Music Production Guide: Start your Music Journey

Abhi Shek
Abhi Shek
Sep 9, 2018 · 7 min read

With the music industry changing rapidly, Electronic Music has proven itself to become an art of music in itself. It has more sub-genres than any other genre of music. As a Music Producer, you need to define your style of music and make it stand out from the others. To get a lot of listeners for your music, you need to experiment with new sounds and come up with great song structures and ideas. But more importantly, your music needs to sound good.

If you are a beginner and do not know where to start, stick with me till the end of the post. I will list out some of the best resources for learning professional production and offer some valuable advice on getting your music famous.

Picking a Music Genre

What music do you like the best? Is it Hip Hop or Trap? Or is it more musical like Jazz or Rock? Maybe you like hard hitting beats which they call EDM. Each genre gives importance to different elements of a track. For Example, if you are producing Hip Hop, you need to get the beats intact, along with a prominent bass. For House Music, you need good lead sounds which sound well when mixed with other sounds of the track. So it is important to select a genre you like and listen to.

As a Music Producer, it is better to learn multiple genres and experiment along the way. Who knows, you might invent a new genre which people like and get hooked onto.

Selecting a Digital Audio Workstation(DAW)

DAWs are the instruments we will use for producing music. Well, they’re just softwares but with a lot of potential. There are a bunch of DAWs out there but I will recommend the ones below:

-> FL Studio: This is the most beginner friendly DAW and it is relatively simple to learn compared to other DAWs. It comes packed with some great plugins and offers a complete interface to make a professional song.

[Link to a place to learn FL Studio]

-> Ableton Live: I personally recommend Ableton Live as I use it for most of my productions. Ableton offers additional features like Video Sync and Convert to Midi which make music composition fun and simple.

[Link to a place to learn Abelton Live]

-> Logic Pro: Logic Pro has a attractive workplace to work with songs. The features are almost similar to that of Ableton although few of its plugins are better and more powerful.

[Link to a place to learn Logic Pro]

[Link to blog post on the top 10 softwares to produce music]

A DAW is the place where you work on your music. Although some of them are better than others, you can pick any DAW and start making music.

What goes into making a song: Elements of Music

Once you have selected your DAW, you can start playing around with the settings and start making some beats. Don’t worry about how they sound now, Music is an art and all art takes time and thought to turn it into a masterpiece.

Now let’s get into the exciting part, how to make a track

Drums

  1. Kick: I bet you’ve heard about kickdrums. These are the hard hitting sounds that makes the crowd moving. It sets the tempo of the song and provides a backbone for the other drum elements.
  2. Claps & Snares: A tight snare with nice reverb along with the kick will get you up on your feet. Every great song has a great snare or clap.
  3. Hi Hats: Hats can help you fill up the space between kicks and add a nice groove to the track. They are usually not very prominent in the mix, but you can experiment a lot with snares as they can be fill upto 1/16th of a beat.
  4. Percussion: These are short but cool sounds which can be added to the beat. You can experiment with these and fit them accordingly in your song.
  5. Crash and Reverse Crashes: Crashes are used as transition elements to move between different parts of the track. Like, after a loud bass drop it is better to add a crash to move from a high volume to a lower one gradually.

[Link to blog post on how to program drums the right way]

Bass

A clean and fat bass which is mixed well into the track can make all the difference when your track is played on a Saturday Night Party. Basses occupy a relatively small number of frequencies(40Hz to 200Hz) and bassline is the heart of any beat. So it is important to work on your basses and get them right

  1. Main Bass: This is a bass within 80–300Hz and works with the drums to make a good groove. It is a more prominent bass and can be heard on any speaker.
  2. Sub Bass: Sub Bass is the warm and pleasant low frequency sound which everyone likes. It is important to mix this bass properly so it’s not playing the same frequencies as the other basses. Otherwise you get a weird sound which is not good for your speakers or your ears.
  3. High End Bass: You can add this along with your bass to provide character for your bass if your bass if really worth listening.

[Link to blog post on making a great bass]

Leads

Lead sounds are usually the loudest sounds of your song. Every producer should have their unique style of leads which makes them stand out from the rest of the producers and define them.

Leads are usually the most important part of your song, and requires the most work. I usually stack 4 different sounds playing the same notes to make a nice and well balanced lead. This will give a big fat lead which will go well with the other elements of the song.

You need some skills in sound design to create your own sound, the way you like it. Although there are many plugins which have presets of a large number of leads, this is a great place to start.

Synthesizers

Synths are the modern pianos, you can say. Each and every feature of the sound can be controlled and modified, so you can imagine its potential. You can use these to make any kind of sound for your song.

Each Synthesizer comes with 2–4 Oscillators, each with a choice of Waveforms: Sine, Square, Sawtooth and Pulse. Then there are filters and effects which will help you clean up the sound coming from the oscillators. You can add extra effects to enhance your sound.

The volume of the sound when played is controlled using ADSR(Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release). When you play a note, the time it takes to reach its maximum volume is called its Attack. The decay is used to delay the attack of the sound, so the sound comes in more slowly. Sustain knob controls the volume of the sound when the key is still playing. After releasing the note, it is controlled by Release function.

Synthesizers are really cool. ADSR can also be applied on the pitch of the sound as well as every other control on the synthesizers. This is what makes them so special.

[Link to a blog post on 10 best synthesizers]

Working with Sounds: Sound Design

Sound Design is a necessary if you want to make your own sounds. It involves working with synthesizers to create a new sound from scratch. You can always use presets from the synths although if you know what sound you are looking for, you can achieve that by tweaking some settings from the existing presets. Therefore sound design is useful for an aspiring producer.

[List of 5 Channels to learn Sound Design]

Mixing and Mastering

A song needs to well mixed and mastered if it needs to sound good. You might have the best sounding leads and synths, but if they are not mixed well properly, they mess up the whole song. Many beginners ignore this, even though this is the part where you bring out the best version of your song.

Mixing a song is basically making sure all the sounds sound good together. This involves cleaning up frequencies on each sound and keeping only the ones most prominent. The volume of each set of frequencies is to be considered here.

[List of 5 YouTube Channels to learn Professional Mixing and Mastering ]

Promoting your Music

This is the essential part in making you famous. You need to make sure your tracks reach your fans and make new ones. For this you need to use everything you can to get your music in front of a wide audience.

With Social Media and Internet, it is easier than ever to promote your music.

  1. SoundCloud: You can sign up for SoundCloud and start posting tracks right away. There is a huge community of listeners always active on SoundCloud. It might not be as effective as before, but it is the best place to start.
  2. YouTube: YouTube is a great tool for promotion with the right tags and SEO. Also you can add lyrics and remixes of your songs for promotion.
  3. Spotify: Spotify is usually the hardest to sign up for as an artist. They only accept music from reputed record labels, or if you can manage to pay enough money. But the upsides are incredible. If you can land your song on a good playlist, you will hit million hits before you know it.
  4. Apple Music: Apple Music is another great platform which a lot of people use. And all it takes to release your track on Apple Music will be some $40 to start with.

[Link to a blog post on the best promotional practices for producers]

Music Contests

If you are really serious about your music career, you just need some great tracks and you’re well on your way. Record Labels are always on the lookout for new and fresh talent to recruit into their family. It is only a matter of reaching out to them and pitching your tracks.

I would suggest signing up for remix contests hosted by big artists. They are very generous in their prizes and they give you a chance to grow your career a lot quicker.

I will list down a few websites where you can find these contests, the results depend on the quality of your music.

[List of 5 remix contests]

[Another post with the top 10 ways to get noticed as a producer.]

Conclusion

Becoming a Professional Music Producer takes a lot of time and hard work. You need a bunch of songs before one of them gets recognized, that still won’t guarantee your position as a great producer. You need to build a fan following and make some great songs to keep them happy.

Welcome to the world of producers, you won’t become famous overnight. Although don’t give up and keep believing in yourself and in your music. That’s how great music legends are made.

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