Hang tight while we fetch the video data and transcripts. This only takes a moment.
Connecting to YouTube player…
Fetching transcript data…
We’ll display the transcript, summary, and all view options as soon as everything loads.
Next steps
Loading transcript tools…
Stop making FAKE tensions and ruin your songs (try these instead..) | Alice Efe - Mercurial Tones Academy | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Stop making FAKE tensions and ruin your songs (try these instead..)
Skip watching entire videos - get the full transcript, search for keywords, and copy with one click.
Share:
Video Transcript
In a second, you will listen the same
Can you spot the difference in the
energy? There is one skill that
separates top one person producers from
everybody else. It is not sound design.
It's not mixing. It's not mastering. It
is the secret to create energy and
controlling the energy in their
arrangements. Later in this video, I
will also show the number one biggest
mistake most intermediate and beginner
producers make too. Hint, it's about
fake tension. This might be my most
valuable video yet, so hop in.
Tension levers are tools that help you
change the energy levels in your track.
They will come in many form, but we will
go each one of them. The first one is
called density levers. The idea is
simple. If you increase the density of
information, we will feel the urgency.
The simplest example is percussion
density. Listen to this
classic for the floor beat. The simplest
way to increase energy would be actually
changing how dense the percussion rhythm
is. Now let's play a 16 note and hear a difference.
Low density
high density immediate jump in an
energy. This is what I call beat density
and easiest way to implement in your
tracks. But it doesn't only applies to
the percussions. The second density
We could syncopate this melody, increase
the density and increase the energy. So
all the red notes is syncopation
increasing the density of the note heads.
[Music]
How to use this? You can use this around
turnarounds to change the energy from
one part of your track to the next part
of your track. Listen.
So simple yet so elegant. Dance delivers
is not only about eating but it could be
How can we remove and make it more
dense? Easy. Gates can add rhythm by
removing some parts of the track. Let's
take a look at this infiltrator. It is
basically creating three hits from a
sustained sound. In this case, it's our
vocal. Listen. [Music]
From here,
if you can add a bit of air and a bit
eco, so there couple of hits on the
sides, ping pong, and a bit shimmer verb
afterwards, you will end up even more
energy like this.
Now listen how much this elevates the
Cool, isn't it? While we are gates, the
LFOs, those are cool. Those can work
Cool. But what if we wanted to increase
the energy? What could be done? Simple.
LFOs. LFOs are basically tools to apply
certain waveform into selected
parameters. In this case, if we take the
same LFO and apply it on the cutff
filter, we will end up with this
with the eight. And the rate will define
how often we replay the V modulation.
Right? You see
from here to here we can still keep it
off bit feel creating this slight
ducking effect with the kick without wait.
wait.
And now listen how much that changes the
to here. [Music]
These are dance deliver. If you're
enjoying the video, please consider like
and subscribe and I promise I will make
more videos like this for you. So, time
to go to next one which is color levers.
The levers are so hard word. Oh my god,
the color tilt means density of
frequency in different bands. So track
that is denser here will be more energy
than the track that is denser on the
left side. How can you use that? First
example, color tilting your buildups.
This is a track that I worked with
Andrea and will be released very soon. [Music]
[Music]
To be fair, energy is very high already.
But I want more because when I play this
track in the club, I know how people
react when things go up and up and up
and energy goes up and up and up and you
build this huge expectation. Remember
that tilty key. All you need to do get
it around somewhere around here that you
like. Doesn't really matter that much
where you exactly put it. And what you
do, you just automate the gain so it
feels more and more and more when it's
[Music]
Basically shifting the frequency
response of your song. Let me AB so you
can hear how much different it makes without
without [Music]
[Music]
Don't tell me that drop was hype. This
track is coming in a month. So, let me
know if you want more tutorials about
it. EQs are cool, but you don't need to
always use them to tilt the frequency
balance. Symbols and using symbols as
That drop was terrible because it lacked
energy. What if we take a simple cry
sound and build energy with simple hit
like this and drop into another symbol
filling up the super high so tilting the
frequency response. Anything would work.
I love rides. I am a drummer. I played
in rock bands. That's that right riding
is my thing. Okay.
Do you have this?
It's more like splashy, right? But it
doesn't matter. This is really very high
sound, right? Very concentrated on the
high end. So, we are tilting the
frequency response and together now we
that's a huge difference, but it's just
single element that also gives the
groove to the track. It's a really hack,
but sometimes you don't want to use
crash. Another lever is actually using
white noise as a high-end tool. How do
you do that? Let's take a white noise.
I'm using serums noise generator. The
problem is white noise is not that
white. What we do like we learned tilt
it. Now it is much more whiter and
brighter. You can literally see the we
change the slope of the white noise. Add
duck to emphasize the groove so that
it's not just like simple noise on top
and a bit shimmery so we can feel room
for the hole too. And let's remove that
symbol and try the same thing with noise
Cool. Color levels are cool, but you can
be a bit more on guard and use pitch
levels. Humans feel anxious or feel
urgency when the pitch of the things
Love this animation. You can abuse this
in your tracks and use to create tension
and energy. The simplest way to do this
would actually octave jumping your
melody. This is a tutorial from two
weeks ago. If you haven't seen it, check
it out. It's about different moods and
modes of technique. It's a very cool
If you shift this melody one octave up,
it will feel more dramatic.
You can use this as your advantage
between different verses of your track
to create a drama, create tension.
drama change, immediate tension. Even
though trick is super simple, this can
apply to vocals too. Listen to these
vocals. We are at the breakdown. We are
trying to build energy. [Music]
[Music]
This is the change over. Coming to the
[Music]
Of course, everything else is changing
the drama, but the vocals needs to add
the drama, too. Now, there's another
take just to use the perfect fifth often
times, but raising the pitch a little
mind.
And listen how immediate drama adds in
when the second vocal pitched up comes in.
[Music]
Cool, isn't it? But vocals are maybe not
your thing. You can do this even in your
bases with your passing notes. This is
Boris Per would approve this group. By
the way, all these things are on my
Patreon. I give this to my Patreon
followers so that they can download and
play around. And this groove alone I
think hurt to join my pattern. But you
decide. The simplest way to create
tension and change around points like
here. Here we have two bars. Another two
bars would be actually giving bass to
octave jumps. Here we are in E 0, we are
jumping E1. And in the second or at the
end of four bar, we actually jumping
twice. E1 first, E2 afterwards. So it
will be like this. And then this is
called passing notes because they are
just right before the passing to the
knee bar and they are very short often
times. It's a tiny trick but can really
add a lot to your track. Listen here now.
Super cool. There's also a method of
utilizing harmonies and playing around
the notes to create tension. These are
called harmonic levels. I'm going to
show a two simple example. We have nice
melody house track [Music]
[Music]
and we are going into a breakdown or
classic progression. The base
progression is like this. High lever
means that holding to a note that
shouldn't be held onto. The idea is
simple. What if we don't resolve the C
sharp and hold on to it's not a
resonance but it's like some kind of
tension that really really wants to
resolve. I do that just extend this loop
right before the breakdown comes in and
listen how tension builds up there. [Music]
[Music]
There are many ways to use harmonic
levers but holding onto the unstable
notes is one of the easiest way. The
other simple method is actually creating
a single note strings. This is utilized
a lot in classic music to create this
kind of tension and building upon it. here.
Remember during breakdown we don't want
to do so many things to emphasize the
vocal but here in G# sharp minor. So
what I'm holding to G# sharp and D
right? A beautiful sound together with a string
doesn't resolve to anything. It just
goes like this. And this together with
the vocal, [Music]
[Music]
And then the corporation comes in back.
It's just beautiful. There's so many
harmonic levers, but I'm going to keep
it short here. And finally, effects
levers. And this right here is the one
of the biggest mistake if not the
biggest mistake that intermediate and
beginner producers do. They use effects
only to create tension in their tracks
and it creates fake tension. The tension
is not there. They're just like addive
elements tilting the frequency without
really creating the tension itself. The
or this.
So they will tilt to the higher
frequencies. Hands uplifters or pitch
lifters the pitch will go up.
Snare rolls
reverse simple reverse voices. I have
nothing against using them in a track
but I have everything against them. If
these are your only tension levers,
these are axillary elements. The tension
should create it somewhere else. And
this should support intermediate track
Do you hear? I'm pretty sure if you're a
beginner, you will be questioning like
what is wrong with that? I did myself
too. The problem is we have this effects
element creating tension but nothing I'm
telling you nothing in the rest of the
track reacts to that change in the
tension hence these emotions from the
frequency response or like a sound of
your track the right way would have
doing like we told before like maybe
cutting the high and cutting the low and
tilting the EQ adding extra jumps to
your bass opening cut off of your
synthesizer maybe syncopating in the
melody. There are so many things that
you can do, but this don't do this.
But if you want to learn more about
music production like the way pros do, I
have more videos over here. Don't worry
about it. I will hold your hand and show
Click on any text or timestamp to jump to that moment in the video
Share:
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
One-Click Copy125+ LanguagesSearch ContentJump to Timestamps
Paste YouTube URL
Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript
Transcript Extraction Form
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
Get Our Chrome Extension
Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.
Chrome Extension