8 Reasons Your Music Sounds Amateur and How To Fix Them

There are 8 mistakes you are probably making with your music which are keeping it sounding amateur. In this video I show you what they are - and how to avoid them, to get your music sounding professional.

Shout out to my Accelerator students who have achieved millions of streams this year. Check out their music on this page, and apply if you want to make 2023 YOUR year for music:

In this tutorial, we cover…

00:00 - Intro
00:45 - #1 Stick to one vibe or theme
02:48 - #2 Source high quality sounds
04:15 - #3 Train your ears
06:58 - #4 Simplicity on the other side of complexity
12:03 - #5 Energy maps
14:30 - #6 Create effects from core sounds
18:28 - #7 Have an intention
19:12 - #8 Seek feedback (from the right places)

📝…And here’s the blog version of this video: ???

Gear I use in this video…

🔈 My Audio Gear:

🎛 Discounted Plugin Deals:

💻 …And some of my Favourite Software…

🎤 Vocal Processing (I use all of these):

….AND SAY HI ON THE SOCIALS, BRUH:

Cheers, and happy producing!
Will

OTHER VIDEOS TO CHECK OUT:

LEARN HOW TO PRODUCE LIKE FAMOUS ARTISTS:

AND…

#ableton #abletonlive #musicproduction

[EDMTips]

Let me know what you think of this video in the comments below. If you liked this video don't forget to smash that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any of my upcoming tutorials!
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Question of the Day ⚡ What's the hardest part of music production/mixing for YOU? I'd love to know! 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

[fluctura]

Same in software engineering. You begin to write spaghetti code, because you don't know what you're doing. Then, you've learned a lot of stuff and mix it together until it becomes a big mess of abstraction layers and frameworks until finally, you come back to simplicity and build great software that is optimal, easy to use and doesn't contain any line of code that is not essentially relevant to fulfill the goal of the program.

[lordberly]

Man, I'm mostly mixing rock and metal music. Your tips is top notch and not only applicable to electronic music

[Jay-ruhx]

I have a chart where I map out energy and emotion levels on an arrangement. I'm an engineer by trade, and my wife laughed when she saw it and said "only you would make a graph or spreadsheet for the emotion of a song."

It was a solid compliment.

[djchemie]

Simplicity is really important! I got a lot of "nice" ideas and put them all together and the feedback always comes back mostly negative. I am publishing the cleanest track I made tomorrow and this is so far my favorite. The only thing different is that I stuck to the genre and kept it simple!

[EdzCreationz]

My opinion is to never limit your creative endeavour to a set of rules by choosing what genre your going to make before the track is taking form, fuck genres.
Genres are for listeners to easily find songs that are alike, not for creators.
If you start your project by limiting the range of avalaible creative fields your journey of creation may discover your just going to make copies of shit that someone already made hundreds of times.
My life has taken me through Rock into Metal, from Led Zeppelin & Queen to Deadmau5 & infected mushrooms, from Hardrock to Hardstyle, From KoRn to Hans Zimmer, from psytrance into hip-hop, from Slipknot to Eminem, and I was a diehard Metalwarrior that shat on every other genre to be a diehard hardstyle-fanboi and all I've learned is that genres limits your view of the world
I think the most fun I've had comes out when I let go of the ropes that try to bind me and just go apeshit for a night, for example, I might start sound designing cool or melodic sounds and coming up with a sweet chord or melody progression at 137bpm(and always use bpms with "magical" numbers, I think tesla was a wee bit crazy but still a great mind that was on to something, always leave some room for the possible existence of magic just in case), after some hours of tinkering I might lower it to 96.3 and continue the fun but switching from a housy feeling to hippetihopbeat, then up to 111 after some more hours, then a day later down to 66.6 with some doubletime-stuff, up to 77.7 just to balance out the hocus-pocus-scale, then I take a step back, arrange all the different crazy patterns quickly into what I 'feel' should go togheter & what doesnt without listening too much, render the track starting at low bpms, successively add ~20bpm at every 'drop' or turn, get a file thats 20-30 minutes long, go to the kitchen & roll up a joint with some snacks or food and sit down & take a listen and analyze the absolute horror you've created, trying to find what glitters & sparkles there is to then a week later try to polish it into a gem.

But, I'm a child of chaos and I don't have to rely on trying to make a living with my music so I use it to vent my feelings & enjoy some time for myself when I need to detach from society or stressfull moments, without it I would be dead long ago, its difficult enough to keep your place & your life in order without chaos enveloping everything so in music I almost never have anything in order, so I try to focus my chaotic energy & turn it into feelings of emotions with what I create in my basement of solitude, so the world doesn't need to suffer my destructive or self-destructive ways outside my walls.
It has taken me ~15 years to just learn the ropes of everything that envelopes music making, and I've had long breaks or stagnant times of no creation, but I've never ever once been bored with or burned out on trying to create music while everyone around me has abandoned it years ago.
I would love to make a living just playing games or making shit, but I know the moment I ever try to monetize it it'll corrupt the essence of it, so I'm hoping someone up in heaven if there is one will find a liking of what I do and remove the need for me to ever have to earn money ever again, cus I love the freedom of having money but I hate having to earn it so I hope I'll earn my freedom in some other mystical way.
Well shit, this derailed a lot
Anyways, Never force it & always let it flow the way it wants to go & dont let genres define you.
There is good places to start when creating music, I just try to start with if I either want to design a cool sound, a melody or a beat, may it be a pluck, a bass or anything in between, I try to make it as good sounding I can and somewhere along the way the journey just takes over and I can stop thinking for once.
thats my 2 cents on this derailed topic, dont remember what point if any I was trying to make really, good luck on your journey. 🤭

[GuitarsAndSynths]

Get a good portable mixer recorder to capture happy accidents for reuse later. I do this on modular since there are no presets or patch memory on eurorack synths and don't want to lose cool stuff I come up with.

[lofialumni]

These tips are exactly what my Lofi tracks are missing. I watched this and your automation video today and can't wait to polish up my next few tracks using these tips.

[astesvideos]

AMEN YO! I produce another totally different genre (reggaeton) and I do lots of this stuff in FL, but it was nice to hear from another person stuff like energy maps, simplicity after complexity or sound beds

[peterpiper]

I have been watching a lot of your videos and the one tip in this video that really struck a "chord" (🤣) was tip number 4, simplicity on the other side of complexity. I have been working on some of my own tracks trying to apply some of the things I am learning from your videos and other sources. I DID catch myself over complicating my mixes where I had to start from the beginning and cut things out and am find this to be exactly the case. Sometimes, if not most of the time, the simplest route is to focus on what needs to be corrected and not overcomplicate it. I had eq's setup and then other eq's that basically reversed what the original eq was doing all because I was trying to use EVERY resource at my disposal. While my learning has been painstakingly tedious, I have learned so much in the last few months. Thanks for making these videos and breaking these points down to understandable terms that I can relate to.

[pulseoflife]

Such a darling you are.
Simply the best music production teacher on YouTube.

[GongMaster]

Usually I fully agree with all your tips, but the thing about sticking to a theme is only partial true. If everyone would follow this, no new music would ever happen. Getting outside the comfort zone is where new stuff happens. All what we do today was beyond the rules in the past. Breaking the rules is where the new stuff is found. If you want to be a clone and sound like million others, then foller strictly the rules and you will be nobody. Be inventive and if you break the rules, be aware if it improves the music. Sure, there are basics which are always true because they are of technical nature, but "sticking to a theme" is what people overdo today. Just listen to the top 10 and how boring and flat the music is. There is no soul and it goes nowhere. Just constant repeating loops with no musical value. They are sticking to the theme and the music is bad. The success is artificially fabricated by the major labels and not because the music is good.
We need to get out of the auto-tune copy clone nonsense and it is about time to create real music again. No templates and break out of the common structures. Create new structures!

[elianvargas]

Honestly this is one of the best edm production channels I’ve found in my 10 years of production learning

[diegolowpass]

16:23 "that sounds quite good" Of course, she's literally saying 'good'
Amen! from BA, Argentina
Thanks for your tips ❤

[maxcmptn]

Excellent video! Thank you so much for the knowledge that you share!

[ImaJettison]

Changing pitch for copy right is genius for a tutorial! Great stuff, great tips 👍

[dijonjackson]

Love this guy actually bought one of his courses and now I need to Upgrade my mac book to M2 no worries though i'm not far off Love you Will No homo and thank you for giving me hope in this journey of music.

[MonoxidexDreams]

I've just recently found your videos and they're great. I wish I had this information when I was just starting out.

[FusedMusic]

Wow. That vocal snippet "underbed" is a brilliant tip. Thanks so much for this inspirational help

[ArsenyS-zkwf]

Regarding item 4: this actually applies to any profession. When you look how real professional works, you're usually very surprised how easy and simple he does. Very often stupid people say: "and this is what he is paid for? So easy, can be done by anyone!" Forgetting about endless hours and years of hard work and practice, thousands unsuccessful attempts and mistakes required to reach this simplicity.