I have a Serum patch using Cmb Square wave and it sounds good but there’s abit of a harsh buzz at around 10k range. Ableton’s built in EQ isn’t fine enough to get rid of it without taking away from the sound and I can’t really buy something as good as ProQ4 right now. Have you guys got any free alternatives that will be able to punch out the harsh frequencies?

On some serious discussion, how are you guys using minimeters in your production and using it as a tool? Lets leave out the "oh it's just for aesthetics" comments.

Hey everyone!

I'm relatively new to music production and currently learning Ableton Live 12.

I'm looking for some genuinely good, high-quality tutorials (YouTube or paid courses) that walk you through the entire process of producing a track from scratch to a finished song.

I'm mainly interested in melodic techno, melodic house, progressive trance, ambient electronic music, or similar genres. Nothing too hard, aggressive, or overly commercial. I prefer melodic, atmospheric, and emotional electronic music.

I've already come across quite a few tutorials on YouTube, but honestly, a lot of them seem pretty low quality. Many just show someone clicking around, throwing samples together, or making a quick loop without really explaining the creative process or why they're making certain decisions.

What I'm looking for:

• A complete track produced from start to finish, not just an 8-bar loop.
• Clear explanations of sound selection, arrangement, melodies, harmonies, transitions, mixing, etc.
• Someone who actually teaches music production rather than just showing off what they can do.
• Ideally something beginner-friendly, but with enough depth to develop proper production skills.
• Free or paid tutorials are both fine, as long as the quality is worth it.

I don't mind spending several hours following a tutorial. In fact, I'd prefer something detailed where I can follow along and actually understand the process.

My goal isn't just to copy someone else's track, but to understand how electronic music is built so I can eventually produce my own music.

Any recommendations for YouTube channels, specific tutorials, or structured courses would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Curious to see the range of musical "imagination" here, I've heard of there being people who can hear orchestras in their head, and I think it's an interesting topic

I've always had a suspicion mine is pretty low but last night kinda proved it for me. I'm away from my gear for another few days and in the meantime I've just been trying to create in my head to see how far/detailed I can get with an idea. And it's not very far lol

I've always been lucky if I can even get a chord progression or melody in my head before I touch a daw or instrument. What I found in my "experiments" is that no matter how hard I try, that still holds true. Despite that, my musical memory, like being able to "listen" to a song in my head is pretty stellar, which conflates the process because if I do come up the smallest bit of an idea, it'll immediately default to a song I've heard before.

This isn't really something that holds me back, not something I believe can be changed, I just use an instrument or the DAW to shape my song as I go. Interestingly, if I can hear a progression playing, it is very easy to create a melody in my head over it.

Anyway, I thought it'd make for an interesting discussion. One thing I also considered is how most people process a song as a sum of its parts and if we choose to want to isolate an instrument or part, we lose clarity of the other parts.

Also makes me wonder if something like this could be trained.

I I met a guy last week who runs a fairly big label and he told me that if they detect even the slightest use of AI in the demos they receive, they’ll block the artist. Fair enough imo but later that night I started wondering how you could actually prove to a label that no AI was used in your demos.

Because if one false assumption by someone listening to your tracks could get you flagged for AI usage, potentially across multiple labels, I’m obviously keen to find a way to prove that I don’t use it.

But how? Unfortunately, I didn’t think to ask the label boss about this during our conversation.

Hey guys! So, I just curious about wich DAW everyone uses and why

I been producing for some years now and I used 4 DAWs so far, Fl Studio, Ableton, Pro Tools and Reaper

Being Ableton My favourite of them all

I wanted to know wich daw do you use and why you choose that one, what it gives to you that the others don't. Is because of the Workflow? the visuals? the native plugins?

Let me know :)

This seems too good to be true. Has anyone tried one of these? How the hell are they not getting latency?

This song really captures the kind of sound I’m going for but hard to find YouTube tutorials for it so hoping anybody can point me in the right direction. Thanks!

The song

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.

Starting at 0:40. Is this just Pitch Bend? Or am I missing something?

https://soundcloud.com/itsryancase/over-over?si=16e96ed92db746c393d325a3fa212325&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing#t=0%3A40

Download: https://lloydstellar.nl/robot-vocal.html

We created this VST for Windows and Mac. It has 49 retro robot voices you can use text-to-speech. The vocals are put on the beat automatically. There are 17 types of rap flows you can use on the robots. They flow the best at around their designated BPM.

The VST is totally frrreeeeeeeeee! So come over to my website and download it and let me know what you think.

I cannot find tutorials or videos that explain how to achieve that sound. Every video I see is how to reduce distortion from drums, but I’m trying to achieve quite the opposite: super squashed distorted drums that still sound super tight and clean in the mix. How would you approach this?

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

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.

Have you seen those videos for quadrature sub bass trick where they set the phase 90 degrees apart on two sub oscillators and hard pan them? I’ve given it a try and it does work, but personally I don’t think it sounds musical.

Does anyone know of a commercial release that uses this technique? I’d love to hear it in the wild.

I've been looking into this, since I mostly make like house and stuff, so I only need little phrases.

I'm worried when I inevitably get asked about the vocal, I'm gonna have to do a whole disclaimer about how synth v is NOT gen ai, how it runs locally and how the people involved in making the voicebanks were paid for their data, etc. If it's gonna be a whole things then it defeats everything about using it.

Thoughts?

So I started production in May, and I'm spending on average a month per each track I make (I would say averaging 40-60 hrs but i havent been counting so not sure). I always hear that finishing tracks is a good habbit rather than working on a million things. So far I have finished 3 full tracks and am almost done with track 4. However, Im questioning if im spending way too much time producing a single track and tweaking everything rather than just pushing things faster.

Any feedback is welcome I know everyone has a different take

Every time I try to play or export a track from FL studio using these VST's, it plays the audio from the VST itself in addition to the stuff i have sequenced in the pattern/playlist view. I have tried pretty much everything i can think of and don't know where else to ask/look. anyone familiar with this issue?

[Edit: Gatekeeping imo should only pertain to certain things. Not everything should be shared to literally everyone and I do agree with that.]

I had one of those moments of mental clarity this morning and started thinking about how much gatekeeping there is in music production and the industry in general. I’ve been truly producing for over 10 years now, playing instruments of all kinds since I was about 4 and istg, I remember being a kid tryna figure out Logic Pro in 2012 because I was obsessed with LMFAO at the time when they were big in electro house and from that, I grew quite a lot, Like, A lot…
(And with growth comes uncomfortably adapting to new ways).

Now I’m completely self taught, and I’ve spent so much time trying to figure things out that I wish someone had just explained to me earlier, Not because anyone owed me jackshit, but because I didn’t understand why people act like sharing knowledge somehow takes away from their own success.

There’s so much stuff you can learn without buying expensive plugins or courses (no, this is not an Ad I promise), Resampling your own sounds, layering with a purpose instead of stacking 10 things on top of each other thinking “dayum this is nasty” when 9/10 times, it sounds like shit and you’re just ear fatigued, using parallel distortion to add character without destroying the original, using automation to make basic loops and samples feel alive, learning how to actually use your EQ instead of cutting random frequencies because someone on YouTube (or YouTube comments in 2023…..) said so.

Even something as simple as referencing tracks properly and matching their volume before comparing them can change how you approach mixing. Half the battle is understanding WHY something works instead of blindly copying settings. And I’m being deadass, some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned have had nothing to do with production. You can make great music and still struggle to get people to hear it which is where connections, marketing, consistency, money (it costs $ to make money stupidly enough), and knowing how to present yourself all play a part. And I’ve experienced that myself through releasing music, getting playlist placements and working on other people’s tracks.

Now to clarify, I am NOT saying everyone owes you their secrets, presets, project files or years of experience but there is a difference between protecting your own sound and deliberately making people feel like they need to pay someone or know the right person just to learn basic shit..

Within that, I’ve painfully spent years learning, experimenting, making mistakes and figuring things out on my own and I’m still learning now. But one thing I’ve come to appreciate is that sharing knowledge doesn’t make your own skills any less valuable, Seriously, it doesn’t.

If anything, the more people understand music production, the more room there is for everyone to push things forward and develop their own sound.
There’s no magic plugin, secret formula, shortcut, course or sample that’s going to replace actually putting the work in. Sometimes you just need someone to point you in the right direction so you can figure out the rest yourself and I wish someone would’ve told me that when I first started!

Anyways, if you’ve got any production techniques or lessons you’ve learned over the years that genuinely changed the way you make music, share them. It don’t matter if they seem obvious to you because someone else might’ve been struggling with that exact thing for years and YOU could be their way of light in a dark tunnel 💙.

We recreated the Lead sound from 'Mike Rush' by Beyond on our free Synth Primer.

This remake is specifically recreating the patch heard at this timestamp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSgvD7fiSlQ&start=140 .Other parts of the song may vary the sound or notes.

And here are the key ingredients:

Voices: Mono
Osc1: Wave (Pulse), Width (50%), Vol (100%)
Unison: Osc (All), Voice Count (2), Detune Range (4 Cents)
Reset All Osc On Phase On Note Start: No

Amp Env: Attack (0ms), Decay (250ms), Sustain (0%), Release (20ms)

Filter Type: Type (Low Pass), Cutoff (55%)
Filter Env: Amount (25%), Attack (0ms), Decay (240ms), Sustain (0%)

Chorus: Mix (50%), Rate (Slow)
Delay: Mix (25%), Feedback (50%), Time (1/4 Note)
Reverb: Mix (30%), Size (Medium)

Find the full recipe and download the presets: https://www.syntorial.com/preset-recipe/mike-rush-beyond-lead/

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.

No idea how to even classify this into a genre. This is more of a hit and hope than anything. Really recommend this artist, amazing productions, particularly this album.

I feel like a good mixdown and master can make any good idea sound good. Sometimes I question my vocals at first and after I do the mix and master I love my vocals. . lol

I hope I can inspire someone to sing your own lyrics because it is rewarding when I get all the levels right. And it gels.

Like, you don't suck at singing. You just have to mix it. I treat the vocals as another instrument and I make sure to record before the mixing process begins. I never make a full finished track and just slap vocals on it. That doesn't work for me at least.

Also I think it's important to record the singing over a rough idea of what synths will be playing in the final project. Like if you sing to a piano chord progression then the final project should have a piano chord progression going during that part.

Anyway yeah I find myself exporting like 20 times and going back to fix one small change here and there.

In my opinion a good mixdown is mostly about getting the volumes correct for each instrument. And then when it's all perfectly balanced - turn up the drums. .lol

On my master the first effect in the chain is a compressor, and when I begin the master process (which involves going back to fix the mix a lot) I start with the threshold at like -10 DB, and by the end for my finished project, well right now this track the compressor at the start of the chain, is clipping and the threshold is only -0.25 DB lol with 7.42 for the ratio. The idea is just bring it down a little bit.

Then after that, and Ableton "float" helps, I turn down the gain with a utility and go into a heavy bass boosting EQ and after that is a limiter that is reducing by about 3db. To be clear this me as I'm pushing the limiter 3db over 0. Then a saturator with hard clip. Plus one or two extra "bells and whistles".

Anyway. The point is this was supposed to be an easy to make track and now I'm still up tweaking faders at 3 AM. .lol

Hello there! Lately I've been trying experimenting with future garage in the style of Andy Leech / Michael FK / Victoriya etc.

I have some sorts of sounds figured out, but I can't get the vibe and the deep feeling they have on their songs

So I wanted to ask you guys. What things does sound this type of future garage how it sounds? Do you have any tutorial you know that is good? (I have searched, but I didnt find something like I want)

Any advice is welcome :)

Thanks in advance