Breaking the barrier of "Musician"

It does not hurt to learn music theory but it’s mostly to open up the ears about all the possibilities and expand the way you write music so you sound interesting. I like the Frank Zappa approach, he did a lot of self-studies himself and got to a high degree of proficiency just by the sheer force of his intellect and curiosity and especially his openness to experiment. It’s more about the possibilities and less about learning odd names for scales or finger techniques.

Anyway, you could learn a lot from YouTube, it’s so easy to become a producer today thanks to this and similar web resources. However if you really want to bubble up from all the wannabe producers all sounding the same, you need to be unique and be willing to experiment. I don’t think we need another DeadMau5 or David Guetta.

Another way to tackle this is to set a goal to make a track similar to something else you like. You learn a lot from this process, such as analyzing tracks, what are the parts, the sounds, the techniques and so on. That and about 1000 hours of studio time or so. If anyone claims they learned to produce tracks in 10 hours or even 100, I doubt it very much myself (most likely boasting.)

I would say learn the chords. As a guitarist and singer, I’ve learnt to play the chords to sing along while I play guitar, and that has been an eye-opener (should I say ear-opener ? 🙂 ). I have a Am chord, what comes next ? In my head I know how Dm, C or G are gonna sound versus an Am. It’s intuitive. And I think that’s the “easiest” way to approach music writing with a keyboard. Don’t even bother to learn all the chords and tonalities, just keep it in the C tonality. Ableton can transpose it for you nowadays. But knowing which type of harmony sounds good with another is a precious tool for composing.

Don’t wanna boast, but very often I think a song mixes good with another one, load it, only to find out that it has the same tonality. My intuition does that for me, because it recognises the harmony and makes me wanna hear a song that matches this harmony, without me being really conscious about it.

Maybe start looking for chords of songs you like, and play them on a midi keyboard. The basic chords fingering on a piano is easy to learn on any solfegis website, and in EDM and commercial music the chords are not Mozart-like, they’re very simple (unless you’re into jazz…hih)i. It’s always gonna be around the Am, C, G and F chords, which is the basic of rock / blues and folkloric music.

Thinking of it, Solfegis is an excellent software for learning music, if you’ve got time to spend, and something like 20 bucks on your credit card, go for it, that’ll get you a long way.

Good luck, keep the passion burning 🙂

You’re already one step ahead of the game by thinking about theory.
Too many begginning DJs / Producers think in terms of loops and the technical side of production.
Avoid that trap.

I see a lot of EDM music where it’s great technical production but musically it’s amateur. I usually chalk this up to the producer not understanding theory, song composition, etc.

Not understanding theory will be a career limiting move as a producer. If you have a great ear for music, which isn’t as common as you may think, you might be able to stumble your way through creating a song but it’ll require a ton of trial & error. Also you might find yourself in the trap of writing songs that sound the same because you are basing your musical knowledge on experience and not the ability to envision something that sounds great. The other thing with EDM is that at a certain point most producers want to work with vocalists. Vocalists are musicians and theory is the language of music & needed so that you can effectively communicate.

If you’re just getting into production I’d dedicate equal time to technical proficiency & musical theory. Probably the best way to pick up theory is w/ an instrument & keys is a good choice (plus you have a MIDI keyboard already).