I’m going to get back into mixing (and maybe remixing) tracks. I haven’t done it since highschool! The plan: produce electronica tracks, compose piano pieces and my own beats. Inspiration will determine how long everything will take!

Anyways, here are a couple of tips that I picked up if you’re new to producing your own music:

Before you start: set up the BPM (beats per minute)

• Dance tracks: the standard is 140 BPM (you can deviate a bit faster or slower if you want)
• Other tracks: if you don’t know, 120 is the safest

Using Loops: If you’re going to use ready made music loops (shame on you!)

• Make sure all of the loops are at the same BPM, making them too fast or too slow from the original BPM will distort the sound
• As a standard, make sure all of your loops are at the same minor or major (if you mix up scales, the sounds will clash together)
• If you want to chop up different layers, what I try to do is have the same sample in 2 layers, overlap the chopped over the other and fade it out (or else you’ll get the obvious “cutting” in your track).

Mastering the final track: I’m not a sound engineer, but if you want to make your final track sound less “flat” follow these tips:

• USE panning: panning simply means certain layers (instruments) are more louder on the left or right ear than another. If you have different panning for each layer, it’ll sound less flat. (Example: If you have a guitarist on the right, make sure that guitar layer is louder on the right, guitarist on the left, louder on the left speaker and so on)
• USE your equalizer: make some samples have more bass, less bass, more/less treb to lessen the flat sound. Note: do not add in too much bass or treb or else the sample will distort in sound.

USE a good program to mix your tracks that actually producers from record labels use such as:

1. Reason
2. Logic
3. Acid Pro