Learning Electronic Music Production The Right Way
After many years of producing music and hustling to achieve a better sound, I compiled in this article twelve tips on how to learn electronic music production that I learned in the past years until today. It would save me so many years if someone told me the proper process and years of struggle to understand the right way to learn to produce music.
Taking a music production course will help you to step into creating your own music immediately. My audio engineering studies enabled me to have a clear image of pre and post-production to mastering, in my journey for example. Many people who want to get into music production don’t really know where to start or how to continue learning and getting confused. I was there too, asking myself many times this question:
How can I learn electronic music production in the right way?
Here is my list of 12 electronic music production tips to help you with your learning marathon:
- Stop Procrastinating and Start
- Choose A DAW
- Learn Computer Basics
- Study Music Theory
- Learn How To Sample
- Sound Design
- How to Arrange a Track
- Master your Mixing Skills
- Learn How to Use Analog Gear
- Understand Connections and Routing Flow
- Learn Basic Acoustics
- Mastering
1. Stop Procrastinating and Start
This is the most crucial step. I hear many people who want to start music production, some DJs and some electronic music enthusiasts, making excuses or finding reasons not to start.
You don’t need expensive gear to start producing music. The only thing you need is a simple computer and headphones at the beginning.
Do the first step. Once you get into it, you will slowly start developing questions that will lead you to the next step.
Procrastination is your biggest enemy, like perfectionism to the ones that already know how to produce music.
2. Choose a DAW
There are plenty of DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) out there. I know at the beginning it’s difficult because you don’t have the experience and don’t know what is best for you.
Some of the well-known music production software out the are Ableton, Fl Studio, Cubase, Logic, Machine, and many more.
Most people in the electronic music scene going for Ableton. One of the best software in 2021 for music production. That also means that it will be easier for you to collaborate with others by just sharing Ableton files in the future.
Ableton, in my opinion, is one of the most more accessible software, it’s beginners friendly, and has a pleasant minimalistic environment and everything is auto-synchronized. In my opinion, it has the best warping mode; I fell in love with it!
One thing I would like to say about DAWs is to not get crazy with which software is the best. All digital workstations have the same features. Some of them come with excellent plugins and samples.
Choose a DAW that makes you feel comfortable; this will help you with your creative process, workflow, and production process.
3. Learn Computer Basics
Producers are spending most time of their life in front of a screen. It might sound ridiculous to some people, but most people are producing music on a computer and don’t have essential computer skills.
What do I mean by that?
You will need to know how to install software and plugins. It doesn’t matter how good your DAW is. At some point, you will need some extra plugins to work with.
You will also require to learn how to set up a soundcard or fix simple issues that might be causing your DAW to crash when you are using third-party plugins.
Understand what x64, x86 bit processor is. There are also different plugin formats for other software like VST2, VST3, RTAS, etc.
Not all computers are powerful enough not to run the software with all the plugins smoothly to produce music. This leads you to learn computer hardware at least at an introductory level.
4. Study Music Theory
Music theory is essential for your music production, but not at the very beginning. Trust your ears when you first start out, and you will see by the time you will start learning music theory with a better understanding.
Everything needs to sound harmonically fit.
A perfect tip to do at your early stages is to use the five black keys on your piano roll or midi keyboard. Pentatonic is one of the most straightforward techniques to create melodies, most music tracks you hear today are pentatonic.
There is no point in using advanced scoring techniques if you don’t know music theory and harmony.
Learn chords and chord progression.
Understand the meaning of +3 +5 +7 etc. Simple things like this will help you later in sound design and sampling.
5. Learn How To Sample
If you dig into music history, you will realize that the most significant records were made by a “stolen” musical piece of other – usually older – tracks.
Many House and Techno tracks are influenced by samples from other music, from movies, or even from the sound of computer games.
Putting yourself in the challenge to learn how to sample audio, you will learn how to chop and edit sound, pitch correction, warping audio, and you will slowly start getting comfortable using effect processors.
You can see slowly how you are getting ready to dive into the sound design and learn how to create your own unique samples.
6. Learn Sound Design
This is a whole subject on its own. Sound design is how to create sounds by recording or sampling and synthesis to use them in music, movies, or game production.
There is a significant demand in the market, and many people working us sound designers in the music, movie, and game industry.
With sound design, you will create your own libraries, and it might lead you to create your own signature sound to stand out from the crowd and be unique.
In the future, you can also sell these libraries online as sample packs and make an extra income.
7. How to Arrange a Track Properly
You might not realize it initially, but this is one of the most important steps to learn and understand.
The arrangement is the art of telling the story in the correct order. Your music piece must have a beginning, a body, break, drop, and ending. Every 8, 16, 32, 64 beats is a new chapter. It has to be exciting and unpredictable.
Electronic music is mainly performed by DJs. That means that your tracks must be DJ friendly, so the DJ can mix them without issues. If you prioritize your music for clubs and dancefloors, make sure to start your track with a kick from the very beginning.
If you are a DJ, then this step will be easy for you to learn. The arrangement is all about timing and creating interesting moments. If the crowd response to that moment, you did an excellent job!
Make it easy for DJs to play your track!
8. Master your Mixing Skills
Mixing is a critical step. If your mixdown doesn’t work, your track will not work at all. Every instrument, every sound you used to create your track, needs to have its own space.
No serious record label will release your track with lousy mixing.
In this post-production process, you need to learn how to prepare a track for mastering or remix. Be ready when the label tells you to provide the files.
9. Learn How to Use Analog Gear
If you starting out now or just a few months ago, there is no need to spend money on analog gear. Don’t get over-excited and think because your favorite producers are using them, you need to buy them too.
Analog is a whole school by its self. There is a window to step into this world with VSTs (Virtual Studio Technology) as a simulation. Learn it first in a digital environment so you can understand synthesis and modulation.
There is so much hardware out there that you will get lost without knowledge. Reading reviews is not enough; experience is vital here.
When you are ready for the gear, you will know what to buy and combine them to create something beautiful with your taste and signature.
If you are considering producing with analog gear, I am recommending to you to check out Analog Kitchen, his Youtube channel is a goldmine:
10. Understand Connections and Routing Flow
Let’s say you got your first gear; now is the time to connect them to your DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).
If you have one or two pieces of gear, that is very simple and easy.
But what do you do if you have to connect more hardware to your studio?
How will everything communicate?
This is why learning to connect the right way is essential.
With the routing flow, you will know how the electrical signal flows in your hardware, from the moment you plug it into the socket until the stereo output of the machine you are using.
This will help you learn how to combine multiple functions or even understand where a problem is coming from and fix it without tweaking all the knobs around.
11. Learn Basic Acoustics
You will need to learn this process when you decide to create a studio or advanced home studio.
Here you will determine how to place your monitors, your studio desk, what acoustic treatment to buy, and how to set it in the correct position.
I listen to people saying that they want to buy 8inch studio monitors in tiny rooms. Yes, you hear louder, but the frequencies that hitting back to you from your wall are traveling randomly in your room and they canceling each other. This will cause a wrong perception of hearing; as a result of making bad mixing decisions.
Room corners without bass traps are a static frequency paradise. So the low-end signal that you are listening to, will be wrong again.
Do you ever wonder why your tracks sound different in various speakers?
I know you were swearing; your mixdown sounded perfect at your monitors.
For example, if you have a carpet covering the whole floor, this will kill the room’s high frequencies, resulting in persistent high-end issues.
So avoid the carpet to avoid EQing your highs. It’s better to trust your spectrum analyzer and let your mastering engineer fix any issues you might not hear properly.
12. Mastering
I left this step for the end in purpose. Let’s make something clear!
Mastering is not a creative process like mixing your music. It has mostly to do with fixing issues, making it warmer, punchier, and wider sound. It will make your track perform perfectly in every device and speaker, from your smartphone or a car sound to extensive PA systems in festivals or nightclubs.
In my opinion, it should be done by a third person that is a professional mastering engineer. A new pair of ears will listen to it with a different perspective and will not approach it emotionally as we do, the music producers.
Understand how to read values, learn how to create a perfect mix, and always leave your master channel empty, apart from your analyzers. Do not use any plugin that is affecting the sound directly in the master output. This will cause issues at the mastering. You don’t want to pay for revisions!
Audio mastering is mandatory for a music piece that is ready to enter the market.
Good mastering can make a good track sound better x10!
If you are looking for a top-notch mastering studio with experience in our sound, I am highly recommending checking out Symmetric Audio.
How To Learn Electronic Music Production | Final thought
There is so much to learn in music production. The only thing you need is the passion for it to start. When I first started out, I didn’t even have a computer. I was taking the CD-ROM with the installation everywhere with me, and in any opportunity, I was finding a computer from a friend, I was installing the demo version, and I was practicing until I got my own. It was the will that drove me and it drives me until today.
Don’t find excuses not to do it, but motivate, believe in yourself and start.
When to start? Today! Now is the time, and believe me, you will never regret it.
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