Reso Producer Q&A

[FSTZ]

Biggup Reso!

Have you ever had a blindingly inspriational moment that made you wanna knock out a tune?

if so what was it?

[reso]

Whats your monitoring situation like? speakers, headphones etc.

Also, what do you do for a day job? Or are you lucky enough to make music full time?



Nice one for answering our questions

no worries!

This is a good question, basically i make 90% of my stuff on headphones only really using my monitors for the final mixdown. A lot of the music i make i regard more as headphone music (even the aggy stuff).

In regards to what gear i have, i'm using Rokit 8's, and flick between sennhieser HD25's and HD 600's for my headphones. I've got an Edirol FA101 soundcard and use a shitty little behringer desk purely as a volume control. looking to upgrade my monitors asap but haven't decided what to get yet.

And yup i'm a jammy prick who can now do this full time which is fucking amazing, i'm suuuuuuuper lucky.

[reso]

great thread !

love your work dude.

cant think of anything specific to ask you.

Just keep doing what you do

thanks for visiting the production forum and shedding some knowledge

Hey, it's my pleasure man, i learn just as much from this forum as much as anybody else. I'm still learning, got a long way to go with my production too.

[reso]

Biggup Reso!

Have you ever had a blindingly inspriational moment that made you wanna knock out a tune?

if so what was it?

I get the odd moment when i'm watching a film or playing a video game and think "that's fucking sick!" then i'll try and hold on to that energy and kncok something up, can't think of any specifics right now.

Most of the time i just go with my mood, sounds cheesy but if i'm in a contemplative mood i'll make something that tries to capture that feeling. As the DJ shadow sample goes "it's like the musics coming through me".

[stappard]

And yup i'm a jammy prick who can now do this full time which is fucking amazing, i'm suuuuuuuper lucky.

70 hours+ on a track sounds to me like you deserve everything you get

[reignstep]

Cheers for fuckin sharing this with us man! <3

Got 2 questions myself:

- How does your mixdown process go? I usually don't get any further than putting each sound in the mixer and cutting/boosting frequecies. When I put a tune online there's always someone saying : 'Your mixdown could use some work'... *sigh*

- How long have you been producing?

[reso]

Cheers for fuckin sharing this with us man! <3

Got 2 questions myself:

- How does your mixdown process go? I usually don't get any further than putting each sound in the mixer and cutting/boosting frequecies. When I put a tune online there's always someone saying : 'Your mixdown could use some work'... *sigh*

- How long have you been producing?

man, i struggle with mixdowns still, it's a constant learning curve, obviously i'm better than i was but it could still use a lot of improvement.
Generally i'm a fan of subtractive eq rather than additive. I said it before but panning really helps to. A good analogy i heard for mixing/eq is imagine the frequency range like a chest of drawers, you can't keep stuffing things into the same draw, spread it out.
Also for example sometimes i have to move my arrangement around a bit to get things to work, i.e if i want a super heavy kick but also pant wetting sub some concessions have to be made, you can't have them hitting at the same time without fucking your headroom and mix, so in this case you can program your bass around the kick or if you feeling really clever you can go on a creative mixdown mission so that when the sub hits you automate the eq to chop off the lows of the kick. Your brain will fill in the gaps.
Also i'll group certain sounds together and do an overall compression and reverb on them to make them gel better.
The main thing i think is certain sounds just work together, and others don't. i'll go through a lot of sounds before i find the right one sometimes, maybe changing drums, or synths 3 or 4 times before i'm happy.
It's a time consuming pain in the arse way of doing it!

I've been producing for about 6 years, got my first PC when i was 21, i'm 27 now. I've been doing music since i was about 9 though, when i first strated learning the drums and being in crap bands haha

[reignstep]

Cheers for fuckin sharing this with us man! <3

Got 2 questions myself:

- How does your mixdown process go? I usually don't get any further than putting each sound in the mixer and cutting/boosting frequecies. When I put a tune online there's always someone saying : 'Your mixdown could use some work'... *sigh*

- How long have you been producing?

man, i struggle with mixdowns still, it's a constant learning curve, obviously i'm better than i was but it could still use a lot of improvement.
Generally i'm a fan of subtractive eq rather than additive. I said it before but panning really helps to. A good analogy i heard for mixing/eq is imagine the frequency range like a chest of drawers, you can't keep stuffing things into the same draw, spread it out.
Also for example sometimes i have to move my arrangement around a bit to get things to work, i.e if i want a super heavy kick but also pant wetting sub some concessions have to be made, you can't have them hitting at the same time without fucking your headroom and mix, so in this case you can program your bass around the kick or if you feeling really clever you can go on a creative mixdown mission so that when the sub hits you automate the eq to chop off the lows of the kick. Your brain will fill in the gaps.
Also i'll group certain sounds together and do an overall compression and reverb on them to make them gel better.
The main thing i think is certain sounds just work together, and others don't. i'll go through a lot of sounds before i find the right one sometimes, maybe changing drums, or synths 3 or 4 times before i'm happy.
It's a time consuming pain in the arse way of doing it!

I've been producing for about 6 years, got my first PC when i was 21, i'm 27 now. I've been doing music since i was about 9 though, when i first strated learning the drums and being in crap bands haha

Yeah I realised mixdown is damn time consuming, thanks for the ingsight bro !

PS: Give us a fuckin banging night wednesday! can't wait

[Mortal]

big ups for this reso

do you have a certain structure when it comes to building your drops? or do you try something new each time?

cheers

[therapist]

This is crazy, so many inane questions I feel I must ask. Firstly; did you jizz your pants when you finished Hemisphere and cranked it for the first time? I couldn't tell you how many times I've listened to that tune.

Do you make anything much outside of dubstep/dnb etc. that we can hear?

Looking at those screen shots there's a lot more bounced bits of audio than I expected. Is this just a love of re-sampling, or separating the mixing stage from the composing stage or am I just rambling about nothing?

Where do the weird titles Namida/Otacon etc. (Temjin) come from?

You've just done a tune with Rusko yes?

Will you please do some tunes with Kryptic Minds, Burial, Excision and send them to me and nobody else?

Do all these questions make you feel like a rock star?

[reso]

big ups for this reso

do you have a certain structure when it comes to building your drops? or do you try something new each time?

cheers

When making dance music it's slightly limiting in the sense that you have to stick to even numbers of bars regarding drops and stuff, so sometimes i do really quick 16 bar intros, sometimes epic long 98 bar ones, depends what i feel like.
There are the classic things to do for drops like white noise buildups, synth rises etc and these work, but i do like to try other stuff all the time. If it works i keep it, if not i try again.
i honestly try and do something different everytime, which can be difficult because it's so easy to draw for the 32 bar "rise" intro.

[reso]

This is crazy, so many inane questions I feel I must ask. Firstly; did you jizz your pants when you finished Hemisphere and cranked it for the first time? I couldn't tell you how many times I've listened to that tune.

looool, no hahaha. It's hard to take an objective view of my own music, honestly tunes like hemisphere are my favourite kind of tune to make because it's got more of "me" in it, i was really proud of the second drop, the melody and feel of it, the whole tune is a build up to that point really.

Do you make anything much outside of dubstep/dnb etc. that we can hear?

i make lots of different stuff, i'm really glad tunes like channel pressure and hyperglide were on the Temjin ep, in terms of what you can hear, you'll have to wait for my album

Looking at those screen shots there's a lot more bounced bits of audio than I expected. Is this just a love of re-sampling, or separating the mixing stage from the composing stage or am I just rambling about nothing?

I bounce audio all the time, partly because of an old habit leftover from when i had my shitty pc and i had to bounce everything down just to render a tune and partly because once i've done as much as i can with midi i bounce a part and resample/automate etc. It just gives you a whole new set of options again. I do it the other way round as well, chop audio then put it in a sampler and go on a midi mission.

Where do the weird titles Namida/Otacon etc. (Temjin) come from?

Japan and video games, namida= tears, otacon = metal gear solid character, Temjin = character from virtual on

You've just done a tune with Rusko yes?

yes, well, we did it in one night at mine when he stayed over for a few days.

Will you please do some tunes with Kryptic Minds, Burial, Excision and send them to me and nobody else?

we'll see............

Do all these questions make you feel like a rock star?

is there anything more rock n roll than answering questions about production on an internet forum? i think not!

[Rickmansworth]

you said earlier that you're doing music full time...

how did you get to this point? were you previously unemployed and just had the time to produce? or did you decide to leave your job once you reached a point where you knew your tunes would require all of your effort/energy?

what kind of stuff do you listen to when you're not producing? who are some of your favorite artists?

[gnome]

Do you hate people mentioning how filthy your tunes in the youtube style i.e. " This is filthier than gollum's ballsack "?

[Tragic_Gash]

Big up Reso, nice one for the QnA, that 169 track arrangment is a bit mental tbh tho.... you're mad

How much of your sounds come from random samples, i.e. stuff you've recorded yourself etc, rather than sample packs?

do you record much percussion stuff live? like on the thing you did with starkey for MAH?

how much out of your day goes into music, was it the same when you weren't making your living from it? (not really sure if I want to hear this )

[64hz]

mate i just stuck hemisphere on and came on the forum to see this! temjin ep is awesome...
hyperglide is better tho imo
thankyou for your music

i'll try to think of a question, wouldnt want to waste this opportunity,,,

[mmjdw]

Good drum tips... already used a couple but resampling the kick seems very useful.

Anything for bass? I've barely got started with resampling and was wondering how a typical bassline would be arranged, step by step? For instance in otacon, where it starts off wobbling and then is just like WOHTBBOHE (or something like that.)

Also do you use presets a lot (especially pads).

[gkmusic]

man, your remix of mike lemmon's brass eye and hyperglide have to be two of my most fav tracks up to date, seriously big up!

for my question i would like to ask;

1. how do you go about making a weighty sub like the one in the brass eye remix?

also

2. what advice would you give to 'up and coming' artists who want to reach the the point you are career-wise?

again. thanks for taking time out to answer these questions reso, really appreciate it!

[Hurtdeer]

i have no questions only a statement:

your drum programming's really great man! I love seeing drums taking more of a lead role in a track and your obvious skill with grooves set your stuff on another level. As well as your ability to explore different soundworlds effortlessly. Both aspects of production that I'm trying to master myself

that is all

edit: you do all of that in logic? mad! i had to integrate renoise into my setup because programming those kind of drums in logic's sampler was doing my head in :O

[sofa_king]

this is one of the best threads I have ever read. thanks to Reso for this it would be great if more producers did this - not to copy their style or anything but seeing screenshots of a pro's monitor is just really interesting. while we're naming tunes, I love the remix of Grand Puba - Get It.

my only question - do you ever blaze the ganja when you maketh the tunes? Is it helpful at any point in the process?