"Evolving" tracks. advice please!

[serox]

All of the above ideas are great, but all attention grabbing tracks have some sort of "hook" to them, be it a sick bassline, creative vocal sample, or catchy percussion part. Get that, and the rest comes easily.

Prob the most important part of a track. Make something good that stands out and people can get into and remember.

[punisha]

Ahh fuck it, I'm gonna sound like a right tnuc but here goes :-

You have a lack of knowledge or skill and talent.

That isn't meant to sound disrespectful dude but its often the case with 'loopitus'. I'm not saying go to college and learn for a degree in music theory but certain basic knowledge is fundamental to most genres of music and you need to either figure this out yourself (which sounds like your struggling to do so), get taught or read/watch something to help.

You said your a drummer, so I'm guessing your drum programming is of a high standard and your fills etc will be better than many. Did you have any lessons as a drummer?

Its hard to teach yourself stuff imo so I'd start with something simple.

There is a 'dummies' book called 'Music Theory for Dummies' which is a fairly easy read or maybe check torrents for Howard Goodall's BBC series 'How Music Works, which is surprisingly informative and easy to watch - Its in 4 parts (drums, bass, harmony & melody). It's a bit twee but Howard Goodall really wants to inform and educate people and while it might not mean much to non-UK residents, lets not forget that he composed the theme tunes to Blackadder and Red Dwarf

Oh and before the posts come suggesting that 'knowledge stops you experimenting' or 'rules are for stnuc' etc etc I've just got one thing to say about that :-

STFU and read the book

Just MHO

[John Locke]

Oh and before the posts come suggesting that 'knowledge stops you experimenting' or 'rules are for stnuc' etc etc I've just got one thing to say about that :-

STFU and read the book

or stfu and listen to music.

there's more than 1 way to gain knowledge. plenty of the more groundbreaking, original, and long-lasting music thats been made over the years has been created by ppl who "understood" (in a conscious, trained, academic way) nothing of music theory. yet they clearly understood everything in an intuitive way; i.e they felt it. and this comes from listening, and, yeah, unfortunately from talent.

but learning some stuff wouldnt hurt; if nothing else, it'll help u listen better.

[howard campbell jr.]

i have been having the same problem lately. my tracks tend to just sound like the same loop over and over with slight variations, mostly in LFO speed automation... a good example of the type of progression that im hoping to acheive would be "boreta-bubblin in the cut". It doesnt sound like the same loop at all, it sounds more like during the chorus, the original synth from the verses is just morphing all over the place. Unfortunately, any advice I have on the topic will be null because I cant seem to overcome this difficulty myself.

My main problem with fruity loops is that if I want the synth to sound like it is morphing and progressing instead of looping I have to make more than one synth, automate them both, and then kind of sync them up in the loop so that they sound contiguous...

you can scope my tunes at myspace.com/spkta should be pretty obvious i have loopitus.

[pets bud]

I'm in the same boat w/ u. I've always had a problem w/ progression. My mixes tend to get thick as fuck, because I'm not going anywhere, I'm just stacking shit on top. I'll tend to unpack that shit, and spread it out, but it usually doesn't sound right.

I tend to do the same thing stack and pull away. But i see this as helpfull cause when you loop things or work in loop mode you can hear what sounds good with what. If you can have 6 instruments or samples working good with each other while layered, then your song should not be that hard to finish. You have the meat of the song you just have to garnish the plate.

Give it variation, pull out 3 sounds for the break. You can use 5 instruments in the first part and add the 6th to the second part for a notable change.

Then listen to the whole thing after you have determined how many bars you want to make it. Then just work on the transitions, ie buildups and breakdowns.

It is not a bad thing, you just have to work on getting better at the part between the loops.

The good thing about this genre is that the less you have the better it sounds. Get rid of the cack!

[sifres]

Insightfull stuff!

Strugling with this @ the moment, although I do believe my loops aren't yet that good...

Just a tip;
When I did an electro live act (well, push play and see if tracks work actually) a while back. I noticed that because I pushed myself forward earlier in the production process, I started finishing a lot more tracks...

This was because I set myself a goal to make it an hour set. Some of the tracks I made "Rushing" like this are some of the best I made back then. Propably because the ideas were fresh instead of looped to oblivion.

So there is an amount of Just do it™ involved I guess...

You don't want to spend half a year waiting on the perfect loop, and then have no idea on how to craft it into a track... Now do you?

dont just lay out a basic structure and then try and add things. you want to be working on your track in small segments from start to finish. sometimes i work a bar at a time. when you think something could do with changing or building up or whatever, sit there and try and come up with something to add or change. it takes a while to get into this mode, but once you do it becomes kind of instinctual and you'll know what you need to add or do at a certain time.

as for automation and stuff, dont just think of the obvious things like cutoff resonance, etc. try messing with envelopes, pitch, lfos, sends to reverbs and delays, delay times, feedback levels, sends to distortions or filters and stuff, layers of compression, stuff like that.

This is gonna be my new mantra... It's so obvious I tend to overlook it all the time

Thanx for putting this down!

[osky]

hey mate try this website www.freesound.org sign up and flick through the 'random sample' option or just browse through and download anything u think u cud use in the future. then open ur DAW and play around with some random samples it really mixes things up and i've made some interesting stuff myself just messing about with random sounds.

it really does help mix up ur track a bit and make it a lot more interesting.

[s & m]

he composed the theme tunes to Blackadder and Red Dwarf
--

This does, in fact, mean a lot to this American

I actually have all the Blackadder on dvds!! it's hilarious!!


but guys really thanks for all the tips... and to the poster who was being straight up I do appreciate that.. you are correct I am not yet knowledgeable when it comes to electronic production. but i do love learning. I am a self taught drummer but I probably would have been where I am at now skill wise many years ago if I had lessons etc.. but anyways thanks a lot for all the useful information I really take to mind everything you guys are saying.

[MidnightMassDubstep]

Also yeah, as battle gong said, listen to music.
I think the reason you cannot get out of loop mode, is your lack of inspiration. You get a burst of inspiriation, and then loose it very quickly.
Do you have ADHD? Because I have ADHD, and it's the case with me. I loose concentration, get bored, listen to the loop too much and it sounds shit. You need it fresh in your mind.

Also, good sources of inspiration come from the wierdest places. I decided to listen to a band that my strange skitzohprenic weed dependant mate likes (boards of canada, they're brilliant) and got a burst of inspiration, and created a lovely little number.

I regret to say alot of this was sorta an epiphany supplied to me by my english teacher, who I hate.

[r]

lots of words in this topic tho it just needs 1 word to awnser the topic.

practice

[sifres]

lots of words in this topic tho it just needs 1 word to awnser the topic.

practice

I see where your coming from but techniques are often learned and not made up (although interesting technique's do evolve from the latter).

You over simplifying...

[r]

lots of words in this topic tho it just needs 1 word to awnser the topic.

practice

I see where your coming from but techniques are often learned and not made up (although interesting technique's do evolve from the latter).

You over simplifying...

arranging is not really a technique. It's something how you introduce certain elemtns over and over again. You just need to be a bit creative. You'll be after practicing it alot. Listen to some good funk or soul. No techniques or whatever. Just smart arrangements. Listen and learn. Copy, paste, edit.

[my_fickle_eye]

I find one thing that can help is taking one of the synths (which uses different notes from the main bass line) from your main loop/chorus & and then making that the main focus for the next 16 bars, dropping synths and sounds out and dropping them in. With most types of dance music its about dropping the layers in and out and adding a bit of variation to the remaining parts with effects and automation, but not to many effects!

As has been said before, try and work with the same synths and add automation. If youve been drumming for rock? kinda treat each synth as an instrument and only have a few and use automation of the LFO RATE and filters to tweek the sound, kinda like a guitar pedal or something.