The Internet abounds with resources (free and paid) for amateur producers, audio engineers, beatmakers, and songwriters. You can learn everything independently; the most important thing here is discipline, setting goals, and a plan. But where to start?
Navigating through hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs is tedious. It can even harm your process if you’re trying to draw a line between different methods, techniques, and opinions to achieve your production goals. Here we have compiled some blogs that can help you if you are trying to figure out a new profession.
MUSICIAN ON A MISSION
Musician on a Mission is a home production blog with articles, tutorials, and its own YouTube channel. They offer many free resources, cheat sheets, and beautiful diagrams to help us better understand concepts such as EQ, compression, bass, and more. On the channel, you will find a series on vocal editing, a free master class on creating a professional mix music from scratch, and much more.
Sound on Sound is one of the most comprehensive publications on production for musicians (many of whom use the recommendations of the site will be published later there). The magazine began publishing in the UK in 1985, and it has completely switched to a digital format this millennium. Check out their archive of over 11,000 articles, including extended one-on-one interviews with producers and hitmakers, rare PDFs of artist and pro gear reviews, gear and studio critiques, and more.
Produce Like a Pro is a diverse music blog founded by English producer and songwriter Warren Huart. Huart creates incredibly detailed content with the help of his many colleagues – there are tutorials, equipment reviews, extensive and detailed interviews, and much more. The blog offers a free starter package – tons of video content with famous songs being parsed by different professionals – and a training program.
PureMix is an audio production blog co-founded by French Canadian producer Fab Dupont. It focuses almost entirely on learning to mix and offers paid content for the most part. However, as a member, you can sign up for free and access content from Grammy Award-winning engineers such as Chris Lord-Alge, Andrew Sheps, Greg Wells, Tony Maserati, and Mick Guzauski at meager prices – it’s worth it. They frequently run promotions and upload free content to their YouTube channel.
The American plugin manufacturer iZotope produces one of the most advanced DSP software (for example, the famous OZONE for mastering). The company also maintains a successful and highly informative production blog specializing in machine learning and audio restoration. Isotope uses its plugins to teach essential production and mixing techniques, but their guiding principles can be applied far beyond specific software. While some iZOPTOPE plugins may be well beyond the budget of a novice producer, you can learn a lot about everything related to sound here and apply their tutorials to work with your software.
Splice has revolutionized home production with a free, subscription-based sample library. Splice is also a rental plugin store, which is especially useful for amateur or novice producers still finding the right equipment for their work. The blog contains production tutorials, DAW tutorials, interviews, and reviews.
SoundGym is a brand-new tool for producers. It describes itself as a “Gym for your ears” – which it is, in fact: there are many well-designed audio games that help to increase the sensitivity of hearing to different aspects of Sound. This is a great way to keep your ears toned and learn the ins and outs of music production. SoundGym also has a forum where you can post mixes and get feedback from more experienced users.
