The most outdated music production tips that you need to avoid

While you can learn a lot online and for free, there’s a lot of bad advice being shared out there.

Following my post where I recommended 20+ tips to enhance your workflow and the quality of your tracks, here are some outdated tips and mindsets that you need to avoid…

4 THOUGHTS FROM ME

1. You must put your kick and bass at a certain level!

Music has no rules, but, at the same time, it has some common moves that help producers speed up their workflows. However, the problem lies when producers share their own workflows as a universal rule, and that’s where the confusion all begins.

Here are some common technical advice that you should stop following:

1. You need to put your kick and bass at a certain db (normally -12db). Pick 4 tracks you love, ideally from different labels, and listen to them using a spectrum (use these settings on Voxengo Span to analyze). Now identify the kick and the bass within them, and check if they are at that ideal level. It is not likely that kick of these tracks you love are not all at a specific level, so why should you do this then?
2. You can’t low-cut everything because low-cutting shifts the phase of your sound. I see so many producers afraid of cutting because of phase shifting, but not low-cutting could make their song crowded in the low end. But, here’s a thing you should ‘listen to the result’ more than to the advice. When you low-cut your element, does it sound weird?
   If not, go for it, or just do a really intense low-shelf EQ, which will have less impact in your phase;
3. You should cut the resonant frequencies of elements. I see a lot of people using Soothe2 in everything or doing so many sharp frequency cuts on elements, but honestly… why? You should cut frequencies that bother you, and sometimes you end up cutting the main ‘sauce’ of the sound by doing this.
   Cut because you hear frequencies that need to be cut, and not because you’ve seen someone doing it;
4. You should only do cuts with EQ, not boosts. If you do a cut on 200hz of 2db, then you raise that channel in 2db, aren’t you raising everything but 200hz in 2db? You need to cut what is bad in a sound, say the low end of a pad since you already have the bass in this region, and boost what makes it shine, which could be the mid-range;
5. Tune your kick to the key of the song; In a show, would Coldplay tune their kick before every song they play? Right? To make things clearer to you, pick 5 tracks you love and detect the key they are in. Now, identify in which frequency is their kick playing and you’ll likely see they are not in the root note (also watch this video)

2. Put your bass in mono or it will suck.

This is one of the most common advice regarding bass and it’s one of the things I wish I had known when I was starting since young producers tend to follow this idea to its fullest and make their entire bass mono, which can end up sounding weak in your song, as I covered in this video about the 7 most common bass issues (and how to fix them).

But, listen to On My Knees by Rufus Du Sol. Guess what… This bass is not mono. Same thing with Lane 8’s Watermelon Warmhole… so, can a bass be stereo? Well, yes, even fully stereo, but here’s what I recommend:

1. Make your SUB layer mono. Your sub is the layer around 30-100hz, and that’s something that I recommend to be mono.
2. DON’T use a ‘Mono maker’ for that. Instead, open any vst that can achieve a pure sine wave (not DIVA) and make a sine wave that plays your bass progression from 30-100hz, and bam. This sub will be mono by default, and you don’t need to EQ, low cut, compress, or anything. Just apply sidechain to it and you’ll be fine;
3. Cut the sub from your bass. Now that you have a sine as a Sub layer, cut the sub from ALL your elements to avoid having another sub layer in your song. Let’s say that your sub progression plays A0-F0-G0.. so, go an octave up to A1-F1-G1, and detect the lowest note there, which is F1 (87,3hz).
   Now, do a 48db cut at around 75-80hz, which is F1 minus around 10hz of ‘safety margin’. Now, you’ll have a mono Sub layer, and bass without sub frequencies, right? Make your Bass without Sub layer stereo.
   This is the layer where you can go crazy with being stereo, so you can then have a bass that feels stereo, but also with presence in the mono (check our free low-end checklist guide for more information on this process)

3. Don’t share your secrets or you’ll never stand out.

In the past, I’ve seen so many producers not wanting to share what they know with me, and one even told me that I should hold on to my secrets since that’s what would make me stand out. But, honestly, that just made more awkward situations and more enemies to me than helped me. Instead:

Share everything you know with the people who ask for help. When you help someone, you’re opening doors for them to help you back, and you’ll gain so much from it that you probably will want to keep on helping others;

Give feedback to random people online. When you help others randomly, you are training your ears to detect things ‘to-do’ and ‘not-to-do’ in your songs, and you’ll meet a lot of producers who can give feedback to you when you need it most. In addition, you can meet people that you can collab in the future, or who can help you find emails for your desired labels;

Learn how to constructively help other people. When you give feedback to others, you’ll need to learn how to give feedback that is helpful and constructive, and that is an amazing skill to have as a producer and as a person. In addition, this skill will also help you interpret and take the most out of feedback that people give to you, or even feedback from labels, which can be small and sometimes vague.

4. Don’t use AI as it is only for fake producers.

Whether you like it or not, AI is coming into music and, instead of rejecting it, use it to enhance your workflow and your skills. There are a bunch of free (ish) tools that use from time to time:

1. Use SUNO.AI and Chatgpt to write vocals and test your vocals. If you’re stuck writing lyrics or don’t know how to write a vocal, you can ask ChatGPT for help and it will already give you a starting point. Now, go to SUNO.AI and create a song with the lyrics that you’ve generated to see if they work. If they work, then you can hire a vocalist to get them done for real;
2. Use FADR.COM to split stems for free and use the vocal as a guide for your song. In a song I’m currently working on, I used Fadr.com to download the vocal stem from Seven-Twenty-Four by Le Youth to use it as a guide while creating the track. With this, not only can you shape your song around a vocal, and then hire a vocalist to replace it, but you can also test your song with several kinds of voices to see what type fits before spending loads of money on the wrong vocalist;
3. Use DropTrack to generate a press release for your song. One of the most tedious parts of releasing is writing a press release to send to media outlets and YouTube and Spotify playlists. Recently, I’ve found DropTrack which does a decent job in creating a press release for your song, which you can adapt it further, but at least you have a starting point;
4. Use Suno.AI and Udio.com to generate ideas for you. Instead of struggling with ideas, go to Suno and try to generate a chord progression you like in your genre. Now, convert it to a piano and make some changes to make it unique and avoid any future copyright problems, and bam, you have a new chord progression to work with;
5. Use AI to help you find playlists for your songs. A friend recently recommended Isitagoodplaylist.com to me, which is a tool that analyses your songs and recommends playlists for you to submit your songs. This way, you avoid wasting time and money on playlists that are unlikely to feature your song, along with seeing stats and data to help you decide if it’s even worth pitching to them

4 QUICK TIPS FOR YOU

What are some other tips that are widely spread that you need to avoid following?

1. You’ll never find your signature sound if you use presets.
When people want to find their signature sound, they normally try to do something crazy with sound design, but that’s not what this is about. Ownboss’, who has 5M monthly listeners on Spotify, has a signature sound, that’s first heard on ‘Move Your Body’ and it’s from a preset, and that’s ok as long as that preset defines the vibe you’re going after in your song, which is the most important part of a ‘signature sound’ (read more about signature sound here);

2. You should use this plugin in ALL your elements.
Anytime someone says that you should ‘Always’ use this plugin every time, or compress the kick and bass or whatever, be careful! There’s nothing in music that you should ALWAYS do as it all depends on the song you’re doing.

3. You need to post every day to keep your followers engaged to you on social media.
NO! Post when you have content that your audience will say “Hell yeah”. Sometimes, it’s better to post less, but post killer content that is worth sharing than to regularly post skippable content.

4. Only release your songs when you think they are perfect.
No! You should release when you feel you’re ready to release your music. And if you’re uncertain, you can also ask friends for feedback, and if they feel it’s ready for release, then do it. But, if you’re still uncertain, you can try sending labels, as they can be an additional step to making sure you’re ready. Now, to check all the steps I do to make sure my songs are ready, check this post.