Check out Skyler’s track breakdown of “extinction” for more studying ruclips.net/video/xRaAPfJxaXI/видео.htmlsi=mOZ2o-uKr379lWcS Check out Chee’s tutorials as well! ruclips.net/video/P0i5qkuaSa4/видео.htmlsi=y9EUrABB-Hns4POY ruclips.net/video/V4mvT4Tbc3s/видео.htmlsi=EEn_mQGL75cyPzpc
I’d really love to see a video from you about how to mix and master bass music. I often make bass heavy stuff and it sounds good while I’m making it but when I export it to the car the bass is way too heavy or way too quiet or some notes don’t sound very heavy etc. I don’t really know how to manage bass for the end product very well so it really has satisfying bass.
just use tonal balance control by izotope. It really helped me with this issue. An other option is to produce with an eq on the master that boosts the lows and highs which you remove before export.
@@MarshMakesComicslike the others said, get better bass response. dedicated subwoofer or transducer if you're on a budget. average car speakers only go down to about 40 hz but you want something that can comfortably hit 32.7 hz or C0
Super interesting, I also think about this kind of thing CONSTANTLY. I listened to a ton of classical music growing up, and it was always very cinematic in my mind. With so many movements and the lack of repetition, you start to think in terms of characters or shapes moving around, expanding and contracting, etc. I feel that when I make non-melodic music a lot of the time, like I’m sort of saying, here’s a big space with concrete walls, ok now you’re hiding, ducking into an alley, ok now you’re on a busy street, maybe you’re running, walking, maybe you’re looking down at something or looking up at something. It’s very indirect but it helps me get an idea to carry across sections, and also helps me digest other peoples music better. For instance, some basses sound like something moving under a blanket, burials Reese bass sounds like the back of a huge fish coming out of the water as it grazes the surface, etc.
This is alluding to a writing style called incidental writing. It’s less of structure and more of using phrasing to describe a narrative. The tempo, signature, etc aren’t locked. Think about listening to a looney tunes cartoon arrangement
Nice! Something I learned with distortion while studying Hendrix is a certain jazz sentiment. Like you can’t expect a raw high gain distortion to deliver the same intricacies every time. Also the tone becomes somewhat dependent on your environment, especially with a a Marshall. So if your signal chain is an entity within an environment then it is reacting to that environment. If a human were to do that it would be called improv. Also sorry I haven’t said hi in the streams for awhile! RUclips won’t let my desktop since the Adblock war. Love the channel still!
this is exactly my philosophy, as a guitarist-turned-producer. learning the intricacies of the guitar tones is in a huge way my intro into sound design
I've conceptualised something about vocals which makes them unique from other instruments and so much more interesting to most people. The timbre of the voice actually has incredibly deeply encoded meaning (aka language) that is part of the music. You can try to extract that kind of timbral significance and apply it to other instruments.
5:23 Its taken me alot of reflecting over the years to realize only one thing was going through his head.............. he was having fun.......... its so easy to get caught in all the work that producing takes, that it actually becomes a skill to remember to have fun............ thats the whole reason this all started. Its just sometime easier said than done.
@@Alckemy Best believe brother, What I find most interesting in my conquest to make bass sounds on the more minimal end of the spec is how simple the process is, the complexity always comes from something so obvious that gets overlooked, be it the wave form or just a single bit of modulation or pushing something as simple as the drive to merge the oscillators. I learnt this through the reverse engineering and have started to get results i thought were beyond my reach. obviously there's more to it, using amps and ext distortion ect, there's definitely some secrets out there . Look forward to hearing more from you dude.
Hi!! Could you please make a video on how BPM detection works on Bitwig? I am so confused by it, and all of the time augmentation tools, and I can't get my head around it no matter how much I try. I don't even know how to record a guitar track and simply have Bitwig tell me what the BPM is so I can change the project tempo or timewarp the track to the project tempo or anything! Have a lovely day!!
@tyler361t2hi there, it has to be imported from outside the project to detect the bpm. Other wise whatever you record is going to be recognized as the host project tempo. If you import a drum loop, however, it’ll automatically try to guess the original bpm and warp it your host project. You can see what the tempo is by clicking on the clip and looking toward the bottom of the inspector window
Somthing I've been trying to tap into is when I listen to bass music that inspires me I'll be taking those elements and rhythms and actively remixing in my head into somthing new. I've tried recording it through goofy mouth noises but red light syndrome throws off the flow. Like just beatboxing in my head and seeing what kinda noises and patterns spill forth can be great starting points.
I think it's because it's often more about texture / sound than anything else. Other music genres have melodies to express themselves... We don't (really). I mean obviously that's exaggerated. We have melodies too.... But a good melody on shit sounds can absolutely carry the sounds and make it enjoyable. We're mostly missing that component for the most part. Rhythm-wise i personally feel like we don't have too much choice either. We do, of course.... but there are things that work reliably and particularily well. Some rythms are really, really hard to "make sound good" - imposisble for me. It's like when we make bass music, instead of a "3-dimensional-space" we are limited to a 2-dimensional-space; lacking the "melody"-component. And due to certain stuff that just works better than other stuff, industry standard sound that's expected etc, we don't really have a 2D plane to move on, but a 2D "Tunnel" that's rather narrow. That makes it so everythign we do has to be much better, more creative and more precise than "normal", melodic music to reach a simmilar "quality". Writing this alongside watiching the Video, let's see what points you make :D
I don't understand what you mean by 3D or 2D. The melody doesn't make it 3D. That's stereo width. The idea of the 3D space is utilizing pan stereo knobs and stereo imaging plugins such as ozone imager. It's adding the illusion of depth. Music is stereo therefore its all 2D.
For me it’s about creating a strong relationship between the sounds I use rather than whether I can create a rhythm with them, but I agree. The fundamental approach is about rhythmic placement ^^
Great video! I've been thinking exactly about this topic, and it's very insighful to see others struggling with this too. I come from a composition background, so now that I'm studying this kind of music I feel like a complete begginer again, and not in the best way. Sure, there are a lot of overlaps like song structure, a feeling for need of variation and flow, the ability to develop an idea, but the way you go about doing things can be completely different. It's a style that's very hard to separate production and sound design from composition. Looking forward to hear more of your thoughts and discoveries on this!
one thing is that bass music is very drum/rhythm rather than melody oriented, which is something that most people aren't familiar with because they've never had access to real drums. That's because there's a certain amount of privilege required to even play the drums, such as living in a house in the suburbs with a garage because it's too loud and cramped to do in an apartment building. Not to mention how people are funneled by music education and society in general to pursue the keys or guitar or something because it fits into classical music whereas drums didn't appear until the start of the 1900s. But in order to have a compelling bass track, a good grasp of rhythm is absolutely essential. Unlike non-bass genres, you also need to have a very deep and precise understanding of single band and multi band compression, distortion, waveshaping, phase, etc in order to get the most out of your sounds. Given how obtuse compression is, it's yet another thing that can take several years to figure out.
drums didnt appear until the 1900s? drums were likely the first instrument ever created and have been used in tribal music for thousands of years. but yeah, european classical composers didnt have access to a modern drum kit.
@@dpounder101he’s on to something though, it’s about placement, which I don’t think I covered as much in this video. But I have another talking head video called “audiating” that goes into this topic more
@@Alckemy yeah most of the comment i can agree with and i see the point being made i just had to mention drums being a traditional instrument. i think thats part of why this music can seem to hit at something primal that exists deep within us. we have been dancing under full moons to rhythmic music (also often in altered states) for almost as long as we have been recognizably human, maybe even longer.
@@wemustkungfufite i wasnt trying to attack you or accuse you of racism or anything, just pointing out that its pretty euro-centric and that rhythm likely came before melody and certainly before harmony.
No, this is extremely important discussion!! Thank you for this post and I look forward to more like this. Recommending people reach out to the ones whose art they are admiring and asking the right questions is absolutely understated and it IS indeed the fastest and most efficient way to achieving many of your goals.
This was a great video really got me realizing that trying to start with cords or a piano like I see and have problems with is just not always the best way. Thank u
We are creatures of habit, and I think the draw of instrumental bass music is the WTF factor of the textures, and the two are at odds with each other. If you want to create a sound you’ve never heard before, it can only come from randomization, and randomization by its nature isn’t repeatable. Because once you fall into habits, you lose the WTF factor that makes bass music so pleasing. I think that’s why we have song structure so we can flex our music theory brain in the verse, and the textural brain for the chorus. It’s worth thinking what we can take from pop about how melodies are structured usually and we can use that to structure our drops to give a sense of familiarity and strike the balance between repetition and new ideas In an 8 bar phrase for the chorus I tend to favor an A A B A, and that can go a long way to take your brain from “thats a cool idea” to “oh wait this is becoming something”
Personally, the more I think about outcomes such as writing hooks, melodies, etc, the more I slow down the act of writing the music and the more mired I become in non-important issues. When it comes to electronic music, I think it's totally cool if your reasoning and thinking don't extend past "because I think it sounds cool". Aphex Twin said that electronic music is more abstract than "traditional" music and I totally agree, and I think that means the process should be, too.
Glad you brought up the “songs are meant to be sung” thing. I’ve argued this point with people many times over the years. Let’s call things what they are. Let’s stop calling tracks without singing “songs”. We wouldn’t call a pencil drawing a “painting” or a “sculpture”. This also brings up another thing I think can be helpful for music producers that only write instrumental compositions (tracks), which is to step out of the “tracks” box and start writing songs! Write lyrics and use our voices to convey them whether through singing, spoken word, etc.. Great vid, love your philosophizing!❤
I also find it irritating when people call instrumental tracks/pieces/tunes «songs». Especially when they actually argue that instrumentals are songs, lol.
i think a problem arises when people confuse the word song with the word music. music isnt a song without lyrics or singing but just because it isnt a song doesnt mean it isnt music.
Great video 😊 I think its difficult because there is so much to balance. A heavy snare is cool, but might make a song feel ‘sluggish’, a thin kick rarely sounds good but it might compliment a meaty 808 bass.
Yeah, in live music you kind of have most- if not all the instrumentation figured out in a sense they’ll work together. It’s not to say you don’t have different styles of drums and guitars and all that, but generally regardless of the genre you can make it sound decent
I'm only about halfway through but in case you didn't mention it I think it's important to note that compared to live instruments EDM has a lot more frequencies above 20k and under 40 hz. Bass music takes advantage of the whole frequency spectrum whereas most other genres do not. Notably, there is pop music that shines more above 20k but less likely to have any focus below 40-50 hz.
people overcomplicate it . simple as that. you can make good music simply. people just think it needs to be complicated for some reason, smells like gatekeeping to me. should be dismantled, challenged, etc
I really love this topic and video. I have a really big comment I'm gonna attach to this to save space on the main thread. I will say here, I would absolutely love to take a production based lesson with you soon. Really great insights, man. Huge comment following 👇🏼
Really interesting topic here. Especially coming from a jazz background where I did a lot of really complex and meticulous transcribing of harmonies and melodies. Part of my mind still activates in that way when listening to examples exactly like you played here in the beginning. The way I learned music from a theory standpoint also aligned with studying things like the Quadrivium, which is a fourfold study of quantification. I teach piano and music theory for a living and have sort of come up with my own method. It started with me breaking music into three categories as a way to approach practice and pedagogy 1. Rhythm 2. Pitch 3. Dynamics Through this, I came to the understanding that ALL elements of music are really just ways of manipulating relationships of time quantification. Pitch itself is really just the amount of times something vibrates over a given time. Rhythm is just time relationships on a more simplex scale. Dynamic is the speed of delivery. A perfect fifth is just the contrast of a 3:2 ratio sped up to an audible rate. Timbre, the tonal color of an instrument is just an interaction of overtones and complex harmonics as presented by a given instrument or sound source. So when I hear musical examples like you showed in the beginning ALL I hear are harmonics and rhythm, so in that way it feels no different, in principle, to any other musical style. The difference is in how intentionally the harmonics are used, what sorts of motifs are explored or developed, or whether they're developed at all and kept in some form of a constant loop. I make music that has a specific harmonic and melodic content, in a more classical sense and I also love exploring texture as a component of the piece. When I explore more texture I almost always make it a playable instrument via pads on Push 2 or MPC to determine phrasing and play it and formulate it in a way that requires real time involvement in developing the motifs to create variation on themes through texture, where that would be traditionally explored solely through harmony and melody in a piano context. I'm hugely new to more experimental sound design and I love incorporating it into my more "jazz" oriented stuff. So this video is really powerful and inspiring for me. Thanks!
@@remyvegamediaI think that what you’re saying is definitely the base foundation of what we’re talking about. My own struggles have been less about where to put these sounds on a timeline but rather about building a strong relationship between them. Or to put things more simply, contextualization of all these sounds I spend all this time making. It’s annoying because like I said, there’s the arrangement hat, the sound engineering hat, then the production value hat, etc. Some days I’ve got it, most days I don’t 😂
Very interesting I have recently decided to try my hand at neuro or that kind of thing. I was making the more chord/melody based stuff previously (Music theory orientated). I know exactly what you mean I have been struggling with this for awhile.( Bass music that is). I've come at tunes from various angles in the past but DnB is a totally different puzzle I'm still trying to crack. I now approach it by just putting rough markers in place before any music and kind of think what this gonna be compared to what happens next and kind of sketch with synths. Some sounds ive made previously some at the time. Ive been looking at do a bit print it change the patch print it I saw some where. (It reminds me of stop motion..Ha). Still havnt reached a point where I feel I know any thing. So its great to hear you think its hard. (Well no not exactly just that its not unusual). ha Take care nice to hear about process I agree.😀
tehnicaly hard stuff , will only impress people that are also producers and literaly no one else . same like when u go to get food , doesnt matter if u have million in your pocket , u just wanna eat what tastes good , not something that is hard to make . only other chef will be impressed by the shit that is hard to make . and today there is plenty producers , who are just trying to sound diferent , not sound good , or be the best , their main plan is to be "diferent " and "unique " Same like in fashion , and in the end , u end up with all of them sound the same and look the same . beacuse they all try to impress someone else , not expres them selfs.
Conversely, I think that a very challenging part of making bass music, or edm, or pop is that you have fairly rigid boundaries that you need to operate within. Not only are these genres technically demanding, but to make music that adheres to a specific structure, musically or systemically (ie, works on a sound system, can be DJed, is palatable to the prospective audience), can turn the creative process into almost a puzzle.
Maybe because I have hundreds of videos of how to make and do everything I know that lead up to me talking about a video like this? Orrrrrrrr maybe because the first comment pinned is a video link to both how Audeka and chee produce directly from them? What else do you want from me brotha
those bass examples you played don't sound good though. i guess you would come up with them by just playing with the knobs in serum. there's no mystery here
Who made you the ultimate judge of quality in music which is subjective in nature ? What's the universal law within music that solidifies something as good ? Very little though behind your attempt of a snarky comment.
@@Felipe-kh6cg no need to take my comment so personally, I never I was the ultimate judge I just said that they don't sound good to me but if you wanted to make them you would just use Serum. That is what people use to make those basslines isn't it?
@@Alckemy With all due respect I watched your video but I don't feel like I learned anything about how to actually make these basslines. It took 15 minutes into the video to get any suggestions from you such as filtering noise which is a cool idea but how does that apply to basslines?
@ I’m not sure why you expected this to be a sound design lesson when it’s a “why” and not a “how” video. To answer your question, pretty much my entire channel is about bass design. Check the catalogue^^
Check out Skyler’s track breakdown of “extinction” for more studying
ruclips.net/video/xRaAPfJxaXI/видео.htmlsi=mOZ2o-uKr379lWcS
Check out Chee’s tutorials as well!
ruclips.net/video/P0i5qkuaSa4/видео.htmlsi=y9EUrABB-Hns4POY
ruclips.net/video/V4mvT4Tbc3s/видео.htmlsi=EEn_mQGL75cyPzpc
I’d really love to see a video from you about how to mix and master bass music. I often make bass heavy stuff and it sounds good while I’m making it but when I export it to the car the bass is way too heavy or way too quiet or some notes don’t sound very heavy etc. I don’t really know how to manage bass for the end product very well so it really has satisfying bass.
just use tonal balance control by izotope. It really helped me with this issue. An other option is to produce with an eq on the master that boosts the lows and highs which you remove before export.
This!
Reference as much as you can. Like metric ab
Better speakers and better room. You can't really mix bass if you aren't hearing it correctly.
@@MarshMakesComicslike the others said, get better bass response. dedicated subwoofer or transducer if you're on a budget. average car speakers only go down to about 40 hz but you want something that can comfortably hit 32.7 hz or C0
Super interesting, I also think about this kind of thing CONSTANTLY. I listened to a ton of classical music growing up, and it was always very cinematic in my mind. With so many movements and the lack of repetition, you start to think in terms of characters or shapes moving around, expanding and contracting, etc. I feel that when I make non-melodic music a lot of the time, like I’m sort of saying, here’s a big space with concrete walls, ok now you’re hiding, ducking into an alley, ok now you’re on a busy street, maybe you’re running, walking, maybe you’re looking down at something or looking up at something. It’s very indirect but it helps me get an idea to carry across sections, and also helps me digest other peoples music better. For instance, some basses sound like something moving under a blanket, burials Reese bass sounds like the back of a huge fish coming out of the water as it grazes the surface, etc.
This is alluding to a writing style called incidental writing. It’s less of structure and more of using phrasing to describe a narrative. The tempo, signature, etc aren’t locked. Think about listening to a looney tunes cartoon arrangement
Nice! Something I learned with distortion while studying Hendrix is a certain jazz sentiment. Like you can’t expect a raw high gain distortion to deliver the same intricacies every time. Also the tone becomes somewhat dependent on your environment, especially with a a Marshall.
So if your signal chain is an entity within an environment then it is reacting to that environment. If a human were to do that it would be called improv.
Also sorry I haven’t said hi in the streams for awhile! RUclips won’t let my desktop since the Adblock war. Love the channel still!
this is exactly my philosophy, as a guitarist-turned-producer. learning the intricacies of the guitar tones is in a huge way my intro into sound design
I've conceptualised something about vocals which makes them unique from other instruments and so much more interesting to most people. The timbre of the voice actually has incredibly deeply encoded meaning (aka language) that is part of the music. You can try to extract that kind of timbral significance and apply it to other instruments.
This is a new years surprising i needed! Thank you, and happy new year!
Happy new year!
5:23 Its taken me alot of reflecting over the years to realize only one thing was going through his head.............. he was having fun.......... its so easy to get caught in all the work that producing takes, that it actually becomes a skill to remember to have fun............ thats the whole reason this all started. Its just sometime easier said than done.
This is quality, it's nice to know there are other people thinking about music like this.
Ah yes, another fine over thinker to join the conquest
@@Alckemy Best believe brother, What I find most interesting in my conquest to make bass sounds on the more minimal end of the spec is how simple the process is, the complexity always comes from something so obvious that gets overlooked, be it the wave form or just a single bit of modulation or pushing something as simple as the drive to merge the oscillators. I learnt this through the reverse engineering and have started to get results i thought were beyond my reach. obviously there's more to it, using amps and ext distortion ect, there's definitely some secrets out there . Look forward to hearing more from you dude.
Hi!! Could you please make a video on how BPM detection works on Bitwig? I am so confused by it, and all of the time augmentation tools, and I can't get my head around it no matter how much I try. I don't even know how to record a guitar track and simply have Bitwig tell me what the BPM is so I can change the project tempo or timewarp the track to the project tempo or anything! Have a lovely day!!
@@AllSeeingIrishManI have. Lot of resources on this ^^
@tyler361t2hi there, it has to be imported from outside the project to detect the bpm. Other wise whatever you record is going to be recognized as the host project tempo. If you import a drum loop, however, it’ll automatically try to guess the original bpm and warp it your host project. You can see what the tempo is by clicking on the clip and looking toward the bottom of the inspector window
Somthing I've been trying to tap into is when I listen to bass music that inspires me I'll be taking those elements and rhythms and actively remixing in my head into somthing new. I've tried recording it through goofy mouth noises but red light syndrome throws off the flow. Like just beatboxing in my head and seeing what kinda noises and patterns spill forth can be great starting points.
Would highly recommend you check out my audiation videos as follow up to this ^^
@Alckemy ima have to.
I don't make this style of music, but these are compelling ideas that apply to any genre. Glad the algorithm served this up today.
Thanks for taking a chance and the time to listen!
I think it's because it's often more about texture / sound than anything else. Other music genres have melodies to express themselves... We don't (really).
I mean obviously that's exaggerated. We have melodies too.... But a good melody on shit sounds can absolutely carry the sounds and make it enjoyable. We're mostly missing that component for the most part.
Rhythm-wise i personally feel like we don't have too much choice either. We do, of course.... but there are things that work reliably and particularily well. Some rythms are really, really hard to "make sound good" - imposisble for me.
It's like when we make bass music, instead of a "3-dimensional-space" we are limited to a 2-dimensional-space; lacking the "melody"-component. And due to certain stuff that just works better than other stuff, industry standard sound that's expected etc, we don't really have a 2D plane to move on, but a 2D "Tunnel" that's rather narrow.
That makes it so everythign we do has to be much better, more creative and more precise than "normal", melodic music to reach a simmilar "quality".
Writing this alongside watiching the Video, let's see what points you make :D
I don't understand what you mean by 3D or 2D. The melody doesn't make it 3D. That's stereo width. The idea of the 3D space is utilizing pan stereo knobs and stereo imaging plugins such as ozone imager. It's adding the illusion of depth. Music is stereo therefore its all 2D.
For me it’s about creating a strong relationship between the sounds I use rather than whether I can create a rhythm with them, but I agree. The fundamental approach is about rhythmic placement ^^
@@AFRoSHEENT3ARCMICHAEL69 he's using analogy not saying actual stereo field.
Great video! I've been thinking exactly about this topic, and it's very insighful to see others struggling with this too. I come from a composition background, so now that I'm studying this kind of music I feel like a complete begginer again, and not in the best way. Sure, there are a lot of overlaps like song structure, a feeling for need of variation and flow, the ability to develop an idea, but the way you go about doing things can be completely different. It's a style that's very hard to separate production and sound design from composition. Looking forward to hear more of your thoughts and discoveries on this!
I have a lot of videos on this kind of stuff already if you check out my talking head videos^^ but yeah. It can definitely be a lot
@@Alckemy I'm definitely going to check them out! Thank you
one thing is that bass music is very drum/rhythm rather than melody oriented, which is something that most people aren't familiar with because they've never had access to real drums. That's because there's a certain amount of privilege required to even play the drums, such as living in a house in the suburbs with a garage because it's too loud and cramped to do in an apartment building. Not to mention how people are funneled by music education and society in general to pursue the keys or guitar or something because it fits into classical music whereas drums didn't appear until the start of the 1900s. But in order to have a compelling bass track, a good grasp of rhythm is absolutely essential.
Unlike non-bass genres, you also need to have a very deep and precise understanding of single band and multi band compression, distortion, waveshaping, phase, etc in order to get the most out of your sounds. Given how obtuse compression is, it's yet another thing that can take several years to figure out.
drums didnt appear until the 1900s? drums were likely the first instrument ever created and have been used in tribal music for thousands of years. but yeah, european classical composers didnt have access to a modern drum kit.
@@dpounder101he’s on to something though, it’s about placement, which I don’t think I covered as much in this video. But I have another talking head video called “audiating” that goes into this topic more
@@dpounder101 yeah i mean modern drums
@@Alckemy yeah most of the comment i can agree with and i see the point being made i just had to mention drums being a traditional instrument. i think thats part of why this music can seem to hit at something primal that exists deep within us. we have been dancing under full moons to rhythmic music (also often in altered states) for almost as long as we have been recognizably human, maybe even longer.
@@wemustkungfufite i wasnt trying to attack you or accuse you of racism or anything, just pointing out that its pretty euro-centric and that rhythm likely came before melody and certainly before harmony.
No, this is extremely important discussion!!
Thank you for this post and I look forward to more like this.
Recommending people reach out to the ones whose art they are admiring and asking the right questions is absolutely understated and it IS indeed the fastest and most efficient way to achieving many of your goals.
Shoutout to @kageidk and @zain.wolf. They offer lessons❤️
This was a great video really got me realizing that trying to start with cords or a piano like I see and have problems with is just not always the best way. Thank u
There’s nothing wrong with it! It might just lead you in a different direction
We are creatures of habit, and I think the draw of instrumental bass music is the WTF factor of the textures, and the two are at odds with each other.
If you want to create a sound you’ve never heard before, it can only come from randomization, and randomization by its nature isn’t repeatable. Because once you fall into habits, you lose the WTF factor that makes bass music so pleasing.
I think that’s why we have song structure so we can flex our music theory brain in the verse, and the textural brain for the chorus.
It’s worth thinking what we can take from pop about how melodies are structured usually and we can use that to structure our drops to give a sense of familiarity and strike the balance between repetition and new ideas
In an 8 bar phrase for the chorus I tend to favor an A A B A, and that can go a long way to take your brain from “thats a cool idea” to “oh wait this is becoming something”
really interesting discussion. Really enjoyed it. Thank you
Wow Alckemy this is another awesome video I love it. Big up dude.👊
Every post a joy
Personally, the more I think about outcomes such as writing hooks, melodies, etc, the more I slow down the act of writing the music and the more mired I become in non-important issues. When it comes to electronic music, I think it's totally cool if your reasoning and thinking don't extend past "because I think it sounds cool". Aphex Twin said that electronic music is more abstract than "traditional" music and I totally agree, and I think that means the process should be, too.
Glad you brought up the “songs are meant to be sung” thing. I’ve argued this point with people many times over the years. Let’s call things what they are. Let’s stop calling tracks without singing “songs”. We wouldn’t call a pencil drawing a “painting” or a “sculpture”. This also brings up another thing I think can be helpful for music producers that only write instrumental compositions (tracks), which is to step out of the “tracks” box and start writing songs! Write lyrics and use our voices to convey them whether through singing, spoken word, etc..
Great vid, love your philosophizing!❤
I also find it irritating when people call instrumental tracks/pieces/tunes «songs». Especially when they actually argue that instrumentals are songs, lol.
i think a problem arises when people confuse the word song with the word music. music isnt a song without lyrics or singing but just because it isnt a song doesnt mean it isnt music.
@@dpounder101 All songs are music, but not all music is a song
great video mate, very phylosophical!
Great video 😊 I think its difficult because there is so much to balance. A heavy snare is cool, but might make a song feel ‘sluggish’, a thin kick rarely sounds good but it might compliment a meaty 808 bass.
Yeah, in live music you kind of have most- if not all the instrumentation figured out in a sense they’ll work together. It’s not to say you don’t have different styles of drums and guitars and all that, but generally regardless of the genre you can make it sound decent
I'm only about halfway through but in case you didn't mention it I think it's important to note that compared to live instruments EDM has a lot more frequencies above 20k and under 40 hz. Bass music takes advantage of the whole frequency spectrum whereas most other genres do not. Notably, there is pop music that shines more above 20k but less likely to have any focus below 40-50 hz.
Above 20k...thats well above my hearing range..must be music for dogs😂
people overcomplicate it . simple as that. you can make good music simply. people just think it needs to be complicated for some reason, smells like gatekeeping to me. should be dismantled, challenged, etc
I really love this topic and video. I have a really big comment I'm gonna attach to this to save space on the main thread. I will say here, I would absolutely love to take a production based lesson with you soon.
Really great insights, man. Huge comment following 👇🏼
Really interesting topic here. Especially coming from a jazz background where I did a lot of really complex and meticulous transcribing of harmonies and melodies. Part of my mind still activates in that way when listening to examples exactly like you played here in the beginning.
The way I learned music from a theory standpoint also aligned with studying things like the Quadrivium, which is a fourfold study of quantification.
I teach piano and music theory for a living and have sort of come up with my own method. It started with me breaking music into three categories as a way to approach practice and pedagogy
1. Rhythm
2. Pitch
3. Dynamics
Through this, I came to the understanding that ALL elements of music are really just ways of manipulating relationships of time quantification. Pitch itself is really just the amount of times something vibrates over a given time. Rhythm is just time relationships on a more simplex scale. Dynamic is the speed of delivery.
A perfect fifth is just the contrast of a 3:2 ratio sped up to an audible rate. Timbre, the tonal color of an instrument is just an interaction of overtones and complex harmonics as presented by a given instrument or sound source.
So when I hear musical examples like you showed in the beginning ALL I hear are harmonics and rhythm, so in that way it feels no different, in principle, to any other musical style. The difference is in how intentionally the harmonics are used, what sorts of motifs are explored or developed, or whether they're developed at all and kept in some form of a constant loop.
I make music that has a specific harmonic and melodic content, in a more classical sense and I also love exploring texture as a component of the piece. When I explore more texture I almost always make it a playable instrument via pads on Push 2 or MPC to determine phrasing and play it and formulate it in a way that requires real
time involvement in developing the motifs to create variation on themes through texture, where that would be traditionally explored solely through harmony and melody in a piano context.
I'm hugely new to more experimental sound design and I love incorporating it into my more "jazz" oriented stuff. So this video is really powerful and inspiring for me. Thanks!
@@remyvegamediaI think that what you’re saying is definitely the base foundation of what we’re talking about.
My own struggles have been less about where to put these sounds on a timeline but rather about building a strong relationship between them. Or to put things more simply, contextualization of all these sounds I spend all this time making.
It’s annoying because like I said, there’s the arrangement hat, the sound engineering hat, then the production value hat, etc.
Some days I’ve got it, most days I don’t 😂
Yo, thank you for putting this kage remix on sc 🙏
Good vid to end the year on. I think about giving up a lot but I know I won't. Everyone's gotta get there themselves
Don’t give up!
@@Alckemy I want to figure it out too strongly to quit now. Your videos have been very encouraging and motivating. Happy New Year man!
It's hard to make and it takes time. :)
Help me find the music used in this video
AUDEKA-EXTINCTION
CHEE-OHM
.KAGE- MERAK (ALCKEMY REMIX)
@@Alckemy many thanks
Great video
Your bass will always going to be sub-freqs up to 250hz, and the rest is just a lead layered on top...
Very interesting I have recently decided to try my hand at neuro or that kind of thing. I was making the more chord/melody based stuff previously (Music theory orientated).
I know exactly what you mean I have been struggling with this for awhile.( Bass music that is).
I've come at tunes from various angles in the past but DnB is a totally different puzzle I'm still trying to crack.
I now approach it by just putting rough markers in place before any music and kind of think what this gonna be compared to what happens next and kind of sketch with synths.
Some sounds ive made previously some at the time. Ive been looking at do a bit print it change the patch print it I saw some where. (It reminds me of stop motion..Ha).
Still havnt reached a point where I feel I know any thing.
So its great to hear you think its hard. (Well no not exactly just that its not unusual). ha
Take care nice to hear about process I agree.😀
tehnicaly hard stuff , will only impress people that are also producers and literaly no one else .
same like when u go to get food , doesnt matter if u have million in your pocket , u just wanna eat what tastes good , not something that is hard to make .
only other chef will be impressed by the shit that is hard to make .
and today there is plenty producers , who are just trying to sound diferent , not sound good , or be the best , their main plan is to be "diferent " and "unique "
Same like in fashion , and in the end , u end up with all of them sound the same and look the same . beacuse they all try to impress someone else , not expres them selfs.
This a great point. Most “underground” bass music is music for other producers.
It wouldn't be worth doing otherwise.
Yeah, try making music without a meter or notes. Just textural sound arranged over time.
I have an EP called tales of the coffin regarding incidental writing :)
Conversely, I think that a very challenging part of making bass music, or edm, or pop is that you have fairly rigid boundaries that you need to operate within. Not only are these genres technically demanding, but to make music that adheres to a specific structure, musically or systemically (ie, works on a sound system, can be DJed, is palatable to the prospective audience), can turn the creative process into almost a puzzle.
You're not going to tell us how you came up with it? What's the point of this video then?
Maybe because I have hundreds of videos of how to make and do everything I know that lead up to me talking about a video like this?
Orrrrrrrr maybe because the first comment pinned is a video link to both how Audeka and chee produce directly from them?
What else do you want from me brotha
those bass examples you played don't sound good though. i guess you would come up with them by just playing with the knobs in serum. there's no mystery here
Who made you the ultimate judge of quality in music which is subjective in nature ? What's the universal law within music that solidifies something as good ? Very little though behind your attempt of a snarky comment.
@@Felipe-kh6cg no need to take my comment so personally, I never I was the ultimate judge I just said that they don't sound good to me but if you wanted to make them you would just use Serum. That is what people use to make those basslines isn't it?
As someone who does make these sounds, no. There’s a lot more to it. And making the sound vs their context is something entirely different
@@Alckemy With all due respect I watched your video but I don't feel like I learned anything about how to actually make these basslines. It took 15 minutes into the video to get any suggestions from you such as filtering noise which is a cool idea but how does that apply to basslines?
@ I’m not sure why you expected this to be a sound design lesson when it’s a “why” and not a “how” video.
To answer your question, pretty much my entire channel is about bass design. Check the catalogue^^
Your title is wrong and misleading. Here is the right one-
Why is Making Bass Music So Difficult For None Bass Players?
Thanks champ let me hop right on that