What would be the next step ?

[sguney]

Hi guys,

 

First of all I apologize if this is the wrong place to write this post...

I am at the 3rd grade in a University. I've been working on music production for 1 year now and I can say that, considering I learned it all by myself with the help of youtube, I am eligible to make a non-professional track easily. To give you a hint, my idol is Swedish House Mafia. So the path I will follow has to be following the kind of music they produce. I believe I did all I can without any professional help and its time for me to get some. I have 4 months of holiday and I am willing to focus on music production, my request from you is to tell me what would be the best thing to do for me in this time.

 

Thank you

[ski]

While there's bound to be some good advice and tutorials offered on YouTube, keep in mind that sometimes you get what you pay for: well-meaning, confidently presented bad advice is still bad advice. To that end, I'd suggest investigating video tutorials from MacProVideo and others. Another choice would be to take a Logic course in music production (Logic Pro Help offers such classes -- see the "Classes" link above). But nothing's going to help you out more than gaining a lot more experience as a musician/producer, and while no tutorial or class can give you that, they'll get you on your way. And of course, you have to be honest with your assessment of yourself in terms of how talented you are.

 

You say that SHM is your idol now, but by the time you're ready to do music production on their level (years from now), who's to say that SHM (and the whole EDM/pop genre) will still be current? In other words, I think you're making a huge mistake by trying to emulate the sound of any existing group as a long-term goal. While trying to understand how they produce records is definitely something worth investigating (lots to be learned and appreciated), setting yourself up to be a SHM clone isn't going to get you to generate anything necessarily new or fresh sounding. SHM already does SHM.

[David Nahmani]

nothing's going to help you out more than gaining a lot more experience as a musician/producer, and while no tutorial or class can give you that, they'll get you on your way.

That's the key. You have to do it, do it, redo it, do it again, and do it some more. Then just keep repeating.

 

The more you do, the more you get frustrated. Because it doesn't sound like SHM, or it doesn't sound like that specific sound you had in your head, or the energy is just not there, or the arrangement is not very exciting etc. SOME frustration is GOOD: it will show you what you need to work on, and it will give you motivation to learn those things. Sound design. Synth programming. Mixing. MIDI programming. Arranging. Melody construction. Signal routing in the mixer. Etc etc... But too much frustration can be discouraging.

 

A class like our Logic 101 will definitely put you on the right tracks by giving your solid fundamentals: the basis you need to get started producing music: MIDI programming, editing, recording, Audio recording, editing, tempo matching and manipulation, arrangement, mixing and automation. The advantage of taking such a class is that you'll bypass a lot of fumbling around trying to get somewhere because you'll already know how to do all the basic steps of producing a track. And I always make sure all my students learn the correct way to do things first - which gives you a huge advantage and allows you to get your ideas from your brain to your hard drive faster.