The beginning melody to an electronic dance track being built off an acoustic guitar riff. Made using (poorly) live recorded instruments and Ableton Live.

A simplified idea of the raw Electronic song that part of the guitar melody turned into. Before sound design, editing, and polishing.

The skeleton to a full track, before EQs and any sort of mastering. I left the bass consistent and slightly muddy in the last bit on this recording, as I’m going to go back in to add variations. This will eventually be part of a fully mastered mix, it will sound much different on the other side, but this is what it will start as.

The polished song on the front end. Bass has been re-worked to remove mud (still no drum side-chaining though). All musical parts have been flushed out, harmonized and integrated. Every track has an EQ including each individual drum hit. Volumes are adjusted so nothing sits over the mix too much. No vocals or lyrics to focus strictly on musical structure without word meaning obscuring the goal here.

The fully mastered track. We left it completely unchanged from the previous iteration to focus on the mastering process and how it transforms the sound itself. We felt like testing one of the most readily accessible mastering services online by using Soundcloud’s service through Dolby. This song is ‘Thunder at 100% master rate’ and it cost us $5. It’s a good place to start, especially having never done it before. We recommend finding an artist you like the sound of and asking them (politely) if they’d be willing to share or point you in the right direction if you’re serious about your music.