I've been producing music for three years now, but my first year was mostly learning the basics of sound design and the interface of the DAWs. I learned to produce by myself and lots of YouTube tutorials and dedication, started slowly experimenting with different genres until I got the hang and feel of it.
At first, I started using FL Studio, since it was a great alternative for beginners since it has a friendlier user interface than Ableton has, but then after a year of fiddling around in FL, I moved over to Ableton since the DAW fits my workflow much better!
Haha, I don't think I'm yet a connoisseur of producer gear since I do own very little few myself, but If I were to choose out of the gear I would like to own, it would definitely be the Denon SC6000 prime CDJs and mixer. I'm very on board with what Denon is doing with the music equipment industry and where they're headed with their ideas and development.
My favourite software plugins by far are Izotope Trash and Sugar Bytes WOW. I think it’s because I use them 90% of the time in my bass design and they are such reliable plugins to make your basses fatter, and since I mostly produce Neuro, they're my handy tools. Oh yeah, and good old Serum, don't think I can say any more about Serum that hasn’t been said yet!
Intro design > get the feel of the track from the intro > bass design > drum design > glueing everything together and working on the drop > 48/64 bars usually, breakdown, and at the second drop. As many people noticed in my tracks, I like to innovate and not just change a few things from the first drop, but instead sometimes completely change it. It's really handy for DJs to have two drops that they can choose to drop in their mix and also a very nice surprise for the listeners to have diversity in your track.
I use mainly masterclasses on YouTube and free tutorials. One channel that has helped me a lot, especially about mixing and engineering a track, is ARTFX. That guy is a hidden gem, and I highly recommend checking his stuff out, really useful!
I really had a debate with myself if I should add another sub-layer to my basses most of the time, and this tutorial cleared things up for me! Wish I had watched it earlier prior to some of my latest releases, but you live and you learn!
A lot of stuff about mixing and mastering a track basically. I could list a thousand things here, but you can be producing for 10 years and still learn about new stuff and techniques, mostly because there are endless possibilities of doing things in music and fixing problems. Because music is so flexible in general, it's really hard to pinpoint all the stuff I wish I knew earlier because I personally think every lesson is valuable at its time. But if I were to choose something exact it would be how to master the tracks myself. Now I definitely know that, but it would've been way more useful to know it before.
Mostly lack motivation due to the grim times we're going through as humanity right now, and of course personal life. I'm still a young producer at 22 years old and I'm just finishing my Psychology degree. I'm literally buried in school projects at the moment so motivation and productivity are not really at a high for me right now. Stress usually does that to people, and definitely writer's block from time to time, I open up Ableton saying I'm gonna be productive and it just doesn't happen that day sometimes, I embrace it, and it's normal, we're only human!
Ghost sidechain instead of normal sidechaining, especially in drum & bass. Make the envelope really small and you can control the release to be really minuscule. That way, you can make enough of a gap just to let through the transients of the kick & snare and not have huge volume gaps in the mix due to sidechaining, since it doesn't compliment the genre too much, only in some cases. But since I learned to do ghost sidechaining, which is really simple actually, it's been really essential to fit my drums well in the mix and make them pop, and I think it should be one of the first things people learn when producing.
Not really, besides the sites I sample voices from time to time since I do like my tracks cinematic and with a story. Most of my tracks have some kind of voice SFX or voice lines in them. Usually, I do them myself with different kinds of programs and post-processing, or just 'borrow' them from different games!
I think feedback is really valuable when it's from an objective standpoint; when it comes down to stuff like mixing, and mastering, and quality of the overall track. But even then the feedback can be subjective, since music in itself is subjective, and the way we perceive sounds and volumes. Everyone has their own tastes and ideas about how a track or certain things should sound, and that's ok.
But if you feel that the feedback you're getting from other people regarding your tracks doesn't fit your personal tastes and values, I think it's best to only take what you can from it and find a middle ground between the both. Constructive feedback is necessary, but it can also kill your morale and creativity. Follow guidelines, but to a certain extent, music always changes and music is beautiful because it can be created in a lot of ways and it gives you the freedom to do so. So have fun and experiment while you're at it.
I'm really critical of my music, and personally, while I do have periods where some of my tracks grow on me, in general, I don't like them because the gap between my taste and my production experience hasn't been closed yet. I know I can do much better and I constantly chase that, therefore leading me into not liking most of my production, despite the public liking them. I guess that's a problem all artists face at some point in all industries. But if I were to choose just one, it would be my latest release 'Hades'.
Through RepostExchange, I met a lot of friendly industry colleagues that taught me a lot and have given me valuable feedback in terms of producing. So indirectly yes, without the platform I wouldn't have met those people and I wouldn't have learned a lot of stuff I know now.
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This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
