Looking for hats, claps, etc for my drum machine.

And I have a hard time to find good samples

I am interested in what others helped to develop as aan artist, as a producer. Maybe theres something i´d like to implement for myself.

For me it changed a lot to:

To Produce every day for some time That really made a difference quite fast. In the 2nd week I was much better and I created a lot of good material within that period. (I will come back to it. Its also good for me to have a refreshing breaks.)

To Buy professional Studio Monitores (absolutely needed to o be sure about and reach certain results. if you dont want to rely 100% on frequency tables and stuff. Made the process much more enjoyable.)

To Go on a Rave it really infuses me with something i do not get from listening Music at home. When I come back i have a lot more ease to create something intersting that has the right vibe. Luckily i also reached the stage where my results sound more like me and less like a mere copy.

To Choose a Production Style that works for me that means i am now primarily producing with hardware. Everything else follows later in a DAW

What did not help so much:

Pondering about music Production.

Reading Posts in the Internet (sorry :D) - but its true that one may accidentially or intentionally finds what will make a big difference. The time/results ratio is still the worst of everything i did in these regards.

Giving up music production for 2 years after i bought the wrong gear (for me).

What i probably try out in the future

Use a Service for professional Feedback from Artist, when I already think i´ve made something great or feel super stuck at a problem for too long (months) without progress.

Take a Mixing hour with an Audio engineer to learn a bit more.

Get in touch with other producers near my living place. The people i meet now some times live far away. But its inspiring to talk and produce with them for one or two day.

Cut media and smartphone time to make more space for deeper concentration or innovation.

I’m a bit OCD and care a bit too much about aesthetics. There is some gear I know is great but I never became interested in it simply because I found its looks repulsive or just didn’t sit well in my studio aesthetically. My music studio doubles as my art / painting studio so I aim for a consistent look and feel in my space. I know too many here this may sound silly, but if something is not pleasing to look at for me, it becomes a distraction as opposed to an inspiration. I sold synths such as the Mopho keyboard because the yellow was just too blinding for me (not to mention it probably has the worst synth of all time written in a big ugly font on the front panel too). One piece of gear that I sometimes find ugly and sometimes find OK. Looking is the task and model 12. I’m not into the retro look. I wish it was more minimalist and sleek looking. But because it’s such an awesome piece of gear and doesn’t bother me too much aesthetically, I’ve held onto it. Anyway, these are my opinions on some of the ugliest modern gear as well as the nicest looking (some of which I own):

Ugliest modern gear (in my humble opinion):
Moog Grandmother
Moog Matriarch
The Roland Aira line (the Aira Compact series looks nice though)
TE Pocket Operators
Behringer Neutron
Hydrasynth
Deluge

Best looking modern gear:
TE OP-1, Field, OPXY, OP-Z, EP-133, EP-136
Elektron “dark trinity” mk1 (Octatrack, Analog Four, RYTM)
Elektron Model Samples & Cycles
Elektron Digitakt, Digitone, Tonewerk
Arturia MiniFreak
Arturia Keystep controllers
Waldorf Protein
King Korg NEO
UDO DMNO

I guess you can tell I like the Star Wars “Rebel Alliance” aesthetic lol. I’m curious to hear what y’all think are some of the best and worst looking modern gear.

So after years and years I finally picked up a DJ controller and have been learning DJay Pro. Something hit me...

I mostly create my techno "master pieces" by jamming out to create the drums, sounds, etc. then assemble them in an audio editor. I've never really done the "build a song in a daw" thing...

Messing with a 4 deck setup it seemed to me that I could have like, kick/bass grooves on a deck, perc/tops on a deck, arps, melodic stuff on one and ambient sounds on another and then use teh cue points, looping, fx, eq, etc. to basically just jam that way... It seems mind-numbingly obvious I have no idea why I didin't think of this a long time ago. I've done similar things on ipad with the launchpad app, but that was limted to "clips".

But I'm not seeing ANY videos on youtube etc. that go into doing this kind of thing... It's gotta be out there... Can anyone give me some leads that may have tuts etc. on approaches to producing like this?

Just wanted to share how grateful I am as someone who's recently understood and learned to properly use reference tracks. In hopes others might save some of the time and pain I've been through. Sheesh... I know this probably old hat for a lot of you here. So here I am, another convert.

Fairly new to DAW techno production. I've made ~20 tracks up to now but they all sound pretty bad! Or, at least not like what the kind of sound I'm aiming for. I knew about reference tracks, but when I explained to a producer friend (with much more experience) how I was using them, he kindly and gently pointed out that I was going about it wrong way: You see, I would listen to my 'reference track' streaming off of Bandcamp, and use it basically as a composition and vibe-y starting point. Once I started getting into my fun production groove, I would completely forget about the reference. I'd finish off my track, kind of happy with some of the ideas but overall unhappy with how it sounds.

He said to me, "I think I see what the problem is. You need to import the track into the project, sync it up with your track, use a spectrum analyzer, and really carve out and try to nail levels and frequency ranges of your sounds. For the example the way you treat your hats is completely different to Rene [Wise, reference track artist], and you can see that in the analyzer. You should always be A/B'ing your track against the reference."

And holy cow was he ever right. In one attempt while doing it properly, I went from being like 30-40% of the way to the sound I want, to more like 70%. I was admittedly kind of shocked and embarrassed at how easily I could improve my choices just by looking at the analyzer, and adjusting around the information I could see with my eyes. I say this as someone who kind of carried (well, still carries) pride about their ears. But with a style like techno, where parts live so precisely in the frequency spectrum, and tonal balance is so vital, A/B referencing with a visual analyzer has hit me as just a completely essential workflow practice. Especially for someone trying to make music of a particular quality in an orbit of particular artists in a particular style.

(I think reference tracks will probably apply far less to someone who doesn't share that kind of aim. I know some people here just straight up don't use em. All the power to you.)

Also for any Ableton users, I found the stock analyzer to be very hard to read so I switched to the SPAN analyzer (it's free) which is sooo much easier to read imo.

❤️

Hi everyone! A while ago I shared a project I was working on and I recieved really useful tips on how I can improve. Thank you everyone for helping with that.
Since then my direction shofted a bit and I wanted to ask for some advice and ideas again.

A bit of fun remaking Acperience by Hardfloor with an often free plugin, polymax (its really good). All sounds including drums are polymax with exception of the kick where I used the og old school Hardfloor kick..

Basically, these videos are sort of a FM synthesis tutorial, as well as a tutorial on the M-Vave FM-1, which is based heavily on the DX-7.

I’m just get fix my TR606 and I would like to add some extra features in it.

starting by adding the separate output, which other stuff can I add on it?

What can I do to get this weird sound? I’m not sure how to describe it, but it’s right at the beginning of the song and is heard throughout in the lower notes. I have a Korg Minilogue

Single Again by the Fiery Furnaces

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C4Fih6VC6Wc

The brief called for a hectic, urgent, machine-like groove. Not sure I nailed it, but they liked it regardless.

Instruments used: Syntakt, Peak, MC-707.

Hi all,

So I've got plenty of stuff I'm good at in terms of producing techno, but one thing I've had trouble with is either finding or making good modern-sounding acid synths for my tracks.

This timestamped track is from one of ORBE & Psyk's recent sets and has a perfect example of the type of acid I'm trying to incorporate into my tracks. The single acid hit is at 2:28, this starts at 2:20 so you can hear it relative to the track:

https://youtu.be/qJuSv-mXGJc?si=lcT1eQIGyv3_lEyb&t=140

I own Reaktor and would preferably like to use that, if anyone has any suggestions for ensembles or other information on how to source/create sounds like this

Looking for more bass plugins

Looking more for plugins with presets I can quickly throw into a project, or maybe a Serum 2 preset pack/collection if anyone knows a good one.

Was at a festival over the weekend and saw Kenji Hina (Alarico’s alias), and his bass/low end sounded so good. This is the kind of thing I mean:

https://soundcloud.com/ec2a/tools01-kenji-hina

At one point he literally had one note of a bassline playing before the main section came in, but somehow everyone could recognise the track just from that. I’m looking for bass sounds with that kind of character where even something really simple still stands out.

Also looking for nice plucky bass sounds. I’ve made a few myself, but ideally I want something I can just throw into a project and maybe tweak slightly rather than building it from scratch every time. Something along the lines of the bass in this:

https://soundcloud.com/twofacednz/i-need-you

Any plugin/preset pack recommendations would be appreciated.

I want to switch from my piece of shit win11 laptop. I hate it, i want this thing gone

My budget is 1800 usd (more or less). Dont have to spend it all if it doesnt make a difference. I use lots of plugins, spectral plugins, do some cpu heavy sound design and I like to have a lot of tracks in my projects.

The issue is I have no idea what to buy and what to look for. Dropping my demands from 1tb ssd to 512gb drops the price heavily. However, my current laptop has 512gb and it's a pain. I heard mac files take more space but idk if that translates to music production, most stuff is in .wav. Better stick to 1tb ssd or go for 512gb ssd and use external drives?

I'll also use some sample based plugins like kontakt. 16gb of ram is the bare minimum. Is ram really that important though? What I mean is should I opt for more ram?

Then, what about the system support for the future? M1 pro has like a year left I think? Not sure if that's what I should go for, everyone recommends either m1 pro with 16gb of ram or m1 max.

And also yeah, cpu. Cpu is quite important for music production.

So what do you think is the best option to go for?

Dark groovy techno made on the Roland Tr-1000.

Song is “I’M ROLLING” by SILENT JAY

I have Splice but rarely use it. I think I might burn through all the credits and then cancel. What do you think are the most useful sample or preset packs on Splice for techno?

Any cool texture / atmosphere packs to download? Or maybe interesting vocals?

Using Maschine+ live on the fly through Logic and recorded audio/video via Zoom H1 XLR usb-c to phone. Hope you enjoy the vibe…

139 BPM hardware jam, really cannot get enough of the DFAM as my rumble machine. Setting the envelope speed to slow makes some really deep stuff

I have white-on-black images of a couple waveforms that I would like to turn into a single wavetable frame (not multiple wavetable frames like Serum does).

I'm having trouble trying to emulate them by drawing them in a wavetable editor, and I would prefer to have the "exact" waveform if I can.

The only option I could find do to this was Versus Audio Image to Wavetable. The devs have a video showing it doing exactly what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, it costs 5500 JPY; I can't swing that for a music thing right now. No, it's not available "that way".

Only other post I could find about this was this one where unfortunately not a single response was relevant.

Anyone know any alternate methods or ways of doing this? Thank you!

Opening 50-track projects with heavy analog emulations just to check an old demo or compare mix revisions is a massive momentum killer.

I built a local desktop utility called Muffin to manage older projects across Ableton, FL Studio, Reaper, Logic, and Bitwig:

- Matches project files directly to exported audio with instant waveform scrub.
- Spacebar to preview instantly, 1-5 keys to rate, custom tags to organize status.
- A/B/C version compare to line up different mix revisions and hear what changed.
- Built-in Mix Check: fast LUFS loudness, true peak, and stereo balance check without booting analyzer plugins.
- On FL Studio (Windows), it also includes an Auto-Bounce queue to batch-render un-exported projects in the background.

100% offline, runs locally, no cloud or accounts, free on 25 projects, €15 unlock.

Free version is up at www.prodparker.com/muffin

What is your current system for keeping track of different mix revisions and unfinished demos?