What Are the Most Challenging Aspects of Becoming a Good Music Producer?

Learning music production is a significant challenge, and when you start, it may seem daunting. However, as you progress, you will encounter some challenges that you need to be prepared for later in your career.

Therefore, here are some of those big challenges you may face…

4 THOUGHTS FROM ME

1. Focus on writing amazing stories in your songs more than anything else.

99.9% of people who listen to music don’t care about the production aspect of it, and the way you connect with them is by making a song that emotionally resonates with them.

And, finding good ideas is hard, but it’s often because we don’t practice ‘creating ideas’ as much as ‘developing songs’. So:

1. Practice only creating ideas and not developing them. Make ‘creating ideas’ part of your schedule and separate 30 min-1h per week to only create ideas. Make at least two ideas per week, and put them in an idea folder as soon as you (a) like them or (b) get their core elements in (melody, progression, etc).
   Then, after a while, come back to the folder and develop the ideas that still resonate with you;
2. Write using a kick, bass, and piano. Write your ideas as raw as possible so you can listen to them without any sound design fluff. Why?
   • When an idea is good without sound design, it will become a lot better with it, and;
   • When you’re using the same elements for all ideas, the compositions that evoke the most emotions are the ones that will stand out;
3. Study your favorite artists. If you want to write songs like Ben Böhmer, recreate his melodies and chord progressions so you can learn what’s behind his songs and why you like them so much. Then, apply what you’ve learned to the new ideas you create this week;
4. Learn how to complement and evolve your stories. Even your best ideas will sound repetitive if you don’t know how to evolve them during your song. For that, again, study your favorite artists, but now focus on how they evolve an idea.
   • How long are the drops?
   • How many new elements are being added?
   • What kind of elements are being added?
   • Especially if you’re struggling with this, copy tracks you like until this becomes second nature to you

2. Learn how to properly mix and master your songs.

Mixing is one of the most challenging skills any producer must learn. It’s not as important as composition, arrangement, and sound design, but it can elevate them, or destroy them.

Now, these are the key concepts you’ll need to master in Mixing:

1. Learn how to get the best low end. Your low end has three main parts: Kick, Bass Sub (~40-80Hz), Bass Body (~80-160hz); and you need to learn how to mix them properly since that’s 50% of your mix. Here’s what I do:
   • Make them independent from each other so you have control of each part separately, and you can watch here to learn how you can split your Bass’ Sub from the Body or get our ebook about it;
   • Use a reference track to match the levels of these three elements according to your favorite tracks with Spectrums (watch here how to do this);
   • Be careful with any “rule” that says that your kick or bass should be at exactly YYdb, as this varies a lot according to genre, artists, etc;
2. Learn how to mix with only EQ and Loudness. An additional 35-45% of your mix can be done only with volume and EQ, and learning that is important to avoid overdoing your mix with compression, saturation, and other effects.
   So, for your next mix, before any other plugin, just use EQ and volume before you think about adding anything, even compression. A couple of quick ‘rules of thumb’:
   • For mids and highs, avoid harsh 48db EQ cuts as they can kill the elements;
   • Be careful with low mids, so low cut most of your melodic elements for your bass to breathe;
   • Choose the most important elements for your low, mid, and high end, and make them the most prominent;
3. Set a target mix as your destination. One of the biggest mixing problems is not knowing what your goal is with your mix. In other words, what do you want it to sound like? For that, use a reference track, and compare your song with it.
   • Is the low end close to your reference?
   • What about the mids?
   • What about the highs?
   • You can use tools like Match EQ or MetricAB to help you with that, as you can see in this video;
4. Avoid making these 9 mixing mistakes, as you’ll see in this video.

3. Learn how to move past a plateau and start climbing again.

Music production comes with phases when we learn a lot, then we make these new learnings a habit, which often makes us plateau for a bit, sometimes even triggering self-doubt and draining motivation.

So, when you hit a plateau, this is what you should do:

1. Understand the plateau. Most of the time, you feel you’ve plateaued because you’re bored with what you’re producing. That boredom is telling you to push your music to new levels and reinvent yourself. Don’t get frustrated, as even PROs have plateaus. Instead, learn how to move past them.
2. Focus on your Achilles’ heel. Do you know that thing that you know you need to fix, but you’ve been postponing for a while? Now, it’s time to master it. Study it and discover how to move past that issue.
   Sometimes this is not so obvious, so, in that case, ask a producer friend to give you honest feedback on what they think you could be better at (more on how to move past this here);
3. Experiment. When you’re hitting a plateau, you should turn on experimentation mode for a bit, and for that, you’ll need a few things:
   • Let go of making perfect songs for a bit and focus on testing new things that will eventually get you to making perfect songs again;
   • Activate your ‘listening mode’, and listen to a lot of songs and podcasts, especially from your favorite labels and artists. Now it’s time to soak in more information and ideas on how you can expand your music;
   • Study what you love about your favorite artists to discover what elements or things you could be missing;
   • Produce genres outside of your comfort zone to expand your knowledge and learn more about music in general;
4. Switch up your practice routine. Over time, your way of learning can exhaust itself and no longer be fruitful, so you’ll have to look for new ways to learn and develop your music. So, check this post and learn the fastest ways to learn;
5. Hire someone to mentor you. Mentoring is the fastest way to move out of a plateau, since you can learn everything I just mentioned and things you didn’t even know you needed to. If you’re looking for a mentor, send us a message and we’ll see how we can help you and your music

4. Learn to recognize when you’re wasting time.

A big challenge producers face is wasting time overthinking everything, and that could happen in multiple parts of your journey.

1. Learn how to call your song done. When your mix is done, if you keep tweaking it, you’ll often make it worse than better, but the problem is often finding that point and having the confidence to call it done. To ensure you’re ready, I recommend:
   • Compare it with a reference track and try to notice differences;
   • Play your song in a DJ set to notice anything that is lacking or overpowering;
   • Ask your friends (or us, over here) for feedback;
   • Test it in mono to check if the main elements disappear (they shouldn’t);
   • For more, you can watch this video;
2. Stop overanalysing every single aspect of music. Is that in phase? Does this (insert element) need +0.25db? If you’re asking these question, just stop. While watching tutorials from my favorite artists, I never saw them doubting such things, so why should we?
   Watch a start-to-finish song from a producer you like and check how much time producers spend on tasks that you might dwell on, and this is just preventing you from finishing tracks;
3. Focus more on your DAW than on tutorials. Tutorials and courses are important to expand your knowledge, but you shouldn’t be spending more than 20% of your time on them.
   We sometimes adopt a ‘I need to learn it all before I can start’ mindset, but this is just a way of procrastinating what you need to do, which is go to your DAW. So, focus on spending at least 80% of your time in your DAW doing something rather than the opposite;
4. Stop [time wasting activity] and produce more. Music production can often get sidetracked for something more fun, like Netflix, games, or whatever. While there’s nothing wrong with them, it sucks up the time you could be making music.
   To avoid that, block these distracting activities, as it’s the most effective way to avoid them.

3 QUICK TIPS FOR YOU

What are other challenging parts of music production?

1. Invest in the right things instead of buying anything that comes in front of you.
Producers often spend recklessly on plugins and packs, but are hesitant to invest in mentoring and other resources that could truly enhance their music. Before any purchase, ask yourself: “Am I trying to replace knowledge with plugins?”
If the answer is yes, seek a mentor and skip that purchase.

2. Learn how to efficiently find your sound instead of just randomly looking for it.
The best way to find your sound is to do a mind map of your art, with your artist name in the center, and start branching it out with things you want people to relate you to.
This will provide you with insights into how you can shape your music and your social media presence so people can see you as you desire. Read more about this in this post.

3. Learn how to get signed even without a following.
Getting signed is one of the biggest desires of music producers, and sometimes we think that we need a following for that.
One way to do this is to collaborate with a producer who is already signed, so they can handle the ‘label work’ for you. You can also find other ways of getting signed without a following in this post.