Mixing and Mastering

Everyone starting out with electronic music production has likely run into the problem of having spent hours in the studio laying down your drums, percussions, bass, synths, vocals and mess with the arrangement. After the final export of the track and playing it back on your stereo it sounds completely dull and tedious. This might be a problem that cannot be fixed by mastering. The issue is almost always a problem with the mixdown. A well-mixed track with no mastering in most cases is better than a poorly-mixed track with a lot of well prepared mastering effects. The first step is to clean up the unwanted deep-toned emphasis of the acoustic pattern of the whole mix by filtering out all the unneeded low-end information from each track. Consider using volume automation instead of compression for your mastering. Gentle sidechaining can work wonders. Make final calls with your ear supported by spectrum analyzers.

Drum Replacement

When it comes to the popular music of our era, how many songs feature real, acoustic drums of the kind played by real humans? Today synthetic elements in modern music have become the norm. The drums tend to sound cunningly perfect. This is achieved by midi signals triggering samples quantized to a minimum of humanity. Augmenting software detects specific drum hits and adds its own drum sound on top of the raw percussive material which can lead to a tonal completeness of drums in electronic music. A top-notch drum sound is vital in establishing a unique and competitive sound.

Ableton Live

We use Ableton Live. Ableton Live is a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). It is versatile, powerful, and simple. When we started using Ableton Live several years ago, we realized that not only could it apparently do almost any musical thing we could think of but also could do many things that we never thought of. It changed the understanding of sequencer software. In addition to the Arrange and Session views Ableton’s innovations also include the dedicated hardware controller Push which in our view is one of the coolest and most beautifully made pieces of technology to date.