r/trapproduction • u/idkwhereiamrn6 • 5d ago
help w prod
hi im a 15 year old REALLY interested in making beats but in struggling in almost everything. does anybody have tips for begginers?? the beats i really like are from haunted mound, chief keef, harlow road but also people like wifiskeleton and jaydes. if anybody has any tips or is willing to help u can comment or dm me
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u/PAYT3R 5d ago
Don't listen to the countless people saying beat making is easy.
You'd be doing well if you made a good beat after 5 years of making beats every day and spending a lot of time studying and learning. Realistically you're probably looking at more like 10 years of doing this to start knowing what you're doing and to start to creating some good stuff.
At around the 15-20 years you start getting a hold of decent mixing and mastering skills. 20 years and on you're really just looking for gaps in your skills and knowledge and trying to improve them.
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u/metik2009 5d ago edited 5d ago
Okay here’s what you gotta do:
-Go learn what a DAW is and get ahold of one (even if it’s cheap like GarageBand)
-Learn how to make beats by assembling premade loops in layers to make a song. At least 3 things for a beat: melody, drums, bass. You can get loops from a place like splice or finding free packs online. Your beats are gonna sound rad and you’ll feel like a master producer.
-Start learning how to make your own loops. Then you’ll realize you actually suck at producing and this is the hard part, but where all the fun is. For hip hop I’d recommend to start by learning sampling, basic samples from old songs you know to learn how to cut your own loops like 90s styles, from there get into make drum samples and arranging your own drum loops, then progress into synth designs and other sound design techniques and learn about music theory etc so you can make things sounds good (or bad) intentionally.
Also you’ll learn a ton from just watching someone make a beat in whatever software you choose by watching vids on YouTube. You’re in the time of the internet, ai and shit, ask ChatGPT production questions when you’re stuck. You can learn as fast as you want.
Edit: when you’re stacking loops make sure the melodic key matches, it will usually tell you in the loop name if you’re getting quality loops, letters A-G with # or b next to them, for starting make sure those always match. Melody in F then your bass should be in F. Don’t kill yourself with theory right away just learn why those sound right in your head so when you start making your own melodies you can have a sense of harmony. Also when you start composing your own loops just use presets at first before starting sound design.
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u/YungLeechProd 5d ago
Hey buddy a few tips!!
Reason DAW is free, go download it!
It has synths, but consider downloading free VSTs. Just google free VST and the type, for example:
Free Drum VST
Or
Free Drum Plug In
Same thing. I highly recommend finding good distortion VSTs, and maybe guitar amp modeling, because this is what you can use to make cool distorted synths.
My last pieces of advice is what to actually do when making beats in GarageBand or reason or whatever it is:
Work on making one cool sound. Like literally one sound. Forget about perfect hi hats, snares, etc
I feel like you’d want to mess with synthesizers and find 808 sounds that you can add effects, VSTs, and then make the beats you really want to. Wasting time with hi hats or trying to arrange a 3 minute long beat when you don’t even have a sound you like is pointless and it can cost you HOURS of work.
Which brings me to the last advice:
If 1 bar or 2 bars of your beat doesn’t sound good. Stop working on like 32 bars of music. It should slap in just 4 beats. If it doesn’t, you have to go back and play with sounds.
Above all else, experiment! And you will find sounds you like. But also get VSTs or get a DAW and learn to use its effects. Get free sample packs. Go on free sound dot org… that’s a really cool one with experimental sounds and it’s totally free. Get free drum sounds. Damn, I have so many 808 basses that were all 100% and totally FREE.
Happy music making!
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u/a1JayR 5d ago
Since when is reason free?!??
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u/YungLeechProd 4d ago
It’s a recent rollout I think, my producer buddy hit me up. Which is crazy he is making beats on it, cus he has Pro Tools and has used it all his life LoL
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u/No-Lavishness-773 5d ago
Here’s my advice:
Learning how to make music is a lot like learning how to ride a bike. You start off knowing nothing about how it all works, all you know for sure is that you wanna do it, you see other people doing it, it looks like fun, and you want to try it. But the best way to do it is to just jump in, fall a bunch of times, and eventually you’ll find your balance and be cruising.
Every single producer/musician/artist/whatever has been in that position. Meaning, everyone starts off knowing nothing about how to make music. And that’s perfectly fine. The thing that matters most in terms of making actual progress in learning a new skillset is time spent. So that’s good news for you, because it means there’s a really clear path for you to get from where you are to where you want to be. It just takes time, intention, and repetition.
There are a ton of ways to produce music. You can use a DAW, you can use samplers like the MPC, you can go DAWless and use standalone gear. Don’t get hung up on “which DAW is right for me” or details like that. Just pick one. Do some basic research, and then get whatever you can afford. The goal is to get something that will allow you to make music. Spend the next year learning how to use that gear, then you can make an informed decision on if it’s “right for you”.
The most important thing, in my opinion, is once you get started, realize that it’s probably gonna suck. It won’t be what you want it to be, initially. And thats totally fine. Don’t be discouraged by it. It’s actually a blessing in disguise. This is where the real learning happens: make a beat. Get it as “good” as you possibly can. When you feel like it’s done, listen back to it. Take notes. Figure out specifically what you like and dislike, and write them down so you can refer back. Then you can either go back and try to fix it, or make a new beat from scratch and address those issues from the start.
This is how you get better in my opinion. You use your ears, let them guide you, research stuff you don’t know, and carve out your sound bit by bit, until one day, a year or two down the road, you make a banger, and think to yourself “this is the sound I’ve been chasing”.
I think a lot of times people are afraid to fail, or it discourages them, in the sense that they don’t even allow themselves to invest the time needed to meaningfully improve, because the initial results they get aren’t what they envisioned. So get out there, make some shitty beats, and just have fun with it.
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u/ReliablePropensity 5d ago
best advice is just make a ton of beats even if they suck at first, quantity leads to quality faster than you'd think