So... let's take a look at some weird but wonderful production tips. Below are five of the weirdest but most genuinely useful techniques electronic music producers can start using immediately.
High-pass More Than Feels Comfortable
One of the fastest ways to make a mix sound clearer and more professional is also one of the most uncomfortable habits to develop: high-pass almost everything. Most producers know they should remove unnecessary low frequencies, but many don’t go far enough. The result is a mix where the low end is crowded, muddy, and hard to control, even if the kick and bass themselves are good sounds.
The reason this happens is that low frequencies take up a huge amount of headroom and energy. Pads, vocals, synth leads, percussion loops, effects, and atmospheres often contain low-frequency information that adds nothing musically but still competes with the kick and bass. When ten different tracks all have low-end content, even quietly, the mix loses clarity very quickly.
Professional producers often high-pass sounds much higher than beginners expect — sometimes 150 Hz, 200 Hz, or even higher for pads and background elements. If you solo the track, it might sound thin or weak, but in the full mix it suddenly fits perfectly. The kick becomes punchier, the bass becomes clearer, and the overall mix becomes louder and cleaner without touching a limiter.
A good way to think about this is that only a few elements should own the low end, usually the kick and the bass. Everything else is mostly midrange and above. When you start mixing this way, your tracks will immediately sound tighter and more controlled.
Put Reverb Before Compression
Most producers learn a signal chain that looks like this: sound into EQ, then compression, then reverb. This is clean, logical, and works well. But reversing the order of reverb and compression can create a very different and often more interesting result.
When you put reverb before compression, the compressor doesn’t just react to the original sound — it reacts to the reverb tail as well. This means the reverb gets pulled forward, the quiet parts get louder, and the dry sound and reverb start to feel glued together instead of separate. The result is thicker, more cohesive sounds that feel like they exist in a space rather than sitting on top of one.
This technique works particularly well on drums, vocals, synth stabs, and even entire buses. On drums, it can make them sound more aggressive and cohesive. On synths and vocals, it can create a very dense, atmospheric sound that works especially well in genres like techno, house, ambient, and drum and bass.
It’s a small change, but it completely changes the character of reverb from something that sits behind a sound to something that becomes part of the sound itself.
Sidechain Things That Aren’t the Kick Drum
When most people think of sidechain compression, they think of one thing: the kick ducking the bass. That’s useful, but it’s only a small part of what sidechain compression can do. In electronic music, sidechaining is really a tool for creating movement and space, not just fixing kick and bass clashes.
One of the most useful tricks is sidechaining reverb and delay to the dry sound that feeds them. This means the reverb or delay gets quieter while the main sound is playing and then swells up in the gaps. The mix stays clean and punchy, but still sounds big and spacious. This is used all the time on vocals, leads, and snare reverbs.
You can also sidechain pads to drums so the pads gently pulse with the groove, sidechain background textures so they move out of the way of important elements, or even sidechain entire music groups to the drums very slightly to create subtle movement and groove.
Once you start using sidechain compression as a creative tool instead of just a technical fix, your tracks start to feel more alive and dynamic. Movement is a huge part of electronic music, and sidechaining is one of the easiest ways to create it.
Turn Sounds Down More Than You Think You Should
One of the biggest differences between beginner mixes and professional mixes is not EQ or compression — it’s levels. Beginners almost always make too many things too loud. They want to hear every sound clearly all the time, so everything ends up competing for attention.
Professional mixes often feel surprisingly minimal when you look at the channel faders. Background elements are very quiet. Effects are very quiet. Textures are very quiet. But when you mute those quiet elements, the track suddenly feels empty and small.
This is because good production is not about making everything loud; it’s about contrast and focus. The main elements — usually the kick, bass, and lead — should be clearly in the foreground. Everything else exists to support them, not compete with them.
A very useful exercise is to build a track, then turn everything down and rebuild the balance from the kick upwards. Bring elements in slowly and stop earlier than feels comfortable. If you can clearly hear everything, it’s probably too loud. In a good mix, some elements are felt more than heard.
Add Noise (Yes, Actually Add Noise)
This might be the weirdest tip of all: sometimes a track sounds better when you add noise to it. Digital production is very clean, very precise, and often very silent between sounds. But real environments are never completely silent, and completely silent digital mixes can sometimes feel empty or sterile.
Many producers add a very quiet layer of vinyl crackle, tape hiss, white noise, room tone, or field recordings underneath the entire track. You shouldn’t really notice it while the track is playing, but if you mute it, the track suddenly feels like it lost some atmosphere or cohesion.
Noise can also help glue tracks together because it fills the tiny gaps between sounds and creates a continuous background layer that everything sits on top of. It can make transitions smoother, reverbs feel more natural, and digital synths feel more organic.
It’s a small detail, but small details are often what make tracks sound finished rather than like a collection of separate sounds.
Final Thoughts
What makes these techniques interesting is that they all go against instinct. You cut more low end than feels safe. You compress reverb instead of keeping it clean. You sidechain things that don’t seem like they need sidechaining. You turn sounds down instead of up. You add noise instead of removing it.
Electronic music production is full of these small, counterintuitive decisions, and learning them is often what pushes producers from decent tracks to professional-sounding records. The important thing to remember is that production decisions should be judged in the context of the full mix, not in solo. Many of these techniques sound bad or strange when you listen to a track on its own, but in the mix they make everything clearer, bigger, and more cohesive.
In the end, a lot of advanced production is not about adding more, but about making space, controlling movement, and creating contrast. And sometimes the best techniques are the ones that sound the weirdest when you first hear about them.
