If you would not mind explaining some basic questions: I am not involved with music production in anyway, but it really fascinates me. 1) I do not understand how one "makes" an electronic song. For example, lets just talk main stream artists for the sake of easy conversation Pretty Lights- does he download sample packs of both vocals/drum sounds, etc. or does he create a sound from scratch? I do not understand. 2) What is it called to tune those said sounds to make them sound unique? Where can I read all about electronic music production? Anyone? Thanks guys
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OalNTVmk4&feature=related](HQ) Big Gigantic - Notorious Thugs (Remix) - YouTube[/ame] Just for fun song is ill.
I'm on my phone so I can't listen to the thing, but I can explain things. Techno, trance, dubstep etc are all made using MIDI keyboards, controllers etc. They load the sounds they want onto the controller and away they go. For Hip Hop type beats, they do the same thing with drums, bass, and samples. Samples are just loaded into a program, chopped up, and loaded onto the MIDI controller. I don't actually do this, but I want to start, so I did do a bit of research.
Exactly, but the mainstream producers, where do they get THEIR sounds from? Are they samples they just finely tune to sound like their style or what? Where do they download said samples?
[quote name='"Danceswithjuub"'] Exactly, but the mainstream producers, where do they get THEIR sounds from? Are they samples they just finely tune to sound like their style or what? Where do they download said samples?[/quote] Not sure, but I know a lot of the sounds are recycled, especially in mainstream. They can change the pitch, frequency etc. other than that I'm not sure. You can try downloading some from the web, pretty it'll be there somewhere.
A lot of drum sounds are sampled from previous songs (a lot of hip hop producers use vinyl for this). Most hip hop drums use a combination of sampled drums and "stock" drum machine sounds that either come in software or from keyboards/other hardware. They are filtered and layered together to make it sound "fuller". Some producers will just sample drum kits right from the studio, like snares and shakers and then fine tune them to fit the mix. A lot of producers use samples. But a lot of producers also make music from scratch. A lot of "new millennium" hip hop just uses stock sounds from software for their drums and then use synths to make melodic parts. Note: pretty much 90% of hip hop you hear on the radio uses the same exact drums. Like the classic dirty south snare roll or 808 kick drums (mastered to have really long release) that appear on club beats. There are some classic breaks that have been sampled thousands of times and will appear over and over again in hip hop songs, and even songs of other genres. Google the "amen break" to get an idea of what I'm talking about. If you want to see a really great producer in work then youtube: Boon Doc from scratch pt. 2. From there you can see his other songs using samples in the related videos. If you get more interested in sampling, google whosampled.com and click on the J Dilla section under the main heading. Here is a J dilla beat using samples. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwkw7fBVj7Y]J Dilla Prince with snippet of original sample - YouTube[/ame] The original sample is at the end of the track. I don't know much about producing at all, so this is pretty much all I can tell you.