Hi everyone, I've been playing with music for around a year, but never really tried to make any EDM, and didn't get a proper DAW until roughly a week ago. So I sat down, excited to jump in and create something. I got half a track down that I was pretty happy with. But then I started to listen to it over and over and I realized I didn't really like the sounds I chose to use. It sorta sounded like any song from Monstercat
One thing I noticed about a lot of my favorite EDM tracks is that, in one way or another, they use unique sounds. I'll list some examples:
Martin Garrix:
WIEE
In this song one of the melodies during the buildup sounds like a sample of someone whistling, and I don't even know what the lead during the drop is but it sounds unique and I love it (drop is at 1:00)
Chinatown
This track uses the sound of an eastern instrument (forgive me but I'm not familiar with what it's called) in a couple spots during the song (0:33)
Madeon:
Pay No Mind
This track utilizes some kind of funk guitar as opposed to a more traditional sound playing basic chords (right at the start)
Tritonal:
I Feel the Love
This one is by far my favorite. To me at least, everything sounds unique. The kick sounds heavy and almost like tropical, I have a hard time even distinguishing what it is that makes this song sound so different (so if anyone can help me there I'd appreciate it lol) but it just doesn't really sound like anything else I've heard (drop is at 1:12, but I'm talking about everything up until there as well)
So, on to my question. I'm not asking about how to make all of these sounds (I assume sound design is a skill that one just gets better at with time and practice?). My question is, how do these artists think to use these sounds? What is it that makes one decide "I'm going to use this (seemingly) completely random spontaneous sound that not a lot of people have thought to use before"?
I could see the argument for some of them being the result of just fucking around with some synthesizers, as I've gotten one or two sounds that I liked using this very method, but others seem like they must have been deliberate (particularly Chinatown and Pay No Mind). Is there a thought process that I'm missing here? Or is this too just a result of practice and experience?
Thanks everyone, sorry if this post was covered somewhere that I missed! I couldn't find a topic about exactly this
Submitted May 01, 2017 at 06:39PM by BopIdol https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/68oyde/whats_the_thought_process_behind_creatingusing/?utm_source=ifttt