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Season 2 ·

S2E06 – Making Your First Months Count

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It’s SUPER OVERWHELMING starting to learn music production.

There are so many videos on YouTube.. and it’s hard to know what’s the best approach to learn how to make beats without guidance and direction.

This is the second interview with Avadar, who has been a student of my platform for over 12 months now.. He has come a tremendously far way, and I’m so proud of him. He has completed almost all 26 of my FL Studio courses.. what an accomplishment!

Make sure to check out the COURSE PATHWAYS page to see how to start taking my FL Studio courses.

This interview will help you make wiser decisions in your early months of learning beatmaking in FL Studio.

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S2E06 – Making Your First Months Count

  1. Season two, episode six, making your first months count.
  2. When you are brand new to making music, there is so much information being
  3. thrown at you. So many tutorials, so many videos.
  4. What equipment do you buy? What plugins do you buy?
  5. Right. I always talk to you about gear lust, like we talked about in season two,
  6. episode three, which was taking music production seriously.
  7. In this episode, I have another interview with you.
  8. This one is with a student named Michael.
  9. His producer name is a Vander.
  10. He's been in the platform for over 12 months, and he's watched almost all of my
  11. courses, and he has come such a far way.
  12. Now I highly suggest that you watch the video interview as well as if you visit
  13. the page. I left a couple of his beats that he's made, right?
  14. So he is a perfect case study.
  15. He has come such a long way. He creates more dance kind of music, and it's super
  16. catchy. I'm really proud of him.
  17. Now, before we get into this episode, what I'm trying to tell you here with making
  18. your first months count is my page that I created is called the Course Pathways.
  19. We will talk about it a bit in the interview, but it's a page that lays out all of
  20. my courses in what order to watch them because I know how it feels.
  21. It's you know, it could be really overwhelming, even if you see all the courses I
  22. have. Like, so right now there's 26 courses, and that could feel overwhelming, like
  23. you know, it's way too much content to watch.
  24. But you take it one course at a time.
  25. So the course pathways works by I have a beginner, intermediate, advanced, and then
  26. kind of like a piano learning section.
  27. You start with the beginner's course and you work your way through that course.
  28. Once you complete it, you go on to the next, and this is the benefit of being a
  29. member. You just watch the course pathways page and you take it slow.
  30. Watch a course.. When you're done, you go to the next course
  31. And I promise you, you will see tremendous improvement in your music in three
  32. months. All right. It's happened to Michael here.
  33. So again, this is Michael's second interview.
  34. I interviewed him about a year ago.
  35. Another student, his name was Joe, him too.
  36. He talked all about the course pathways page.
  37. All right. So make sure to check the resources of this episode for links on how to
  38. watch these interviews to learn about the course pathways, as well as to check out
  39. the training platform. I promise you, you guys, you know, if you are on YouTube and
  40. if you're struggling, if you feel that, you know, you're kind of getting answers
  41. here and there, check out my beatmaker trainer platform.
  42. There's so many courses. All you do is you watch the courses in order from the
  43. course pathways. And since you are a member, you get to watch all the courses at
  44. your own pace, and I'm here to help.
  45. Okay. So here is the interview.
  46. I hope you enjoy. But again, I do suggest checking out the video and the written
  47. article so you can check out Evander's beat.
  48. All right. thank you, Michael.
  49. This is interview number two. I would I want I wanted to give you a nice updated
  50. interview because you've come a long way.
  51. And something cool about you, Michael, is you I think you've watched all of my
  52. courses. pretty much 90%. 90%.
  53. Well, is it like one or two? I think I have three, I have three left, but they're
  54. there for when I'm a pro. Yeah.
  55. But you've come so for releasing your beat tapes and stuff like that.
  56. And you know, which I haven't got around to yet.
  57. But you've come such a far away, you know.
  58. okay, so what courses were the ones that you felt took you to the next level of
  59. understanding like about beat making.
  60. Well, I think for me, the beginner's course at the start really was probably the
  61. one that took me to another level because you might know I spent months looking at
  62. YouTube videos and I was lost after a while because I'd know structure.
  63. I had no music theory or anything like that, and the piano and the music
  64. theory course because I didn't have music or didn't play an instrument at the time.
  65. Okay, so the piano to the music theory course.
  66. do you feel that there's like a difference as you're watching those two different
  67. courses? Because I kind of created them with a little bit of a different mindset,
  68. like the piano is with like it has the music theory, but you're playing the keys,
  69. and then the music theory is learning how to make music without knowing how to play
  70. the piano, so like knowing how to click your chords in and yes, yeah.
  71. Yeah, that they are two separate courses, as you say, but for some reason I did them
  72. together because I didn't know both I didn't know any of them.
  73. it just combined i it linked things together for me to be able to start making my
  74. own beats, you know, or apply stuff watching you and your courses, putting in
  75. chords and stuff like that, it made things a lot easier for me because I could
  76. understand what you were doing while you were explaining it.
  77. It made it a lot easier coming from a complete amateur point of view, you know.
  78. Yeah, yeah, because then you can start learning, like you know, how do the notes
  79. work, and then you can just start being creative and start figuring out. how to make
  80. catchy melodies and you know, because half the half the battles is knowing the notes
  81. you're allowed to play Oh, yes, yeah, without doubt, because it was just always
  82. listening for me and copying what somebody else is doing to try and understand what
  83. notes they're playing or what chords or keys they're playing.
  84. But with the music theory course, it gave me an understanding of the scale, music
  85. scales and you know what keys you can play in certain chords when when you're
  86. playing chords together with with in a in a particular scale.
  87. And it just made me understand my core progressions, you know, with with
  88. with a combination of again with the beginners course and all the different teams,
  89. how they fit together in the DAW and what you need to do in the piano roll in the in
  90. the channel rack, etc. That that was really that's what really stood out to
  91. me, really, because it got me started and I progressed in there, you know.
  92. Awesome. Yeah, it got you to the point where you don't need to rely on watching a
  93. video to you know, like they're saying click in these notes.
  94. It's like no, like at the end of watching the music theory course and my piano
  95. course, like now you know how to make your own melodies, and which is hard in
  96. itself, but but that's half the battle is knowing the notes.
  97. And once you know the notes, now you can start being creative.
  98. Out of all of my courses, what was your favorite course?
  99. So if you yeah. For me, no, 12 months later, the
  100. mixer course for me was the one because your mixer
  101. course, I suppose it it brings all the courses that I spoke of the last few
  102. minutes together, and it could have you you're applying all your knowledge inside
  103. the mixer course, not just learning the mixer and having a better understanding of
  104. scenes and you know parallel processing and all that.
  105. it just there's something about mixing that I like because you get real satisfaction
  106. when you can, you know, put on your FX and your your EQs and your compressions,
  107. making the music theory that you learned and making it sound much better than what
  108. it could be, you know. Yeah, having having full control over yourself.
  109. Exactly. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.
  110. Yeah, for sure. It takes so long to get from A to B.
  111. You know, Rome wasn't built in a day.
  112. I expected it that I'd have all this within six months, but no, it's more like six
  113. years. Maybe not that extreme, but you're always learning.
  114. Yeah, like I'm 10, 11 years in right now, and there's still so much for me to learn,
  115. like a more of the intermediate to the advanced level now.
  116. You know, like like it's kind of like just like anything in life, it's usually like
  117. you can learn the topic really fast up to a certain point, and then if you want to
  118. pass that point, it's like now it's it's a slower learning curve, and you really got
  119. to understand what you're reading and digesting and practicing.
  120. It's incredible, yes, because I remember in your last interview with one of your
  121. members, it was a very good interview, actually.
  122. I really enjoyed it. A lot of the stuff said in that.
  123. I think I I I said it relates to a lot of the stuff I was thinking, but I think
  124. maybe every beginner, 78% of of what the I think
  125. James was his name, but he said, what James said, I think it applies to all of us,
  126. and it's amazing you don't know it at the time..
  127. No, but when you hear somebody else saying it, you're saying, Oh my god, that's
  128. exactly the way I felt, you know
  129. And I still feel with some of the stuff.
  130. So okay, so so that that's my next question.
  131. Like, what what did you find the hardest part about starting up making beats and
  132. finding the tools out there and gear lust and oh they're definitely guilty with the
  133. gear lust for me, yes. you know, you have to have every free
  134. VST that you see on the on on YouTube and on the internet.
  135. You have to have that, and you don't use them half the time because you don't
  136. understand how to use some of them, and they're all within your DOW and you don't
  137. realize it. Well, you do realize it, but you might think that the other stuff is
  138. better. It's not, it's just so sometimes it is, sometimes.
  139. Well, but filter is a perfect example, actually, as you keep at the start, you don't
  140. realize that, you know. but as you progress you do, certainly.
  141. Yeah, so like when you're new, you're out there on YouTube searching all these
  142. different new tools that you're finding, finding reviews, free downloads, you're
  143. acquiring them. What happens is you actually are making yourself really
  144. unorganized, and then about six months later, a year later, you realize
  145. like, man, I have all this stuff, and it's like I don't use half of it, but I
  146. started to use it in my projects.
  147. Now I'm kind of stuck with it, but it's okay because it's your early stages, so many
  148. of these beats aren't your serious beats, but yeah, so you know that happens to all
  149. of us. We start out, we get trapped in the gear lust.
  150. I have a perfect example, actually, Reddy.
  151. You you as you probably know, I changed my computer maybe two months ago.
  152. Yeah, you got upgraded. I had an old computer, you know, and it was getting
  153. overloaded with some projects..
  154. I was getting red lines everywhere
  155. And your music production folder saved a lot of problems for me
  156. because I had a backup and I was able to just copy it from my drive onto the new
  157. computer without any issues whatsoever.
  158. that was smooth. But when it came to the free VSTs that I had,
  159. 70, 80% of them, which I never used, but I might have used them once in a project in
  160. the early days. Yeah. And Bing comes up in your screen, you know.
  161. Studio is missing. you know. But I was lucky enough I had a backup folder.
  162. I was able to go in and find them.
  163. But because I was organized, probably.
  164. But it is it it was definitely wake-up call in one of your blogs.
  165. Your I think it was your first one this year, this season's one.
  166. Did you mention that you know, you have to be careful if you get stuff that you
  167. may not in a few years' time, you might only use it once, but in a few years time,
  168. you're going looking at a an old project and all of a sudden, you know.
  169. And that was a wake-up call. If we said, God, it this is exactly what I experienced
  170. with one or two on a mini scale.
  171. But you know, it's it's definitely it's learning every day when it comes to
  172. things like that. And it's a wise it's a wise piece of of advice.
  173. Honestly, it's something that I realized like significantly within like the last
  174. year or two. So that's why I really I really wanted to get that out.
  175. So the free video was called I think selecting the right plugins as a producer.
  176. So that video is just telling you like be wise in the plugins that you're acquiring,
  177. the ones that you're bringing in, because as soon as you use them, like you're stuck
  178. with them on on serious projects, right?
  179. Yes. Yeah. You know, so like because you know, for me, like I create like the my my
  180. I create my beat tapes or albums or whatever, and so if I want to open up that
  181. project in four years, five years, it's like, well, whatever plugins and whatever
  182. sounds I used, they're they're opening with that project.
  183. So, how happy are you now? So, 12 months later, like you said, how much happier are
  184. you that you learnt to make your own music and not not use construction kits, loops,
  185. MIDI pack, you know what I mean?
  186. Like you have learnt to make your own music, your own chords, your own melodies,
  187. your own drum loops from one shot drum samples.
  188. Very, very satisfying. Right. Especially this is coming from a guy like that.
  189. I just I had no music theory, I never played an instrument, love music, listened to
  190. it all my life, all sorts of different genres, but just being able to make your own
  191. and call it your own for me was you know, because it's very tempting.
  192. And also being able to listen to it, like when you listen to your own music, like
  193. it's kind of weird, it's like it's your own music, and someone could kind of think
  194. it's weird, it's like oh, he's listening to his own music, but it's like you made
  195. that, yeah. You're enjoying it.
  196. Yeah, exactly. Like you'll there's there's like no feeling like it.
  197. It's it's absolutely amazing. Yeah, there's plenty of times, there's plenty of time
  198. to you know pull drum loops or music samples or whatever, but you as you always say
  199. it is somebody else's invention, and you're using that.
  200. You can't really call that your own.
  201. You you don't get the same satisfactory.
  202. Okay, so I want to ask you a couple questions about safe spots.
  203. Safe spots, yeah. Did you finish the book?
  204. I
  205. Yes, did finish the book. I enjoy the book, and I applied it to what my
  206. more recent base beats that I make, you know.
  207. Applied it, and it's you're applying what you're reading, you're applying what
  208. you're seeing in your courses as well.
  209. You know, it's it's for me, it's a reminder.
  210. I have to read, I prefer watching and doing rather than reading.
  211. But again, yeah, you've learned me to you have to read, you have to read, and I
  212. understand that. No, you do have to read.
  213. So when you read the Safe Spots book, did you find that watching the safe spots
  214. course brought a lot of clarity into the concepts?
  215. Yes, definitely. I had already watched the course, and then
  216. I read about it, and I went back and watched the course again.
  217. But because I just told you I'm not a great reader, but I have to read.
  218. But the fact that I had watched the course and read the book, I could completely
  219. 100% relate to everything you were saying.
  220. In other words, I was probably a little beyond the beginner part, which made it
  221. more understandable to put for me.
  222. That approach definitely helped me or worked worked for me that way, you know.
  223. Yeah, no, for the most part, I really tried to use the same sounds which I make
  224. available to you. So, again, the exclusive audio drum bundle trio sounds, but when
  225. you watch the courses, if you have the same sounds, it's like you can literally just
  226. kind of follow along, but then again, my teaching style, I always tell you now do
  227. your own thing, right? Learn the basics.
  228. Now you can go on and and yeah, just actually just make your own music, drum
  229. loops, melodies. And then for you, and right now it sounds you know, now you're on
  230. to kind of more like the mixing, right?
  231. Which takes a long time as well.
  232. Yeah, well, yes, I I I love I love it.
  233. I really like it. that part of it.
  234. particularly EQing and compression, they're two things that I've really studied in
  235. the last few months to perfect to try and perfect them better, you know.
  236. But you realize as you've got on how important EQ is.
  237. It's just you know, and balance it's it's of all the well, of all
  238. of what seems complex, like compression and saturation and all that kind of stuff.
  239. EQing is probably one of the easier parts of them, and it's the most important
  240. in my view from from the knowledge I have.
  241. No, it's definitely the most important.
  242. Mm-hmm. Because at the end of the day, it it's it's your final sound, right?
  243. Like, because again, there's there's two approaches to EQ.
  244. There's like the sound design approach where you're being aggressive, you're trying
  245. to find a sound, and then there's the EQ approach where you're trying to just tweak
  246. the sound to make it maybe fit better or balance it out in the mix.
  247. Yeah, that's that's the part I'm talking about, really.
  248. Right. When I was talking about it, which is you know, taking finding the right
  249. space for a certain instrument or a certain sound and trying put the bass where it
  250. needs to be in the drums where where where they need to be, just by EQ alone before
  251. you touch anything else. I think it's very satisfactory.
  252. just the mixer for me is is yeah, yeah, because it's so powerful what you can do
  253. inside there. Well, like that's see the thing is like you you make the beat and
  254. those are all your loops but the mixer is really where that's where it all comes
  255. together right all your audio has to route through an in you know one insert and
  256. then it all gets summed to the master so you you want to make sure that you're
  257. learning you know your different inserts but then you also want to learn about that
  258. master too right because those are those are crucial.
  259. Okay. It was one so oh oh yeah yeah yeah sorry I was just going to say that the
  260. during one part of the mixing of one of the beats I was doing recently I applied
  261. delay onto hi hat by mistake and
  262. it was it was it was really high it was a wet a really wet mix but the hi-hat
  263. started sounding like a shaker you know and I started messing around with and I
  264. actually you ended up using delay on the hi-hat as a shaker instead of going into
  265. the channel rack and you know the way you can separate and make one higher one lower
  266. and make it sound like a shaker in the hi-hat.
  267. Yeah yeah so you you learn stuff by accident as well when you're messing around with
  268. the mixer it's it's fabulous. Okay so just to recap so
  269. courses that really helped you was the beginner's course the music theory course and
  270. the piano lessons for producers course and then your favorite course was the FL
  271. studio mixer flow isn't yeah f FL Studio Mixer Workflow is the
  272. mixer one yeah and then also also the a specific music production folder because you
  273. followed my music production folder when you switched over to your new computer, it
  274. was just for the most part, it's pretty seamless, right?
  275. Like you just drag the folder over when you open a project, as long as you have all
  276. your plugins reinstalled, it's you're good to go..
  277. Yes, without doubt I don't think I don't think I have used the FL
  278. Studio projects folder for well, I have used it, but I everything comes out of my
  279. project, my own project folder from the organization.
  280. So just to say that so FL Studio recently did like a change to their folder, like I
  281. think in FL Studio 20. So you know, you can take that approach, but you just have to
  282. know what you're doing. But the reason the reason why I took my own approach is just
  283. because of missing files I've experienced over the years.
  284. So I created that a specific music production folder.
  285. Keeps my music very organized, easy to back up.
  286. And again, when you switch a computer, it's the easiest thing.
  287. So my last question is what advice would you give to somebody starting up?
  288. So if you know if you were starting brand new, like what would you say to them to
  289. save them the first three months of gear losses?
  290. First three months, you know, don't waste your time too much on YouTube.
  291. YouTube is powerful, and yeah, there are some fabulous 10-minute clips about
  292. EQing or compression or whatever, but when you have no guidance or or
  293. anything, any structure, you're going to overload yourself with information because
  294. you might be trying to learn something that you're not going to use for months.
  295. You have to learn the basic foundation of something first and then develop it.
  296. the best bit of advice actually that I would give somebody is that use your pathways
  297. system, course pathways platform.
  298. Oh, yeah, without doubt. Use it because it puts things into structure,
  299. really. And you know, when you're a beginner, it looks daunting when you see all the
  300. courses, and then you say, Well, if there's pathways, you can learn., for instance,
  301. the beginner's course, you know, and you can progress from there and take it step by
  302. step don't expect to don't expect to be an expert in six months.
  303. But definitely you will find huge progression in six months if you start with
  304. pathways and don't waste your time thinking that YouTube is gonna make you an
  305. expert. Okay, and just let everyone know that the course pathways is a page that I
  306. created listing all of my courses in what order to take them for the best learning
  307. experience. Okay, so thank you so much, Michael, for your time.
  308. You're welcome. That's great. Thank you for having me.
  309. yeah, thank you, man. Like you've been in for like 12 months, you've been such a
  310. good student. You're you've right.
  311. I've always told you that you have to read to learn, and you're under like you
  312. actually are though. Like you've you've come such a far away.
  313. I even have created a little folder for you whenever you've sent me beats over the
  314. time, and just like how yeah, yeah, like how your beats have improved, right?
  315. Like, you know, so you've come such a far away, and you're an awesome case study.
  316. and I hope you know other people can learn if they join up, just like you have.
  317. Oh well, thank you very much. I I I I come looking for that music folder off you
  318. sometime. Hey Gratuit is here.
  319. I hope you enjoyed the content.
  320. If you want to become a better producer, then check out my podcast called Music
  321. Production Made Simple. It's totally free and available wherever you listen to
  322. podcasts. I also run a beatmaker trainer platform.
  323. There's over 26 courses in there right now, all focused on FL Studio.
  324. It's helped a lot of students, and I'm sure you'll love it.
  325. For more information, just go to it'sgratuitous.com forward slash courses.
  326. Finally, if you like to read, all of my books are now available in one bundle, such
  327. as audio painting about arrangement, safe spots about drum loops, FL Studio
  328. Beginners book, which is going to teach you the basics, my template book to teach
  329. you about a fast workflow, as well as proper producer mindset to start your music
  330. production career right the first time.
  331. For more information on my book bundle, just go to itsgratuitous.com forward slash
  332. books. Thanks again for watching.
  333. Visit it'sgratuitous.com for all your FL Studio training
  334. needs.
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