My personal problem isn’t arrangement per say as they are fairly easy to grasp after you’ve done music for a while, but where I struggle the most is getting the flow of the track to feel right and finding the right sounds and transition FX so that the arrangement would make sense
I feel the same way. You need to find inspiration by listening to others’ music and then try and take bits and pieces of it while applying new and original ideas.
I'm in the same boat. I keep doing snare rolls and crashes with the occasional pause sprinkled in. I'm definitely starting to bore myself, but when I try anything fancier, it mostly sounds like a**. 😅
Babe wake up, new bthelick vid just dropped ! Another great one. I recently got into production and im getting close to having watched every video you've made... Such great stuff. If i can offer a suggestion/request, a remake of atlas by bicep would be amazing. The sound design and automations on the lead, the syncopations and the swing i feel would be great topics to hear your wisdom on. Thanks again for everything you do!
Surprisingly, I revisted my old songs that i made without any knowledge about mastering, and they sound way better. Thanks so much..all the way from uganda, Africa.
This video gave me so much ideas to improve my workflow. It never came to my mind to just put FX into an instrument to easy change between them. I really enjoy your videos. Perfect mix of deep knowlede and little history lessons.
I do that mostly because of Ableton. It let's you switch out tracks instantly from other sessions without having to open said session, so I started putting effects on the tracks so that when I swapped other tracks in they would already have the FX and automation on them. For reverbs and delays I also made insertable racks which behave like sends. (Shown in my free racks video)
When I have no inspiration, I paste a professional track into my DAW. Then I use Google to look up the BPM and then I create an empty midi track above. There I paste midi clips of 8 or 16 bars that I rename: intro / full kick / break / intro main melody / drop etc. When I'm stuck with my own new project, I open such a song and paste the empty midi clips in my DAW as 'midi reference'. This way I can 'cheat' very quickly 👌
Also your hook is insane. Its like a breathing pattern during buildup, like a breath in during "you move" and a wide breath out theough the mount on "a little closer". So good. So satisfying
The OG💙💙💙. Thank you so much for making this! The way you break explain things is second to none. As a novice I would love to see more videos like this.
I literally just started doing this last weekend and it was a game changer. I mapped out every track on a few records I like so I can see what elements were added and removed throughout. This unlocked arrangement for me. It was also really interesting seeing the differences between an old Fisher record and a new Odd Mob record. The Odd Mob record had nearly twice the tracks. Both records are bangers though, so more doesn’t mean better, but Tech house has evolved so much over the last few years. A lot more complexity to the newer tracks, at least the ones I’ve broken down so far.
So weird was looking for an arangment video earlier and was like, damn wish there was a bthelick one thats not the one about vertical arrangment principles... and then you drop this two hours later. Great as always dude!
This was the game changer for me. Copying arrangements to understand why they are arranged the way they are. Now I can just free fly my own arrangements and break the rules for fun.
This is exactly what I need right now. I recently started tons of IDs and loops that never got a proper arrangement, cause I didn‘t know how to create this from scratch. I think it‘s a very good idea to reference arrangements for a while until it‘s easier to come up with my own ideas. Great work as always ✌🏻
Wow. Yet another great video with loads of great tips. Also appreciated the workflow of how you arrange. Also, not sure how others consume these videos. But takes me a few days of 5-10 minutes watches, firing up DAW and applying ( or at least implementing before going off on other tangents) and a final end to end replay (or two ) to unpack all that is in these. Truly thankful for these.
This should not take you long to do. It's a matter of taking the reference and you lining up your elements in correlation to theirs. If you are missing those components that the reference has then yea would take some time to get that done. An arrangement should not take more than a few hours if you have all of the elements in your mix.
I have been doing this intuitively since I am producing and it is really satisfying to see a professional advertising this technique. Love your videos, hope your channel gets all the views it deserves. Thank you
Hey sir thanks for what you do loved your afro chords session. I was hoping to suggest a percussion session inspired by Rampa. Specially neverender remix. The use of tom's, sub and kick mixed in with shaker is soo fascinating, I guess an all round afro percussion video would be so amazing ❤❤❤
Great video, I use same technique. Great to see you delving into minimal genre. Love you to cover Deep Tech House, likes of Gorge, Nick Curly. Love the DJ tool too, thanks for sharing and love all your videos ❤
A lot of useful advice e in such a short tutorial. Reference tracks work great and eventually, you’ll find there’s a general set up that usually works. Hell… NIN would often use the same beat through their whole song but just add an extra hit or two later or change the beat to a different drum kit. Love when Front 242 does that too.
Awesome video, and great tracks both yours and Odd Mobs. This may be quite a broad question depending how you look at it, so apologies if it is, and I'm sure there is no right or wrong answer, but I was curious to see whether you think all of the dong/stab/hit ear-candy I guess you could call them sounds are essential in keeping interest in the track, especially this genre of tracks. When I make music (not that I'm any sort of expert) I always try to avoid those sounds to keep the focus on the main groove of the track, just remove and add the main elements that run through. I understand the sounds keep retention, but is there any fault in using these, or is that just what is important for tracks coming out these days? Thanks again!
Well is it working live? That would be the only question that matters! What's added is usually genre dependent. For example If the purpose is to stay purely hypnotic you might avoid these types of sounds and maybe just tweak synth automation instead. But when you analyze your reference even if it sounds like it's just sticking to a groove you'd be surprised what details you might miss before you scrutinize it closely.
@@Bthelick Yep I guess you're absolutely right, whatever works works. I'm definitely going to get back to some reference tracks and see if i can catch some things I may have missed after this vid and your response. Thanks again mate, you are a legend!
Hey man, thanks for this video! It really opened my mind a bit. I’d love to see your interpretation of Boris Brejcha’s arrangement style, and maybe you could even try creating something similar in his style? Wishing you lots of health and all the best!
Great tutorial coming from an OG in the scene. The input I needed to polish my skills. Wondering about cutting super low frequencies on my kicks and/or bass like 30 - 40hz and below. Most of my kicks are hybrid kicks tuned around 50hz I have a subwoofer that goes really low which low freq kicks tuned around 44hz sound great and beefy (pound) but when I listen to those lower spectrum kicks on sound systems that don’t go that low, the kick either gets lost or push the low end of the speakers a bit hard where it isn’t always pleasant to listen to. I would love to get your input on this. I typically use a 12db low pass EQ with a soft Q roll off around 50hz but I am wondering if a steeper cut like 18 or 24 would be better below 30ish or maybe higher like around 40hz, I just don’t want to lose the heavtiness of the kick or bass on the large subs. Basically I want the best of both worlds if possible. I found when I experimented with steep 18/24 roll offs it sucked away the pounding kick or bass a little too much. By the way sun is in the car, can’t really use my house sub due to personal constraints. Switch headphones too test as well but just wanted to know what you think. Cheers! Thank you for everything. 🎉
Filtering away lo end will just add signal peaks unfortunately. Unless there is serious 'leakage' below 40. If the kick disappears on non-club systems that can be ok, but might be an indicator that it's weak in the chest area, which can effect the groove, and certainly means you'll have a compromised streaming mix if only the club extended works. What do you mean by 'hybrid' kick . Are you combining?
4:30 is an Extended Mix? What strange times we live in. Remember songs like "Jesus to a Child" by George Michael? But to be honest, I'm not sure if I could listen to "Left to right" any longer. 😄 I know this was not the intention to the video, but I could not leave lying around. I surely get the idea what you want to tell. I want to tell a story with my tracks. I use a similar formula with other references. Sure, my stories might be different to musicians like Nore en Pure or Ben Boehmer or so. But that's why we are different musicians. Interesting demonstration, so thank you very much. Ah, and now to one of the best Extended Versions of all times: The "FCKW Free Mix" of "The Atm*Oz*Fear" by "Cozm*Oz*One" from 1990. 😎
Yes depends on your reference, genre and era. A lot of crowds can't handle the 8 min mixes any more! Different drugs maybe, or even the rise of ADHD coming through our instant technology these days who knows. Nothing to stop you doing those for your crowd though.
@@HenningUhle I was thinking the same thing. Most of my songs are around 8 mins. I still enjoy them and I can DJ mix them longer (I love the vibe when two tracks are playing together) but yeah the extended mix makes me wonder what the original length was? My guess somewhere around 3 mins. If that’s the new normal that sure would reduce the amount of work! Lol. Not sure if I can make the switch to these shorter formats but I digress. It’s nice to know that my music arrangement is on the right track given I am completely self taught DJ style producer. Cheers!
Yes. Yes I am. But it's getting there. Tbf, I seem to have a problem with the most basic stuff... Time. Just a simple set of timeblocks to put different elements in that makes sense. I'm a very rigid thinker, usually problems go away by first walking away and worrying the problem to death, then come back and fix it in 5 minutes by not thinking and just doing. So let's see what we have here....
haha thanks, its not natural, I have a thick northern accent normally which is hard to understand for many so I do lots and lots of takes in an attempt to annunciate clearly ( and so I don't have to manually edit the captions for foreign viewers!)
that reference track is uber compressed for loudness, you can hear a big difference of yours and his, i had my laptop volume at almost 0, still could hear the ref track very loud. Nice video !
I feel like I've recently been getting caught up on composition more than arrangement. I've been trying to sample some of my records, and I found cool pieces, but it's difficult to create a cohesive melody. I'm having the most trouble creating a soundscape versus a loop
Yes, I just took four bars from the intro and inverted the phase against the other section. (Bear in mind that won't work well if the track is time stretched or has come from tape or vinyl)
@ Thanks, great quality as well way. I use Cubase and works every time Great remix technique. Maybe you could share some mixing techniques like this to get remix’s and stems ?
@samhudson9257 hmmm I'm not sure about that. Because you're still going to need permission and a licence to do the remix, at which point they'll usually have good stems to give you. I'm not sure how I feel encouraging the alternative , stealing for the sake of bootlegs. I mean don't get me wrong I've done it, but as a 'public figure' now I'm not sure. Some people are so confused about copyright they can take it as a go-ahead. Maybe I'll make sure to have my copyright video first.
This is the video I needed 🙏 incredibly demonstrated, now I’m a little less stuck 😅 also slightly off-topic, virjis boiler room and his unreleased songs on that.. how did he do it (the chopping and the drums)
@ fair play for actually taking a look 🙌😲 these time stamps are off the soundcloud one, hopefully it’ll be same for youtube. 23:40, 26:00 and 34:10 🙏 thank you for checking these out, these songs are absolute tunes!
I Took a section of the intro drums and played back at the same time with reversed polarity (180 deg phase) (In Ableton you can use the utility plug-in to invert the phase or most daws have it directly on the channel)
@@Bthelick me either really, my mate would be more versed off of it as they're who introduced me to it, but a good place to start would be Bangs & Works volume 1 & 2 from planet mu, as they introduced the genre to europe in 2010 (DJ SPinn Crazy & Deranged being one of my favs from the rave stab-like sound, or Rashad & Gant-Man's Heaven Sent as a more casual-listening example). footwork aka footwerk/footwurk aka juke started in chicago in the mid 90s, as a dark/abstact battle-dance genre that was derived from ghetto bass, with heavy syncopation on the kicks, so it can be a hard listen to some since it's mostly about rhythym and dance battles. a lot of the earlier stuff is hard to find as apparently its main distribution method was casette tapes on the school grounds lol. as for dj assault's bootybass, I think that was just what he called his version of ghetto bass he was producing, but I could be wrong on that front.
After producing for 20+ years I find arranging a slog at times. I'm going back to following arrangement from other tracks now. Find some tracks that have the biggest plays (500k-1mil) streaming wise and use those to follow arrangement. Sometimes learning from the big tracks will help as well.
Yes the extended mix has the intro and outro sections on it to allow the DJ to mix it in. Those are usually chopped off to make the radio/streaming mix
Thanks for the tutorial! Can’t count the number of times I’ve sent a bthelick video to someone Vocal might be de-essed too much, sounds a little lispy to me? Might just be me though
Haha yeah well I am pretty lispy IRL unfortunately, and sometimes after so many takes i start to get a blocked nose for some reason so you'll definitely hear it get worse by the end of the video. Also I don't have time to edit every mouth click and slurp so I do have some pretty aggressive multiband limiting on the highs to try and catch spikes. Sorry if it's annoying.
Not used it. Even as a noob I could hear that t-racks 1 sounded rough and sample tank always had a muddiness I didn't like so early on IK kind of burned their reputation with me and I haven't used them since. I'm sure they're fine now. As is most stuff. But so is most of the freeware now (are my video) such is what I use mostly. When you've got analogue modelling as good as Variety Of Sound does it what do you really need anything else for? These days I only really buy a plug-in if it massively upgrades my workflow / saves me lots of time or inspires me so much that I instantly make (AND FINISH) lots of new tracks.
So, my main problem is usually that after I start arranging, I finally hear what's wrong with my initial sketch, so it's back to sound design. Then back to arrangement, again, back to sound design. It's endless. Any tips for my frustration?
It's a stack of the Ableton midi pitch plugin. At the bottom you can select the range it operates in, so I have each octave 'windowed' and then transposing back down by the relevant number of octaves. E.g if my desired octave to keep is C1-C2 I set the first pitch plugin to 'catch' C2-C3 (by setting "C2 range +11) and it's pitch is set to -12, and so on and so on. So every time a note leaves my desired octave (via some random pitch type plugin like sting) then it is put back down. I did that for a few octaves and put them in parallel.
@@Bthelick Doesn't need to be this one :) I'm referring to let's say to a kind of a problem that we all have or had, when you don't know when the track is finished (enough elements), when to say that's enough, not to overdoit, we tend to overcomplicate things :) Add some tips on that maybe BTW English is not my first language :)
I really want to find someone who loves music to collaborate with in person! Hopefully someone knowledgeable on ableton! If anyone is around near Halifax in west Yorkshire. Let me know! Great vid mate, i hate doing arrangements, i dont think im on my own there😂 this video made me realise its just laziness 😂
My personal problem isn’t arrangement per say as they are fairly easy to grasp after you’ve done music for a while, but where I struggle the most is getting the flow of the track to feel right and finding the right sounds and transition FX so that the arrangement would make sense
totally feel this
I feel the same way. You need to find inspiration by listening to others’ music and then try and take bits and pieces of it while applying new and original ideas.
Agreed. I think a transitions tutorial would be legendary
I'm in the same boat. I keep doing snare rolls and crashes with the occasional pause sprinkled in. I'm definitely starting to bore myself, but when I try anything fancier, it mostly sounds like a**. 😅
disclosure have a song about it, it's called white noise :)
Babe wake up, new bthelick vid just dropped ! Another great one. I recently got into production and im getting close to having watched every video you've made... Such great stuff.
If i can offer a suggestion/request, a remake of atlas by bicep would be amazing. The sound design and automations on the lead, the syncopations and the swing i feel would be great topics to hear your wisdom on.
Thanks again for everything you do!
Surprisingly, I revisted my old songs that i made without any knowledge about mastering, and they sound way better. Thanks so much..all the way from uganda, Africa.
The legend has returned. Happy New Year Buddy. Good to see you back.
I can honestly say the way you approached arranging is going to help many others evolving their production game! Great work as always! 🔥
This video gave me so much ideas to improve my workflow. It never came to my mind to just put FX into an instrument to easy change between them.
I really enjoy your videos. Perfect mix of deep knowlede and little history lessons.
I do that mostly because of Ableton. It let's you switch out tracks instantly from other sessions without having to open said session, so I started putting effects on the tracks so that when I swapped other tracks in they would already have the FX and automation on them.
For reverbs and delays I also made insertable racks which behave like sends.
(Shown in my free racks video)
When I have no inspiration, I paste a professional track into my DAW. Then I use Google to look up the BPM and then I create an empty midi track above. There I paste midi clips of 8 or 16 bars that I rename: intro / full kick / break / intro main melody / drop etc. When I'm stuck with my own new project, I open such a song and paste the empty midi clips in my DAW as 'midi reference'. This way I can 'cheat' very quickly 👌
Enjoy the coffees 🎉
HOLY MOLY Cinthie You're too kind!! 🙏❤️
Coffees are on me next time we catch up!
@ don t spend it all at once 🤣🤣 and well , you know. Always happy to support good things 😍
Also your hook is insane. Its like a breathing pattern during buildup, like a breath in during "you move" and a wide breath out theough the mount on "a little closer". So good. So satisfying
The hook has a call & response built in, pretty nice
@TALE5music yeah, but also notice the wideness change, it's just something else!
The OG💙💙💙. Thank you so much for making this! The way you break explain things is second to none. As a novice I would love to see more videos like this.
I literally just started doing this last weekend and it was a game changer. I mapped out every track on a few records I like so I can see what elements were added and removed throughout. This unlocked arrangement for me. It was also really interesting seeing the differences between an old Fisher record and a new Odd Mob record. The Odd Mob record had nearly twice the tracks. Both records are bangers though, so more doesn’t mean better, but Tech house has evolved so much over the last few years. A lot more complexity to the newer tracks, at least the ones I’ve broken down so far.
The answers are always right there. In front of us. On the internet lol.
So weird was looking for an arangment video earlier and was like, damn wish there was a bthelick one thats not the one about vertical arrangment principles... and then you drop this two hours later. Great as always dude!
Thank you your a genius with the way you explain everything and it’s so needed for me right now. Grateful to you.
This was the game changer for me. Copying arrangements to understand why they are arranged the way they are. Now I can just free fly my own arrangements and break the rules for fun.
About halfway through, ive learnt so much! Thanks for this.
Kicking the new year off with a belter! Just what I needed, again!
I can watch this all day - feel free to do another like this with a different track in a different style - brilliant…
This is exactly what I need right now. I recently started tons of IDs and loops that never got a proper arrangement, cause I didn‘t know how to create this from scratch. I think it‘s a very good idea to reference arrangements for a while until it‘s easier to come up with my own ideas.
Great work as always ✌🏻
Wow. Yet another great video with loads of great tips. Also appreciated the workflow of how you arrange.
Also, not sure how others consume these videos. But takes me a few days of 5-10 minutes watches, firing up DAW and applying ( or at least implementing before going off on other tangents) and a final end to end replay (or two ) to unpack all that is in these.
Truly thankful for these.
This should not take you long to do. It's a matter of taking the reference and you lining up your elements in correlation to theirs. If you are missing those components that the reference has then yea would take some time to get that done. An arrangement should not take more than a few hours if you have all of the elements in your mix.
I have been doing this intuitively since I am producing and it is really satisfying to see a professional advertising this technique. Love your videos, hope your channel gets all the views it deserves. Thank you
Hey sir thanks for what you do loved your afro chords session. I was hoping to suggest a percussion session inspired by Rampa. Specially neverender remix. The use of tom's, sub and kick mixed in with shaker is soo fascinating, I guess an all round afro percussion video would be so amazing ❤❤❤
Check out my video on "organic house" i did go into some of that , let me know if that answers some things for you
Amazing as always 🙏🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌
Great video, I use same technique. Great to see you delving into minimal genre. Love you to cover Deep Tech House, likes of Gorge, Nick Curly. Love the DJ tool too, thanks for sharing and love all your videos ❤
That kick, hat and clap loop at 10:00 strongly reminded me of Oxia - Domino
I’ve just started to experiment with this kind of Solid Grooves minimal tech house and you post a tutorial about it haha What a nice coincidence 🙌🏾✨
You're such a g for dropping that dj tools rack, thank you brother, and to answer your question, yes, I am overthinking arrangement
Cannot thank you enough for how helpful your videos have been on my learning journey so far. You are an absolute gem and incredibly appreciated!
Very well put together 🔥 Thank you for all that you do.
A lot of useful advice e in such a short tutorial. Reference tracks work great and eventually, you’ll find there’s a general set up that usually works. Hell… NIN would often use the same beat through their whole song but just add an extra hit or two later or change the beat to a different drum kit. Love when Front 242 does that too.
Brilliant video as always - thanks for sharing. I'd be interested on how you made the DJ racks that you talked about. Keep the videos coming.
Thanks. In the meantime It's in the description if you want to dissect
❤❤❤ Thank you for making this video mate! ❤❤❤
love the Ro minimal stuff, Awesome video ! thanks
Awesome video, and great tracks both yours and Odd Mobs. This may be quite a broad question depending how you look at it, so apologies if it is, and I'm sure there is no right or wrong answer, but I was curious to see whether you think all of the dong/stab/hit ear-candy I guess you could call them sounds are essential in keeping interest in the track, especially this genre of tracks. When I make music (not that I'm any sort of expert) I always try to avoid those sounds to keep the focus on the main groove of the track, just remove and add the main elements that run through. I understand the sounds keep retention, but is there any fault in using these, or is that just what is important for tracks coming out these days? Thanks again!
Well is it working live? That would be the only question that matters!
What's added is usually genre dependent. For example If the purpose is to stay purely hypnotic you might avoid these types of sounds and maybe just tweak synth automation instead.
But when you analyze your reference even if it sounds like it's just sticking to a groove you'd be surprised what details you might miss before you scrutinize it closely.
@@Bthelick Yep I guess you're absolutely right, whatever works works. I'm definitely going to get back to some reference tracks and see if i can catch some things I may have missed after this vid and your response. Thanks again mate, you are a legend!
Man I love this guy
The best at teaching! Seriously!
Hey man, thanks for this video! It really opened my mind a bit. I’d love to see your interpretation of Boris Brejcha’s arrangement style, and maybe you could even try creating something similar in his style? Wishing you lots of health and all the best!
Great tutorial coming from an OG in the scene. The input I needed to polish my skills. Wondering about cutting super low frequencies on my kicks and/or bass like 30 - 40hz and below. Most of my kicks are hybrid kicks tuned around 50hz I have a subwoofer that goes really low which low freq kicks tuned around 44hz sound great and beefy (pound) but when I listen to those lower spectrum kicks on sound systems that don’t go that low, the kick either gets lost or push the low end of the speakers a bit hard where it isn’t always pleasant to listen to. I would love to get your input on this. I typically use a 12db low pass EQ with a soft Q roll off around 50hz but I am wondering if a steeper cut like 18 or 24 would be better below 30ish or maybe higher like around 40hz, I just don’t want to lose the heavtiness of the kick or bass on the large subs. Basically I want the best of both worlds if possible. I found when I experimented with steep 18/24 roll offs it sucked away the pounding kick or bass a little too much. By the way sun is in the car, can’t really use my house sub due to personal constraints. Switch headphones too test as well but just wanted to know what you think. Cheers! Thank you for everything. 🎉
Filtering away lo end will just add signal peaks unfortunately. Unless there is serious 'leakage' below 40.
If the kick disappears on non-club systems that can be ok, but might be an indicator that it's weak in the chest area, which can effect the groove, and certainly means you'll have a compromised streaming mix if only the club extended works.
What do you mean by 'hybrid' kick . Are you combining?
Great to have you back!!!! Another great one!! Cheers!
Remake works well! Nice!
Happy new year Bthelick!
One of the vid I've watch for arrangement. When you've good vertical arrangement then turn to horizontal arrangement is so easy..
ooff this came at a great time! Thanks so much... and Happy New Year!
The man just dropped a banger. Wheww 😮💨
Top tip: turn off UA-cam's "Stable volume" in the settings so you get the full impact of the drop.
When the f* did they added this
Was looking for this last night. Awesome! Also, I am an ODD MOB fan for SURE.
THANK YOU
Oh I missed you so, Sir!!! Thank You!!
Thanks so much for these great videos, i have learnt alot
Hope you had a good Christmas/New Year Ben
Insanely useful video! Thank you 😊
Thank you!
Thank you
4:30 is an Extended Mix? What strange times we live in. Remember songs like "Jesus to a Child" by George Michael? But to be honest, I'm not sure if I could listen to "Left to right" any longer. 😄
I know this was not the intention to the video, but I could not leave lying around.
I surely get the idea what you want to tell. I want to tell a story with my tracks. I use a similar formula with other references. Sure, my stories might be different to musicians like Nore en Pure or Ben Boehmer or so. But that's why we are different musicians. Interesting demonstration, so thank you very much.
Ah, and now to one of the best Extended Versions of all times: The "FCKW Free Mix" of "The Atm*Oz*Fear" by "Cozm*Oz*One" from 1990. 😎
Yes depends on your reference, genre and era. A lot of crowds can't handle the 8 min mixes any more! Different drugs maybe, or even the rise of ADHD coming through our instant technology these days who knows. Nothing to stop you doing those for your crowd though.
@@HenningUhle You’re thinking of the modern category: the Club Mix, which is usually the go-to over-six-minutes version
@@HenningUhle I was thinking the same thing. Most of my songs are around 8 mins. I still enjoy them and I can DJ mix them longer (I love the vibe when two tracks are playing together) but yeah the extended mix makes me wonder what the original length was? My guess somewhere around 3 mins. If that’s the new normal that sure would reduce the amount of work! Lol. Not sure if I can make the switch to these shorter formats but I digress. It’s nice to know that my music arrangement is on the right track given I am completely self taught DJ style producer. Cheers!
Every video pure knowledge and fun.
Solid gold.
Great Video!!!! Your content is amazing!!!!
Yes. Yes I am.
But it's getting there. Tbf, I seem to have a problem with the most basic stuff... Time. Just a simple set of timeblocks to put different elements in that makes sense.
I'm a very rigid thinker, usually problems go away by first walking away and worrying the problem to death, then come back and fix it in 5 minutes by not thinking and just doing.
So let's see what we have here....
Your've got a great voice for the Radio Shows
haha thanks, its not natural, I have a thick northern accent normally which is hard to understand for many so I do lots and lots of takes in an attempt to annunciate clearly ( and so I don't have to manually edit the captions for foreign viewers!)
HNY B. Great advice as always.
that reference track is uber compressed for loudness, you can hear a big difference of yours and his, i had my laptop volume at almost 0, still could hear the ref track very loud. Nice video !
Well yes, different genres. I wasn't using it as a sound reference.
Oh Btheclick, you know how to make my day! Let's sit pretty and watch this gem
I feel like I've recently been getting caught up on composition more than arrangement. I've been trying to sample some of my records, and I found cool pieces, but it's difficult to create a cohesive melody. I'm having the most trouble creating a soundscape versus a loop
How did you cancel out the kick drum in abelton? Invert Phase? Thanks:)
@3:15
Yes, I just took four bars from the intro and inverted the phase against the other section.
(Bear in mind that won't work well if the track is time stretched or has come from tape or vinyl)
@
Thanks, great quality as well way.
I use Cubase and works every time
Great remix technique.
Maybe you could share some mixing techniques like this to get remix’s and stems ?
@samhudson9257 hmmm I'm not sure about that. Because you're still going to need permission and a licence to do the remix, at which point they'll usually have good stems to give you.
I'm not sure how I feel encouraging the alternative , stealing for the sake of bootlegs. I mean don't get me wrong I've done it, but as a 'public figure' now I'm not sure. Some people are so confused about copyright they can take it as a go-ahead.
Maybe I'll make sure to have my copyright video first.
@ That is true there’s no way round that but you’ve got plenty of tracks by the sounds of it ! or use mine or someone’s else who follows the channel?
Thats why hes the goat
The goat!
Nice driving track, and yes copying the arrangement of a track that really works in the club is a great way to do it.
Thanks! 🤸♂
0:47 fellow hermit here. Grass is overrated. 😂
@@hey_maurice hello fellow hermits!
This is the video I needed 🙏 incredibly demonstrated, now I’m a little less stuck 😅 also slightly off-topic, virjis boiler room and his unreleased songs on that.. how did he do it (the chopping and the drums)
Time stamp? I've only skipped through it so far , I need to give a proper watch
@ fair play for actually taking a look 🙌😲 these time stamps are off the soundcloud one, hopefully it’ll be same for youtube. 23:40, 26:00 and 34:10 🙏 thank you for checking these out, these songs are absolute tunes!
killer music..
Happy New Year and welcome back! Ummm.... you are going to release that, right? Right?!
Happy new year
reminds me of To Burn by Denis Cruz
Who else got three trillion unfinished tracks on their hard disk drive? Yep guilty 😊😊 thanks for the new video, Ben 🎉
Get 'em out!
How did you cancel out the kick drum to show the sub rumble at the start?!
I Took a section of the intro drums and played back at the same time with reversed polarity (180 deg phase)
(In Ableton you can use the utility plug-in to invert the phase or most daws have it directly on the channel)
@@Bthelicklegend!
Oh btw make sure the track is not time stretched / warped in any way.
And for similar reasons this doesn't work on tracks recorded to tape or vinyl.
steal this album!
A.D.D is such a tune
14:43 reminded me of DJ Assault for some reason lol. bootybass/footwork tutorial when?
I don't know the genre well, tell me some artists / tracks and I'll see if I can extract any lessons 👊
@@Bthelick me either really, my mate would be more versed off of it as they're who introduced me to it, but a good place to start would be Bangs & Works volume 1 & 2 from planet mu, as they introduced the genre to europe in 2010 (DJ SPinn Crazy & Deranged being one of my favs from the rave stab-like sound, or Rashad & Gant-Man's Heaven Sent as a more casual-listening example). footwork aka footwerk/footwurk aka juke started in chicago in the mid 90s, as a dark/abstact battle-dance genre that was derived from ghetto bass, with heavy syncopation on the kicks, so it can be a hard listen to some since it's mostly about rhythym and dance battles. a lot of the earlier stuff is hard to find as apparently its main distribution method was casette tapes on the school grounds lol. as for dj assault's bootybass, I think that was just what he called his version of ghetto bass he was producing, but I could be wrong on that front.
After producing for 20+ years I find arranging a slog at times. I'm going back to following arrangement from other tracks now.
Find some tracks that have the biggest plays (500k-1mil) streaming wise and use those to follow arrangement. Sometimes learning from the big tracks will help as well.
You mentioned that the reference is an extended mix, what does that mean apart from it being longer? Is that the one that would be played in a club?
Yes the extended mix has the intro and outro sections on it to allow the DJ to mix it in.
Those are usually chopped off to make the radio/streaming mix
@ thank you
Thanks for the tutorial! Can’t count the number of times I’ve sent a bthelick video to someone
Vocal might be de-essed too much, sounds a little lispy to me? Might just be me though
Haha yeah well I am pretty lispy IRL unfortunately, and sometimes after so many takes i start to get a blocked nose for some reason so you'll definitely hear it get worse by the end of the video.
Also I don't have time to edit every mouth click and slurp so I do have some pretty aggressive multiband limiting on the highs to try and catch spikes. Sorry if it's annoying.
@@Bthelick i meant the vocal on the song! the "move a little closer" thing - your voice sounds great lmao
Oooooohhhhhhhh I see haha 🤦♂️ thanks!
What's your take on ik multimedia t-racks 5
Not used it. Even as a noob I could hear that t-racks 1 sounded rough and sample tank always had a muddiness I didn't like so early on IK kind of burned their reputation with me and I haven't used them since.
I'm sure they're fine now. As is most stuff. But so is most of the freeware now (are my video) such is what I use mostly. When you've got analogue modelling as good as Variety Of Sound does it what do you really need anything else for?
These days I only really buy a plug-in if it massively upgrades my workflow / saves me lots of time or inspires me so much that I instantly make (AND FINISH) lots of new tracks.
YOU ARE GODSEND BRU😂❤
So, my main problem is usually that after I start arranging, I finally hear what's wrong with my initial sketch, so it's back to sound design. Then back to arrangement, again, back to sound design. It's endless. Any tips for my frustration?
Are you referencing for sound before you start a session?
hi, how did you create the "keep to octave " ? thank you
It's a stack of the Ableton midi pitch plugin. At the bottom you can select the range it operates in, so I have each octave 'windowed' and then transposing back down by the relevant number of octaves.
E.g if my desired octave to keep is C1-C2 I set the first pitch plugin to 'catch' C2-C3 (by setting "C2 range +11) and it's pitch is set to -12, and so on and so on.
So every time a note leaves my desired octave (via some random pitch type plugin like sting) then it is put back down. I did that for a few octaves and put them in parallel.
@@Bthelick got it thanks
Now ... wherever can we find some people on drugs to test it on? Thanks for the tutorial. Entertaining and informative.
😵
What did you use to create your randomly generated basslines?
The device is called Sting. It's a max4live device for generating acid parts.
Thanks! Your videos are the best!
Very noob question , but do you sidechain the vocals
Yes, sometimes.
I do it for groove, or it's sometimes needed to prevent obvious clipping too (because I release my tracks unmastered)
❤
Bravo
You legend
What really happens in the backroom hmm?..
You forgto to put the reference track's link into the description 😅
Haha thanks for the reminder, it's there now
Yes.
siiiiick !!!
If you look at the song credits, Soulja Boy is on there first lol I wonder how much they had to pay to clear that vocal sample 😂
Can the next one be please for ear candy, maybe on the same track :) ???
Hmmmm, maybe. But I thought the track was finished? 🤣 I don't normally stick around haha.
What kind of ear candy are you referring to?
@@Bthelick Doesn't need to be this one :) I'm referring to let's say to a kind of a problem that we all have or had, when you don't know when the track is finished (enough elements), when to say that's enough, not to overdoit, we tend to overcomplicate things :)
Add some tips on that maybe
BTW English is not my first language :)
Hahaha, the life of the music and visuals editor…😂 thanks boss and happy 2025
I really want to find someone who loves music to collaborate with in person! Hopefully someone knowledgeable on ableton! If anyone is around near Halifax in west Yorkshire. Let me know! Great vid mate, i hate doing arrangements, i dont think im on my own there😂 this video made me realise its just laziness 😂
Villalobos would approve.
Also, I used to map these out in excel, nerd vibes for real;)
I don’t know what is it but I’ll have an issue, and the next day you’ll upload a video about it😂
Legend🫡