Beat making and composing makes up a large part of the music production world.
we’ve witnessed the come up of so many producers in the industry that are primarily beat makers.
artists now have their own engineers that record and mix their music,
therefore the necessity of producers to make beats, record, mix and master has seen it’s fair share of depreciation.
nowadays making beats alone can take you places that people never even dreamed of back in the day.
therefore alot of producers have built their own income streams through beat selling,
which makes knowing this art a pretty great deal.
for the newbie producer it may be difficult to know exactly how to practice their beat making skills,
it is for that reason that I decided to compile up a good list of how you can practice your beat making.
one sure great way of practicing beat making is remaking songs.
Beat remakes
the general rule here is that you pick a beat that you wouldn’t otherwise pick.
you need something challenging that will set you on the path to overcoming any temporary fear or doubt that you may have in yourself.
therefore choose a beat, then listen to it and get started remaking it in your DAW, try as much as possible to get the sounds right,
that is what will differentiate you from other people and the more attention you pay to making sure your remake sounds like a duplicate the better you’ll basically get at composing on your own beats from scratch.
Active listening
if you want to practice beat making and wish to improve,
another technique you can employ is called active listening.
this is a type of listening in which you pay attention to every detail in a song without being distracted.
of course, this sounds easy, but you should know that when we listen to music we mostly do it passively,
which means our brains naturally select the elements that it wants to pay attention to.
therefore the more you practice active listening the better you’ll get in applying this same principle within your music,
as an exercise, get a pair of quality headphones and play any song you wish,
then try and hold off thoughts and just pay attention to the sounds you’re hearing.
the more you do this exercise the better you’ll get at it.
I advise you to do it every day.
Buy a Beat Making Course
this is a great idea if you’re looking to level up and improve your beat making skills.
purchase a course and start to learn and relearn certain things, there are hundreds of great resources available online,
this will set you up on a good path.
after each learning session,
fire up your laptop, get inspired and start applying the techniques you’ve learnt.
this will give you some kind of direction, which is great because nothing beats a good system.
therefore learn as much you can from that course until you feel the need to take the training wheels off.
Learn an instrument
live instrumentation has become sort of a forgotten concept in today’s electronic music.
but don’t let that convince you into thinking it’s not important, live organic instrumentation is in a league of it’s own.
therefore it’s a good idea to step off your computer and actually find someone that can teach you how to play a live instrument.
it may seem like an awful lot of work but trust me it will pay off in the future .
one great thing about learning and practicing with live instruments is that it will change your entire perception about music,
which you can learn to incorporate in your music.
as homework look up great instrument courses and get started right away.
take action right now, don’t wait for tomorrow. leave me a comment if you’ve taken some action today towards learning an instrument.
Buy loop kits and build on other people’s ideas
it’s always good to basically understand how well you can make your beats.
thats why its important that you learn how to work with samples.
go to splice and buy any melody or loop kit and get started working on building with the loops you find.
this is good trade craft, it will give you perspective and will teach you how to work with other peoples ideas,
which is a key thing when you’re a beat maker because often times you’ll have to deal with someone that brings their own idea
and would want you to execute it perfectly, therefore a good foundation in making beats with other people’s ideas will help out in such scenarios.
Find your niche
more important than anything is you figuring out where you fit in.
realising your strengths will get you far ahead more than anything,
you can narrow your focus and work to perfect that area,
therefore choose a path which you’ll take and carry on until you’re ready to spread yourself into other areas.
I knew I loved hiphop and I had a strong background therefore I chose to pursue it fully,
that’s what made me excel and actually make a huge difference in my learning process, I advise you to do the same,
find your niche and hammer away at it!
Genres
it’s always a good thing to focus on a specific niche that you choose.
but this shouldn’t at all limit you to an extent where you block out all other genres.
be flexible, you have a lot to learn.
music is a universal language, therefore build on your learning.
try making beats in other genres and add a touch of your strength genre.
this will help you a lot because I believe every genre has something to teach,
all you have to be is a good student.
therefore strive to find your niche or specific genre that you’ll enjoy making,
but dont limit yourself, try other genres too.
Make melodies
one thing I constantly did when I was still working on being a great beat maker was composing.
to this day I feel it has taught me more than I could possibly need.
therefore start making melodies and composing melodies from scratch, this will strengthen your sound choice and incorporation qualities.
which is exactly what you need.
this is great practice, make beats but sometimes just take some time to compose melodies and see how best you can work with different plugins and how best you can incorporate sounds,
in the long run you’ll appreciate yourself for having taking the time to do so
Study music theory everyday
music theory when it comes to making music is your friend.
granted you’ll find a lot information online saying it’s not that important but I you’re gonna need it if you really intend to take this seriously.
therefore as an everyday habit, make music theory a part of your daily activities.
there are alot of music theory books online, do yourself a favour and buy one,
then atleast read a chapter everyday, music theory might seem not that important but a person that knows theory will always have an advantage,
don’t you think it would be great if you had this advantage too?
Consistency
consistency in any area of your life that you’re working on is a key thing.
therefore take yourself seriously and strive to atleast better your skills everyday.
dont be that dude that reads through this article and forgets about it in an hour,
consistency is your friend,
keep trying to get better,
every tip I share here is useful,
make everything a daily routine,
here’s an exercise that you can do,
set up your beat making goals each week and set out to do them every week, plus
get a piece of paper right now and write down your daily practices and stick it up somewhere you can see it every day
train your brain to be consistent and faithful to the process.
Sound Design
sound design is a very useful technique that can really change how you perceive your beat making, therefore practice this art every day.
youtube has a lot of great courses on synth programming,
watch them everyday and make them part of your daily routine,
this little process will make a great difference,
it will make you understand sounds in a deeper way that can help you handle a variety of things that may come your way.
make this part of your daily goals and implement it into your plan, sound design takes a lot of practice therefore make it part of your journey.
YouTube
this should have probably been the very first thing I discussed in this post,
but anyway since we are here let’s get on with it.
use YouTube as an educational resource,
most of the techniques I describe here are accessible on YouTube.
for example, sound design, you’ll find a lot of videos tailor made to help and teach beat makers everything they need know.
therefore utilize YouTube as much as you can, reap the benefits of it,
after all its FREE.
make learning things on YouTube part of your daily goals, make sure the money you’re spending on your internet bill is being put to good use.
post some great and helpful links that have helped you in the comments section,
this will help others.
Collaboration
one of the many things that have helped me level up my beat making game is collaborating with other music producers and beat makers.
collaboration helps you learn a lot from your collaborator just as much as they learn from you.
therefore find a person that’s into beat making and ask them if they could like to collaborate with you,
especially online, there are quite a number of willing collaborators, that will always be interested in working with you,
utilize them and learn from them, make collaboration part of your end game,
collaboration opens a lot of doors and it might just do that for you.
Make beats everyday
remember when I mentioned consistency?
well this is a continuation.
if you’re determined to make a difference then invest a great amount of time into making beats everyday,
trust me on this,
pushing yourself to limits will work in your favour.
a great technique is usually having a number in mind,
I advise you to go with 5 beats a day at minimum, that’s the kind of momentum you need and trust me theres no substitute for hard work.
so if you’ve been putting off making beats all day today,
get in front of your computer right now and start making something.
you’ll appreciate yourself for this in the future
Experiment
as you continue to make beats everyday on a consistent basis, make it your mission to experiment with variety, make it part of your everyday practice,
if you’re utilizing the sound design technique I talked about then experimentation will be pretty easy for you,
mix up some genres, try new sounds.
this will be of great help to you, each time you experiment you discover a newer part of yourself.
therefore push yourself with goals that you would otherwise not do, try techniques that you would otherwise not try.
this will certainly help you learn more and achieve more
Listen to music
listening to music is one of the great ways to learn,
therefore listen to lots of music and make it an everyday practice.
try your best to be an active listener and not a passive one.
active listening is educational listening.
youtube has playlists of some of the top songs in the world,
that should be where you start from, pay close attention to how the professionals are making their beats,
plus learn how they structure their songs, and how they take away and bring in sounds.
then incorporate some of those techniques in your beat making, it will pay off.
Follow your favorite producers
let’s face it, making beats can be exhausting, especially if you’re working daily and for long periods of time.
therefore its always good to find a great source of inspiration.
as a daily practice routine, follow your favourite producers and do what they do.
social media has made it easy for everyone to access their favorite producers, therefore make efforts to watch interviews, beat making videos and learn some secrets from these guys,
this will help you in your own works and it will get you inspired and ready to work again, therefore as a daily practice, get inspired by people that you look up to.
Mixing
when you run across the term mixing I’m sure what comes to mind are vocals.
but don’t worry about vocals right now, learn how to mix your beats.
this will help you improve a lot,
the better your mixes become, the better your music gets.
you can buy a course that teaches mixing or you can simply go to youtube and pick up some great tutorials.
it’s not always about making mind blowing beats, sometimes a well mixed beat will better appreciated.
plus good mixing will teach you how to put sounds together and how to combine various elements,
therefore make it a priority to implement good mixing everytime you make a beat.
Mastering
a great combination of clean mixing and great mastering makes your beats sound better.
most of the time, mastering helps me see what’s wrong with my mix and how I can fix it,
I always make sure to finish beats that I start no matter how bad they sound,
because i know that mastering will make the beat come to life, therefore take a similar approach.
you won’t always make the best of beats, but you can use the beats you have less confident in to play around with mastering and see what you can do to give the beat more life.
take this practice and apply it daily.
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