Bad opinions • Page 363

Writing a catchy hook is the hardest shit ever

I also hate when someone that has never sung before thinks that professional pop singers have no talent. Even if you don't like their music, they clearly can sing (for the most part)

 

This also generally ignores how difficult writing melodies is. And the fact that a lot of what ends up credited as writing is technically arranging. If you write your own basslines, but the core of the song's music and melody was written by someone else, then you should technically be getting arranging credit, not writing.

 

I think it was L.A. Reid who hit the nail on the head with this one:

What makes it so brilliant is that every. single. part is a hook. The drums? The bass? The guitar? The synth? Every single one could be a hit on its own.

As someone who's a few albums into trying now:

Yep.

 

Billie jean is the song that went through over 90 mix versions and they ended up using the second one right?

 

I vaguely remember hearing something to that end yeah. It's also the one where MJ crashed his car because the idea came to him while he was driving and he was so busy singing the bassline to himself that he stopped watching the road.

 

Just curious but which tunes you been listening to the most? I just started a new beat yesterday that's sounding hot and I've got an ungodly amount of works in progress

 

That song has so much history behind it hahaha. But yeah I remember a professor telling me the story about the mix, where Michael and Quincy kept pulling him aside separately saying they wanted different things changed every mix. Wild they did so many revisions and ended up with the second one. That's the problem with mixing man. You never know when you're done and it becomes so easy to overwork it when you're past the point of where you want to be

 

Out of the collection I have on my phone:
do you remember
hands to the sky
interlude
push
strapped

Those are probably my top 5

Plus Starsucker on soundcloud

 

Shiiit I forgot about some of those like interlude and push, damn push is still one of my best ever I think. I think my actual best ever is hands to the sky

 

Hands To The Sky is still my favorite other than Starsucker but I have such a good idea for Interlude

Push has been the more recent favorite, like Hands is always my favorite and Interlude is always 2nd but Push is most played lately

 

OH yeah. We do the mixes where the producer/mixer sends them to us via dropbox and we go over them and send him notes and he sends new ones and lather, rinse, repeat. I think it took us 8-9 mixes on a few of the songs on the s/t. Shit can take FOREVER

 

I find it easier to mix for a client because I have clearly defined marks im trying to hit when they give me their notes. When I'm mixing for myself I have to fucking force myself to stop and say "it's not getting any better than this im just wasting time and sanity at this point"

 

I used to sit in for mixing but now I do back and forth also just so there's an extra copy of the mix because, when I recorded my first release and sat in for the mix, after we left the studio caught fire and the mix wasn't backed up

 

Hah what little stuff I mix for myself I have the benefit of not knowing shit about it outside of having a decent ear. So I can only feasibly get it just so close to what I want anyway. Otherwise I'd end up going full Howard Hughes storing pee in jars, shunning sunlight trying to get that one perfect mix.

It's what I imagine Tom Scholz and mid-career Trent Reznor were like. Haha

 

ALWAYS BACK YOUR STUFF UP. I almost lost @ComedownMachine's entire album because my hard drive decided to die the week I had to get mixes in. I had to buy special software that could access files on a dead hard drive, it was worth it but I immediately bought an external and have time machine backing up my computer literally every hour now

 

Yeah I've basically got everything backed up now haha, it was a rookie mistake both by the engineer and by me

 

That was the most stressful day of my life. When I called Apple support and went through a bunch of steps that ended with the guy muttering under his breath what I said was popping up on the screen, I knew I was in trouble. He made me wait five minutes after that then said yeah you're gonna have to do a data retrieval which Apple doesn't do. I almost cried right in front of my mother and girlfriend lol

 

Hahaha god I know that feeling too well

I had the engineer basically send me the pro tools files of all the songs I had recorded because those at the least were backed up. 3 were missing and I flipped out (thank god they were missing they were horrible even for me). I ended up having to find someone else to mix them because all his stuff was destroyed and the guy I was able to get was a rock engineer, and he was good but he definitely couldn't get the sound I wanted but I made ANOTHER rookie mistake and set a deadline for myself so the mix I got was the mix I got. Furthermore I think he had to break everything apart because he used Logic so it was all just a giant mess.

 

Conversely when I tried the software I had to spend 100 bucks on I almost cried tears of joy when I realized it worked and everything would be alright. I even managed to save world of Warcraft!

 

He was also in the middle of doing that one Fever Dreamer album preproduction that never ended up coming out so my stuff was all on the backburner because they were paying him much more than I was

 

If you ever need a mixer hit me up especially if you use my beats because I'll mix your vocals in the entire project file and not just on a two track instrumental, it'll blend much better

 

I've been trying to get into producing/writing electronic music but have absolutely no idea where to start..

 

I started just by messing around on GarageBand making stupid little shit. It's like any instrument, start with basics, learn and explore and get better. Look up tutorials on youtube, when you feel confident upgrade your software to something more advanced. I got logic 9 about a year after using GarageBand then a year after that I got logic x then a year after that I got a native instruments maschine controller/software, then last year I got myself a native instruments komplete kontrol 48 key keyboard and komplete 10 software and now I'm basically set for life in terms of sounds and software. I also have a bunch of waves plug ins for mixing and izotope ozone for mastering

 

Reason is the besssssssst.

 

Software realistically doesn't matter just pick something and learn it. I use native instruments soft synths and samples because I have the maschine and komplete midi controllers which seamlessly sync with the software and make my workflow so smooth and easy to use. Logic is just the natural step up from GarageBand if that's where you start so I always recommend it to people if they're gonna learn on GarageBand. Plus, logic x is a steal for 200 bucks, the stock plug ins that come with logic aren't bad at all, I don't use any of logics synths anymore though I did for a while but I still constantly use logics stock compressors and reverbs and other effects and mixing plug ins