Elements of Music Production
A song of any genre is generally made of the following 6 elements:
• Drum Elements
• Bass Elements
• Music Elements
• Melody Elements
• FX elements
• Vocals & Lyrics
However, it is the sounds of each of the elements of music along with the arrangement pattern of each of these elements put together that defines the genre of the song.
So choosing sounds for the project will depend on the genre of music you want to produce.
It is the harmony of these elements of music and the sound of the element that will set up the feel of the music.
Now let’s take a look at the song elements used in the EDM Music and also a typical guide to the space these elements consume in the frequency spectrum of our song.
So while mixing these elements we can give importance to these sounds in the respective regions as mentioned.
There may be some variation in the frequency range depending on the actual sound used in your project and accordingly, you may decide to alter your decisions.
1. Drum Elements
In EDM Music we can have the following drum elements:
• Kick / Bass drum: We can have a Kick / Bass drum dominating in the low frequencies around 60-80Hz and also around 3000 Hz where we have the supporting frequencies of the Kick / Bass drum sounds.
• Snare: Snares have dominating frequencies around 150 Hz and the clarity to the snares comes from around 2500-3500 Hz.
• Claps: Claps have dominating frequencies around 1000 Hz and their supporting frequencies start from 200 Hz and can go all the way up to 12000 Hz.
• Hi-hats: Hi-hats have dominating frequencies above 2000 Hz and their supporting frequencies start from around 500 Hz and can go all the way up to 18000 Hz.
• Percussion sounds – Rims, Toms, Congas, Bongos etc: Have dominating frequencies between 200-500 Hz depending on the sound and again like the snare drum their crispiness can come from the range of 2000-4000 Hz depending on the sound.
• Shakers, Rides, Crashes: Again these are hi-frequency sounds and they have dominating frequencies in a region above 2000 Hz and their supporting frequencies may start from around 300 Hz.
2. Bass Elements
We can have the following 2 elements to make a solid bass structure for our songs:
• Sub Bass: Dominating frequency from 20-200 Hz and supporting frequencies can go up to 1000 Hz.
• Synth Bass: Dominating frequencies from 80-200 Hz and the supporting frequencies around 2000 Hz.
3. Music Elements
Depending on the sounds chosen the frequency range for the elements of music may change. We can have the frequencies of music elements starting from around 100 Hz and can go all the way up to 20000 Hz.
We can have the following elements to build a music section for our songs:
• Arpeggiators: Arpeggiators are running sounds that give a good background feel and a kind of rhythm to the music section of our song.
• Pluck Sounds: These sounds short and punchy sounds which are created using some pluck instruments like the guitar, string instruments etc.
• Chords: Chords are ‘a set of notes when played together sound harmonic’. There are many types of chord patterns like the Major, Minor, Diminished, Augmented, Suspended etc. that give these chords a harmonic feel.
We can also have a series of chords played together called chord progression that gives your song a harmonic feel. So we can have these chord progressions for various instruments like Pianos, Guitars, Violins, Synths etc in the music sections.
• Pads / Strings / Atmospheric sounds: These are sounds layered behind all of the above sounds in the music section which provides a feel of completeness to the overall music group.
4. Melody
Melody can be considered as the soul of your song. It will give your song a unique identity.
The frequency range for the melody can start from about 150 Hz and can go all the way up to 20000 Hz.
5. FX Elements
These are elements that are required to have smooth transitions between the different sections (like the intros, verses, choruses etc) of our song. These sounds can range throughout the spectrum from 20 – 20000 Hz.
We can use different FX Elements like – Impacts, Up-lifters, Down-lifters, Risers, Downs, Sweeps, Noises, Fills etc. to have smooth transitions between different sections of our song.
6. Vocals & Lyrics
Vocals and lyrics are by far one of the most important elements of the song and required to make our songs sing-along.
Vocals and lyrics are used to express certain emotions and are elements that can give our song a unique storyline that our audience can get connected with.
While we can release instrumental versions which are well accepted by the audience today but having vocals in our songs will give you more views/streams to our songs.
To Conclude:
The above elements of music production coupled with a solid arrangement, mixing and mastering will give a unique shape to our songs.
As discussed earlier these elements normally go in the making of any genre of music.
But the sounds of these along with the arrangement and the mixing mastering techniques will help you in making a song of a particular genre.
QUICK SONGWRITING TIP TO PRODUCE SOMETHING VERY GENRE SPECIFIC:
In case you are producing a hip-hop song you can use loops/sounds from the hip-hop sample pack to build your songs.
In case you want to create an Indian classical song, use the sounds from the Indian sample packs.
In case you are creating your elements you can listen to the loops of that particular genre and take inspiration from them to build your elements.
This way you can be sure that you will make your songs sound like a particular genre.