Production Tutorial - ''The Producer's Toolbox'' - Lesson 3: Learning through imitation. Deconstructing your favorite tracks.

Hello Steemit!

Today I'd like to write a production tutorial a little different from my previous ones because I think this may be overlooked in a lot of ''production lessons''. So I thought I'd give some ideas and exercises to hone on this skill.

I kind of live between the producer/arranger line because I am not really a sound engineer nor a serious music arranger but I kind of meld both skills to my benefit . I can arrange and produce up to a certain point , then I send the edited raw sessions to a sound engineer to get mixed and mastered. If I had to write for a 12-piece brass section , I'd also send it to a real arranger but I can set some guidelines and general ideas in both cases.

''Ok , I want to produce .... How do I start? How am I supposed to practice this?''

Just like an instrument , after getting the basics down, you learn through ''imitation''! When you like a certain player you investigate how they do certain things , how they get certain tone , or their use of a technique . In some cases you'll find interviews or tutorials with the information all present for you , in other cases you can only rely on your ears and intuition to get to certain player's sound and/or style. So , if you hear with enough attention eventually you'll adapt some of their playing into yours , that is how most musicians learned , they transcribed the music from their favorite records!.

Production can have the same learning approach, you can ''transcribe'' your favorite tracks from a production point of view , this meaning : how was it mixed , how does the drum sound , how is it panned , how many instruments does it have , what type of guitars were used, etc . etc. If you listen close enough you'll find elements that you might have missed when ''just listening to the music.''

Today I am going to propose this exercise to you and show you two of my ''practice sessions'':

- Track ''Remakes''.

Grab a pen and paper , choose one track you like and make a list as detailed as possible on all the elements you can find and your best guess on how could it have achieved that sound . Let me show you directly with an example:

Let's grab my first track for this:

''Slow dancing in a burning room - John Mayer''

Let's try and analyze the elements:

Drums : Very dry and vintage sounding , maybe cut in treble on most of the drum parts , a lot of space , very centered in the mix , can't find to hard panning. There's some spring reverb when the snare hits , quite possibly done with a guitar muted strum. There is also a tambourine doing 1 hit in the first up-beat of the groove.

Bass: Boomy , low in the mix , quite possible Pino Palladino on a P-bass with a muted thumb technique.

Guitars: A lot of little elements and layering , hard left and right panning on some guitars . Quite sure it's a strat as John is mainly a strat player. Possibly using a Fender Blackface type of amp. Some acoustics appear from time to time , steel string.

Keys: no keys at all , the layers are made with the guitars.

Backing vocals: subtle , low in the mix , the panning is very spread out.

Write down what you think is the tempo and any other element you might want to add , write down the chords , structure , anything you feel is relevant. Now... let's try and do a ''remake'' of a section , see if you can get close to the original.

It's obvious that I wont sound as good as a top notch production , I'm just one person with a computer and some instruments , but take it as an exercise, then compare the two and be critical of what you think you got right and wrong.

Here's my ''remake'':

Drums: I think the bass drum is quite loud , the snare is off , way to trebly and not dry enough , the hi- hat is a little too panned to the left . The reverb trick with the guitar strum worked.. so maybe that's how they did it . It's hard to get this with Virtual Instruments , by the way , I used Steven Slate Drums.

Bass: I wish I had a bass for this excercise , so i just programmed one using the Xpand plugin, did some EQing to try to take away some treble.

Backing vocals : This one i think i got right , the layering and spread . Well , i can't sing like John Mayer!

Guitars: Ok , i got the strat sound ok , maybe too much treble. The spring reverb was close , should have lowered the mix on it. The layers are ok , the panning is quite ok . Cool... next!

I got all the guitar tones using this plug-in , i definitely recommend it for direct sounds!

Let's try one more track!:

"The Pretender - Foo Fighters"

Since I love the guitar work of the Foo Fighters in almost anything they put out , i tried to do a remake of this one... so , let's start:

Drums: Even though it is a hard-hitting performance , it seems to be left quite natural , not much compression , a lot more treble than in the mayer track , the panning is a lot more open . Seems to be quite dry too .. maybe some distortion on the overhead mics??

Bass: quite distorted , maybe a P-bass played with a pick , hit quite hard.

Guitars: Huge sounding! Lot's of layering , hard panning and doubling. I guess at least three different types of guitars were used , some hollowbody , some humbucking tele and maybe a strat doing some ''cleaner'' doubling.

No keys , There's just a little subtle string arrangement on the song intro ( that I missed in the remake ). Let's see how I did :

Drums: Got a little closer with this one , the snare is not quite there but I guess I am a little better in getting more rock sounds out of the drums , still programmed so it's hard to get it to sound with real intention.

Bass: I had and old cheap P-bass that i used for this but it didn't seem to work , it kept getting mushy sounding even when played with a pick and tweaking the EQ , I'll need to research on what the foo fighters use for bass sounds.

Guitars: I got quite close , I did bring 3 of my guitars out : The thinline tele for the hollow sound , the Tribe tele for the bright sounds and my Suhr Strat , that has a humbucker in the bridge. I'm still missing some ''clean cut'' in the mix and I could have worked better on the panning.

The EQ on the general mix is quite boomy and I missed the little string section at the beginning , I picked that one late :p. Still so much to learn!

How I feel when mixing...

Well , that makes it for today! Make sure to be as detailed as possible on your descriptions and corrections , so you may try and do it better next time, eventually your mixes and productions will get more into the professional territory . As with anything . Practice makes perfect!

Have you tried this way of training your production skills? What to you think of this method? What do you think of my remakes and analysis? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading and listening!
Signing off

Pechiche Mena