No Mana

Getting Creative Momentum & Output Speed

heyo, per request i had a question about my creative process so i’d like to explain to you how i begin to attack a track.

this process of course varies differently from day to day, and certainly from producer to producer. but typically it starts with a sound, loop or melody or anything inspiring enough to get the ball rolling, then just build around that.

for example, in most cases i find vocals the most inspiring part of the song, so especially with melodic songs i start with f...

City2City Project File

ok this one was a little tough to get together, i was probably just trying to manhandle a bug where live would massively lag on mme whenever i would freeze a specific track. or it's a skill issue. idk. anyways, this was a fun project cuz i never really swore to make frat house music and this was kind of the first. as a rare case i actually took this to a really nice studio and got a couple of friends to write and sing on it.

requirements: latest live

SP 2507262141

guitar practice!!!

2018 Demos

sorry forgot to upload the actual files! they in here now. recycle bin musiccccc

• Backseat Sleepover [No Mana].wav

• Crunch [No Mana].wav

• H3 (inst) [Jordan Orcaz].wav

• ID23-2 [No Mana].wav

• ID31 [No Mana].wav

• INTJ2 (inst) [No Mana].wav

• Melody4 [No Mana].wav

• Midnight Sun [No Mana, Mat Zo].wav

• Social Entropy [No Mana].wav

• Technologically Incorrect (MAST...

  2025-07-24 20:06:33 +0000 UTC View Post

How to Move Forward in your Career

so i just came back from a family trip and had some time to reflect on my career especially with lots of family members asking me what it's like, basically how i got here, etc. i went up for a trip for my cousin's debut (you know where a girl turns 18 and it's like a massive deal) and they had me do an "18 treasures", and the way we did it was that we had 18 people each give life advice to this new adult. i was assigned to give a speech about risk taking, and thought these points would be use...

SP 2507212155

Forget About Us Project File

here's the project file for this massive collab! this is actually the 25th version - it was such a clusterfuck of a process, but 100% fun. going back to the project file made me realize how this was a lot of throwing shit at a wall and everything just felt like it sticked. it made mixing this a pain (which is probably why there were so many versions) but we got through it!

this was the first kind of breakcore song i released (inb4 jungle/dnb purists in the thread) via odyssey soundsyste...

ABC Monitoring

Found this in one of my projects, it's just a little makeshift emulator for different types of monitors EQ wise. while it's useful in that way it obviously doesn't account for different flavor dimensions of various monitors (imaging, sweet spot, combing, single vs multi woofer, etc).

Options:

• Main (bypass)

• Hi-Q: raises the top and bottom ends of the bandwidth.

• Cheap Monitors: EQs to closely resemble a Rokit 5

• Barefoot: Boomier t...

  2025-07-21 21:33:21 +0000 UTC View Post

Reference Music Spotify Playlist for Mixing & Mastering

hi all just wanted to share with you a very crucial playlist i go back and forth with in the mixing/mastering process. i also added much of tom norris stuff in there because he's a goat of a fucking engineer.

it's a mix of stuff. you'll notice some at different loudness and dynamic levels, or flatness of the spectrum depending on the genre. most of these are pretty full spectrum anyways because it's more useful to me to understand how reputable engineers EQ there stuff in a wall of soun...

Compressors and Limiters

compressors and limiters are effects that reduce the dynamic range of a sound. they turn your waveform closer resembling a sausage by making the amplitude of a waveform homologous through time.

when you feed sound into a compressor, if the sound is loud enough above its threshold, the compressor takes time to react (the attack) to output the sound to its threshold sound level. limiters on the other hand, work so that the gain reduction is immediate (if ...

Constellations Project

aye. the deeper i dig into older project files the more i laugh at my production decisions. i think this one might even be just as simple as Strangers.

one thing i do remember making this was just being utterly inspired by gabriel and dresden. it's natural for me to overproduce things and i think there's an art to minimalism which is something i really tried nailing during these years. lately not so much.

requirements - live latest

SP 2507121817

ok project of the day and continuing on the scary brief, i think they wanted something a bit more whimsical... more of like a thriller theme as opposed to something horrifying.

SP 2507111553

got a brief for scary creepy things. i don't think this is what they would want so i'm keeping this for isqa maybe.

No Mana, Julian Gray, 28mm, C.H.A.Y. - stuck (drunk at julian's) Project File

this was a fun one. the 6 of us (including emma and matt) were just chillin in LA and at the end of the day we just decided to get a six pack and cook at julian's. considering our history in progressive house everyone would have expected this collab to be in that realm. we didn't have any expectations. actually, it wasn't even me that set it to 173 and put amen breaks (as much as i love that sound right now), but it got me off the fuckin rails as soon as someone put it down. it was probably ...

2017 Demos

demos from 2017! couple of collabs that never went anywhere but yea. here's the tracklist.

• And I 2 [isqa]

• collab2 [No Mana, Mat Zo]

• Eruption (No Mana Remake) [Jeff Mills, X-103]

• Feed Me Mana [No Mana, Feed Me]

• For Human Consumption 2 (instrumental) [No Mana]id2 [Jordan, Tim Liles]

• id2 [Jordan, Tim Liles]

• ID2v2 [isqa]

• ID5 [isqa, Holly]

• ID51(instrumental) [isqa]<...

  2025-07-10 16:11:01 +0000 UTC View Post

Losing Focus Project File

aye. cleaned this one up for ya. this song kinda marks the first into doing faster tempos, and it's kinda like a bridge between what i have been doing (house/electro house/progressive) vs where i'm leaning towards sonically. kuspe has been an inspiration making y2k trance/dance (130 and above) since he sent me a track for mastering last year. was keen to hear more of his stuff and eventually one of my demos (or i think his?) ended up being a collab. amongst much of what he did to the track, t...

stuck teaser

for the release going live this friday! will be posting tomorrow

100 members! and a question

hey all! just wanna say thank you for joining and supporting me - i'm really happy to dust off a lot of my hard drive and share it with everyone and hoping you guys can get use of my materials and knowledge for your own projects. just wanna get a headcount to see what everyone is looking for in this profile. which of these do you feel like you get most use out of, or helps you the most, or even simply for entertainment, whether through my patreon or others?

the mixing and mastering process

since the mixing process can be confusing to some like it’s black magic i’m going to explain to you my kind of system of how i go about my mixes. of course, the golden rule is always “use your ear” because the whole purpose of mixing is getting something to sound as good as possible, but that may not be helpful to those who are trying to find a method to do that. this is my approach to it in order.

(fig 1. me playing bullshit at interscope records)

• 2025-07-08 17:54:45 +0000 UTC View Post

[Redacted] Sample Pack by isqa

probably the most important sample pack i made via isqa, this pack was made out of the [Redacted] album i made in 2015. i've enjoyed catching some of its samples on public releases (chee and moore kismet to name a couple).

this used to be up on prime loops but i guess they took it down and i'm not just gonna let this collect dust on my hard drive. 388 samples of everything, have at it.

Contents:

• Atmospheres (20 samples)

• Bass Hits (48 samples)

<...
2025-07-07 18:25:55 +0000 UTC View Post

Solarpunk Project File

project file for solarpunk here! go nuts.

requirements:

ableton live 12 latest

SP2507040153

finished a demo today. got a screen recording of the process so will probably put that up once it's released! whenever that is...

2016 Demos

i think some metadata might be incorrect cuz i made some of these way before the date mentioned but i think you guys are in for a treat for this one. rezz remix, kreo remix, isqa x ak9, bunch others. 25 tracks.

• A10 [isqa].wav

• Anna's Glyph [isqa].mp3

• Burn for You (No Mana Remix w Cafcat) [Kreo'].wav

• colla_4 [isqa].mp3

• Cryptic (No Mana Remix) [REZZ].wav

• fly (isqa Remix) [Protohype, Alina Rae].mp3

2025-07-04 08:35:47 +0000 UTC View Post

NM Rack Essentials 1

in my effort to rid myself of using third party plugins at all, here are some ableton live-native utilitarian racks that i use in pretty much every project file

Delay-Reverb Throw

• this allows you to create a delay or reverb tail by automating a piece of incoming signal. this is useful because you cannot do this by simply automating wet/dry.

• parameters - input gain, and time for both delay and reverb separately.

Dimens...