📈 8 Tips to Professionalize Your Music Productions 📈 (part 2)

Transform your sound with 8 expert tips to professionalize your music productions and take your tracks to the next level.

Want to take your productions to the next level, but don’t know where to start? Discover 8 tips to professionalize your music productions and get a clearer vision.

Focus on Writing 📝

It’s not uncommon for problems that appear during mixing or even mastering to actually stem from the writing process.

If you encounter issues during your production that you can’t seem to solve, rather than struggling with production or mixing, go back to the root cause!

Check the composition and arrangements:

• Is the chord progression consistent with the melody?

• Does the bassline and keyboard part clash with each other instead of working together?

• Does the rhythm of the melody match that of the drums?

• Are there too many different parts stacked on top of each other?

💡 Use the tools available in your software to visualize two elements and listen to them simultaneously to check if they work well together.

💡 Reaper’s piano roll makes it easy to display multiple tracks with different highlights, which is especially useful for orchestral writing.

💡 A rhythm, bass, harmony, and melody are already a lot! You can maybe add a counter-melody, but not all the time. Keep in mind that the listener won’t be able to focus on everything at once. Like a film director who uses focus to guide the viewer’s gaze, use writing to create contrast between the different elements.

Organize Your Session 🧹

You’ve made good progress on your production and are quite happy with it, but suddenly you hear an odd sound right in the middle of your guitar solo. Now, you’re stuck scrolling for 5 minutes, trying to find that stray bagpipe track.

Add color and organization to your tracks!

Here’s an example for a rock combo:

Drum Group (orange):

• Kick

• Snare

• Bat

• Clams

• Fx (room)

• Etc …

Bass Group (blue):

• DI

• Amps

• Fx (chorus)

• Etc ...

Guitar Group (green):

• Guitar mic L

• Guitar mic R

• Acoustic guitar room

• Acoustic guitar close

• Etc ...

Be creative and come up with your own color codes and protocols. This will save you time and energy, and it will be much clearer when you revisit an old session.

If all your sessions are codified, switching between them will be much smoother, making you more productive and at ease!

Have a Clear Vision of the Structure 🧱

Sometimes artists enter the studio without a clear vision of their track.

It’s essential to lay out the structure of a piece to understand where you’re coming from and where you’re heading.

To do this, you can use a simple sheet of paper. Personally, I write the structure alongside the chord grid to also understand the harmony. You can also simply write the names of the different sections or make a diagram.

💡 In your software, use section markers to identify parts and apply color codes to make navigation easier. This helps you maintain an overall view of your track and simplifies manipulations like swapping sections. Some software like Cubase or Reaper allows you to do this automatically.

💡 Use drum breaks, riser effects, or even silences to highlight transitions. This also helps energize your production and recapture the listener’s attention, guiding them through your track.

💡 Use an instrument from the chorus in advance to play a transition melody line; this can be original and unexpected.

Usez et abusez du bouton mute 🤫

As you progress in your production, you accumulate tracks, ideas, and parts. While this adds richness, it can also lead to confusion. You’ll need to be brave enough to let go of that synth part you’re so proud of!

With hindsight, you’ll realize that some elements are competing with each other. And that’s where the “MUTE” button comes in—it’s your best asset, use it generously!

Compare each part of your track by removing certain tracks or soloing a group of tracks. The result may surprise you. If, like me, you tend to overfill, remember that there’s no harm in space—the emptiness is space. The more space your production has, the better it will sound and the easier it will be to mix. You have everything to gain.

💡Keep rejected ideas for other sections of the track to add variety elsewhere. If you truly can’t figure out where to place them, create a folder with those ideas, and maybe you’ll use them as the basis for future productions.

If you liked these first four tips, feel free to share the article! To be continued (here)!