Why I Rarely Use Loops

Neon Notes — Week [15]

Let me start by saying, there is nothing wrong with using loops in your music. Using loops or samples creatively is a skill in itself, and I have used a few loops in a couple of my early songs.

I used a sax, ambient pad, and a guitar loop. But I've always wanted to try to create everything in my songs.

That also includes my lead synth and bass design, and my drums are always created from scratch on every track.

The reason why I do this is to force myself to be creative, and to stay sharp.

I also think that not using loops or samples other than vocals has helped me solidify my sound. It's given me a chance to train my skills into something that I think is recognizable.

Now when I start a new project, either solo or with another producer or artist, I can fuse my sound into any track.

Sure, loops can speed up the process, and not using them did slow me down in the beginning. But by not using loops, I've trained myself to be able to create a desired sound relatively quickly.

Sometimes the easy path is to just use a loop when I'm having trouble dialing in a sound that I want, but I push forward with my sound design anyway. I want those sounds to be my creations.

And over time, my drums have evolved into something that sounds like me. I try to give them lots of life and movement by making the fills between sections sound a little more human. And my synth sound has become more consistent with each release.

I would never have been able to do that had I just used loops.

This is not to say that my way is the right way, it's just the right way for me. I love opening a new project and trying to create what I hear in my head.

In the end, just do what feels right to you.

Now Creating

• Refining my drum sound. More punch and clarity
• Starting to finalize the songs for Electric Skyline Vol 2
• Recent life changes have put the website redesign on hold

Thanks for reading.
If you have thoughts about any of this, I’d love to hear them.

This post is part of my weekly Neon Notes series. New posts go live every Wednesday.

How I Use Remixes For Inspiration

Neon Notes — Week [14]

Writer's block is a real thing, whether you write lyrics, instrumentals, or both, this can be frustrating.

When I'm having a little writer's block, I tend to do a few things to help me overcome it. I'll either go into an old project and make a new version, sound design in Serum for future songs, or remix someone else's song.

Most of the time, sound designing or going into an old project just help me stay sharp, but remixes usually give me some kind of inspiration.

There are various ways to get vocals from popular mainstream songs, but that's another post on its own, and any remix I make using these vocals are only for me. While I may let people hear them, they are never uploaded to any streaming sites.

One example is a remix I'm working on using the stripped vocals from a song by Dua Lipa titled Break My Heart.

When I do a remix like this, I purposely stay away from referencing the original song. I may be familiar with the song, but I don't want any influences other than my own creativity and the vocals to drive the song forward.

I want my song to sound completely different from the original, so this is how I use remixes for inspiration.

I listen to the stripped vocals, no music, no beat. I just listen and try to imagine my own song around the vocals.

I may leave the vocals lined up like the original song, sometimes I'll chop or rearrange them.

For the Break My Heart remix, I chose to leave them as is, follow the sections and put my own spin on it.

I wasn't too familiar with this particular song, so when I heard the vocals, I had no song reference to go by.

I laid the vocal track into my DAW and got to work.

From there I start the remix like I start all my songs.

I experiment with tempo, bass patterns, different drum patterns until I get something that feels good, and complements the vocals.

I may go through a few iterations until I have something that works, but this is where this helps with inspiration.

Once I find the starting point, the rest of the song tends to fall in place.

This is the beauty of remixes. Sure, I might not always finish the songs, but great ideas come from them. I may use the main drum pattern in another song, or use a whole section to rewrite a song around that.

Sometimes, I'll just strip the vocals and keep it as an instrumental, or add different vocals that are royalty free.

Remixes have helped me get out of that stuck feeling.

In the end, it's not about making a slightly different version of the original, it's about sparking inspiration to make the song mine.

Now Creating

• The last song of the EP is out
• Still working on website
• Working on new artwork for old songs

Thanks for reading.
If you have thoughts about any of this, I’d love to hear them.

This post is part of my weekly Neon Notes series. New posts go live every Wednesday.

How I Use Deadlines To Finish More Songs

Neon Notes — Week [13]

Deadlines are very important, and they are the key factor in why I'm able to finish most songs that I start. 

I briefly touched on it in an older blog post, but I thought I'd dig a bit deeper today.

I made up my mind early on, that I needed to create deadlines for myself. I viewed it as a way to force myself into making more deliberate decisions.

So I landed on a two week deadline. This did two things for me. It gave me enough time to use every bit of my limited skillset, while also forcing me to make more concrete decisions.

And let me say that while I have collaborated on a few projects recently that used real guitar and real bass. My solo Laxrax projects are purely electronic based  songs, so I'm aware of the extra time it takes when using instruments.

My idea after "finishing" my first song was to give each song two weeks. I give it all I have and once the two weeks is up, I listen to the song, find one thing I'd like to improve upon, and then I would upload the song to SoundCloud and YouTube.

Then I would start a new song the day that I uploaded the newly finished song, and do it all over again. For the longest time, the song I was currently working on was the only song that wasn't finished.

I didn't have a 20 or 30 projects that were half completed or barely started. I just had the one I was working on.

Moving into the next song, I would look at my notes from my last song and try to make sure to fix at least one thing. 

Looking back to when I uploaded my first song, I wasn't really too nervous to share it publicly, but it did give me a pretty good rush. It felt really good, and I was proud that I was able to make a somewhat coherent song.

It also taught me that getting it out there, even with all it's flaws, was better than waiting for it to be perfect. If I did that, then I'd never release anything.

Fast forward to today, I don't use the strict  two week deadline anymore. I've conditioned myself to finish songs without it now. My workflow is faster now that my decisions are more concrete, and my ear is a lot better.

I also no longer just have one unfinished song. At the time of this post, I have 15 finished songs waiting for release, and another 10 in the works. 

I may not use hard deadlines anymore, but they are the main reason I'm so consistent today. They are a direct influence on how I make decisions now, and my deliberate workflow might not have happened without it.

Now Creating

• One song left until the full EP is available everywhere
• Finalizing new website tweaks
• More consistent music releases
• More collaborative music planned

Thanks for reading.
If you have thoughts about any of this, I’d love to hear them.

This post is part of my weekly Neon Notes series. New posts go live every Wednesday.

How I Blend 80's Sounds With Modern Production

Neon Notes — Week [12]

In last weeks post, I talked about WHY I blend 80's sounds into my music. Now I'm going to tell you HOW I blend them together.

It's actually a very simple concept, and just by adding this one element to a song, I can instantly give it a retro feel. 

The gated reverb snare.

The gated reverb snare was discovered by accident, and is a staple of the retro sound. But this is not the only thing I add to my songs to give them a retro feel.

So let's dive into.

The vocal samples I use are definitely not retro, so there's the first step in making the song sound modern. The next steps are what I do to blend the modern vocals with retro sounds.

I don't use it in every song, but my go to snare is the LinnDrum snare from the iconic LinnDrum drum machine. I like the snap and punch of this snare, and also the retro sound.

In Ableton I use a return track to send the gated reverb signal to the main snare track.

The way I create my gated snare is to put a reverb onto the return track set to 100% wet, 5 - 6 seconds of decay with a low cut to get rid of mud. 

After the reverb I put a gate, set it to sidechain from the snare channel, and I have the floor set to -inf dB. I bring the threshold down until I start to hear the reverb in the snare and adjust it to taste, usually somewhere between -40dB to -50dB.

Depending on the tempo of the song, I set my release and hold so that the reverb tail fades out before the next snare hit.

Lately I've been using a retro sounding kick, and I really only have about 4 kicks that I use. They all have good punch to give the song a modern feel. I just go with whatever I think sounds good for the song.

Next, I like to use a lot of synths in my productions. In my older songs I used the stock Ableton Operator or some of the stock Ableton presets before getting Serum. Currently I use Serum 2 to create all my synth sounds.

Once I get the chord progression laid out, I like to sound design either a soft pad or an aggressive saw wave patch, depending on the mood of the song. Most of the time, the next step is to add a warble, or a slight wavering detune to the chords.

I will either use a plugin called Tape Cassette 2 or add lfo's to the oscillators in Serum 2.

If I use Tape Cassette 2, I will adjust the wow and flutter knobs to give it a warped tape effect.

If I use Serum, I'll add lfo's to the fine tune section in the oscillators, and I'll adjust how exaggerated the detune is based on taste. What this does is forces the oscillator to slightly detune up and down, which gives it the warble/warped effect.

Tape Cassette 2 is quick and easy, but using the lfo in Serum 2 gives much more control, although it's much more work if you're going for a very specific effect.

Depending on the song, I might add some tom drum fills. I like to add a little reverb to the toms to give it a retro sound, but this is on a song by song basis.

Next is my bass design. This is where I use a lot of modern ideas. A few of my songs have deliberate 80's sounding bass, but most of the time I use modern techniques like a Reese bass or a modern Deephouse bass. 

I want the bass to sound current with a lot of warmth and impact. The basslines themselves usually sound retro, but the actual design is based on current ideas.

My go to bass is a patch that I designed consisting of a saw wave and a squarewave with heavy unison on both oscillators. I like to put a utility on the bass track and set everything under 125-135 Hz to mono to avoid phasing.

Depending on the tempo and energy of the song, I like to adjust the filter cuttoff to give it a bounce. 

Another thing I like to do is add a clear break or bridge into my songs. Most new songs these days are shorter and they skip these, so i think that's another way that I can give the song a retro feel.

Now on to the actual mixing of the songs.

Most retro songs go for the true retro sound, keeping everything kind of washed out, like it was recorded on old equipment. I love songs like that, but I want a modern sound with my music.

I like my drums to hit, I want you to feel it when it's playing at a club or a roller rink on a Saturday night.

In the end, it all comes back to a balance between the two. In my last post, I talked about why I like the 80s sound, and this is my idea of how to bring that into what I make today. I’m not trying to exactly recreate the 80's, I just want to a mixture of the two ideas. Something that takes both ideas and gives it my spin.

Now Creating

• New song later today!
• Replacing old ai artwork with my own, real artwork
• New website ideas
• Remixing/remastering old songs

Thanks for reading.
If you have thoughts about any of this, I’d love to hear them.

This post is part of my weekly Neon Notes series. New posts go live every Wednesday.

Why I Blend Modern Production With An 80's Sound

Neon Notes — Week [11]

I like to blend modern with retro.

I make sure everything is clipping, and I also make sure that the snare is so gated that it disappears completely.

And of course, I always remember to export at the lowest bit rate to give it that vintage sound.

April Fools! Now, on to the real post.

I touched on this briefly in a previous post, but there’s something about that 80s sound that keeps me coming back.

From the warm analog synths to the slight imperfections and warble, it just feels nostalgic.

But I never wanted to make music that could be mistaken for something that actually came out of the 80s. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just wasn’t what I had in my head.

I wanted something more modern while keeping that love of the 80s.

Something that takes the feeling of the 80s and blends it with the clarity and punch of today’s pop music.

A lot of that starts with the vocals I choose. They have a definite modern sound, and I try to build a song around them with retro sounds that complement them.

Looking back, I don’t think I fully appreciated 80s music at the time. My taste has always been all over the place. But once I started making music again, it hit me all at once that those songs from the 80s were so unique and were much more than I first thought.

There are also a lot of newer artists recreating the 80s in their music, and they’re keeping it more faithful to the whole 80s aesthetic, which I love.

But the sound I’m going for sits somewhere between the 80s and now.

I want my songs to have a retro vibe, but with clarity and punch.

When I moved away from more instrumental synthwave style tracks, I immediately had an idea. I wanted less of the washed out drums and fuzz of the 80s sound, and more of the polished modern pop sound fused with the 80s.

From artists like The Weeknd or Dua Lipa, I wanted a modern, hard hitting pop sound with lots of retro elements like gated snares and synth sounds with some tape distortion.

That’s what keeps me coming back to this style.

It’s not just about recreating the sound. It’s about making it my sound

Now Creating

• More website redesigning
• Refining my sound (A definite shift in my sound)
• Lot's of new music coming soon!

Thanks for reading.
If you have thoughts about any of this, I’d love to hear them.

This post is part of my weekly Neon Notes series. New posts go live every Wednesday.