When playing something like a straight eighth-note groove where every note needs to be pretty much on the beat you only have two things to play with to make it sound musically appealing. The distance, or silence, between the notes are affected by two things: the length and the position of each note. Silence is essential when it comes to creating a compelling groove. Muting a few selected sounds for a half bar or so before shifting into a new section with higher intensity is a great way to give extra power to the first downbeat of a chorus. And unless you’re a master at complex arrangements, deleting sounds instead of adding more for contrast is a smart way to create a tight sounding production that lends itself to fun and creative mixing instead of pulling your hair out just to keep all the elements from clashing. Once you have a complete arrangement, deleting sounds in different sections of the song is a great way to create that all-important contrast that keeps the listener interested all the way to the end of the song. Making the low end tight and powerful is also a lot easier when you leave some gaps both frequency-wise and on the timeline. Getting the mix to breathe and fixing frequencies that mask each other can be done by merely muting or deleting certain elements.Īsk yourself: Can I get rid of something and still keep the overall feel and sound? Could this particular note play every other sixteenth note or every other beat instead of every beat? The groove can be more clear and compelling when you get rid of some clutter. Sometimes we’re better off putting on the arranger’s hat and reaching for the mute button. The Big PictureĪs producers or mixers, we often reach for EQ or compression to fix frequency clashes or to give something more presence and stand out against other instruments. If you look at a morning show or a sitcom on television you’re probably not going to think about how they work with shadows and light, but watch a movie like David Lynch’s Eraserhead or some artsy photography and you’ll suddenly be aware of what the creative use of shadows can accomplish. Let’s take film and photography as an analogy the camera creates an image through light and the absence of light (shadow). Silence, of course, is what’s left where we don’t add any sounds, but thinking about silence as its own entity gives you the power to use it creatively in your work. Silence is not something that usually comes to mind. When we think about creating music we tend to think about the sounds we want to add.
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