10 Music Production Exercises That Will SKYROCKET Your Skills

Summary

This video presents ten engaging exercises to enhance music production skills, from easy to challenging. It emphasizes active listening, daily ear training, and quick creation of chord progressions and melodies to encourage spontaneity and creativity. The exercises also cover sound design, sample manipulation, genre exploration, and remixing, pushing producers to experiment with different styles and tools. The creator suggests using only stock plugins for one exercise to foster innovative thinking. The hardest exercise involves recreating a favorite song to deepen understanding of music composition. A comprehensive roadmap with curated tutorials is also available for further guidance.

Takeaways

• 🎶 Active listening helps analyze professional songs to understand their structure, instruments, and production techniques.
• 🕒 Daily practice on SoundGym can significantly improve your mixing skills in just 5 minutes a day.
• 🎹 Creating chord progressions every 5 minutes fosters creativity and helps generate material for future songs.
• 🎵 Composing a melody every 5 minutes encourages experimentation and can lead to new song ideas.
• 🔊 Sound design exercises promote originality by creating sound presets from scratch without tutorials.
• 🧩 Modifying a single sample in five different ways enhances creativity and helps discover new production techniques.
• 🌍 Exploring new genres through tutorial videos introduces you to different techniques and expands your musical repertoire.
• 🎤 Remixing a favorite song into a different style challenges your creativity and production skills.
• 🛠️ Creating music using only stock or free plugins encourages innovative problem-solving and improves mixing skills.
• 🎧 Remaking a song from scratch provides a deep understanding of sound design, arrangement, and mixing.

Q & A

What is the first exercise suggested for improving music production skills?

The first exercise is active listening or analyzing tracks, where you listen to a professionally made song and note details like BPM, key, arrangement, instruments, and effects to understand its composition.

How does the Daily Sound Gym practice work?

Daily Sound Gym is an online platform that offers ear training exercises covering various mixing topics. Users can create a free account and complete a daily workout consisting of five different mini-games that enhance their mixing skills.

What is the goal of creating chord progressions every 5 minutes?

The goal is to generate several chord progressions quickly, allowing for experimentation without overthinking, with the hope that one progression might stand out as a potential song idea.

In the exercise of creating melodies, what is the suggested approach?

Set a timer for 5 minutes to create a melody each time. You can start from scratch or use previously created chord progressions as a base for the melody.

What is the purpose of the sound design exercise involving creating a sound preset?

The purpose is to explore a VST without tutorials to understand sound manipulation, which helps in developing original sounds and defining your sound signature.

What does the exercise of tweaking a sample involve?

This exercise involves taking a sample and modifying it in five different ways to explore creativity and learn various production techniques.

How can producing a song in a new genre benefit a music producer?

Producing a song in a new genre helps the producer learn new techniques, arrangements, and sound designs, which they can later combine with their own style.

What is the significance of remixing a song in a different style?

Remixing challenges your creativity and production skills, as it requires you to take a song and transform it into a different genre while retaining the original vocals.

Why is the exercise of making a song with only stock or free plugins valuable?

This exercise encourages innovative thinking and resourcefulness, as it restricts the producer to use only available tools, pushing them to learn more about sound manipulation and mixing.

What is the final exercise, and why is it considered the most challenging?

The final exercise is to remake a song you like from scratch. It is considered the most challenging because it requires a deep understanding of music composition and sound design to recreate the nuances of the original track.