Boom! I'm Will from EDM Tips, and if you've always wanted to produce electronic dance
music – be that house, techno or drum and bass or any other style
of electronic dance music – but you've never actually started, this video is for you. So,
basically for complete beginners who are new to the production world! It can be very overwhelming
when you open up your first DAW project and it's completely blank and you just don't know
where to start so in this video i'm going to show you the three things you can do today
to start producing music right now and actually get your first track finished otherwise you've got
infinite possibilities infinite options and it can just as i say be too overwhelming my name's will
from edm tips i've been producing dance music for over 25 years and i've spent the last five years
teaching new producers how to create music that's good enough to get released on their favorite
labels now the techniques i'm going to share with you today will work for any style of dance music
and i want to give you a really quick taste of some music that i've made just so you know
that i kind of know what i'm talking about this first trap was supported by boris brazier oh yeah
and the second track's a bit more poppy just to show you that these techniques work for any genre
if as i suspect you are a complete beginner you can download my edm production starter pack
completely free below this video which is going to help you produce any genre of dance music it's got
some templates it's got some cheat sheets it's got some free samples as well so you can get started
straight away cool so let's get stuck right in just imagine you've got a completely blank door
where do you start well the first step is deciding what kind of music you want to make now a lot of
new producers make the mistake that they think they have to be original but the truth
is you don't want to be too original it's going to be too hard to learn the techniques that you know
so this is what i recommend pick a genre that you absolutely love and pick specifically an artist or
a track that you absolutely love and the quickest way to improve your electronic music production
skills the quickest way to get that first track done is to try and replicate it use the reference
track as a template to build your own track now a lot of people think this is copying but this is
just how you learn the techniques you're not going to be able to replicate their tune and you're
not going to release it this is really for your benefit because the skills you're going to learn
by trying to replicate one of your favorite tracks can then be taken and applied in every single
track that you do from then on out so this is how you do it firstly download your reference track
rather than stream it because then you can drag it into your door i recommend using something like
beatport because then you can download a really high quality version of the file for not very much
money and then bring that in to your door and make sure that your project tempo matches the tempo of
your reference track and this means you'll be able to loop parts of the track within your project and
it's all going to be matched up nicely in time part two is focusing on the drum beat first
because in any kind of dance music the drum beat is the main thing that people are dancing to it's
called dance music for a reason so there are two main types of drum beats in all of the dance music
that you hear now i know that sounds a little bit simplified but let me give you example the
first and most common dance music kind of beat is the 4-4 kick drum this was used by avicii this is
used by dead mouse this is used by most house and techno artists and it looks something like this
so you have a kick on every four beats at the bar and in between those beats
you have an open hat or a closed hat and then on every other kick so on the second
kick and the fourth kick you have a clap or a snare that looks something like this
now that's the first and most popular kind of dance music beat the second
is based on a more hip hop type beat and this is where you still
have the snare on the second and the fourth but the kicks switch up a bit
now whether you're producing hip-hop or trap or drum and bass this is the hip-hop kind of beat
that you use you're just changing the tempo a bit so check this out this is kind of a trappy beat
and i'm just going to speed this up and now check it out it's a drum and bass beat
and pretty much all dance music is based on one of these two beats so start with the beat first
get your reference track loop the busiest part and then just try and replicate their drum beat that's
the first most important thing that's actually going to get your track started and then after
that you can build in the other elements around it now you've got your drum beat that's maybe
8 or 16 bars long and now we need to get a bass line on there that's the next place to focus
so there are three main different kinds of bass lines and this will depend on what
kind of genre you're producing and what your reference track is but try and copy the bass
line from your reference track it's either going to be a long sustained bass like this
it might be a base in between every kick so where the open or the closed hat is hitting like this
now the third kind of bass and my personal favorite is a syncopated bass line which is where
you can move the bass note around by sixteenths and a sixteenth is when a bar is split into
16 beats so you've got four kick drums and 16 beats and if you set your grid to 16th and then
move those bass notes off or forwards by a 16th then you can create a course incubated bass line
and those three bass lines are going to be perfect for pretty much any genre you can think of so i'm
not going to go into music theory too much in this video but the next stage after that would
be building your chords and i'm going to link to a video there where you can learn how to build
your chord progressions even if you don't have any music theory background so the fastest way you can
get started and improving as a complete beginner is to bring a reference track into your door try
and replicate the drum beat try and replicate the bass line and take it from there at that point
you should have some kind of inspiration you should be able to move things forwards now i
still use reference tracks today and as i say i've been doing this for 25 years my students also use
reference tracks and now they're being released on some of their favorite record labels like
armada and juna beats spinning records and the secret is even the big producers are doing this
they're using other big producers as reference tracks and that's how you can develop your skills
faster than in any other way that i've ever seen i forgot to add as well don't worry about the mixing
don't worry about the mastering or any of that stuff just stick to the basics when you're first
starting out get that drum beaten you can just tweak the levels with the faders if you want to
balance the mix but don't worry about equalizers don't worry about compression or any of that other
more advanced stuff the first thing you need to do is just get that beat down don't run before
you can walk because the chances are and i've seen it happen hundreds of times that you'll
get disheartened if you get stuck in the weeds with all that advanced stuff that you just don't
need to know the most important thing is getting your idea down getting that first tune finished
and it will feel like such a win for you and it's a really important milestone so anyway i really
hope you've enjoyed this guys have found this useful if you are writing your first ever track
if you did like it please like my video and if you haven't already please subscribe to my channel for
tips and tricks like this every single week and you can also download a free sample packs and
free cheat sheets that's going to help you get that first track made you can download that for
free below this video thanks again for watching and until next time cheers and happy producing
you