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S3E04 – 3 Types of Music Production Educators

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In this episode, I talk to you about the 3 types of music production educators I’ve seen over the years.

After talking with so many students over my 15 years of teaching beatmaking with FL Studio, it’s time to finally talk about what to be careful of when choosing a music production educator to continue learning with.

In short..

Music Educator #1: Teaches With Multiple DAWs

Be very careful with these types of educators, because they are trying to capture their sales from brand-new users to music production..

Sadly, those new producers don’t realize that they may not be able to continue learning with that music teacher if they like their teaching style, because they are using so many DAWs!

Another red flag about Music Educator #1 is that they do not know the best workflows and shortcuts of a DAW.. which can only be learned after putting in HUNDREDS OF HOURS into a DAW when making music..

Yes, you can probably get going, but just be aware that the information may be surface level, leaving you still having to find the true beatmaking secrets.

Music Educator #2: Shortcuts, Beat Breakdowns, and Popular Techniques (at the time)

Music trends come and go all the time..

If you are new to making beats, you may not realize how fast music genres change..

Just think about all the music you’ve listened to over the years..

From the 80’s, to the 90’s, to the 2000’s, and even today.. music genres have changed so much.. and what you need to know is each music genre has it’s own music production techniques!

So every now and then, new “techniques” pop-up, and people jump on the bandwagon to build their brand, hoping their subscriber base and views skyrocket.. (it’s really no different than the Gold Rush back in the day!)

There’s lots of valuable tips you can learn here.. but it will be hard to learn how to make your own beats from scratch, and find your own sound as a producer.

Very often, these types of Music Production Educators burn out after a couple years, only to be repeated by the new Music Educator #2 for the next new music trends..

I’ve seen this happen OVER AND OVER in my 15+ years teaching FL Studio..

Music Educator #3: The One That Cares for You 🙂

If you look back to your elementary and high-school days.. there was always that one teacher everyone loved 💖.

The question is.. why?

Just like how we often wonder why we love the songs we do, and what makes their melodies so awesome..

It’s the same reason why these teachers are so valued and respected..

  • They know what they’re talking about
  • They teach more than just the subject at hand
  • They don’t waste your time..
  • They listen to your question
  • They have lots of knowledge in other areas, too..
  • .. and ultimately.. THEY MAKE LEARNING FUN

Music production is incredibly hard to learn..

Why?

Well.. let’s see what you have to learn quickly..

  • Your music program..
  • How music theory works (chords, notes, and rhythm)
  • How to program drum loops
  • How to Mix/Master Music..
  • How to learn all your VST plugins
  • How to use a computer at an intermediate/advanced level
  • How to be very organized (for long-term success)
  • How to release and finish songs..

These all use very different parts of your brain..

And if you can imagine.. point 1 is learning your music program.. That’s not even making beats, yet!!!

Anyways..

Music Educator #3 is a music teacher that will provide you value for years to come.. These are hard to find, and you know you can reach out and get incredibly helpful advice.

Here’s two ways to start learning beatmaking with me:

Hope you enjoyed this one..

LEAVE A COMMENT IF YOU HAVE FEEDBACK 🙂

Beatmaking FL Studio Help Guide Gear Lust

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Questions about this episode

Transcript

S3E04 – 3 Types of Music Production Educators

  1. Season three, episode four. Three types of music production educators and red flags
  2. to avoid. I have been teaching how to make beats with FL Studio for over 12 years
  3. now, and I have seen common patterns over and over again.
  4. And my goal here is to protect you, to make sure that you get high quality education
  5. and be aware of these patterns so that you don't fall into them, okay?
  6. Remember, I always tell you guys about avoiding gear lust.
  7. Stock plugins are not bad. It's about knowing how to use them.
  8. However, there is a place for third-party plugins, but make sure that the
  9. third-party plug-in that you are bringing into your studio production tools that you
  10. actually like them. People sometimes don't really realize that you can be stuck with
  11. third-party plugins for the rest of your life if you ever want to open up your
  12. serious projects again. Before we get into this episode, check out my new homepage
  13. by going to it's gratuitous.com.
  14. There is going to be exclusive videos.
  15. If you sign up, you will not be able to get those videos anywhere else unless you
  16. sign up with your email, okay.
  17. Alright, so the first disclaimer I want to say is I am not the world's best music
  18. producer, and I'm not the world's best music producer educators.
  19. However, my education is known for being very simple to the point, and it gets
  20. people up and running to allow them to save money, to see results, and have fun.
  21. That's usually always my goal.
  22. So let's move on to the first type of music production educators that I've seen over
  23. the years. Each of these types of music production educators, there is value that
  24. you can learn from them. That's not what I'm saying, but many times they are a
  25. little sly in what they're doing and they're not really helping you in the long run.
  26. So the first type of educator that I have seen, music production educator, is
  27. somebody who teaches with multiple DAWs.
  28. If you have listened to my podcast long enough, you know that I'm telling you to
  29. stick to one DAW. And there's a couple reasons for that.
  30. First of all, you save money. Second of all, you learn way faster.
  31. Third, a lot of people don't understand that.
  32. First of all, you have to learn the music program, which is very hard in itself.
  33. And then you have to learn how to make music.
  34. Those are two separate things.
  35. Learning the music program, learning to make beats.
  36. Just because somebody can learn a music program doesn't mean that they can make
  37. beats, at least very good. Okay.
  38. And so when somebody is teaching off of multiple DAWs, from my perspective of
  39. somebody who has been teaching how to make beats for many years, these types of
  40. educators are just trying to grab new producers, okay?
  41. And the problem with somebody teaching multiple DAWs is that they do
  42. not know the best workflows of those DAWs.
  43. Workflow can only be taught after hundreds of hours of making music.
  44. This is not possible if you use different DAWs.
  45. And it's a clear sign that they are more interested in selling you a product rather
  46. than teaching you best practices for the most enjoyment.
  47. One thing I want to say is: where should you be using multiple DAWs then?
  48. This is useful if you are a very popular producer working with tons of different
  49. clients all the time. Sometimes, yes, you might need to have pro tools, you might
  50. need to have logic, you might need to have FL Studio.
  51. That's very different, and that's more rare.
  52. These super producers are like, you know, 2% of the industry.
  53. I'm talking about a home studio producer, someone like me who sits at home, has
  54. their speakers, MIDI keyboard, sound packs, virtual instruments, stick to one DAW,
  55. and I promise you, you will see results, save money, and have the most enjoyment.
  56. Okay. Now to continue on with the type of music production educator who uses
  57. multiple DAWs, the knowledge will be very surface level of that DAW.
  58. And many times there's really no further learning with that teacher if you like
  59. their teaching style as you progress, right?
  60. And because they're bouncing around with all these different music programs.
  61. Now, I just want to say you can learn from watching other DAW tutorials, but it's
  62. not the same experience. For example, if you want to learn about EQ and compression,
  63. you can learn that in any music program.
  64. And same with even making beats.
  65. Making beats is essentially just sound placement, right?
  66. But again, it's still not the same experience from somebody teaching in your music
  67. program that you like to use. And in my case, and hopefully in your case, FL Studio.
  68. The final thing I want to say about the type of music production educator who uses
  69. multiple DAWs to teach music production.
  70. This is not to say that that particular music teacher is not talented, but in my
  71. opinion, it's a clear sign that money is in front of the education.
  72. And my goal is education first.
  73. Obviously, a business needs to have money coming in to fuel its business.
  74. But if you have ever sent me an email, you know that my mindset is education first..
  75. Obviously, sales are important too
  76. But it's kind of just like the mindset as well as the heart of that music production
  77. educators, okay. We are now gonna move on to number two.
  78. So, number two type of music production educators.
  79. This type of educat is someone who shares powerful and popular keyboard shortcuts or
  80. creates breakdown videos or quick beat making videos that don't really reveal or
  81. teach what they're doing. In other words, people who are new many times watch these
  82. people's videos, they see the tools that they're using and they might see kind of
  83. cool little tricks here and there, but they're not really learning like the full
  84. picture. And people are benefiting by watching these different things, but at the
  85. same time, the really the only person who's benefiting is the person creating that
  86. video because they're essentially building their brand, okay?
  87. And that's the next point. So these people who again create these breakdown videos
  88. and popular keyboard shortcut videos, they are just building their brand off of
  89. popular music products. For example, they might be doing things like best free VST
  90. type of videos, and you have to be very careful here because these are the types of
  91. people who are creating stumbling blocks for new producers, causing them to fall
  92. into gearlust and not warning them the dangers of having too many plugins.
  93. I can't tell you how many times students come into the platform and they are so
  94. unorganized. If you want to learn how to select the proper plugins for you,
  95. check out my video about how to buy plugins as a producer.
  96. It's a free tutorial, and the link will be in the description on my website for this
  97. podcast episode, okay? Now, these types of educators, they know what people are
  98. searching for., If you've ever heard of SEO right?
  99. And they make videos to help grow their brand and channel.
  100. But again, it will be hard to learn to make your own music from scratch from
  101. watching these types of videos.
  102. As I said, there's lots of good tips here, but it will be hard to learn how to break
  103. free from tutorials as they don't teach how to discover your own sound.
  104. You're just learning little quick tricks, but you're not really learning how to make
  105. beats, okay? One thing I want to say here is people like to copy a lot in the
  106. music production industry. And I do not believe that copying teaches you how to make
  107. your own music. Copying does not teach improvisation.
  108. And essentially that is what you need to learn as a music producer is improvisation,
  109. being able to play the keys, being able to be creative with your drum loops, and
  110. being unrestricted. There was this one post on Reddit, and I go on Reddit
  111. sometimes, not all the time, but I saw one that someone was asking the question can
  112. you learn music production from copying other people's projects?
  113. And everyone kept saying, Yeah, yeah, you can learn this way.
  114. And I explained, I said, No, you cannot learn because what is happening is you are
  115. literally just copying, but you're not learning.
  116. And people were like, Well, no, you learn from copying.
  117. And I 100% disagree. Here's an example.
  118. I had a friend who learned how to play the popsicle song on the piano.
  119. The popsicle song is like when the ice cream truck goes down the street.
  120. Everyone knows the ice cream truck is coming, right?
  121. He learned to play that piano piece on the piano.
  122. Well, then the next question is, okay, go and make your own beautiful piano piece
  123. now. You know how to play the piano, you know how to play that that one song, right?
  124. And so when you copy, you are just memorizing.
  125. Memorizing is not learning, right?
  126. And that's what I teach you. I teach you learning.
  127. I teach you improvisation. I teach you how to break free from videos so that you can
  128. learn to make your own beats, okay?
  129. So remember, following the trends will not allow you to last long as a music
  130. producer. That is a short-term game mindset.
  131. I like to teach long term for enjoyment and finding your own sound, okay?
  132. This type of music production content should be very cautiously watched.
  133. They are more concerned with building their subscriber number as well as what's
  134. called affiliate income, rather than teaching how to remain organized as a music
  135. producer. I can't tell you how important it is to be organized.
  136. It doesn't take long to be organized, but if you are unorganized, it takes you a
  137. long time to get organized because you have to redo everything that you were all
  138. messy with. But if you set yourself up properly in the beginning, reorganization is
  139. very quick. It could take you maybe an hour.
  140. Whereas if you're very unorganized, I've seen students, it takes them a month or two
  141. to get back to organization because they install all these free tools, et cetera, et
  142. cetera. One other thing I will say about the number two type of music production
  143. educator who shares powerful keyboard shortcuts and stuff like that.
  144. Very often these types of educators are only there for a short time, such as one
  145. year, two years, maybe three years.
  146. Their channel does grow quite big, and then they kind of burn out, and then you
  147. never really see them anymore.
  148. And I can't tell you how many times I've seen this over and over and over for this
  149. number two type of music production educator.
  150. They come in, they kind of talk about what's really really popular at that time in
  151. the music production industry, and then they burn out, they're gone, and then
  152. everything that they talked about is kind of left, and sometimes there's a lot of
  153. value there, but at the same time, they leave a lot of things out, and very often,
  154. again, they're telling you to download tons and tons of plugins or two or new tools,
  155. and you have to remember that a lot of people get popular by talking about popular
  156. products, if that makes sense.
  157. One last final thing I will say about both the the number one type of music
  158. production educator, you know, and that was someone who uses multiple DAWs to teach,
  159. as well as this type of music production educator, which is really just showing kind
  160. of keyboard shortcuts or best free VST kind of videos.
  161. It's very rare that you actually hear these people's own music, right?
  162. They often use like pre-made loops.
  163. If you visit my website at it'sgratuitous.com forward slash music, you can hear
  164. my music. I'm not saying I'm the best music producer in the world, but my music is
  165. there for you to hear examples of practicing what I'm talking about.
  166. All right, so on to the third type of music production educators, and I'll tell you
  167. right here, this is the type of educated you are wanting to learn from.
  168. So, number three type of music production educator.
  169. This is someone who uses only one DAW and is an education first mindset..
  170. They know how to teach and are natural at it
  171. Just because somebody is a good music producer does not mean that they are an
  172. educator. Again, is someone who uses one DAW is an education first
  173. mindset. They know how to teach and are natural at it.
  174. They share best practices while also showing ways to break away from the trends.
  175. They aren't using thousands of plugins because they know it's all about how you use
  176. the tool, not having every tool.
  177. They are mature and they stay away from drama and they provide exceptional content.
  178. They are someone you know that you can continue to learn from on an ongoing
  179. basis. Here are two examples of very high quality educators that I have
  180. seen over my years, okay? One of them, Echo Soundworks.
  181. If you have ever watched his videos, I believe his name is Shane.
  182. Simple to the point to such high quality education.
  183. The second one is Gregor from Presonus.
  184. Okay, if you ever check out his videos, fun, simple, straight to the point.
  185. And that's the goal. When I learned music production many, many years ago, some of
  186. the tutorials that I watched was the original FL Studio Guru.
  187. Simple, to the point, very high quality education, and then also a huge shout out to
  188. NFX, right? Everyone knows NFX from FL Studio, especially if you were in the earlier
  189. days.
  190. Whatever one you select, that's up to you.
  191. In my case, of this podcast and my own music production workflow, I like FL Studio
  192. because lifetime free updates, super fast workflow.
  193. If you ever visit the image line forums, I really like how they actually listen to
  194. the community. They actually put a survey out and they're like, what new features do
  195. you want to see for the next version?
  196. And like it's just amazing. Such a good company for us as users.
  197. Again, don't forget to visit the homepage.
  198. And there's also the exclusive videos if you sign up there.
  199. All right. And there's also going to be a lot of resources on the homepage there
  200. too. So I hope you enjoyed this episode.
  201. I wanted to get this out there because, like I said, I have been teaching for so
  202. many years and I see students coming in and they're so unorganized because they
  203. watch all these videos on YouTube, but very often it's like the top 10 best free
  204. VST plugins. And those are very, very popular videos when people create them, but
  205. they really don't understand the harm that it's doing to serious producers who want
  206. to learn to make beats to stay organized and be in this for the long run.
  207. So be careful out there, protect yourself, be aware of what
  208. you're being taught. If you are looking for simple, high quality, to the point
  209. education, visit me over at it'sgratuitous.com and I'll talk to you in the next
  210. episode.
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