Will Darling – Becoming a Music Making Machine

Will Darling provides us with his powerful techniques for writing and finishing music. He is a Grammy shortlisted producer, mixing & mastering engineer, coach, speaker and founder of ‘EDM Tips’. In this course he talks about finishing more music than ever before, improving in the quickest way and developing your own signature sound.

What You’ll Learn In Becoming a Music Making Machine

1. Introduction

Producer, mixing mastering engineer, coach and speaker. Wills goal today is by the end of this session you’re going to know some of the most powerful techniques hes picked up and honed over the years to:

• Finish more music than ever before
• Improve in the quickest way
• Develop your own signature sound
• Mix quickly and effectively

2. Producer Mindsets

• You are a music producer, stop wanting to be it. Internalise it. Be it.
• Be a student of music – listen to different types of music, but focus on one.
• Always keep learning
• Accept today responsibility – no excuses
• Act.. despite how you feel
• Be a finisher, not a dabbler
• Be persistent and consistent
• Make decisions fast
• Don’t reinvent the wheel
• Use sample banks and presets
• You don’t fail. You learn
• Be bold, be humble, give value

3. Recommended Kit

• Computer – As powerful as you can afford
• DAW – All do the same thing
• Decent paid of headphones and/or monitors
• Optional: Audio Interface
• Plugins
• Decent 3rd party synth – Serum, Spire, Sylenth1
• Decent saturator: Soundtoys Decapitator, Fabfilter Saturn2 , Sonnox Inflator, House of Kush Omega
• Decent Limiter: Fab Filter Pro L2 or iZotope Ozone
• Optional: Decent Reverb: Valhalla Room

4. How to Produce Prolifically

Split into 3 main stages:

1. Music production – creativity, songwriting, sound design, arrangement\
2. Mixing – Focus on making the song sound great by balancing the dynamics, frequencies and stereo image of the separate tracks
3. Mastering – Focus on polishing an already great track and increasing the loudness

Flow – Is your hallowed state, this is where you want to be.

Create your time blocks for your production time.

Create inspirational playlists:

• They are a perfect inspiration if you get writers block
• Combining 2 different sounds for originality

5. The importance of referencing

• Referencing is one of the most important skills you can learn in music production
• Not using a reference track is like trying to navigate with no map.
• Recreate sounds to learn techniques, reverse engineer
• Inspiration – arrangement and sound design

6. Sound Selection over Sound Design

Sound selection is vital to your process, it beats sound design and when you have selected sounds that work well together, your workflow becomes easier.

7. Music Theory Hacks

• Music theory is a force multiplier skill to learn. It’s not rocket science, but a few hours learning it will put you leagues ahead.
• You can also hack music theory, using MIDI banks like Unison or Niko’s MIDI packs
• Use Hook Theory
• Google tracks in other genres, use the chords and put them in your own track

Create a favourites folder:

• Favourite tracks
• Favorite samples
• Favourite effect chains

8. Using Splice & LoopCloud

The ultimate home for samples, presets and MIDI files. Splice & Loopcloud are 2 of the biggest sample stores out there.

9. Arrangement

Getting your loop into a full track.

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