Five fun games to become a better producer

ONE of the best ways to become a better producer is to make your life harder.

I know how that sounds, but hear me out! If you limit yourself to certain options, then you have to become more creative. By only allowing yourself certain freedoms, you can really steer your music in ways that you’d not see open to you otherwise.

DAWs now ship with huge content libraries and the availability of free and cheap VSTs means that producers are spoiled for choice with what is on offer. This can lead to more time choosing sounds than time spent making music.

Here are a few “games” you can play to improve your production:

1. The one synth rule

Grab yourself a powerful synth VST and make a song using only that synth. You will have to make the elements from scratch, including the percussion.

This works great with synths like Serum, where you can add in samples as wavetables and have a wide range of sounds on offer.

By playing with the one synth rule, you will force yourself to learn that synth inside out and come up with new techniques for making ideas flow.

Alternatively, you could use a single hardware synth or (limited functionality) groovebox.

2. The one track rule

This option is even more limiting. You are only allowed to use one track to make a song.

With this, you will have to curate a selection of samples (or make your own) that fit together into a single track.

While this game will become harder as you want to make a track more complex, you can play about with delays and other options to let sounds flow over each other.

You will be limited with sounds as you can’t layer them on top of each other, so expect to play with off-beat notes between the drums and percussion elements.

It will also teach you to pick and level sounds as you produce them because you are limited in the way you can mix when only using one track.

Some DAWs like Reaper offer clip effects, where you can apply FX to individual sounds on a track, other DAWs may only allow you to apply effects on the track itself.

This is a great way of finding new possibilities within the feature-set of your DAW.

3. No effects mixing

This will open up your possibilities more than the last game. To play this, you can have as many (or as few) tracks as you like, but you can’t use any effects.

Built-in effects on synths like Serum are not allowed either – so don’t try and sneak a compressor in there!

This game will make you very considerate of the sounds you pick and design in a song, and the mixing is as much a compositional and arrangement affair as it is setting levels and panning.

Remember, before tracks could be mixed, composers had to select how many instruments in the orchestra were playing a section so other elements weren’t drowning them out.

4. Single sample production

Rip a recording of a politician or celebrity speaking and choose a 10-second snippet.

You are only allowed to make sounds and instruments from that small clip.

Sounds that are vowels (“aaahs” and “ooohs”) can turn into sampled notes, and plosives (“Ps” and “Bs”) can make up the percussion.

This game will turn you into a sampling mastermind as you discover how to transform sounds into real-life instruments.

5. The 20-minute song

You have 20 minutes to make a complete verse and chorus that you would be happy to show to your friends.

This game puts efficiency at the forefront. You can use any sample pack and join loops, but the more original ideas, the better.

Set a timer for 20 minutes and see how far you get.

One thing to work on is your ability to use shortcuts and the tools built into your DAW to improve speed and efficacy of production.

This will not only make you learn your DAW better, but it will also force new ideas into your head and prevent overthinking or losing the flow by getting bogged-down with sound design.

You can add new rules to this game such as recreating your favourite song, or combining it with any one of the games mentioned above.