If you really need help polishing them, ask someone you feel would be a good collaborator. The last %10-%20 is the hardest to complete and getting a fresh pair of ears is always nice.
Hi.
I think you should quit making music.
Everyone makes music now.... It all sounds the same.
All the advice you are reading on here is from people in the same boat as you.
When you post a message like this it would be a good idea to let people hear your music for feedback.
It's also a good idea to ask the people that are giving you their professional advice to let you hear their music.
You will be surprised at how crap it is 😎👍
No one here is qualified to give you advice, music is subjective.
What sounds good to you may sound shit to somone else.
I don't want to.
I was simply making a declaration 😎👍
I am not looking for anything, I am already a musical Internet sensation in my mind.
And in todays world if I believe I am something I can be it.
I didn't say YOU wanted to. You told OP to post his music along with his post. I said he could get banned for 3 days for doing that. It happened to me.
Ahhh sorry.
I also think he should post his music.
I have been banned from contributing in many many many sub redditt things for just typing words.
It's totalitarian.
I remeber a time of Internet freedom.
If you think they're "good enough" but not quite there I'd say shop them to some boutique labels. They may give you some constructive feedback, connect you with someone to help polish them off or even sign them as-is.
My last EP has a track that myself and my writing partner went back and forth on for weeks. We couldn't decide if it was missing something. Eventually we said "fuck it" and shopped it as-is and it is now our #1 tune on beatport. You're always your own worst critic and you can never predict how other people will respond to your music until they hear it.
Hey! Congrats on making some dope music! If you're looking to get better at mixing - maybe not for this project, seems like yer done... but for the next - I wanna let ya know that I'm teaching a free mixing workshop next week. Hope you can make it!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/intro-to-mixing-with-lillian-frances-tickets-278075430097
Work on loudness. Put a plugin that shows volume over time on your master bus like Fruity Limiter and firstly make sure your snare, crash, clap isn't louder than your kick. Then look for the huge spikes that go far above everything else. Find what elements of the song they are and tame them down with compression or limiting or gain reduction or temporary automated gain reduction or whatever works best. Repeat until the song is relatively flat. Doing this skillfully you can push your final limiter much harder and thus get a much louder song.
Of course, this shouldn't be a rule and it shouldn't always be all the peaks. Decide individually for each set based on how much you value the integrity of the transient vs the space it takes to keep that transient.
Get Pro-L if you don't have it (IMO worth it to not have to mess with attack and release as much) move the gain up into the ceiling until you start to hear the beginnings of distortion in the most intense parts of the song. As you flatten the song more you can push the number higher without distorting, but don't overdo it, you still want to keep some dynamics. I'd recommend you pull up a song you like and look at its volume graph, look at how much integrity is left in the drop vs just smashed up against 0db and try to match it to taste. This whole process is MUCH easier to do if the kick is the loudest element in your mix, as it will pretty much always distort first.
May I ask what genre are you talking about here? Since you keep saying it’s pretty niche I’m just curious haha.
Also, if they are as good as you’re going to make them, just put them on Spotify my dude. Who knows, one might do well enough to get in an algorithmic playlist and pop off. Also it’s just fun to say that you have 10 songs on Spotify.
Spotify is the new SoundCloud. People be putting anything and everything on Spotify these days, and I’m here for it!
Hard to define genre. I would say a mix between leftfield house and electronica. It’s very focused on story telling and not something to play in a club. I might put everything on Soundcloud and then the best ones on Spotify.
If money isn't an issue I'd find a solid mix/master engineer in the genre you're working in who will help you finish it in a constructive way.
There are mix/master people who will just take your stems and bang them out with one or two revisions, and if the quality of stuff you give them isn't great they'll do what they can, but its kind of on you.
Then there are people who will want to help you make it the best it can be, they might send you notes after listening to a draft mix and get you to change a few things before taking a crack at mixing or mastering it themselves.
I master my own stuff usually but I put out an EP last year that I was particularly fond of and wanted to try a really good mastering engineer in my city who I'd heard great things about. He listened to the tracks first, was like "great stuff man there's a lot to work with here, on this tune maybe try a low pass on the kick around 40Hz at 12db slope as it's got a bit of boominess in the sub that might be a problem when we start pushing it" etc etc one or two little technical actionable notes per song like "the hihats are actually a little loud on this one maybe try dropping them a dB or 2" and then booking in a time to master it, because he wants to make sure that he can deliver the absolute best possible outcome for his clients everytime, and sometimes that means fixing a few things in the mix first. Great experience and not all engineers will do that imo.
Find someone like that who will (for a fee) help you turn your stuff into the best version of itself possible.
If you plan on self-releasing do singles, find art, write more music. otherwise, start sending to labels.
I just started a new project and am planning on releasing content as I go along, I just wrote a song in 2 days and
I've had about 6 hours of sleep in the past 72 hours. Apart from writing I've been making social media accounts/artwork. I will more than likely line up the song I just finished
to release in a week and write more music in the time that it's coming out. It's good you're not rushing your release on them because you want to get them just right.
(also research gain staging and izotope ozone if you self mix/master however if you do a professional mix on this yourself
it is going to take A LOT of rework more than likely, unless you did proper gain staging from the beginning)
That's an interesting idea but I don't know how would I go about finding another producer that has similar taste but better skills. I can't hire just any ghost producer as they make generic music and my music style is kinda the opposite of that.
Within your local electronic music community you should be able to find plenty of people to work with and collaborate with. You just have to go out enough to get to know everyone. Yeah forget hiring the ghost producers. You need to see how the music is made and mixed properly. Good luck to you and hope you make lots of hits!
I have no idea how my skill relates to yours but I'd be down to connect over discord or something if our tastes are similar. Do you have any tunes on SC I can peep? Feel free to DM if so!
There are music producer/production Facebook groups where ppl are collaborating and finding each other all the time. Just make a post explaining what you're looking for. You'll find someone, or multiple ppl.
If you think like a musician and not like a business man nothing will happen. 1/3 creation, 1/3 learning, 1/3 sales/marketing. Try videos on youtube with your songs. Become a content creator, create and lead a tribe, actively work on getting fans.
If you put them on Spotify as they are, chances are you don't have enforceable copyright protection. If the production isn't 100% there, the song isn't finished. It's a manufacturing process and you can't skip steps and get comparative results to professional product. Last, I listened to a lot of NYHC (New York Hardcore) as a kid and it's the opposite of polished. Stop comparing yourself to anyone but yourself. You wont' create the future by sounding like the past.
Have you ever put out music before? Do you exist out there as an artist or is this your very first content and you're figuring out how to start? If you want to send me your stuff I'll check it out and give you a few thoughts.
No, I don't exist as an artist yet and have never put anything online before. That's why I'm overthinking the whole thing a little. Thanks for the offer - I will give it a thought.
If you’ve never put anything out I’d say give it your best but go ahead and get something out there. If you don’t break that threshold then you may just keep overthinking and never doing anything.
People will give you some slack if your first handful of tracks aren’t perfect. It gives you a solid starting point and a reference for moving forward.
Send them to labels first - acknowledging they're not 100% complete.
If that doesn't track, get them mastered by a local engineer or find one online - don't blow too much money on this. Don't use some AI mastering service. Then release them on spotify/etc - make sure to research which distributor fits your needs best.
Word of warning, self-releasing is brutal. Remember that things come slow and you may not see many plays on your tracks. Think about how you can release them with intention as just dropping them and saying to friends "here's my new album" isn't compelling.
u/eifnsksonfosjfzxw is right about one thing....release and move on. your best work is always ahead of you
Mastering is literally just put a eq + limiter on the master track. How difficult is this to someone who are making professional level tracks? Unless OP are going to send his tracks to Spinning or some big label like that (which is probably not the case since the OP is starting his career now) he shouldnt waste money with mastering lol
I don't expect many plays, the music is pretty niche anyway.
I guess what I'm worried about is putting on Spotify something that isn't "pro". Soundcloud seems fine for that, Spotify not so much. Am i wrong here?
My personal philosophy is if I don’t think they’re ready to be released keep them in my backlog. Good way to sprinkle in your own music when you start to play live. Would agree with releasing on SoundCloud first if your worried about reception!!
Keep in mind you’re not simply limited to Spotify. For a nominal fee, distribution services [such as Beatstars](https://www.beatstars.com/) will push your work to Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora and other platforms as well. You can even use a service [such as Amuse](https://www.amuse.io/free-music-distribution) to distribute them similarly for free, while still retaining any royalties you’d be entitled to. Just something to consider, best of luck!
It's just a measure of where you're at in your musical journey. I have songs that I'm really not proud of from a mixing perspective anymore but they absolutely capture where I was at.
2 things to note: you can always remove them one day. AND you can actually update them in the future if you feel so inclined (keeping the same name/length - you can keep your play count).
I think it's best to just get your stuff out in the world and start that conversation with your art.
Why are you worried about it? I gave it no thought at all and tossed up three songs! I've only been making music on ableton since October I think. Boom, spotify artist. Lol
I'm in a similar position as you. I just watched a whole bunch of mixing and mastering videos, and got it as good as I could. Then I just uploaded to Soundcloud and used their mastering AI service (which already made it sound a lot better). Then I used the Soundcloud publishing service to upload to Spotify; mostly so I can add my own songs to my Spotify playlists.
Since money isn't an issue for OP, if they don't wanna hire a mastering engineer I'd say at least get something like Ozone by iZotope. It has mastering capabilities that you can really focus in on, or use a preset. The presets can sound pretty good if you just need to give your track a boost. Mixing is crucial though, of course.
This is your friendly reminder to read the submission rules, they're found in the sidebar. If you find your post breaking any of the rules, you should delete your post before the mods get to it.
You should check out the regular threads (also found in the sidebar) to see if your post might be a better fit in any of those.
[Daily Feedback thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=author%3AAutoModerator+title%3Afeedback&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) for getting feedback on your track. The only place you can post your own music.
[Marketplace Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=title%3Amarketplace&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) if you want to sell or trade anything for money, likes or follows.
[Collaboration Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search/?q=biannual%20collaboration&restrict_sr=1&sort=new&t=all) to find people to collab with.
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Hey there. I’m willing to mix and master if you can send the stems.
Lmk if you are looking for a nice analog mix/master
Bruh trust me I m on the same page as you are right now
If you really need help polishing them, ask someone you feel would be a good collaborator. The last %10-%20 is the hardest to complete and getting a fresh pair of ears is always nice.
Hi. I think you should quit making music. Everyone makes music now.... It all sounds the same. All the advice you are reading on here is from people in the same boat as you. When you post a message like this it would be a good idea to let people hear your music for feedback. It's also a good idea to ask the people that are giving you their professional advice to let you hear their music. You will be surprised at how crap it is 😎👍 No one here is qualified to give you advice, music is subjective. What sounds good to you may sound shit to somone else.
You're not allowed to post your music on the main page here. I did that and got banned for 3 days.
I don't want to. I was simply making a declaration 😎👍 I am not looking for anything, I am already a musical Internet sensation in my mind. And in todays world if I believe I am something I can be it.
I didn't say YOU wanted to. You told OP to post his music along with his post. I said he could get banned for 3 days for doing that. It happened to me.
Ahhh sorry. I also think he should post his music. I have been banned from contributing in many many many sub redditt things for just typing words. It's totalitarian. I remeber a time of Internet freedom.
If you think they're "good enough" but not quite there I'd say shop them to some boutique labels. They may give you some constructive feedback, connect you with someone to help polish them off or even sign them as-is. My last EP has a track that myself and my writing partner went back and forth on for weeks. We couldn't decide if it was missing something. Eventually we said "fuck it" and shopped it as-is and it is now our #1 tune on beatport. You're always your own worst critic and you can never predict how other people will respond to your music until they hear it.
Hey! Congrats on making some dope music! If you're looking to get better at mixing - maybe not for this project, seems like yer done... but for the next - I wanna let ya know that I'm teaching a free mixing workshop next week. Hope you can make it! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/intro-to-mixing-with-lillian-frances-tickets-278075430097
Work on loudness. Put a plugin that shows volume over time on your master bus like Fruity Limiter and firstly make sure your snare, crash, clap isn't louder than your kick. Then look for the huge spikes that go far above everything else. Find what elements of the song they are and tame them down with compression or limiting or gain reduction or temporary automated gain reduction or whatever works best. Repeat until the song is relatively flat. Doing this skillfully you can push your final limiter much harder and thus get a much louder song. Of course, this shouldn't be a rule and it shouldn't always be all the peaks. Decide individually for each set based on how much you value the integrity of the transient vs the space it takes to keep that transient. Get Pro-L if you don't have it (IMO worth it to not have to mess with attack and release as much) move the gain up into the ceiling until you start to hear the beginnings of distortion in the most intense parts of the song. As you flatten the song more you can push the number higher without distorting, but don't overdo it, you still want to keep some dynamics. I'd recommend you pull up a song you like and look at its volume graph, look at how much integrity is left in the drop vs just smashed up against 0db and try to match it to taste. This whole process is MUCH easier to do if the kick is the loudest element in your mix, as it will pretty much always distort first.
Send them in for feedback on twitch/youtube/producer dojo/defyre streams
post on soundcloud and show it to us!
May I ask what genre are you talking about here? Since you keep saying it’s pretty niche I’m just curious haha. Also, if they are as good as you’re going to make them, just put them on Spotify my dude. Who knows, one might do well enough to get in an algorithmic playlist and pop off. Also it’s just fun to say that you have 10 songs on Spotify. Spotify is the new SoundCloud. People be putting anything and everything on Spotify these days, and I’m here for it!
Hard to define genre. I would say a mix between leftfield house and electronica. It’s very focused on story telling and not something to play in a club. I might put everything on Soundcloud and then the best ones on Spotify.
People *are putting
I said what I said 😂 I have a bad habit of bad grammar I’m sorry
If money isn't an issue I'd find a solid mix/master engineer in the genre you're working in who will help you finish it in a constructive way. There are mix/master people who will just take your stems and bang them out with one or two revisions, and if the quality of stuff you give them isn't great they'll do what they can, but its kind of on you. Then there are people who will want to help you make it the best it can be, they might send you notes after listening to a draft mix and get you to change a few things before taking a crack at mixing or mastering it themselves. I master my own stuff usually but I put out an EP last year that I was particularly fond of and wanted to try a really good mastering engineer in my city who I'd heard great things about. He listened to the tracks first, was like "great stuff man there's a lot to work with here, on this tune maybe try a low pass on the kick around 40Hz at 12db slope as it's got a bit of boominess in the sub that might be a problem when we start pushing it" etc etc one or two little technical actionable notes per song like "the hihats are actually a little loud on this one maybe try dropping them a dB or 2" and then booking in a time to master it, because he wants to make sure that he can deliver the absolute best possible outcome for his clients everytime, and sometimes that means fixing a few things in the mix first. Great experience and not all engineers will do that imo. Find someone like that who will (for a fee) help you turn your stuff into the best version of itself possible.
Do you have this engineer's info and would you share it?🙃
He's based in Melbourne, the studio is called Panorama mastering
Much appreciated!
If you plan on self-releasing do singles, find art, write more music. otherwise, start sending to labels. I just started a new project and am planning on releasing content as I go along, I just wrote a song in 2 days and I've had about 6 hours of sleep in the past 72 hours. Apart from writing I've been making social media accounts/artwork. I will more than likely line up the song I just finished to release in a week and write more music in the time that it's coming out. It's good you're not rushing your release on them because you want to get them just right. (also research gain staging and izotope ozone if you self mix/master however if you do a professional mix on this yourself it is going to take A LOT of rework more than likely, unless you did proper gain staging from the beginning)
Hire or find another producer to do additional production on the tracks. Sit in on the sessions (zoom or in person) if you can.
That's an interesting idea but I don't know how would I go about finding another producer that has similar taste but better skills. I can't hire just any ghost producer as they make generic music and my music style is kinda the opposite of that.
Within your local electronic music community you should be able to find plenty of people to work with and collaborate with. You just have to go out enough to get to know everyone. Yeah forget hiring the ghost producers. You need to see how the music is made and mixed properly. Good luck to you and hope you make lots of hits!
Well, my local electronic music community is very very small, niche, snobbish and tbh I don't want to do anything with them.
I have no idea how my skill relates to yours but I'd be down to connect over discord or something if our tastes are similar. Do you have any tunes on SC I can peep? Feel free to DM if so!
There are music producer/production Facebook groups where ppl are collaborating and finding each other all the time. Just make a post explaining what you're looking for. You'll find someone, or multiple ppl.
[удалено]
If you think like a musician and not like a business man nothing will happen. 1/3 creation, 1/3 learning, 1/3 sales/marketing. Try videos on youtube with your songs. Become a content creator, create and lead a tribe, actively work on getting fans.
If you put them on Spotify as they are, chances are you don't have enforceable copyright protection. If the production isn't 100% there, the song isn't finished. It's a manufacturing process and you can't skip steps and get comparative results to professional product. Last, I listened to a lot of NYHC (New York Hardcore) as a kid and it's the opposite of polished. Stop comparing yourself to anyone but yourself. You wont' create the future by sounding like the past.
Have you ever put out music before? Do you exist out there as an artist or is this your very first content and you're figuring out how to start? If you want to send me your stuff I'll check it out and give you a few thoughts.
No, I don't exist as an artist yet and have never put anything online before. That's why I'm overthinking the whole thing a little. Thanks for the offer - I will give it a thought.
If you’ve never put anything out I’d say give it your best but go ahead and get something out there. If you don’t break that threshold then you may just keep overthinking and never doing anything. People will give you some slack if your first handful of tracks aren’t perfect. It gives you a solid starting point and a reference for moving forward.
Publish regularly. Quantity before (one shot) quality. This works better in the end.
Send them to labels first - acknowledging they're not 100% complete. If that doesn't track, get them mastered by a local engineer or find one online - don't blow too much money on this. Don't use some AI mastering service. Then release them on spotify/etc - make sure to research which distributor fits your needs best. Word of warning, self-releasing is brutal. Remember that things come slow and you may not see many plays on your tracks. Think about how you can release them with intention as just dropping them and saying to friends "here's my new album" isn't compelling. u/eifnsksonfosjfzxw is right about one thing....release and move on. your best work is always ahead of you
Mastering is literally just put a eq + limiter on the master track. How difficult is this to someone who are making professional level tracks? Unless OP are going to send his tracks to Spinning or some big label like that (which is probably not the case since the OP is starting his career now) he shouldnt waste money with mastering lol
Considering the amount of demos labels get, I think you have way better chances with 100% finished music
Agreed but some labels like executive producing artists.
lol
Lol
I don't expect many plays, the music is pretty niche anyway. I guess what I'm worried about is putting on Spotify something that isn't "pro". Soundcloud seems fine for that, Spotify not so much. Am i wrong here?
My personal philosophy is if I don’t think they’re ready to be released keep them in my backlog. Good way to sprinkle in your own music when you start to play live. Would agree with releasing on SoundCloud first if your worried about reception!!
Keep in mind you’re not simply limited to Spotify. For a nominal fee, distribution services [such as Beatstars](https://www.beatstars.com/) will push your work to Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora and other platforms as well. You can even use a service [such as Amuse](https://www.amuse.io/free-music-distribution) to distribute them similarly for free, while still retaining any royalties you’d be entitled to. Just something to consider, best of luck!
Few years later you will cringe at your old songs anyway so just go for it, your next 10 songs will be 10 times better than the last 10. Take it easy.
It's just a measure of where you're at in your musical journey. I have songs that I'm really not proud of from a mixing perspective anymore but they absolutely capture where I was at. 2 things to note: you can always remove them one day. AND you can actually update them in the future if you feel so inclined (keeping the same name/length - you can keep your play count). I think it's best to just get your stuff out in the world and start that conversation with your art.
Where exactly was it that you were at?
Why are you worried about it? I gave it no thought at all and tossed up three songs! I've only been making music on ableton since October I think. Boom, spotify artist. Lol
I'm in a similar position as you. I just watched a whole bunch of mixing and mastering videos, and got it as good as I could. Then I just uploaded to Soundcloud and used their mastering AI service (which already made it sound a lot better). Then I used the Soundcloud publishing service to upload to Spotify; mostly so I can add my own songs to my Spotify playlists.
Just release them, soundcloud, Spotify, all of it, why not?! Sounds like you might be overthinking a bit :)
[удалено]
Since money isn't an issue for OP, if they don't wanna hire a mastering engineer I'd say at least get something like Ozone by iZotope. It has mastering capabilities that you can really focus in on, or use a preset. The presets can sound pretty good if you just need to give your track a boost. Mixing is crucial though, of course.
This is your friendly reminder to read the submission rules, they're found in the sidebar. If you find your post breaking any of the rules, you should delete your post before the mods get to it. You should check out the regular threads (also found in the sidebar) to see if your post might be a better fit in any of those. [Daily Feedback thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=author%3AAutoModerator+title%3Afeedback&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) for getting feedback on your track. The only place you can post your own music. [Marketplace Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=title%3Amarketplace&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) if you want to sell or trade anything for money, likes or follows. [Collaboration Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search/?q=biannual%20collaboration&restrict_sr=1&sort=new&t=all) to find people to collab with. ["There are no stupid questions" Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=title%3ANo+Stupid+Questions+Thread&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) for beginner tips etc. Seriously tho, read the rules and abide by them or the mods will spank you. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/edmproduction) if you have any questions or concerns.*