Email received:
Hey, I am looking at becoming a music producer and found your article on “How To.” But you never really specified what they actually do. You just said to start immediately. What is it that you should start?
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Producing music! That’s what you should start doing if it’s what you want to do. If I sound vague about that it’s because if it’s your passion, nothing will stop you. If it’s not your passion, you’ll never get around to it anyway.
How to start? I can tell you what I did. I started with pencil and paper writing songs at the piano. I remember at one point I would thumb tack finished songs to my bedroom wall. I had no posters or pictures, my goal was to cover all my walls with original compositions. Was it a silly goal? Not to me, it got me to write a lot.
People that have good ideas are people that have lots of ideas. Not all your songs will be good. Just start writing. The whole path will open itself up to you as you go along.
For instance: I remember when someone first hired me to write a song (because they had heard I was a writer). I think I made $30. But I had to get a good recording of it so I bought a 4 track recorder. Later someone wanted a song that needed strings, so I got a string module and started to learn how string parts worked. Then someone needed drums in their song so I had to buy a drum machine.
That was all over 20 years ago when each piece had to be purchased separately. Now you can get one computer program to do it all. Don’t have a computer program? Start with pen and paper.
Are you finding that you don’t know how to write down your music? Time to take a music theory class. Find that you don’t understand loops and beats? Time to study that. See what I mean?
There are a lot of great college courses now with degrees in music related fields and electronics now too, you could go that route.
If it’s your passion, you will seek all that out as you go along.