Mixing It Up - Dub Style

Lee Perry, right? A stoner genius hunched over a giant 1960's mixing desk, concocting a dizzy swirl of reggae loops and effects? Well, that's the stereotype. But you don't need 24 ch

Dub mixing - that's King Tubby andannels of vintage hardware to get involved; you can take some of the techniques for your own beats and use them to create great dub effects and styles to bring extra flavour to your productions. There are plenty of reasons why you might want to do this - whether to give new life to your arrangements, or to use a whole new branch of effects to lift your tracks. So let's go in on a mixing style so popular it spawned a whole culture...

Dub mixing can really be broken down into two main aspects; there's the arrangement, and then the treating of individual sounds. If you listen to some classic dub reggae you'll notice immediately that it's a very sparse arrangement; dominated by the bass groove, the drums, and the producer's choice of embellishments over the top. These embellishments make up the other part of dub mixing; they'll be heavily effected snippets of vocal, piano, guitar and so on, that use the mixing desk like another instrument.

How does all this help you? Well, you can look at the way the bass-led arrangements are used for inspiration on your own tracks - garage and dubstep have been doing so in fine style for several years. But more importantly it's all about the effects. Get creative with these and you can summon enough musical interest to carry a whole track...

Delay is one of the most common effects. You can put it on anything but try adding an auxilliary send from your drum buss, or one of your melody lines. Then send a signal to the delay and see how the effect floats into the track. To make it more interesting, set the delay time so that it doesn't exactly sync with the tempo of your track, and filter out the tops and low frequencies from the delay return to give a more authentic tape vibe. If you turn the delay feedback up, you'll quickly create a wall of delayed distortion - turn the 'send' down so you're just left with the effect, then you can turn the delay fader down so that it fades away gently. Try also sending the delay return back into the input of the delay to create a feedback loop - this is very easy with a modern DAW; in Logic you can simply take a send from Buss 1 and send to Buss 1 - again, this will rapidly create a wall of feedback and so you'll need to be careful with the send levels! It may be worth putting a limiter into the chain so that you don't overload anything (our ears in particular). If you then mute the source channel you'll again have a crazy delay effect replacing the original sound, while nudging the delay time will also alter the pitch and speed of the delayed signal.

Reverb is the other big dub effect, and the basic idea is similar in principle; set up an occasional send to an effected buss. This is particularly effective on snare drums or vocal hits; send it for just one beat, and you'll hear the snare which was up close and present, suddenly zoom off into space. Alternatively, send it for a longer time and experiment with the pre-delay time on your reverb to create a rhythmic, pulsing sound.

You can then get busy putting new effects on the effect returns. Put a delay on a reverb return to make an even bigger and more spacious effect, and try phasers and flangers on the reverb while you're at it. Anything is fair game - whatever you can think of to make the effects even more crazy. At this point you'll start to see why dub arrangements need to be so sparse; effects can get so huge you need room for them in the mix, and they would clash badly with a full complement of vocals, melodic elements and harmonies. In the same way, it should also be apparent why you'd only be sending a short snippet of sound to the effects busses - it can quickly build and dominate the whole track.

The comment about using the mixer like a musical instrument may also make more sense now; with so many variables, sends, returns and feedback loops, you need to keep close control on what you're sending to where. It takes practise, and is not really possible in real time with just a mouse, so most DAW users will make use of automation instead. A much more fun way, however, is to assign the important parameters on a good midi controller, so you can let the track play through and record your controller movements as you jam out an effects track over the top. This will take a little while to get the hang of, but it's a lot of fun, and will help you see the dub mixing process as more musical than just banging a load of effects on a drum track!


As we can see, dub mixing is something that can look complex to begin with, but it offers you a whole new way of looking at arrangements and a new sonic palette where effects are concerned too. So there's no reason not to get involved, start making some crazy effects chains, and seeing where it can take you!

How Long Should It Take To Make A Track...?

Do you find it impossible to finish off a track, and spend ages tweaking all the little details? Or perhaps zap through a beat in an afternoon, only to wonder later on if it couldn't use a little more interest? Then join us as we look at two different approaches to writing tracks, which may just help you find a different style...

There's always an ongoing discussion in music about how long it takes to write a track; put a group of producers in a room and you can be sure that they'll eventually come round to this. Four hours? Four days? Four weeks? Answers will span the whole spectrum, and while there's not really a right or wrong, it is worth considering if you sometimes feel you haven't found your rhythm.

Artists such as Skream and Zed Bias are famous for writing their tracks very quickly - both are quite capable of writing four or five tracks in a single day. While this level of productivity can make other producers envious, it's worth remembering how many they release - an awful lot less than 25 tracks a week! It's clear, therefore, that the vast majority of their tracks do not see the light of day.

Conversely, other artists take much longer; Peverelist for instance has spoken in interviews of how he can spend anything up to a month working on a single track.

What's happening here are basically two different means to the same end. Those who turn out tracks by the dozen are essentially coming up with an idea, finding a way to run it over the course of 6 minutes, making sure it sounds roughly right and then moving on to the next one. The ideas are not overly developed - there isn't time for that - but just presented in a raw form. Some of them might not be amazing, but that's ok, because one of the next few might be the hit - an idea so good that it just works on its own, looped up.

The opposite end of the scale involves starting with an idea, which may or may not be amazing, but then working on it and shaping it until it finally becomes a good track. This can require plenty of changes and a willingness to recognise when something isn't working - if you need to scrap a bassline for instance, even though it's been in there since the start.

The upshot of both of these methods, of course, is broadly the same; you spend a long time writing music in order to come up with a good track. But if you sometimes find yourself stuck in a rut with your tune writing, it's often worth trying a different tack to see if it doesn't give you a fresh way of looking at things.

So if you normally spend forever tweaking and changing your tracks, then set yourself a challenge - try and write a tune in, say, 5 hours or so. To do this, you need to forget about messing around with the details and concentrate on the big stuff; the drums, the bass, and the main hook, be it a sample or a melody. There's no point in spending 20 minutes EQ'ing a reverb tail if your drums don't cut it. Do that at the end, if at all! With any luck, once you've got a strong basis for a track down, you might realise that the reverb tail isn't as important as you once thought.

If on the other hand you start a new track every evening, then it's maybe time to slow it down a bit, and work on something until it's fully ready. When working like this, there will be plenty of ideas and sketches that don't make it into the final arrangement, and sometimes dead ends where you scrap a whole big chunk of the tune and start over. To do this, you need to use one of the hardest skills to acquire in music - that of listening to your work critically and objectively. You need to be able to step outside the 'creating' bubble for a moment, and instead of thinking 'do I like this lead/breakdown/bass?' consider 'does it do what it needs to do?'.

One good way of getting into this mindset is to get a friend round and play them the beat - if you find yourself apologising for the track, or saying things like 'wait for the next part, it's great', then you know you need to go back in. And before you try to argue that you'd get bored working on a track for so long, remember that if you can't listen to your eight-bar loop for three days solid, then it probably isn't good enough! So at this point you need to be ruthless; cut out the bits that don't quite work and try again. It will be possible to create a good finished article, so long as you have the discipline to make it work.

So, there are two basic ideas for writing - keep to the bare bones of an idea, finish it quickly and let it be seen in a basic form, or spend time working and developing it until it's as good as it can be. Both sides have their disciples, and both can be equally rewarding - so maybe it's time to switch up your workflow, and try a new angle on production!

Bring The Hype Into Your Tracks!!

It's the hands in the air moment; that point where the music drops down, the beat falls away, and the track winds up the crowd into a frenzy - the build-up. It's often the centrepiece of a track, especially in house, trance and electro music, so it's something you need to get right. But when it all comes together, it can be the making of a track. So let's go in deeper with some tricks of the trade that will help you bring the crowd to a frenzy!

Before we start though, let's get one thing straight; you need to dispense with subtlety. Less is not more. The more hype, the bigger and the crazier the better. An understated build-up is basically a contradiction in terms, so remember to go all-out when you do this.

So, when writing, you need to first consider that it's all about contrast. A build will always sound bigger if it follows a sparse, minimal section - and you'll want to drop the track down anyway, since you're probably coming from a driving beat into your breakdown. Listen to some late 90's trance by the likes of Ferry Corsten and Paul Van Dyk for some classic examples of this (they're very cheesy but structured perfectly!); the tracks often drop down to complete silence before the build up emerges. This serves two purposes; one, the crowd gets their breath back and a chance to prepare themselves for the build. Two, the build sounds much bigger when it comes from complete quiet, amplifying the effect of all your careful production.

There are plenty of tricks you can use to bring in your sounds. First, and most obviously, is volume. If you're coming from a quiet section then you don't need to slam in your lead harmonies at full whack; bring them in gradually, and the simple fact of the volume increase will help intensify the build. At the other end of the build, when it's at its peak, don't be afraid to crank the volume of certain parts even higher than they are in the main track - this may be a technical no-no, but it'll all get compressed at some point anyway; and for the last four bars of the build no-one's going to be worrying about a slight lack of clarity when they're busy reaching for the lasers.

Next up is filters. Low-pass filter your lead lines, and gradually turn up the cutoff to increase the intensity of the sound. Simple! Anything with distortion on it sounds great with the resonance turned up too - the high harmonics will really squeal. But don't neglect the high-pass filter - these are very effective when used on kick drums and basslines. The sound of a descending cutoff on a kick-drum roll increases the energy of your track in just the same way as a rising low-pass; so be sure to use plenty of filter action.

Which brings us neatly onto drum rolls. These are not only effective, but also great fun if done properly. Stay away from the old faithful of just going from crotchets to 8th notes to 16ths - it's been done a million times and isn't particularly interesting. Instead, program something a bit funkier, a bit more stuttery, to keep people hooked in. Fade the drum roll in, make the MIDI pattern increasingly busy as it goes along, and think about playing around with the sound too - automate things like pitch, panning, even volume envelopes (try a very short decay with sustain at zero, and then slowly increasing the deay time). But drums aren't the only thing you can 'roll' - try taking a single syllable from your vocal sample, or a snippet from your lead riff, and loop those up. Or even bounce down your whole track and loop that up, kick drums and all, using shorter and shorter loops for a crazy but huge sound.

We've talked a lot about increasing things as the build goes on - volume, filter cutoffs, intensity, but there are other things you can try too. Effect sends, for instance; put a reverb plugin on a buss and gradually increase the send level to this buss. Try it with your synths and pads to make a huge spacious effect at the end of the build. Again, you may lose clarity, but this is rave energy we're talking about here, not delicate piano subtlety. Remember - more is most definitely more!

Don't forget about some of the classics, too, like the high-pitched rave-string. This one is simple but always works - just fire up a strings patch in a sampler (usually, the ropier and cheaper sounding the better) and play a high octave of your root note. Whack a load of stereo spread, phasing and reverb on it for extra bigness and let it sit above your build-up to create that kind of tension that only high strings can do. Need some extra anticipation right at the end of your build? Then just add in one bar of silence right at the end, before your tune crashes back into the main groove. Again, you won't win prizes for innovation with that one, but there's a reason it's a popular trick; because it works! On a similar tack, you can also experiment with the "fake ending" - bring things up to such a level that it sounds like you've hit the climax of the build, but then drop them down a touch, and bring everything even higher for another 8 bars or so.

Finally, once you've got all that in place, you can turn to the essential riser. Used well, these can turn any build into an insane rave meltdown - they are the icing on the cake and should be added in once you have all the other elements in place. You have plenty of options here - a simple rising pad can work, or a siren sample. A very popular one is just white noise - filter it, get plenty of stereo width on it, sidechain it off something to give it an interesting rhythm and it will fill in all the gaps left in your frequency spectrum. This is also somewhere that keen sound-designers can really get moving - program those synths to make the wildest rising sounds possible. But for the rest of us, sample packs are a very good option here. For a bit of pocket money you can usually grab a pack with enough complex, interesting risers to keep you in build-ups for years!

So, the world of the build-up is something you need to get to grips with if you want your breakdowns to really do damage on the dancefloor. But it's also somewhere that you can get very creative once you've mastered the basics - the possibilities are almost endless. So don't just sit there - get working on those kick rolls and risers, and bring the hype into your tracks!

Looking for the essential sounds to create an epic hands in the air moment? Look no further! Check out Epic BuildUps & Breakdowns 1 & Epic BuildUps & Breakdowns 2 for impressive results!

Funk Up Your Bass!

If you're making tunes, you'll be well aware of the need for a good bassline. They shore up the foundations of your beats, they add much-needed weight on a sound system, and can bring the funk to your track in a way that nothing else really can. But how do you come up with a decent bassline? And what should you use? Let's take a look at some of the options...

It can be hard to know where to start with a bassline in an electronic track - since production and composition are so inextricably bound together, the sound you use might dictate what sort of line you can write. But there are a few basics that we can consider first.

For example, take the key that your track is in. The root note of the scale (if you're in a scale of C, then the root note is the C) will always sound "right", and a solid place for the bassline to be. Other strong notes would be the fifth (G), or the minor third (E flat). A straightforward but effective option is to simply follow the movement of the chords in your track with the bassline. It's worked for trance, punk, and house for years, and there's no reason why it wouldn't work for you too.

A similar option is to move the bassline around under a static chord or leadline. This gives your track the impression of movement, even when most of it doesn't move at all. The classic examples (and possibly overused, but try them anyway because they always sound great) are the minor chord (i.e. go from C to E flat to G) and the even more popular alternative where you go to F instead of the G. Try either of these against a simple lead line and you'll realise why everyone from the Chemical Brothers to Calvin Harris use these progressions time after time.
You can also eschew all this "key" nonsense and go for the good old fashioned one-noter. It's been a staple of dubstep and techno since way back when and there's a good reason for that - when you need sheer guttural heaviness, there's not much else that can cut it. But be careful; a one-note bassline can be difficult to pull off successfully. You need to make sure that it's tuned to complement the pitch of your kick drum. It needs to be rhythmically interesting too; a sustained single note can get very boring, so you'll need to get some funk in there to compensate for the lack of musical interest.

Which brings us round to the rhythm of your bassline; how complex does it need to be? Straight tracks tend to have a pretty straight bassline; hard-house has its ubiquitous off-beat bass, psy-trance generally has semiquaver patterns, some tracks simply have a sustained line that runs across a whole bar. There are two points to make here; the main one is that music should be all about contrast. What that means is that if you've got a complex track otherwise, you can afford to have a simple bassline; trance, with all its soaring arpeggios and busy lead lines, sounds fine with a basic bass rhythm. Stripped back dubstep, on the other hand, may need a busier bassline to contrast with the space in the usual halfstep beat. It's also about energy; a sub line with distinct hits can really add a lot to a track - just check any 90's jungle to see the effect of a simple 808 sub. Or indeed a recent Julio Bashmore track to see how it can work in current house music.

The other maxim to remember is the old catchphrase about how it's not the notes you play, but the notes you don't play that bring the funk. Dance music is so maximal these days that it's easy to forget that you don't need to fill every beat with noise to make it stand out. A lot of classic house and funk might just have one or two short bass notes per bar, but the fact that you have to wait for it only heightens the anticipation. It also gives each note more impact - instead of getting lost in a flurry of bass hits.

No discussion of basslines in 2011 would be complete without mentioning "filth"; that staple of dubstep and electro music the world over. The screeching distortion that we all know so well actually has very little to do with real bass, however, since it occupies the frequency spectrum from about 200Hz and upwards. It is, thus, essentially a lead. However if you want to write a "filth" track then the same rules apply - you need a huge, twisting, turning sound (or several alternating sounds) in the lead area, and so your sub line can be relatively simple so as not to confuse the listener.

Basses are a real make-or-break area in a track, and deserve at least as much consideration as your drums. But with a bit of practise you can get into the swing of writing the biggest, funkiest basslines this side of Funkadelic. So load up that sampler, fire up the sub, and get grooving!

Cool it Down in the Digital Realm!

Redlining, turning it up to eleven, cranking it up. It all sounds very cool, very rock and roll. But does it actually sound any good? Let's take a look at the details of going into the red and what it can mean for your tunes...

Back in the day, this was a pretty straightforward equation. When you're working with hardware, if you go into the red, it's simple - things will distort. This wasn't always a bad thing, however; the classic example of distortion sounding good is the electric guitar. It fizzes, squeals, and has zero dynamic range, but still sounds great.

People also still talk about the "warmth" from overdriving a piece of valve kit, and there are any number of plugins available now that claim to emulate the sound of overdriving a channel on a classic SSL desk or tape saturation. But once we get into this world of digital emulation, it starts getting a lot less clear.

The buzzwords here are "digital clipping" and you'll no doubt have heard about how terrible it is. Generally, it is indeed terrible. Cold, harsh, it doesn't really add anything to your tracks, and it's the sound of what happens when a digital environment can't cope any more and goes over zero. Fortunately, most DAWs are so well coded these days, and now we're up to 64-bit programs, they can take a lot in their stride. What does this mean? You might have heard about floating point calculations and whatnot; the upshot is that you can have an individual channel going way into the red and it still won't clip - until it gets to the master output, of course. Problem solved? Unfortunately not.

What a modern DAW can't compensate for is what you're doing with the plugins. While you might have your audio channel peaking above zero and sounding OK, if you then feed that signal into an EQ, compressor, or other processor, it may not be able to handle the amplitude, and will clip, distort, and generally mess up your sound. Although it might be a plugin that's designed to emulate classic hardware, you can bet that the input stage of it doesn't work in quite the same way; after all, a 1970's valve EQ never had to deal with a digital signal at +11dB. So it's important to make sure that the plugin receives its signal at a sensible level, and equally, that the output gain is set appropriately so that the next plugin isn't sabotaged either.

It's increasingly common to find mixdowns where the drums or bass sound unpleasant and squashed, but the problem isn't in the processing as such, but in the links where one plugin feeds into another. If you have a chain of plugins, and one in the middle is outputting a huge signal, it will just overload the next plugin. And it might not be visible once you get to the end of the chain, as a third plugin may have reduced the volume so that you're back below zero. The result, however, will be a mixdown that looks right - your EQ and compression settings may be perfect - but sounds bad, as one of the plugins is wiping out all your transients.

Fortunately, as well as a good DAW being able to handle large signals these days, they also have enough bit depth to handle smaller signals without adding noise. So you can afford to have everything turned down pretty quiet, especially your plugin outputs; it won't hurt your mix but it might save it! It's always better to have things arriving at your master output on the quiet side; you can turn it up at the end. Easier than going back through the mix to figure out what's causing (or killing) all these peaks.

As mentioned earlier though; hardware? Well, that's another matter entirely. If you have a keyboard it's always worth trying to run it hard through your line mixer, pre-amp or whatever else you have lying around, just to see what happens - but again, as we're talking about going into a DAW here, make sure it's back below zero before it hits your soundcard! Hardware distortion can sound very different; it will add harmonics, it may cut certain frequencies at the top or bottom, it can sound great, or (often) crappy. Sometimes crappy is what you want for a given sound, but in general you'll find that you need to try everything in your studio to find the one item that sounds cool being overdriven. When you find it, it's useful for lead sounds to give a ripping presence at the top end; overdriving a bass sound (especially subs) will introduce harmonics that make the sound come through more clearly in the mix; crunching those drums a bit may give you a compression sound that's a bit more rugged than an actual compresssor would.

This topic is one that can get very technical, very quickly; but that's not what we're all about here. So in summary, the best practice is to make sure that within your DAW, everything is running at nice low levels - not only will this avoid any plugin related distortion, but it will also make your mixdowns much easier; so you're not having to turn down one thing to make room for something else. Do this, and you'll suddenly find that worries about clipping or distortion are a thing of the past - and overdriving only happens when you really want it to!

Mixing Made Easy!

Struggling with your mixdown? Do you find yourself getting lost in the million possibilities for changing the balance, levels, and sound of your beats? There is another way! Read on for some tips on how to make things much more straightforward as we delve into one of the trickiest topics in production - the mixdown.

This blog often returns to the idea of keeping things simple and straightforward in your work, and mixdowns need be no exception. Modern production capabilities mean that even with a relatively basic laptop and a DAW, you can still end up with dozens of channels - drums, extra percussion, FX, layers of synths and more. This is something that didn't happen so much 10 years back - people just didn't have enough hardware to cope with all that stuff. A 50-channel mixdown was solely in the realm of mega-money studios. Now we're all trying to keep up!

So what can you do? The obvious suggestion is to use less channels - and that's exactly what you should be considering. A 'stem mixdown' involves bouncing down some of your myriad channels into groups, then opening a new project file, loading them up and taking it on from there. Ideally, you should be looking to work with a selection of channels that strikes the right balance between flexibility and efficiency. Ten to twelve is usually a sensible amount.

There are a number of reasons as to why this is a good idea. As mentioned, the most obvious is to simplify the mixing process - working with groups can be much simpler than many individual channels. On top of that, there's a psychological aspect too. You might have heard the old producer's mantra that you should never spend more than 20 minutes working on a sound (if you've got a sound in the right ballpark in that time then move on and come back to it later, to keep the creative flow going; if you haven't, then bin it because it'll probably never work) - well, this applies here too. By bouncing your stems and setting them in stone, you're moving on to the next stage. You're less likely to get bogged down in trivial details, and you'll find that many issues will be easily solved by treating the whole stem. Also, by narrowing down your options you'll be less likely to suffer the classic paralysis induced by too much choice.

So how should you go about it? Well, precedence should be given to anything that needs to be a major feature of your mix - vocals, leads, basslines. These things can be given their own stems. Drums can largely be grouped together, although it's often useful to bounce the kick separately to the rest of the percussion, to make subsequent side-chaining easier, for instance. Similarly, it is wise to treat the bassline and sub bass as two different entities - for side-chaining again, and also for reverb and other effects which may want to be on the top section but not the sub.

Anything that involves several instruments playing the same thing (for instance when you have synth parts doubled up for a bigger sound) can be bounced down to a single stem, and with vocals you can perhaps have a lead vocal stem, and one stem for adlibs, backing vocals, and so on. Incidental effects too - make sure that you've got the panning sorted first (but even this can be expanded or contracted later on), and then bounce to one stem.

Reverbs and group compression should be left off until you're mixing down - it doesn't matter so much with background FX, but drums and featured elements should be kept fairly clean so that you can process them more effectively in mixdown.

Once you've done all this, and loaded it into a clean project, it's a lot easier to hear what is going on. You're less likely to be distracted by things you've already done - for instance, sometimes when you think a part needs a treble boost, and you see that there's already an EQ with a treble boost on it, you can be inclined to just leave it - as it's an issue you've clearly already addressed. When you've bounced everything, however, it becomes much more straightforward - if a part needs a treble boost then you simply apply one without worrying about it.

Of course, nothing is ever set in stone - and if you really need to go back a stage and bounce two elements separately then it will only take a few minutes to go and do so - but the hassle factor of that means that you'll most probably try and solve the issue without breaking up the stems. And in most cases, you'll usually be able to do so.

So, as we know, mixing down can be a complex and tricky process. But by narrowing your options, you can find that the choices you need to make can be reduced, without having to compromise on sound quality. So next time you're facing a big, multi-channel affair, try bouncing down to stem level and starting again. You may be surprised how much difference it can make!

Producing the Cash!

Most budding producers have a fairly straightforward idea of how they'll eventually make their living from music - write a selection of irresistible 12" releases, set the world afire with some choice DJ mixes, and then rake in the cash from the inevitable Ibiza residency. It's a nice dream... But in 2011, with sales falling through the floor and ever-increasing competition for DJ gigs, many producers are finding that they need to revise their expectations somewhat. However, it's still possible to make a living as a producer - if you look around for some other revenue streams. Here are a few ideas that you may want to consider, if you're going to pay your rent out of this.

Mixdowns: If you're a good producer, you'll no doubt find plenty of novices with decent tunes but poor engineering skills who need someone to put some polish onto their beats. You can look for work on forums, and use Soundcloud to show "before & after" clips to demonstrate your skills. If you can be diligent and turn a mixdown around in 2 or 3 hours, you should be able to charge a good hourly rate.

Tutorials: On a related note, there are many novice producers around who are happy to pay for production lessons. In general, they often don't need high-level advice, but more pointing in the right direction as regards getting started, composition, arrangement and basic production techniques. Again, hourly rates can be quite high, and so one or two lessons a week can make quite a difference to your balance sheet.

Selling beats: You don't need to sign up with a label to make money from selling your tracks - you can sell them directly to people who need need them for a flat fee. There are always plenty of MC's looking for beats for their singles, demos and mixtapes, and a good producer can make a decent three-figure sum for a beat that a rapper wants to chat over. Some producers make a living from this alone, and while a flat fee means you won't get that Ferrari in the unlikely event that your beat gets into the charts, it will guarantee a lot more work!

Advertising: It's the new music model - everything is supported by advertising, from Spotify to Youtube to Last.fm. So why not get in on the act? You could try starting a website that gives away what you have to offer - free music, or tutorials in how to produce, news and reviews of the latest tunes - and charge for advertising space. In general, the more populist you can go, the more likely you'll be to get some decent numbers; to make this worthwhile you'll be needing at least 30,000 unique visitors a month. That won't make you enough to live off, but it will certainly be a handy contribution to your earnings. The downside is that it's quite a commitment - you'll need to update your site regularly to keep people coming back for more.

Starting a label: If you have a good ear for what's hot and what will sell, it might be worth considering starting a label. This can be advantageous for several reasons - in addition to being a business that could make money, the contacts you build up while running the label will help when you want to promote and work your own music. Proceed with caution however - running a successful label is a huge amount of work, and many labels make only small profits at best. The work is also mainly managing, networking, marketing and accounting - not really using your hard-won musical skills!

DJ-ing: This may sound like it's contradicting the first paragraph, but have you considered DJ-ing beyond what you normally produce? As a music lover, it's likely you'll have a fairly solid musical knowledge and collection. It may be worth asking around some local bars if you can do a hip-hop night, or maybe a Sunday night reggae or funk session - whatever you can specialise in. These nights will generally require you to play for 3 or 4 hours at a stretch, and are poorly paid compared to that Ibiza residency - but if you can do a couple per month, it starts to stack up quite quickly. They'll also have the additional benefit of broadening your DJ skills beyond the standard of playing your normal tunes to your normal kind of demographic.

Making a living from music is harder than ever these days, and sadly it's no longer possible to just release a single every few weeks like it was back in the day. But by working hard and combining some of the above options, you can use the breadth of your talent to bring in enough money to pay the bills, and kiss goodbye to the day-job forever! It's tough, but then the best things are - and if you can manage it, it's immensely satisfying...