The fastest ways to learn music production in 2025

You likely want to achieve your music goals as fast as possible, but mastering your music production skills is crucial for that to happen.

So, if you want to speed up your learning process, here’s some tips on how to learn faster:

4 THOUGHTS FROM ME

1. Master your genre by recreating it.

The first thing you need to do to hack your learning journey is understand your genre to make sure that you’re focusing your efforts on what will give you the most results. So:

1. Define the core elements of your genre. What is your genre all about?
   • Ask ChatGPT what are the main elements of your genre;
   • Then, ask what are the main components of your genre’s sound design, arrangement, and composition;
   • Now, compare what you read and focus on tackling them one by one. You now know, at least, the foundation of your genre, and you know what to focus on. If you’re a Melodic House producer, for example, here’s what Grok recommends you focus on;
2. Recreate your favorite songs. An amazing way to learn how to master your genre is by recreating it. You can use your favorite song to:
   • Learn how to arrange the sections of your song and how long the song should be;
   • Learn how often you should introduce new elements… What elements should you add next to keep the arrangement moving?;
   • Compare whether you copied every part correctly, in other words, is your version’s low end hitting as hard? Does the lead sit in the right space?;
   • Now, make something similar by applying what you’ve discovered;
3. Develop your sound design skills by recreating your favorite sounds. Go to YouTube and check our sound design playlist, or The Sound Design Channel, where I’m also a host. Now, pick some sounds you like from there and recreate them. This will help you understand what you need to do to create the sounds you love;
4. Recreate what you’re most struggling with. If you’re struggling to create emotional progressions that make impactful leads, then recreate 5-10 progressions from your favorite songs, including the leads. Now, practice creating similar melodies, but different from what you’ve just recreated.
   If you have a piano, play these 5-10 progressions so you can create physical memory of playing what you like, which can help you write new melodies later with the same vibe.

2. Focus on learning the smart way, not the hard way.

Instead of working as hard as you can, you’ll have to work as smart as you can to learn faster. This is how:

1. Hire a mentor. I’ve said this here, but hiring an experienced producer is a way to speed up your learning, as a mentor will be able (a) provide solutions to issues you don’t know how to fix; (b) discover potential issues that you’re not able to spot; (c) create a learning outline that will boost your progress;
2. Do Start to Finish courses to learn how to structure tracks. A start-to-finish course is an amazing way to understand and develop your arrangement skills since it will expose you to an experienced producer showing you what to do next, which could serve to develop your own tracks later. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can check my melodic techno start to finish over here;
3. Watch tutorials of your favorite producers making music, and not just showing tricks. When you watch producers actually making songs, you’ll learn how to make music like your favorite producers, picking up tricks and tips that are actually used to make a song.
   Use that to not only learn what they do, but also copy the elements you’re struggling with, and also their processing chains for what you’ve liked. Why? These could all be used in future tracks.
4. Focus on what will make the biggest difference to you. Instead of learning random things, you need to focus on what will make the biggest difference for your music. If you feel like you don’t know what that might be, ask a producer, or ask me about a song you’re working on, but ask the right question like: “Based on this song, what 3 things do you think I need to learn and master next?”
   This gives you a guideline for the knowledge to go look for in order, and focuses your learning to what will give you the biggest improvements.

3. Commit yourself to learning music production.

Most of the time, learning fast is not only about hacking your learning process, as mentioned above, but also about committing to it and following through, and this can be more important than learning faster. So, here are some recommendations for you:

1. Set short-term goals. Where do you want to be in three months? What about six months? Now, what do you need to do weekly to get there? This makes sure that you not only know where you want to go, but also makes sure that you write down a path that can get you there in the timeframe you want;
2. Commit to producing every day in chunks of 30 minutes. Learning daily is key to keeping the flow going and also for making consistent progress. But, most importantly, committing to producing in 30 minutes makes this task a lot less demanding than if you needed to commit to 2 hours every day. After all, it’s just 30 minutes, so you can do it. More importantly, this can make producing a habit, which is key for growth.
3. Teach other producers. An amazing way to learn is to teach other producers how to do something, as this gives you the chance to revisit what you’ve learned and also learn new perspectives on how to achieve something. But, you don’t need to do it in an actual lesson format… Just giving feedback to someone can already teach you a lot;
4. Get Feedback. To understand issues you might not be spotting in your songs, ask for feedback from other producers, something you can do on my server on Discord (more on how to get GOOD feedback in this post);
5. Finish a track a week. You must focus on finishing your tracks and avoid leaving them unfinished. After finishing every track, listen to it and write down what you could do better in the next song, and focus on fixing this for the next one.

4. Avoid the most common rookie mistakes.

Learning fast is also about avoiding common music production traps that could slow you down, since that might frustrate you and drain your motivation. So, this is what you should avoid:

1. Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis. Analysing other artists is important as it can teach you a lot about how to produce what you want, but when you get stuck overthinking it, it becomes an issue. This often happens because you’re either (a) not understanding something or (b) not being able to achieve what you’ve analysed. In any case, ask for help from a producer friend, or hit me up on Instagram or with a DM on Discord (leolauretti#3633), as it can help keep you moving;
2. Stop trying to find the miracle plugin. Instead of investing thousands in plugins that claim to solve your low-end issues, learn how to solve them with the tools you already have. Ask ChatGPT or Grok how to fix what you need to, and you’ll receive a bunch of recommendations that could help fix your issue, saving you money and expanding your knowledge.
   For example, I asked Grok how to fix a kick that doesn’t have much power, and check what it recommended me to try.
3. Stop sharpening the axe and just do it. Spend 60-70% of your time learning by making music in your DAW instead of just watching tutorials to prepare your ‘toolkit’. Instead of reading manuals, start turning knobs and tweaking stuff, and look for new insights as you need them. Preparing and looking for good tutorials are important, but music production is something you’ll mostly learn by doing, so just do it

1 QUESTION FOR YOU

What else can you do to learn music production faster?

1. Invest in knowledge, not just plugins or promotion.
In addition to buying some plugins and investing in promotion, set aside some money for developing yourself, especially if the feedback you’re getting on your songs isn’t only positive. In this case, your time and money would be better spent than paying for ads or making content to promote your song.

2. Learn Music Theory and how to play Piano.
Learn how to play piano, as this will help you write better chords, melodies, and bass progressions. Not only this, but it’s a lot more fun to play your songs than programming them with a mouse. Now, learning music theory will expand your possibilities to write better songs even further.

3. Engage with a Community.
Engaging with a community is an amazing way to meet new people who can share experiences with you, help you with feedback, teach you cool tricks, and also share other hacks like label contacts. But, most importantly, it can help you not feel alone in your journey, which sometimes can make music production less desirable than doing something else.