Learn music and production

1. Rhythm and tempo

Music is organised in time. The beat is the steady pulse you tap your foot to. Beats are grouped into bars, and most pop, hip hop and dance music has four beats per bar (called 4/4 time).

Each beat can be split. Two notes per beat are eighth notes, four per beat are sixteenth notes. A drum pattern is just a list of which sixteenths get a kick, a snare or a hat. A basic rock or pop beat puts the kick on beats 1 and 3 and the snare on 2 and 4. House puts the kick on every beat.

Swing delays every second sixteenth a little, which gives hip hop and lofi their relaxed feel.

2. Notes, scales and keys

The distance between two notes is an interval, counted in semitones (the smallest step on a piano, one key to the next). A scale is a set of notes that sound good together. The major scale follows the step pattern whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half. From C that gives C D E F G A B, all white keys.

The natural minor scale (whole, half, whole, whole, half, whole, whole) sounds darker. From A it is also all white keys, so C major and A minor share the same notes. They are relative keys. A song's key is the scale whose notes it mostly uses, with one note, the root, feeling like home.

Pentatonic scales keep just five notes and are very hard to play wrong, which makes them the best start for melodies.

3. Chords and progressions

A chord is three or more notes played together. A triad stacks two thirds on a root: major (bright) has a major third then a minor third, minor (sad) is the reverse, diminished (tense) is two minor thirds.

Building a triad on each note of a major scale gives seven chords: I ii iii IV V vi vii° (capitals are major, lower case minor). Songs are built from chords moving in a progression. The most used in pop is I V vi IV, which in C is C, G, Am, F. In a minor key, i VI III VII is a favourite.

Chords I, IV and V are the main pillars. V pulls strongly back to I, which is why a song feels finished when it lands there.

4. Ear training

Hearing intervals and chord types by ear is the fastest way to find melodies and chords without a keyboard. Practise for five minutes a day. Start with the easy set, and move on when you reach about 80 percent. Answer 20 questions with at least 80 percent right and this lesson is marked done for you. Tip: link each interval to a song you know, like the first two notes of "Happy Birthday" for the major second.

5. Mixing basics

Mixing is balancing the tracks so each is clear. A reliable order of work:

• Levels first. Set each track's volume so the loudest moment of the whole mix stays below 0 dB, with the kick and bass near the middle and the main vocal or lead on top. Keep the master from clipping.
• Pan. Keep kick, bass, snare and lead vocal in the centre. Spread other sounds left and right to give each its own space.
• EQ to make room. Two sounds fighting for the same frequencies sound muddy. Cut the lows from everything that is not bass or kick, and cut a little where a busier sound masks another.
• Compression evens out loud and quiet parts. Go gently: if you can clearly hear it working, back off.
• Reverb and delay add space. A little goes a long way, and too much pushes a sound far back.
• Take breaks. Ears tire. Check the mix quietly, on headphones and on speakers.

6. Recording well

A clean recording saves hours of fixing. Pick a quiet, soft room (a bedroom with curtains and a bed beats a bathroom). Put the microphone about a hand span from your mouth, slightly off to the side to soften plosive sounds like "p". Use a pop filter if you have one.

Set the input level so the loudest parts peak around −12 to −6 dB and never touch 0. Recording too quiet adds noise when you turn it up. Recording too loud clips and cannot be repaired. Wear headphones so the backing track does not leak into the microphone, and record a few seconds of silence first so noise can be removed later.

7. Loudness and mastering

Mastering is the final polish: a consistent tone and the right loudness for where the music will play. LUFS measures how loud music seems over time. Streaming services play everything at a similar loudness, around −14 LUFS, and turn louder tracks down. So making a track extremely loud no longer makes it play louder. It only squashes the dynamics.

Peak level is the highest instant of the waveform. True peak estimates the peaks between samples, which can go over 0 and distort after MP3 or AAC conversion. Keep it under about −1 dBTP. A limiter is a very fast compressor that holds peaks under a ceiling so you can raise the overall level.

Always compare your master to the unmastered mix at the same loudness. If the master only sounds better because it is louder, it is not better.

8. Make your first beat in ten minutes

Put it all together with a short project in the Studio:

1. Open the Loop maker, set 90 BPM and A minor, and press "Open in Studio" on the Boom bap drums.
2. Go back, choose "Bass: Syncopated" and open it in the Studio. It lands on a new track already in time.
3. Do the same for "Chords: Offbeat stabs", then lower its volume so the bass leads.
4. Double click an empty Keys lane, open the piano roll and add a short melody on the A minor pentatonic notes.
5. Set a loop over four bars (hold Shift and drag on the ruler) and listen. Mute things one at a time to hear what each adds.
6. Export the mix, then open it on the Mastering page and bring it to −14 LUFS.