Being new to music production can really make many processes look confusing. Even if you are returning to music-making and need a refresher in certain aspects of recording, mixing and mastering can look quite complex. If either of these conditions applies to you, then you’re at the right place, reading this post!

This piece of writing will help you understand the main principles of music technology and how to produce music in the easiest way possible. After reading this article, you should be in a good place to start or restart music production, whether as a hobby, semi-professionally, or even as a career.

How and Where to Start?

To learn the basics of music composition or song you need to understand the constituent parts, i.e., the instruments like guitar, drums, bass, keyboards, and so on and the vocals. These are generally called the ‘tracks’ and are the core of the music production process. The process simply involves how to get the sounds together for each track, arrange them, mix them according to the composition and make them sound ‘professional’.

The process does not demand a lot of devices but the heart of the 21st-century studio, i.e., the computer or any other portable devices like tablets and iPads.

Another important thing rather is the software that the computer runs. Software turns a computer into a music production powerhouse. A DAW software enables the recording, mixing, and mastering of music tracks.

Sounds

Sound is an integral and main component of music. Have you wondered where do the sounds come from and how to get them together within your computer? It’s can be thought of as ‘internal’ and ‘external’ in your desktop. You need to record ‘external sounds’ through instruments like guitars, vocals, and other acoustic instruments such as pianos, violins, or electronic keyboards like synthesizers. Once recorded, you can arrange them together using a sequencer. These are ‘digital audio’ tracks and one doesn’t need to worry about the term used to name the tracks. This contains the actual audio information and the recorded waveform of the external instrument.

Now comes the internal sounds that are generated within your DAW. Most sequencers have ‘virtual instruments’ that recreate sounds, for example, drum kits, keyboards or guitars to play or a connected keyboard. These sounds are known as MIDI tracks and the data within a MIDI track is more about the note information. This all includes which notes are played, how hard, and for how long. These notes can be moved around and edited after being recorded using a sequencer’s editor.

The other type of internal sound used in music production is called a sample. Again, these are audio, so digital recordings of real sounds, but especially-created riffs, melodies, drum patterns, or vocal parts produced by third party manufacturers. You can buy collections on CD, DVD or download them for free and drop them on different tracks to build up a track.

So, there are three different ways of getting sounds together for music creation and production. You are now ready to create songs using virtual instruments, external sounds, and samples. You can also try your hands on creating a combination of all three. The theoretical knowledge is having a lot more to learn. To produce music there’s a lot more if you want to explore and delve a little deeper and look at each method a little more closely.

The thumb rule when you sit down to produce music is, be subtle with editing, mixing, and mastering. Do not do it just for the sake of doing it and end up making a mess!

And that’s it for now. Welcome to the world of music production. how to produce music