Top 5 Production Tips from #1 Ghost Producer – Marteen Vorwerk
Maarten Vorwerk, dance music leading Ghost Producer, has been doing a series of #TipOfTheWeek on his Facebook. Maarten Vorwerk is the mastermind behind many charting tracks, and the sound behind many DJ Mag Top 100 DJs. We compiled Marteen Vorwerk top 5 production tips for all inspiring producers:
#Vorwerk #TipOfTheWeek #82 – Creating your own sound
Every artist wants to distinct themselves from others (in most cases). A good way of doing that is to create your own customized presets for your mix busses. A lot of people always scroll thru there eq, reverb, compressor or whatever mix plugin standard presets to find there best setting. But if you put a good amount of time in it to create your own you are also creating a signature sound for yourself. Which eventually will be the best starting point for all your mixes.
#Vorwerk #TipOfTheWeek #79 #Halloweenweek – A ‘Lively’ sound
That is quit a vague term. But still important to my opinion. I think its meaning is adding a certain richness to a sound. Or to make your mix sound less static. A good way of doing this is by detuning the Cents (1/100 of a Semi-tone) of the layers of a sound.
An easy example would be for instance;
Take a sound from the Nexus Vst. (press ‘Mix’ and the tab ‘Lay”)
Now sometimes you will see that sounds are build from seperate layers which you can also detune. If you detune the sounds a couple of Cents each, you will notice a difference in the liveliness of the sound. Play around with it and see what it does to your sound. For the experts out here. This effect is kinda similar to a chorus effect but it ain’t a chorus. I think the technical term would be “off-key” or “Floating”.
#Vorwerk #TipOfTheWeek #68 Mixing: Kick & Bass vs Drop Melody
This mixing tip comes particularly in handy while mixing a progressive style drop. And it’s an alternative or an addition to the previous mixing tip (nr.67). Normally you would put a side chain on the melody to give it more energy and to let it sit better in the mix. But if you then still having some trouble to get the kick & bass punch thru you could add a Multiband Sidechain on the lead sound. In which you only side chain the lower end of the spectrum. Let’s say a split frequency between 500 & 1000 Hz. This creates even more space for the low-end (Kick & Bass) and makes your mix sound better.
#Vorwerk #TipOfTheWeek #61 – Problems in the high end.
Sometimes when you are using to much high Eq or an exciter to spark things up it could sound nasty. An alternative way to fix this problem is to put a Sound reducer / Bit crusher on the sound / instrument which is causing the ‘nasty high’ sound. This will reduces the harshness of the high but without affecting the finished feel of the overall mix.
#Vorwerk #TipOfTheWeek #49 – Monitor volumes:
This is a very important tip which sets the base for everything!
If you want to mix your leads or whatever in a Fat way. You first need to know what Fat is, and sounds in your studio/room. When you are mixing your track you need to find a monitor volume for you that works. The best is to put your volumes not to hard to prevent ear fatigue or even damage. When experiencing ear fatigue your perception of sound will change. So beware of that. When mixing down a club track it’s often tempting to put the volume up of your speakers to get that real club feel. The best thing you can do is to mix every track in your studio at a constant volume. It will help you to know and better learn the loudness of your own and other tracks. I’ve marked a certain point on my big knob controller. This way you can get used to the sound pressure levels. In general you could say that the bigger the speakers the more sound pressure you have, the lower you can keep the volume. The more tracks you will mix this way the better they will sound. Cause you will learn very fast how a mix should sound at that volume. This way you can also rely on your ears during the mix down instead of metering. I put the volumes way up to listen if the drop makes the impact I am aiming for. Or just to mix the kick drum. Also near the end of the mix down I put the volume super low to hear if I can filter out and hear all the different elements in the track like the kick, bas, clap, hihats, leads, strings, vox etc.. if you can hear them all in a clean way then you have made a proper mix balance between all elements. Of course be sure to reference with different monitors or headphones.
