Advice for newcomer producers?

Hello there,

A great question and good on you for asking it.
10 tips we can offer here:

1. Firstly don’t try to make music that doesn’t represent you, trends come and go. But stick to your guns.

2. Make the vibes that you think are missing from the scene, or a style you wish would come back in a new way. If you try to make stuff that already exists it’s less inspiring for you and others.

3. Fully keep in mind at all times, dance music is simple. It’s often about a really simple idea, produced really well. So the production process might be complex and take time, but the effect is simple. Groove, Groove Groove. Find that unique and infectious groove.

4. Finishing vs not finishing a tune is a hard act to balance. If you never finish tunes you won’t get better at sequencing and develop new tricks and also learn how to get an idea down that is around 5 minutes total length. However if you finish tunes that aren’t really worth it then your time could be better spent. The advice would be make a 16 bar loop that is worth finishing!

5. Don’t get sucked into being a plugin fiend. Get a few solid ones for processing, such as the Fabfilter stuff, Izotope and then learn the sh*t out of a 2 VST synths for bass. Learn everything about them, they will be all you’ll need.

6. Be an artist before a sound engineer ( in the early days) A good idea is the first thing people are looking for.

7. Visualise how you want things to sound, really imagine the changes you want to hear in your tune. Imagination is like a muscle, the more you use it the stronger it gets.

8. Don’t send music to people unless you are 100% sure they have you interests at heart. People are all too willing to destroy your idea for you regardless of whether it’s good or not.

9. Take constructive criticism seriously, and soak it up when you get it.

10. They say it takes 10’000 hours of practice to perfect something. Anybody you look up to in music didn’t get there overnight. Every session you put in, you are getting closer to being a master. A great quote from the film ‘The Edge’
“What one man can do, another can do”

And most importantly enjoy every moment you can.

Wow some great tips there!

Just off the top of my head and may not relate directly to your question but.

Take plenty of breaks when producing I usually try have a 5 minute break every hour to rest my ears.

Spend days making just samples to use later in tunes. specially drums as they are very transient instruments that I find are taxing on your ears. Once you are ready to start writing a tune you don’t have to spend 3 hours getting your drums tight and then start writing a tune with tired ears.

Spend time analyzing tunes from artists you like in a frequency analyzer and rms meter. It is a great tool to help improve your productions. you can really pick apart tracks and basically see where they are placing all of their instruments and how loud they are.

I think finishing as many tunes as you can is a very good exercise even if it is wasted time as they sound terrible initially, over time you will improve in the other areas. But if you are not finishing tunes you dont even have the chance to improve in that area. As the genie said its just finding a balance.

Most of all enjoy the journey.

Get some decent open back headphones, learn about frequencies and where things usually reside in the frequency spectrum, learn how to write in key. Until you know a lot more only make tracks in mono, will save you a lot of trouble down the line