that say 'my track is out now in shops'. But if they can offer something more to their readers, then they may help you promote your release. You'll notice the mentions of 'promotion' there, and this is something that's really important now. It's no longer the case that a free track alone is enough, and will generate its own publicity; you have to promote it just as much as you would if it was a 'real' release. You should be sending it to blogs - lots of blogs - posting on forums, hitting up your mailing list if you have one, getting your friends to tweet about it, and so on. As such, of course, if you're going to promote it like it was a real release, you need to make sure it's as good as a real release! The last thing you want is for it to work against you - someone checks out your free track, it's a bit substandard, and instead of winning a fan, you have just persuaded someone that you're not very good. So quality control is extremely important.

Another thing to consider is what you can expect, results-wise, from the process. A good free release will certainly boost your profile to a degree; if you can get it on plenty of blogs, websites, magazines, and into free music archives, you can expect a significant bump in people's awareness of you; you can check this with google insights. If you're diligent with your promo, you may even see a lift of 50 - 100% in searches for your artist name. This will, however, be extremely transient - maybe even for just a week or so, such is the internet generation's constant hunger for the new.

So if you're not getting money from it, and it only lasts briefly, is there a point? Yes; but only if you build on it. You need to make sure that you're able to direct all this traffic to your website or facebook page; you could even set up a topspin or bandcamp account that will collect an email address from downloaders. If you do that, though, make sure people can preview the track before they have to give up their email address, as it can put some people off. What you can also do, however, is to use it as proof; mail some local promoters and ask for gigs. Mail some local papers and try to get a small feature in the night-life section, based on how this local artist is getting global coverage from their DIY promo efforts. Also, as you make contact with blogs and websites, use it to build a relationship - as you say thanks for the coverage, ask if you can do an exclusive mix for them, offer them something in return. This may serve you well in securing future mentions from a friendly blogger.

We can see, then, that getting hits from a free release is not an end in itself, but it's something you can incorporate as part of a wider effort. So plan it carefully - what will you do next? How will you build on it? Which sites and blogs will you target? And when will we be seeing your free track out there on the net?