Hey all!

Happy new year. Im stepping into the professional realm of music this year, and unfortunately i have little resources as far as studios to go intern or understudy at.

im wondering if theres one, a collection or multiple diffrent sources that can help me from "front to back"

Enginnering, production, and mixing are the main things im looking for, but i need extreame detail.

alot of books or youtube videos leave out or gatekeep vital parts of each step.

so any information you all may have of these topics will help, but again im looking for very detailed or advanced books,videos, courses ect.

THANKS!


p.s. i know certain things can only be learned hands on or are particular to a certain track or project, i also know that some production and mixing is subjective and creative. im looking for the "proper" ways to do things.

 

Last edited: Jan 5, 2024

There is no proper way to do things. There is no standard but your own.
You're going to get a bunch of diverse answers but it all boils down to these steps:

1. Find similar tracks that are the same quality that you want to put out
2. Find out who produced, mixed and mastered those tracks
3. Research. Find articles and posts about these people. Google see if they offer any training materials or recommendations for tools and training.
4. Obtain these tools, materials and training by any means necessary.
5. Practice, practice, practice.
6. Rinse and repeat until you are satisfied.

 

Listen to refence tracks until you know them back to front.

 

my sincere advice is to use spell check. the first thing i noticed was "professinal." i understand this is just a post on a forum, but there are 4 typos in there, and i'm not including alot being one word. so when you begin to reach out to other people in the industry double check your writing before you hit send is what i recommend so you can catch those. good luck its a fun journey!

 

"proper" way is work-driven hands-on experience, over and over again,
don't expect books and schools to make you a Pro, it's faster to just do things and receive feedback on your work (in nowadays online world it's very effective way imo)

where in the realm are you stepping in? are you a musician? technician?

there is so much to learn from it's really overwhelming to grasp everything,
it's indeed most diffcult and complex stuff if you want to become a complete one-man-show producer,

my advice is only an order of things:
1) learn computers and basic technical stuff - this will help you have a proper functional setup without being distracted from worrying about functionality
2) learn arranging and composition - if music is catchy, interesting, well thought out etc... it's 80% done already
3) listen lots of various music - not just for ideas and references, but also to keep up with trends, modern sound, artists and such
4a) learn recording - if you want to record actual instruments, it's good time to give it some effort
4b) learn live sound - recording may be cool, but doing live shows and gigs makes you think and act faster
4c) learn mixing - live sound is fine, but if you've managed previous points, only then you should bother approaching tedious mix stuff where you can pay more attention to details and do more complex stuff
5) learn about distribution and mastering - because in the end you want to deliver music on a professional level, streaming, CDs, vinyls, film... those are all bit different, and so is the mastering of the well-mixed audio beforehand

 

I was at my night time job and wanted to get this out asap! Apologies. I made some edits.

 

all gooooooood i figured it was just a rushed post but just making sure! night shift gang representing!


ps the first thing i would do personally with my money is make sure i have a good monitoring setup, whether headphones or monitors- all the learning in the world doesn't mean much if you can't hear whats going on!

 

i should mention im a pretty seasoned composer and beat maker. but that doesnt make me a good mixer or producer.

i have a decent studio. hs7 with hs8s some pre amps midi controllers plenty of software ect.

i use vsx btw.

i guess im just trying to make sure im as knowledgable as i can be before stepping into projects and jobs that im being paid to do and that dont pretain to my personal music and that will be commerical.

 

nice! im decently satisfied with my own mixes lately because i switched to sennhieser hd600s a while ago and i feel like i can hear things properly for the first time, so i'm always trying to make sure people invest in monitoring equipment. as far as working on tunes outside of your own stuff/genre, have you searched for multitracks/stems of songs to practice mixing on? i know sometimes places have remix contests where they post all the stems, it might be worth searching for some of those so you could get some practice in. or ask for volunteers to send you tracks to practice mixing/mastering for free before you feel like you can start charging people.

 

Think this is the most advanced and no BS stuff you will get online for free or even paid, look for mixedbyAli videos at the bottom.

Take this with grain of salt or for as little as it's worth, but try to nail the genre you are currently doing, you got most familiarity with it and down the line your taste in it could be deciding factor for many of your customers to pick you in the sea of competition. In some genres, people expect you to nail some things and those things seek lot of attention to detail, knowledge and skill to nail, so stick to your guns. it's not rare that some A list guys are specialized in some genres and people turn to them because they will deliver 100%.

 

Get to know a bunch of local bands, offer to record them and as they improve, so do you, try to get to venues and learning live-mixing.

Those are good because it forces you to improvise and learn a wide variety of things instead of being purely analytical and you get some good personal skills, and meet people in the biz. It helps if you're not an asshole, by the way. I'm sure that won't be an problem, but there are a lot of heated egos in this area of work.

 

find one mixer/producer you like, spend 1-2 months trying to be him, copy every single shit he does, google everything about him, watch all his videos, listen to all his work, his interviews, watch it, read it, eat what he eats, only use plugins he uses they way he used it. write down every single thing that you think is cool. highlight the thing that you want to learn further, deeper, in the future, KIV but dont do it just yet. then move on to another for the next 1-2 months. Ignored what you learn from the previous person. this time a mixer you like but doesnt do the music you like, CLA or something. the next 1-2 month go random with someone that mix music you dont really know. after 5-6 times doing that, you will reach a point where you kinda have a certain view of things and hopefully a decision of what type of mixer you want to be. Check back all your notes, make a schedule of how you are going to learn the KIV things. from the interviews, videos etc, you might picked up the mixer mentioned book, a person he looked up too, gears, all stuff like that. slowly dig them all out.

Create your own type of mixer/producer you want to be, based on the stuff you ripped-off from those people. You'd know what you want to be at that time. What book you want to read. What subject matters, to help you become the type of mixer you want. What will be your specialty and stuff. There are grammy winning mixer/producer that doesnt even know how to play instruments, also some dont even know shit about music theory, others might have PhD, some dont even know how an EQ work, some handwired all their gears and allergic to digital equipments. Some just doing the bigger picture stuff without ever touching anything, all manual labor done by army of assistants. So which one is the proper way then ?

There is no one certain exact way to do it. Kinda have to pick one that you think will work for you 1st and IMO it's best done by spending time observing all the successful, inspiring people in the industry and see how they look at things first. Get atleast 10 minimum especially people that you never know exist before.

As for now if someone randomly suggests a book or production course for you, low chance it is ever going to be useful in the future since you probably can't tell the things I've previously mention just yet. You see we don't have enough time to learn everything about everything in this lifetime. Important to be able to tell what matters today and 100% certain that it will still matters next year.

Just my two cents.

 

Just an advice off the top of my helmet: make plenty of songs/tracks. Short ones will do in the beginning. Practice does make perfect, really. That's how you learn and get new creative ideas. In the end use your reference tracks, or just similar tracks/songs to make them sound alike.

oh and don't worry too much about mixing or mastering when starting a song. It's a good idea to make it sound good without much eq and compression. fx like reverb, chorus, phaser, delay, distortion... are allowed, of course, as they can define your sound. eq and compression are more like polishing tools, and can screw up too much if used improperly. However, compression can be part of the sound too. When used as a creative tool to emphasise transients, for example. If it sounds good, it is good.

Cheers!

 

The music industry had changed so much so rather than advice in an ever-changing platform, I will simply say that if you are able to feed yourself by doing what you love, it is worth more than making a lot of money doing something you have to force yourself to get up every morning to do.

On a personal level, keep going, no matter how hard it gets.

 

Owsley "Bear" Stanley, the guy who produced around 4 million hits of the infamous Orange Sunshine acid in the 60s, and who conceived The Wall of Sound aka the most ahead of its time PA system ever that has changed the game of live sound, once said that you couldn't really understand audio unless you took shitloads of acid and saw sound waves in their most intricate detail.

I'm still an apprentice in his school. Don't know if I'll ever get my credits.

 

i just started doing this theres a great site for getting this type of stuff! https://www.cambridge-mt.com/ms/mtk/

 

thanks! i wasnt aware of this channel and i agree 100%!