In February 2025, I had a stretch where I was trying to get better at music production in a more deliberate way. Rather than just opening a DAW and hoping I stumbled into something useful, I gave myself a structure.
Each day, I would pick an artist. Then I would pick one song by that artist, listen closely, identify one specific technique that stood out to me, and try to implement that same technique in one of my own songs.
This was not really about copying whole songs. It was more about isolating one useful idea at a time and forcing myself to understand it well enough to rebuild it. That turned out to be a much more productive way to study than just listening passively and telling myself I would "figure it out later."
deadmau5 - Ghosts 'n Stuff
The first track I pulled from was Ghosts 'n Stuff by deadmau5. The main thing I wanted to steal was the way the pad breathes around the kick. That pumping effect is a huge part of the song's energy, and it keeps the sustained synth from feeling flat.
So for my own study, I focused on sidechaining the pad to the kick. I also experimented with adding motion on the pad itself, either through an LFO or through glue compression, depending on what gave me the right feel. The point was not to copy the exact sound design. It was to understand why that kind of movement makes a static pad feel alive inside a dance track.
ghosts-sidechain.mp3 open file
deadmau5 - When the Summer Dies
I also did another deadmau5 study day based on When the Summer Dies. What I was paying attention to there was the contrast between sections. The intro has a dirtier, more washed-out feeling, while the verse comes in much cleaner and more defined.
The way I broke that down for myself was pretty simple. The intro leaned more on reverb to make everything feel bigger and less direct. Then for the verse, I focused on bringing in distortion and more high-end presence so the lead would cut through more clearly.
That was a useful reminder that a section change does not have to come from changing notes or rhythm alone. Sometimes the whole effect comes from changing the texture and clarity of the sound.
summer-clear-lead.mp3 open file
P.T. Adamczyk - The Rebel Path
Another day, I studied The Rebel Path by P.T. Adamczyk. What stood out there was the way the bass changed character. It did not just sit on one texture for the whole track. It moved from a darker bass sound into something much grindier and more aggressive, which gave the section a real sense of escalation.
For my own version, I tried two ways of getting there. One was automating the volume balance between two different bass sounds. The other was automating distortion so a single bass could gradually become harsher over time. Both approaches worked, and both taught me the same lesson: a bassline can evolve a lot without losing its identity.
I later revisited the same idea with a cleaner setup by combining LFO movement with automation rather than treating them as separate options. That version made the transition feel more controlled and gave me a better sense of how to move from one bass character into another without it sounding abrupt.
rebel-path-intense-bass.mp3 open file
lfo_plus_auto.mp3 open file
Yuri Petrovski - John Kick Cyberpunk
For this day, I picked John Kick Cyberpunk by Yuri Petrovski. The technique I focused on was the pulsing bass. It has a very mechanical kind of movement to it, which makes it feel rhythmic without needing to get overly complicated.
To recreate that idea, I put an LFO on the bass and used it to modulate the frequency. One detail that mattered was setting the modulation to move at twice the rate of the wobble I actually wanted to hear. That gave me a more useful pulse once it was translated into the final sound.
This was one of the better reminders that in synthesis, the control signal does not always map directly to the musical effect. Sometimes you have to think in terms of what the modulation is doing under the hood, not just what it sounds like on the surface.
john-kick-modulated-bass.mp3 open file
Rezz - Black Ice
For the last day of this run, I studied Black Ice by Rezz. The big takeaway there was the build into the drop. It does not just rely on one riser or one obvious transition trick. A lot of the intensity comes from layering effects and using them to keep the pressure rising before the drop hits.
So in my own study, I focused on building toward a drop with that same kind of weight behind it. That meant adding more sound effects in the lead-up and treating the transition as something I actually needed to compose, rather than just a gap between one section and the next.
black-ice-drop.mp3 open file
What I got out of this
The useful part of this exercise was that it gave me a way to practice music production without feeling directionless. Instead of trying to become "better at production" all at once, I could just focus on one concrete idea for the day.
That also made the whole process less intimidating. I did not need to become deadmau5 or Rezz overnight. I just needed to understand one thing they were doing, and then try it myself.
I think this is probably one of the best ways to learn creative software skills in general. Pick one thing that someone better than you is doing. Figure out what makes it work. Then rebuild that one thing in your own project until it stops feeling mysterious.