Beat making is a lot of fun. It’s something that, unlike most people thinks, is easy to master (at least learn basics) if you dedicate yourself to it. You only need to love music a little bit more than normal people do. If music is your passion and not a day passes without you listening to dozens of songs, then you’ll fit right in and can become a decent beat maker in just a few days.
However, to learn beat making, as anything that is worth doing, dedication and patience are essential. I’m not saying that you’ll need to give up everything that is going on in your life in order to become a good beat maker. It’s far away from that.
Before even starting your journey of learning beat making basics, it’s better to have a clear plan that is advised by someone who had become a respected music producer. Am I right ?
An advice on how to start from someone who had been in your same shoes a few years ago would be of a great help. Mapping your learning journey will make things easy for you and most importantly it will keep you highly motivated and excited.
In this post, I’ll be talking about some of the mistakes in which newbies fall in without even knowing so. Then, I’ll explain a simple strategy that I recommend to everyone asking me how to become a great beat maker.
So, let’s get started !
What’s Most Newbies Are Doing Wrong !
Beat making may seem to others as something that needs a lot of time more than a busy person can have. The reason of this is that they don’t have a learning guide. They just purchased a complicated software and spent a few hours on it and realize how difficult music production is. This SO WRONG !
They paralyzed themselves before even starting. Most music enthusiasts who want to start beat making fall into this mistake at the very beginning. This results in failure and self-doubt.
This is the reason why I decided to dedicate a whole article to discuss the best strategy for a beginner to start learning beat making. There are hundreds of tutorials and how-to articles that explain how to make a beat. But, there are very few posts on the internet that discuss how to start your career as a beat maker from scratch. I’m not talking about the tools you need. But, the mindset that you need to have installed that will guide you through your learning journey.
Most people ignore this and focuses on tools and software. Of course the gear is definitely important for any music producer. But, you need to have a strong learning strategy that will take you from being a beginner to a decent beat maker who mastered the basics of music production.
Now, let’s talk strategy. I’ll show you in this post a SIMPLE BUT EFFECTIVE strategy that will pave the way for you to learn the basics of beat making as you should without falling in the trap of self-doubt and despair.
It’s not rocket science. I divided the strategy to a few stages in which any compete beginner pass by.
The Learning Strategy To Become A Decent Beat Maker
STAGE 1: Feeling Excited & Amazed by How Cool Beat Making Is
We all have been there. It’s the few days after hearing about something called beat making which enable you to create your own music using just your computer. It’s mind-blowing at the beginning. You can’t help yourself but to go to Google and type “making beats” or something like that. But, as I said before, we often make mistakes at this stage which lead to a bad start which ruins everything before even starting.
So, at this stage what you really need is an article like this one. You don’t need some anonymous person telling you on a Wiki-how guide how to make a beat. I’m not saying that you won’t be able to make a beat. Trust me you will. However, the danger of these make-everything-like-a-matter-of-an-hour articles is that it gives you a WRONG idea about beat making. They show it like beat making is just playing on some music app on your phone. Avoid this kind of articles.
Think long term. Determine your goal. Is it that you just wanna have fun acting like a music producer for a few days or is it that you wanna create REAL beats that people would pay for ?
Just be clear with yourself and decide what got you into beat making in the first place. Are you serious about it or is it just a fling that will disappear in a few days ?
In this stage, the one things you need to do is to decide what’s your goal. If it’s becoming a decent beat maker, then you can continue reading this article. If not, this article ain’t for you.
STAGE 2: Determined to Become a Decent Beat Maker But Don’t Know Where to Begin
Now that you’ve decided that you wanna learn the basics of beat making and that your goal is to become a good beat maker. The next step is to figure out how your learning process is going to be. This is a crucial step for your career as a beat maker. You need to be very careful at this stage.
At this point, there are two ways to tackle this. The first one is quite what most people do but it can be confusing for some newbies. It’s starting out with buying all the gear that you need from an expensive DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to a MIDI Keyboard Controller. Long story short, you’ll need more than 500$ before even starting to make any beats. The downsides of this first route are two things. You need a big budget and you buy gear that you don’t really need at the beginning.
In the other hand, there is another route that I think it’s the best way for a newbie to start. It’s affordable and simple that lets you concentrate on what really matters: Learning the basics of beat making. This second plan consists of buying a cheap but powerful DAW (beat making software) along side with a decent headphones (we recommend Audio-Technica ATH-M30x ). That’s it. That’s all you need for now. And the budget that you need to buy these two things is less than 80$.
Using the second plan allows you to start with a small budget so that if things didn’t go as planned it won’t be a huge financial loss. Besides, you won’t be distracted by the overwhelming possibilities of the gear in plan 1 and instead you’ll focus on mastering the user-friendly software which will enable you to learn the basics faster than you think is possible.
Beat Making: Everything You Need To Have For Beginners
STAGE 3: Getting To The Next Level AKA Kicking ass
The cheap equipment will allow you to understand the basics and create some decent beats. But, at some point you’ll need to move to the next level. It’s the level of a professional beat maker who is able to create beats that can be easily sold.
So, you’ll need two things at this stage. A gear upgrade to a powerful equipment and learning the basics of selling beats.
You’ll need a powerful beat making software such as FL Studio, Propellerhead Reason or Cubase Elements 8. Besides, a powerful gear is a must at this stage. You’ll need a studio monitor and headphones alongside with an excellent MIDI Keyboard Controller such as Akai Professional MPK Mini. And not to forget, sound samples like this Awesome collection.
The second thins is learning how to sell beats. Everything you need to know about selling beats can be found on this post I wrote a few months ago:
How To Sell Beats Online : The Ultimate Guide For Beginners
Last Words
I hope this post would have helped you during your learning journey towards you ultimate goal of becoming a good music producer. Just remember that at the beginning things won’t be easy and it will require a lot of patience and sacrifice. But, I know you can do it since I and others have done it before you.
All you need is to be self-confident and push until you make it. If you have any questions you can comment below in the comments section.
