In The Studio

In the studio with Enlia

This week, we catch up with French producer and songwriter, Enlia!

Jaz from the RepostExchange Team

How long have you been producing music and how did you learn?

I have been producing music for nearly 14 years on and off. I’ve been singing and writing little songs forever though, so my parents offered me an acoustic guitar when I was a teenager. I recorded my first songs with an old MP3 player/dictaphone to share it with my friends, but very quickly I wanted to add some effects to it so I got Acoustica Mixcraft and that’s how I discovered reverb abuse! Then I left my guitar for a synth, tried Fruity Loops and ended up falling in love with Logic Pro.

What DAW(s) do you use and why?

Logic Pro X! Mostly because they have a lot of good midi sounds and sound-design tools. I also love playing with Space Designer to create a dreamy background or add some texture to my sounds. It’s also an excellent DAW for scoring to picture (which I am very new to).

What are your favourite pieces of gear and why?

I do not own my favourite piece of gear, unfortunately, but I had the honour to record vocals for the french pop-rock project, Le Jardin, in professional studios with a vintage and a custom Neumann U47. It has an incredibly warm sound! I do like my RØDE NT1-A at home though, it gets the job done.

What are your favourite software plugins and why?

This is a big question, there are so many! Melodyne became essential for me this year, I use it to correct the pitch of my voice manually in some places, to blend it better with the instruments and their own relative tone. As a producer, I experiment a lot so it changes often, but I usually like Izotope’s plugins (I’m discovering BreakTweaker and Neutron at the moment), LABS virtual instruments from Spitfire Audio, Analog Dreams from Native Instruments etc.

How would you summarise your approach/workflow when creating a track?

It depends, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with that full orchestra in my head, so I need to get the main melody out of my system and quickly put some midi notes in my DAW or use my phone to record myself humming it. Then it evolves in unexpected ways and genres.

And sometimes I sit down with a goal, I set myself some rules, create a little loop and build a whole track around it.

When creating a full song, I usually finish my instrumental before writing lyrics and recording vocals, but I also find it very interesting and challenging to produce an instrumental around an a cappella, I proceeded this way with The Void, for example.

What resources do you use to improve your craft?

I mostly rely on the advice of music buddies. Tutorials are great as well but there’s nothing like a good conversation, I think. When I need something specific really quick, I just ask ID3. He is some sort of human encyclopedia for gears and plugins!

What knowledge or advice do you wish you'd learned earlier?

Keep your stems and projects! I have so many old songs I’ll never be able to remix or remaster properly, unfortunately. When I started, I just didn’t care that much about production, but now I do and some tracks would have been interesting to improve without having to record everything again.

What challenges related to making music do you face and how do you overcome them?

For me, the biggest challenge, in general, is to find a balance between what I do for a living (I work mostly as a session singer-songwriter) and my own personal projects. For many reasons, I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself and it can take the fun out of the process sometimes. I know I need a little break when I start feeling this way, to recharge and bring creativity and playfulness back into my music, whether it’s for professional purposes or not.

Can you share any killer tips or techniques?

One of the biggest things I have learned this year is Andrew Scheps’ parallel compression technique! There are many helpful tutorials available on YouTube.

Do you use any online tools to assist with the production process?

I used LANDR online mastering service for a couple of tracks a few years ago though. It doesn’t replace good ears, knowledge, experience and custom mastering, but it’s pretty standard I think. If their master sounds horrible, you probably need to fix your mix.

Do you try and get feedback or suggestions to improve your music?

I ask for feedback from producers I know when I feel stuck. If I didn’t have any contact, I’d probably try SubmitHub’s Hot Or Not feature. Facebook music groups and challenges can be very helpful as well to get advice and grow as an artist.

Which track are you most proud of and why?

I’m not really proud of my own music, to be honest, I just make it and enjoy the process, but it’s never as good as I would want it to be, there’s always something to improve and details bothering me in the end so I just have to declare it ready to go.

It feels different when I collaborate with other amazing artists, and it’s hard to choose one. But I’m gonna pick 'Salvation' by Ayna. It was my first time contributing to a synthwave track, this one is incredibly dreamy!