Contents of Electro House?

[ryderhartman]

Hey guys,

I'm a newcomer to these forums and I have a couple questions when it comes to electro house. I hope I'm not going to get this topic closed due to improper location of post however, hopefully you guys can provide me with some insight. I'm familiar with electro house production at a slightly below intermediate level and I'm curious to know what the average track consists of. I know there's going to be some drums (Kicks/Snares etc.) Some bass and a lead of some sort but, I can't figure out how those are usually used and structured in the songs. I've been watching tutorials on Sylenth1 and trying to make these elements of the song but I'm getting caught up in details. If it helps I'm looking to produce tracks along the lines of Dada Life's track Feed the Dada.

Thanks

[sporkles]

Hi, and welcome to the forum.

I'm no electro house virtuoso, but regardless of genre, your most important tool are your ears. Listen to a track thoroughly, and break it down into sections that are meaningful to you, e.g. traditional parts, like "intro", "chorus", "verse", and more "modern" terms, such as "drop" (whatever the hell that is) and "take-off/build-up". Then, when you have a general feel for the song structure, you can start going into details. You've already figured out the most important bits: drums and bass are the foundation of any dance track. From there, you need to think chord progression and groove - this is really quite genre independent. The actual sounds are of course very important in electronic music, but that's, as you say, detail. Once you've got a melody or a chord sequence down, it's a lot easier to experiment with the sound. The inverse is a certain way to bland, mediocre music.

Also: use cowbell.

[ryderhartman]

Hi, and welcome to the forum.

I'm no electro house virtuoso, but regardless of genre, your most important tool are your ears. Listen to a track thoroughly, and break it down into sections that are meaningful to you, e.g. traditional parts, like "intro", "chorus", "verse", and more "modern" terms, such as "drop" (whatever the hell that is) and "take-off/build-up". Then, when you have a general feel for the song structure, you can start going into details. You've already figured out the most important bits: drums and bass are the foundation of any dance track. From there, you need to think chord progression and groove - this is really quite genre independent. The actual sounds are of course very important in electronic music, but that's, as you say, detail. Once you've got a melody or a chord sequence down, it's a lot easier to experiment with the sound. The inverse is a certain way to bland, mediocre music.

Also: use cowbell.

Thanks for the help!
i'll take a look at whatever cowbell is haha.

[TomViolenz]

ryderhartman...

ride_her_hard _man.....ooh ,....that's nasty!

carry on...

[mutator]

A really good way to see and learn all the elements that are or could be in a song of a particular style is to get a remix pack or stems of a professional song. Beatport has remix comps a lot and you kind find some in there, or other places around the net. That way you can see each element in the song, when they come in, if it's two sounds together (high and low),etc.

Go find and download the "Far Too Loud- Acid 9000" remix pack. I believe it's still on Beatport, but if it's not just google it. This pack not only has all the wave files of the song, but even has a ableton project file. When you open the project, it will already have the tracks layed out. It's broken up pretty well. It has multiple sweep and riser tracks, FX tracks, synthetic tracks, drum rolls, impacts, etc. The one thing it doesn't have in the drums. But, you can download the actual track and place that into ableton as well and see where and how the drums are used. This will give you a real good idea of all the elements in a real electro house song. There's a lot of audio tracks in it, probably 20+ of them. So you really get a good idea of how things are flowing. Some remix packs will only have 5 or some audio tracks because the producer just bounced all his sweeps and risers into one track, all his FX into another track, etc. That's why I mention this FTL song, it's got a real nice breakdown of how all the elements come together to make the tune.

You could even group all the tracks together into a folder track and then use the same project to make your own tune. Placing your own sounds in the same place they did... Kinda like ABing your song to there's, but more in depth to the arangment and the amount of elements in it.

[ryderhartman]

A really good way to see and learn all the elements that are or could be in a song of a particular style is to get a remix pack or stems of a professional song. Beatport has remix comps a lot and you kind find some in there, or other places around the net. That way you can see each element in the song, when they come in, if it's two sounds together (high and low),etc.

Go find and download the "Far Too Loud- Acid 9000" remix pack. I believe it's still on Beatport, but if it's not just google it. This pack not only has all the wave files of the song, but even has a ableton project file. When you open the project, it will already have the tracks layed out. It's broken up pretty well. It has multiple sweep and riser tracks, FX tracks, synthetic tracks, drum rolls, impacts, etc. The one thing it doesn't have in the drums. But, you can download the actual track and place that into ableton as well and see where and how the drums are used. This will give you a real good idea of all the elements in a real electro house song. There's a lot of audio tracks in it, probably 20+ of them. So you really get a good idea of how things are flowing. Some remix packs will only have 5 or some audio tracks because the producer just bounced all his sweeps and risers into one track, all his FX into another track, etc. That's why I mention this FTL song, it's got a real nice breakdown of how all the elements come together to make the tune.

You could even group all the tracks together into a folder track and then use the same project to make your own tune. Placing your own sounds in the same place they did... Kinda like ABing your song to there's, but more in depth to the arangment and the amount of elements in it.

I'll give that a shot! Thanks a lot for the help.