Ableton Forum

im quite new to music production and i keep finding the stuff i make just down sound quite right. im into hard house/trance and im having trouble making basslines/drum loops sound decent. what i really want is like a video tutorial or a guide of how to make hard dance music. i just watched the video from the link inside the post from johnashby with the Steve Angello videos and that was pretty good. something like that but with hard house/trance would be ideal.

anybody got any thoughts?

cheers

let me ask you this:

Did you think it would be easy?
Did you think the first song you tried to write would sound as good as the music you listen to?

if the answer is yes, you don't need a tutorial.

if the answer is no, you need to practice.

Keep working and it will come!

no i didnt think it would be easy and obviously i need more practice, i just think it would help to see how other people do it so i can try and learn from them.

Youtube it.

I'm not sure you'll find something quite so specific that will tell you how to write a "hard dance" tune. I think watching those producer video's you mentioned is as good as it's gonna get when it comes to watching dance music producers at work (I think these are from Future Music magazine so check that out). That is, apart from actually teaming up with someone in the studio who knows what he's doing.

In any case, for most people it will take several years before they're able to produce something that sounds "professional".
My advice is, if you're starting out, don't worry too much about how things sound technically, but focus more on the musical ideas behind it. Of course you should try and absorb as much technical information as you can from the internet and magazines (Sound on Sound is a good mag for picking up technical know-how). Just experiment and try to write and finish tracks, even if at first they sound like shit, technically. Just try and do a little bit better with each track.

learn about dynamic signal processing and learn about sound design and make the sound as perfect as you can before applying any dynamic processing if it even needs any. i realized the other day that making psychedelic downtempo music is way way easier than making something like psytrance even though you would think its not since psytrance has the monotonous kick drum and sometimes the intricasies can sound more obvious in slow music...but it takes alot of practice. iv been trying to produce music for like 4 and a half years now and im just now getting good enough to be happy with comparing my music with all the professional tracks and even then, i have still got lots of practice to do...just stay determined......oh and there is a book called "the dance music manuel" i forget the author's name i think its like rick snow or something like that but you can find it on amazon and its like a big text book full of useful info that you are probably trying to seek

Hard dance?
My advice would be please, just dont.

dont listen to that elitist. hard dance is the shit. he is probably just afraid to dance with no inhibitions

OK, I'll be a bit more helpful.

I'm not a hard dance fan but I have been asked to help out someone who wants to produce in the genre so I started working on a set to demonstrate the basic techniques that I heard being employed in tracks they played.

One very obvious thing is the distorted kick drum ( more often than not), which I managed to emulate using three layered kicks. One for some initial strike sound, one for some of that distorted sound and one for some extended tone. Here you will just need to find some samples that you think fit the bill.

By dropping these three samples into a drum rack and mixing them to taste you can get a kick that does the job nicely.


Start with summat like that and then dissect a favourite track of yours and see if you can emulate the individual elements.