A Guide To Learning Modern Audio Production from Home. Whether you’re looking to start a new career or master your passion and finally get your recordings to sound the way you want them.
If you have absolutely zero experience in Audio Production, are just starting out, or are interested in a modern perspective of the industry, then definitely keep on reading. If you’re a more experienced Producer or Sound Engineer, you could also find some of these listed resources quite helpful for advancing techniques and moving ahead of the curve.
If you’re just curious to cut to the chase go ahead and skip to the 3 Months Guide Of Leveling Up — I won’t know either way so it won’t hurt my feelings.
Still curious? You don’t skip on the details and I respect that. OK, so check this out:
You can master Professional Audio Production at top level industry quality at home for free without spending money on equipment or software, or missing key fundamentals you just simply won’t find in Master Classes and Bootcamps out there today. You don’t need to have any musical or technical experience or access to an outlandishly expensive studio equipment and fall into silly debt $$$ to gain employable level skills in Audio Production. All the tools and tutorials are available for free and at your disposal and we just need to identify them.
Please Note: This guide is more than just about steps to learning Audio Production, but hopefully as well an eye-opener into catching up with how the world has significantly changed in the Entertainment and Tech Industry and bringing to light new work and project opportunities in this unfolding landscape.
Sound is an amazing part of the human experience extending to communication into both essential technology companies as well as the entertainment industry. With the world shifting more and more into a virtual landscape, so continues an increased demand for Producers and Audio Engineers. So let’s go over some of the reasons why you could be interested in pursuing this path.
· You want to learn a skill which can cross over to a multitude of fields and provide you with a wider option base of exciting opportunities.
· You can work from home or remotely since so many technologies to produce high quality productions have shifted from expensive studios to being computer and software oriented.
· You are passionate about music production and have been looking for a journey to take to teach you the skills and revitalize a creative and technical part of your mind by challenging yourself.
· You may have used to record and produce music, and would love to get back into, but you’ve been hesitant because there’s just too much over saturation on where to even begin.
· You believe in trying new things and that sometimes that can open up a whole new world you could have otherwise complete have missed out on.
| But what if I don’t have any music sensibilities, and I wasn’t taught piano as a kid, or have perfect pitch or experience with recording equipment and computers?? Fear not. I’m here to tell you that that doesn’t actually matter, and in fact, by going down the right path, this fresh slate can actually work to you advantage!
Starting something new can be exciting and intimidating and it’s important to weigh the time you put in versus the pay off.
1. Learning skills which can be applied for years to come and not limited to how the technologies shift. Having skills which transcend and can translate to different tool sets, software, and work projects, is valuable for the long term and makes for a more worthy time investment.
2. A launchpad to start freelancing and working on projects from home in a matter of months without losing valuable time and money.
3. The Entertainment and Technology industries do not require college degrees for employment. You don’t need to go to an expensive Bootcamp to make music for big Video Game Companies. Companies like these invest in the quality of work and the quality of people first and foremost.
4. Going on a journey and adventure of deep sound exploration. Is listening to the same loops and recordings over and over again something you have the patience and are super passionate to pursue? Can you see yourself doing this for a living full time?
5. Try something really cool and captivating. Audio Production is a universe unto itself and it can be very rewarding and hypnotic the more you get into it!
In David Toop’s legendary Music book, Haunted Weather, he explores the thin lines between when an audio recording, such as the wind or electrical hums, are considered a music composition versus just sound. Once you start diving into Audio Production with an open mind frame, it’s very easy to see these days how seemingly infinite the possibilities are with what you can do with just your imagination and a computer. A galaxy of sound explorations await your passion and curiosity ahead.
| Still sounds interesting to you? Alright, let’s continue…
Something To Bear In Mind When it comes to learning Audio Production the struggle in the beginning is real. So many producers and engineers go through that gap of frustration and hitting those walls when first starting out. The first month, especially when things are all new, can be tough and hard to understand and process many things. It’s usually at this point that many Producers will settle in their habits and think that they can’t get to a higher level without purchasing gear or taking a full time expensive classes, but this is a shortfall and a modern day fallacy. It’s normal to feel frustrated in the beginning, but we don’t need to justify this and settle for anything less simply due to our means and finances. You can get your drums sounding air tight, produce artists and bring out the best in their music, and get amazing sound FX to sweep audiences off their feet with just your computer and the right knowledge. It may seem impossible in the beginning, but that’s normal and the point is to keep going and I can promise you it will get easier and become second nature in time.
By going through this guideline you will hopefully learn most importantly that it’s not the tools that define our potential, and that the mere power of technology we have in our average computers and phones are enough to produce mind blowing production levels if we understand the fundamentals and how to harness them. When it comes to production and sound engineering, there’s most often multiple ways of finding solutions. And part of the art behind mastering the craft isn’t just learning how to solve problems, but identifying the various paths to getting the results you desire and making the most effective calls based on each specific task, environment and project.
So who am I and why am I so passionate about this?
Good question and allow me to tell you a little about myself.
*Feel free to just skip this part since I’m going on and on about myself for the next little bit —
I’m a sound engineer and producer who has worked for Majors and Publishing such as Universal as well as Tech Companies, produced and engineered for Grammy Nominated and Award winning artists, and have tens of millions of plays of my independent music grown organically on multiple streaming platforms and indie labels which I’ve mixed, produced, and mastered at home myself. I’ve had a very fortunate career and have spent the past decade touring the world at cutting edge festivals and performances like PY 1 VR of Circle De Soleil’s Guy Laliberte. Some of my students have gone on to working and contributing for game changing Indie and Major labels including tech companies such as Warner, Landr and Spotify. But I am fully self-taught, I don’t and have never owned a fancy expensive studio, and I definitely do not have perfect pitch.
I just loved listening to music and watching movies and was obsessed with songs and sounds, but I had no idea where or how to start to make sounds or make things sound amazing. So one day I decided to just to figure it out on my own.
I took a few weeks to stop and not even record a single sound, or learn any music software or recording techniques, but instead read about my favorite artists and who produced them, and look up the studios of my favorite movies and TV shows and learn about how they produce their sounds and built their projects. I interned and hung out at friend’s studios and helped however I could. I checked up freelancing job postings and took note of the type of projects and skills required to do the work. I checked out university programs, Academies and Bootcamps course guides and through this process I developed my own path to move forward. The key is to shape a path that doesn’t get cut short due to a lack of tools and finances but can take you all the way given what you have.
Developing a self guide check in a career path that isn’t clear cut took a bunch of time, but once I got going it catapulted me ahead and made impossible seeming things feel accessible for the first time; and they were. And it can be that way for you too.
The problem isn’t there aren’t enough tutorials out there to getting started or teaching complex subjects, but that there are far too many that aren’t focused with a clear outline. You have either these master classes of famous Producers and Engineers who aren’t necessarily teachers and on top of that try and compile their life lessons into merely 2 hours. I mean c’mon… let’s get real here. You can’t learn the fundamentals required to adapting their wisdom and knowledge condensed in a lesson like that and it clearly not about that. It’s still cool for sure to get insight, but it’s not enough and in many cases can you leave you more confused than how you were beforehand.
Alternatively, you have these wiz kids who play 10 instruments and promise you to take a course for a couple months to make a couple songs where you follow along in their very particular way of doing things that even if they’re making great projects for themselves and showing you how they do it, over 90percent of that gets lost in translation in being actually relatable to you directly. The reality is that we don’t have to spend months learning the particularities of only one Software from beginning or end, but better to learn software skills and knowledge that can be applied to multiple environments, set ups, and digital and analog alike.
No matter what kind of software or microphone or speakers you’re using to record your sounds, they all share similar inherent fundamentals which, if you master, you can produce amazing results by leveraging the power of each tool to its utmost capacity. And that’s just a question of having the right strategy of learning from the get go.
I believe that Bootcamps and online Academies are charging way too much money and have too many unrealistic expenditures for you to make when the reality is that the technology and knowledge has past the thresh hold, it’s just a matter of accessing it. We can make professional audio production way more accessible.
OK… so really important question here — Where do we begin?
You are going to became a master wizard of Ableton’s DAW.
Ableton is a professionally used DAW in top studios worldwide for all sorts of varying projects. It is particularly acknowledged for its non-linear sequencing allowing for a extra leeway when it comes to live improvisation of high performance electronic projects, concerts, and events.
When it comes to live Audio Electronic Production, Ableton is among, if not, the best in the world. However, Ableton is also extremely proficient at track-based recording, has one of the most intuitive workflow for MIDI, and offers a classical arrangement and console based view which we can leverage so that we learn the fundamentals of recording, arranging, and modern production theory, as we advance.
I am highly proficient in multiple Professional DAWs ranging from Pro-Tools to Logic, Cubase and many others over the many years of technological innovation. The reason why I’m choosing Ableton is because, for a learning platform, it offers everything you need to cover the basics and complex subjects from working with a console to advanced compression techniques.
It’s also a highly intuitive software that feels lightweight in the sense that it excels in an ease of use for creating ideas and quickly getting into a smooth workflow.
With Ableton you can produce a wide range of high quality professional work from electronic music, pop productions, film scoring and processing FX for video and video games and much more. It is a great choice for starting out.
And what we’re going to learn from Ableton won’t just be restricted to that software, but my years of working in many different DAWs will direct you so that you learn universal skills that you can apply to multiple software. You will become an Audio Production super chameleon.
Ableton also offers a 90 day free trial as well so you don’t even have to buy the software while you learn. On top of that, even after the 90 day trial you can still work with the program and continue to grow except with a more limited range or features until you decide whether or not you wish to continue with it. And, trust me, in 90s days starting at the beginning, we can learn and make a lot of really cool stuff.
Alright. So I could continue to go on and on about my thoughts on why there is such room here to advance ourselves with learning, and I’m also quite impressed you’ve made it this far, but I think we’ve covered enough for now and it’s time to get started with the 3 month plan so that you can learn Audio Production at home and get started on your journey!