How to start your career as a music producer

If you’re interested in becoming a music producer they are many roads you can take to build a career. And your journey will on depend on the type of music production you want to do. If it’s edm production laidback luke has a video on youtube that outlines the process which makes it easier to develop your skills. just to go over it here:

  1. Start by doing edits to tracks
  2. Then move on to making bootlegs
  3. Then move on to doing mashups
  4. then start making your own original tracks
Along the way get a better understanding of arrangement and sound design and mixing and all the things needed to make a release ready track. Once you have a track that is ready for the public send it to friends and get feedback about your music and build a fanbase overtime. This will help you build demand for your work and give you leverage when you start shopping tracks to labels.
If it’s pop music production or you want to produce a band and vocalist and so forth the process is a bit different.
  1. First you’ll need a space to do recording, you can pay for studio time or you can build your own studio.
  2. Next thing you need to understand what makes a good song and the basic arrangement structures for your genre. This will help you make decisions about an artist song and what it needs to take it to the next level so it can work for its indented listeners. This involves cutting or adding stuff to the song or even changing the order of lyrics etc.
  3. Then the final bit is project management to ensure that things get done on time on budget as well as hiring the right people to do the right job.
You don’t have to be a musician to be a producer you just have to know what you want and get the right people to get it done. Because in essence, you are producing a piece of music. The early producers had a good ear and know good music they didn’t know how to play anything.
So in conclusion to start your career you’ll need to do:
  1. Find and artist who has a song
  2. Get a beat produced for the song
  3. Work on the song so it’s good and the artist knows the lyrics by heart
  4. Record it whether at your own studio or someone else’s
  5. Get the song mixed and mastered
  6. When you have the final master you essentially just produced your first song.
Do it long enough to build a portfolio and eventually a career.

PS. It won’t hurt hanging around local studios to get a foot in and meet people, the key is to be helpful and bring something to the table because you never know.