danielmapar/ArminVanBuurenMasterClass

Armin Van Buuren Master Class on EDM production: https://www.masterclass.com/classes/armin-van-buuren-teaches-dance-music

Armin Van Buuren Master Class on EDM

Chapter 2

• Listen for chores that move you

  • Take a song you love, break it down, and find new uses for its basic parts. Armin demonstrates how a portion of Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” can be broken down into two simple chords. These chords can be played different ways and can inspire new chord progressions and melodies.

• While Armin believes it is helpful to have a basic understanding of music theory, he suggests you experiment with chords that are musically incorrect. Something about unconventional sounds could inspire you. Play with wrong-sounding chords—record them, reverse them, add effects—until you find something that sounds right to you.

• Grab an exciting a cappella (sung by a group of people without any musical instruments) track and try to write new chords, melodies, and rhythm tracks that fit around it.

• Scroll through your DAW’s (Digital Audio Workstation) library of loops and presets and try out different sonic combinations until something strikes your ear as interesting.

• Sing your way to catchy hooks

  • Singing the melody

Chapter 3

• Spend time thinking about the acoustics of the room where you’re making your music. Armin demonstrates how you can use a sine wave to test which frequencies are louder or quieter in your workspace

• Try to work in a sweet spot where the sound is relatively even across the frequency spectrum and watch out for areas that cancel out your bass

  • Blankets can help you with higher frequencies, but usually the bass will be your issue, and the bass is incredibly important in dance music.

• Hardware

  • MIDI Keyboard

• Software Synths:

  • Serum
  • Massive
  • Sylenth1
  • Omnisphere 2
  • Nexus 2
  • Kontakt 5
  • Vengeance Producer Suite

• Effects and Processing:

  • iZotope Ozone 8
  • FabFilter Saturn
  • FabFilter Pro-Q 2
  • FabFilter Pro-MB
  • LFOTool
  • ValhallaRoom
  • ArtsAcoustic Reverb
  • Dimension Expander
  • Kick 2
  • Bark of Dog
  • H-Delay
  • L1 Limiter
  • Little Labs Voice of God
  • Noveltech Character
  • G Bus Compressor
  • Invisible Limiter
  • The Glue
  • VSC-2 Compressor
  • Antares Auto-Tune Realtime

• Software

  • Ableton
  • Logic Pro X

• Sample websites

  • https://splice.com/home
  • https://www.beatport.com/

• Synthesizers

  • Is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers generate audio through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis, and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be shaped and modulated by components such as filters, envelopes, and low-frequency oscillators. Synthesizers are typically sequenced, controlled by software or instruments via MIDI, or played with keyboards or other controllers.

• You don’t see it on camera, but another crucial part of Armin’s studio setup is his DAC, or digital-to-analog converter. This piece of hardware converts analog audio signal to digital information and vice versa, so he can transfer hi-res audio in and out of his computer over USB. Armin’s DAC of choice is the Apollo Twin.

• Armin recommends using Beatport.com and Splice.com for building your sample libraries.

• Waves cancel out in a room, it bounces back on the walls (acoustics)

  • Car testing your song is important
  • Listening on stereos
  • Listening on headphones
  • Listening on your phones
  • etc..

• The studio monitors you can see above Armin’s mixing console are Yamaha NS-10s. These are popular, professional-grade speakers, which are great for producing music across almost any genre. For producing dance music in your at-home studio, more affordable options include the ROKIT series by KRK.

Chapter 4

• Armin starts every track from the same basic Logic template: a 130-beat-per-minute (BPM) arrangement with a kick drum on the quarter notes, a couple basic instruments from the ES2 synth, and an ESX24 sampler

• Sampler

  • A sampler is an electronic or digital musical instrument which uses sound recordings (or "samples") of real instrument sounds (e.g., a piano, violin or trumpet), excerpts from recorded songs (e.g., a five-second bass guitar riff from a funk song) or found sounds (e.g., sirens and ocean waves). The samples are loaded or recorded by the user or by a manufacturer.

• Armin also routes all his tracks using buses. Buses are a way of grouping tracks together in a DAW, so you can process them together all at once. Armin sends every track in his arrangement to bus 30, which then gets sent to bus 31 where he adds his final dynamic processing. Listening back and forth to bus 30 and 31 is a quick way to hear the sonic differences between his mixes before and after dynamic processing.

• Armin colors his drums red; basslines blue; pads, melodies, and leads in green; effects in yellow; and vocals in orange.

• Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner are both helpful backup utilities. Your projects are your art—they should be well protected.