Music Production: How to Make Professional Tech House Track in 2023

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is macro-level. I'm a professional DJ, a music producer. And this is my class where I'm going to show you how exactly I made number one selling record of mine. I'm going to share many of my secrets and production techniques. So you can learn from them and implement them in your own production. If you know your digital audio workstation pretty well, but always struggled to finish tracks. And this class is for you. If you follow along the steps outlined in this class, I guarantee you'll finish more music. You will learn some cool new techniques along the way. I'm excited to share my start to finish process of music creation with you. You will learn how to build a unique kick drum from scratch, how to construct your own original Trump's without using a single loop, we will create a groovy bouncy baseline from scratch IN operator layer, a massive hook synth line using multiple soft synth instruments. And I'm going to show you a really cool resampling technique that I've been using for years and all of my tracks to make them sound more original. Of course, we will drop a vocal sample and process it. Once we have all elements in a song, I will show you the easiest way to arrange it. I will teach you how to effectively use grouping and mixed groups of similar frequencies. And at the end, I will show you how I mastered the track to get it ready to be played in a club. I'm going to let you in my brain so I know what goes through my head. When I make certain production decision. One thing I want to advise before we begin the class is to not copy my project like for like, make your own one, make your own music. I guarantee you will learn a lot quicker and a lot more if you would make your own tune. Used techniques and steps outlined in this class, but use them in your own way. So if you're ready to take your music production to the next level and press play on that next video. And let's get started. 2. Kick: Hello, welcome to the class. And without further ado, let's start. We're going to set the temple to 126. As you can see, I've got one midi track here, and there's absolutely nothing on the master channel. So we're going to start with selecting an instance of Serum. Going to set a loop to 4 bar. Make a midi clip. Go to G is zero. And just add a note, make that clip one beat. Extend that to four. And also extend the node. We can adjust that later. Basically, that is controlling the length of your cake. That's the sound we haven't at the moment. So let's go back to theorem. Going to have to select the analog DB sign straight away, go into global and turn on the quality times four if your computer allows that. But that's basically the best sound quality of theorem. Now let's check how it sounds. Oh wait, that's for some reason it went back to 1 bar. So let's change that back to one beat. Let's just do it manually. We can to decrease that to one beat, as you can see, 01. So then move this to one-sixteenth. Here we go. That's the kick pattern. Can type kick in here. I prefer caps just to be able to see a bit better. Kick. Copy that to this media pattern, make it so it loops. And now let's go back again to serum. I also like to put a spectrum analyzer just to be able to see the spectrum of the sound. Let's go and turn this into a kick. So straight away, we're going to decreased sustained tour in there. And then also decay to around 300 something. And definitely increased release to around there. To make it sound like it's a kick, we need to modulate the pitch. So that's going to be our amplitude envelope and we're going to use LFO to modulate the pitch. So I'm going to turn it into an envelope and do BPM, an anchor. So we can really control the speed of the envelope, put it to 1.3 hz, add a dot here and bring it to run here. Now, go into metrics and on the destination select global master tuning, and on the source select LFO one and put it to around 29, 30. Now you can basically play with this to find perfect tone for your cake. Oh yeah, make sure it's turned on to one way. Can increase some volume. As you can see by moving this envelope. You can create a whole spectrum of different sounding kicks. Nice and easy. Obviously, you can go into a Effects section and spice it up with like saturation and all sorts of that. But I'm not gonna do that. I'm going to be done with this low end of the cake. I'm going to do next is create another midi track, color it the same way, and name it. Top and actually rename this to bottom. So there are no That them to channels are my kick. I'm also going to group it and name it kick. All that is just purely to be able to stay more organized and find your elements easily, especially when you're opening old projects that you've worked on years ago. So we're just going to copy this pattern into a top, so rename it. So we know that's the topless, the bottom. And there's a whole group. Alright, so I've got this drum rack that I've prepared and I'm just going to go and drag it into the project. So this is basically a, an instance of a sampler and it's got all these essential parameters mapped into macro knobs. So I'm just copied the drum rack from here onto this top layer. And I'm going to go back to my current project. I've got a whole bunch of samples that I'm going to be using throughout this class to create various elements. So for this top layer of the cake, only use this sound here. And as you can see, now I've got a full control over attack, sustained release, or really easily accessible to while also like to do is straightaway drop in a utility at the end of the drum rack and select one of the channels to make sure that the kick is mono. And there's no, any weird phasing going on. I'm just going to select left channel. We also need to go into the midi and change it onto a kick to get the sound. So the moment is way too long. All I want is this initial transient high-frequency information. I don't want any of that low frequency information. So I'm just going to decrease the sustain completely, decrease the release to about 60 and decay to taste. So I'm going to play and just decrease it. See what sounds best. That's way too much. Maybe, maybe like that. Let's hear it in a context with the low-end. Okay, that's good. Let's see if we can mix it a little bit better of a EQ here. Like I said, I don't want any low frequency information here, so I'm just going to locate everything that I don't need. So I'm just cutting the low-end rumble. And it's a bit too, too bright at the end here. So I'm going to show you a little bit as well. Like so. Yeah, that sounds nice. So we can a bit. Yeah. Much better. I'm going to put a little widening on top of that. It may not make any sense to you to make the kick mono first and then to widen it. But this is just how I do it. The top player should be wider than the bottom layer, just to make kick, stand out a little bit more. But you definitely should make the bottom layer mono 100%, because everything on the sublevel should be mono to translate really well in the clubs systems. Just going to increase the white and see how it sounds. If you go too much, it doesn't sound good. Around there is fine. And if we take this of that off, you can hear a difference. Like it's definitely wide sounding kick before you apply utility. And then up to utility, it's just left channel, which means it's mono. And then when you widen just one channel, rather than wiring both of the channels, you essentially make it less likely to face. With that said, let me move this away. And let's, let's hear the difference with them to on and off. So that's width. That way. It's more controlled and like I said, less likely to face. So let's clean up that bottom end as well. Dropping an EQ, going to have a 30 hz cut. And I just don't want any high information from the low-end of the cake crossing to the high-end. So they kinda like stay away from each other. Let me show you, which just make the dequeue less harsh, less abrupt, more pleasant sounding if you will. So all I'm doing is basically removing all that very high-end, just keeping it nice and low. Also this is a bit jumping out to me. So I'm going to do is just drop a little dog here and just move it down a bit toward it sounds nice. Even by using the queue, you can shape your kick quite significantly. So we can add more low end if you boost around this area. She can sound like. But I think we're gonna do that by applying some by applying some distortion. Change the Q. Oh yeah, that sounds cool. So just before and after sounds much more smoother. Now, I don't really need this drum rack to be honest, delete that channel. And whenever I need the new drum rack, I'm just going to copy this drum rack from the top layer and just swap the sample that's right here. Now that we grouped our kick here, we can apply some processing into both of the layers to glue them together. First thing I want to put in is a saturation. Let's put SAT and onto it, keep it warm tape like this algorithm, start increasing the drive. It's quite harsh. Or we can do is just add a bit of EQ before the Saturn. Like I did before. I said I'm not going to do it, but I'm actually gonna do, I'm gonna bring out bit of that low-end, cheap, very helpful thing. You can turn this on and off. Here in Q3 is this keyboard button, which gives you this piano roll from where you can select precisely which note you boosting, and that node corresponds to the precise frequency of that note. It's really good if you're trying to boost specific note rather than frequency. So I'm trying to boost around G, some reason this says G1, but since piano row says G zero, no idea why it's doing that, but this one is actually GZ in Ableton has quite a nice, Let's turn this harsh area down a bit. It's probably way too loud. Let me see. Let's have the bottom kick play around -12 to control volumes at the source. So I'm going to decrease the master volume on the serum for the kick. Okay. That's good. See what we can do with the top layer. That's cool. Let's put the spectrum analyzer at the end of the kick. See how it looks like. Quite like the way it sounds. Let's see where else we can do. Maybe we can put something like kick tweak at the end of this. That's like a compressor slash. Saturate for cakes is quite cool for like other elements of the track, even though it says kick in its name, but feel free to use it on other elements, like the drums are vocal, maybe to add some character to the sound. Tone it down a bit. They all sound slightly different. I mean, it's easier to hear the effect when it's turned on like that. This is quite serious. One is his work or for maybe shave off a little more on high-end. Let's see what saturation does. Yeah, maybe that was a little bit too much. You know what, We can turn it back to where it was around 79. And instead, just blend it in, leave that like that but use mixed nope. To mix it like half and half e.g. Oh, yeah. Way better. Without saturation. And that's when saturation. So when it was all the way up to much yeah. Like that. That's obviously you can play as much as you want with it, but I'm pretty happy with the way that sounds. So I'm gonna see you in the next lesson where we're going to add some more drums. 3. Drums And Percussions (Part 1): Welcome back to lesson two, where we're going to add some drums. Like I said, I'm going to be using this drum rack. So I'm just going to copy it, going to insert new midi track. I'm going to color it to the color I like my drums to be in. So I'm going to rename this as well, clap and then paste my drum rack in here. I'm gonna go back to the sample folder and I'm going to select Serum clap, which I made earlier. Next step, I'm going to place this marker. This is the start of the sample marker, right at the beginning of the samples. Sometimes when the sample is recorded in a lower volumes, it's quite handy to increase this. This isn't the volume, this is just the visual Zoom features so you can zoom in so you can see it a little bit easier. The ideal place to place this marker is at zero-point crossing, where the waveform crosses zero line. So around there should be fine, can zoom back the way it was. And now I want this sample to start right away. So I'm going to decrease the attack, increase the cake because I want it to sound for most of the duration. I'm going to increase to around there, like so. And then, you know what, I actually want it to sound completely all the way through. So I'm going to increase the sustained. So the entire sample will play whenever the midi information will pass through this drum rack also can increase a little bit of release, create new media clip, and insert a clap in here, like so. Make it so loops and increase it. So it hits every second beat. Just like that. We don't need this view at the moment, so we can just turn it off, make it a little bit cleaner. Obviously, doesn't sound like a clap at the moment because basically what this is is just a bunch of noise. It was a noise generator that I've sampled from serum. And to make it sound like clap, you need to apply some effects. So the first thing I'm gonna do is apply this saturation. We can increase it and start listening. Also good idea to decrease the volume straight away here, just in case it's way too loud. Which saturates is normally do make things louder. Quite good idea to soft clip. It. Just doesn't clip. I don't like this color. And to compensate for the volume increase, which is going to reduce the output. Let's change the curve to medium. Shift makes things punchier, just trying to match this really as good. Another thing that can make your drums bunch here is this thrombus got new stuff, new plugin from Ableton. I'm normally decreasing this saturation down, but increasing the transients quite a lot. If I need some punch to my drums, instantly sounds much better. What it does is just adds the trends into your sound. This dump is quite cool as well. Check it out. If you increase, it, sounds like it's almost controls the character of the sound. Almost like a filter. See if we can maybe spot it in the spectrum. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a filter but very kinda like gentle filter and check this out by just adding those two plugins onto a noise will make it sound like that. Next thing we're gonna do is remove unnecessary low-end. And please wherever you do, always compare it before and after. Gain staging is a real thing. Maybe we can decrease that by about one. This will. I don't like the way it's clipping here, so I'm going to reduce this to about four dB. So now that we don't clip here, we're ready to move on. Quiet. Don't like this peak here. Yeah, that's much better. Alright, next step. Another midi channel. You know what we can maybe even just duplicate that clap. Make sure this clip is also named appropriately, like so. Now this next sound I'm going to add is this vinyl snare. And I think I want it to sound once every 4 bar. So I'm just going to consolidate this clip. So it's a two bar loop. Yeah, this is a four-bar loop here. So what we're gonna do is just increase this to 8 bar, start with bar nine. In terms of arrangement, we're going to move in aid bar sections. So 8 bar a boss. We're going to play some markers and make our structure like this. So I'm going to just move everything cross to start from bar nine. You don't have to do this is just me. I like to work that way. And I'm going to, whoops, what happened with six clap? Let's name this clap command, copy command. We clap. And then amend a little bit, consolidate the delete all this information here. Start fresh. So that's our vinyl snare channel. Remove all those effects and all EQ, go back into a sample selection of God, this quiet cool sample. I'm going to use again attack at zero. I want it quiet punches so sustained to zero as well. And then decay is, we're going to have maybe like 400 milliseconds. Let's find out, let's put some media information in and find out how it sounds. Set the grading to one-sixteenth. And like I said, I wanted to have this pattern once every four bar. So I'm going to place the midi notes like so and loop it. So it's like once every 4 bar with the decay, you basically control how long did the sample place for. But only if the sustain is decreased. If sustain is all the way, it will play for the duration of the midi note. So I quite like the way the sounds. Again, I want to make it mono. Let's see which channel sounds, but I'm really liking the right channel. Even from looking at this waveform, you can already tell that the left channel and right channel, they sound different, they look different. So next thing we're going to add some compression because for one more beef out of it, increased ratio. So it's like it's almost like limiter, knee to zero. Maybe increase it and then start from the top. Decrease the release, releases. How long it takes for compressor to go back to zero. And then out again. I'm just going to compensate manually as per usual, which is going to see how we can clean this up nice and quickly without affecting its sound. Let's move on. At this stage, we can probably go and group tracks like that Command G and then rename it. Hi, my idea with this is I'm going to have three different groups for high and low frequencies, which I'm going to be mixing separately to achieve the clean and mixdown. I'm briefly touching on this just so you know why I'm naming this group high. So let's continue adding more elements. Another midi track, and it makes our life easier because when you create another midi track in a group gets assigned to the same color, which is handy. So you can just go back and copy the drum rack paste in the new channel. And we've got clean channel with an EQ at the end and spectrum. So next thing I want to add is more snares. So this one, I want to be the same every BAR command Shift M to create a midi clip. I'm going to place media nodes like so. Increase it and go back to sample folder, select a different sample. This one is really cool. Going to increase attack on this one because it's a bit too punchy to my taste. Let's decrease the volume straight away. Yeah, like that. And then increase the TK a little bit. So they're almost like a call and response question and an answer, although it doesn't happen here, but it's on purpose because we're going to have some other sounds occupying this area. So it's gonna be kinda like dancing around each other. One cool trick I like to do to make my sounds less robotic sounding is to add this random effect. It's a media effect that basically randomizes velocity of each individual midi note. So let's check this out. If you increase this random. As you can hear, each sound is either quieter or allow the previous one, and it's always random. The more you increase this random, the more you widen difference between the loudest hit and the quietest. So in terms of processing, Let's just slam decapitate on that. Let's hear how this sounds. I quite like that little bit distorted sounding thing. Rename this snare, copy that to the midi clip. So now we've got this little pattern that's going on. Also, let's clean this up a bit. Nice. Let's just adjust volume. Yeah, That sounds good. I'm gonna be doing a bit of mixing as I'm going. And then we'll be doing proper look at all the elements in a mixing session. Alright, I think it's about time to add our hi-hat. So I'm going to add new midi track. As per usual, copy the drum rack onto new track, rename it open hi-hat, add a media clip, decrease the length of it. So we can add a high hat on upbeat, go back into the sample library and select the sound. We're starting to shape our beat into something at this stage That's decrease attack. Alright, let's start processing. Like I said, quite cool trick is to use logins are not meant to be used in certain situations, which is this kick tweak. Let's use it on this high hat. Slap it on and find the decent setting for yeah, nice, uncompressed bit too loud. You remember, we're going to be adding more layers. It's good habit to turn things down just to be able to stock more or less. One other trick I want to show you is widening technique by utilizing ozone imager. So why normally do here is I hit steroids and set it to around 7.5 milliseconds, then select the band, crank up the width of this band to quite high, and then mode select first. And then to find the frequency range that I want to widen. So it doesn't create any phase issues. There's a quick before and after foo. So it's clipping here at the end. Here. So we can just turn it down like so and then turn up. All right, That sounds good. In terms of processing, that's really all we can do now is pull little bit of EQ at the end, change the the cube. So it's like less deep of a curve. I find 12.24 the most pleasant values. This super high peak one a team down. Yeah, like so. This checkout before and after. Yes, much better to double this layer up, create another midi channel. But let's get creative this time. Instead of using sample, we're going to use silent, initialize the patch and you use noise oscillator. Used to noise oscillator, keep re-trigger on pan, one left, one right. Make sure one is on the one side of the stereo spectrum and one is on the other side that stereo spectrum copied the pattern denotes rename this silent hi-hat copy that renamed the middle clip. Let's turn this down just to protect our ears. Also, don't forget to crank up the voicing to one. So we want this to have at least one voice. Let's solo this. Let's bring this down. So if you don't do the painting, it's right in the middle pan. It creates this super wide high hat. Let's shape the envelope for this. Crank up the decay. We don't want any sustained and then we want some relief. Basically replicating the same envelope as we've got here on the hi-hat. As you can hear, it's exactly the same, but obviously it doesn't sound any good at the moment, but it's really easy to fix. The only thing you have to do is really select the right frequencies. So the moment it's playing throughout the whole spectrum, just remove everything that we don't want. Maybe turn it down so it doesn't clip. Gain staging again. Very, very, very good practice. So you don't clip at any point of your signal chain starting from the source. Make sure you don't clip on the output of the source. Make sure you don't click on the output of the EQ. Make sure you don't clip on the channel level. And as a rule of thumb to equality mix really. From there you can go and tweak. Let's hear without it. It's just adds that extra width, extra high intensity, high-frequency sound to fill in our main hi-hat and add a bit of character to that. Let's continue adding more layers onto our drums croup, going to take the drum rack as before, copy and paste it, create a midi clip, make sure it's 1 bar, extended all the way to 8 bar. Add some nodes like so copy this random, I want a bit of movement on this rim I'm going to create, let's rename it rim copy, paste here, and then go back to our projects samples and use a room sound like so. Let's turn it down. Let's make some adjustments, sustain all the way up. At this point really we can add some groove to our, our drums. So go into the midi clip and in grooves, click that little circular arrow button and find the groove you like, I like swing 16, 64. This is how it sounds and we're just adding that into the groove pool then in the middle clip, which is selecting that groove that we added to this group pool. We can close that. We don't need that anymore. Let's hear. Width. That's without. And we can apply that groove to whichever midi clips we want. I normally apply that to every single one that's got 16th. Everything does go like 16th pattern will be affected by the group. Let's hear how this sounds now. That's without. And that's where maybe 64 is a bit too much. Check this one out. Yeah, it's a little bit less swing. Let's add some processing to our rim. So first things first, I'm going to use utility to select the channel because it's quite stereo. I wanted to translate and every system really well. So if I'm going to make a mono, yeah, I quite like direct channel. Let's get rid of the low frequencies. Like that, quite like that. Now, I want to add extra movement to this sound. I'm gonna do by using LFO Tool. Select the shape sign. I'm going to use pan. I'm going to set it to 1 bar. The moment It's also applying a volume modulation. So let's undo that and only use panning. It's just shifting phase of this curve, basically another way of just moving curve along the axis. Yeah, just like that. Let's continue adding more layers. Add another midi channel. I'm big fan of using rems and snares in my tracks. So I'm going to add another room sound. If you notice every channel and every sound is occupying the empty spaces, sometimes they overlap, but they rarely overlap with the sounds of the same spectrum is a little bit like painting. So consider every single layer of your track is a different color. And by applying that color into empty spaces on the canvas, you kinda painting the picture, the whole image. So that's how I like to think about the process. Making music. Or next rim shot, I'm going to use this one here. That one, make a midi clip that's 2 bar long, turned a gradation to one-sixteenth and add a midi note right at the end of that midi clip. Stretch it out and make sure it's looping. Here it sounds. Let's turn it down as that quite cool field to our drum loop. Let's rename this room shot, copy, paste or something. Notice this hasn't been titled yet. Let's do it. Okay, That's much better. Keep you organized. Again, use utility to control the sterile field. Left channel is stronger, I think it mono anyway, but just to be safe, Just roughly mixing as I'm going solo high frequencies. I just want to solo that and work directly on that top loop. 4. Drums And Percussions (Part 2): Let's continue adding layers. We've got a few layers more to add. So let's not waste any time and keep moving. I'm going to add another drum channel from there, select a different sample. This is the one I want to use to create even more groove. Make a one-bar loop. Once again, I'll make sure it's looping, make sure it's in 16th. Drop a pattern like this. During this down. Here, we need to shape the sound. So I wanted just to take a little bit rather than play whole thing. Yeah, it looks so. Let's copy this here as well. Quite like left channel. Let's add some widening. Same again. But just make the whole thing wide. This sample has got lots of low frequencies, so we're going to cut them off. Maybe I've cut a bit too much like that. Let's rename this 16th closed copy paste. Let's move on and other media channel, another drum rack adjusted some levels to make it more cohesive is add a shaker. This one, sustain all the way up. And let's create a midi clip. We can just drop couple here. Like so, rename this shaker attack to zero, released to where it was, make it mono. Mean it sounds quite nice there as well. But I like to be in control of everything that my layer is doing. I'm going to get rid of the low frequencies also to the last couple of layers, we've added what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna select the More than Shift Tab and apply swing to all midi clips. So now they've got groove applied to them. Yes, much better, shaker, quite intense at the moment, I want to add side-chain preset here. I'm going to tweak it a bit, take the volume all the way down, and then control it with this volume knob. That's ducking. Every time the kick plays. If you start decreasing that to let some of that sound through that on and off that that's consistent. So if you turn it on, it kind of bounces back and up and down. Just to create that extra movement. I hope you can pick it up on an off. I'm also going to just take this widening copy here. That's without. And that's nice and wide, we want all the super high frequencies and y to occupy our stereo field. Also going to go and add some random, just copy that random onto other channels. Like, so. Like that, this pattern is super repetitive. You can see repeats every beat, but by adding little bits like this throughout the chain, this random media effect plus LFO as a side chain, this creates some consistent movement throughout the sound, and it makes it less static. Let's continue filling in our drumbeat, going to copy both straight away like that. And then this channel, I'm going to create a two-bar media loop, make it one eighth, and add a midi note in here. Go back to our sample library, and I want to select this open hi-hat. This one here. I believe that's a real symbol. So this will add character, a bit of realism to our track. So sustain all the way up, which is good on the sound to play throughout its hear how it sounds. Let's turn it down. I like the way this beat is shaping up. So I'm going to select one or the other channel. As per usual. I quite liked the left channel. Let's rename this open. Let's get rid of some low frequencies like that and add some movement at that as well. Select the sine wave, removed the volume modulation, and add some padding around 60% certain to one-fourth. So what this does, it just goes from the left ear to right here. Every time we place, Let's hear without it. It's just dead in the middle. With it. It's got some movement That's slides from right to left the air. Let's keep adding layers. I'm keen to add another rim. Let's just copy this and add it onto our new channel. Go back to sound library. Of course, this electric rim shot, the sample starts quite late. So we're going to have to bring this star of a sample marker wrote at the beginning of the sample. Let's create 1 bar midi clip. Extend it like that and put some notes like so. Listen. Let's solo the drums again. The moment is quite loud. Let's bring it down a bit. Also. It doesn't sound quite nice, but the reason is it doesn't have any swing applied to it. Once you apply the swing, it will almost like blend in with the rest of the beat. Checks out. How good is that? Rename this electronic Rim. Yeah, I like that. Nice. I love the look the way it sounds. I don t feel it needs any processing apart from just cleaning up nice and quick. Let's move on. Create another media channel as before, copy, nice and quick. Select a different sample. Add 1 bar loop, put some notes in just so we can hear what's going on. Listen. Just as extra groove, extra complexity to our drumbeat sounds like a pipe to me, it's called this pipe is go back to the device and shape it. Yeah, nice input cost of going to EQ. It sounds like this. It helps to tune them. So this is playing G-sharp. That's where I've got these tuning, these tunes, incense and these tunes in semitones. So I just adjusted so it's dead on G-sharp and I'm just going to go minus one semitone. And now this is plain same key as our kick. The trumps that have some tonality to them sometimes helps to tune them. Not always. I wouldn't suggest tune in every single drum here because if it sounds good, it sounds good, even if it's out of tune. You know what I mean? Let's keep moving. Let's add another layer. I want to add a ride. Let's not forget to add swing to a pipe. So with this one, I want to add, right, so let's go back to our sample library. It's a good old, nine or nine, right? So for this one it's just going to copy hi-hat pattern. I want it long, so I'm going to increase the release, increase the k. The main thing to shape it would be EQ because there's a lot of low frequencies. Let's hear how it sounds in a context. There's a whole bunch of resonant frequencies and this sounds, so this is quite cool to use the special EQ, it's called two. So I'm going to do is flat start this completely flat, going too low cut, similar to what we've done here in Pro Q. So it doesn't affect any low frequencies. And then the rest of it going to increase the depth until it sounds nice. With the sharpness you control the sharpness of the peaks. We've got a lot of really sharp peaks here. So increasing of sharpness is only benefiting those on an author. Obviously it's reduced volume, so I'm going to increase it back and it's a way more pleasant sounding ride cymbal. Before. And after. Much better. I want to add some reverb just to blur it a little bit about how a room works really well for this, I'm going to mix 5050. By clicking this, you can lock the dry wet and even if you select different preset, who will maintain that ratio. So I'm going to select small ambience. This is quite dry, doesn't have any character, but once you apply a small amount of reverb, check this out. It widens. At the same time. It adds some character in depth. Let's rename this Ride or Sit for the processing of that one. Let's move on a couple more layers in drums, and then we move on to the processing, the group as a whole. So this one is going to be a club row. I want this to be the entire aid bars. And this will be the first midi clip that I'm going to have. And once we move onto the arrangement, we're going to go into each individual clip and change the midi pattern. So every 8 bar of clubs will be different to the previous 8 bar. So for this one we draw a pretty simple. Drum pattern like that. And let's go and select the sample. This one, decrease the attack on it. Nice and punchy. Yeah, that's quite cool. A little bit of cleaning up. Also we can add swing to this. One other thing we can is obviously this random. We're going to just duplicate this club parole and use a different sound. We're going to use nine or nine snare. And we delete that. Delete all this. Make a simple pattern like that. Just make sure it's named correctly. Go back to the sample library and select this. Nine are nice. They're obviously it's way too high. We can it doesn't sound right to me. Try and tune this. Oh yeah. Clap role is changed as well because we copied the same drum rack. So we're going to undo all these tuning. Much bare. Same here. Let's start from scratch. Let's see which node That should be. Okay. Yeah, don't really need any processing on this sound because it's quite intense as well. And we're going to process the whole group together. Literally couple more sounds to add, which is crash, rename crash. So what we're doing is building our palette of sounds that we can then arrange into a whole song, copy that as well. So eight bar loop, eight byte chunk rather, and then make a huge long note of 4 bar, rename this brush, go into our sample lab row. Let's copy the drum rack. Also can copy this random. Yeah, that's just going to add a variety. This is very static, right? And if you add that, especially, especially if you increase, it looks quite like that. Let's increase on that clap as well. It's definitely adding some dynamic to things like snare Roles, click Browse. Quite a good technique to do with crash. It's that one I want to choose. Let's increase the Decay. Let's turn this down. First of all. Really, I want it to sound all the way. Yep. So let's just remove unnecessary frequencies. Okay, 12. Yeah, it looks like that. So what I'm going to use is this delay echo plugin, select one-fourth, bring that back down. Use ping pong and feedback quite high. Change these two nodes. Yeah, just so it bounces left and right like that. Cocoa. And let's put some reverb as well. Low cut around there. Pretty late to zero or as low as it goes. Decay time 15 s, quality on high removes spin. Around 50 per cent is hear how it sounds. Yeah, just adds extra depth and blurs, everything. Blows. The decay law is the echo blurs the actual crushed sounds. So kinda like blends everything together. And that's it for that one extra layer I want to add. And I'm going to explain how, how I made it when we move on to the sense lesson, where I'm going to show you how I use resampling to sample already existing sound to create new and exciting sound. So I'm going to use one or the sounds over sampled earlier just to add the extra groove, go back to sample library. So this is the sound I want to use, going to place it in, going to decrease the volume. Let's just hear how it sounds at the moment. Little bit extended leg. So make sure it's the same color. So this one, to make it more like percussive sound, I'm going to use this Beats algorithm selected to forwards only and decrease this amount to where it sounds decent. Also select this 16th. Maybe. Trends in sounded a bit better. Let's hear it in the context. Shape it, shave off some of the low frequencies. Like that. I want to add some movement to the sound. So I'm going to use three different LFOs. One, I'm going to add side-chain as before, but not all the way. Like so. Then I'm going to use different LFO to remove the last part of the sound. So I'm going to select flood 100. So we'll play all the way until I remove that last part shoots up. So this one is just removes that last note. I could have done it on the sample level like that, but you would require me to do it every half a beat. I don't wanna do that. This is much quicker way. So another one of LFOs, I want to add some extra movement with a sine wave and select it to 1 s, like half a bar, and some volume automation modulation. So like if you remove all these and then bring them back in, adds an extra groove. And let's bring this back into the mix. Let's remove it. Feels empty. Maybe the crash could be a bit louder. Now I've got all my drum elements in a group. I can process them simultaneously. Let's use thrombus, one of my favorite things in Ableton, don't share this with anyone. Just dropping this thrombus and doing absolutely nothing increases the excitement of the sound. Quite cool. So I'm going to use compressor. I'm going to trim ten dB or so. Let's just blend it in. Not use like 100% dry wet. Increase transient, tiny bit, like literally tiny bit. And let's not damp anything we want high frequencies to still come through. It increases the loudness quite a lot. So we're going to have to compensate for that gain staging once again. And now, well enough with the correct gain. Let's add some crunch. See how this sounds. So much character with this one. I love the way this sounds. Let's add more character saturation. Pretty cool plugin. So this one is, we're going to use rotten drum machine and use it really, really suddenly. This is quite a lot. Just use a tiny little bit to add even more character to the sound, more compression. So I'm going to use Google compressor, set it to auto release, quick attack, soft clip, and start decreasing the threshold until it starts to bite. Then to utilize the clip, you have to crank up this makeup, but then it increases in volume. So what you're going to have to do is group these into a audio rack and add a utility of two that because it's going to increase the volume because you use a makeup gain. So to compensate for that, you just decrease the volume here and just make sure that the input level is the same as the output level. And the compressor is ticking around clip areas. So it's shaving peaks off? Yeah. Like solely on and off. Yeah. We just compressing it, making sure that there's no sudden peaks coming through. There's just add one final EQ to make sure no low frequencies coming through. I like to do that on the group level as the last plugin to make sure that the output of the group is a clean signal. Make sure you don't overdo it and play it altogether. Because if you overdo it, you end up ruining the whole sound. Let me demonstrate that to you. That's way too much. Let's put it together with the kick here, how it sounds. Yeah. I'm happy with that. In the next lesson, we're going to move on to creating a base, which is my favorite thing to make. And I'm excited for this. So thank you and see you in the next lesson. 5. Bass: Hello, Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to be creating a baseline. This is definitely one of my favorite things to create when I'm making music. And I think whenever I get cake and base, right, then the rest just falls in quite easily. So we've got our beat going on. It's a pretty good foundation for our baseline to go around. So what I'm going to do is create a midi channel, place it outside the Kick group like that, color it differently and rename it. So now it's base, group this straight away. Rename this low. So you're probably starting to get an idea. So I'm going to have a couple of major groups which has low, high and made vocal, which is going to be separate in this bass track, I'm going to be using a operator, one of my favorite sense of all time for making baselines. There's many ways you can create baselines. I'm going to show you the one I like lot. So let's just click on the 16th. That's just a little bit easier to draw. What we're doing is we're just drawing in harmonics like this. And by doing so, you can already see how the waveform shapes from the sine wave to whatever you prefer. So if you've got one harmonic like this is going to be just pure sine wave. Once you add another one, it creates different wave form. And the more you add, the more different the sound becomes. Let me show you. So let's create a one-bar loop. Let's go down to a base register. I think we're going to just solo the low. So it got kicked and bass playing and we start drawing in notes. Lower it down. Make sure it's looping. Don't follow this. We can select the scale. So, oh yeah, the groove is also a good idea to just grew straight in. And let's, let's make this June in a minor. Once you've got a baseline going on, which can go back into operator and shape the sound. Let's hear how adding more harmonics or removing harmonics will change the sound. Just have fun for house with this. What I am going to do is I'm going to have, have it like this. So I'm going to remove the filter altogether. Basically, our sound going to increase released to like 120. And straight away. I want to shape this with AQ. Like so. Let's increase the tone and volume. Let's hear how it sounds on its own. I prefer creating baselines with one layer if I can. Sometimes you just need to add extra high frequencies, so make it out of couple of layers. But if I can get away with just using one synth, one layer, it makes my life easier. I don't need to make sure there's no issues when you blend two layers together. So one layer is always a winner for me, maybe a little controversial, but I'm using a thrombus, a baseline damp all the way up. Here it sounds. Obviously there's a significant increase in volume. Remove like four dB. I love to sound on this. Definitely compressors at some drive. Yeah, brilliant plug-in. Let's stuck some saturation plug-ins on top. Let's stick the Sutton on top of the thrombus, which is going to decrease the drive and put up again to zero. And also use warm tube. So by adding extra layers of character and color to the sound. At the moment, obviously they clashing. So we're going to use LFO Tool to side chain the base to the kick. And that's going to be our last our last plugin in the chain because we don't want anything after the LFO Tool. And to make this base a bit wider, I'm going to use imager just before the side-chain, create a band around hundred stereos, 7.5 milliseconds and increase the width of this band to about there. You can definitely hear it that became wider. But also you can see on this vector scope that it's not mono anymore. So if I go back stele in the middle, what this does is it splits the signal into two bands and it widens only the top band above 100 hz. That's all you need really. I mean, you can add more saturation, maybe a decapitated on top of the satin. So it's gonna be like three levels of saturation. Just mixing it in like so. And it's that simple. It's only one layer. Let's name this base and that's all you need really. It's all about making it simple and effective, which in this case it is. Now from there, I want to add some extra ear candy, if you will, like some accent layers that are going to support our baseline every now and then. Let me show you, I'm going to create another media channel, going to color them. I am going to name it Tom. I'm going to create a four-bar loop, going to use a drum rack from a clap. Just place it here. Go back to my sound library. Going to select this. Thompson plays the start marker at the beginning of the sample, going to midi clip and punch in some notes like that. Let's hear how it sounds. Let's put it down. Just going to solo. That's the way it sounds at the moment. We are going to shape it. So maybe increase attack a bit like that. We don't want it to clash with our baseline. So I'm going to filter the low frequencies, going to bring the volume down a bit. So what it does is it's just accents that last node of the baseline. So if you noticed, I made a baseline so it doesn't conflict with the cake. So see where the kick is playing. There's no baseline, although we use in side chain. It helps even if you try and stay away from Keck. So that Tumblr, I think we've done with that. Let me add another supporting layer. This time I'm going to use serum. I'm just going to copy the baseline notes and go into my instruments and select serum in here. I'm just going to go into the presets and select Instant idea preset. Like I said, I don't want the entire baseline to be layered. Only. Some couple of notes. I'm going to solo the theorem layer, and I want to accent only the first three nodes. Let's hear how this sounds. Let's turn it down. It's very low at the moment. Let's put it up. Yeah. It needs shaping. So first stop, go into an envelope one and decrease the sustained decay to about 300. I want it quiet, punchy, almost creating transient. Yeah, something like that. Let's see if switching off sub help blending the extra layer. Yeah, we don't want that sub in there. Let's hear how it sounds with a kick. Shape the sound a bit further. We obviously don't want it to clash with our main baseline. So we're going to filter all the low frequencies. And at the moment is a bit overwhelming in high frequencies as well. As I removed a lot of high frequencies, I decrease the volume naturally, so I'm going to increase the gain of the channel level. Yeah, this sounds pretty good to me. I'm going to rename this the name of the preset. Also renamed the tongue midi clip. And let's hear it together with a beat. Yeah, I'm pretty happy with the way this sounds. Let's remove these and see how this sounds without those supporting layers. And now we've done this adds a bit of dynamic to the baseline, is less static, is bouncy. It's more interesting. My favorite thrombus, I think I'm going to copy it from the baseline, which is to add some compression and color to the instant idea layer. Down to drive dry wit to 50. Maybe we can increase transients. Let's hear how that sounds. That sounds good. Pretty happy with that. One extra thing I'm going to copy is LFO, which is R side chain, if you remember. Just to make sure nothing is clashing with the, with the kick. Here, even though this note is in plane directly on top of the cake, it still gets ducked down like that. Because the curve of the side chain and that creates extra groove. That's it for the base. I'm pretty happy to wait. It sounds like I said, and now we can process it on the group level together with the kick. And I'm going to start with compression, going to go into UID and select 11 76 compressor here where I love to do to add some grit to it, hitting the shift on my keyboard and engaging all the buttons. I believe that's like an infinity ratio on a compressor. So it's acting like a clipper or limiter. Not sure about the technical aspect of this, but I just love the sound of that. Let me solo the low group. Can you hear that sound? That it adds pleasant distortion? Let's adjust it. That's obviously way too much. So let's play with the release. An attack. Releases to quit, thins out the sound. Super slow attack, slow-release, because that's where it's less invasive. Let's hear before and after, before. As the extra layer of texture, we're going to need a filter. I'm going to use volcano three for that. So this is just going to be a high-pass filter, decrease the peak slightly, and then make sure it's clean. Frequency to about 200 hz, like so, and the slope to 24. And we need to write some automation. Just need to show automation and clicking couple of dots. So only switched on in certain areas of the track. Let's hear it sounds. Yeah. So let's hear in a context with a beat. Maybe that's a bit too much. Let's leave it like this for now. We can always come back and tweak it. And that's it. That's the low group done, high group done. In the next lesson, we're going to move on into adding more melodic elements to our track, going to add some sense. I'm also excited for this. We've got our tune shaping nicely. Hope, enjoying the class so far. Stay tuned. I see you in the next lesson. 7. Vocal: Hey, welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to just quickly slap in the vocals and move on to the arrangement. Alright, let's move things around a bit to make more sense. So low, mid, high. And then between mid and high, going to insert an audio track, color it, rename it works, and then go back to sound library, select a vocal sample. Fear that It's pretty good as it is. Fear that it's in the same key of our track, which is E minor, has a couple of things that we can add. One of them being a little altar boy, who each we're going to use as a doubling effect. I'm going to pitch to -5.412 minus two. And then I'm going to increase the dry wet feel that. I feel about that it's good. If it's too much fear that sounds unnatural. This is pretty good. Some clean up, some cleanup as per usual, bit of a low cut. Feel that let's slap in a, well hello, supermassive. I believe that's a free plugin from a holler. Use default preset. Just turn down the mix to about 21% delay on there. And let's hear the sounds. I feel that I feel that here in the context. Without it. It's just makes it fuller and occupies the gaps between where the bulk isn't doing anything. It sounds nice, but we can make it sound even nicer. So I'm going to do is dropping this dry wet rag that I've created. So it's got two channels. One is dry, one is wet. So when this knob is all the way to the left is only dry signal, no effects being applied. If you drop some effects on this wet channel, which is here, which we're going to drop supermassive onto. And we have to make sure it's on 100%. So it's fully wet. This is the same way as if you would have used return channel like this. And if you would have dropped the effect onto return channel, but sometimes I prefer to do this directly on the channel. I'm applying the effects on purely because just ease for organization purposes. Alright, so we're going to set this to roughly where this was like 20 per cent something. Remember this was like 20%. We can hide that. We don't need this. So it's a parallel processing, this dry signal that's not being processed. And there's wet signal that's been processed with supermassive. And then I'm selecting how much of a dry versus how much of a wet signal I'm getting at the end of this chain to make this delay slash reverb plugin sound cleaner. Or we're gonna do is a side chain compressor at the end and select a vocal as a trigger, knee to zero. And now every time the vocal plays, reverb signal gets stuck down. Let's check this out. I'll solo that so we can hear it. See how delay doesn't play when debacle place. I fear that if you remove the compressor, I feel that that delay is on top of the vocal. And that's it. A much cleaner version of doing things like this. And let's hear the whole thing altogether. I just backed the side chain a little bit and that's it. This bokeh has been processed is from a sample pack. And you don't really need that much of a processing on samples like this. So now our idea is done. We've got our vocal, we've got kickin base, we've got hook, we've got drums. We've got a decent strong loop going on. And now we are ready to arrange our track, which is what we're gonna do in the next lesson. So I'll see you there. 8. Arrangement: Alright, welcome back. It's time to turn our loop into a full track. Let's remove this. We don't need to expand this. What always helps me to determine the structure of the track is setting the markets. I'm going to start here and name it intro. And then I want my intro to last for 16 bar. From there, I want to introduce base. I'm going to have my base carry on for 16 bar. And then there's gonna be a thirst drop from there. Another 16 bar break is going to be a small break That's going to be 8 bar long, only from there. It's going to be a second drop shadow. I'm going to have 24 bar from there. It's going to be a massive break, which is going to be quite long. I want it to last 40 bar. And then it's going to be a drop. Again, the main drop where all the elements will come in, in the 16 bar drop with a small break fade bars, and then the outro, the outro will happen for 32 bar, and that's gonna be the end of the track. And that whole thing puts us in about 5 min and 30 s. So from here, now I've determined the length of the track, just going to stretch out all the main elements. Like I said, I want to kick in around this mark. I definitely don't want any base last 16 bar either. Just before the drop. I don't want any base. So that's that. Let's stretch out most of those elements for the whole arrangement. And now let's have a listen. Okay? All this is definitely going to go into the drop. Same as the vocal around break. Obviously, this is way intense for the intro. So what I'm gonna do is remove some of the elements. Vinyl snare. I'm going to drop it somewhere in various areas, maybe like that. So it's only going to be present in a drop sections, maybe like so in my head, this will be the cool trick effect, which I don't want any instruments really playing in this area. I can even market like predrawn. So I know that this is gonna be the clean area for this special effect I'm going to be creating. I don't want to start with a crash. Crash will come in on a first drop or maybe when the base comes in, this little thing, I want it throughout the entire track, but not here, right? Probably not in the beginning of the track. Let's take them to the drops. Maybe like so fills and roles. Let's put them away for now. Listen. That sounds cool. We can move on. Long 16 bar loop, DJ friendly intro. Let's turn off the loop. To make things interesting. As we go, we can start paying club roles. Maybe we copy here and there's go in. Like I said before, there's change the patterns of each of those clips. So for this one, Let's delete this and keep it like that. So that's already different from this original one. For that one, Let's go in here and delete this and move that here. So let's have a listen how it sounds. Nice. We can move this here. So over here, I don't want to start with the base straight away. So what I'm gonna do, I'm just going to copy this filter envelope, going to bring it. So let's have a listen. Now, before the drop, the filter will drop to zero and the base will be in full action. You need to move these away, maybe start them on a second drop. Basically gradually building towards the drop. That drop is not really a drop. Suddenly. It's only going to introduce the full base two. And then before the drop, we can introduce the vocal as well. Grab this section here. Yeah, like so. Just before the drop we introduce vocal and then it goes into the drop for base, right? Maybe, let's, let's put it like this. So the base starts on its own. Then after 8 bar, the term comes in, and then after another 8 bar, the drop kicks in. And this instant idea comes along as well. I don't know if I prefer it. An octave higher or lower. Maybe lower. Sounds, cool. Let's put those cool sounds. And like that. Stretch them out all the way because they like kinda complement. And then maybe remove them in break sections. That this is a bit too loud. Maybe that one as well. Without them kinda empty, you know, what's coming with them. It's completely unique, original kind of beat. Even though it's the beginning of the track is already something interesting going on. There is some movement left to right, some sounds on the background, but you can clearly hear that there. And then I kinda want to briefly introduce the hook during second section of the drop. Maybe like that. And then copy this. Like so. And then maybe we can take one. Copy here and on this break is removed. Couple of nodes, maybe like so. Let's do that. This filter in here in place. Because it's a break. We can probably get rid of some elements, maybe remove the shaker, long open. Then we can just copy the crash over a bunch of times. So I'm just copying this filter. So it's not as abrupt. Feel like we need some kind of fill in here. So it's moves the transition out between these sections. So let's just duplicate this. I think we can just reuse this right here. Do something like this. That's going to be different. For me. It helps to break the track into eight byte chunks. So what I'm going to do is just insert markers quickly into those chunks, takeoff the numbers from them so they don't distract me. That just helps me visually see where track is broken into eight bar segments. So now I know e.g. how will my shaker not be heard in the intersection? Only going to come in next 8 bar. In the next slide bars. The base comes in and filter kicks in. And then here we'll probably need some effects like a rise or something that's going to last for 8 bar just before the drop. And then maybe a reverb and then bring everything together on a drop. So the idea with the arrangement is basically every 8 bar, there's a change. There's either something gets removed or something gets added. So let's continue. I don't want any shaker during the break and during that break as well. So it only comes in every now and then open hi-hat, same pipe. Really want it to be like an extra element just to make it different from the rest of the truck. I think I'm going to leave it throughout the entire second drop. Lung open. Don't need that in the break. Copy. This here, and let's hear how it sounds. So here we just removed couple of nodes, start to introduce the main melody. Instead playing fully only plays first half. I kinda plays around the vocal as well. So it's melody, vocal, melody, vocal with which works really well. So you want to avoid crushing elements into each other if you can help it saying we did with the kick and base. So the kick is in plane with the bass is playing, the mixes will sound cleaner generally, if elements have their own space in time as well as in spectrum and also in stereo field. Continue adding variety to our track at a couple of different scenarios. Maybe add one here, maybe here, and move this away here, because it kinda plays nicely between amino. Again. They have their own space. This is running for this long, then there's a little gap, and then there's this. So for this one, we have slightly different pattern. Let's hear how it sounds. Add couple of hits here. Boom, boom. Yeah, just to add interest, there's always something going on. Maybe you don't expect it, it's there and it's going to make you feel nice. Maybe do something like this. Move this across those. Let's hear this sense. Let's move this away because they now clashing. And then let's copy this here and remove that, go into here and then move this couple of hits there. Again. That's completely different pattern from this one or this one or that one. Couple more variants to snare roles and clap roles. Maybe a good old crash and remove one from here. And this is a break. So we do want here is copy this filter and then we move it all the way just before the drop. Also, we can copy these in-between every 8 bar. So it sounds like this one here just before the second 8 bar would drop. Definitely going to need one in the break here. Copy them here. Yeah, that should be. So now when it approaches the break, it would filter out throughout this section. Maybe we don't need any of this here because we're losing keychain base and everything are here anyway. So it's just going to cut this off. Yeah. Silence. That's why I need I'm going to make special something in this area. Definitely need a crash in here. All right, let's continue adding some extra patterns of our roles. Duplicate this, delete. Everything, is good to have contrast. So it's good to have long stretches of the drum roll. And then next day boss is only a couple of hits e.g. see what works? Take these three e.g. I'm literally just go in and randomly selecting whatever and then go in, change couple of things like so, and create different patterns. I mean, we've created enough so I guess we can just go in and copy, whichever. Maybe like that. Right till the end. So this one will be like this one. This one will make it different. That one literally make it one hit. Boom. This one probably copy that. And then this last one, like so. Let's move on to the snare here. Right before that silence. One, it's super long. I wanted to start here and I want it to stretch for this long. Actually, no, I'm want to die here. Stretch it like that. Maybe this is too much random. We can have some vocal in their copy, this one here. Just before the drop. A couple of hits like that. Scope. Just adding variety and the more hits. As you can see, if there is no Club role, There's this narrow, if there's no snare roll, there is a club pro. If there's a club pro and snare row and make sure that separate. Maybe remove first four here. Then remove. Like that in here. So different, like that. Nice about adding variety. This is quite cool pattern and I'm reusing it quite a few times for other track, maybe I'll put it here because there's nothing there. And copy that there and then have it run all the way. Okay, that's that maybe add couple of crushes here as well for the break and then for the drop for the outro. I mean it is kinda drop. Here track we'll get stripped down in terms of elements. Definitely want a one crash right at the end of the track. So that's drums. Let's not forget about vocal and melody. So I want this to play for the drop. Then we're going back to the stripped-down version just before the break, and we're going to have it playing up until that silence moment and then copy this to the next break, like so. Here. Here I want this hasn't come in just before the drop. Yeah, that sounds good. And then we copy the same thing into the break as well. So we'll listen. I think it's good idea to get rid of base. Also, I think one of the cakes can go drums as well. So listen, Let's see if we can get rid of this. We strike that. If we do that. Wait a second. Let's move it here. Okay. Yeah. Nice little silent moment just to make the impact of the drop most significant. Yeah. See Wyoming. Copy the vocal here and then we can take this vocal. The other section. I want it, the other section, sig figs. Like the very first section, would take another section here. And then we'll take the third section. Hoops. It's always playing different section for variety, use different parts of the vocal in different areas. Now here, I want this to repeat a bunch of times because it's a main break. We want to build tension in this area as much as possible. And then there's something called that's going to happen here. And then boom, release of the tension drop. And I also have this really cool vocal. Let's go back to the sample library and select this piece of vocal. Tone it down a bit. We're going to lose everything here just to give that vocal space. Literally everything. That's why I made this snare. So it stops right here. You're going to get rid of it. That's gonna be kinda like main transition. And then we can copy this here. There won't be any vocals in this area. Then this break will be same as this break. And then copy that. Again, just trying to, whoops, just trying to use different parts of the vocal in different areas. And then for the very last one, we're going to copy this. This is in the wrong place. Again here we can go in, get rid of the unnecessary drums just to create more impact. So we'll listen now. Maybe we can do that or like that. Here in the brakes section. I don't want any of that extra trying to break things down to bare minimum. And then maybe like so we go in down in terms of elements. I want to introduce extra tension buildup, going to insert midi clip. Ableton automatically sets it to E minor to match the rest of the track. So I'm going to go in instruments and find zebra. Was there, bro. Most the correct way? I have no idea. But I know that I really like this. Preset. Select this, and we're going to go in and add some notes. Let's put this up. Right where the vocal stars. We're going to add some chords. This sounds really nice. Okay, that sounds good. So far. Let's copy that over again. That sounds really nice. Desk just going to add extra attention to our break main Greg. We need to shape it up so it doesn't clash with our vocal cutting around the area where vocal is more prominent, Let's hear before and after. Sounds much cleaner. I also want to automate the level. So I'm going to drop a utility and dropping couple of dots around there. Give a slight curve. Make it rise throughout the duration of the break. Good idea to go into the base and copy the helpful tool, which is our side chain. Maybe not as intense. It's just pumps up and down subtly given that movement. Also, filter is a very good idea for here. So I'm going to drop in a filter a preset, clean, low-pass peak down a bit, and then it's completely open like so. And it's thoughts, maybe halfway, Let's have a listen. So we've got this one, and I think we're ready to add these little interesting bit right here. So I'm going to create a midi channel on this track. I want to drop in simpler. That's the simplest way you can create this effect in Ableton. I've already sampled this melody, so I'm not going to waste time on that. I'm going to go into a sample library. And this is the sample, I'm going to drop it in. I'm going to create a midi clip, the length of the 8 bar, I'm going to drop in a c3 note because that's where a place at the original pitch. Maybe turn down the volume a bit. So one, instead of playing throughout the sample once, I want only looping this first note. So I'm going to select loop. And now if you automate this marker here, it will shrink the loop. Let's check out what we're gonna do. I'm gonna automate the length. I'm going to go from top, zoom in. So we can easily see this. I think let's insert another audio track because I want this to play like right at the end. Like so. We'll go back here and draw the automation, insert another breakpoint there and do a curve like this. That some point, it gets so short that it's in front of the sample so it doesn't play anything. So what we also have to do is automate the star. So bring that to the ln. Put a dot here to here, and then back to zero. Let's hear how they sound. The moment it's kinda broken. So we're going to have to increase the fade. So it kind of fades in between sections. Also voices to one, this snap is activated, so let's deactivate. That should make it smoother. Yeah, that sounds nice. Yes. This Let's have a listen again. That's not too bad. Obviously, we can go back and tweak it later on. But yeah, that's the basic idea. You just re-sample the hook and you just loop it, decreased the loop length, automate it for the time, and then bring it back to normal just before the drop. And then the drop, quite a cool trick. And let's spice it up with a reverb little plate. That's why when you use for this and we automate the mix knob. So we go right from zero all the way here and then back to zero. So let's have a listen. You kinda one is tail to overlap a little bit with this to bring it back to normal. So yeah, I think that's it. In terms of arrangement, we can start adding effects and little sounds in the effects section, which we're gonna do in the next lesson. 9. Fx: Hello, Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to make some effects. So let's start with creating an audio track and then color it in like so, group it and aim to group effects, renamed the Track vinyl. And for me, nothing beats the GoodNotes of the vinyl record. So for this, I'm going to use our C20, go in and use vinyl one preset for this. This is how it sounds. And to make it blend in with the track a bit more, I'm going to EQ it like that. And let's play the track back and turn it up so we can barely hear it. Take you off here, and add it back in. She just feels nice and subtle. Background pad also widens the track quite a lot. Next week we're going to create is a snare roll right here in the breakdown section. So we're going to copy the drum rack again, paste it here, going to the sound library. Select the snare that would like nameless, narrow, create a midi clip and plays 16th note pattern. Like so. Then let's move it across because we don't want it over this section here. Maybe cut that end as well. Because remember, there's this vocal snare roll copy, paste it here just so we know what this is. Let's have a listen. Obviously we need to do some work on this. First of all, I want to saturate it and going to use overdrive. Increase this old way, decrease the drive. Dynamic to zero, tone to zero. Then blender. That's just adds a bit of body through our sorrow. I want to squeeze the **** out of it. So I'm going to use compressor to do that. Knee to zero. Threshold down ratio is quite high. That sack and release to zero. Again. So it's like instead of hearing each individual sound, so almost like a wall of sound has the effect I'm trying to achieve with this next little plugin I want to put in is hyper effects of created this one here. This one is an effect chain with a vocoder set to noise. And what I'm doing with this is just automating of created this a while ago. What this does is basically runs the snare roll through vocoder for a noise generator. And then on the output of that, There's a bit of side chain and that's all it does. It basically washes out. You can achieve similar effect with the reverb. Prefer it to be in parallel. So there's dry signal coming through unaffected and there's wet signal initially, it's a dry snare than a vocoder comes in. A vocoder itself has dry wet, but then if you do it that way, you won't be able to add side-chain onto a vocoder directly because that way it will affect the actual snare as well, not just Vocoder. And I don't normally have it all the way up. I have 60 something. So it's like noise mixed in with a snare roll. So that's that I want to insert a utility just to control the volume of this as well. I'm going to set it to around -12. The n value is zero. So it's adding noise in parallel to this narrow rising in volume. And also we're going to add a filter. Select tube filter this time can add some color to about 4,000 hz. We don't want any peak pretty much on this map, it automation curve like that. So there's three different things going on simultaneously. There's a snare sample which has been duplicated by the noise which rising in volume and filter is opening up. So yeah, a lot going on, but that's how you make your snare roles less boring. One other thing you can do is to grab one of those random devices and randomize the midi, see how it sounds. Maybe reduce random a little bit. And also one extra thing you can add is swing. Ever listened in cortex? This nine or nine snare duplicates it nicely right before the end of it, just to add some more intensity. So that works really well. We can copy that and do the padlock here. So we can have the automations run with it. Like so. We can copy this here as well. We have to, we're going to have to adjust the points like that. The easiest way now is to copy this and paste it here. So we've got similar things going on both of our breaks. Let's have one just before the drop as well. Let's make something interesting here, has decrease the loop length to 1 bar, crop it, and then remove gloves, couple of nodes, and let's hear the sounds. So by doing this, which is giving some space, and also this sounds different to the rest of them. One, return this back in. Let's hear how this sounds. Kind of gives that extra tail at the end. So let's put a padlock on that. Padlock is by the way, locks in automation. So when you move stuff, the automation stays. So I'm going to copy this here and make sure that this drops down like that. And we can copy that here as well. Actually. So all three small builds different from this main one. So another bit of facts I want to insert is this swash down kind of sound, which I want to use here to smooth out the transition between the drop and break. I'm going to insert a midi note. It's going to last for 8 bar in here. I'm going to go into instruments in silent one. So I'm going to select this preset called swoosh down. Let's hear how it sounds. Just a noise generator been filtered with the modulation envelope. So let's hear in a context that's gonna help us to smooth out that transition. So to help this out, I like to use utility and automate the gain so it doesn't stop there abruptly. So listen now, in nicely decays over time. That's ever listened in a context. Another thing I want to add is reversed crash. It's the same crash that we used here. All I did is routed it through reverb, re-sampled and reversed it. And this is the sound. I want it to happen just before that Bohr called bit. So let's have a listen. Just as that extra intensities before the vocal bit kicks in. So we did snare roll, swoosh down to help transition between the drop in the break. Also, we need to create a buildup to create a riser effects sound, I'm going to use silence again, going to select preset. It's called swash. Basically going to copy this, rename this square riser, go in, edit, denote certainly happens together with the reversed crash. Mike. So let's have a listen. It's quite cool. So I'm going to duplicate that in-between each break and I'm going to extend the note, or do we actually have it start halfway through 8 bar? That just helps smooth out the transition between the sections. I think I should add this for each break helix. So couple of short sounds I've created earlier, which I'm going to insert. So two audio tracks right here. I'm going to go back to the symbol library and use this sound here. All these sounds basically layers of one intense sound. So if you solo this effects, they create one complex evolving riser. This one. If you copy it, and then reverse it. It's a clap. Put through reverb and being re-sampled and reversed. So it's very easy to do if you have questions on how to do that, you can always hit me up. I'm happy to help. I'm here. If you need any help and if you struggle with any sounds, just drop me a message. I will be happy to help. Another sample I'm going to use is this. This is a bunch of hi-hat stuck together through reverb and resample. I've done those as you can see, 2020. So I use them on many other projects. I always try and use my original sounds rather than using sample packs. But you can consider this as me going into splice and picking the risers and impacts from splice. So would this sample that is just releases that tension that buildup has created. Let me solo the effects. There you go. Let's have a listen in a context. And I put it here, it's going to drop just to duplicate that crash together this sound like that. Then we can just go in and reuse these samples whenever we need them. So you can just copy it. So I'm gonna go here. Base section. Just before bakes cakes in, I'm going to transition to that section. Like so. Then I can copy it and use it here before the drop. And also copied that. Let's hear how this sounds. Yeah, just go in for the track and copy it and every now and then, like so I'm placing them strategically. I can see my outro markers here, so I won't Section transition to the outro section. So I'm placing right here. And that's one of the reasons I put all these markets so I can clearly see which section this is a worst. The start of this section on what's this section? I can clearly see by the titles on these markets So I can place my sounds accordingly. So let's just copy this over into some places. Maybe here and here and here, something like this. And that's our effects group. We can throw in EQ on there just to make sure it doesn't clash with any of the base, roughly like this. Now that we've finished with adding effects in the effects group, I want to go back to the mid group, and I want to add those resampled sounds that are recorded earlier, Ron, and I think now's the time to add them in. So go back to a sample library. So let's create a new audio track. And on the first draw on a drop in this sample color it is, turn it down straight away. So this is a re-sampled version of the vocal. And to make it last longer, I'm going to drop in a supermassive, select this billions and billions preset. And literally that's it. Just drop it before the EQ. So we'll listen. So the idea is that this vocal sample is playing. And then this is long reverb tail, right? It's like extra little details that play on the background kind of thing to fill in the blanks in. Good idea to make it bounce to the beat. So just dropping a side chain. Yeah, I love the way it sounds. I'm going to copy it, have it throughout the track a bunch of times. Every time after this small vocal section, Let's move on another audio track back to our sample library. Only use this sample. Going to place it here. Shorten it. Only this section. Listen. Yeah, that's quite cool. So it's just small little details like this to make a track more interesting, duplicate that onto next 8 bar. And then here, we'll just make it interesting. Drop it in various places where it fits and you're good to go. Let's move on another track. Again, this is a vocal. Lower the volume and duplicate that to next 8 bar, copy 16 bar, and duplicate that on the next drop. And then here, and then on the outro. Move on another track. This sound here. So let's move it here. So from hold 1 bar loop, I only want this sound. But it's a cool sound. So maybe, let's see if we can extend this. Like so. Another fill in sound. And after that, we can insert another audio track and add another sound. Let's lower the volume as well. This is quite cool. Yeah, Again, this has been sampled from the vocal. I think I want to move this here and move all this in here. This one here. Listen. Shorten that up. Yeah, Let's have a listen. So that's the drop. So every beat, this something interesting happening. Let's insert another track and insert this sample. This is definitely sampled from sense. Let's insert another track and this sound right at the end, low the volume. So I'm going to copy this over. Actually here it kind of clashes with the actual vocal. So I'm going to cut this out and I'm going to paste this in. So first 8 bar is going like this. Maybe a bit louder. And then next 8 bar is going like different sound is another colon response kind of thing. Yeah, I'm not going to do all of them. There's a lot, but you get an idea if you just go in and drop those samples the way they fit. And let's have a listen. So you get an idea. There's always something happening. Instead of having boring, continuously repetitive 8 bar, we've now inserted a bunch of weird effects sounds that we resampled using technique I showed you earlier, found interesting bits and place them in various places in the track. That's the idea behind it. So now we've placed a whole bunch of effects sounds. Next, we're going to move on into a mixing stage. So I will see you in the next lesson. 10. Mixing: Hey, welcome back. In this lesson we're going to look at how we're going to take this track to a next level by utilizing mixing. So I went in and added a whole bunch of other resampled sounds. Let's have a listen what we ended up with. Let's move on. So first things first I want to look at is panning some drums. Let's band is vinyl snare. So it goes to the right. And let's pan is other snare opposite. You can hear. They kinda bounced left and right, which is two separate things in terms of stereo field. I'm going to keep hi-hat right in the center. Same silent hi-hat rim shot. Let's pan it to the left. But differently from this off snare just brought a level up so we can hear it. Actually, I kind of prefer its center. Let's see if we can pan this one instead. Yeah, much better. I prefer that. Yeah. Remember this one had a helpful tool that went left and right anyways, So yeah, it didn't sound right. So let's move on. I want it the rest of it center. Because this one is already have panning. Shaker center. Same as closed hi-hat. They kinda complement the main hi-hat pipe. Yeah. Kinda want its center as well, right? Definitely center. We can pan clap roles and snare rolls, slightly to left and right respectively. So just a little bit. We definitely don't want every element to be centered or every element to be panned. Some of it should be in the center, some of it should be left and right. So that's pretty boring, right? Let's do some fun stuff. So we've got this return channel. Let's color it differently and name it reverb effects. So what I wanna do is use this reverb to wash out this area of the break. So we're going to use filter Pro for this decay rate all the way down. Stereo width max, mix on max because it's on the return channel, decay to about there. And what I want to do is spice it up a bit. So let's first of all draw a nice automation line. Like soap. We're going to have a drop-down just before that. Vocal sample. Groups on the wrong channel going to delete this. And it was meant to go into this pre-master channel. So that's another useful thing for this pre-master channel, is that you can route all of the sounds simultaneously for a return channel by just using one envelope. So that's the effect that this is doing. Let's drop in some saturation on this. I like this saturation knob. Increase the saturation, keep it in neutral. She's going to compress it. The look. Maybe we can increase brightness and character just to see if it's going to improve. Yeah, nice and bright and lush sound of the reverb going through the buildup. Then obviously, you don't want any low frequencies in the reverb like this because it's going to just muddy up the mix. So what we're gonna do is just remove every band and select this bandpass. So that's essentially a low cut and high cut filter at the same time, and we place it somewhere here. So just removing super high frequencies and low frequencies and having this round 1 khz band passed into finalize, we're going to compress this with Glue compressor threshold all the way down because it's quite low in the volume. Soft clip on released to auto. Okay, Let's have a listen in a context. So if I turn it on and off, massive difference makes things more epic. That's for sure. Next reasonable thing to do is to copy this onto a other breaks. Like so. And maybe even have one just before the first drop. Just like that. It works really well in the areas where filter is turned on. That room is way too loud. Now, this one can bring this in like that. Same here. Now that we own space, we can start adding more return channels. So this one is going to be called short reverb, and we're going to have one called long reverb, again, color them. So for the short one, I'm going to go into reverbs and grab Valhalla room, set it to medium, ambience, adjust decay. And that's really it. Just going to saturate it with overdrive very suddenly. And then again, makes sure there's nothing in low and there is nothing on high. So at this stage, we can just start increasing the center of our short reverb onto the bits that we want. So one entire mid-frequencies group to be routed through that reverb. So listen. I think around there. The dry without and then when you engage it, he puts things in the room. Let's copy that same reverb onto a long reverb. And really we can put, we can copy this as well. Copy everything. And the only difference here would be increased decay time. So we increase it twice as much. The switch things up. Let's see how this long reverb sound on mid frequencies. Yeah, quite like it longer actually. So what we can do, we can just collapse of our effects is not in a primase to group. Let's put it in a pre-master group as well. Like that. Let's have a listen. Way too much about that. It's fine. So the short reverb we're going to use on drums on the whole group that we're going to put entire drum group into its own space. Obviously that's way too loud. Always helps to ABA, just turn it on and off. That's it really, for vocals. I think they already have some reverb on them as they sound a bit more epic when they got lots of reverb on them and less reverb on mid-frequencies group just to make it more pronounced. And definitely no reverb on the low frequencies. That's just going to make the things sound muddy. The idea behind this is that when you apply one reverb as a sand on the entire group, good clues, the whole group together and make sound more cohesive. Like it puts the entire drum kit in Rome. He puts entire synth group in a row. So let's move on. I want mid-frequencies, especially in this main break, to have some different things going on to make it interesting, to make it one of a kind. So it's only going to happen in this area here. It's not going to happen in the beginning of the track or the end of the track, just to add more tension in this area here. So to do that, I'm going to use filter. I'm going to leave it on gentle and map this. Like so. I want it to be open most of the time. But then starting from this second drop, I want to gradually go down to about there and then back to normal at the drop. Listen. Kinda went down to the background. And then let's the vocal to come through a little bit more. And then we started to build up from this point on in opening up to Filter. And then by the time we hit the drop is fully open. Let's use some Valhalla Delay to wash things out a little bit. I love that Valhalla plugins come pre mapped in Ableton. So you can just select parameter you want to automate, and off you go. I quite like these preset here. And let's see. We're going to start at the same place where this dots. And just before the vocal comes in, we're going to drop it down. So maybe not all the way, like 50% Hey, just nice blush delay with a long feedback. So next thing we're going to add this cool plugin by Ableton called Echo just before the filter. And that's just going to add extra layer of depth for our delay. So it's like delay within a delay. That's just my way of doing it. Could be messy, so I have to be careful with this. But if you want wash things out, This is the way to go. I'm using one eighth note with ping-pong. I'm going to start with a break starts. Notice I have it go all the way to wet. So it's basically almost like transforming the rhythm of the sound is quite cool. Placing descent way back on the background to allow vocal to dominate. And I want to finish this effect chain with this crazy effect called histories is not even sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but I use this preset, learn time. And then I go in and I automate two parameters. One is this one going all the way from the bottom. Turn there, give it a little curve and then dry wet. Quite the same pretty much we can just copy drag and drop that. Maybe slightly less like that. This is the effect of this kind of rings. Yeah, it's a weird one. It's a weird effect that not even fully aware of what it's doing. But if we play it from the beginning, you can hear how it kind of can you hear that? As the thing is like weird glitch effect that's creating some unreal textures. So let's have a listen again. I hope you could catch that, but it's basically an extra layer of complexity of delay in glossiness on top of the main layer. So let me play this back from here. I'm pretty happy with the way they sounds. Our track is shaping real nice here. So let's add something to Trump's. I don't really like the way they are sounding consistent throughout the, the break. So what I'm gonna do is add filter. One filter I've been using lately is volcano three, but I placed it in the rack and map this knob to filter frequency. So I don't have to do this all the time. So all I have to do is drag this device, go here, show automation on a new lane and I can just draw the automation I need. So here, the drums, I want a curve like this. So on drums to gradually disappear, like so. And then when we hit the drop, they're back to normal. So we've done some creative stuff till next thing I want to go in and make sure each group has got EQ at the end of the chain to make sure nothing clashing. So what I'm gonna do, I'm going to select drop, I'm going to loop it. I'm going to go into the low and drop an EQ right at the end. Just a straightforward 30 hz cut with this, what I'm doing is turning it on and off and trying to hear if it sounds better. Without or with. Sometimes, I feel like I need that extra low rumble is just sounds better with it. So every single time I'm doing this low car, I'm always comparing it on and off. In this instance, it definitely cleans things up a bit. So I'm going to leave it on. So I'm going to leave it as is for here. And I'm going to move on to mid-frequencies is already in the queue there. We went and done this as we went through the sense lesson. I just want to go in, make sure everything is working. So what I'm gonna do is back that EQ and bring it in until I hear the difference. If it starts to change the sound, I know I need to bring it back. Right there is good. And then like I said, we need that area space for the high frequencies, so we'll leave that open. Next stop is the cetera. I want to make sure. That sense is this one has been mixed in. So we've cut the low-end. I'm not worried about the high cup because when that sinth is playing, there is simply no drums were filtering them out at that stage. So it's all working fine on this side of things. Let's move on to vocal. With vocal, I feel like it's lacking a bit of lushness. So in this instance, I normally reach out to my poor tech Pro and cranking either ten or 12 K with a broad setting and I'm just boosting. Let's have a listen to the other. There's another plugin I use if I'm lacking some air and presence. Is this Plugin cold, fresh air has got quite cool preset vocal air. Obviously it sounds way different from the pole tech. Feel the feeling. Even if you crank it up like this. I think I prefer fresh air. Let's leave it as is. And make sure that we've got a nice low cut here. Just to make sure I'm cutting everything that's gonna being aware of our baseline. The way I was doing this cut by moving this thought on a piano roll is, as you can see, it shows nodes in this area here. So that's a three and that's D-sharp three because the track is in E minor, I'm basically doing a cut just before the root node, which is the, I'm doing D-sharp cut. I'm not sure if that's the right way or wrong way to do it. I mean, there's no right or wrong in music anyways, but that's just how I do it. Move on to a highest. So just moved EQ. I always want my EQ and compressor to be the last plug-ins in the group chain. So with highs. Same here, just to make sure that the root nodes come in through nicely with effects. I'm not even worried about having root nodes coming through because there's mostly noises and stuff that doesn't have particular pitch to them. So now I went through every single group and made sure that everything is separated in terms of EQ. I went and tanned my drums. I don't feel anything else needs to be panned because low frequencies, supposed to be mono generally mid-frequencies. They pretty wide bunch of sense, so doesn't make any sense to pan them. They pre-wired and they go in. Left and right. Vocals, stays in the center. We applied delay and reverb to it. So that's widened vocal quite a lot. So one last thing to make things louder, I recently started to stick pro L at the end of the chain. And literally in the modern setting, or sometimes on a bus setting, I just crank it up a tiny little bit just to make sure that those sudden peaks get shaved off a bit. And I use a one-to-one ratio like this. So every time you boost this game, this compensates for the loudness. So as you can see, she asked 0.2 dB, just catching those small little peaks. And then I'm doing that for every single group. When you boost, when you boost without the one-to-one ratio, it boosts the volume quite a lot. We don't really want that. So let's move on. Limited to the vocal. See that feel word kinda like sticks out a bit. This just helps tame it. And by the time we have all these groups hitting the master, all the sudden peaks will trigger the final limiter on a master, which as a result can render distorted sound. So the idea behind this is to tame the sudden peaks to give more space to the final limiter. So with the drums, same, just going to go and make sure this is engaged. Let's go to the most intense part of the tune. See, even though we used multiple instances of compression for drums, there's still some sudden peaks every now and then. Popping through. Man, I love these drums. So yeah, this just helps glue things together for the effects. Generally, I don't use it, but you are welcome if you want to. So now, I'm pretty happy with the way this tune is going. In the next lesson, I'm going to be looking at mastering this tune and getting it ready to be played in a club system. Let's have a quick final lesson. 11. Mastering: Hello and welcome. This is the last lesson in this class. It's mastering. This is the final stage where we're going to take our track to the next level. So let's do this first things first, we're going to drop in an EQ on a master. We don't need any of these spots where we do need this one at 30 hz, high-pass flat. And we increase this to 24, like so. And then this one is 20,000 hz, low-pass flat, and we increase that to 24 as well, just to make sure there's nothing going above 20 hz and nothing is below 30 hz. Let's select the loudest part of our track, which has dropped. For me. It helps to have a spectrum analyzer at the end of the chain. Sounds really nice. All we have to do is make it louder. That's what basically mastering is all about. Next thing I want to add is glue compressor. I've got this device created, which is called clip. It's very simple. All it has is Glue Compressor, which is set to soft clip attack one release set to auto. The clip is mapped to makeup and gain is mapped to the gain of this utility plugin. I also have to Max for Live devices, these are only meters. They don't process any sound whatsoever. This is for me to be able to see the loudness on the input and the output. Check this out. I'm going to do is increase this makeup gain until I start heating this clip light. Once it starts blinking like this, it means it's clipping the signal. So now to be able to compensate for the loudness increased, I'm going to use gain to reduce that loudness. I know I'm doing, I'm basically matching the gain of the input and the output. So that's the layer of compression after which I really like to add some color to a final mix and process as a whole. For this, I'm going to use sausage fastener and that's it. I literally going to not touch any of these knobs maliciously going to switch it off. And that's, that's it. Check this out. Hopefully you can tell by me switching it on and off how much difference it has on the final mix. But have no idea what's behind the whole of this plugin. But it does a lot. It widens, it, it adds color. So I really like to use this on a master mix thing. I'm using as a part of mastering chain is this little guy with this one. I'm selecting 300 hz and then dipping. Let's have a listen. Hopefully you can pick up how different this sounds when you start to deep around 300 hz. Very easy to overdo it. But if you do it tastefully, it cleans up the mix quite a lot. I like it between the 1.2 range, somewhere around there. Let's a and B. So that's without, again, subtle is where you want to go for in terms of mastering. So let's move on to a high frequency range. We going to select ten K and broaden the width of this and boost tune 1-2. Let's have a listen. Switched 10-12 because that's the ones I like the sound of. And sometimes I like to learn more over the 12th and sometimes 12 over the ten. This time ten sounded better. So let's again turn on and off. Much leaner mix. Sometimes I test this 60 hz frequency as well and boosted, that's like sublevel. Let's turn on and off. Yeah, that sounds good. Next thing I always have in my mastering chain is utility. So one doing with this is decreasing the gain just before the drop. So I'm gradually decrease in it to around minus three dB throughout the break. So when the break starts, utility starts to decrease the volume. And then as soon as the drop kicks in, that volume is straight back to zero, and that creates subtle difference in volume. And as a result, you get much bigger drop because of that little difference. Let's have a listen. Yeah. We're going to copy that to all the breaks. So where the break starts, as you can see, there's Marker there. It's going from zero to minus three and then backup to zero once the drop kicks in, we're going to copy that from here to this break as well. And that's going to create the same effect here. So whilst I was listening, and notice that this base is playing quiet loud during the break. So I'm going to go to this filter, increase it like this. And what this can do is going to push this kick and base to the background. Let's have a listen. Hopefully you can pick it up. But it's it's a subtle difference, but yeah, I think it makes break down, clean up. These weird sounds. Does that history is for you? Thus, this plugin that makes this sounds really loved, this plugin. So let's go back to the mastering chain. And final thing I want to add is a maximizer. I absolutely love this maximizer bio zone. I'll show you how I use it. So I use IRC four. With the transient setting, I always engaged true peak. I have this at minus 03 ceiling, and then I dropped down the threshold until I have about 34 dB of gain reduction. Let's have a look and be careful it gets loud. So maybe turn down your volume on your headphones or speakers. Let's go. I'm going to switch to a drop. And also before I bounced the track, I also turn on data. I always bounced into four and use strong data and noise shaping turned off, so that's on. Now, gain reduction is on. So I normally group the entire mastering chain because it's significant increase in loudness. I keep the limiter on and I turn off all the rest of the devices and compare it with the same loudness if these plugins do improve the track or not, Let's have a listen. One other reference thing is really helpful to do is drop in a utility on the end of the channel and make sure it's mono compatible. So hit this mono and turn on and off here just to see if the truck doesn't break and phase and do weird stuff when it's bounced to Mono. Let's have a listen. It doesn't change much. So we did a great job of not having any phase issues. One last thing I'm going to show you is how to bounce ready track. It's really simple creating midi Track rather than audio track. Selecting everything that I want to bounce and inserting an empty midi clip. Call it render copy, paste, just so we know. Remove any devices from that track, Turn it off as well, does not attract. We had some times when you bounce right from the beginning. It's like doing weird stuff with the very first kick. So why do I select this much like 60 milliseconds in front and stretch that Miniclip to there. And then I do the same with the end of the track. So that's our crash. Maybe stretched like this and add a little bit extra. And on the utility. I just make sure that it goes back to minus infinity, which is silence. So I'm basically making sure that there's at least a tiny little bit area of silence at the end and also in front like that. So there's this much silence, complete silence. And then the volume is going up. And then there's a cake. Sometimes I do this as well like that. So there's silence. And then on the very first kick, it goes to zero dB. So now all I have to do to bounce this is select this clip like this, and it highlights the area. And now I just File Export Audio. Make sure it's 24. Make sure it's worth, make sure there's no data. And that's it. As you can see. It's the render starts where this midi clip starting. And then the render length is whatever the length of this midi clip is. That's just a good practice to make sure nothing gets cut from the initial kick. And also everything fades down to complete silence at the end. And you hit Export and you're done. Congratulations. You've completed your track, and now it's ready to be played in a club. Don't forget to play next video for a complete track play through. Thank you very much for taking this class. See you in the next one. Cheers. Bye.