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S2E16 – See Results FAST While Learning Music Production

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Do you want to know the #1 secret to learn better, FAST?

It’s actually TRYING what you’re just watched, read, or have been studying.

If you do not TRY what you are trying to learn, you WILL NOT get it. It’s truly as simple as that.

In this episode I share a couple VALUEABLE tips to discover how to learn effectively, no matter the time schedule you have, or the industry you’re involved in.

Remember, I was an electrician for 10 years and VERY busy all the time… so how did I make time to learn music production so well on the side? (P.S… I also run an electrical website called Becoming-an-Electrician.com!)

It was by following many of the tips within this episode.

I’d take advantage of my breaks at work… Sometimes I’d sit with the guys at work, but I’d like to read a lot, so I’d often go somewhere on my break to eat my lunch and do some light reading without getting distracted!

Key Points of the Episode..

  • Make a list of things you want to learn.. add to this list common terms you keep hearing repeated from video to video.. What do those things mean? When you have spare time.. (like on lunch break), try to read these topics as you’re eating your lunch!
  • ACTUALLY TRY what you’re learning. If you just watch a tutorial and don’t go and try it, you’ll never learn it. Same with the things you’re reading, go and actually try it, and then you’ll see if you understand it!

Alright, thanks for tuning into this episode about how to learn music production fast.

Don’t forget, I have a beatmaking training platform with over 26 FL Studio courses..

You feel free to reach out any time. If you subscribe to my YouTube channel, I have been doing some live streams lately randomly.. they’ve been fun.

Talk to you in the next one!

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Transcript

S2E16 – See Results FAST While Learning Music Production

  1. Season two, episode 16. See results while
  2. learning. Now, being a music producer, there is so much to
  3. learn. And if you're just getting into this, you know, you're about to realize that
  4. it's a never-ending learning industry.
  5. Because there's actually many little mini industries within the music industry,
  6. right? Where are we making a beat?
  7. Are we doing sound design? Are we doing mixing, mastering, arrangement?
  8. Each of these tasks have a different set of professionals.
  9. And if you're trying to learn them all, good on you, because that is what I was
  10. always like. You know, I want I want to learn, I like learning it all, and so all
  11. I'm saying is it takes a lot of learning, okay?
  12. But I want to talk a little bit about how to see results in your learning.
  13. Because you know, you can go to school, you can read a book, but ask
  14. yourself, did you really learn anything?
  15. Before we get into this episode, I want to let you guys know that I run an FL Studio
  16. training platform. If you'd like to learn more about it, you can go to
  17. it'sgratuitous.com forward slash courses.
  18. There's over 26 FL Studio courses at the moment.
  19. So, how do you see results when you're trying to learn?
  20. There's a couple main things that you have to understand if you really want to get
  21. good at making beats. First of all, is you have to read, okay.
  22. And I say that one a lot, but you have to read and you have to just get over it.
  23. And the easiest way to see results is you write a list.
  24. Okay, so if you're doing research, such as, like, let's say you're learning about
  25. EQ. Some common things that you're gonna start doing research on is like the NyQuest
  26. theorem, right? With sample rates and different stuff like that.
  27. Okay, well, what does that actually mean?
  28. So write that down. That goes on the list.
  29. Go do some research on it when you have some free time..
  30. All right Because in the last episode, I talked about when you sit on a computer,
  31. you know, make sure that you have a goal.
  32. So if you make a list of things that you want to learn like that, and again, how
  33. you're gonna know to make a list like this is listen for keywords.
  34. So if someone is talking to you in a tutorial or in a video, listen to certain words
  35. that they keep repeating, but you're not understanding.
  36. Again, such as NyQuest theorem.
  37. Now, you don't have to even know what that means to be a beat maker and even to use
  38. EQ. That's on like the scientific level with like a filter and like all that kind of
  39. stuff. That's super technical.
  40. But do you need to know that to make a beat with chords and knowing about your you
  41. know your favorite synths? But it's still important to read up on it and just
  42. understand just a general idea of what's going on.
  43. If you make a list of these common terms, and what I would do is when I was
  44. electrician at work, we used to get two breaks.
  45. You know, if I was working at a condo, many times I would just go into a different
  46. room for my lunch break, you know, sit, eat my lunch, and I'd just be reading on my
  47. phone these different things about what I wanted to learn.
  48. And that allowed me to really learn the things I wanted to learn.
  49. And since I had a list, I knew that I have this free time, and you know, I could
  50. just kind of mix and match. I didn't have to go in order.
  51. You know, if I had a list, I could be like, oh, maybe I'll read about that or I'll
  52. read about this. So that's one thing.
  53. Now, the next thing where I see a lot of people struggle, is they watch a
  54. tutorial, but they don't actually go and try and practice it.
  55. So that's the biggest error that you are making and
  56. why you're not seeing results..
  57. Because there is a lot of good information out there
  58. And if you feel that you're watching a video to do this or a video to do that, you
  59. actually need to try it. Okay.
  60. And that's the biggest thing that I always tell you guys with my courses my courses
  61. are directed at self-learners.
  62. So what I'm saying there is, yes, I'm showing you the trick to
  63. speed you up to save you time so that you don't have to go and do all this heavy
  64. research. You know, that's what my courses are for.
  65. Like they tell you a lot of these main answers, but you still have to practice them.
  66. Just because you watch the video doesn't mean you know it.
  67. Like if I show you how to make a drum loop, are you just copying what's on the video
  68. to make your own drum loop? And hopefully you're not taking the same sound as me,
  69. you know, if you're watching my courses, because the whole goal here is that you're
  70. taking your own sounds, and yeah, if you want to follow along, okay, that's fine.
  71. But if that's how you're now going and making your music, that is concerning, right?
  72. Because you're not truly learning to make your own beats.
  73. You need to listen to what the video is trying to teach you.
  74. Like if you really want to learn something and you look it up on YouTube or Google
  75. or again on my courses or wherever, and you're trying to learn this topic, you need
  76. to try it in your own way. Okay.
  77. And you might not get it the first time.
  78. And a good example here is side chain compression, right?
  79. Many of you might just be on that topic right now.
  80. But the hardest part about that is learning about the routing.
  81. Does it go on this insert first or does it go in that insert first?
  82. Okay. You're only gonna learn by trying it yourself.
  83. And sidechain compression, like I said, is probably the perfect example of this.
  84. Sure, you watch it in the in the tutorial.
  85. You're even doing it as the person is doing it in the tutorial and you somehow still
  86. screw it up, but eventually you get it to work because you went back and forth so
  87. many times and then it just works.
  88. But mainly when it comes to something like a drum loop.
  89. Nobody can teach you to make a drum loop.
  90. And even with my book, it's called Safe Spots.
  91. You know, again, if you're new around here, Safe Spots is my curriculum for learning
  92. how to make drum loops in FL Studio.
  93. There's a book, there's a course, or like there's the bundle.
  94. If you want more information on that, you can go to it's gratuitous.com forward
  95. slash drum corner. Okay, you can download a free PDF about safe spots.
  96. But when I'm showing you how to make a drum loop, I just want you to understand the
  97. concepts of what's going on. You know, I always tell you the easiest way to make a
  98. drum loop is you put your drum on the one, and then you put your clap or your snare
  99. on the two and the four. That's the easiest way to learn to make a drum loop.
  100. Now you just place your drum, you bounce it around, work with the hi-hat, get
  101. something started. You know, if you're working with a different genre, well, you
  102. know, everything's different. But typically, you know, that four-four time, that is
  103. what you know, most music is in.
  104. So to finish off this episode, to see results in your learning, I highly, highly
  105. suggest making a list. The easiest way nowadays is honestly just, in like an
  106. app. Now, my suggestion to you is if you are gonna do it on your computer, is you
  107. need to have an app that you can access from your phone and your computer.
  108. That way you can you can keep this content in sync, right?
  109. When you're at work, you do it there.
  110. If you are at home, you can update it faster with a keyboard and mouse.
  111. But honestly, my favorite way over time has just been a paper, like a
  112. notebook and a pencil. It just allows you to write, you know, how think about it.
  113. How often do you write nowadays?
  114. Not very often. So it allows me to keep writing a little bit here and there.
  115. and just make a list, tackle some things you want to read.
  116. Okay. The next thing is again make sure you actually try the things that you are
  117. trying to learn. You know, you watch a video, you might not be trying it.
  118. And this is very often with music production, right?
  119. If you're watching videos of someone making a beat, so if you see them do something
  120. cool or something, well, then pause it and like go try it yourself.
  121. And I'm talking more like the standard techniques, such as maybe routing your sounds
  122. to the mixer or color coding, or even even how someone did you know something with
  123. their EQ, you know, with automation or something.
  124. So I hope that allows you to see results in your learning.
  125. That is what I have done. And I have learned a lot.
  126. You know, if you're just learning about music production, I'll give you very, very
  127. quick background. I've learned all this music production stuff just by you know,
  128. YouTube at the time. My YouTube videos that I was watching was around 2009-2010.
  129. And at the time, I really really liked NFX.
  130. I didn't watch all of them, but there was definitely some ones that really helped,
  131. you know, got me past that learning curve.
  132. Because it's hard. It's hard to learn how this program works.
  133. But the tutorial series, which is still available, is by ImageLine, and it's the
  134. original FL Studio Guru. I'm sure they still have it on their YouTube channel.
  135. They have it in a playlist. The old tutorials, they were so good.
  136. They just broke down just music production in just a very simple way, different
  137. things to know about FL Studio for workflow shortcuts.
  138. I remember just watching them and just listening.
  139. Very, very good information. Okay.
  140. However, music production isn't the only thing I've taught myself by doing this,
  141. right? So for those of you that don't know me, I'm the only person at my website,
  142. and I've learned coding, learned how to run a website.
  143. And then again, I was doing the electrical.
  144. You know, I had to go to school, and school wasn't the easiest in electrical.
  145. And it was mainly just because a lot of the teachers were like previous workers.
  146. Many times they didn't want to do the job anymore, and they just started to do the
  147. teaching. And teaching really is important if someone's really passionate.
  148. Okay. I really do think passion in teaching outweighs if someone's like a good
  149. teacher. they go hand in hand, obviously, because a good teacher is organizing
  150. and ultimately cares for the people who are learning, right?
  151. But again, I was having to always go to YouTube, look online to help me when it came
  152. to prepare for a test. I had to go further than the book and from the
  153. teacher. I had to go to an outside source for information.
  154. And so I followed these exact same techniques for all these different industries
  155. I've been kind of involved in over the years.
  156. And so I know they work for me.
  157. I hope they really help you because, like I said, there's a lot to learn.
  158. And if you don't read, you will only get so far in music production.
  159. If you want to kind of jump into all the different areas, right?
  160. Like again, I like to do the the beat making, the arrangement, the mixing, the
  161. mastering, and even some of sound design.
  162. And each of those industries are very, very different industries.
  163. And they also require different effort.
  164. I really do think sound design is interesting, but to me, sound design I find much
  165. more boring than the beat making.
  166. If I was to do sound design, I find that many times I can only do a couple sounds,
  167. and I get tired and I have to stop.
  168. When I come to make beats, you know, I could just keep going beat, you know, make a
  169. beat, done. Okay, go to another beat, make another beat.
  170. You know what I mean? So it's like the beat making is way more fun.
  171. I find the mixing more tiring, but I do enjoy the mixing, but I do find it more
  172. tiring. And the mastering is honestly probably like my favorite part.
  173. It's the part that I spent spend like the most time on.
  174. I'm not saying I'm good at mastering, but I do enjoy it.
  175. it's like you could totally change your song in mastering.
  176. It's incredible. And a multi-band compressor is such a powerful tool, but you got to
  177. be very careful with it. So, again, lots of information.
  178. So if you want to learn FL Studio and make and make beats with FO Studio, again, I
  179. have an FL Studio training platform.
  180. I have a lot of courses in there.
  181. If you want to learn more about it, visit my website, it's gratuitous.com.
  182. And again, you feel free to always reach out to me.
  183. That is what this podcast is for.
  184. It's just to promote my brand, but also share tons of valuable information about
  185. life as a music producer, making beats, getting involved with this stuff, everything
  186. from a MIDI keyboard and your VSTs and your drum kits.
  187. Again, I always like to create my stuff from scratch.
  188. Okay, that's what I always try to teach, is we create our own. melodies, we create
  189. our own drum loops from one-shot drum samples, and then from there you get into the
  190. arrangement We open up our own EQs, our own compressors, and we get into it.
  191. So thank you for listening. Again, reach out if you need help with FO Studio, and
  192. I'll talk to you in the next
  193. episode.
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