Ten Tips For The Fledgling Producer

So, being that I'm somewhat frustrated with the lack of flight in regards to my musical career, I figured I'd give a list of ten things that you need to know upon disembarking on an "attempt" to make music your career, catered specifically to electronic music producers (and yes, folk, hip hop music is electronic music).

Here's part 1:

1. Don't NOBODY believe you're gonna make it with this "little" hobby of yours more than you. For example, as much as your girl loves you, somewhere inside of her, she really just wishes you'd give up this shit and go back to school like you've been saying for the past five years (odd thing is, as I listen to this, Saint Etienne's Lose That Girl is playing on Pandora on my Iphone, and they make a reference to dropping out of school; weird). Of course, that is, until you start making some shit that she feels is competitive with the stuff she listens to on the radio (that is, unless you're one of the lucky blokes to find a chick that's into the weird or hardcore shit that you be producing; and, if you are, hold that motherfucker in a headlock and don't let her out of your sight for a second).

2. Being a music producer is never an intriguing thing for folks you encounter until you can turn to them and say, "You know that song by so and so? Yeah, I did that." Until then, expect them not to give a fuck. Or say, "Oh, that's cool." So, by that end, don't waste your time getting their opinion on your output, for, to the casual music listener, shit don't sound good until it's either on MTV, the radio or played in the club.

3. Getting your music to the artist that you envision gracing it is doubly as hard today than it was before the advent of myspace, facebook, blogger, etc... Reason being, you're just 1 0f the 1,000 cats that try to get at said artist through that venue every month. And yes, your shit may be leagues better than their shit, but, after a month or two of sifting through shit, most artists are sending beat submissions either to their lackeys or straight to the trash.

4. Fuck a music production forum. And, that's not to say that there's not some valuable information to glean from these social communities, but, there' s also a lot of bitter people on there who, due to their own lack of success, have now chosen to deflate the balloon of anyone else hoping to float up into the ether of musical greatness. So, yeah, that cat telling you that your snare is too loud or that your music isn't Ed Banger-ish enough, or doesn't have enough Timbaland derivatives, trust, he's gonna be there doing the same shit 5 years from now, with nothing to show.

5. Use what you've got. One thing I've learned is, no one tool is better than the other. Some will have you believe that Fruity Loops is the devil, Reason is his cousin and anything other than a good ole MPC (and not just ANY MPC, has to be 2000XL or earlier; anything else is just sacrilege) is just nonsense. Hodge podge. People are making all kinds of wonderful music these days and there is NO way of telling what someone is actually using without sitting down and spending some time with them during the production process. And, when you factor in that a lot of cats just straight up LIE about what they actually use (so, ignore those cats on your favorite music forum telling you that Madlib only uses the SP303), you'd be terribly mistaken to trump one tool over another. So, the next time that cat on that production forum (see rule #4) says that a particular beat sounds like it was made on Fruity Loops, don't pay his ass no mind. There's no real way to listen to a track, and, by listening to the sequencing of the track, tell what piece of software or equipment it was created on. The one thing someone CAN recognize is stock sounds, but, with the internet being what it is, Fruity Loops stock sounds are being used in Reason and samples from almost any sound module you can think about are floating out there somewhere, so, let's get off that bullshit, please?