Exercises

Here are the practical exercises from each chapter of the book to help consolidate what you have been learning:

01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12

01 Production Analysis

Exercise: Genre challenge

Draw up a list of genres that you don’t already produce and select some at random to create sketches or tracks.

Resources: DAW, samples, synths, samplers, effects

Begin by writing down a list of music genres that are familiar enough for you to understand its overall aesthetic, tropes and production conventions. Pick one or more at random and try to produce a convincing and authentic rendition as a sketch or full track. It might help to keep your genres at the top-level (hip-hop, techno, dubstep etc) without dipping too far into splintered sub-genres (west coast, melodic techno, brostep etc). Think about the tempo and instrumentation used, any mix or sound design traits as well as the use of melody and harmony – or the absence thereof.

Extension: Replication of a track, style or genre is always a revealing process but see if you can go further by smooshing together multiple genres and derivatives into an imagined new hybrid form. What does tropical shoegaze sound like?

Exercise: Essence of an era

Try to recreate the production sound associated with a certain era, producer or label.

Resources: DAW, audio material, effects

Explore how you can attain the hallmark production sound of a bygone era, a famed producer or production house. Try to achieve a similar tone and feel in music arranged in your favoured DAW. You can visit one of the online archives of multitracks to find band recordings to practice with if that makes more musical sense. Do some research and consider the equipment (and fidelity) inherent to the era you’ve chosen:

The recording medium used and whether it gives the audio capture any frequency alteration or dynamic suppression
The types of microphones in common use at the time, whether they have any particular tonal response
The types of amps, effects and other outboard gear that might have been used in the original studio
How the tracks you’re examining are mixed – observe the levels, tonal balance and use of space

Extension: You might not achieve a close match with the original, as a lot of this will be down to the composition of the music too, but once you have mimicked much of the original sound try to put your own twist on it. Explore how producers can take inspiration from the past whilst splicing in their own unique sonic character.

02 Workflow

Exercise: Working within constraints

Challenge your creativity by producing a sketch or track within a set of defined parameters or boundaries.

Resources: DAW, synths, samples

Having an unlimited amount of track counts, plugins and different methods for producing music can become overwhelming. We might also stick to what we know best and fail to explore new ways of doing things.

The history of dance music is peppered with artists who found that constraints – in their hardware (maybe budgetary) or gaps in their knowledge (prior to the advent of YouTube) –were creatively very beneficial. It’s something that we can use to force our hand and challenge our music production brain.

Make a short piece of audio/music in your favoured DAW that employs one or more of the following constraints:

Working in an unusual time signature
A radically different tempo to what you usually use
Deriving everything from just one audio sample (or a small set of random sounds)
Using only one type of instrument or synthesis type for all sounds
Use drastically different instruments and sounds to the typical genre conventions
Try to compose free of your notions of genre or working to a grid

Extension: You might challenge yourself further by working in an unfamiliar DAW, either as its own constraint or in tandem with one of the above suggestions.

Exercise: Production carousel

A group activity where two or more people add musical elements to each other’s projects in rotation.

Resources: DAW, samples, synths, samplers, effects

This exercise can break you out of familiar patterns of production and help you to explore collaborative music making. It can work with two people but gets more interesting with four or more. Each producer needs their own workstation and headphones and they should:

Create a new project, set the tempo and time signature and create the first element
Then move to the left, taking their headphones with them and create a new musical part in the next person’s project
Continue this process, rotating until the composition process feels complete (or total chaos reigns)
The original producer should now return to their own computer and refine the contents into a workable arrangement
Everyone should share the results to the group

Extension: The above version is as much about listening and responding to what’s already on the page, leaving space for more elements to breathe whilst making your own creative contribution. Beyond the first element laid down by each producer, there is little to guide the productions stylistically. You could instead try an alternative where the first producer also gets to supply a creative brief or notes on the intended style.

03 MIDI Composition

Exercise: Generative music

Try your hand at creating a piece of music that dynamically evolves over time without ever precisely repeating itself.

Resources: DAW, MIDI effects, sequencers, instruments

Generative music can stem from various approaches and be fashioned using whatever tools you have to hand:

A combination of MIDI effects (note/velocity randomisers, arpeggiators and scale quantisers to keep things in key)
Use of probability and randomisation to change a sequence (either from a step sequencer, MIDI editing function in certain DAWs or with further use of MIDI effects)
Sequences of different lengths that don’t precisely align (asynchronous loops and use of polymeter)
Different phasing and loop lengths can also be achieved with different modulation cycles on audio effects – using Hz instead of beat divisions on filter or gain LFO modulation

If you have a proclivity for more abrasive and punchy sounds, then perhaps take a leaf out of the book of most generative music and make the results less jarring by using a slower tempo and soft or ambient sounds in your composition.

Extension: You can embellish the results with effects treatments and asynchronous feedback loops to consolidate a more ethereal and spatial feel.

Exercise: Rhythm as melody

Write a part, sketch or track where the rhythm programming also works as melody.

Resources: DAW, percussion sounds, sampler, tuner

Techno and jungle music have separate takes on a crossover between rhythm and melody. Create something of your own choosing where the rhythmic programming also serves as melodic material. You might first tune your percussion sounds into a musical key in the sampler with the help of the tuner device that most DAWs have.

Extension: New pitched tones can emerge with extremely short loop lengths in a sampler (the essence of granular synthesis) as the loop cycle reaches audio rates. Although this can be unpredictable, try tuning these by ear to use in the exercise instead.

04 Synthesis

Exercise: Expressive synth patching

Use standard MIDI or MPE to create a synth patch from scratch that responds dynamically to nuance from a physical controller.

Resources: DAW, keyboard or other MIDI/MPE controller, synths/samplers

Using an instrument with a capable modulation matrix, create a new synth patch from an initialise preset that reacts to varying incoming MIDI messages such as note pitch, velocity and aftertouch. Some common starting points:

Opening a filter or increasing resonance with key tracking
Velocity assigned to filter cutoff, wavetable position, sample start point
Aftertouch assigned to amp volume (for tremolo), pitch (vibrato) or filter cutoff

Extension: If you have an MPE controller you can also look at polyphonic aftertouch, slide (forwards and backwards) and per note pitch glide (side to side). Slide could be used for effects sends, filter resonance or LFO rate.

Exercise: Synth sound recreation

Listen carefully to a sound or set of synth sounds and write notes on how you think they were produced before trying to recreate them yourself.

Resources: DAW, sounds, synths, effects

There is a lot to learn from analysing and deconstructing sounds and presets, with even more value in trying to recreate them from scratch. You can find an example set of sounds on the companion website in the exercises section. Whilst writing your notes you might try and identify:

The type of synthesis and the waveform used
If there is a use of a filter and the type, slope or resonance setting
Is there any effect processing, what effects are they and is it serial or parallel processing?
Has modulation or automation been applied to make the patch move?

After you have written your analysis, try to recreate some of the sounds in your DAW. Write down some further thoughts about the shortcomings of your experiments and how much of the target sound could be down to the specific instruments and effects used by the original producer.

Extension: As your knowledge grows you might try to recreate more challenging sounds in a similar manner by examining digital synthesis methods or sampled sounds.

05 Digital Audio

Exercise: Sound transformation 1

Select two sounds from your collection and try to morph one into the other using editing, automation, clip settings and envelopes.

Resources: DAW, samples

First analyse and write down the properties of both sounds and consider what transformation and shaping might be needed to get the first sound closer in nature to the second. Use audio editing, time stretching and pitch shifting algorithms to match the duration and pitch. Utilise any available clip/region envelopes to add changes over time. Choose sounds that will give you fighting chance of achieving your goal, this can also be a lesson in the sampling skill of sound curation.

Extension: Do as much as you can within the basic audio functions of your DAW but apply some finishing touches with effect processing.

Exercise: Creating a sample pack from resampling

Refine some chaos using audio resampling and select choice cuts for a sample pack.

Resources: DAW, source material, modulated effects, audio editor

Go crazy and run your source material through an extensive chain of audio effects that contain a lot of modulation. Although you will refine this, make sure that the resulting signal does contain some treasure amongst the trash. Render the audio for a suitable duration and then open the bounce in an external editor (Audacity/Adobe Audition/Steinberg Spectralayers) to extract one-shots for your own sample library. Refer to professional sample libraries to see how they’ve categorised and organised their files. Your sounds can be put back into a sampler to be sequenced into loops.

Extension: You can try resampling a live version that has many key parameters assigned to a controller. You can record this into a loop and have your DAW capture your performance as a set of takes. You can then comp the results into one final take or simply repeat the sound extraction editing process above.

06 Creative Audio Effects

Exercise: Sound transformation 2

Select two disparate sounds from your collection and try to morph one into the other using effects processing.

Resources: DAW, samples, effects

Before you begin you should analyse and note the properties of both sounds to form a rough strategy for how you might get the first sound close to the second. Even if the sounds aren’t derived from synthesis, it should help to think in terms of the way we broke audio in the synthesis chapter into pitch, volume and timbre and notice how these aspects change over time. You might need to use automation to shape your effect transformations and you can also try to discern whether:

Any processing is already printed onto the sound – the type of effect, digital or analogue qualities, insert or send effect routing
Their dynamic range and tonal character
The stereo spread or spatial nature of the sounds
The fidelity of them – clean and crisp or grungy and lo-fi

Extension: You could instead try to achieve much of the transformation within the capabilities of a sampler. Some more advanced devices also incorporate effects, signal routing or granular and FM processing.

Exercise: Effects as synthesis

Run a trigger sound through dense spatial effects treatments to generate an atmospheric soundscape.

Resources: DAW, effects, source material

Push your effect devices into extreme territory to create an ethereal bed of sound from a very inconsequential sound source. Use a noise burst, short sine tone or a percussive sound to excite a signal in the effects. Most reverb plugins will allow for some very long decay time (or even have a freeze button) that can be further elongated with the use of delay and further devices in the chain. Once constructed, note any differences in the results when you swop out the source exciter.

Extension: Include hardware effects as part of your chain, using your DAW’s I/O devices to incorporate them as an insert or send effect amidst your in-the-box processing. For guitar pedals you may need to use a reamp device to bring the line level signal from your audio interface down to the expected instrument level (and some form of DI to bring them back to line level for DAW re-entry).

07 Noise and Texture

Exercise: Noise as music

Use recorded noises as the source for rhythmic material and textures.

Resources: DAW, field recordings and found sound, samplers

Record, or otherwise source, non-musical sounds and SFX and repurpose them as musical elements in a beat, sketch or track. Think like a Foley artist and be imaginative with how objects and actions can become rhythmic or textural material:

Household items can work well for percussion: kitchen tools, dry foods, boxes/pots/jars
Semi-tonal sounds can make nice pads when looped in a sampler: fridges, ovens, boilers, fans

The sounds can be placed and manipulated on a DAW timeline or a sampler could be used either for tuning, shaping and triggering one-shots for rhythm programming or for crossfade looping of sustaining parts to make playable melodic patches.

Extension: You can use extreme time stretching techniques, combined with the looping of sounds in a sampler, to create pad sounds from any shorter source material.

Exercise: Send and return feedback loops

Use your DAWs audio routing capabilities to create self-sustaining feedback loops.

Resources: DAW, effects, source material

Create a bed of texture through the use and control of feedback. The simplest form would be to send a return track back into itself, but great results can be yielded by also sending different return tracks into each other (and back) to create a further loop. This can follow on from the ‘effects as synthesis’ exercise and serve as a precursor to the dub mixing techniques chapter. Be sure to place a limiter on your master bus for safety against escalating volume levels. Soft clipping functions in compressors, saturators and clipper devices will add more analogue-style limiting if preferred.Extension: Use keys/pads to trigger your source material and assign a bunch of physical controls to parameters such as the feedback and return levels to build a playable feedback instrument. Record a short performance with your instrument and use it as the basis for a new track idea.

08 Creative Dynamics

Exercise: In stark contrast

Use silence and contrast to create a compelling narrative arc and build tension across the duration of a track.

Resources: DAW, existing project or sketch, automation, effects

Create a dynamic track arrangement that explores contrast and use of space or silence with both arrangement choices and dynamic automation.

Prior to commencing, draw an ‘energy map’ similar to Figure 8.2 to plan key moments of tension and release
Implement contrast through use of automation techniques on parameters such as volume, filter cutoff (for timbral evolution), spatial depth changes (send levels, dry/wet balance) and stereo positioning
Include moments of silence and have at least one point where the energy significantly shifts up or down a gear

Extension: Add an effects chain with extreme dynamics processing (OTT-style heavy compression and/or distortion) in parallel and automate the blend between this chain and your original mix to create transitions.

Exercise: Dynamic interplay

Create interaction between multiple elements using advanced sidechaining and envelope followers.

Resources: DAW, source material, effects, modulation devices

Set up at least three distinct sonic elements: a percussive/rhythmic source, a sustained harmonic element and a textural layer. Use sidechain techniques and MIDI routing, as well as envelope followers or other modulation tools, to create complex interplay between each element:

Setup filters and dynamics effects on these sources as well as vocoders, resonators and anything that can be tuned by incoming MIDI
Try applying the modulation to filter settings, volume gain, send levels or effect amounts
Tweak envelope settings to refine the shape and movement and use automation to vary the extent of the relationships over time
Consider whether you are using the amplitude or frequency aspect of one sound to affect another

Extension: Combine multiple elements into a bus before using its composite output as a control signal. Try applying several modulations in tandem to a single musical element for maximum groove and create silent ‘ghost’ parts as modulation sources if necessary.

09 Vocal Techniques

Exercise: Classic vocoder sounds

Construct a classic robot voice and then try out different modulator and carrier sounds.

Resources: DAW, vocoder effect, vocal samples, synths

Although clichéd, it’s often good practice to achieve a classic sound before putting your own spin on things. Combine sung vocals or speech with the bright and simple waveforms used in subtractive synthesis to recreate the ‘talking robot’ vocoder effect. Variations on the theme can come in the form of different modulator and carrier signals. Drums work well in place of a vocal modulator, providing a further take on the rhythm as melody exercise.

Create or load a bright synth patch sound (saw/pulse-width in a subtractive synth are good starting points) as your carrier signal
Ensure that this sound is continuous and doesn’t contain any of its own rhythm (raise the sustain of an amp envelope to maximum)
Bring in a vocal audio part or live signal from a microphone as the modulator signal that will give shape to the carrier
You can EQ and compress the vocal before it hits the vocoder for an improved sound

How to setup the audio sidechain signal can vary, as sometimes the vocoder is placed on the carrier and in other DAWs it’s on the modulator. If your DAW does not have a vocoder device you can try the free plugin TAL-Vocoder.

Extension: Try achieving a similar form of cross-synthesis using other techniques such as resonant filter banks or spectral morphing. You can utilise envelope follower modulation devices if your DAW has access to this function.

Exercise: Just my voice

Create a track entirely composed of sound originating from recordings of your voice.

Resources: DAW, microphone, audio interface, sampler

The human voice is the most powerful and expressive instrument of them all. Regardless of whether you consider yourself a vocalist you will be able to emit a vast array of different sounds and noises. These can be captured with a microphone and edited into a sound library derived just from your voice. Use clip editing, audio manipulation and some form of sampler instrument to construct a track built entirely from these sounds. Use this limitation to challenge your sound design skills and refer to previous exercises and chapter content related to synthesis to help you forge percussion sounds, looping pads, leads and SFX.Extension: Make a further library of voice originating sounds which are processed with effects during the performance – using a vocoder, harmoniser or autotune. Practice adapting and shaping your vocal delivery with the effects being monitored in your headphones. Try to meld and work in accord with the processing, using a vocal technique specific to that tool.

10 Temporal Processing

Exercise: Extracting the artifacts

Stretch audio files to an extreme degree to intentionally produce useful artifacts.

Resources: DAW, samples, samplers

Use your curational sampling prowess to select some disparate sounds that contain good tone and strong sonic potential. A set of sounds known to produce interesting artifacts can be found on the companion website. To get a feel for the limits of the algorithms that we want to breach:

Use the stretching and clip settings in your DAW to stretch sounds to at least four times their original duration
Switch between the different available stretching algorithms and note the different artifacts and textures that they produce
Resample the stretched sounds back to fix the results into a new piece of audio

Extension: Try resampling an extreme stretch using one algorithm so that you can run the rendered result through another process using a different algorithm eg. A smooth stretch followed by a slicing stretch. You can also try a similar process in a granular synth or a sampler that has time stretching modes. Try reducing the playback rate to zero and see if you can still sculpt the frozen tone into something useful.

Exercise: Slicing tracks and textures

Apply slicing and dicing techniques to less conventional material.

Resources: DAW, full tracks, samples

Apply some of the MPC sample slicing techniques developed by Pete Rock and J Dilla to chop and resequence material beyond the normal choice of beats and percussion. Try your hand at slicing up pads, noise material or taking fragments from a full piece of music. To help bind the results together cohesively you can experiment with:

Using the percussive/slicing time stretching algorithms in your DAW, applying a gate effect or shaping of the slice amplitude envelope to make textural material more percussive
Conversely, apply reverb to smooth over the cracks from your resequencing

Extension: Use randomisation or grain jitter/scatter techniques in samplers and granular synths to make the material into a set of wholly unrecognisable fragments.

11 Spectral Processing

Exercise: Spectral editing

Use an audio editor or plugins with spectrogram editing capabilities to visually edit and shape your source material.

Resources: DAW or audio editor, spectral effects or instruments

Load suitable sounds into a capable audio editor (Audacity, Izotope RX or Steinberg Spectralayers). Being sure to switch to the spectrogram view and use the visual editing tools it provides to perform precise edits in the spectral domain. Initial tasks could be a simple noise reduction, but you can also try to attenuate harmonics and core tenets of the sound for more experimental results. A set of noisy samples can be found on the companion website.

Extension: You can use other forms of spectral processing prior to this editing for the full gamut of spectral potential. Try using a stem separation tool to isolate the drums, bass instruments or vocals from a full track and then using visual editing to clean up any leftover traces or artifacts from the separation process.

Exercise: Spectral sound design sample pack

Resample the output of spectral instruments and effects to compile a library of one-shot sounds.

Resources: DAW, spectral effects or instruments, audio editor

Tinker with spectral processing in a DAW to perform radical transformations of your source material. Mac users have access to the free Michael Norris’ Soundmagic Spectral plugin suite. Live users have the Spectral Resonator and Spectral time effects and some popular Max for Live devices. Logic users have the in-house Alchemy and Sample Alchemy instruments set to spectral mode. Everyone has access to the wonderful PaulXStretch or SPEAR. Try and process a variety of different input material and set up some form of resampling to catch any happy accidents as you experiment. Edit out a library of one-shots or loops from the resampled audio files.Extension: Take your edited samples and create melodic instruments with the help of a sampler and a tuner device. For bonus points you can use this instrument as the carrier signal for a vocoder experiment.

12 Dub Mixing Techniques

Exercise Part 1: Make space

Strip down an existing arrangement or sketch to prepare for a dub mix.

Resources: DAW, finished project or sketch

Dub is all about a creative use of space, so we need to make sure there’s plenty of it in our arrangement before we remix it:

Mute, delete or simplify parts to make it less repetitive
Strip down the amount of channels by bounce some to stems or grouping to a bus
Push the rhythm section to the fore – add some weight to the bass end, strip back the percussion

Don’t worry about leaving gaps in the flow as we will fill those with effects in the next stage.

Extension: Grab some stems or multitracks and try using this as general-purpose remix technique. Edit subtractively to reduce the original down to the raw essence that you’ve chosen to keep. Then build the composition back up again with new material and different programming, tempo and mix.

Exercise Part 2: Fill the space

Use a lavish amount of effect processing to fill the gaps created in your dub remix arrangement.

Resources: DAW, finished project or sketch, effects

Now we want to plug those gaps with some spatial effects. Use something dense and captivating regardless of whether you want to go for dub authenticity or something more unique:

Set up a bank of auxiliary returns (as well as insert effects on specific channels)
Send your source material to varying extents into the effects buses and tweak until you get the right feel and balance in the mix (compression and gating can help to tame things and sound more polished)
Retro-sounding and thick reverbs like plate and spring devices (or presets) work well, as do tape delays and phasers
If you aren’t getting enough mileage from these effects: saturate them, find the feedback parameter or feedback the aux channel(s) itself

Extension: Try other effects too, you don’t have to stick with the original sound palette and it’s a great way of experimenting with sound design. You could try some of our granular and spectral techniques or implement some form of cross-synthesis, glitch and creative dynamics.

Exercise Part 3: Perform a live dub mix

Map a controller and record the audio and/or automation from a live dub mix performance.

Resources: DAW, finished project or sketch, effects, controller or control surface

Now comes the time to perform the actual dub mix as a single or set of takes. This should ideally be a tangible and expressive process with a good number of physical controls, but it could be split into several passes if you don’t feel up to the task of performance:

Set up the controller in your DAW, enabling any mapping ability
Map/learn the most important parameters of your mixer and effects to the physical controls – mixer faders, feedback levels, filtering, send levels, any macro controls
You might want to set the range of your controls, so that the movements don’t upset the mix balance too much (or produce painful feedback levels)
Once you have assembled your dub ‘instrument’ build up a bit of basic muscle memory and practice using it
When you’re ready, activate automation recording in your DAW and record some takes to create your live dub remix

Extension: Use this work as the basis for building a system for jamming out ideas in the studio or even working towards a full blown liveset. Development of a live performance project or persona can run in parallel alongside your production work. It’s also a great way to explore a more ephemeral form of music making, where you can dwell in the fun composition stage and create music in real-time whilst in a state of flow.