Hi,
Have been producing music, experimenting with mixing and mastering for about 3 years (30-40 hours per week), got a treated room, great monitors (Focals CM65s and Mackie HR824 MKII), UAD-2 Omni bundle, and I would say decent knowledge of my gear (I mainly work in Ableton and Cubase). The tools I am using, I consistently see being used in SA tutorials, all Future Music In The Studio videos and I tend to use them in a similar fashion. I follow proper gain structure, watched numerous SA and other training site tutorials over and over.
Even though I had 2 commercially successful tracks, trying to better myself as a producer, I to this day, cannot match the clarity and “in-your-face” styles of today’s dance music.
EX: If I EQ, pan, reverb, compress, parallel compress my drums, have a gentle limiter on them, I still no matter what…can’t achieve that clarity, space and punch of artists I am trying to match. The commercial reference tracks just always end up sounding bigger and clearer.
Same thing with pianos for example, every time I hear a nice housy piano, I could never replicate the phatness of it in my tracks, layering and EQing doesn’t help either, but then even the Main Room House tutorial mix to me sounds much “thinner” (no offense-it is a great tutorial) that those of SHM, EDX, Axwell etc. Matching the loudness and turning down the mastered commercial track, doesn’t resolve my issue either…
I understand those producers have years of experience, expensive gear, and great engineers working for them, but still so the bottom line is that we average joes cannot achieve their sound with the ears/tools we currently got?
What is the secret technique?
Some track examples:
Like the intro drums here, just pop out at you so much, they are so saturated and distored. Yet, compressing, limiting my drums, distorting my drums, it never sounds as powerful.
Here, the piano is just so phat and defined.
Is it my knowledge/skills that are keeping me from achieving the sound I am looking for or what kind of gear I might be lacking to get their results.
Many thanks!