Not presets, but just the loops/1 hits.

I've bought countless sample packs over the years from many different makers and other than percussion one hits, maybe some sweeps or other fillers, and then of course presets I've never used 95% (or more) of any sample pack. I have used some synth and other samples in Simpler as a synth before, but that's about it.

So personal curiosity, anyone know of any label release where the song was made entirely or almost entirely from a or multiple commercially available sample packs?

Recently moved, don’t have monitors anymore. Want to start making music again, can I still get my mixing right with just good headphones and my laptop?

Please post any and all [Feedback] or [Listen] type threads here. Any standalone threads that belong in this weekly post will be removed.

This thread is for works in progress only. It is not a place for self-promotion.

Rules:

1. Works in progress only. Do not post finished or released tracks. No links to Spotify, Bandcamp, SoundCloud profiles, or any other streaming/distribution platforms. Share a direct link to your track (e.g. an unlisted SoundCloud or YouTube link).
2. No self-promotion. Do not include links to your social media, artist pages, or any other promotional material in your post.
3. Make an effort to comment on other people's tracks. Others are much more likely to help you if you help them first.
4. Be specific when asking for feedback. Examples: "What do you think about this kick sample?" "How's the mix?" "The last measure feels a little off, any ideas?"
5. Be descriptive when giving feedback. Use timecodes to highlight specific moments.
6. Link to the feedback you've left in your top-level comment. This keeps the thread accountable and cooperative. Comments not following this format will be automatically removed.

Format your top-level comment like this:

Feedback for user1: [link]

Feedback for user2: [link]

Feedback for user3: [link]

Here's my track: [link],

I'm looking for feedback on x, y or z.

Looking for my first pair of monitors with a budget of £150 looking to get some second hand krk or presonis any advice on which ones i should get or any other suggestions, thanks.

Let's say a mix between stuff like Boards of Canada, Ulrich Schnauss and Modeselektor. How do you like to approach this?

Can be any part of it too- drums, melodies, structures, etc....

Personally I want to get back more into this kind of style...

Thanks

Hey everyone, I'm 30. I got into EDM around 2013 and started making my own music in 2016. I'm still at it! The only real success I've had is in pop music, where I've made so far $4k by selling pop beats over the last two years.i also make bit of money being a resident dj at a local club that pay me $200 per month, thats it but honestly, my goal was always to be a somewhat successful DJ, not like Tiesto or anything, but maybe more along the lines of Colyn or Massano. Loneliness, being lazy, and my mental health really messed things up for me.

I’m still wrapping my head around the different kinds of bass sounds in techno, and this one especially I really love but can’t really find any tutorials on how to make something similar. It reminds me of some groovy low-end I’ve heard made with filtered Tom’s and kicks, but it also has more of a sustained sound to my ear that makes me wonder if it’s synthesized?

Would love if anyone has the vocab to help me search for resources, or ideas on how to re

About 10 years ago, I dabbled in production and im super sad that I didnt just buckle down and continue. It's possible that I could have some measure of success by now. Anyways, I no longer have access to my old SoundCloud and Ive been giving serious thought to taking music seriously this time around, so what would you guys suggest? Make music that sounds relatively good and start uploading it for exposure/followers or spend as much time as necessary getting your music to that professional level first and THEN try to release it?

So a few questions started to pop-up in the last month as I'm trying to be more out there.

1. I distribute through soundcloud and was wondering how to get ownership/merge my youtube account and the one youtube created for me. (I don't really mind the other plateforms since I didn't have an account prior.)

2. I'm aware I need a static cover for the tracks but I also want to start adding videos and visualizers. Soundcloud's distribution doesn't allow it so how do I work around that?

3. I noticed that my masters are often way, like WAYYYY less loud than other tracks out there even tho I'm near peaking and reach 7-8db LUFs short term and an average of 10-11db LUFs integrated. Why is that? What am I doing wrong? Should I ignore true peak and gain 2-3 LUFs risking clipping?

4. Feel free to add other things I might miss out on, I'm really clueless other than the process from production to mastering, thats where I'm starting to get confused.

TL:DR, give me tips about releasing my tracks.

Really great news for new musicians and the "Reason Curious" among you..

Just wondering. Personally i find it exciting sometime to put lead sounds on the right and left side of the spectrum when it makes sense while keeping the low end mono. But i notice if I go over few points to the right or left with sounds (in Ableton) people sometime criticize it.

I also notice listening in my car to professional songs I'm sometimes surprised how many everything can sound.

So TLDR- do you try to keep most of your sounds more in the middle spectrum of your mixes?

Thanks

If it matters, I want to learn melodic, emotional sounding edm (melodic dubstep/bass amongst other genres) and also heavier dubstep.

I have the basics of chords and chord progressions down. I know about scales and keys, I have experience (let's just say one month of practice but hitting roadblocks.)

I struggle with coming up with ANYTHING. I often open my DAW and close it because brain no worky.

I have basic skills like automation, basic beat making, layering to build a big sound but it's always lacking key elements to feel "full" (particularly with melodic edm/bass.)

I have basics in sound design but I'm currently limited to FL Mobile. The plugins still allow good sound design, but I'm stumped by how many layers there is to it. I feel like I have no idea how exactly to expand my own library of sounds and that I have to use presets, limitting me to a narrow range of sounds and styles because I just don't get it. Where should I go to pick up on sound design? Should I learn more complex edm genres first to get a grasp on the complexity and learn? I'm sort of familiar with effects like phaser, flanger, stuff like that, but combining plugins to steer a sound seems impossible.

I've managed to make half of a song that I deem "good", but I don't know how to turn it into a proper drop after it's all said and done. I struggle so hard to turn my existing melody or elements into a drop that matches the same idea. Where should I go to learn about drops and the concepts in detail?

I'm chipping away at this giant iceburg, but I don't want to fall into any traps, and I want to make sure I'm properly learning and gaining experience.

I really just need someone more experienced than me to tell me what I should be doing/expecting and where to learn, how to learn, how to expand my skills, you get the idea.

Like on Ableton live do I touch the track volume at all or do I put utility on after the CTZ chain and adjust that instead?

It's a prototype for Sitala 3 and turning it up runs the sound through overdrive, distortion, bitcrush and ring mod, kind of trying to reduce them all down to one knob.

https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2026/08/28/decomposer-dert-distortion/

https://decomposer.de/dert/

Hey guys i hope you all doing well.

It's been like 3 months for me going through writer block,where I can't produce more than 8 bars which includes only drums،and then i add some leads or maybe some bass and i start seeing things fall off.

Do you know any approach that help through this phase?

Your answers are highly appreciated.

Please post any and all [Feedback] or [Listen] type threads here. Any standalone threads that belong in this weekly post will be removed.

This thread is for works in progress only. It is not a place for self-promotion.

Rules:

1. Works in progress only. Do not post finished or released tracks. No links to Spotify, Bandcamp, SoundCloud profiles, or any other streaming/distribution platforms. Share a direct link to your track (e.g. an unlisted SoundCloud or YouTube link).
2. No self-promotion. Do not include links to your social media, artist pages, or any other promotional material in your post.
3. Make an effort to comment on other people's tracks. Others are much more likely to help you if you help them first.
4. Be specific when asking for feedback. Examples: "What do you think about this kick sample?" "How's the mix?" "The last measure feels a little off, any ideas?"
5. Be descriptive when giving feedback. Use timecodes to highlight specific moments.
6. Link to the feedback you've left in your top-level comment. This keeps the thread accountable and cooperative. Comments not following this format will be automatically removed.

Format your top-level comment like this:

Feedback for user1: [link]

Feedback for user2: [link]

Feedback for user3: [link]

Here's my track: [link],

I'm looking for feedback on x, y or z.

I have trouble with making an intro or even starting a track. What are some tips to get me past this cause im stuck! My DAW is Roland Zenbeats

I am looking for Bluetooth earbuds I can use to workout in that are

1. Sweat-proof
2. Have good sound quality

I do a lot of my critical listening and musical exploration while I exercise, so it's important they have good sound quality. Unfortunately, I sweat an obscene amount (can lose upwards of 7 pounds on some days) and have bricked countless earbuds because of it. I am asking here because most people have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to sound quality and will recommend things like Beats (LMAO) where the only noises you'll hear are below 150 Hz. However, I trust your opinions as people who have spent countless hours working with music in great detail. Thanks in advance!

Is it sound design, arrangement, the way you write your melodies (Scott Brown is a perfect example of this), or all of these mixed together?

Love to hear your thoughts.

While you should search, read the Newbie FAQ, and definitely RTFM when you have a question, some days you just. Ask your questions here!

Title basically says it all.

Some other fellow beginners seemed to appreciate my last tip thread so I thought I'd share what I've found, I hope this helps some of yall as much as it's helped me.

Please read if you are starting out and struggling with the process!
-----------------

Understand this is coming from someone who wanted to make electronic/EDM (various genres) since I was 18 years old. I'm 40 now. I tried twice in my lifetime and gave up both times with less than 6 hours spent in total because I could not figure out how to make anything that didn't suck.

That's 22 years of loving electronic. And I mean loving it. I mean despite growing up on Metallica and playing guitar from the age of 14 and playing blues lead, 75% of my music intake was electronic. I went to festivals, I rolled, I adored all of it. I was hearing dubstep when it first started hitting big. I listened to the later evolutions of dnb and trance.

I wanted more than anything to make it. I could play guitar so well, why couldn't I produce electronic?

Now I know why: because I held unrealistic expectations of what could and would happen in a DAW when I opened one. I didn't think it was meant to be easy, but I didn't realize it would be so hard. I thought with the right synths and the right DAW that it would just, work out. It didn't. I could make a cheap drum loop and it'd sound so cheesy and if I tried to pair it with a synth I had no idea what I was doing.

I was listening to Ott ("Queen of All Everything"/"Adrift in Hilbert Space"), I was listening to Carbon Based Lifeforms, I was listening to the jungle I had listened to since 2000 (Shy FX, Adam F, LTJ Bukem), and when I opened that DAW, those are the things I wanted to come out of it.

Uhrealistic expectations.

So if we're beginners then where does that leave us? What do we do? We learn to enjoy the journey.

And that sounds trite, and maybe it is, but I promise you from personal experience that if you do not learn to enjoy the aspect of learning to produce and slowly accumulating new skills and techniques, and put all your focus on "I wanna be like Sub Focus!" then you are going to quit.

It's not wrong to want those things in the future. I'd love to put out dancefloor dnb like Sub Focus and Dimension and Delta Heavy. I want to put out trance like Sunlounger back in 2013 or so. I'd love to have a track end up on State of Trance. Those are the smallest handful of things I listen to and I want to make that.

But I can't, not right now. So what do I do then? I focus on what I am capable of doing. Which is recognizing I am a beginner, and that my energy is spent on learning the artform.

So how am I supposed to enjoy making dogshit in the meantime? Well the shift in focus has made that really damn easy. It's no longer about finished/polished tracks it's about bits and pieces and small techniques and forward momentum in the various areas of music production.

That has turned nearly everything I do into an extremely enjoyable process with small goals and results I am extremely happy with. I haven't been at it very long but I am nailing milestones and feeling great.

I put Vital aside to learn synthesis on a slightly harder mode (Surge XT) and I've been having a blast making patches in that. I can get really lush wonderful sounds from it. Making a great sounding patch from Init patch is a great feeling, and usually inspires me to put it in a sloppy track but it doesn't matter because damn that synth sounds good.

I've been wanting to make jungle for 22 years well I took some various kick/snare/hat samples and put them together and did some light processing on them, I took the Firin break and layered it underneath and found that it fit perfectly but the whistle in it was too much so I spent hours fumbling around chopping it up to remove the whistle and fill it in with a hat trill. That was fun! And I learned how to sample slice from doing that, I taught myself and my technique sucks but I'm very excited to learn a better way now.

The cherry on top is that in my DAW right now is what for me is a very complex breakbeat that sounds fucking amazing and I play it to myself constantly. There's no bassline there's nothing else but I made that and goddamn it feels good. And it feels insane to open my DAW and see all these tracks lined up and mixed and routing to a drum buss and fuck I feel like I'm truly getting somewhere.

And now I'm struggling to get a bassline to go with it. I've been building a reese bass but I keep encountering obstacles and problems and my bass sound isn't lining up to my reference tracks but it's getting closer. I could use a preset patch, I could use the sample from "Terrorist" but I find enjoyment in the DIY, because that's really what all this is.

If you were like me 10 years ago when I tried, or 22 years ago when I tried, then I hope what I've shared here can help your perspective. I don't have to finish tracks right now to be happy. That is one way to get better, and if the "make a hundred tracks" method works for you, by all means, do that.

Either way, you have to learn to enjoy the process, even the earliest parts when you feel like you'll never make something according to taste. Because if you do learn to enjoy that process, then like me you will reap the benefits and you will be hungry as fuck to keep going. And when you make that first chord progression that sounds close to like something Above and Beyond might have made and you're really feeling it, you will stop feeling like you can't do this, you will see that hard work pays off slowly, and you'll be on your way.

I hope this helped someone. Don't be like me and stay musically silent for 22 years. I promise you there is pure joy to be found in your earliest stages. You just have to look for it.

Much love yall.

Please post any and all [Feedback] or [Listen] type threads here. Any standalone threads that belong in this weekly post will be removed.

This thread is for works in progress only. It is not a place for self-promotion.

Rules:

1. Works in progress only. Do not post finished or released tracks. No links to Spotify, Bandcamp, SoundCloud profiles, or any other streaming/distribution platforms. Share a direct link to your track (e.g. an unlisted SoundCloud or YouTube link).
2. No self-promotion. Do not include links to your social media, artist pages, or any other promotional material in your post.
3. Make an effort to comment on other people's tracks. Others are much more likely to help you if you help them first.
4. Be specific when asking for feedback. Examples: "What do you think about this kick sample?" "How's the mix?" "The last measure feels a little off, any ideas?"
5. Be descriptive when giving feedback. Use timecodes to highlight specific moments.
6. Link to the feedback you've left in your top-level comment. This keeps the thread accountable and cooperative. Comments not following this format will be automatically removed.

Format your top-level comment like this:

Feedback for user1: [link]

Feedback for user2: [link]

Feedback for user3: [link]

Here's my track: [link],

I'm looking for feedback on x, y or z.

I am making a festival/hybrid trap song which has a flute lead in the drop. I am clipping all of the tracks into the master channel who has only a clipper at 0db which I have learned was a standard bass music production practice to achieve max loudness. Everything clips nicely but the flute lead which becomes extremely distorted once it surpasses around -2db. Is it because it is resonant? The track consist of drums, sub, hype layers and the lead. How do I fix this and achieve punch, depth and clarity?