Tag: production

  • Album Histories Monthly: New Order – ‘Substance 1987’

    Album Histories Monthly: New Order – ‘Substance 1987’

    + Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. Welcome back to our new series on Flypaper, Album Histories Monthly, which brings you the story of a single album each month, in the month that it was originally released.…

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  • Entrepreneurship in Music: Diggers Factory

    Entrepreneurship in Music: Diggers Factory

        Entrepreneurship in Music Series: 013     DIGGERS FACTORY Founder Alexis Castiel Diggers Factory is an online vinyl pre-order and production service built like a crowdfunding platform and with an international network of digital “crate-diggers” to back it up. Founder Alexis Castiel actually calls it “a community platform,” as it offers fans and professionals a chance to work…

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  • The Musical and Sociopolitical Evolution of Kanye’s Use of Soul Music Samples

    The Musical and Sociopolitical Evolution of Kanye’s Use of Soul Music Samples

    + Learn the nuances of producing beats, arranging tracks, and creative sampling, drawing on the rich history and influence of hip-hop in Soundfly’s acclaimed online course, The Art of Hip-Hop Production.  Between the old-school sound of his debut album, College Dropout, in 2004 and the ultra-synthesized feel of his most recent album, 2016’s The Life Of Pablo, there…

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  • The Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up a Home Studio: Recording Interfaces

    The Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up a Home Studio: Recording Interfaces

    Audio interfaces are pieces of hardware that can act as both sound inputs for recording into your computer, like a mixing desk in a studio and as your sound output when performing and processing digital sounds live. For the purposes of this article, we’re only going to be dealing with their recording function since anybody recording…

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  • How to Make an Instrumental Track Shine with Vocal Samples

    How to Make an Instrumental Track Shine with Vocal Samples

    + Bridge the worlds of theory, improvisation, and jazzy hip-hop, and improve your piano chops with Grammy-winner Kiefer in his course, Kiefer: Keys, Chords, & Beats. Tons of producers making instrumental electronic music today scour YouTube and other online forums to find “vocal samples” to add to their tracks. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve googled…

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  • The Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up a Home Studio: Choosing the Right Monitors

    The Beginner’s Guide to Setting Up a Home Studio: Choosing the Right Monitors

    + Learning to record and mix at home? Check out Soundfly’s acclaimed online courses on mixing, production, and beat making — Subscribe for unlimited access. If you’ve ever tried mixing something you recorded at home on computer speakers, your stereo speakers, or even headphones, you know that it’s nearly impossible to get a great, objective sense…

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  • Scrap the Backing Track – How I Create Live Improvisations Using an Ableton Push

    Scrap the Backing Track – How I Create Live Improvisations Using an Ableton Push

    + Master the processes and techniques for programming professional-grade electronic drum beats in Ableton Live with Soundfly’s acclaimed online course. By Dan Freeman In 2013, I had the fortune of receiving one of the first ever Ableton Push sequencers before the model went to market. I was chosen to be the Certified Trainer who demoed the…

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  • These 10 Super Helpful Key Commands in Ableton Live Will Change Your Life

    These 10 Super Helpful Key Commands in Ableton Live Will Change Your Life

    + Master the tools and techniques of producing pro-level electronic music and audio in Ableton Live with Soundfly’s course, Intro to Music Production in Ableton Live. There’s no other way to put it: computers have become a central component of all recorded music, as well as most composed music. Especially when taking on more projects with tighter deadlines,…

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  • How Jazz Is Secretly Rewriting Its Own Future in Camouflage

    How Jazz Is Secretly Rewriting Its Own Future in Camouflage

    You may not have known this, but yesterday was International Jazz Day. Look around, and you’ll find a ton of jazz festivals happening right this moment worldwide — from Denton, Texas to Espoo, Finland, and not to mention New Orleans. On the surface, it might seem like jazz is doing just fine, chugging along and as…

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  • How to Add Bittersweet Emotion to Your Chords with 7ths

    How to Add Bittersweet Emotion to Your Chords with 7ths

    You might understand the construction of a chord or triad, but here’s how to make your music express the heartbreaking lilt of a seventh chord.

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Ryan Lott: Designing Sample-Based Instruments