Sunday, September 06, 2009

Tutorial - How To Produce A Deep House Track

I mostly listen to Deep House music every time I work intensively with graphics, cuz I try to avoid being sidetracked. Why? Let me explain. If I listen to any "real music" or let's say anything that has a complete composition including lyrics and all that jazz, there's the danger of me getting side-tracked because:
  • I might sing-along, if I know the song, but then I have to recall the lyrics (how did it go again? hmm)
  • I might start to think about the meaning or message of the song, especially if the lyrics are deep or intellectual
  • It might remind me of something pleasant or unpleasant (later is of course worse)
  • I might start recognizing certain chords, samples, loops I already heard before. Then I'd start to find out, from which original track the stolen tune was
  • I might start analyzing how they did the arrangement, well I tend to separate each instrument when I listen to a track

Those are just some of the reasons, why I prefer to listen to Deep House music, when I'm working on something and need to concentrate.

Deep House or house music in general are monotone. If you're not familiar with it, you will first get the impression that the same beat and loop sample is playing for more than half an hour. But the fact is, it's probably only 20min. or less. But anyway, while listening to Deep House for hours, working on stuff, I notice that they mostly consist of the same pattern.

So I had the idea of writing a tutorial on how to produce a Deep House track. This is going to be useful, especially for "producers" out there, who got all the tight ass, expensive gear and studio equipments, but unfortunately couldn't produce a decent track, due to lack of creativity and talent.

Here's how you do it step by step:
  • Open your DAW, whatever you're using.
  • Open a new template - rename it to whatever name you want
  • Set your BPM to 120
  • Find a cool bassline, a deep one. Better with a moog or something similar. Attention - the chords need to be the same ones used for the rhodes (see rhodes)!
  • Loop it for a duration of 5min. (that's the length of your track)
  • Find a complete drum beat that fits well, if you can't find anything, then you need to create it yourself. But I guess you wouldn't want to do that, since that would require some skills, that you don't have (or you wouldn't be wasting your time reading this). Loop it for 5min.
  • Now this is where the "deep" in house comes in (Warning - teeny bitty skills required!) - open your rhodes instrument and choose the sound you want. Play a random set of 4 chords. Let's say C-D-G-F or something like that. But you need to play it like C and D and G G G F or C C C D G and F or whatever fits your mood. Loop it for 5 min.
  • Time for some vocals - this you can do by yourself. Say a meaningless sentence like, "Get your ass on the dance floor", or "Time to get down everybody" or just talk about what you did the whole day, like you went to the store to get some groceries etc.
Now if you can speak other languages like French or Spanish, it would even sound more meaningful. Remember to speak in a low and sexy voice (no mickey mouse sound alike!). If you are more sophisticated when it comes to lyrics, you can also say something deeper or anything that would give the impression, that it's intellectual like "trees are dying what's goin' on with this world?" or "I don't see people on the dancefloor, what's the sense of life?".

Warning! Avoid being too meaningful with your words or see above regarding me being sidetracked. Other variation for more advanced no-skill "producers" (see below). Remember that people don't wan't to think, when they listen to house in general, especially if they took, snorted or smoked something. Loop it for 5 min.
  • Wow, your track is almost done! But we need to make it a bit more interesting. Throw in some ahhs und oohs or any random human sound (Please no burps or farts! That's very uncool! And if you still use them, apply lots of filters and effects so no one would recognize!) every 16 bars, to spice it up. You can also apply some filters or effects on some of your vocals for the break part, to give it a variety.
  • For the break part, just turn off the drum beat for 8 bars and add more filters and effects to your vocals. Attention - avoid the break to be more "bridge part" alike (like using a different set of chords) or there's danger in losing monotony!
  • You're basically done with your track. Control all output levels and eliminate clippings. Tweak and fine tune your sound if necessary. Use presets, if you have no idea how to mix the sound. Bounce or convert your finished track to a wav or mp3 file. Congratulations!
You can also apply the same method for regular House tracks, just replace the rhodes (it's what defines the "deep" in deep house) with any random instrument. Common instruments used for regular house tracks are anything that sounds synthetic.

For advanced no-skill tune makers:
  • If non-sense talking for the vocals is too ordinary for you, you can replace it with non-sense singing instead. Now if you can't do the job yourself, you need to hire a singer for that. It doesn't really matter if the singer can sing (as heard by many examples, with lots of them singing off-key), you can also use "Auto-Tune" if necessary. You can also combine non-sense talking with non-sense singing.
  • Another possibility is to hire a piano bar dude, to play any random free-style wank tunes (like ad-libing for half an hour) on the whole track. This will give it an even more jazzy feel to it. Same applies for saxophone (hire the dude playing at the street corner etc.). You can also combine this with non-sense talking or random human sounds. Warning -- combining this with non-sense singing will not work, since it might result to heavy ear strain and vomit attack!
  • Don't loop them continuously.
If the above tutorial is still too difficult for you, purchase a contruction kit instead and just create your tune out of the contruction kit.

Enjoy and I wish you a lot of success and lots of record sales. Don't forget to give me 70% out of net revenue!

Disclaimer:
The above tutorial was written with pure sarcasm and should be understood by people with a certain degree of sense of humor. If you felt offended in any way when reading this tutorial -- go sell all your equipments dude, you're totally hopeless!!


8 comments:

Daviid Tølløse said...

Having a laugh! thx for this great tutorial dude... finally i can produce deep house to mi local club ;) really interesting

Can'Tell said...

Have fun producing! And don't forget to send me 50% of your revenue per wire transfer, once you start selling your deep house track. Oh btw, I iz female and not dude. Rock on!

chris said...

very usefull...
but im still stuck in the rhodes thing :P

Anonymous said...

when you say "sarcastic" i'm not sure even you know what you mean.

CanTell Mizser said...

LOL umm yeah... I don't know if you know what you believe to know. You know?

Anonymous said...

I'm a deep house producer and i find this post offensive

Anonymous said...

What you said won't help any one improve their skill....its not even basic stuff.

Anonymous said...

Who are you