tl;dr: a DAW has no way of representing a signal that goes higher than 0dB, thus creating distortion

Richard Devine

Speaking of blowing minds, I love your latest album, especially Lying To Myself. So crisp and clean.

I second Andrew Bayer, Culprate, deadmau5, Noisia, and Mat Zo, and I would add Amon Tobin and KOAN Sound to that list.

But there is no producer out there who blows my mind to the extent that Tipper does. He is a master at sound design and has a very unique style. I would HIGHLY recommend you listen to some of his work if you are serious about production, have a listen to his Fathoms EP he released last year and tell me that isn't some of the best sound design you've heard. Even Noisia has stated that they have no idea how he does a lot of the stuff that he does.

How can I remove muddiness from my track?
Any suggestions?
https://soundcloud.com/bassdem

The most common reason for muddiness is frequency overlapping. Make sure all of your elements has their own space in the frequency spectrum, especially lower frequencies. Also, cut your reverb tails.

As far as favorite libraries, I just picked up the Una Corda piano and it has blown me away with the tonal quality. It's my default piano now (Alicia's Keys used to be my go to patch).

Well shit, my "to buy" list just keeps growing. This sounds amazing, thanks for the tip.

I want to know is music theory really important to become a good Electronic Producer

This kind of depends on what you want to do really. Do you want to be a really good producer? Do you want to be a really good musician? Both? Do you plan on making music for films and video games etc.? It all depends on what you want to do.

If you want to become a really good sound designer and make production porn, then music theory might not be necessary. If you want to make really good art and music that connects with people on an emotional level then music theory is an amazing tool. I'm not saying that production isn't art, but I'm sure you get my point.

I thought for a long time that learning music theory would put my mindset in a "box" and it would inhibit my ability to be truly creative. That is not true at all, actually quite the opposite. When you understand the fundamentals of music theory; scales, melodies, chords, arrangement, etc. you can much more easily express the feelings and emotions you want. This is important if you want to make film or video game music, because being able to put a certain feel and emotion in the viewer/player is absolutely key. Sure you can just write what feels right and still convey a certain feeling, but music theory will help you so much and spare you a lot of trouble. If you know nothing about music theory and want to make a sad or dramatic sounding track, you will probably write it in minor because it just feels right. Knowing WHY you do that is important in my opinion, and it can help you write elements that fit the rest of the track much more easily.

So, the answer is pretty much "it depends". It is certainly helpful to you no matter what you make, but it is not necessary. But then again, is knowing FM synthesis necessary to produce a track? No, but learning it will help you tremendously. Also, learning the fundamentals of music theory is really not that hard.

https://soundcloud.com/jadecicada/zoya-whats-done-is-done-jade-cicada-remix

Jade Cicada is a relatively unknown artist but he makes some pretty awesome music. This remix in particular is really good.