In this video, I'm going to show you
five common mistakes that are guaranteed to ruin your music career before it even
begins, and we're gonna start right now. There are many pitfalls to avoid for
music producers. You may have great melodic ideas in your head, but then your
hard drive still ends up being filled up with unfinished projects that are just sitting there.
Music production is not easy, but there are steps you can take to save yourself a lot
of trouble, so, let's cut to the chase. Number five: After working on the track for
countless hours you're going to be suffering from various degrees of ear fatigue. Once
you've finished with the mixdown, let the track sit for a while, at least a week.
You can then come back to it with fresh ears and do the final tweaks. It
can also be a good idea to have other people listen to it in order to get some input.
When you're done, test the mix on various systems. It's impossible to get it to
sound perfect everywhere though. The best you can do is to make it sound decent on
most systems, so that's what you should aim for. Talking about tweaks, make sure you don't spend
too much time tweaking. This is another pitfall I see a lot of people fall into. The track might be
finished, but then they end up endlessly tweaking it to death making it sound worse and worse.
The best thing you can do is to let the track sit for a while without listening to it at all.
Then, come back to it and make the final tweak. It's natural to think it can always be
better, but seriously, it's possible to tweak a song for 50 years without ever being
a hundred percent happy with how it sounds. At some point, you'll just have to tell yourself
that it's good enough and be done with it. Number four: Don't spend too much time mixing
early on. Remember; when you start a new project you're always in a race against time. Try to
get all the important elements in place, such as your chords, leads, vocals, counter melodies,
and so on, and do just a rough mixdown as you go. Then, once everything is in place you can do a
final and proper mixdown when the track is done. Number three: Use a reference track. Find
a professional track that's similar to what you're making. Drag it into your DAW and keep it
on top of your playlist at all times. You can now use this as a reference. It will make it easier to
determine how long the various sections should be, where transitions should be, and so on. Study it
and figure out what makes the arrangement work. Don't just copy it, that's not cool, however,
it's perfectly okay to use it as a guide. Number two: Speed is key. In order to finish
tracks, you need to get the job done before you get sick and tired of the track. Try to lay
down the basic arrangement from the very start. Figure out where your drop is going to be,
where the breakdown is going to be, and so on. It can be a good idea to lay down the main kick
for example, so that you have a basic idea of how the structuring will look like. This will make it
easier to fill in the missing pieces. Number one: Whatever you do, don't listen to your track more
than you absolutely have to while working on it. You might have a great melody going, and it's
natural to want to listen to it on repeat, but that's the one thing you must not do!
This will cause you to get tired of it, and when that happens you'll start
to second-guess how it sounds, which typically ends up with you making changes to that
melody that was actually great, to begin with. In other words, you'll end up ruining it. So
always listen to your track and the melodies as little as possible. Pause it whenever you can, and
don't let it play in the background for no reason. Now, when it comes to mixing and mastering, this is something you'll tend to get better
at naturally as you gain more experience. However, if you adopt a bad workflow early
on then you'll have a much harder time as a music producer, compared to someone who
manages to break those bad habits early on. As some of you already know, I have a feedback
service where you can send me your track and then I'll listen to it and give you
detailed feedback and advice in return. I've reviewed hundreds of tracks over the
years, and many are returning customers. What I've found is that those who struggle
with mixing and mastering, but consistently finish their projects, tend to advance more
rapidly overall. So workflow is definitely key when it comes to music production. I'm curious
though, what are your thoughts on the matter? Let me know in the comments below. Hit
that like button if you enjoyed this video, and don't forget to subscribe and click the
bell if you want to see more videos like this. Let me know if there's any particular video you
would like me to make next. Thanks for watching.
