How to get the right sound for your songs

Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to share with you all how to get the sound that you’re craving for in your songs. 

From Hip-hop to rock, here is a guide that will tell you how to get that right sound. 

Let’s get started. 

Listen to the music that you want to sound like

So what happens is that there are little and minute sound that really define a producer and sometimes a genre. 

Sometimes there are big changes between songs. 

Like say for example with a Hip-hop track, you really know it by heavy use of synthesizers and heavy bass and snap and clap snare patterns. 

And you can characterize rock music by distorted guitars and acoustic drums. 

So let’s talk about a few of these genres and how to get that sound that you want in your productions. 

Rock 

So rock is exactly that, distorted or acoustic guitars played with a slow bass line and a simple drum pattern over 4/4.

Most drum patterns that you’re going to play for most of the genres that you want are going to be played in 4/4 anyways, but it’s very common in rock. 

The ideal tempo of a pop song (In this instance pop here refers to any song in mainstream radio) is often between 80 and 120 bpms.

The reason for this is because at these bpms, the music is easily digestible and understandable, any faster and it feels like it overwhelms the audience, and any slower and it puts the audience to sleep. 

Not to say that you can’t go any slower or that there haven’t been songs that have gone slower, 

It’s just that, that’s the ideal bpm of a song in mainstream circulation. 

The vocals are the tricky part because depending on how heavy you want the song to sound, you will introduce different singing techniques. 

You will introduce screaming or yelling in some of your songs, in other songs you will introduce clean vocals. 

Clean vocals are when you just sing it regularly. So it just depends on what you’re going after. 

Hip-hop

Hip-hop is very dark compared to rock. 

Rock can be dark, but in pop radio, you want an inspirationally dark tone with the chords and with the melodies. 

In some forms of rock it really emphasizes the dark tonalities of music, but with Hip-hop it’s almost always in the minor key. 

Like rock, Hip-hop is usually centered around 4/4. But I find that Hip-hop uses more polyrhythms than it’s rock counterpart. 

That’s just me for instance, Like I think that the music I listen to uses a lot more polyrhythms in hip=hop and mainstream pop than rock. 

So you would be surprised as to how many hip-hop songs use triplets in their drum grooves which is a ¾ rhythm. 

Remember that Hip-hop uses heavy synthesizers to create their drums and their bass drum is sometimes the part of the song that is emphasized. 

Not to say that hip-hop can’t be happy, because I most certainly heard Hip-hop songs that were happy.

But it’s just more dark than usual. 

Country and blues

Country and blues is and interesting subject to talk about. 

Because they apply some of the same aspects as rock except they use different chords. 

In country and blues, you use 7 chords more often than other genres. In other genres, you might use suspended chords and add9s and add13s, but in blues and country, you use a lot of 7 chords to try and create dissonance. 

Overall, just listen and recreate the songs that you want to sound like

So what happens is that if you want to sound like your favorite artists, then just recreate your favorite songs by those famous artists however you can. 

Whether that’s through your DAW or through your guitar or voice, recreate it and you will become the music producer that you want to become. 

Broadcast

I sure hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please remember to pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. Like, comment, share, subscribe, and I will see you all next time. 

If you want to go to heaven, then believe in Jesus and you will go to heaven. (John 3:16)

Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. 

German Gonzalez, signing out!