Have you changed your production techniques in 2014?

[arkmabat]

Feel free to elaborate.

[thomni]

Pretty open ended question... How I produce always changes after every project. You're always learning and growing, so you're always figuring out what works better than what you've been doing.

Now HOW have I changed in 2014 so far? I feel like my synthesis has gotten much better, so I tend to be more inspired with sounds than just opening up the sequencer and hammering away.

[ouroboros]

Yes.
Less is more.
5 Instruments/sources max.
A return to songs instead of pieces.
Use compression only as a special FX, not mixing tool.

[inkwarp]

i change my 'technique' every day : (
actually i am not so worried these days about my shortcomings, technically speaking, so much as being more concerned with learning how to write melody and structure in general. after all, the song is what remains when the sound has died away ( sorry, that doesn't make much sense) : o
i totally agree to having more limitations to actually force me to finish stuff instead of spending hours pissing about with patches in the latest oh-so fashionable synth or effect.
this also means listening a lot more to music by others, something that i seem to have let lapse since trying to make my own.
currently Hissing of Summer Lawns, Plaid.. i am truly not worthy
x

[flash-trance]

I definitely have! In a lot of ways...

For one thing, my actual production techniques have changed. Different plugins for mixing, learning that having all bass and no treble is NOT necessarily a good thing, stuff like that. Really though, the best thing I've learned this year is that simplicity is sometimes the best option for a track.

After I learned to mix reasonably well, I started making complicated tracks, JUST because sometimes I thought they didn't sound/look complicated enough. I was thinking people wouldn't like it because of that, even though I would oftentimes think it sounded fine the way it was. So, I've stopped doing that. My efforts are going more towards sound design and interesting automation techniques rather than slapping layer after layer on just because it looks empty in my DAW.

The second thing I've started doing is to add little fx here and there that you don't really notice actively when listening, but which add a LOT to the track overall. This has not only enhanced my sound, but also helped with my OCD about not having enough going on on-screen, as mentioned in the previous paragraph

It's been a good year! ^_^

[Loki Fuego]

Yes. Better, bigger, phatter.

[Alias9593]

Yes.
All drums and percussions are made with unusual/experimental samples and more "in the background".
Push the effects to limits (carefully)
Using more and more granular synthesis, combined with Kontakt.

[Ranjarresh]

More and more experimental methods.
More generative elements.
Much more complex FX chains and networks.
More own samples and FX processing than depending on synthesizers.
More images sonification and spectral-level operations.

[arseniy2]

Yes very, but also keep changing right now because I found really great mixing courses. They are in russian tho. So if some russians reading this I highly recomment video courses from wikisound.org(only russian) - compression, equalisation, dimensional editing.

[Burillo]

i can think of a few things that have changed since last year.

i'm putting way less FX per track than i did. made myself familiar with at least basics of synthesis, so now i'm capable of creating marginally more diverse music (previously it was pretty much all acoustic, aside from occasional SampleTank samples). i'm also putting more effort into reverberation now (previously i just slapped a reverb on everything, but now i usually have several reverbs with similar but subtly different settings, trying to recreate the illusion of space). started to appreciate subtle bus compression and fast attack compression on tracks.

@wikisound never saw those, but i'll check them out. although to be honest i never watched/read any mixing tutorials or anything - did everything brute force from day one.

[crimsonwarlock]

For me the main change this year was (finally) doing the acoustic treatment of my small studio. It completely changed how I work now, where previously I tended to think about FX in terms of the mix, now being able to hear much more detail in each separate instrument/vocal I tend to 'optimize' the individual sound first and during mix mainly focus on EQ to get rid of problems from overlapping spectra and add (a tiny bit) reverb to glue things.

[show-off mode]

Here's my current room



[/show-off mode]

[DJ Warmonger]

Yes, I do it all the time since I'm learning.

I tried hard to implement some professional mixdown techniques, master them and invent my own, but that didn't help much.
Finally I figured out that kick drum shouldn't ever be the lowest instrument in the mix. I put it higher, highpassed it and suddenly mixed started to sound WAY better. Ahh, and all the techniques and tricks I tried before are still in power, adding to overall mix quality.

This year I purchased Push and Ableton Suite.

Push has fancy flashing keyboard, but it also has some controller options that I've been missing:
- Play FX, trigger loops and samples. To use samples, you need physical sampler - completely changes perspective.
- Drum rack. Now I can play my own loops, woohoo!
- Midi encoders. I can control a variety of parameters live, with my own hands and record them. Finally figured out how to get right acid sound.

Live Suite has a lot of things I wanted, but the biggets discoveries were the things I didn't care about. These are:
- Granulator, which is first granular synth I ever saw. Very intuitive, just works great for FX
- Corpus, which models physical resonances of an object. In particular, I use it to add "analog bass" feel to any arbitrary sound that contains low frequencies.

Also, convolution reverb is the only reverb unit I need. Realistic ambience -> quality and clarity. Built-in reverb units are nice to control perspective or create special FX, but convolution is the thing that makes it sound right.

I also approached FM synthesis and granular synthesis, but didn't have time yet to use the latter :F

[fese]

For me the main change this year was (finally) doing the acoustic treatment of my small studio. It completely changed how I work now, where previously I tended to think about FX in terms of the mix, now being able to hear much more detail in each separate instrument/vocal I tend to 'optimize' the individual sound first and during mix mainly focus on EQ to get rid of problems from overlapping spectra and add (a tiny bit) reverb to glue things.

[show-off mode]

Here's my current room
...

[/show-off mode]

[envy-mode]
Dude, I wish I had the space to even think about acoustic treatment
[/envy-mode]
But, the lava lamp, isn't that a bit too cliché?

edit: damn, did I really write "dude"???

[XorXisT]

Yes I did.

From songwriting & playing guitar to songwriting/production & sound design.

When using Live 8, it feels like an instrument so was easy to dive into.

But this year, after purchasing Sonar X3 Producer (btw, ProChannel CA-2A & PC4K was included for free ), my player mindset changed to a production mindset.

All the tools I needed to start producing was right there.

So I'm really excited!

I'm entering every mix competition I can handle, to learn more than what I learned reading pages of kvr and other forums in the internet.

I hope to dive into sound design in the near future.

[robogone]

Nope. I have played a lot more keyboards and less of other instruments, but haven't changed the way I record or mix.