Hey guys so I've been thinking. Which one do you think results in a more productive work ethic? Do you think it's more productive to focus on results. (Today I'm gonna finish the arrangement) or the amount of hours producing? (Today I'll produce for 8 hours).

I quit my full time job a month ago (My business supports me) and one thing that I kind of got used to was the the 8 hour shift. If I could dedicate 40 hours a week working at some shitty job then I figured I can do the same with music. The only thing is that sometimes those 8 hours aren't always the most productive.

The other day I just made it my goal to focus on specific aspect of the new song I was working on. (By the end of the day I want to have "this" done.) Within 2 hours I found that I was more productive than when I spent 8 hours on something. I still feel like a halfass though if I don't spend at least 8 hours working because I've gotten used to the working at that old (shitty) job.

Which one do you guys think is more productive? Focusing on results or time? Also, how long do you think one can spend producing before they start seeing diminishing returns?

Hey guys so I just bought this omnidirectional mic. It's the Behringer ECM8000. I bought it because I heard that omnidirectional mics were needed to test room acoustic frequencies.

Here's what I did. I got a sine wave sweep and recorded the peaks in waves h-eq. This is what it looked like.



After I did that I recorded the same signal through my room using the ECM8000. I held it up in the same position that I use when listening to my monitors.

Here's what I got.



If these graphs are correct then as you can see my room adds a huge amount of coloration to the 100hz region. It also contains practically no sub bass and another pretty decent dip at the 1k region.

My question is... did I carry out this procedure accurately? When I listened to the sinewave sweep using my ears I was clearly able to hear the dips in my room.

Is there anything else I need to do to test out my room acoustics and now that I'm aware of the characteristics of my room what should I do about it?

Hey guys so I've been thinking about this a lot more recently and does it seriously matter which EQ method you decide to go with? I know most people recommend subtractive but I never actually understood why. I remember reading a few articles saying something like additive adds artifacts to the signal that isn't originally there but I honestly don't hear anything "bad" being added. (Might just be untrained ears)

Right now I'd say 80% of the time I use additive EQ'ing. One of my suspected drawbacks of additive EQing is that sometimes I'll EQ the shit out of a sound and think it's better when really it's just because the sound is louder. I was thinking that maybe this was the main con behind additive eqing. Either that or it's all in my head.

Anyways... does anyone have any real experience with the topic? I'd like to be better educated on the subject.

Hey guys. I wasn't sure whether to post this in the composition or the sound design section but I felt that the composition section was more suitable.

It's always been beyond my understanding how people manage to create drops like these.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fkwtq2uhbmU 1:37

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYaeoeLHva8 0:35

For those of you dubstep/glitchhop producers out there how do you go about making this stuff? It's not as straight forward as the progressive trance/house stuff in my opinion. The only thing I've been able to observe about it is this type of "call and response" feel all the sounds have when they're put together.

How important do you guys think it is to have a sense of self efficacy as a producer? I've always told myself that producing is the most challenging thing I've ever taken up in my life. I'm not trying to lie to myself at all by any means when I say that. Thinking about it now though I feel like that mindset is starting to hurt me because I have a tendency to underestimate my own ability to rise up to those challenges.

When I think of the mindset of a great producer it isn't along the lines of "This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life." It's more along the lines of "This is next track is going to be a piece of cake and I can't wait to hear what I'm going to create next." I have a feeling I'm going to get so much hate for saying that and I AM over exaggerating when I say "piece of cake" for lack of a better term but please let me know your opinions.

Do you think that me having this belief is detrimental to my progress as a producer and if so how should I go about overcoming it?

I've always told myself that producing is the most challenging thing I've ever taken up in my life.

Hey guys. Right now in the track I'm working on the verse is shamefully louder than the chorus. I want to lower the balance of the instruments in the verse so that they are balanced with the chorus but if I do that then I'm also going to be lowering the balance of some instruments in the intro, (Intro and verse share a few sounds) which will result in the balance of the intro being messed up.

How do I adjust the volume between the verse and chorus without completing screwing up the balance of my intro? If that was unclear then let me rephrase the question. How do I deal with unwanted dynamics between song sections? Better yet... how can I prevent this from happening in the future?

How do you guys generally equalize your lead layers? Do you keep your layers within the same frequency range or do you equalize them so that the layers exist in separate frequency ranges?