Electronic Dance Music | How to Make Electronic Dance Music
Electronic Dance Music | How to Make Electronic Dance Music | Act Natural… by Steve Powell I personally feel that you can break electronic dance music (EDM) down into three things when learning how to make dance music; structure, sound and soul. The soul you put in is a mixture of so many things like groove, expression, the spirit of a track, it’s emotion, subtle timings and a million more extras. At the end of the day however, soul is a fairly unexplainable term. It’s just there, you feel it, love it and that’s about… it....
read moreDance Music Production – Creative vs. Technical
Dance Music Production – Creative vs. Technical by Steve Powell What does it take to make a record in terms of equipment? A four track? A Mac Pro? An SSL4000E? What people use and how they use is of course crucial to the quality and type of dance music production that’s made. The equipment heavily dictates many of the attributes of the music that’s created, probably far more than many people realise. It was commented by one well known electronic music producer that “I realised that I was getting bored with a lot of the music I...
read moreSampling Frequencies & Bit Rates: 96 v 44.1Khz & 24 v 16bit
Sampling Frequencies & Bit Rates: 96 v 44.1Khz & 24 v 16bit by Stephen Powell I had a conversation recently with a guy who described himself as a “glitch-dubstep-lo-fi composer” He went on to describe a couple of his tracks which turned out to be pretty much what you might expect from such a description. When I asked him about his production he said to me: “I make all my tracks with a low sampling-rate and bit-rate for the whole project”. At this point I was a bit confused and so asked him to elaborate. Apparently all his...
read moreMixing Music with Creative FX | Mixing Desk
Mixing Music with Creative FX | Mixing Desk by Mr Steve Powell The signal chain is something always at work whether you’re in the studio, playing around with beats on the computer at home or playing a synthesiser live at a gig. If you are purely a performer, your worry with the signal chain ends when your voice seeps melodically into the microphone, or perhaps at the point your electric guitar strings leave their mark in the magnetic field of the pickup. However, if you have anything to do with the recording or production of sound, the...
read moreBuild a synthesizer | THINK, MAKE, PLAY | Max/MSP
Build a synthesizer | THINK, MAKE, PLAY | Max/MSP. article by Mr Steve Powell What’s the first thing you do when starting a new track or build a synthesizer on your computer? Fire up Logic or Max/MSP? Warm-up the TB808? Sit on top of a hill and hope musical inspiration hits you whilst pondering the meaning of existence? Any of those things would do, but if you’re like most people, you sit in front of a blank screen wondering where to start for at least ten minutes. If it’s a bad day you sit there for hours, not getting anywhere. One of...
read moreApproaches to electronic music production (EMP) in Max/MSP
New Approaches: Max/MSP Digital Synthesiser Building in electronic music production (EMP) by our course designer and instructor Steve Powell: 11/1/11 Everyone has different ways of writing music whether you sit down with your guitar, play and hum until you get something you like, or draw out some beats in Reason. However, one thing that many electronic music production (or EMP) composers often have in common is linearity in their music making. What I mean by this is that when you sit down in front of a sequencer and program in some notes,...
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