Reverse Reverb Special Offer!!

Reverse reverb is now at your finger tips and can be included in your bangin beats today!  

TESTIMONIAL:

"I have done reverse reverb before and I enjoy delicately placing it on vocals as well as samples, but until now it was always a big hassel with aux sends, recording playbacks, and multiple tracks!"

Andrew Pike
Principle, 4D2D Productions

Not anymore!  With Abelton, and the guidance of this 3 minute video you too can be adding this amazing effect used by the pros to your own music!  Act now and receive approving nods from me, and adoring fans alike.

  

Dubspot and Ableton 30/30

Dubspot provided me with yet another reason to toute their website. The advice provided in their blog's posts and the youtube tutorials are easy to understand and have expand my horizons in many ways. Dubspot is a music school in New York city that specializes in DJing/performing and all aspects of production. I first discovered Dubspot about two years ago while browsing the internet for production tutorials and have been avidly visiting and watching since. Having just bought Native Instruments' Maschine a few short months earlier, my production progress plateaued to somewhere above semi-terrible. Enter the Dubspot. I watched as many videos as possible, thus developing my current style of music. A video that directly influenced my production stems from a sound design segment about layering synths. Now listen to my beats. My synths now go HARD, like shatter 1 and a 1/4 inch lexan hard.


Fast forward to a week ago. I'm taking a break from my creative destruction using my current opiate of choice, facebook, when this link popped up in my feed: a free course from Dubspot on Live. Are you serious? Normally these course run over $4K. Not surprisingly, I signed up. I've never taken a music class before and always wanted to. The biggest draw to the course for me, besides it coming from Dubspot for FREE(!), is that it covers the basics of Ableton Live, a program I'm unfamiliar with. The other two members of 4D2D put Live to good use and it has a unique interface for music making (clip launching), therefore there isn't really a choice in the matter. This clip launching function gives Live individuality among other, more simple programs *cough*fruityloops*cough*. This allows for slick recording and performance, something I would like to try my hand at so I don't perpetuate the era of "Pressing Play" (more on that soon). After I finish the 30 lessons, a short overview and review will be in order for those wondering if it was worth the investment time. Hopefully, I don't end up like Kevin Durant after the finals - disappointed.

Music Process

My goal with this blog is to provide you tips and ideas to boost your production skills and make sure you stay up on the game.  Today I stumbled upon a great article by one of my favorite producers Blockhead.

http://phatfriend.com/2011/03/22/how-my-music-is-made-fuck-the-bullshit/

Turns out his set up and process is pretty simple.  But one of the key things I got out of the article is that everyone has their own style and work process.  Back in the day I didn't want to waste time learning a new program, or trying something new because I get so set in my ways.  I am glad I finally got out of my 'put 2 samples together and call it good' rut and learned so much more about mixing editing and composition.  But at the end of the day find the process that clicks for you.  Usually that process is the fastest, and there for more productive and lucrative.

While studying Abelton and learning more tricks and tips from online videos or articles I am realizing that almost every step in your music creating process can be done in so many different ways.  Pitch shifting and chopping up samples alone each have 3-4 different ways to get accomplished in Live.  Just remember on your quest for the number one spot, go with what works for you, what you feel comfortable with.  Once you get that base skill set to crank out hits like I did back in the day with just 2 samples you can learn and build and soon be making hits with 20 tracks in Pro Tools with all sorts of routing and plug in's as easy as it was when you first started.   This process you develop helps create your sound, your personality as a producer and musician and is what you can build on to seperate yourself from the thousands of other "hip hop producers" in the world.

-AP