Photo Credit: Nick Mizen
Combining aggressive sound design with hypnotic grooves and melodies, Massano’s rapid rise in the melodic techno scene continues to accelerate. Hailing from the outskirts of a thriving electronic music culture in Liverpool, Massano burst onto the scene with his first releases on Running Clouds; Velocità, and The Feeling, gaining major support from widely known DJs. Following this initial recognition, Massano proved himself as an established artist by releasing EPs on top labels such as Afterlife, Oddity, Atlant, Eleatics, and his own imprint Eternity Sounds, whilst also gaining frequent support from DJs like Tale Of Us, Mind Against, Mathame, Camelphat and Pete Tong on BBC Radio 1.
Now, to celebrate the drop of his new remix for Yubik’s ‘Human Aura’ on Radikon, Massano invites EG into the studio for 5 tips to achieve your own personal style:
1. Building your sample and preset library
It’s important to collect and organize your sounds as you move from track to track, this way you don’t have to sit for hours scrolling through packs to find what you want, you can just go back to sounds that you have used in the past for a similar purpose. I do this a lot, whether it be drums, instrument racks, effect racks, or even background textures. This way you can also start to develop your own sound and people will recognize your tracks due to the familiar sounds you use. To avoid tracks sounding too similar, I will often tweak the sounds to adjust their sonic character of them and make them fit their purpose for each track.
2. Avoiding reliance on presets
Although preset packs can be useful for inspiration, I think they distract people from learning how to use synths to shape the sounds you want. I believe that it’s important for producers to develop an understanding of the synths they use and how to make sounds from scratch. I very rarely use presets and mostly make my synths from scratch, I love to do this because it gives me sounds that no one else has, again contributing to developing my own style.
3. Using midi to get hands-on with software
Hardware synths sound incredible and can be great for experimentation, but personally, I do not use them often due to the limitations they come with when compared to software synths like Pigments and Serum. I also find that they slow down my creativity a lot, so I stick with software synths for the most part. But using only software can be a little boring, not allowing you to get hands-on with synths, so to avoid this I have 4 different types of midi controllers, which I map tons of knobs to when I am producing, allowing me to automate and adjust parameters without staring at a screen all day.
4. Referencing
If you are stuck at any stage of making music, whether it be composition, arrangement, mixing, or mastering, I always say just check a reference track to give yourself an idea of how someone else worked and what was good about what they did. I think this is especially important for beginner producers. After using a lot of reference tracks for your production, you will find that after some time you gain a general understanding of the music and how things should be to sound good, meaning that you no longer need to use the reference tracks as much.
5. Give things time
I have friends that finish a track and do the mixdown the next day, and this may work for some people, but for me, I think it’s important to space out different parts of the production process. For example, after finishing arranging a track, I will often leave the project alone for 1 month before coming back to it to make the finishing touches and complete the mixdown. This way you have a chance to check the track on many different devices and gain some objectivity that long studio sessions often lack. After this 1 month, I will usually come back to the track and notice things I didn’t when I had the arrangement session, listening to the track for 10 hours straight.
‘Yubik – Human Aura (Massano Remix)’ is out now via Radikon. Purchase your copy here.
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