Image Credit: Rezli

Try and avoid these common music production mistakes, and improve your producing at home.

All music producers make mistakes, no matter if they’re an up-and-coming DIY producer or they’ve been making beats professionally for eons. Often, it’s hard to notice errors have been made until they’re pointed out.

Check out our list to see if you think you’ve been guilty of making any of these common music production mistakes.

Over producing

Staying simple is the best way to success. What your track needs more than anything is a strong core idea, something catchy or exciting that’s going to anchor the whole thing. Avoid cluttering with too much melody, or cramming it too full of drums. You’re making it harder for anyone you’re collabing with, too.

Equally, try not to obsess over the tiny details – don’t tweak away perfecting the mix until that original exciting creative spark is lost.

Your home studio setup sucks

Contrary to popular opinion you don’t need fancy equipment for your home studio, but one common music production mistake is not having everything set up correctly. Take speaker placement, for example. If speakers aren’t placed at ear-height, you’re not going to be able to hear those all important highs and lows in your beats accurately enough, and you’ll be fighting a losing battle from the start.

Being out of key

Something in your mix sounding off? Check everything’s in key. Samples and loops come in various scales; check your low end beats are in tune too. It’s hard to figure out the key of unlabelled samples. Your 808 isn’t just to keep rhythm, it’s got to be in tune too, otherwise everything will be off. A base understanding of music theory will serve you well when it comes to understanding why something sounds wrong in your mix. At a basic level, as long as you know what key you’re in, stick to those notes in the scale. Unless dissonance is what you’re aiming for, of course!

Forgetting about the BPM

Sometimes it may seem preferable to just stick with the default BPM. It’s easy to get sucked into the creating process and become too married to the idea of one BPM for the track. But don’t forget to check if a faster or slower tempo would actually suit your track better.

You haven’t checked your mix in mono

Make sure to check that your individual presets from synths and samplers sound as good in mono as they do in stereo so you don’t find that the whole mix has lost clarity when listened to on a phone, for example. Frequently listen to the mix in mono to check it doesn’t sound muddy.

Now go for a walk, have a snack, return to your track with fresh ears and a clear mind, and see if you can spot any music production mistakes you might have inadvertently made. Then once your track is mastered and ready to go, hit RouteNote up to get it out into the world. We can’t wait to hear it.