Hey guys, today, I'm gonna show you how to reference music properly.
And I'm gonna explain exactly why to referencing other professional music.
When it comes to music, production is super important.
One of the reasons is sitting down in front of a blank project with no guidance
or no direction could be one of the most intimidating things.
When it comes to music production, I'm gonna be using Ableton live 11,
but it doesn't matter which DAW you use.
And it doesn't matter which genre of music you make.
Either it could be rock could be house could be drum based.
Referencing is essential.
If you want to get to a professional level and I'm gonna show you every step of
the process in this video, also massive shout out to my accelerated student kid,
Mike,
who recently got released on dirty bird records and supported by Claude von
Stroke. You can check out his new trap below this video, and if you enjoy it,
please share it. And like, so without further ado,
let's hop into the DAW, and get it done.
So I'd actually find a reference track before I start doing any production in
general, but I wanna show you with an existing track that I've done.
So this is what I've created so far, just a little piano house loop,
and I want to get the mix and the master sounding comparable to other records in
this genre. And this is how we set up our reference track. First thing to note,
it's essential to pick the right reference track.
So if you are creating a piano house track, for example,
don't pick a rock track for your reference track.
Pick another piano house track, ideally from within the last couple of years.
So the production is at a modern level. The loudness is a modern level.
So when people are listening to Spotify and it goes from one track into yours,
there isn't a massive difference in frequencies and energy.
And that applies for when a DJ plays it on the dance floor as well.
You want yours to sound modern and comparable. So create a,
an audio track in whichever door you are using ring in your reference track
for this, I'm gonna use MK 17. So I'm just gonna drag it in
like, so,
and then the next thing we need to do is make sure that this is synchronized to
our project. And the way to do that is double click on your track,
zoom in and take this clip marker to the first transient in your
track. Now, if your reference track has got a smooth intro,
you're gonna have to bring this further forward until you get to the first beat
of the track.
And the easiest way to find out the tempo is just look it up on Google,
just do a Google search, take this to the first beat of the track. Like, so
I know it's 120 BPM, so I can select hundred and 22 PPM there.
And now this is in sync with my project, which makes referencing way easier.
Next thing we have to sort out is the routing.
So our track is going into the master channel, which is absolutely normal,
but we want our reference track to be going to the external out.
And that's because we're gonna be using effect on this master channel later on,
especially in the mastering stage.
And we don't want to have reference track to be going through those same
effects, cuz it's already been mastered.
So there are a couple of things we need to do at this stage.
We need to set up a mono switch for both of these tracks. Now,
the reason being it's easier to reference levels in a frequency spread.
If your ears aren't being confused by the stereo field and we will be getting to
the stereo field later anyway, but it's really important. And a game changer,
if you set up a mono switch, so on our master channel, I've just got a utility.
I've set up a little keyboard shortcut to be option M we'll make the whole track
in mono. So let's just have a listen to how that sounds stereo.
Press.
Mono switch.
It's a mono and we want to set up the exact same thing for our
reference track as well.
So I've now copied that and I need to make sure that it's got the exact
same keyboard shortcut and that's. So when I hit my shortcut,
both of those mono switches are going either on or off. Boom, really important.
That next thing we need to do is make the levels comparable because if you
listen to our track and then switch over to the reference track,
well actually let's find the right part of the track to reference.
And that would be the busiest part with everything going on much like we've got
an hour track.
So that would be the chorus. Let's bring that in, just copy and paste it there.
And we can just loop this section now, which is lovely,
but I'm actually going to take the loop away from this first beat because
that's where a symbol crashes.
So it's better to reference it from a couple of bars in
And that's so we don't get distracted by that symbol crash,
which is like an incidental thing. We want to get the main, big, mixed balance.
Anyway, that was a bit of a sidebar. So when we've got our mono switch,
the next thing we need to do is get those comparable levels.
So I'm gonna put in another utility.
And if we measure the average volume of the reference track,
as it stands using this free plug in the Yuli loudest meter,
which you can download using the link below and play it through this,
we can see that the average volume over time is hitting about minus eight or
minus seven and a half left.
Whereas if we go to our track and pop one on the master as well,
open it up,
We can hear ours, or we can see ours is hit here about minus 20.
And the other words hitting minus seven and a half,
that's why there's such a difference in energy levels.
So we're gonna balance them out to both be about minus 18.
And the reason being that when we've mixed our track,
if it's Peaky at about minus six, you don't need to worry too much about that,
but,
but minus 18 for an average volume is just a good rule of thumb to aim for when
referencing.
So let's go back to our reference track and just take down the volume of this
utility until a city about minus
18. And that will be usually about minus 12. Again,
it doesn't have to be super accurate, just roughly the same area.
What's more important is that our track is comparable in volume to this
track. So we might actually have to boost ours a little bit.
That's hitting minus 18.7. So we go back to ours,
put on a utility.
And the reason I'm not using the same utility for the mono switch as the,
uh,
gain staging is because if we switch this mono switch,
we don't, well, you could, I suppose,
but I just like to have different plugins for each separate purpose because then
it just keeps things easier. And I know exactly what each one is doing.
So let's look at this Yu loudness meter,
and we're just gonna boost this up until we are hitting about minus 18
as well
that our track will have a similar energy level.
So they're now comparably loud.
The next thing that we want to do is check our frequency spread.
We'll get back to the loudest later when we go through the mastering process,
but we need to get,
make sure that the frequencies we are hitting are similar to those of our
reference track, cuz they're in the same genre.
We want them to sound good when they're played next to each other.
So let's go back to our reference track and we are going to use this free
plugin. It's by Oxo, it's called the Oxo span and it's just a spectrum analyzer.
You can use the spectrum analyzer from within your door, the stock one,
but I prefer this one cause it's resizeable and there are a few other things you
can use it for as well,
but let's look at what frequencies our reference track is hitting.
And this is pretty usual.
You'll see the base will be hitting about where the
maximum of the tr is hitting with a bit of a dip in the middle.
It's gonna vary slightly between different genres and different tracks,
but that's more or less a, a desirable frequency spread.
So if we now copy this and paste it on our master,
we can open them side by side and see how ours compares.
Now it's important to make sure that both of these are the same size and you
haven't resized them like this, cuz we want to actually compare.
Now we've got the average levels about the same.
We want to compare where our frequencies are hitting on this graph.
So that's the reference track. Let's just allow our play
let's look and what's going done.
Pretty good job of this, this, because you can see here,
this is peaking at about minus 43.
Ours is about there as well about minus 43,
staying up there and ours is hitting about the same on those high
frequencies. Now that's because I've already mixed this track, uh,
to a degree.
So it would've been a better example if I'd chosen a poorly mixed track,
but you can at least see what I'm looking out for.
And then I can adjust them accordingly. For instance,
if our track was like this, and then we compared them,
You think, oh, that sounds pretty good.
And I wouldn't really know that the kick and the base was too low unless I
opened up my reference track like that.
And I'm doing this by ear as well as visual.
Because if you rely on just one of them,
you are not maximizing your capabilities to get the most accurate reference.
So we want to be using our ears and our eyes.
So here I can see that our base is way too low.
So at that point I'm.
And.
I'm increase the low.
Until it.
Looks about. Right? See,
and I can hear, it sounds a similar,
you know, energy level as well. Now, if you want extra help,
when it comes to the low end, this is what you can do when you're referencing,
get an EQ on your track, on your reference track.
That is take out the high end at about 130
Hertz. And that's just gonna allow the kick and the base to pop through.
We're gonna do that on our track and we're gonna do it on our reference track.
So now this is what we are hearing.
You might need good headphones or monitors to hear that.
So now I want to hear and see if my base and kick is bringing the same level of
energy. I mean, yeah, they are.
However, if it was more like this
or my base was like this,
because I've now isolated, the base frequencies.
I can hear that my base is way too high here by switching between the two.
So I want to get that balance about right. And again, I can actually use the
analyzer for this, but if I'm doing that,
I need to make sure this EQ happens before the analyzer.
So let's do that for ours too. And now we can
See what average volume theres is hitting when it's just the base.
And.
Ours
is a bit louder. There's this is almost minus 22.
So I'm gonna take this base down a bit more,
cause I know the kick's about the right level
and then let's do the audio check.
Maybe my kick's a bit loud. My base needs to be a bit louder.
And again, I'm looking to hit about minus 21.8 here.
That's pretty good.
So now let's listen to it without the EQ one same with the reference track
and check the overall spread.
And you can check in as well as I said,
now, it's important to acknowledge that yours isn't gonna sound exactly the same
because it's a different track. You've got different chords,
you've got different sounds,
but overall we want it to be matching on loudness and on frequency spread. Now,
when it comes to matching the loudness,
this is what you'd really do in the mastering stage.
So if we go to our reference track again, we can now turn off this utility.
That's been attenuating the volume and look and see what it's hitting.
We already know it's about minus 7.7.
I'm doing this in mono. That's okay. About minus eight.
So now we want to get ours comparably loud as well.
So I'm gonna use limiter for that. Obviously I'm gonna use the pro L two
Have it before my loudness meter and I'm just gonna bring it up until it's
hitting. There are other plugins I'm gonna use as well. Um,
like compression and stuff. But if you want lesson on mastering,
you can click the link that's popping up now,
but I'm just really looking to increase this loudness
seven bit loud actually.
And this way you can actually get your music sounding better and louder than
your reference tracks. You feel careful about it.
So ours actually banging her.
What?
Let's.
Take it down a bit. Just start it back a little bit
More comparable. Cool. We've referenced the frequency range.
We've referenced the loudness. Now we want to reference the stereo field.
Now the best tool for this is the free ozone image of two.
It comes, you can get it with the link below this.
And unfortunately I haven't actually registered mine cause I've just got a new
computer, but it should work for a few seconds anyway. So let's use the demo.
That's all you really need it for. So if we put it on ours,
so we've got our master track here and we've got the reference track here
over to the left.
So we need to make sure ours is showing up similar here.
They're both completely narrow cause it's in mono at the moment.
So I've just pressed my mono switch and now let's have a look. So.
Ours.
Is already comparable.
But.
If it wasn't, perhaps I'd use a multi-band stereo imager from ozone. Um,
and just make sure that those stereo spreads are the ours is at least as wide as
the reference track.
And you could even push it a bit wider sometimes if you want.
So that is my step by step referencing process.
I use this in every single track. I use it from start to finish.
I use it in the composition. I use it in the mixing.
I use it in the mastering and I teach my students to do it too. Bear in mind,
I've been doing this for a long time. When.
Students say, I don't wanna use reference music, cuz I want to be.
Original. All they're doing a few months down the line,
they come back and they say, I should.
Have just been using reference traction.
To start.
So the sooner that you can get over this idea that you're copying other people's
music, just because you're referencing it the faster you are gonna proceed.
So I really hope you've enjoyed this.
If you want to have mul tutorials like this,
let me know in the comments I wanna know.
And you can download my mixing guy for free below this video and please do
subscribe and like this video, if you like it and I will catch you soon.
Thank you so much for watching and don't forget,
you can check out my other video on how to mix a track in 30 seconds as well.
That's very popular for mixing quickly. So do check it out and yeah,
I'll catch you soon. Have a good one. Bye.