12 Quick Actions You Can Do Today To Become A Better Producer In The Long Run

Time and dedication are two of the most essential ingredients needed to become a great producer. Practice is king, and should be treated as such.

But there’s a problem. You don’t always have 3 hours per day to spend on music. You might have 20 minutes here, an hour there. Not enough time to get into that elusive creative flow.

You could let that time go to waste and use it for mind-numbing activities such as watching Vine compilations (they’re quite good though I must admit). Or you could take action and work towards becoming a better producer.

I’ve made it easy for you. All you need to do is set aside some time and pick one of the 13 quick actions below. I don’t expect you to do them all at once, so feel free to bookmark this page and come back to it in the future.

1. Start Building Your Production Library

The quickest and easiest way to improve the quality of your productions is by using better source material: drum samples, synth presets, plugins – you name it.

If you haven’t already, make a dedicated "Samples” folder for all your sample libraries. It’s best to organize them either by brand/company, or by category (kicks, claps, etc.)

Not sure where to find samples and plugins?

Obviously I recommend looking through Freshly Squeezed Samples first and foremost, but if you can’t find what you’re looking for here then you may want to check out:

• Loopmasters
• ModeAudio
• PluginBoutique

If you’re a new producer, doing this is even more important. The stock samples that come with your DAW don’t take long to grow out of.

2. Create An "Ideas” Folder (10 Minutes)

One of the unfortunate truths for music producers is that not every project will be finished. Sometimes you’ll work for 20 minutes on an idea and abandon it, other times you’ll just get fed up with a track.

But these projects are good to keep lying around. You might come back to them later with more knowledge and skill, and a better sense of what to do with them. A two-year old unfinished project can end up being a masterpiece.

By creating an ideas folder, you’ve got these "idea” projects in a single place that can easily be browsed when you’re lacking inspiration.

Oh, and one more thing - NEVER delete idea projects. I did this once and got told it’s akin to killing babies. Just don’t do it.

3. Put Together A Basic Template (30-60 Minutes)

The basic function of having a template is to get to the important stuff faster. To bypass the mundane preparation that’s needed when you start from a blank slate.

Some people find templates too restricting. I personally think they’re a godsend when it comes to workflow and creativity.

A simple 3-step process for making a production template:

1. Create, name, and color basic instrument tracks such as channels for drums, synths, basses, FX, and so on.
2. Add plugins you know you’ll use. I always EQ my synths, so I’d add a default EQ to them in the template.
3. Implement any mixer routing such as buss and group routing.

Basically you want do as much as you can to streamline your creative process. It’s about reducing the need to do mundane tasks when you’re inspired and motivated.

Check out Morgan Page’s In The Studio video for some extra template building tips.

4. Brainstorm Your Next Track (10-20 Minutes)

Have you ever sat down to begin a production session with no idea of what to do or where to go with a song?

By brainstorming beforehand, you’ll know exactly which direction to head in. Use a website like Coggle.it and come up with themes, ideas, and styles that you want your next track to feature.

A few tips for brainstorming:

• Don’t judge, challenge, evaluate, or criticize thoughts and ideas.
• Go for quantity over quality.
• Put analysis and organization in the background.

You’re really just putting down as many ideas as you can for a track and then carving something from them.

5. Make A List Of Your Favorite Instructors (10-20 minutes)

Many tutorials are around 20 minutes long, making them great for those moments where you just have a little bit of time to spare.

Why not make a list of your favorite instructors or teachers and cycle through their videos?

If you don’t know of any, here are a few YouTube channels to get you started:

• Sadowick
• Tom Cosm
• Future Music
• Computer Music
• Seamless
• EDMProdTV

And also our channel, which will have more tutorial videos coming soon.

6. Salvage Parts From Old Projects (60 minutes)

Sometimes you’ll be working on a song and a lightbulb will go off in your head, "That hi-hat loop I made in Track_017b_Tuesday would work perfectly here!”

Wouldn’t it be great to just have it ready?

Go through old projects and your "ideas” projects and export anything you think could be used or re-used. It could be parts of a melody, synth patches that you’ve made specifically for that production, MIDI elements, the list goes on.

Put all these exported parts into a separate folder that’s easily accessible.

Note: This can take quite a while if you’ve got a lot of projects, so you may want to do it in bursts.

7. Learn Music Theory Basics (60 Minutes)

It still amazes me how many people are unaware of what an interval or scale is! Knowing even the most basic music theory can be incredibly helpful to you as a producer and especially when collaborating with others.

You don’t need to spend 4 years studying jazz music theory, but you should have a fundamental knowledge of how chords and scales work as well as harmonic and melodic progression.

Here are a few learning resources:

• Dave Conservatoire
• MusicTheory.net
• Music Theory: The TL;DR Guide (free eBook)
• Music Theory for Computer Musicians (Book)

8. Schedule A Production Session

Never seem to find the time to produce? Keep making excuses? It’s time to open up your calendar and schedule out a production session.

I recommend blocking out at least 45 minutes, anything less than that makes it hard to get into the creative zone and really enjoy what you’re doing.

You might also want to read this post on getting the most out of your production sessions.

9. Create Two Folders For Unfinished Projects (20-30 Minutes)

Sometimes we abandon projects because we lose inspiration, and other times we abandon them because they just sound horrible.

If you’ve got a spare 30 minutes, it’s a good idea to organize these unfinished projects into two folders: good and bad. This saves you time later on when you decide to work on an old project, only to open 10 hopeless projects before getting to one that has potential.

But why not just delete the bad ones?

Like I said earlier. You NEVER delete projects. But if you really feel the need to delete them to save hard drive space or something, then salvage what you can first (see #6).

10. Purchase A MIDI Keyboard (Even If It’s A Cheap One)

I’ve been rather depressed for a while now as my last MIDI keyboard broke. Producing just isn’t the same without it.

Regardless of whether you play keyboard or not, having a physical object that you can come up with ideas on is not only a more enjoyable process than plotting notes individually with your mouse, it’s a lot quicker.

You don’t need to shell out half a grand for a keyboard either. In fact, a 25-key will do if you’ve got simple needs. Here are a few recommendations:

• Korg NanoKEY
• Alesis Q25 (or 49)
• M-Audio Oxygen Series (25/49/61)

11. Make A "Feedback” List (10-20 Minutes)

Asking for feedback is one of the best ways to improve as a music producer. Finding quality feedback on forums and Facebook groups is near impossible, however, so it’s best that you build relationships with producers and ask them for feedback personally from time to time.

Make a list of people that you know will give you feedback. Try your best to include people that are above you skill-wise.

Why a list?

If you choose one person and constantly ask them for feedback they’ll probably get annoyed. By having a list, you can cycle through each person and get differing opinions.

12. Self-Assess Your Last Production (30 Minutes)

Being critical of your own work as an artist can be hard, but it’s also incredibly helpful.

Take a couple of listens through the last song you produced and ask yourself the following:

• What works well in this track?
• What could work better?
• Could I have put more effort into this?
• What did I learn from this track?

Bonus points for coming up with your own self-assessment questions!

Conclusion

Many of you will have already done some of these actions, which is great! But for those that haven’t, I strongly encourage you to pick a few to do in your spare time. Most of them are incredibly easy to do and will help you immensely in the future.

What would you add to this list? Comment below with your thoughts and ideas.

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