KEEP YOUR KICK IN SCALE

“I always ensure my kick fits in the scale of the music I’m writing in. Generally I find that kicks work best around the frequency of F/G, these can be F# or G#, or sometimes E but it’s super low. Once you start tuning your kick drums, writing basslines becomes so much easier.”

Always use call and response

“I always try to have elements asking questions in one bar, and an answer in the other. This can be done with drums, lead sounds and even vocals. It stops the music repeating over and over. Faster music tends to have call and responses over shorter duration, say a half bar.”

Don’t over-compress

“I’m a big believer in not compressing every sound you add into your tracks, as it can make your music sound pokey and quite tiring on the ear. I tend to compress when it’s needed, so for example, if you have a shaker loop and one element is too loud, you can compress to bring out the low elements and bring down the high elements so it sits together. Another good idea is to compress groups of sounds, so if I have layered a kick drum or a lead sound, they will sound like one unit. This is especially useful on your drum group. My favourite tool for this is the VSC-2 on the UAD.”