Pro -sounding house music

[SubFunk]

Practise, Practise, Practise, Practise, Practise, Practise, Practise, Practise, Practise, Practise, and Practise,
even he is right that looking over someones shoulder that has more experience will help a lot and might speed things up.., your own amount of Practise and experience can't be replaced by anything, be patient and have faith into yourself... keep on doing and you will improve / get there.

tarekith's assets are great and free for beginners like you, go to his website and read them!

keep on!

[tlennon]

That expert engineer/producer started out just like you until he mastered his craft. Like SubFunk said....be patient and persistent. Good luck!

[contakt321]

Timothy Allen has some great tutorials to a search for his name.

[Tone Deft]

work on starting with good sounds.

then work on not screwing them up in the process.

I hate turd polishing. it's a bitch to make a bad sounding song sound good, I'd rather start over.

IMO if you spend any money on someone else to polish your song look for someone that can do it with Live so you not only get back a good song you can play with the settings they chose and start to understand how they got there.

[morbid]

Work on your own samples - dont buy them in

I keep referencing my stuff to stuff I like and Im so not there yet in terms of sounds, Ive been producing 2 / 3 years now

Too many people these days want to knock out releases after 6 months with a copy of Reason or whatever

Just take your time, production can be a slow process

Getting it right from the start as someone else said is the way to progress

[Silence]

ok, my tip is:
Finish songs... U learn a lot more from songs that are finished
Loops are allright and u can get a whole lot of experience in sound design but nothing beats a song thats done/finished and hopefully wicked.

[heavensdaw]

+1 to all that's been said..

Also if he was saying that your arrangements are good but the sounds need to improved maybe you could post up a tune for us to hear and give you some pointers... It really depends on what (sounds) you want to achieve ... as in do you wanna sound like everyone else out there... or do you want to create 'your' sound?.. if it's the latter, the basic sound design tutorials will help but to push on from there you gotta be brave and be prepared to walk solo ...

Hd

[Saxer]

being a real "pro" in any kind of profession takes about 10.000 hours working on (it´s a fact).
sounds horrible, but you can have a lot of fun all the hours
enjoy what you do and go on... best thing to learn is hanging around with people who are better.
go to studios where they might need someone to do the cleaning and make coffee...

[simonlb]

Not sounding great after 6 months of earnest production is nothing to get depressed about, for most people that's still very much in the beginner stage... I've been doing it for years and still feel like an intermediate at best!

[SubFunk]

Not sounding great after 6 months of earnest production is nothing to get depressed about, for most people that's still very much in the beginner stage... I've been doing it for years and still feel like an intermediate at best!

yep!

i do it over 20 years now, and i still learn and improve all the time, i feel i am sort of alright since the last 5-6 years... but the learning / improvement process is never finished! never!

practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise,
and practise.

[NRJay]

Learn your DAW, wether it's Live or something else. Try to comprehend the big story behind all the little buttons and options.
Learn the shortcuts and keyboard controls, they make your live to much easier and your workflow faster. So creative ideas can get captured in a faster and more natural state.

I recently bought a 61key keyboard, and the creativity has just upped 5 levels! It gives you the chance to PLAY with the sounds, and lean a lot about chords, scales and progressions along the way.

The best tip I can give you is: get some books with explanation and examples of how to make certain sounds or structures. You'll learn a lot by reading it, and the best thing, if you want to know how it sounds you need to make them in Live. In the mean while you'll learn to work with synths in a good and creative way and you'll find other ways to make it even sound cooler. You'll have your much needed practice without you even noticing it. Watching youtube vids is good for inspiration, but you need to do it on your own too.

Also finish songs! How terrible they might be. Song structure is something you'll need to learn! Good sounds stacked on a heap doesn't mean it's a good song!

As you know by now, music production is like a bottomless pit, there's always something beyond the horizon you didn't see before.
And if you aint got a serious passion for music, you'll quit making music really soon, so be prepared to make a commitment.
Music is my first passion, and it will be my last too. Progress is slow and the learning curve is steep, but every time I make something I couldn't make before my heart jumps to 200bpm, and then you instantly remember why you went to all the trouble in the first place!

[Z3NO]

All of the above are good advice, but if I might add my own opinion to the pot...
Before getting sucked into the intricacies of software, samples and youtube videos, I'd take a little time to really understand some fundamental theory about sound itself. How it works, what are the differences between the physics of sound and our perceptions of it, how are particular tones and timbres built and understand how we can manipulate them etc. (basically the stuff behind sound engineering).
Bear in mind you can really get entangled in the subject and sink really deep and might never emerge (like me) to become a producer, and unless you want to make it your profession to be an engineer I'd say you don't really need to get obsessive about it, but I usually find that producers with a clear understanding of the mechanics involved get a real head-start and their productions sound pretty good off the bat compared to others who learnt their trade through practice alone.

If I may also add (and I'm getting ready to get my arse debated to a bright red colour), I also generally find that forcing yourself to finish tunes (and end up with a long series of disappointing results) is not only counter-productive but also quite demoralising for many, and progress is often slow.
Approaching production from a different angle that yields quick gratifications, like working on individual sounds only or make the arrangement process more concise, is usually more stimulating and can benefit the learning curve.

Of course all of this is based on my experiences and may not work as well for everyone.

[Da hand]

practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise, practise,
and practise.

+10

Tons of practice is very essential, but I would argue something like:

read, listen, practice, listen, practice, read, listen, practice, listen, practice, read, listen, practice, listen, practice, read, listen, practice, listen , practice, etc.....

As in, read some theory on what you want to achieve, listen to how others apply it by picking a couple of reference tracks you find have stellar production, try it on your own, listen back to your references, try again, read some more on the subject, listen some more, try more, etc....

[SubFunk]

@ da hand... i just assume that most, if not all people already do read a lot and listen a lot... but you are right pointing it out.

[rosti]

I have been making music something like 3 years now and i'm NO WHERE near pro level. Actually my tunes sound like sh*t. So what subfunk said, practise practise!

One thing that helped me alot was getting a hardware synthesizer. The physical knobs just makes the difference when learning synthesis. I still have a lot to learn on that though.

Maby after 10 years i start to have my sounds in place