Music Production Archive - Nadine de Macedo

AI in music production – A statement.

Nadine — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 17:45:00 +0000

It’s time to talk about something serious: artificial intelligence in music. I made up my mind, to which extent I would use, tolerate or deny the use of machine learning algorithms in composition and music production. A deep dive into the future of music. How I see artificial intelligence in music After first lawsuits and social media hypes, the music scene is debating over the future of the music business. I am sure that the rise of AI is such a big and tremendous step, like moving from a 4-track recorder to a digital audio workstation. Young producer take the chance “working” with the vocalist of their choice, creating new beat types or circumventing creativity blocks by generating parts. On the other hand, well-known artists fear being copied or being put into the wrong context. I understand both views and made up my mind, where I see artificial intelligence as chance or threat. I could profit from: I am against: A clear statement All music on my social media channels will be performed, recorded, edited and mixed by humans. I may use software for sound design and drum programming, check my mixes with algorithms, but I won’t generate content with artificial intelligence. As a composer it is important to me to write my own music, so I don’t use sample libraries for songparts, chord sequences or melodies. The same applies for artificial intelligence. I don’t mind flaws and imperfections, cause my working ethics is about sharing creativity and supporting small independent artists. Human recorded stems will *always* be prioritized! However, it feels wrong for me to support people or collaborate with people who use AI to generate creative content. Of course, generating interesting prompts and optimizing parameters needs certain diligence and knowledge, but it’s not comparable to the creativity and craft of conventional art. I am happy that you find a way to express your creativity in this novel way, but please don’t ask me to comment, repost or buy AI generated content. It’s good practise to credit everything properly, so people can decide on their own. Why is AI a threat and chance to music? Technical knowledge becomes obsolete I’ve spent twenty years of my life learning how to compose, analyse, arrange, structure and mix music. I have a deep knowledge about instrumental ranges, playing techniques, vocal techniques, frequency ranges. My studies helped to understand the mathematics and physics beyond the knobs of your compressor, spectrometers and reverb machines. Most of my knowledge and will become obsolete, if I let algorithms generate melodies, or decide about dynamics and instrumental choices. What is the point in learning all this if you could train an algorithm to generate an AC/DC guitar riff from scratch; turn your lousy vocal performance into Freddie Mercury or mix your song like Steve Albini? We’re standing on the shoulders of giants instead of understanding WHY their work is so valuable. We are not able to do everything with one knob, but it’s just a question of time. I have a problem with this mindset! You could argue, that using virtual instruments, step sequencers, sound presets, rhyme dictionaries samples or musical function theory do the same – but I see them as low-level helpers. These tools help us to learn and grow, and they give us the freedom to create new things when we understood how they work. You cannot program a realistic drum groove if you haven’t tried to play drums yourself or at least watched months of video footage. If I buy MIDI or drum samples, I could draft a song pretty well, but I skip a big part of the learning process, and thus forget to appreciate all the people who learned to play drums. Lack of transparency and explainability The type of machine learning algorithms that are used to create ready-to-use content and deep fakes do not require knowledge of physics, music theory or instruments. They also do not show us how they came to the result. These are nothing else but calculation of probabilities and similarities in multidimensional spaces with the big risk, that we don’t even know where the input data comes from and which parameters are tweaked. Further, machine learning algorithms can be biased or skewed, which means, that they have a higher probability for certain outcomes than others. We will have a hard time figuring out if AI technology has been used to create music, so the market will be flooded with fakes, bootlegs and interpolations. How would you feel, if you hear a song sounding exactly like you, but you never wrote, sang or performed it? How would you feel if somebody else gets the payment for using your voice? I have a problem with that – especially with no given consent or post-mortem. There is no copyright for voices or styles. The courts will have a lot of lawsuits concerning interpolations and trademarks. This is not about cover versions and tribute bands. Music becomes replaceable Music is endangered to become replaceable, arbitrary and fast changing – and thus, decrease in importance. Well-trained musician ears are still able to hear artefacts, but the algorithms will become better and flood the market with superb audio quality and mediocre songwriting. Soon, everybody will be able to generate a 2-minute piece of AI music that sounds exactly like the stuff in the radio. I bet that some people will embrace it, while others visit live concerts to support human performed music. I am very concerned about bedroom producers and songwriters, who learned everything from scratch, don’t perform live and have to compete against a mass of music. Optimizing workflows and sound quality I am not against AI, I just have to make a distinction between generative and analytical tools. Working with novel amp simulations or synthesizers can simplify the workflow. What about using one effect pedal instead of a dozen? Getting rid of noise or artefacts in a ten year old recording? Finding issues in the mixing, when your ears are tired? These are the only chances that I recently see in using artificial intelligence in music. Side effects on cover artwork and music videos You may have noticed a huge increase of AI generated music videos and cover images. I understand that some musicians don’t have the means to shoot them on their own, but I have to point out that most tools are not using training data that has been approved by artists. Due to ethical problems, I will avoid or even reject these tools. I love to draw and design, so I want to support photographers and illustrators. I have *absolutely no* understanding for well known bands who work with these algorithms since they were able to afford graphical artists. I don’t want small and middle sized freelancers to shut down their business. Wrap Up As you can clearly see from the length of this article, artificial intelligence in music is a topic that bothers me as a composer, producer, artist and scientist. The AI revolution cannot be stopped, but we have to discuss regulations and crediting before the music market is saturated. I am all in for a transparent, trustworthy and fair use. I don’t support generated content, but I support use within impulse response and analytics.

This post AI in music production – A statement. was published at Nadine de Macedo.

Writing songs in different genres

Nadine — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 19:16:12 +0000

What are the differences in songwriting and music production in electronic and handmade music? It is impossible to write about all differences and ideas of all genres, so I’d like to stick to the ones I have the most experiences: pop, rock, metal and edm – and everything in between. Read this article, if you want to know some thoughts of a versatile songwriter and producer, who came from electronic music and jumped into handmade music. The trouble with music genres Some people guess that there might be a thousand different genre of music. Each has a certain instrumentation, feel, tempo or harmony. Some decades ago, putting songs into boxes was quite easy. Electric guitars indicated rock music; electronic music was all about synthesizers; blues was about a harmonic scheme, whereas pop became a synonym for catchy mid-tempo radio productions. These days are gone. Nearly every piece of music we listen right now is a mixture which cannot put into boxes. Still, we use genre classification tags for targetting a peer group and raising expectations. Musical background in between the genres Before having an in-depth discussion about the differences in genres, I’d like to give a brief overview about my musical background. Songwriting – creating harmonies, melodies and lyrics – has always been my delight. I started writing pop songs as a kid, but I was not able to play, sing or produce it. Piano has been my only instrument, which made it quite hard to compose full band arrangements. Instantly lacking of singers and guitarists, I started to produce electronic dance music. I learned how to deal with synthesizers, drum programming, automation, mixing and premastering, but it took years to make my dream of pop music come true. When I turned 16, I founded my internet band The Verge which has been my ticket to alternative rock and punk rock music. Until now, I’ve tried about 40 different genres in between pop, rock, metal, electronic, ambient and blues. If somebody asked me what kind of music I make, I probably say “everything I like”. My music is constantly evolving and not always compatible with the mainstream. I still stick to a pop kind of structure, but sometimes I love messing up with people’s expectations. Harmony Independent of the genre, there are plenty of techniques to write good songs. Songwriters and composers may use scales and progressions from music theory, others create music during jam sessions. I usually have 80% of my song in my head when I start with a draft. After collaborating with so many people the past years, I figured out, that the harmonies are highly dependent from the instruments used. The role of your songwriting instrument For composition, the piano is my instrument of choice. C major and G major are the easiest scales for a pianist, but they are too bright for my songwriting. In my opinion, everything is quite okay to play, except for keys with double sharp notes and weird interval shifts. Therefore, I really hate to play in f sharp major and g sharp minor. Transposing a song into another key is cumbersome because I have to rewrite and learn all chords. If you don’t care about a real performance, most digital composition tools do that with one click. On the piano you have plenty of keys, so everything which can be played with ten fingers in two or three octaves is fine. Everything else needs skilled pianists. Practising guitar, I learned plenty of 6ths and 7ths chords that were much easier than on piano. They even sounded better! People coming from punk rock or metal prefer power chords, since they are easy to play and sound nice when distorted. As a pianist, I never came to the idea, because they sound pretty awkward to my ears. But I know plenty who use them. On guitar fronted songs, I noticed an excessive use of the keys e minor, a minor and d major, because they have plenty of easy chord positions. Learning a new instrument, I realized that some melodies, that are super easy on piano can be very hard on the guitar. You easily forget about the fact that you only have 4 fingers to play a melody (except for two-handed tapping and people who play bass with the thumb). Guitar playing is a lot about fingersets – and bass, too. I envy guitarists for a tool called capodaster. It is a device you mount onto the guitars to shorten all strings at the same time and transpose keys. Thus, you can play chords in a different key than it sounds! I wish there was a tool like this for the piano! Woodwinds and brasses have a very limited range. If you want to write song for orchestras, you have to keep that in mind, and optimize the key or arrangement. Sometimes it’s better to use instruments with a different tuning or range. Speaking of this, violins, mandolines and ukuleles do not use the same tuning as guitars, eventhough they are stringed instruments! Sometimes, the choice of the harmony and chords is also limited due to technical reasons. You may write epic orchestral music hitting 16 keys at a time, which just doesn’t sound good on fat EDM synthesizers. Not every chord and inversion is performable on every real instrument. Lyrics You can write songs about everything, but certain genre have special tastes. You may not find dance music about the joy of eating. Their lyrics are mainly about love, party, despair, loss, nature or a certain feeling you have right here, right now. I don’t know why singer-songwriter and country musicians write so much about their personal lives or the cities they’ve grown up. You may find these topics in pop and rock music, too. Punk rock lyrics contain a lot of irony and political statements due to the cultural background. The good side: Love is everywhere, no matter which genre. Despite the topics, the rhyming schemes and phrasings can be very different. I noticed, that stanzas with three lines and plenty of redundancies are quite okay in EDM music but a no-go in most handmade music. The more you drift into punk or grunge the shorter and straightforward the lyrics become. Use the right words and let the rhythm give the final punch. I figured out that hip hop and rap lyrics are really hard to write due to their double and triple rhymes. You may think a lot about the emphasis of each word. Pop is just somewhere in between. You can write about everything, but it has to have the right feelings. Arrangement Of course, arrangement is the main difference in all the above stated genres. Choosing the right instruments is the one thing, but the structure is important too. Most songs need a climax and a drop to be listened to the very end. Layering and complexity Coming from electronic dance music, I was used to layering basslines and synthesizers. The melodic complexity of the arrangement decreased, but the amount of tracks stayed the same. It seems like you have to group at least four synthesizers for that aggressive main synthesizer. When I started producing pop and rock music, the arrangements were quite small. I counted a roundabout 12-20 tracks, basically, recording each instrument twice. A typical five-member-band may have 40-100 tracks in today’s arrangements. I guess one third of it are only vocal recordings for layering, and about 10 tracks are only drums. But the thing that surprised me the most, was the heavy amount of tiny blips you won’t spot in the final recording. I only knew this technique from electronic music – so how did it come into rock?! Song structure The arrangement of parts also changed a lot. I still remember the days were dance music was written in an VCVC (verse, chorus, verse, chorus) structure, now it’s more VVDCC due to the heavy drops (denoted as D). Despite of progressive genre, the song length decreased from 6:30 – 11:00 to 2:00 – 2:30. Bridges are quite unusual in electronic music, it’s all about the drop and the hookline (chorus melody). The song length of pop and rock music also decreased. I grew up in the late 90s and 00s where the radio station played 4:30 rock songs. The standard may be around 3:00 – 3:40. Inside this length some typical patterns evolved. You may know VCVCBC (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus) or CVCVBCC (chorus, verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, chorus) best, but the bridge is endangered due to the decreasing song length. Funnily, pop music of the current decade stole the idea of the drop from electronic music. You may come across structures, where the bridge or pre-chorus is replaced by a drop, a complete change of the sounds of melodies. The more music you listen, the more you internalize its structures of different genres. Sounddesign Nearly every EDM producer speaks about sound design. Creating new sounds with cool synthesizers, massive layering and stacking is quite common there. If you hit the nerve, everybody wants to know how you did this or copycat. I just noticed that pop music is dealing a lot with sound design these days. The more electronic and modern parts of rock music do a lot with synthesizers, so they also use a lot of sounddesign. I also came across some guitarists and bassists who utilize sounddesign in rock and metal music by tweaking their amps and pedals. The effect chain on electric guitars can become complex. There’s also EQ, compression, delay, flanger, yes even a bitcrusher. I never expected all these effects inside an amp or amp simulation, because I knew those from electronic music. Synthetic music and rock are more alike than you think! It seems like both learned from each other by combining the very best methods. Mixing I learned mixing and mastering on electronic music. This made a huge difference because my workflow of setting EQs and dynamics is completely different from people who grew up with acoustic music. I also noticed that people who record “real instruments” care a lot about recording quality and preamps to achieve a natural sound. Digital clones of vintage equipment are on their way! But the largest difference I spotted in between all those genres were special effects like delay, reverb, stereo enhancement etc. I feel like electronic musicians do a lot of sound design here instead of going deep into physics. Just take a look into the reverb settings. Some trance vocals may be recorded inside a cathedral of glass to sound like this! These are topics I have to learn anew. Genres are more alike than you think! No matter where your musical roots lie, it is time to overcome these borders. The mixture of genre did not only lead to interesting innovations – it changed a lot in the arrangement and sound design. Guitarists shall embrace the variety of effects that came from electronic music – And electronic musicians may learn a lot from analogue vintage gear. I don’t feel like there’s “right” or “wrong” in any genre, there are only habits and techniques which are only shared inside a certain peer group. Playing around with all these different structures, melodies, effects and topics opens up a large space of possibilities. So, why should you bother matching the expectation of the crowd?

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How many music genres have I tried?

Nadine — Mon, 16 May 2022 15:00:00 +0000

I have been asked quite a couple of times, in how many music genres I have tried to write songs. I call myself a multi-genre songwriter and composer for a reason, but it has been very hard to give a number. I decided to start a list with different examples that will be maintained regularly. My comfort zone Being a multi-genre songwriter is hard. You find inspiration everywhere, that you’re constantly dropped out of your comfort zone. Let’s talk, what is easy for me in different roles. Please note that some genres are in brackets, because I cannot enjoy them for personal reasons. This list is from May 2024. As a producer / mixing engineer, I love moody, heavy and melancholic music. I enjoy hard drums, heavy guitar riffs and multiple styles of vocals. It’s easy for me to mix a dense arrangement with vocals, guitars, piano, bass and drums. I feel best doing:Alternative Rock, Pop Rock, Progressive Metal, Progressive Rock, Blues Rock, Punk Rock, (Electro House), (Hard Trance), (Epic Trance) As a composer, I have tons of fun with heavy melancholic and complex music. I’m a big fan of weird chord progressions and modulations, which is best in progressive genres. But I also do pop music, when I’m allowed to escape the usual 4 chord scheme. I’m still taking a break from electronic music. I feel best doing:Progressive Metal, Progressive Rock, Alternative Rock, Pop Rock, Pop Ballad, (Progressive Trance), (Epic Trance) As a lyricist, I enjoy writing heavy lyrics and diving into shady characters. I don’t mind strong language or complicated words. Storytelling ain’t my thing, so I have issues with country and singer-songwriter. My way to write is quite straight and direct – I am not a poet! I only write in English. I feel best doing:Alternative Rock, Alternative Metal, Nu Metal, Pop Rock, Progressive Metal, Progressive Rock My skills as an instrumentalist are inferior, so I have to rely on mid-tempo songs with easy progressions. I hope that I can catch up on that soon and try new genres. My playing is heavy, so don’t bother me with soft emotional songs. I feel best doing:Pop Rock, Alternative Rock, Blues Rock As a listener, I love heavy, fast, complex and melancholic music. This could be literally everything, but I don’t enjoy electronic dance music right now. I like listening to:Djent, Metalcore, Progressive Metal, Nu Metal, Symphonic Metal, Folk Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Industrial Metal, Grunge, Stoner Rock, Indie Rock, Swing, (Aggrotech), (Future Pop), (Electro House), (Epic Trance), (Hard Trance), (Dubstep), (Trip Hop) This is NOT for me – neither as listener, musician nor producer: Experimental, Ambient, New Age, Synthwave, Schlager, Humppa, Retrowave, Future Bass, Hardstyle, Rave, Gabber, Future House, Classical (especially baroque), Neoclassical (exept metal), Bossa Nova, Latin, Free Jazz, Neurofunk, Baile Funk, Contemporary R&B (stuff in the 90s is good though), Mumble Rap, Funk, Reggae, Reggaeton, Danceholl, Grindcore, Speed Metal – And I’m not a fan of the 70s! A brief overview My list is very long, because I tried many genres. So I decided to write it down as a table. The left column is filled with an emoji, how I feel about trying this genre again. The digit tells the number of finished songs or remixes. Some songs are not online yet, which is why I wrote the numbers in brackets. The links go to YouTube, Bandcamp or SoundCloud, where you can listen to a sample. How to interpret the emojis:😄 = I love it and want to do more.😊 = I will try again, when I have ideas.😥 = I keep on trying, but I haven’t succeeded yet.😔 = I gave up, because it doesn’t catch me (anymore)😕 = Never again. Electro I started writing electronic music in 1998 and producing in 2003. I have tried over 30 subgenres of electronic music and figured out that my home base is trance. Most trance related genre were easy for me, but I struggled really hard in genres that need sound design or rhythm. Electronic music is in hiatus, because I don’t have fun listening, writing nor producing. Fun Genre Amount Example Experience 😕 Acid Techno 2 Acid Orbit Techno made me shift my focus from melodies to sounddesign and automation. Though succeeding with two songs I don’t feel well in that genre. 😔 Acid Trance 4 Fruchtsäure However, combining acid techno with trance has been easier for me. Adding melodies is a game changer for me, but I won’t produce this genre on my own. 😊 Aggrotech 1 All Hallow’s Eve It has been fun to produce this genre, but it was harder than expected. Whenever I have a simple melody, I will try again. 😕 Ambient 1 Ambience I’m not calm and patient enough to enjoy ambient and chill out. That’s not for me. 😕 Ballearic Trance 1 Yesterday’s Past I never planned to write something in this genre, because I don’t like it. 😕 Big Room (1) tba Today’s edm music is full of festival and big room. You need simple melodies and heavy drops. Both is a challenge for me, and I don’t really like it. But I’m working on a remix. 😔 Chill Out 2 Deep Heart It took a while to produce a chill out song. Same as ambient, the focus lies on sounddesign. I love the result, but I cannot imagine doing this all the time. 😕 Classic Trance 14 World’s Future After producing trance with the sounds of he 90s and 00s for 15 years, it’s getting boring. It has been very simple for me, but not again, please! 😕 Dance 6 Hold Me Tight Starting with dance music, I realized, that I shift towards trance. So I gave up after 3 years. 😕 Deep House / / Major props for sounddesigners. It is very hard to make textures, blips and cuts sound harmonic and cool. I lost my patience. 😕 Dream House 1 Moonlight I often feel like dream house and classic trance a connected. I can produce this, but I don’t like to, because it’s closer to ambient. 😥 Drum & Bass / / Well, I was not able to program the charismatic beat with a simple bass. Maybe I try again someday, but not now. 😥 Dubstep 2 / I like the hard wobble in dubstep, but I didn’t expect the synths to be so hard to program. Rhythmic issues followed. I succeed remixing something, but I am not allowed to upload. 😊 Electro House 5 Neotokyo After leaving trance, electro house became my second home. I can go heavier and go crazy with the bassline. It’s a good style to remix, but songwriting is hard. 😥 Electro Industrial 1 Liminal Spaces Well, I tried it a couple of times, but I had issues in sounddesign. This song definitely has some influence but isn’t pure industrial. 😥 Electro Swing / / Electro swing uses plenty of old samples with house beats. I am not a big fan of sampling, so I want to write the swing arrangement by myself. This is what makes this genre hard. I am still trying! 😄 Epic Trance 11 Adagio of Life I was so glad when I found that niche in trance music. My only possibility to write weird chord progressions and gigantic arrangements in electronic music. It’s still hard for me to write the orchestral part. On hiatus. 😕 Goa Trance / / It’s been okay to program arpeggios and bass, but I don’t feel goa and psy. 😊 House 2 Lost Letter I never expected that house is connected to soul music. If you don’t feel it, you won’t create a cool groove. I need good vocals and loops to help me with the drums, otherwise it won’t groove. 😄 Hard Trance 7 Dream of You Oh yes, I enjoyed rocking out! A genre I like to continue when I have simple melodies. 😊 Indietronica 4 Dystopia It’s never been my aim to connect pop with idm and trance, but I did a couple of these. And it worked. It’s nothing I could do intentionally. 😊 Rock House 2 It Only Takes A Miracle I love rock – I love house – But getting a good riff is harder than expected. This may happen again whenever I have a cool riff – But only with real guitars, please. 😕 Uplifting Trance 25 Breathing Rush Instruments and melodies were just in my dna, but I cannot listen to this genre anymore. 😕 Progressive Trance 9 Lightyears Away Sidechain compression made me produce this genre more often than expected. And I loved it. And now I don’t like it anymore. 😕 Tech House 3 Promenade This has been very hard, because I have no idea of sounddesign. The songs I wrote here were just experimenting with knobs. 😕 Tech Trance 4 Transitional However, combining experimental techno with trance has been easier than house. But it’s nothing I’d do again. 😕 Trap 1 Weight Trap is full of sounddesign. I didn’t succeed in writing a song, and ended up with a hybrid. 😊 Trip Hop 10 Going Nowhere This seems to be my go to genre, when I try downtempo electronic music. Pop & Hip Hop I started composing and writing pop music in 2001, but only around 2005 I was able to collaborate and produce. I need vocalists and guitarists to realize these projects. This is why I see myself as composer, but I also produce and write lyrics. I love big arrangements and acoustic instruments. Fun Genre Amount Example Experience 😕 Art Pop / / What I like about art pop is the openess to weird scales and sounds. I tried it often, but I have trouble with sounddesign. 😊 Ballad Pop 6 A.L.E.X. I usually don’t listen to ballads, but they are easy to write. I have a knack for melodramatic melodies. 😥 Country / / It is very tricky to get the country sound without banjo. I haven’t succeeded yet. 😥 Contemporary RnB / / The modern version of rnb is not my favourite genre, but I just had to try it. I wrote a beat and a chorus… and now I’m stuck. 😕 Dance Pop 2 Dancing In the beginning of the 2000s, I listened to dance pop – but I don’t like to produce it. My melodies and harmonies are not happy enough. I enjoyed it more than pure dance. 😔 Folk 1 I’m not angry Practising fingerpicking on the guitar helped me to understand folk music. It’s not my favourite though. 😔 Future Pop 1 Perpetual Machine I succeeded in writing genre typical lyrics, but sounddesign is still too hard. 😊 Gothic Pop 1 Seven Days To Live Dark, soothing, melancholic pop music with a bit of electro. Just my thing. 😔 Hip-Hop 3 Darker Programming beats has been much harder than I expected. I wrote a couple of raps, but nobody was able to turn them into a song, so I trashed them. I won’t continue unless I have a great idea. 😊 Indie Pop 2 Going My Way I never intended to try this but I liked it. Even more than folk. 😄 Pop 5 Promises Writing pop music is quite easy for me, but my tendencies go to adding a touch of rock. Pop with synthesizers and synthetic beats is hard for me. 😄 Pop Punk 5 When I’m Gone I produced many songs in that direction, and also wrote lyrics, but I’m quite fresh to writing. More to come! 😄 Pop Rock 11 Don’t tell me if it hurts What I like about pop rock is the possibility to use simple hooklines in a rock arrangement. This genre is simple for me. 😊 Trance Pop 3 Daylight Means Endeavour I will continue on this when I have more ideas. Rock & Metal Since 2006, I love writing rock music. After a couple of years, the connection to metal has been given. My guitar playing and singing is not good...

This post How many music genres have I tried? was published at Nadine de Macedo.

A remix in 36 hours

Nadine — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 10:29:00 +0000

The Israeli band Brownies handed in their song “Dancing” for the start-ab remix contest 2010. The special thing about this remix contest: You only have 36 hours to remix and produce a song in radio length. Read the story about one of the shortest remix contests of the world and how I approached that challenge. Analysing the material As the start-ab remix contest has been related to the cultural event Ruhr 2010, our local radio station searched for interview partners and contacted me. Before the official start of the contest, nobody knew about the song, style or artist. Right after the start signal, we took a listen into the given material, often called “stems”. These are individual files of the instruments or full song parts the producer can arrange according to taste. How do you remix a song? Don’t jump into production before you haven’t analysed the following: Which key is the original song? Which chords and inversions are used? What is the BPM of the original song? Are keys and BPM changing throughout time? There are some algorithms which may help you to get that information, but the situation has been different in 2010. I only had my pair of ears, a scale chart and a metronome to recreate the original chord sheet of that song. If you want to try it yourself, listen to the original song on the band’s official YouTube profile and comment your results. Starting with a zero crossing, I put all tracks into my arrangement and clicked the beat until the metronome synchronized exactly. I started to play along the vocals to figure out the melody, song structure and key. Finding the right harmonies A good remix is close to the original, but still a new piece of music. Some remixes like to play along piano or guitar tracks, but I did not listen to them. Instead, I chose the bassline and the vocals to create a harmonic structure. The reason for it is quite simple: Guitars have a wide frequency spectrum and play full chords with (nearly) all strings. If I take my harmonies from this track, I have to use the full chords or a harmonic subset of these. If the guitarist plays Em7, I have to play either Em7, Em, E5 or G. The less information I have about the chords, the bigger is my artistic freedom. Let’s say the singer sings a G and the bassist plays an E. I can take all chords with G and E inside, like C major. I only have to ensure, that the scale of my chord works with the scale of the vocals. Most of the time, a remix is written in the same key and scale like the original, but sometimes it is not. Let me show you my single “Lost Letter” which has been written in F lydian. The Thomas You remix is in C major and uses the same vocal stems. This works, because F lydian and C major use the same tones. If you want to know more about the theory, I recommend reading my post on modal songwriting. Arranging the remix After three hours of work, I had the full chord progression and tried out some ideas on arpeggios. The more I composed and produce, the less I liked my approach on arpeggio. So, I wrote down the chord progression and rested. The next morning, I figured out that the remix works better without full chords, so I deleted lots of thirds and fifths out of my chords and worked on another rhythm. Until then, my remix only consisted of a verse and chorus, so the arrangement was the next thing to do. I filled the synthesizers and chords according to the vocals, tried out some beats and had another look into the stems. The lead guitars worked fine on the climax. I also used some guitar fills and licks. The next couple of hours flew by with creating a trance beat and searching for drum samples. Mixing and Mastering 24 hours of 36 hours remix contest flew by, and my remix is nearly finished. Since I already mixed parts of the song during arrangement, I only had to kill some annoying and overlapping middle frequencies. Guitars, vocals and synthesizers share the same frequency space, so I had to use a lot of EQs and compressor to make the sound clean and punchy. Next, I tried out some settings for reverb. I did not think too much here, because I produced a lot of songs in this period. Just before handing in the remix, I had to do some mastering. I applied a compressor and limiter on the sum to make this song a bit louder. It is not easy to find the right dynamics, because the verses should sound natural and danceable at the same time. My mastering has been very basic and lousy, since I need much more time and a pair of fresh ears to do it properly. Finished! 36 hours is a short period of time for a remix and production, but I managed to hand in my remix 6 hours before deadline. You can listen to the result at YouTube. About two thirds of the participants managed to hand in their remixes in 36 hours. Most people were close to deadline. My remix has received good critiques from the contestants and the jury. I did not win, but I was in the upper third. How does it feel to finish a remix in 36 hours? Remixing in this short amount of time is challenging and stressful. But I have good vibes, because I talked to lots of interesting musicians and producers. Before entering that challenge, I did not expect to succeed at all. You can skip a lot of steps, the more proficient you are. I still think that you should invest more time into mixing and mastering, because your ears have to be well-rested to do it well. I also noticed, that an arrangement done in two months is not better than one written in two days. This remix contest helped me to stay focussed and to rethink my structures. I’d like to thank and greet the band Brownies, the team of start-ab and the people from our local radio station Antenne Düsseldorf. It’s been fun to remix this song and to participate in this challenge. I have learned a lot about arrangement, remixing and time management. Thanks also for letting me upload this song onto YouTube and using cover and lyrics for promotional purposes.

This post A remix in 36 hours was published at Nadine de Macedo.

Fighting Loudness War

Nadine — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 09:55:00 +0000

The hardest part in music production is mastering – especially the dynamics and loudness. I’m here to stop loudness war. Let me show you what it’s about and what I decided to do against it. The Loudness War If you grew up in the 2000s you may have come across the term “Loudness War”. Music in radio stations, streaming and advertising became louder over the years. The audience is annoyed that each song has a different loudness, which makes it hard to create playlists and mixtapes without moving the volume button. Musicians and engineers are annoyed, that most mixes sound metallic and fuzzy. The more gain the limiter produces, the more distortion happens. Even if you don’t have the full physical understanding of limiters and compression, just imagine a sine wave being pressed into a square to enlarge the amplitude and thus loudness. But a square wave has a completely different, more metallic characteristic of sound. You can construct a square wave by adding lots of higher harmonics to your sine wave. Thus, distortion, which looks like a square wave, consists of plenty of higher harmonics. It is really hard to mix a loud song that it still sounds great, because you have to take these mathematically generated higher harmonics into account. Most of the time, the fuzz is out of control. Fighting the Loudness War Some years ago, people used the dB RMS scale to compare the loudness of songs. But this is a physical measurement unit, which means something like averaged sound pressure level. It is a neat concept for technical application, because it is independent of frequencies. But this led to the problem, that inaudible frequencies are taken into account and high frequencies have the same weight as bass. Therefore, another standard (R-128) and unit (dB LUFS) was introduced. With these, it is easier to calculate and to compare the perceived loudness of songs. In contrast to the dB RMS unit, the LUFS takes the human hearing threshold into account. This scale is weighted and means something like the perceived loudness. I am a big fan of the dB LUFS scale, because it helps to compare different genre as well as spoken words to music. Some popular streaming platforms set up rules for uploading music. In most cases algorithms render the song to the loudness of the platform. If you’re not careful, it can destroy the song. Therefore, it is important to know the loudness of the platform, where you want to upload your music. LUFS is not the final answer Being a producer of different kinds of music, it is hard to compile an album of calm pop ballads and punk rock. Even the R-128 norm is not able to solve this problem completely, because it does not take the dynamic range into account. I guess, it is not a great idea, because a pop ballad needs a constant build, whereas a punk rock song is loud from beginning till end. I took me years to figure out the level, that works for my song. Everybody talks about -10 dB RMS in the context of CD productions, though most records I own are even louder. -14 dB LUFS seemed to be the standard for streaming platforms, until it figured that different platforms use different algorithms to analyse and adapt. Is anybody glancing through all these quasi standards?! I don’t like pop songs with -10 dB RMS and punk rock sounds super lush with -14 dB LUFS. My old studio albums were mastered to -10 dB RMS, but I switched to -10 dB LUFS now. It’s an empiric decision that worked the best for soft and hard music. Heavy metal doesn’t sound that great, but it’s better than having a pop ballad with digital distortion. Still, -10 dB LUFS is really soft in comparison to the music played on radio. If you don’t like my loudness, turn up your amp or use a brickwall limiter. But I won’t do that for you, because I hate distortion and lush dynamics.

This post Fighting Loudness War was published at Nadine de Macedo.