Sonic Academy presents another massive ‘How To Make Progressive Trance’ with the mighty trance duo that is ‘Ost and Meyer’. Ever wanted to know how to make epic sound sounding tracks, well now you can in 5 hours dead from these progressive trance super stars
Nikita and Vadym, both hail from Kiev in Ukraine, but have reached a worldwide audience with their productions appearing on Anjunabeats, Black Hole, Enhanced and Always Alive labels. Every big hitter in the trance and progressive trance scenes has supported their work from Above & Beyond to Armin, from Schulz to Emery, and they have all watched ‘Ost and Meyer’ productions rock their dance floors.
Here the guys use Cubase to create a beautiful piano led slice of progressive heaven, and show how to create the storming drums, deep buzzy baselines, and mix it all down getting a super punchy, super clean mix. These guys pick up where 7 Skies left you off!
*Please note this is a Artist series course and may contain the use of some 3rd party plugins.
I really learned a lot from this course! Great job guys. I did notice that on the mastering, the sound was really breaking up when you pushed into the limiter. You didn't hear it I guess, so it must have been the signal that reached the screen capture audio. Anyone else hear it? Otherwise, I would recommend this tutorial for sure though. Cheers, Rob
Great tutorial, but why do you skip so much? In between videos Groove Drums Part 2 and Creating The Intro you guys added like 3 new tracks and made automation edits, arrangement edits etc.. It's quite confusing to try and figure this out when I'm trying to follow along(in a different DAW especially) with my own project files. It would help greatly if you could at least make mention of the things you decided to change while not recording or in between videos. Also on Breakdown Part 3 near the end you use a preset reverb channel strip setting without showing how to make it ;( just small things that make it tough to follow along. Great job otherwise
Hello Sonic Academy! :-) Q.? In tutorial 03, they start cutting out useless frequencies. How do they know which frequencies are useless? I understand cutting some low-end and trim off a bit of some high-end req..., but he starts cutting some mid portions with tight Q on a bell filter. Then with the Fabfilter plugin he keeps pressing a headphone icon to listen for specific frequencies. What frequencies is he looking for while switching between that icon to cut and why? I thought one would only want to cut off a tad bit of low-end and high-end! Any input would be greatly appreciated :-)
don't hold me to this….but i think what they are doing is cutting frequencies that don't add anything to the sound ( like you said .. useless to the mix) i done some studio time with damion houchen (genix) and he showed me to create a peak with your EQ and search through the frequencies with this peak. any really sharp horrible tones you get … pull the peak down to remove it from the eq. This will clean the sound up and overall mix. hope this is what you where looking for to help?
Much appreciation Thomas for the response! Watching some more tutorial videos from S.A. and other tutorials online... I have noticed many engineers doing a tight Q. sweep with one of the bands on the E.Q. but no one seems to say exactly why they're doing this and when to do it. I have now come to the assumption that its to remove any odd sharp frequencies just as you stated.
Would be nice to hear Chirs's view on this small techniuqe :-) I'm actually (on another website watching tutorials) on layering sounds... and this technique is especially used.
I struggle trying to figure out how one really knows or figures out if frequencies are clashing with one another. Especially with Bass N' Kicks. I wish there was a plugin that tells you where are all the conflicting frequencies happening and were to correct them... (LOL... I bet there's a plugin already out...LMAO I'm such a noob) :-D Now I do use an Analyzer to help see some frequency issues but I still can get great layers sounds or great sounding kick n' bass's.
As a rule, its always better to cut than boost freqs, you try and move things out of the way from each other, but I believe, you don't have to be to sugrical in your approach. It is OK to have some things that overlap, all adds to the vibe and you will be able to EQ eveyting into its own space. Just try as best you can to give each sound its own general own space, when mixing different parts of the track. When boosting freq, be gentle and have a wide 'q' will sound more natural, a narrow boost can sound 'resonant and unpleasant. When layering sounds, your just trying to achieve a thicker, fatter, more complex and interesting sound. Layer sounds that have slightly differing qualities, like one stereo wide pad, one with more mids in the overall sound, one detuned more that the others, one mono but pan slighty etc etc.
Thanks Chris for forwarding the EQ vids above. :-) I found this on Youtube on eliminating resonate spikes. Hope this helps futher explain the use of EQing out those spikes. http://youtu.be/QG8vOV6xL10
Question, am I the only person here that hears that the mastering is simply a piece of crap ? RMS should be as loud as possible ok but what about this distortion ???
No, many users here regularly follow our tuts in different DAWS. You can do pretty much the same things in all DAWs. Don’t forget all samples used are included in the download.
Hi! What’s the most suitable structure for a standard 7 min style Progressive Trance track? Would you first start with a 1 and a half min intro, and then a 4 X 8 bars of breakdown, then 4 X 8 bars of chorus, then 4 X 8 bars or even 5 X 8 bars of second breakdown, and then 4 X 8 bars of second chorus, and finally 4 X 8 bars of outtro? I remember watching David 7 Skies’s video of his “Are We On Air” track, and he utilized that pattern of 4 X 8 bars in each section of the track, but with a longer second breakdown I think it was. But I guess that was more of a Progressive House type of track? Anyway, I am really confused about what the magic formula is for arranging a Progressive Trance track.
While initially it can be good to copy structure from other tracks to learn the basics of arrangements. Really the most successful arrangements will have their own flow. You need to just feel where the track wants to go next. This sort of depends on the strength and weakness of each element, how much air time they should have and what parts you want to draw focus too.
Part lengths are dependent on the type of parts, are they building and keeping things interesting etc. Or just bridging parts linking 2 sections. But generally 4s 8s etc.
Also just doing what is already been done a million times isn’t that interesting. To create excitement try creating surprises and twists… Not too many like 80/20 regular vs surprise. Dropping to just a kick or a bass. Something unusual… A vocal on its own or anything really that makes the track stand out.
Transitions generally get overlooked on amateur tracks. It’s really worh spending time on those 4/5 bits that link the sections. Can make a big difference.
I personally suck at arranging… I’m too impatient I think. Ultimately good arranging takes huge amounts of work and a real ear for detail and the perseverance to keep pushing to make each element better.
Found the course so far ok but the use of ANA for every sound and also the time spent endlessly applying EQ, compression, saturation, reverb, delay, basically the same for most sounds and always fabfilter does get a bit tiring or is tedious the word. That close up window is also pretty annoying to watch as is the constant dragging stuff around the arrangement window where it gets a bit hard to follow what he’s doing. It’s an ok tutorial but it also leaves a lot to the imagination getting from start to finish
but what about this distortion ??? 