Starting out in the music production space can be hard and even scary especially when you start watching all those professional videos and masterclasses on the internet. But as soon as you put some hours into the work you will notice how fast you can build an understanding of the things you do in your DAW. To give you a little extra start boost, here are the top 5 tips for all beginners!
Table of Contents:
1 - Gear
When you're starting out with music production, you probably wonder what gear you need to get started as fast as possible. The things you need are simple: an at least decent laptop, headphones or speakers, and that's it. You can even just use your laptop speakers if they are not that bad. Of course, room treatment is important later on but absolutely not when you're just starting out. You can easily get to a good level with super basic equipment. If you upgrade a bit later on, you will feel much more fulfilled since you know why it's nice to have such things as room treatment, a nice pair of headphones, etc.
2 - Know your tools
After you've got your gear, it's time to get a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). This is the software in which you'll make music. Some of the most popular DAW's are Ableton Live, Logic and FL Studio. Find the one that suits you the best and learn everything about it. Most of the DAW's come with great sounds and plugins that you can use right away. Try to learn how these plugins work and create with them, before you dive in and get loads of expensive external plugins.
3 - Reference
The next tip is understanding how music is produced. When you listen to music next time, listen closely and focus on the production. Focus on the patterns, the melodies, the chords, and even the instruments that are used. You can even try to recreate your favorite tracks. Search the internet if somebody has already recreated the track. You can learn so much from videos like this. Referencing means that you should download tracks that sound similar to the track you're working on, drag it in your daw and compare both tracks side by side. You probably notice that your track sounds not powerful enough, sounds harsh, or muddy. That's completely normal, but try to find the elements that create such sounds and find ways to make them sound good and more like the track you are referencing.
4 - Organize
As years pass on, you would wish you could start again and build a nice organized system for all your productions and samples. We highly recommend building a clean folder structure with all music production-related terms. This will make things a lot more simple later on. Also organize the productions themselves. Feel free to use colors and make sure you name all your elements. A clean project is especially important in the mixing stage or when you send stems to a collaborator/mixing engineer.
5 - YouTube
Let's talk about your main source of knowledge - YouTube. You can literally find anything you want to learn on YouTube and the best thing is it's usually completely free. Most channels even put free samples and project files in their description which are a great way to learn. There is not much to say since you just have to search for whatever you want to learn.
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