Two Tips For Learning Music Production More Effectively

Solicit feedback from fellow producers. Reference tracks, reference tracks, reference tracks.

Had a message from another ambitious producer starting out asking how he can learn more effectively. I post my response in the hopes that it helps some other neophytes jumping into the lion’s den that is music production:

If I leave you with nothing else, if you do these two things over and over you will completely blow your mind at how quickly you improve:

1. Solicit feedback on your tracks from fellow producers. Ask them to be brutally honest. Destinations like the Laidback Luke Forum and the EDMProduction subreddit’s “Feedback Thread” are great for this.

Yes, it’s worse than open heart surgery. Yes, you’ll want to crawl into a hole and die multiple times over.

But if you can isolate all the variables your tracks need improvement on, and one by one tackle them, after 3–4 tracks of a handful of improvements each it’s insane how quickly you get better.

2. Reference tracks, reference tracks, reference tracks. Listening to these in comparison to your own initially is like watching your best friend fuck that hot girl you’ve had your eyes on: Except at least the latter ends in 2 painful hours (I think I severely questioning my self-worth as I A/Bed my tracks for at LEAST 2 years).

That being said, if you can stand back to objectively figure out what your tracks lack in regards to the pros (this is where tools like MMultiAnalyzer and fellow producers come in handy), your ear/artistic-intuition will develop faster than Barry Bond’s home run streak on steroids.

Hope these insights help :)

P.S. If you have a little bit of expendable income, get a copy of Syntorial. As much as it sucks going through their program, I learned in one month what I struggled for 2 years trying to learn sound design. I get $0 for endorsing them, though with all the people I suggest their direction I should be able to retire with the amount of income I’ve made for them. Highly recommended if you’re looking to improve in this area.