The main cause of this very common (and frustrating) problem is that you aren’t hearing the music accurately in your studio while you’re working, and so you’re making adjustments that won’t sound good on other sound systems or in other environments.

For example, you may think the bass is too loud in a track when you hear it in your studio, so you turn it down–but then when you play the track out on a proper club system or even in your car, the bass sounds weak.

To fix this problem and make your mixes sound better, you need to improve the overall listening environment in your home studio. A lot of us are just using computer + gear + monitors on a tabletop in an empty room, not exactly ideal from an acoustical standpoint:

Making improvements in your studio listening environment is probably the most important thing you can do to make your finished mixes sound better, but most electronic producers are more interested in spending money on new synths or software than room improvements.

There are a few obvious things you can do to improve the situation. You can get better speakers, and this can certainly help. It’s also a good idea to frequently compare the sound of the track you’re working on with a commercially-released track in a similar vein, as a reference for the overall balance of frequencies in the mix. You should also take your final mixes and listen to them on a variety of different sound systems (car, earbuds, club system, laptop speakers, friend’s studio, TV, etc.).

This is all good advice, but this kind of advice has always been frustrating to me as well–it all makes me wonder, what does the music really sound like?

Ultimately you need to be able to clearly hear what you’re working on to make your music sound the way you want. Accurate monitoring depends mainly on your speaker system and the space they’re set up in, and here’s the problem: decent speakers are available for a reasonable price, but what if (like most of us) you have a less-than-ideal space to set them up in? Mixing on expensive speakers in an echoey concrete basement or in a cramped space under a stairwell is not likely to produce good results, but what can you do about it short of moving to a new place?

This is where acoustic treatment and room correction come in. These are both ways to improve the overall listening environment so that the mixes you make sound consistent and translate better through different sound systems and in other spaces.

Acoustic Treatment

Acoustic treatment simply means to use bass traps, sound absorbers, sound diffusors and other such devices to absorb unwanted sounds, and this should be the first step in treating your studio. Most commonly you want to use some bass traps in the corners of the room to absorb the extra bass reflections that build up in a small room. You may also need to install some wall-mounted diffusors or absorbers as well to stop too much of the sound from your speakers reflecting back to your ears from the walls around you.

If you could really afford to set up your room properly with bass traps and diffusors, it might end up looking something like this:

Realistically though, most of us aren’t going to go that far. As a music producer you owe it to yourself to learn something about studio acoustics and acoustic treatment, and almost any small studio will benefit from a few well-placed bass traps and diffusors, but you should also realize that you won’t be able to get perfect sound in a small room that wasn’t designed with acoustics in mind. This is where room correction can help, but in most cases you will benefit most by adding some acoustic treatment and then adding room correction.

Acoustic treatment is a science in itself but this article from the Feb 2006 issue of UK audio magazine Sound on Sound is a good place to start learning. This diagram from the article shows some suggestions about where to place acoustic treatment in a typical small studio:

Sound on Sound also has a long-running regular feature “Studio SoS” where they go on location to a reader’s studio and do a proper acoustic treatment, detailing some of the unique problems they encountered along the way and the solutions they found, for example…

Room Correction

Room correction takes an opposite approach to acoustic treatment, and in fact the two approaches are complementary and can (should) be used together. Instead of trying to absorb unwanted frequencies by adding foam traps, absorber panels, etc., with a room correction system you analyze the frequency response in your room using a microphone and test tones, and then the system introduces some kind of filter to give you a flatter, “truer” frequency response. By using room correction while working on your tracks, you should be able to come up with final mixes that will sound more consistent on different sound systems.

Although there are differences between manufacturers, they generally follow the same process:

1. Measure the frequency response of the room over a spread of different locations using a reference microphone and audio test tones.

2. Analyze the frequency response of the room and create a correction filter to compensate and bring the final output closer to a flat response.

3. Apply the correction filter to the playback signal while mixing.

You can see that in step one, you will need to make audio measurements at a number of different locations. This is because the frequency response you hear in any room is dramatically affected simply by moving a small distance in any direction. (You probably already know that the bass sounds a lot louder in some parts of your room than others, this is what we’re talking about here.)

For a home/project studio, generally you want to optimize the sound at the sweet spot between the speakers where you sit while you mix, and you’ll do your measurements around this spot in some kind of pattern. The manual for IK Multimedia’s ARC software includes a diagram showing where you should make your measurements. The circled number 1 indicates your ideal listening position, you measure this first and then proceed in a symmetrical pattern around it:

What You Can Correct…And What You Can’t

The term “room correction” sounds kind of magical to me, like it will correct all your audio problems and make everything right! In reality though, there are several different types of acoustical issues going on in a typical project studio, and room correction can only fix some of them.

Generally speaking, room correction products work by fixing frequency problems in the room. If you are hearing too much bass at 150Hz in your studio, a room correction system may subtract some at that frequency to balance out.

However, it is also true that many of the acoustical issues in small studio rooms are not frequency problems but what are called time domain issues, issues with when different parts of the sound reach the ear, and these cannot be fixed except through studio design and acoustic treatment; examples here include early reflections and reverberation. For example, if your studio is set up in an echoey concrete basement, no amount of room correction is going to make it sound good, you need to put in carpeting and install some soundproofing/damping first!

Having said that though, room correction can help a lot in the typical project studio. Most significantly, a properly setup room correction system can give you a better idea of the true bass level in a track. This always seems to be one of the hardest things to get right in dance music, because it is difficult to hear the long low frequency bass waves accurately in a small studio room. This is really a frustrating problem with bass-heavy styles like drum’n'bass and dubstep, where you generally want the bass to be as powerful as it can be but without drowning out everything else; it is hard to find this balance when you can’t hear the music clearly in your studio and room correction can help a lot with this.

Acoustic Treatment + Room Correction = Sonic Bliss?

While there does seem to be some controversy among audiophiles about whether acoustic treatment or room correction is a better way to go, it seems the consensus is that the best approach is to do some basic acoustic treatment of your room first, and then use room correction to further fine-tune what you’re hearing. So assuming that you’ve already installed some bass traps and diffusors as needed, let’s look at the main room correction systems out there and how they stack up…

Which One Should I Get?

There are room correction systems on the market from a number of different manufacturers, but some of these are intended for audiophile hi-fi music playback systems or home theater setups and wouldn’t easily fit into a typical project studio. At the moment there are basically only two companies making room correction solutions for small studios: IK Multimedia and JBL. IK’s product, ARC, is software-only while JBL’s MSC1 is a hardware piece, and each have their pros and cons. These two are comparatively priced as well (both were around $300 on Sweetwater.com and other sites I checked when I was working on this post), so if you are interested in adding room correction to your studio I recommend checking out both of them and decide which would fit better in your studio.

Software Room Correction: IK Multimedia’s ARC 2.0

IK Multimedia’s ARC software, first released in 2008 and updated with a 2.0 version in 2012, allows you to apply room correction in your studio with just a software plug-in, without requiring any hardware. ARC=Automatic Room Correction, get it? This is the system I’m currently using in my studio, let’s look at how to set it up.

To use ARC, you first run a setup program and run through a series of audio measurements as the software plays a series of test tones through your monitors.

Then, when you’re working on a music project in your DAW, you just run the ARC VST plug-in on your master output as the very last effect in the chain. When you go to render your final mix, you turn the ARC plug-in off so that the room correction filter does not affect the sound, resulting in a mix that should translate well anywhere.

Opening the ARC plug-in, the interface looks like this:

On the left under Measurement is a drop-down where I can pick various measurement profiles, of different rooms measured at different times and so on.

On the right under Target Curve, you can see that I’ve selected Flat. Normally you want to keep it on this setting, and ARC will do its best to play you your “true” mix, uncolored by the response of the room you’re sitting in. However there are other choices here that will simulate the sound of a car stereo, laptop speakers and other playback systems, letting you hear what your mix will sound like on different types of speakers without even leaving your room…

In the graphs below the drop-down menus, the brown BEFORE line represents the measured frequency response in my studio from when I did the audio test. The grey AFTER line represents the frequency response I should be hearing after the correction has been applied, and in the background the green TARGET line represents the perfectly flat frequency response of a completely transparent listening environment.

Because of the imperfections in my room and the limitations of what room correction software can do, the final corrected frequency curve will never be perfectly flat, but this grey curve represents the best it can do in my room.

There are both advantages and disadvantages of using a software solution for room correction. On the plus side, you can take advantage of the latest updates to the technology without having to buy a new hardware piece, and in fact most reviewers found that last year’s ARC 2.0 release was a substantial step up in quality from the first generation of the product.

The downside to a software-only solution lies in the fact that to really take advantage of a room correction system you should be running it all the time, whether you’re doing sound design, arranging, mixing or just listening to some of the latest tracks you bought. To do this with ARC, you need to have some other piece of software such as Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack Pro that allows you to run audio plug-ins on your main system audio output, and you need to remember to run this whenever you are listening to music in your studio. This is a minor inconvenience, but no big deal really; this is the way I do it and it’s never caused me any other issues.

Hardware Room Correction: JBL’s MSC1

JBL’s MSC1 is a desktop hardware unit that you run your final audio output through before it reaches your speakers, also providing you with multiple stereo ins and outs so you can use it with several different audio sources and/or speaker sets without reconnecting anything:

The accompanying software that comes with the MSC1 walks you through the setup process using the included reference microphone (following a similar procedure as ARC), and then you can use the MSC1 to apply a corrective filter to your audio at the press of a button:

The MSC1 was released in 2009, but JBL has also been incorporating their RMC (Room Mode Correction) technology into some of their studio monitors for awhile. You can get the same functionality as the MSC1 built into the company’s LSR4326P or LSR4328P monitors for example, both of which are also highly recommended, but the MSC1 lets you use JBL’s room correction with the speakers you already have.

Honorable Mention: The KRK Ergo

KRK has had a solid entrant in the room correction field for some years with their Ergo device, but it seems to have reached the end of its lifecycle now and been discontinued fairly recently. The Ergo is a small hardware box comparable in size to the MSC1, but it is able to function as a Firewire audio interface for your computer as well as a standalone room correction device:

I know a number of satisfied users of the Ergo system and I’ve heard good things about it, but at this point KRK isn’t selling it any more and it’s not really the sort of thing you want to buy secondhand. It needs to be able to connect to your computer so you can set it up and get it working, and without updated drivers and software from the manufacturer this may not work right, at least not for much longer.

Related Dubspot Courses:

Transform rough ideas and basic compositions into dance floor bangers and sonically pleasing commercial-quality masters. Learn well-kept industry secrets of EQ, compression, panning, level balancing, reverb and special effects from platinum mix/mastering engineer, Daniel Wyatt, senior Dubspot instructor and course designer.

This program gives you everything you need to refine your tracks into a clear commercial-quality release, including special mixing and mastering techniques for dubstep, techno, house, trance, downtempo, hip hop, and the gamut of electronic music.

Science behind the art.

Investigate how to use key concepts and tools in your tracks, while paying special attention to techniques of metering and spectral analysis in order to apply science alongside the art.

Mixing & Mastering

What’s Included:

Mixing & Mastering Level 1: Mix
Mixing & Mastering Level 2: Modify
Mixing & Mastering Level 3: Master

“The videos were helpful and the chats were great. I expected a lot out of this course and I got it!” – Jon Yu, California

Start dates and information about payment plans can be found here.
Or if you have questions, please call 877.DUBSPOT or send us a message.

http://blog.dubspot.com/files/2013/03/Room_Correction_6.jpg

Today’s electronic music scene revolves continuously on hype, and there are few labels and artists that can rely almost entirely on their musical content to do the talking. Mala’s Deep Medi label and V.I.V.E.K are noted exceptions to this rule.

Influenced by the golden years of drum and bass and a steady diet of dub and roots music, V.I.V.E.K has been honing his musical construction skills since 2004. Progressing naturally from DJing to production, and originally producing fast-paced beats around 170bpm, 140bpm was the speed that worked for V.I.V.E.K to shape his unique subterranean groove.

V.I.V.E.K – “Motherland” (Deep Medi Musik, 2009)

With one 12″ release under his belt for On The Edge, fellow soundscaper Silkie passed a CD of his productions to DMZ / Deep Medi visionary Mala. The launching pad into musical infamy was then set with his first 12″ for the innovative camp (“Kulture” / “Meditation Rock”) in 2009. The momentum this release initiated was to spark a flurry of concentrated creative power, and many sought after dubplates from V.I.V.E.K. The Feel It EP was the culmination of this period of focus. This 4-track EP and its attached Mix Session CD captured his vision succinctly and solidified V.I.V.E.K’s reputation as one of the most talented artists working in the 140 framework today.

Fervent support for V.I.V.E.K music has always come from the DJs that fully understand the power that 140 BPM holds when the construction is pure. Mala, Youngsta, N Type, Mary Anne Hobbs, Skream, Distance, Giles Peterson, Mistajam, Nihal (BBC Radio 1), & Anti Social have all been compasses that chart the sonic progress of the V.I.V.E.K sound.

As a Deep Medi artist, V.I.V.E.K himself has become a regular DJ on the DMZ / Deep Medi nights, recently playing sets that have become highlights for many at the DMZ 6th birthday celebrations in London and Amsterdam. Chest rattling, consciousness moving exclusives are the norm here, and catching one of these performances is a potent reminder of why we all fell in love so deeply with the dubstep sound.

2011 sees the internet on fire again with clips and YouTube videos of the latest batch of V.I.V.E.K dubplates, Deep Medi is set to drop the Eyes Down EP in May 2011, and it’s comforting to know that this is only the beginning of what promises to be the year V.I.V.E.K comes out from the shadows to the forefront of bass music with more stellar releases and genuinely important DJ sets.

V.I.V.E.K – “Eyes Down” (Deep Medi Musik, 2011)

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A new pair of speakers can be a huge inspiration to your music making experience. Who doesn’t like better sound? But it’s important to realize that where you place those nice new speakers can have a massive impact on how they will sound and also how your productions will sound. As I explained in the previous article on studio monitors, these speakers aim to achieve “zero coloration,” which is to say that all frequencies in the audio spectrum are presented equally with a “flat” response. Variables such as the surface they sit on, how they are angled, and where you sit in relation to the speakers can change how your ears will receive this spectrum of sound.

Speaker Size

One of the most important variables to consider when purchasing new monitor speakers is the size of the room that you will put them in. While most of us would love a nice 10″ or 8″ driver, this might be too much bass for a small studio, which will in turn create a false representation of your signal. Dubspot’s Evan Sutton explains,”Using a smaller speaker will actually make the bass response better in a small room. These days, we’re really preoccupied with bass, but the fact is that too much low end in a small room will make the bass sound worse, or emptier than it would be.”

Speaker Placement

Speaker Isolation Pads

Speaker isolation pads are small wedges of foam that sit between your speakers and the surface that holds them. If your speakers sit directly on a desk or hard surface, they can create false sounds by way of vibration that flows through that surface. Isolation pads such as the Editors Keys Monitor Guards (above) are created from dense foam that isolates your studio monitor speakers and allows a true sound to be projected without your desk or stands resonating.

Bass Traps / Absorption

Once again, the room that you are working in has a lot to do with the sound that will be reproduced on your speakers. The size and shape of the room as well as the surface of the walls can completely change the sound. An empty room will allow sound waves to bounce off the walls in every direction creating a very problematic situation for producers. For this reason many studios have bass traps or absorption panels to keep the sounds in place. Dubspot’s Evan Sutton explains further:

Absorption is also important in rooms with parallel walls. When a wave leaves the speaker, hits the back wall, and reflects back to the listening position, the brain can’t tell the difference between the original wave and the reflection. This causes smearing of the stereo field and increases listening fatigue. Trapping and absorption especially on the back wall and in corners behind the listening position are infinitely helpful.

Michael Walsh is a producer of audio/visual art and a journalist living in Southern California. Read more of his work at soundsdefygravity.com

Start dates and information about payment plans can be found here.

Or if you have questions, please call 877.DUBSPOT or send us a message.

Unravel electronic music’s origins, build your chops, learn the language and theory, and make and play music the way you want. Students will develop a deeper understanding of the roots and lineage of a variety of electronic and dance music, strengthen their keyboard skills, and learn valuable music theory skills, deepening their creative practice and facilitating effective collaborations with musical partners.

What’s Included:

• Music Foundations Level 1: Electronic Music Appreciation
• Music Foundations Level 2: Keys & Melodic Theory
• Music Foundations Level 3: Pads & Rhythmic Theory

This course exceeded my expectations. I went through everything I needed to have a solid knowledge of basic music theory.
- Jonathan Crespo, Miami

EMF (Music Foundations) has been an amazing experience! I didn’t realize I was going to learn so much about electronic music history, something my generation missed.
- Yianno Koumi, United Kingdom

http://blog.dubspot.com/files/2012/04/Monitorthumb31.jpg

Studio Monitors are one of the most important investments you can make for your studio. I touched on the importance of monitor speakers a few months back in an article that Dubspot published on building a home studio. In that article, and again here, I want to emphasize that the speakers you are using to make music have a massive impact on your perception of recording.
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Monitor speakers play a specific role in the recording process. These speakers aim to achieve “zero coloration,” which is to say that all frequencies in the audio spectrum are presented equally with a “flat” response. As I’ve mentioned previously, Hi-Fi speakers (ie: Bose, Polk, Klipsch) can sometimes have a “sweet” sound compared to studio monitors. This is because Hi-Fi speakers are made with enjoyment in mind. They are manufactured with certain frequencies boosted or subtracted from the output to sound pleasing to our ears. On the other hand, monitor speakers may have a tendency to amplify parts of a mix that sound bad. This is their job. As a producer or engineer it’s your job to make the mix sound the best you possibly can on flat speakers to ensure that the mix will sound good on ALL speakers.

Most likely a new pair of studio monitors will delight your ears because they are often precision built with the perfect amount of amplification built-in to make them pump. Generally speaking, the more you spend, the better your sound. But there are a multitude of options on the market currently and economically-priced studio monitors can be a perfect upgrade to your studio if you’re looking for better sound. While we generally don’t review specific products on our blog, but we thought it would be a great idea to poll our instructors and staff to find out what everyone is currently using in their own studio.
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Dubspot Instructors on Studio Monitors:

I use Mackie HR824’s. They’re powered, can reproduce sub without a subwoofer and I really enjoy working on them. I use them for production and DJing if I happen to be DJing at home, which is fairly rare unless I’m recording a mix. - Matt Shadetek

I use Mackie HR824’s for production. I’m used to them and I like the sound. I also use a pair of Avantone Mixcubes for reference in mixing. The Mackie’s sound really good but you need to hear how the mix sounds on crappy speakers to know how your song may sound on other people’s systems. These are pretty mid-ranged focused, so if you can get your mix to sound decent on these and the Mackies, you’ll have a more solid mix that translates better between systems. I also use Sennheiser headphones for detail and a pair of crappy Altec-Lansing computer monitors for checking mixes on. KRK’s are pretty decent and well priced for studio monitors.  They seem to be pretty popular these days. - Michele Darling

I find the JBL LSR series to be  the best all around monitors on the market today. Mixes and masters translate extremely well in the real world. - Daniel Wyatt

I’m using M-Audio EX66s and a sub courtesy of my years working there, but the word on the street is Focal monitors are the jam, a bunch of my respected sonic expert friends have them and they will soon be in my studio as well. The JBL LSR4328Ps are fantastic too. - Steve Nalepa

This is a no-brainer. If you’re on budget and like bass (and who doesn’t) Yamaha HS80M rule, and you can even add a great matched subwoofer. $700 for a pair and 400 for the sub. You might even get the combo for less. I also recommend the smaller HS50M($400 for a pair) as near fields, they look kind of reminiscent of the legendary NS10M that used to be a  standard in all major control rooms. These here are bit less boxy and throw some more bass, but nothing like the 80M, that really have a lovely low end (even without the sub) and are perfect for EDM/bass music. You can also use the 50M with the same sub if desk space is an issue.  We use all of those speakers at Dubspot and people love them. - Heinrich Zwahlen

I have Yamaha NS-10s (for 95% of time) and I check the bass on Mackie HR824’s. I also use a couple crappy radios for checking balance. - Bill Lee

Currently, I’m using Yamaha HS80Ms with the matched HS10W subwoofer. It’s great sound for accurate mixing and plenty of bass response to punish annoying neighbors. - DJ Kiva

I use the KRK RP8G2 Rockit Studio Monitors. I get a clean sound when I use them in my studio. They are onvenient when it comes to connecting them, and they have XLRs, 1/4″ and RCA connections. It has a HF adjust. I only wish  it  had a LF level but over all good investment. - Jamie Glover

I use the KRK Rokit 5 Generation 2 monitors for my home studio.  Great price, easily available at many different retailers (I think even best buy is carrying them now), and the sound is accurate and solid for a small room. - Paul Laski

I use KRK Rokit 6 for studio and monitoring. I’ve been using them for many years. No complaints on sound, and they are very affordable. – DJ ObAH
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Michael Walsh is a producer of audio/visual art and a journalist living in Southern California. Read more of his work at soundsdefygravity.com

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Start dates and information about payment plans can be found here.

Or if you have questions, please call 877.DUBSPOT or send us a message.

Unravel electronic music’s origins, build your chops, learn the language and theory, and make and play music the way you want. Students will develop a deeper understanding of the roots and lineage of a variety of electronic and dance music, strengthen their keyboard skills, and learn valuable music theory skills, deepening their creative practice and facilitating effective collaborations with musical partners.

What’s Included:

• Music Foundations Level 1: Electronic Music Appreciation
• Music Foundations Level 2: Keys & Melodic Theory
• Music Foundations Level 3: Pads & Rhythmic Theory

This course exceeded my expectations. I went through everything I needed to have a solid knowledge of basic music theory.
- Jonathan Crespo, Miami

EMF (Music Foundations) has been an amazing experience! I didn’t realize I was going to learn so much about electronic music history, something my generation missed.
- Yianno Koumi, United Kingdom

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Michael Walsh’s home studio

One question we often get asked is, “How much do I need to spend to build a decent home studio?” This is a tricky question because for the audio enthusiasts amongst us, there is never enough sound or enough gear. Creating a home studio can be a wallet-draining hobby. But it can also be a streamlined affair if you know exactly what you want to get done.  All you really need is a MIDI controller of some sort (to play your keys and your beats) and a decent pair of headphones or speakers. If you want to record live sounds such as vocals or guitar, you’ll also need an audio interface and a microphone to get those sounds into the computer.

Speakers vs Studio Monitors

Do you need high-end studio speakers? Not necessarily. I remember visiting a producer friend once and noticed that he was mixing tracks (that were getting published on the regular) with a pair of $20 computer speakers. He could do this because he knew from experience how to EQ his sounds and master his track to rumble a club sound system, so he didn’t need to hear the bass on his home system to know what was happening to the sound. For those of us who don’t have that skill (yet), it is probably wise to invest in a set of speakers that will give you a good idea of what you are creating. This is where the term “studio monitor” comes into our conversation. Studio Monitors are speakers that are made to give an accurate, transparent representation of the sound you are making. Where a pair of home theater or bookshelf speakers may “color” the sound to make it sound more appealing to the ear, studio monitors are made to sound accurate and therefore very flat. At first they may not sound as exciting as your other speakers. This is because you are hearing an honest representation of the music.

Audio Interface

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One crucial and often overlooked part of the home studio is an audio interface that will provide connections to route sound in and out of your computer. Your computer may have something like this (if you use Apple they provide decent sound output with the included 1/8th inch jack). But you may lack some connections such as input for a microphone or instrument. This is where you’ll want to figure out exactly what plugs into what in your studio, and purchase an audio interface to fit your needs. For a bit more information on audio interfaces, check out our Audio Interface Breakdown.

MIDI Control

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MIDI controllers or keyboards come in a variety of shapes, sizes and prices these days. If you’re a pro keyboard or piano player you may want to invest in something nice but for most of us a cheap, 25-key keyboard works perfectly well for almost everything. Some controllers also come with pads, sliders, or knobs on them. This can be handy when you want to use the controller to turn the virtual knobs in your software (for instance in Reason or Ableton this sort of mapping is very fast). When considering a MIDI controller look first at the comfort factor – do the keys feel good to you? Do you need 88 keys or will 25 keys work as well for you? Then look at the size factor – will it fit on your desk? Avoid MIDI controllers that are too complicated. A simple controller is easiest to learn and work with.
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The $500 Studio - In this setup we have spent the bulk of our $500 budget on the speakers / studio monitors from Mackie and M-Audio. Both companies are making very nice self-powered studio monitors that rate well among producers. The Behringer audio interface is inexpensive but effective for a small home studio. The M-Audio and Akai keyboards are both highly rated and have been used on countless recordings. This package will give a clean sound with a simple yet effective setup.

- Behringer UCA202 Audio Interface – $50
- M-Audio Oxygen 25 or Akai MPK Mini MIDI controller -$100
- M-Audio BX5 or Mackie MR5 Studio Monitor Speakers  – $300

The $1000 Studio – In this setup we again spend the bulk of our budget on sound – upgrading the speakers to an 8 inch driver that will deliver much more substantial (and clean) low-end sound. We’ve also upgraded the audio interface in this package with the highly rated Apogee One. The One contains a very nice microphone in the package so you can start recording vocals or instruments right out of the box. Apogee is also known for their DAC (Digital to Analog Converters) that will breathe beautiful life into your speakers. Lastly, we’ve chosen a more elaborate MIDI controller, the MPK 25, which adds pad functionality to our setup.

- Apogee One Audio Interface – $250
- Akai MPK 25 MIDI Controller – $250
- M- Audio BX8 or Mackie MR8 Studio Monitor Speakers – $500

In Conclusion, If you’re new to making music there’s one great benefit for you today: it’s affordable! With the aid of a computer and some software you can get well on your way to creating professional sounding music for a fraction of what it cost to do 10 years ago. It’s easy to look at this list of gear and feel the need to get more things, more speakers, more components to create sound. But remember that we are at a unique place in history when this has all (for the first time) become affordable. Until now people were making music with much less. You don’t need much to make great sounding music.. you just need to understand your instrument.

Michael Walsh is a producer of audio/visual art and a journalist living in Southern California. Read more of his work at soundsdefygravity.com

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Start dates and information about payment plans can be found here.

Or if you have questions, please call 877.DUBSPOT or send us a message.

Unravel electronic music’s origins, build your chops, learn the language and theory, and make and play music the way you want. Students will develop a deeper understanding of the roots and lineage of a variety of electronic and dance music, strengthen their keyboard skills, and learn valuable music theory skills, deepening their creative practice and facilitating effective collaborations with musical partners.

What’s Included:

• Music Foundations Level 1: Electronic Music Appreciation
• Music Foundations Level 2: Keys & Melodic Theory
• Music Foundations Level 3: Pads & Rhythmic Theory

This course exceeded my expectations. I went through everything I needed to have a solid knowledge of basic music theory.
- Jonathan Crespo, Miami

EMF (Music Foundations) has been an amazing experience! I didn’t realize I was going to learn so much about electronic music history, something my generation missed.
- Yianno Koumi, United Kingdom

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Professor Steve Nalepa has worked with a diverse and talented group of musicians, each with their own unique sound and approach to composing and performing. He’s worked with artists such as Photek, Nosaj Thing, The Glitch Mob, the L.A. Philharmonic and Adam Freeland to help them actualize ideas in Ableton Live. We are proud to have Professor Nalepa on staff as Curriculum Designer of our Ableton Live program at Dubspot. Below we revisit a series of video tutorials he created to provide tips and tricks to our readers and students. In parts one through six of this series you can learn more about Slice To Midi, setting up return bus effects, Beat Repeat, Locator Points and much more. Read on to expand your knowledge of Ableton Live’s capabilities and check the links below to learn more about Dubspot’s in-depth programs in Ableton Live.

“So far the experience through Dubspot is incredible I can’t wait to go through the next levels it’s just getting better each week and I can not wait to start putting my EP together in addition to creating a successful track!” – Dubspot Online Student

In the first installment of Live Production Tips with Professor Nalepa, Professor Nalepa shows you how to improve the quality of your production and avoid clutter from the get go. He demonstrates a simple technique that can take a bland pad sound and transform it into a more interesting and lush mixture of moving sounds. By adding audio effects such as Reverb and Auto Pan to a series of Return tracks, the pad will begin to come to life and demand a little attention.

In the second installment of Live Production Tips with Professor Nalepa, Professor Nalepa investigates the Slice to MIDI function in Ableton Live in a two-part video tutorial. Slice to MIDI is ideal for isolating individual sounds out of a drum loop, and it is also a powerful tool for live performance, remixes, and experimenting in the studio. Nalepa shows you how to utilize the various features of the Slice to MIDI option, as he chops up a couple of drum loops (a basic house loop and the jungle/drum n bass staple, the “Amen break”) using Transient Markers in Part 1. In part 2, Nalepa shares some cool tips and tricks for working with full tracks, and shows you how Slice to MIDI allows you to play the individual parts and elements, and how you can recompose or program your own beat.

In the third edition of Ableton Live Production Tips with Professor Nalepa, Professor Nalepa shares mixing techniques using one of his current works in progress as the example. Ableton’s built-in Utility plug-in has a width setting that adjusts how wide that track stretches across the panoramic spectrum. Setting different width values for different tracks helps give differentiation and separation to the individual elements of your song, and it helps each part cut through so it can be heard clearly in the mix.

In this week’s ,  Nalepa shares some tips on using the built-in Beat Repeat effect. Beat Repeat is great in the studio for creating interesting drum fills. Using a simple drum loop, Nalepa demonstrates how Beat Repeat works, re-sampling the effected audio with all of its random variations, then mining those parts to give new life to your drum arrangements. He also shares a live performance technique using MIDI Mapping and the Beat Repeat’s Pitch Decay control.

Inspired by a recent studio session with the legendary producer Photek, Dubspot Instructor and electronic music produce Nalepa shares some techniques for preparing your live set for DJing, live performance and DJ mixes in this week’s Ableton Live tutorial. In particular, using remixes of his own tracks by Salva and St Andrew, he shares some useful advice on warping your tracks properly, a few tricks for setting up your live performance document, and some ideas to incorporate when making a DJ mix.

In his week 6 Ableton Live tutorial tutorial, Nalepa gets inspired by a wedding present from Aunt Jade, a set of rainbow butterfly windchimes. Using the Repitch Warp Mode, he explores how you can take a recording and play it back at 1/2, 1/4, and 1/8 speed to get interesting variations of the original recording.  He also explains how you can set Locator Points in the Arrangement View and then map them to keys on the typing keyboard or keys/pads on a MIDI controller, giving you the ability to trigger video in live. By setting the video window full screen out on a second monitor, this allows you to use Ableton for dynamic live audiovisual performances.

Steve Nalepa is an LA-based producer, professor, Dubspot Instructor and Ableton Live expert. He’s produced tracks and collaborated with everyone from legends like Bill Laswell and Pharoah Sanders to rising electronic music artists Nosaj Thing and The Glitch Mob.

Ableton Live Producer Certificate Program

See dates and register for NYC and online classes!

The flagship of our music training, with every Ableton Live course offered at the school. After completing this program, you will leave with 4 completed tracks (EP), a remix entered in an active contest, a scored commercial to widen your scope, and the Dubspot Producer’s Certificate in Ableton Live.

What’s Included:

• Ableton Live Level 1: Shake Hands with Live
• Ableton Live Level 2: Completing Your First Track
• Ableton Live Level 3: Production Essentials
• Ableton Live Level 4: Sound Design & Instrumentation
• Ableton Live Level 5: Advanced Composition & Production
• Ableton Live Level 6: Taking Your EP Global

This program is about learning Ableton Live by going through the entire process of being an artist, by developing your own sound through a series of sketches and experimentation. You will also learn the ins and outs of this powerful software through a series of exercises designed to help you master the steps involved in producing your own music. After a level of getting familiar with the tools that Ableton has to offer, you will then develop your sonic ideas into full length songs – one per level. You will be exposed to a variety of approaches to arrangement and composition, storytelling techniques, ways of creating tension and drama in your music. At the end of the day, it is the sum total of your choices as an artist that define your sound, and levels 2 – 6 will give you the experience of actually completing tracks to add to your portfolio.

NYC

• Ableton Live Core & Advanced: 6 levels
• Dubspot’s complete Ableton course load
• 132 hours of hands-on instruction
• Additional instructor-supervised lab hours

ONLINE

• Ableton Live Core & Advanced: 6 levels
• Dubspot’s complete Ableton course load
• 60-80 hours of high quality videos
• 3 hours of instructor-led chat sessions per week
• Direct video & audio feedback from instructors

For more start dates and information about payment plans, please call 212.242.2100 or 1.877.DUBSPOT (1.877.382.7768) or send us a message.

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To address this issue we have compiled five rules you can use to ensure you’re playing the game well enough to find some success. These tips are a good list to turn to when you need a kick in the butt to get started and feel serious about succeeding in music production.

1. Show up!
Mark Twain was once asked if he had to wait for inspiration to come before writing. “Yes, I do,” he replied, “but inspiration always comes at 9am sharp, every weekday!”

To succeed, you have to turn up. When you’re a solo producer, maybe doing it part time, it’s doubly important, because nobody else is making you do it and you’re busy anyway. But if you don’t put the hours in, the rest of it comes to nothing. Professionals do; wannabes just think about it.

The best way is simply to plan a certain number of hour for production into your days, weeks and months, and stick to it. Jobs have set hours, and this is a job. If you’re physically there, ready to start, you’ve already won half the battle.

2. Fight resistance
Novelist Steven Pressfield wrote a seminal book on creativity called The War of Art. In it, he identified the devil on your shoulder that stops you producing creative works, and gave it a name: Resistance.

Resistance is what makes you sort through your sample library recategorizing all of your loops and hits, instead of working on your tune. Resistance is what makes your hand move towards the Facebook bookmark to check your fan page, instead of working on your tune. Resistance is what makes you suddenly decide to rearrange your studio to put the speakers in a different place, instead of working on your tune…

In short, resistance is what makes you do something else that feels important but that actually isn’t, at the expense of doing what you’re really meant to be doing – creating. It’s particularly insidious because you feel like you’re working, but in fact you’re actively looking for anything but your important creative work to do!

A simple way to trap this creeping disease is to log exactly what you do for a few production sessions, and see how much time you actually spent producing. Once you’ve identified the apparently urgent but really unimportant stuff, the “instant gratification” tasks that you’ve been doing instead of the real, painful, worthwhile job of creating, you can start doing something about changing your habits – the kind of things outlined in our 10 Tips to Fight Writer’s Block & Increase Studio Productivity post a few months back.

3. Finish what you start, then start again
How many times have you had somebody tell you excitedly about an amazing new tune they’ve made, right up until the point that you ask to hear it, at which point they shuffle uncomfortably, muttering something like “it’s not quite finished yet…” or “I need to master it first…”. How many wannabe producers do you know who never seem to finish anything at all?

Signed bands traditionally had little choice but to finish their records on time, with obligation-ridden advances, studio time booked, and record company execs breathing down their necks. Even then, there are legendary stories of albums taking years to finish (or never getting finished at all). If “real” bands sometimes never finish their work, what chance do effectively self-employed producers have?

You have every chance, as long as you set yourself deadlines and stick to them – come what may. Tasks tend to expand to fit the available time. Deadlines are your friend. Professionals produce, release, and move on. Wannabes procrastinate and spend more time coming up with excuses than delivering and getting going on the next project.

4. Accept failure as a necessary part of success
Let me make a few assumptions about you: Music is your life. Tunes express things for you that words can’t. You can say more about yourself in a musical production than you can find words to express. Bands, musicians and producers are your heroes.

So how can you possibly live up to the expectations these feelings impose on you? How can you possibly do something of worth in the arena you so admire? How will you deal with releasing something that doesn’t meet your own impossibly high expectations?

The answer is to accept that to get that success, you have to first miss the mark. You have to produce tracks that nobody ends up liking. Hell, you have to produce tracks that even you end up not liking!

Every time you miss the mark, treat it as training – or if you like, as “nudging your guided missile closer to its target”. We always learn more from our failures than our successes. Without the little “nudges” that each almost-success gives us, we simply can’t hit our final, successful goal.

With modern music distribution, there’s a real hidden bonus here. As you release track after track, piling them up on YouTube and cross-promoting them on Facebook and so on, you’re actually building up a back catalogue. And believe me, as soon as you have one success, a lot of people will want to know about that back catalogue. So treat your early efforts as banking stuff up for future success if you like.

5. Accept that it’s natural to lack confidence
We are each programmed to think than anyone, everyone, can do stuff better than us. That simply because we’re involved, anything we do is bound to fail.

Writers feel it when they face a blank page, artists with a blank canvas. DJs feel it as they warm up a night, scared out of their wits. Producers feel it in Ableton Live with a new, empty project and no ideas. All feel like they’re just not up to the task.

Let me give you an example. I have had a long, fulfilling career in dance music. But, even when I was five full years into DJing as a professional, I remember realising that I’d never lost the feeling that I wasn’t really a DJ, than I was a fraud, and that if anyone actually came up to me while I was playing – I mean, just one person out of a packed, happy dancefloor of hundreds – and told me so, I would crumple and never play again. Such was my lack of confidence. It’s better now, but it’s still there. And I’m very normal (I think!).

Here’s another thing: While it’s unlikely anyone will ever tell you you’re a fraud or no good at this, also nobody will ever come up and give you permission to be a producer. No-one will say “you’re good enough, welcome to the club”. You have to tell yourself it’s OK, and you have to do it daily.

How many producers do you hear saying they can’t stand to listen to their own work, or read their own reviews? Do you ever wonder why that is? It’s because they have that natural low confidence in their own abilities. Success and money don’t cure it, either. You just have to accept it’s part of the creative mind.

Finally…
A wonderful thing happens when you turn up, blindly believe in yourself and push on. They say “God loves a trier”, and it’s true – when you get going, the stars seem to move in your favor, synergies happen, your mind – having beaten resistance – slips into creative mode, stuff you can’t explain begins to go your way, and out of nothing – painfully, slowly and precariously – good stuff evolves. Good luck!

Phil Morse is a DJ and journalist originally from Manchester, England. He currently lives in Spain, from where he publishes Digital DJ Tips: How to DJ properly with portable digital DJ gear

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Laura Escudé’s Pororoca Pt 1: Production – Studio Equipment

In this video Ableton Certified Trainer and Dubspot Instructor Laura Escudé takes us behind the scenes to look through some of the equipment in her studio which she used to make her new album Pororoca. The equipment she shows includes the Akai APC40, Novation Launchpad, her violins both acoustic and electric and other various controllers and instruments. This is part one in a five part series.

Laura Escudé’s Pororoca Pt 2: Ableton Tutorial: Instruments

In this video Ableton Certified Trainer and Dubspot Instructor Laura Escudé takes us behind the scenes to look through some of the production techniques used in producing her new album Pororoca. In this video she shows us some of the instruments she’s using in Ableton Live including plugins from Rob Papen and Native Instruments. This is part two in a five part series.

Laura Escudé’s Pororoca Pt. 3: Ableton Tutorial : Composing in Ableton

In this video Ableton Certified Trainer and Dubspot Instructor Laura Escudé takes us behind the scenes to look through some of the production techniques used in producing her new album Pororoca. In this video she shows us some of her creative process composing in Ableton Live including creating rhythms in non-traditional time signatures like 7/4 and jamming out arrangements using Live’s unique work-flow. This is part three in a five part series.

Laura Escudé’s Pororoca Pt. 4: Logic Pro Tutorial: Finishing in Logic

In this video Ableton Certified Trainer and Dubspot Instructor Laura Escudé takes us behind the scenes to look through some of the production techniques used in producing her new album Pororoca. In this video she shows us some of her creative process working in Apple Logic Pro in order to add and manipulate vocals using Melodyne, mixing down and more. This is part four in a five part series.

Laura Escudé’s Pororoca Pt. 5: Pororoca Music Video

In this fifth part of the series we hear the final version of the title track Pororoca from Ableton Certified Trainer and Dubspot Instructor Laura Escudé’s new album. The title Pororoca is a reference to the longest wave in the world, a tidal bore that flows into the mouth of the Amazon with waves up to 4 meters high that travel 13 kilometers inland. Check out the beautiful 3D animated video created by Scott Pagano.

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