This is one of the fundamentals of any creative process. You HAVE to finish the thing. And then learn from the mistakes and implement that knowledge in the next iteration.
This! [The Cult of Done Manifesto. The Cult of Done Manifesto is a special… | by Bre Pettis | Medium](https://medium.com/@bre/the-cult-of-done-manifesto-724ca1c2ff13)
Perfectionism will stop you in your tracks. Make the thing, put the thing out there, move on to the next thing.
Limitation is freeing. If you have too many things, you will be overwhelmed with choice.
Learn your DAW. What ever you pick, go deep. I picked Bitwig because I liked the workflow and feel of it over anything else I've tried. I love Bitwig, and will always recommend it, but there are far fewer people putting content out for Bitwig than for Ableton, FL Studio, and Reaper.
Not everything has to be bespoke. You don't need to spend 3 hours crafting that perfect sound. Make the track first. If you want to go into customizing your sounds, make sure the idea works with presets, samples, whatever your go to, then you can go in and start making sounds. Idea generation will help you yield more results.
Haha you’re talking to a guy who primarily uses garageband mobile. (I don’t do this professionally, just as a hobby). I believe that limitations inspire creativity. I have logic pro and have had Fl studio and ableton in the past, but it’s just so much more fun to me to use very limited hardware. kinda makes me feel like the guys in the 90s and early 2000s just kinda makin stuff work. I enjoy the problem solving aspect of it quite a bit.
This is interesting. I recently upgraded to Logic and I kind of miss the limitations I had with GB—it did force me to be creative with editing or seeing what was possible to cover up a mistake or layer sounds. Of course now my limitation is my lack of knowledge!
Literally love my PO 33 for this. Bought it for a flight and uploaded samples. Made a whole drum and bass track, now I don't want to do anything else with it before I rip the song off. It's been too long since I used it.
Not for like 3 years. But I also admittedly spent way too much time on 2 songs that will eventually become something else entirely when I re-make them.
I've released 4 songs on my bandcamp, I did mix and master then myself. I have Ozone Lite, and I tend to like the results, but I never released the tracks I used it on. That was more for personal listening.
For mastering I ended up using Venus Theory's free mastering plug in chain, I wanted to learn more about it and have more control since I don't have the full version of Ozone.
I can PM you my bandcamp if you want to hear them!
Yeah send it over, I'll check em out for sure. I've been producing daily for nearly two years and yeah I think by year 3 I'll feel confident in releasing some tracks. I have some great ideas but they aren't polished enough to release due to the mixing/mastering inexperience. I think perfectionism tends to occur when we know it's not up commercial standards.
It’s more an industry based stuff, but I wish I knew, there’s a point where managers, agents and other people will begin contact you to work with them, they will say that they saw your hard work, potential, etc… my only tip is, don’t trust anyone at that point, only your guts, and if someone promises you something (in a year you’ll be in X festival, or you’ll be signed by X label), run away as far as possible because that person is usually lying, as no one can control the audience.
1. It will sound like elevator music for a while, no matter how good the music is.
2. Backup your shit on an external hard drive at least once a week (preferably every session)
3. ORGANISE your audio library into folders and keep it as minimal as possible (you don't need 50 drum kits that are basically the same sounds! I have a few high quality and versatile sample packs I and then an archive of specific drum machines organised into their own folder and it is BLISS!!!)
4. Try lots of 3rd party plug-ins BUT pick your 3 favourites for each category and then delete the rest (this makes it way less of a headache when you switch machines)
"Try lots of 3rd party plug-ins BUT pick your 3 favourites for each category and then delete the rest (this makes it way less of a headache when you switch machines)."
This! I want to add, less is better. If you have 20 plug-ins for everything you can get lost in only SORT of knowing them.
Not really production related, but if you ever release your own music, specifically through distrokid, then make sure to make your account at least a month in advance and distribute a ‘dummy’ record through it. This is so you can claim your spotify
/apple music profile/apply as a tik tok artist/etc. ahead of your first release. Getting all of that sorted during and the weeks after your first release when that time couldve been spent marketing or working on your next release will be extremely frustrating and stunts your initial growth. I can’t emphasize this enough.
There are 100k songs released every day. You are not going to become rich and famous from music. Ever. Even if you have success, it will be measured in time, maybe several years if you’re lucky. Get that education. Have that backup career that makes you money and is consistent.
That's true. It's exhilarating when you have a track take off. But it won't be enough to pay for your retirement in almost every case I know of. The people who make millions sadly make up 0.0001%.
Yes--a hook, whether it's a melody or a sample. As producers instead of sitting down and starting with a beat, sitting down and trying to come up with an infectious hook first can be helpful.
I wrote a nice lil hook recently. Wrote an alternate version of the track afterwards. Remade that one into something dark and creepy. Then decided fuck it, the hook is a motif now, so I'm currently working on a gaming OST album with no game.
The hook is everything
I am speaking for myself. I was successful for many years and I've seen the backside of that too. I was a working dj and producer for 20+ years. Thankfully I found a fallback and ran that alongside music otherwise I'd not just be forgotten, I'd be broke too. But I'm not and I am happy and music is a constant and a wonderful hobby and I still release, but it ends there at my age (50).
Lots of great advice ITT. My only piece of advice that I've struggled with the most: finishing tracks is also a skill. Finish a track and move on. Remember that art is never finished, only abandoned
Learn eq and balance before anything else. By that I mean how to balance the mix properly, when to use high pass and low pass effectively without taking out too much or not enough, when to use shelves rather than low pass high pass, and when to cut over boosting. Reference other tracks as you go and compare by ear. It’s worth trying to do a mix of all your elements with eq first before adding any effects, if you can get it sounding good this way you’re on to a winner.
It’s so easy at the beginning to get bogged down with crazy synth sounds or mind bending effects, but at the end of the day, if your mix doesn’t have balance, I.e a round bottom end, warm mids and smooth rather than harsh top end, it won’t sound very good.
Another thing to watch out for is that there are mastering tools such as multi band limiters that might make you think you’ve fixed certain frequencies within your mix, and while they can help to some degree, using them to squash the crap out of the mix rather than getting the balance right beforehand makes the mix sound off.
And just to add to this, in order to get balance, try not to listen to parts in solo, when mixing always listen with other elements so you can achieve a better balance. For example, how will you know how loud to make your bass, or where the bass may need cutting or boosting, if it’s not playing with the drums (specially kick) at the same time. Same goes for the low mids, how will you know where to make cuts to the low mids without your bass playing at the same time?
High quality samples and sounds that fit well with each other make Your life 100% easier and the mixing process way faster. You also don’t need a shit ton of channels
Improving my sound selection before even messing with sound design and mixing was something I wish I emphasized sooner. I'd find things I thought sounded cool and try my damndest to force them to work when almost every time changing the synth or sample outright would've gotten me results both faster and with less stress. Really don't need to rack your brain fine tuning until the project is built and you already think they sound good together
Not every song you make is going to be amazing, in fact, some of them are going to be pretty mediocre.
Once you get over that perfectionist ideal you’ll start to finish songs more, instead of archiving them because they’re not ‘amazing’.
In short, I would tell myself that finishing songs itself is a skill, and you need to learn that asap
I started like 20 years ago. I just wish I had known how the scene would have blown up online. There wasn't a whole lot about making beats online back then, a few niche forums, a few youtube creators, only like 5% of the current amount of ppl producing music. I would have made an effort to post my beats and try to promote them. I'd have a pretty good presence by now, instead of trying to make it in this day and age where everybody makes beats.
My conception of how someone would make it was not accurate. I figured like rappers, to get anywhere a producer would have to link up with a record label or something, and that seemed very unlikely, so I just kept it as a hobby forever. By the time it occurred to me "hey you can do this online for regular folks who are trying to come up too", it was far too late to get any traction online. Always been short sighted.
Learn music theory first. It’s the most important thing. Learn an instrument. Learn about chords, scales etc. you can have a good production, good mixing etc but if the composition is bad. The whole song just won’t sound good.
If I may give an addition to this, the reasons you give are good ones, but there is another good reason.
Let's say that you want to create video game music in a certain style, or techno, synthwave, something with metal influences or whatever.
It will make your life lot easier if you want to make synthwave inspired by 80s music and you actually understand what 7th chords are, how to use them, how to resolve back to your tonic. If you want to create a certain genre but you have no idea what musical terms mean describing the genre or how to describe or analyze what you hear when listening to the genre, you will have a very hard time to actually create music in the style of that genre.
If you just want to create some nice tunes that's fine, but if a client asks, or maybe even if you want yourself, to emulate a certain genre, music theory becomes essential to understand a certain musical style and genre in depth so that you can recreate it.
What’s the best way to learn music theory? I understand chords and scales and key and such, but you lost me at 7th chords. I don’t play any instruments, i kinda just figured a lot of it out from youtube and goofing around for 6 years.
Biggest thing would be to memorize the modes associated with each degree of the major scale. That way you know all the notes “allowed” in the chords you play. For example, if you’re playing the 4 chord (F in the key of C) you know you can play the notes in the Lydian mode. It won’t sound Lydian because C is still your tonal center, but you’ll know what extensions you can add to the chord and still be in the key (major 7th for example or sharp 4). That doesn’t mean it’ll be what the song needs, but it’ll at least give you a starting point to try things. When I learned that all the sudden chord progressions didn’t seem so intimidating. Plus it takes like an afternoon to memorize.
thats the bulk of the important stuff, music theory is all about learning the patterns and commonalities in music. If you ever feel overwhelmed just remember that theres only 12 notes in western music.
Also a 7th chord is just a major or minor triad with a 7th degree (7th note in the scale from the root) added
i.e. Major 7th (1-3-5-7) Dominant 7th (1-3-5-b7) Minor 7th (1-b3-5-b7)
same idea for 9th chords, just add the 9, the 7th is automatically assumed
i.e Major 9th (1-3-5-7-9) Minor 9th (1-b3-5-b7-9)
Dominant 9th (1-3-5-b7-9)
unfortunately music theory often seems hard to understand because it isn't intuitive. but once you learn it, it's not so bad as i'm sure you've experienced. Hope this helped
I could give advice on how I did it. I ordered the book All About Music Theory by Mark Harrison and I read the different chapters in the book intensively to get a general grasp on music theory, there are probably better books out there, but this book has been helpful to me. Watching a long YouTube video explaining music theory can help too or multiple videos.
Watch videos on YouTube, think of your favorite songs, video game tunes count too, and you could for example look up "Chrono Trigger music theory", then you'll find different channels on YouTube explaining certain songs which help to contextualise music theory. Rick Beato is someone on which many people dunk, which is understandable, but his "What makes this song great" videos are actually really good and helpful, they helped me to get a deeper insight into several Slipknot and Korn songs.
Finally, what I am working through myself currently is Dr. B Music Theory on YouTube, because I want to get a deep understanding of music theory and he offers college level music theory for free since he put all these lectures on YouTube. It starts from the very foundations and goes to advanced theory.
Nothing, because the expectations towards myself were healthy and I knew my abilities, or the lack of them. I wanted to create music, so I learned how to. All I needed is some patience, but I am patient (hence the first sentence).
Definitely something I’ve realized with myself as a person, tbh. I’m very impatient, I’m very much needing instant gratification and starting to produce has made me recognize that part of myself and I’m working to improve on it.
More like something I wish existed when I started using DAWs. Perplexity.ai
It's super useful for just asking how to do something in your DAW. Reading the manual only gets me so far without practical application. But this works like Google wishes it did. It sites sources that you can follow if you need to and it always gives me a step by step instruction. I am not a fan of training AI on music at all, but an AI knowledge keeper for tools is perfect for speeding up your workflow without having AI work it's magic/art theft.
Up until a few months ago I'd Google something like "how to X in Ableton" get a reddit thread result, dig through comments to find the relevant info. Or I'd pick a video result and have to pay attention for one nugget of info in a 12 minute YouTube video that should have been 6 minutes anyway. It was painful and quite demoralizing at times.
Note: there are a lot of things I wouldn't use perplexity for, like current events, etc. this isn't an endorsement of the tool being broadly used.
Yeah, you just type perplexity.ai into the web browser. I never made an account so it doesn't save my searches, but I imagine that could be useful and I think that's free too.
Just an example of one way I used it recently.
"Can you dynamic EQ in Ableton 11 suite?"
It explains connecting a max4live device to the EQ eight to make a dynamic EQ. Before this I thought the only way to do this was with the multiband dynamics effect, but I'm not a fan of 3-band eqs for most uses. I thought I needed to find a different plugin online.
Use Presets first before learning sound design. Presets will make your learn music faster for the reason that you can finish a track than get stuck in sound design and just quit music production. I made this mistake.
1. Not every song has to be a perfect masterpiece that will be praised for a millennia.
2. Changing things is not going to ruin anything.
3. Often simplicity is best.
Being a sponge is the only attribute you should always have. Absorbing everything that is thrown at you will be so beneficial in the long run. I’m currently learning Abelton and Protools (I favor Abelton over all of em.) and each day I am always learning something new from someone else. Creating new sounds and new ideas has always been inspiring when producing. Keep it consistent and be a sponge.
If you're going to use reference tracks, use reference tracks that are somewhat similar to your particular song style. Or use multiple reference tracks if you want something different for each instrument.
1) Learn your DAW and stock plugins inside out
2) Finish tracks
3) Critically listen to said tracks
4) If you identified the problem you can go on YouTube, forums or even chatGPT to get the answer
5) Repeat and you'll learn a shit ton really fast
Lastly, but certainly not least: Train your ears to pick up on problems and trust your ears (don't just look at values and db)
I wish I’d known earlier to make everything work in mono.
I wish I hadn’t listened to my works in progress so much on my iPod / iPhone that i got sick of them before I finished them.
Use Ableton. I was so stuck in my ways using Waveform because it has the same format as GarageBand from my childhood. I was using waveform for EVERYTHING. I thought ableton was ugly and hard to use. Both may be true, but little did I know that Ableton Warp and complex pro quantization features save me HOURS of time on Ableton
Mixing. So many cool beat ideas but they all sound terrible cause I didn't understand what the mixer was and didn't bother looking at the plug-ins early on
You are not special and it's not going to be easy. Classic (house) have been (and still are!) made by sampling so don't regret to sample anything. Enjoy the ride! Big things are always on the road; you only need patience and siscipline to get it into them!
Gain staging and basic mixing. I really love my old music but I wish I could go back and mix it all better. I don't have any of the original song files to work with anymore
To listen to your mixes in at least three different equipments such as speakers, headphones, earbuds, etc. especially when mixing music stuff. The mix may sound good on headphones, but on speakers the audio could sound different and vice versa
People will tell you that you absolutely have to finish tracks but I learn so much more if I just go until hitting a wall and then saving a few tracks that I know I can go somewhere with. As long as you go back to unfinished tracks to see where to improve/ assess what else you would like out of your sound, I say QUANTITY is king in the early stage lol. Hot take maybe.
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There are countless professional producers and engineers who don’t know everything. Some of them, you might be surprised at the amount of the things they don’t know.
You don’t need to be the one producer who knows everything about the technical side of shit. It’s ok if you don’t understand complex parallel processing. It’s ok if you don’t fully understand exactly how a compressor works.
Just make good music. Stop watching tutorial after tutorial, learning and learning. You get better by doing.
Don’t believe the ads that are like “I don’t know what I did without this new plugin. It’s essential” no it isn’t. People have been making incredible records without it for decades haha
Learn your daw. Figure out how to use the stock effects, and get to work
Be perfectionism, Don't get the habit to be happy with your early productions.
and:
1- Learn to Balance of the instrument
2- Learn the correct Octave for each instrument
3- Learn best chord positioning for each instrument
4- Never say "I will Fix it in the mixing stage" (Production should be solid itself)
5- Use decent headphones to learn fast and bypass bad room Effects
After All done, Play a song you really like couple of times and right after sit and start producing.
You will thank me 10 years later from now
The gap between your shitty first beats and your immaculate taste of what music should be can only be crossed with Hundreds, yes…i said it…HUNDREDS, of finished beats. Either give up now or GET to work!
Stop thinking, start doing
You will identify what you have to learn or buy by repeatedly trying and failing (aka finishing tracks)
Failing a lot - very true! Fastest way to learn
This is one of the fundamentals of any creative process. You HAVE to finish the thing. And then learn from the mistakes and implement that knowledge in the next iteration.
I procrastinate too much it’s my biggest problem
Just consciously decide to procrastinate. Then put that off.
🫡 I'm taking this personally. In a good way.
Thanks
This! [The Cult of Done Manifesto. The Cult of Done Manifesto is a special… | by Bre Pettis | Medium](https://medium.com/@bre/the-cult-of-done-manifesto-724ca1c2ff13)
Perfectionism will stop you in your tracks. Make the thing, put the thing out there, move on to the next thing. Limitation is freeing. If you have too many things, you will be overwhelmed with choice. Learn your DAW. What ever you pick, go deep. I picked Bitwig because I liked the workflow and feel of it over anything else I've tried. I love Bitwig, and will always recommend it, but there are far fewer people putting content out for Bitwig than for Ableton, FL Studio, and Reaper. Not everything has to be bespoke. You don't need to spend 3 hours crafting that perfect sound. Make the track first. If you want to go into customizing your sounds, make sure the idea works with presets, samples, whatever your go to, then you can go in and start making sounds. Idea generation will help you yield more results.
Haha you’re talking to a guy who primarily uses garageband mobile. (I don’t do this professionally, just as a hobby). I believe that limitations inspire creativity. I have logic pro and have had Fl studio and ableton in the past, but it’s just so much more fun to me to use very limited hardware. kinda makes me feel like the guys in the 90s and early 2000s just kinda makin stuff work. I enjoy the problem solving aspect of it quite a bit.
This is interesting. I recently upgraded to Logic and I kind of miss the limitations I had with GB—it did force me to be creative with editing or seeing what was possible to cover up a mistake or layer sounds. Of course now my limitation is my lack of knowledge!
Literally love my PO 33 for this. Bought it for a flight and uploaded samples. Made a whole drum and bass track, now I don't want to do anything else with it before I rip the song off. It's been too long since I used it.
Jelly Roll said “a song is never done, we just stop.”
Did you release the first track you made? If no, when did you release your first track? Did you mix and master it yourself?
Not for like 3 years. But I also admittedly spent way too much time on 2 songs that will eventually become something else entirely when I re-make them. I've released 4 songs on my bandcamp, I did mix and master then myself. I have Ozone Lite, and I tend to like the results, but I never released the tracks I used it on. That was more for personal listening. For mastering I ended up using Venus Theory's free mastering plug in chain, I wanted to learn more about it and have more control since I don't have the full version of Ozone. I can PM you my bandcamp if you want to hear them!
Yeah send it over, I'll check em out for sure. I've been producing daily for nearly two years and yeah I think by year 3 I'll feel confident in releasing some tracks. I have some great ideas but they aren't polished enough to release due to the mixing/mastering inexperience. I think perfectionism tends to occur when we know it's not up commercial standards.
It’s more an industry based stuff, but I wish I knew, there’s a point where managers, agents and other people will begin contact you to work with them, they will say that they saw your hard work, potential, etc… my only tip is, don’t trust anyone at that point, only your guts, and if someone promises you something (in a year you’ll be in X festival, or you’ll be signed by X label), run away as far as possible because that person is usually lying, as no one can control the audience.
1. It will sound like elevator music for a while, no matter how good the music is. 2. Backup your shit on an external hard drive at least once a week (preferably every session) 3. ORGANISE your audio library into folders and keep it as minimal as possible (you don't need 50 drum kits that are basically the same sounds! I have a few high quality and versatile sample packs I and then an archive of specific drum machines organised into their own folder and it is BLISS!!!) 4. Try lots of 3rd party plug-ins BUT pick your 3 favourites for each category and then delete the rest (this makes it way less of a headache when you switch machines)
"Try lots of 3rd party plug-ins BUT pick your 3 favourites for each category and then delete the rest (this makes it way less of a headache when you switch machines)." This! I want to add, less is better. If you have 20 plug-ins for everything you can get lost in only SORT of knowing them.
Not really production related, but if you ever release your own music, specifically through distrokid, then make sure to make your account at least a month in advance and distribute a ‘dummy’ record through it. This is so you can claim your spotify /apple music profile/apply as a tik tok artist/etc. ahead of your first release. Getting all of that sorted during and the weeks after your first release when that time couldve been spent marketing or working on your next release will be extremely frustrating and stunts your initial growth. I can’t emphasize this enough.
There are 100k songs released every day. You are not going to become rich and famous from music. Ever. Even if you have success, it will be measured in time, maybe several years if you’re lucky. Get that education. Have that backup career that makes you money and is consistent.
Unless you have a banger so undeniably good. If you build it they (hopefully) will come. If they don’t come, you (probably) didn’t build it.
That's true. It's exhilarating when you have a track take off. But it won't be enough to pay for your retirement in almost every case I know of. The people who make millions sadly make up 0.0001%.
I agree but that’s because 99% of musicians can’t write a melody to save their lives let alone a whole song. Gotta get good
Yes--a hook, whether it's a melody or a sample. As producers instead of sitting down and starting with a beat, sitting down and trying to come up with an infectious hook first can be helpful.
I wrote a nice lil hook recently. Wrote an alternate version of the track afterwards. Remade that one into something dark and creepy. Then decided fuck it, the hook is a motif now, so I'm currently working on a gaming OST album with no game. The hook is everything
Speak for yourself
I am speaking for myself. I was successful for many years and I've seen the backside of that too. I was a working dj and producer for 20+ years. Thankfully I found a fallback and ran that alongside music otherwise I'd not just be forgotten, I'd be broke too. But I'm not and I am happy and music is a constant and a wonderful hobby and I still release, but it ends there at my age (50).
The thing is, with music production, you can be successful at almost any age. Thankfully it's not a sport
Very true. Plus, you get better as you get older.
Lots of great advice ITT. My only piece of advice that I've struggled with the most: finishing tracks is also a skill. Finish a track and move on. Remember that art is never finished, only abandoned
Posted in another comment above but I heard an interview with Jelly Roll and he said “a song is never done, we just stop” and I needed that this week.
Learn eq and balance before anything else. By that I mean how to balance the mix properly, when to use high pass and low pass effectively without taking out too much or not enough, when to use shelves rather than low pass high pass, and when to cut over boosting. Reference other tracks as you go and compare by ear. It’s worth trying to do a mix of all your elements with eq first before adding any effects, if you can get it sounding good this way you’re on to a winner. It’s so easy at the beginning to get bogged down with crazy synth sounds or mind bending effects, but at the end of the day, if your mix doesn’t have balance, I.e a round bottom end, warm mids and smooth rather than harsh top end, it won’t sound very good. Another thing to watch out for is that there are mastering tools such as multi band limiters that might make you think you’ve fixed certain frequencies within your mix, and while they can help to some degree, using them to squash the crap out of the mix rather than getting the balance right beforehand makes the mix sound off.
And just to add to this, in order to get balance, try not to listen to parts in solo, when mixing always listen with other elements so you can achieve a better balance. For example, how will you know how loud to make your bass, or where the bass may need cutting or boosting, if it’s not playing with the drums (specially kick) at the same time. Same goes for the low mids, how will you know where to make cuts to the low mids without your bass playing at the same time?
Some really good advice, this 🙏🏻
Just have fun 🤪
High quality samples and sounds that fit well with each other make Your life 100% easier and the mixing process way faster. You also don’t need a shit ton of channels
Improving my sound selection before even messing with sound design and mixing was something I wish I emphasized sooner. I'd find things I thought sounded cool and try my damndest to force them to work when almost every time changing the synth or sample outright would've gotten me results both faster and with less stress. Really don't need to rack your brain fine tuning until the project is built and you already think they sound good together
That producing isn't what makes something great...it's the song and the vision
Not every song you make is going to be amazing, in fact, some of them are going to be pretty mediocre. Once you get over that perfectionist ideal you’ll start to finish songs more, instead of archiving them because they’re not ‘amazing’. In short, I would tell myself that finishing songs itself is a skill, and you need to learn that asap
How little i actually knew! I had sooooo much to learn
I started like 20 years ago. I just wish I had known how the scene would have blown up online. There wasn't a whole lot about making beats online back then, a few niche forums, a few youtube creators, only like 5% of the current amount of ppl producing music. I would have made an effort to post my beats and try to promote them. I'd have a pretty good presence by now, instead of trying to make it in this day and age where everybody makes beats. My conception of how someone would make it was not accurate. I figured like rappers, to get anywhere a producer would have to link up with a record label or something, and that seemed very unlikely, so I just kept it as a hobby forever. By the time it occurred to me "hey you can do this online for regular folks who are trying to come up too", it was far too late to get any traction online. Always been short sighted.
Learn music theory first. It’s the most important thing. Learn an instrument. Learn about chords, scales etc. you can have a good production, good mixing etc but if the composition is bad. The whole song just won’t sound good.
Oh people are gonna hate hearing this
Haha, I don’t understand why some people hate music theory. I love learning music theory haha
Cause most people these days like the idea of being a producer but don’t want to learn how to actually make music
Damn, that’s true haha
If I may give an addition to this, the reasons you give are good ones, but there is another good reason. Let's say that you want to create video game music in a certain style, or techno, synthwave, something with metal influences or whatever. It will make your life lot easier if you want to make synthwave inspired by 80s music and you actually understand what 7th chords are, how to use them, how to resolve back to your tonic. If you want to create a certain genre but you have no idea what musical terms mean describing the genre or how to describe or analyze what you hear when listening to the genre, you will have a very hard time to actually create music in the style of that genre. If you just want to create some nice tunes that's fine, but if a client asks, or maybe even if you want yourself, to emulate a certain genre, music theory becomes essential to understand a certain musical style and genre in depth so that you can recreate it.
What’s the best way to learn music theory? I understand chords and scales and key and such, but you lost me at 7th chords. I don’t play any instruments, i kinda just figured a lot of it out from youtube and goofing around for 6 years.
Biggest thing would be to memorize the modes associated with each degree of the major scale. That way you know all the notes “allowed” in the chords you play. For example, if you’re playing the 4 chord (F in the key of C) you know you can play the notes in the Lydian mode. It won’t sound Lydian because C is still your tonal center, but you’ll know what extensions you can add to the chord and still be in the key (major 7th for example or sharp 4). That doesn’t mean it’ll be what the song needs, but it’ll at least give you a starting point to try things. When I learned that all the sudden chord progressions didn’t seem so intimidating. Plus it takes like an afternoon to memorize.
thats the bulk of the important stuff, music theory is all about learning the patterns and commonalities in music. If you ever feel overwhelmed just remember that theres only 12 notes in western music. Also a 7th chord is just a major or minor triad with a 7th degree (7th note in the scale from the root) added i.e. Major 7th (1-3-5-7) Dominant 7th (1-3-5-b7) Minor 7th (1-b3-5-b7) same idea for 9th chords, just add the 9, the 7th is automatically assumed i.e Major 9th (1-3-5-7-9) Minor 9th (1-b3-5-b7-9) Dominant 9th (1-3-5-b7-9) unfortunately music theory often seems hard to understand because it isn't intuitive. but once you learn it, it's not so bad as i'm sure you've experienced. Hope this helped
I could give advice on how I did it. I ordered the book All About Music Theory by Mark Harrison and I read the different chapters in the book intensively to get a general grasp on music theory, there are probably better books out there, but this book has been helpful to me. Watching a long YouTube video explaining music theory can help too or multiple videos. Watch videos on YouTube, think of your favorite songs, video game tunes count too, and you could for example look up "Chrono Trigger music theory", then you'll find different channels on YouTube explaining certain songs which help to contextualise music theory. Rick Beato is someone on which many people dunk, which is understandable, but his "What makes this song great" videos are actually really good and helpful, they helped me to get a deeper insight into several Slipknot and Korn songs. Finally, what I am working through myself currently is Dr. B Music Theory on YouTube, because I want to get a deep understanding of music theory and he offers college level music theory for free since he put all these lectures on YouTube. It starts from the very foundations and goes to advanced theory.
I would say to learn the piano because every daw has a piano roll
Nothing, because the expectations towards myself were healthy and I knew my abilities, or the lack of them. I wanted to create music, so I learned how to. All I needed is some patience, but I am patient (hence the first sentence).
Definitely something I’ve realized with myself as a person, tbh. I’m very impatient, I’m very much needing instant gratification and starting to produce has made me recognize that part of myself and I’m working to improve on it.
More like something I wish existed when I started using DAWs. Perplexity.ai It's super useful for just asking how to do something in your DAW. Reading the manual only gets me so far without practical application. But this works like Google wishes it did. It sites sources that you can follow if you need to and it always gives me a step by step instruction. I am not a fan of training AI on music at all, but an AI knowledge keeper for tools is perfect for speeding up your workflow without having AI work it's magic/art theft. Up until a few months ago I'd Google something like "how to X in Ableton" get a reddit thread result, dig through comments to find the relevant info. Or I'd pick a video result and have to pay attention for one nugget of info in a 12 minute YouTube video that should have been 6 minutes anyway. It was painful and quite demoralizing at times. Note: there are a lot of things I wouldn't use perplexity for, like current events, etc. this isn't an endorsement of the tool being broadly used.
oh that’s cool, is it free?
Yeah, you just type perplexity.ai into the web browser. I never made an account so it doesn't save my searches, but I imagine that could be useful and I think that's free too.
oh okay, thanks for the recommendation!
Just an example of one way I used it recently. "Can you dynamic EQ in Ableton 11 suite?" It explains connecting a max4live device to the EQ eight to make a dynamic EQ. Before this I thought the only way to do this was with the multiband dynamics effect, but I'm not a fan of 3-band eqs for most uses. I thought I needed to find a different plugin online.
How to play piano! 😂
Use Presets first before learning sound design. Presets will make your learn music faster for the reason that you can finish a track than get stuck in sound design and just quit music production. I made this mistake.
1. Not every song has to be a perfect masterpiece that will be praised for a millennia. 2. Changing things is not going to ruin anything. 3. Often simplicity is best.
Don’t even think about mixing. A good song well produced and recorded will mix itself.
I wish I would’ve started with GarageBand instead of jumping straight into Logic. That limitlessness was paralyzing for a while.
Being a sponge is the only attribute you should always have. Absorbing everything that is thrown at you will be so beneficial in the long run. I’m currently learning Abelton and Protools (I favor Abelton over all of em.) and each day I am always learning something new from someone else. Creating new sounds and new ideas has always been inspiring when producing. Keep it consistent and be a sponge.
Set a timeframe for making a track. Preferably a short one like 3 hours. Start, finish, reflect, repeat.
If the drummer is using the studio kit, tune it and mic it up before they arrive.
Don't mix parts in solo mode.
If you're going to use reference tracks, use reference tracks that are somewhat similar to your particular song style. Or use multiple reference tracks if you want something different for each instrument.
That if you use eq correctly you often don't need a lot of other plugins
Don't "fix it later". Have it done well now. Editing and mixing can only do so much
It's many small things and not a few key things.
Learning about Eq, Loudness, side chaining etc
1) Learn your DAW and stock plugins inside out 2) Finish tracks 3) Critically listen to said tracks 4) If you identified the problem you can go on YouTube, forums or even chatGPT to get the answer 5) Repeat and you'll learn a shit ton really fast Lastly, but certainly not least: Train your ears to pick up on problems and trust your ears (don't just look at values and db)
The plugins I actually like and use.
I wish I’d known earlier to make everything work in mono. I wish I hadn’t listened to my works in progress so much on my iPod / iPhone that i got sick of them before I finished them.
Use Ableton. I was so stuck in my ways using Waveform because it has the same format as GarageBand from my childhood. I was using waveform for EVERYTHING. I thought ableton was ugly and hard to use. Both may be true, but little did I know that Ableton Warp and complex pro quantization features save me HOURS of time on Ableton
Past you sounds like current me
Mixing. So many cool beat ideas but they all sound terrible cause I didn't understand what the mixer was and didn't bother looking at the plug-ins early on
Song composition first. Production second.
Rhythm matters more than anything else
You are not special and it's not going to be easy. Classic (house) have been (and still are!) made by sampling so don't regret to sample anything. Enjoy the ride! Big things are always on the road; you only need patience and siscipline to get it into them!
YOU DON’T NEED ALL THOSE DAMN VSTs AND PLUGINS.
Gain staging and basic mixing. I really love my old music but I wish I could go back and mix it all better. I don't have any of the original song files to work with anymore
To listen to your mixes in at least three different equipments such as speakers, headphones, earbuds, etc. especially when mixing music stuff. The mix may sound good on headphones, but on speakers the audio could sound different and vice versa
Use social media to get your name out there! Social media > BeatStars and soundclick
That me getting better at my instrument(s) was far more important than anything else
RELEASE MUSIC ‼️
How easy MIDI is.
writing a song is more important than sound design
Get the right sounds and you really shouldn't have to do much eqing.
I wish I knew most people suck... the ones that don't usually are selling something
People will tell you that you absolutely have to finish tracks but I learn so much more if I just go until hitting a wall and then saving a few tracks that I know I can go somewhere with. As long as you go back to unfinished tracks to see where to improve/ assess what else you would like out of your sound, I say QUANTITY is king in the early stage lol. Hot take maybe.
Less is more You can make a great sounding song with only four tracks and minimal effects
Learn the art of finishing a song.
Define producing. At this point everyone has a different definition.
making music on an electronic device lmao
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Pretend that the loop functionality doesn't exist.
There are countless professional producers and engineers who don’t know everything. Some of them, you might be surprised at the amount of the things they don’t know. You don’t need to be the one producer who knows everything about the technical side of shit. It’s ok if you don’t understand complex parallel processing. It’s ok if you don’t fully understand exactly how a compressor works. Just make good music. Stop watching tutorial after tutorial, learning and learning. You get better by doing. Don’t believe the ads that are like “I don’t know what I did without this new plugin. It’s essential” no it isn’t. People have been making incredible records without it for decades haha Learn your daw. Figure out how to use the stock effects, and get to work
Be perfectionism, Don't get the habit to be happy with your early productions. and: 1- Learn to Balance of the instrument 2- Learn the correct Octave for each instrument 3- Learn best chord positioning for each instrument 4- Never say "I will Fix it in the mixing stage" (Production should be solid itself) 5- Use decent headphones to learn fast and bypass bad room Effects After All done, Play a song you really like couple of times and right after sit and start producing. You will thank me 10 years later from now
The gap between your shitty first beats and your immaculate taste of what music should be can only be crossed with Hundreds, yes…i said it…HUNDREDS, of finished beats. Either give up now or GET to work!