How I've produced my craziest track yet

Hey team! I recently released one of my craziest track yet.

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And I thought why not break down some lessons I’ve learnt along the way because I know quite a few of you at some point want to make your own music. Even with my students, we’ve started producing/making their own tracks in our session.

Now caveat - I’m not sharing this from the perspective of someone who’s an “expert”. But rather I just want to document some of the lessons I’ve learnt and hopefully share it in a way that makes sense to you.

Real quick! For those of you who don’t know me. My name is Ivan, I love making music and also teaching singing to students all around the world. On this newsletter my goal is to make learning to sing simple. If that’s up your lane, consider subscribing. If you want to improve your voice faster, check out the links down below for ways to work with me

If you want to inspire our next episode! Drop in the comments below what you want me to talk about next.

Anyway! Let’s dive in.

Okay so for today, I want to break this project down in 3 important lessons. Starting from the very beginning

Lesson 1: The brief/concept

The biggest lesson for this track, was realising how important the brief/concept for a song is. Not only does it set the directions, but it allows you to explore areas in making music you might not have which you’ll notice in the next 2 lessons.

For example with this song “THE GAME”

At it’s very core, it was simply my answer to this one question

“How crazy/dirty can I make my beat?”

And this idea actually came off a podcast I heard with Keshi, where he talked about how he created this song “Get It”

And it was a very similar approach.

Now the reason why I thought it was VERY helpful for me is I’ve put out quite a few songs now. And I think at a certain point, every producer/singer songwriter goes through this phase where you start to get comfortable with the sounds you make.

You might even start to reuse a lot of the sounds whether it be convenience or comfort.

But what can happen is the music making feels a bit stale.

So I had to set this BRIEF of creating something completely different to what I’ve made before.

Now what was cool is because it opened up to 3 really cool lessons OR moves that has made this one of my favourite tracks I’ve produced so far.

Lesson 2: Anything can be a transition

So let’s talk about the beat first. In some of my early tracks, I would always use drums fill or sweeps to transition between different parts of the song.

The challenge though, was at some point in time it started to feel a bit repetitive/stale for me. Almost like a cheap way to move to another section.

So I really made it an intention to not use these sound as much to build energy/transition.

Rather I wanted to try use sounds that wasn’t conventionally used for transitioning.

For example at 69 - there was this triangle sample.

This was part of loop and was meant to intended to just be used as

Now another example of this is in bar 8. I really played around with the transition here and I think what really worked was having 2 very different sections. I think it’s that contrast sometimes that can make a really cool transition or drop.

Lesson 3: Building crowd vocals & Layering different textures of vocals

Now building on this concept, I also tried to explore something more interesting with the vocals.

Usually when I layer vocals, I would it pretty simple

I’ve my main/lead vocals.

And then I’d just layer from doubles and maybe some harmonies

Now what I tried this time round, was exploring some crowd vocals. I’ve heard done in songs before.

Now the process is basically you just record a WHOLE bunch of takes, and then moving around different positions in the mic to really give it that illusion of a crowd. One thing you can actually do to get the sound bigger, is bouncing this and then lowering the formant.

Another thing I did vocally that I really thought was cool, was adding this auto filter to my ad libs. Without it, it didn’t have the feel/movement that I needed for my final section but with it it.

So don’t be afraid to try some really crazy sounds.

Anyway! Once again please let me know if content like this is useful. So I know whether to create more of this in the future.
 
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Last but not least, if you’ve always wanted to improve your singing faster and with less confusion. Remember you don’t have to do this on your own.

I’ve got ways to work with me in the description down below. Make sure to check it out. Apart from that, my name is Ivan, I'm your voice teacher, and I'll see you for our weekly tutorials every single Thursday or Friday.

Take care.

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