These Skills Predict Every Successful Music Producer

did you think becoming a successful music producer would be easy being honest at one point I did I think we all wish we could do things smarter to speed up the results so to make your journey easier I want to share with you what I have learned from my own experience here are 15 brutal truths and skills that consistently produce Real Results in our students have you ever been part of a team now this could have been playing sports or even at work and have you ever noticed that being surrounded by other like-minded people can

make you better at work whatever it is you're doing it's literally how I got signed to ultra records back in the day another Cosmic alumni provided that opportunity for me so lesson number one is get out there and link up with other like-minded artists having Community can literally change your life if you're still struggling with mixing and mastering I would bet that is not your actual problem you struggle with something else let me explain if I took the greatest Chef in the world and handed them spoiled meat rotten vegetables and told them hey make a

dish out of this they can try and whip something up but it's still probably going to taste like that dish can only be as good as the ingredients in it no matter how good the chef is and your music is very similar because your mix and master can only be as good as the production is think of this is the sounds you choose these are your ingredients so lesson number two is understanding that the production is everything this concept of choosing the right sounds definitely factors in a lot of things it could be the different

timberl characteristics from sound to sound the fact that they need to be sitting in different octaves different parts of the stereo field giving great attention and detail to the adsr and shape of these layers I'll link a video in the description if you want to go a little bit deeper on this exact topic because it is super important all right this next one is going to help you climb the ladder much much quicker because not only is it going to help you finish more music but it's even going to get you better at songwriting think

of every single song you listen to there are at least two distinct sections of writing in that song this might be verse and chorus or in a lot of electronic genres we think of it more as breakdown and drop but every song has at least these two sections sometimes they have even more but when you sit down to write and you're only writing in an eight bar Loop are you writing a song or are you writing an idea the lesson here is simple sit down to write songs and not ideas so think about creating both

the break and drop simultaneous L it's literally the same thing you've been doing if you're working in an a bar Loop just create two a bar Loops one for each section thinking about both of these parts simultaneously is going to make for much better songwriting and storytelling and it's going to give you the necessary pieces to be able to complete the next item on our list here's a serious question I have for you ready if you're looking to grow more in one year than any other year you have before what would you do well if

you were trying to be a great lion tamer would you just stand in front of this vicious lion and wave a wand all day no because you'd suck at every other thing that goes into being a good lion tamer you need to spend time with that Beast feeding IT training it teaching it commands the same thing goes for being a great producer the only way you're going to get really good is by getting good at all of the things required to make great music and that's what this one is all about so Lesson Four finish

more music and I want to say it's okay if what you're finishing is not your best work you're still going to learn a ton by finishing every single song you work on those skills you develop by solving the problems in that song that's what's going to make you better in the long run so I want to issue you a challenge this year try and finish more music than you ever have in any previous year because if you keep beating your previous self it's unavoidable you are going to get better unless of course you just want

to become a lion tamer all right your addiction to Netflix might actually help you become a better music producer because if you ever noticed what great TV shows do I loved Breaking Bad and throughout all of the season they always focus on many of the different characters one episode might be about Walt the next might be about Jesse then you get one about Gus but it's always clear while you're watching that episode we're focused on that character for that time and great mixes and great songs do the exact same thing great mixes have great focus

and focus can be controlled by volume it's going to be on you to guide a listener through your mix it's basically you holding their hand and telling them what to pay attention to at any given time you need to make sure your most important elements the focus of a section is that loudest element otherwise they're just not going to be in Focus the ear is always drawn to what's loudest first so for example you have this vocal but you mixed it too quiet because instead you wanted your high hats to be really loud you want

to make sure everyone hears the high hats but now they can't focus on the vocal you can barely hear it do you see how that works volume is everything let's stay on this topic of improving your mixes and I want to stress the importance of separating your EQ intentions here's what I mean there are two distinct ways we use EQ throughout our process the first would be to color or reshape the tonal balance of a sound think of this almost like an extension of sound design the other way is to correct competing frequencies between instruments

in your mix so for example this would be like using an EQ to scoop some out of the lead so that the vocal has a pocket to sit in so we have coloring EQ and a corrected EQ and the lesson here is to separate these different EQ intentions into separate different eqs when you start doing both of these in one single EQ there's a good chance the moves you make are going to screw up one or the other so here for example you might have sculpted this nice piano sound using an EQ but then you

start trying to make it fit with the vocal and you do some corrective moves what did you just undo though you're coloring EQ the moves you made to get this piano sounding amazing are gone so instead why not just make the corrective move in a separate EQ that way we're separating our intentions you're no longer changing the tonal balance of the piano you're just creating a pocket for the vocal let's play a game you need to make a bet on one of these two fighters fighter number one has already beat down 29 other people for

a record of 29 and0 Fighter 2 well this is their first fight so who you taking who's the money on there's absolutely a chance that Fighter 2 can win this fight but the safer bet is probably going with the fighter that has the proven track record let's do the same now for your music let's say you're trying to sign to a legit label first scenario is you finished 30 songs and you're going to pick the one song that is better than the other 29 and that's the song you sent to the label or second scenario

you're going to finish one song hope it's your best work and that's the song you're going to send to the label now same as before with the fighters there is a chance that the second scenario can produce an amazing song just the one song you chose to work on but again if you want to play the ODS I'm betting on the song that has beaten 29 others because it is proven to be extremely good so understand that through quantity you will always find quality instead of just hoping your next song will be great just go

finish a bunch of music and I guarantee you will find greatness in the bunch this is a great time to talk about our next one here not every song you work on should be released and that's okay you're allowed to make songs that are horrible that's normal 10 years so now you're still going to be doing it it never changes and this is why you really have to fall in love with the process and not the results and it's funny because when you start chasing results you never really get them but then when you start

chasing consistency a consistent process this is what can yield consistent results it's pretty cool too because I do see this daily with our students this year was no different than past years they're signing to Big labels they're playing huge shows but it's probably because they're consistently doing the same thing they've been doing since boot camp they're consistently working towards improving their music and building their brand they genuinely love the process sound design is obviously going to be a huge part of the production process and I want to give you a better approach to help you

improve I've got nothing against presets I think they're amazing and you should use them but have you ever tried using them in your own songs and it just sounds like but then you'll see someone else using the exact same presets and it sounds amazing that's because those people are using the presets as starting points but then they're going one step further and tweaking them to fit their specific production and mix the lesson here is it's on you to make presets work for your song because think about it these presets were made for literally millions of

people to use what are the odds that that preset is just randomly going to fit your instrumentation the frequency balance needed for your mix like literally slim to none the other problem is they're made to sound good on their own that's usually why they come dressed up with all these effects but for you you need to make that preset sound good with all of the other Sounds playing around it so in order to do this you need to be more comfortable manipulating synths here are three exercises I highly recommend you do on the side to

drastically improve your synth skills first remake presets that you already have go find a preset that you like and literally study what you see memorize the settings then you're going to initialize the patch and try and recreate it get as close as you can you're probably not going to get a first try that's okay go back then load up the preset and see what you missed eventually if you keep doing this you're going to learn how to make that sound and not only will this teach you how to make sounds you like but you're also

building your comfort level moving around the synth as you do this the second exercise is going to come in the form of tutorials and I highly recommend watching the how to sound like such and such artist tutorials where it teaches you how to make a bass that sounds like them a lead that sounds like them these are awesome but make sure you're making it along with the video you're not just downloading the preset the final exercise is my favorite of the bunch and I believe this is so important that you do this as an artist

put 10 minutes on the clock and literally just start turning knobs in your synth the goal of this session is not to leave with a patch that you can use it is literally to freely turn knobs because if you're in a song where it matters you need to finish that song you need to find the right sound you're never going to be willing to just randomly turn and see what happens but this is where you can sometimes create greatness or this is where you can learn something vital to help you in the future create a

different sound sound or find the solution in another mix a big part of learning how to produce quality songs is studying quality songs and referencing other music is a major part of what we do we can learn a ton from our peers now in choosing reference tracks I really want you to think about choosing different songs for the different stages in your process rather than using one song for everything here's what I mean use a couple songs for Creative inspiration then when you get to the arrangement find another song that maybe matches the the structure

you're going for the the timing between sections break and drop it's really more about bar counts than anything else and then you could use a couple other tracks for mix and master references but by taking this broader approach it still keeps you informed in what you're going to need to do to succeed cuz no two songs sound the same anyways and it's even going to allow you to keep your own originality and create a freedom in this process okay you have a gig coming up next weekend what do you do beforehand you prepare you probably

even practice a little bit you might mess around with some transitions between certain songs you know you want to fit in and I'm sure there's a lot of you sitting here who pre-plan your entire set and you practice that thing 50 times before you even step on stage and I get it it makes sense you're practicing so you can perform when it counts the most just like sports you practice all week the fundamentals the skills for what so you can show up on game day and perform at your best music and specifically production it's the

same thing you have to give yourself time to practice it's not just about making songs 24/7 because to make great songs it requires a lot of smaller skills you got to practice them songwriting Arrangement production which might be sound design or synthesis you need to work on things like automation modulation mixing mastering you can practice all of these things so that when it's time to show up and work on your song you're actually capable of doing the things you want to do do you know the one thing almost all producers stress over no matter the

genre they make it's the struggle to find your sound as an artist I'm sure there are a lot of you right now that are in search of your sound and you might not have any idea of what it is or you know what you want that sound to be but you just can't get it to sound that way inside the Daw I want to be able to help you and make this the least stressful part of being a producer they're going to be two key points here first just by finishing a lot of music you

will 100% find your sound in that process there's no extra work needed here your sound is literally what we hear in your music but if you're not finishing releasing music then you kind of don't have a sound think about it too how do you identify your favorite artists it's through the music you listen to it's through the music they put out now the second part to this which you may not want to hear it could just be your skills are what's holding you back from finding your sound you may know the sound you want but

you're just not skilled enough right now to get there and that's okay it's going to take time so continue to finish music emphasize some of the other things I've mentioned in this video and eventually you will get to that point point where you can take the sound you hear in your head and recreate it in the doll the next one is crucial for those producers who want to play big shows and reach large audiences with their music and if you don't care about those things completely disregard this we discover pretty much everything in life right

now through social media it's where you discover your favorite artists but this is an advantage because you as a producer maybe in your bedroom right now it's never been easier to reach a worldwide audience but you got to put in the work and you have to play both both sides as hard as you work on the music stuff you have to be working equally as hard on the other side of things too you have to be mindful of building a brand creating social media content building a connection with your audience and following and like for

real if you're dead serious about this this really is your dream you need to be doing this because it's just going to help you get there way quicker next I want to get a little bit nerdy and Technical and talk about how to achieve loud and clean mix in Masters because it is possible to have both both but you really need to know your you have to know these five things so tap the video on screen I want to walk you through those exact steps you need to take how to approach these things how to

think about these Concepts so I'll see you over there