When we are inspired to make music, our own songs get stuck in our head which is an awesome experience! One of the most helpful video classes for getting motivated just to try to make music even with no experience is Deadmau5 Teaches Electronic Music Production Masterclass which helped me have the courage to just start putting some sounds together in FL Studio 12 even though I had no experience making any music! For Steemit, I hope in depth posts like this are very helpful to get organic search traffic from Google to continue growing our community automatically!
Would you rather pay $90 to take the masterclass at http://jerry.tips/deadmau5mc and take several hours to watch the class or get the best of what I learned out of "Deadmau5 Teaches Electronic Music Production Masterclass" in just a few minutes for free by reading this post? If you do want to take the class after reading this, will you use my link to buy it because I get $25 of the sale and you pay the same price? I watched every video in the class and hope to communicate to you most of what I got out of it right here!
To begin, would you read my quick summary of Deadmau5 Teaches Electronic Music Production Masterclass?
Next, you might enjoy the skills I think are valuable for making electronic music based on what I learned in the class followed by stories Deadmau5 shares that I enjoyed.
Then, I think sharing the context for my journey in learning electronic music production combined with the actions I took as a result of watching the videos in Deadmau5's masterclass will be really helpful for you in your own adventure in producing music!
Finally, finish strong with a look at the challenges I faced using this masterclass and learn about what's next!
If you have never heard of Deadmau5, that's okay because prior to taking his masterclass I had never heard of him either!
Here is a bit more about him from selected parts of his Wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadmau5
Would you prefer to watch the video?
The full video class is available free with this coupon on The University of Jerry Banfield at https://u.jerrybanfield.com/courses/deadmau5?coupon=steem.
Thank you very much to @gmichelbkk for converting the transcription of this class from GoTranscript into this beautiful post for Steemit, which is much faster to read than the video.
Purpose
Would you like to shortcut the "Deadmau5 Teaches Electronic Music Production" masterclass here with me, Jerry Banfield.
I'm grateful I bought the "Deadmau5 Teaches Electronic Music Production" masterclass. I watched all 23 videos of the class, every minute of the class, and I hope to communicate what I got out of it here for you in a shorter time for a fraction of the cost. I will share a summary of the class, what it contains in terms of the basic elements from start to finish. I will share the best stories that I thought were a part of the class and the actions that I took out of the class.
If you're taking any kind of self-help, learning, or skill development program, aren't you hoping to ultimately take action to be inspired to do something? That's what I hope to give you the ability to do right here, to be inspired to take the same kinds of actions based on what I took out of the class. I will do the basics of teaching you the skills I learned out of the class and I will share with you the contacts that I took the class in. I will also provide challenges that came up for me as I went through the class. I hope all of this is useful for you in a fraction of the time and for a fraction of the money to get the majority of the value that I got out of the "Deadmau5 Teaches Electronic Music Production" masterclass.
Thank you very much for starting this journey with me on my first shortcut, with the idea being, not just a book summary, but the majority of the value in a fraction of the time.
Summary
What does the "Deadmau5 Teaches Electronic Music Production" masterclass have in it? In other words, what's a summary of the class?
The class begins with an introduction. Deadmau5's actual name is Joel Zimmerman and he begins with a basic look at hit music production. This is the part of the class that most people watch most. What I noticed going forward from the very first lecture is that people start to drop off from there. One of the main things I got right away out of the introduction is that Joel loves music. Simple, right? Joel takes the time to mess around and make lots of different music, and he's been doing it for a long time. That's a summary of the whole class basically.
Then Deadmau5 gets into his process and theory, it's all about experimentation. He has a unique approach to music creation, but really, almost every artist's approach to music creation is unique. Deadmau5 shows you his way to put things together. The basic way he puts things together is like this: he tries to make a chord to start off with and he says that once you've got the chord, then basically you have the whole song from there.
He plays around with different synthesizer sounds, which then he demonstrates in real time how he starts to put together the elements of a track. He looks at his home studio which he has, a several million dollars home studio, with all kinds of analog synths connected together in what looks like the inside of a UFO.
It's cool and at the same time, he makes it clear that you don't need all that stuff to make amazing music. One artist on his label, Skrillex, is able to do it just on a laptop. So Deadmau5 shows you his really cool home studio, but at the same time, he emphasizes that you don't need this to make great music.
He gives a few pointers and one thing I liked in particular is when he says, "You do not want to use headphones. If you can avoid it, avoid using headphones, but rather use something that actually plays the sound back to you." This was some of the most effective advice I found in the class because it's so tempting, and I make my music on headphones because I'm live-streaming and I have a wife and daughter in the house. This was an outstanding tip that he got early on in the class.
Joel then continues with developing melodic structures. He gets into how to do loops that resolve. I liked how he emphasized, "When you start something like a chord or a loop, you want it to kind of resolve so that you can just loop it back and forth. The end shouldn't sound crazy different from the beginning." He looks at turning the melodies and the chords, and then the melodies made from those into an entire arrangement to make then a song, spread that out, include bass parts and leads.
He gives an overview of synthesized sounds, whether you've got a chord structure, an analog synth or whatever you want to do with it. He gives you a look at how to then bring the synthesizer in and have some fun. He does several lectures in the middle about modular synths, digital versus analog synths, that if you're just trying to make music online, these aren't likely to be very relevant because you're probably not going to go spend a bunch of money and buy analog synths and try them.
What I thought as a beginner is that basically a digital synth can do about everything I need it to do, and if I spent 20 years doing music on a computer, maybe I might want to play around with an analog synth.
Deadmau5 continues with shaping sounds and effects. I loved watching how he just played around with everything. If you get one thing out of the class, it is to just play around with stuff. I know that when you start out making music it's kind of scary like, "If I touch this knob what's going to happen?" Deadmau5 makes it clear, just play around with stuff. Tweak that knob, move this around, move that around, and be sure to save your project.
Then, Deadmau5 goes deeper into beats. He says that the kick drum is the heartbeat of the electronic music track. However, he also says something along the lines of he "f-ing" hates the kick drum, and if he didn't want to make money he wouldn't put it in any of his songs. I hope that gives you a feel of how the whole class goes. I'm grateful that Deadmau5 has a bunch of his kick drum loops and sounds available that you can just get as a loop masters' pack. It's not from loop masters, but that's the basic setup it's in.
Deadmau5 in the middle of the class gets into structuring songs and remixes, and then mixing and mastering. This is about where the electronic music production in terms of doing it on your own computer and making a song kind of wraps up. He offers some outstanding advice, he aims his sound levels at about negative 6 db, and then he uses the limiter and compression to do whatever he wants with it after that. Before he's mixed anything he says that it's a lot easier to just get everything at about the right volume, to begin with, and leave some head room. I thought that was really helpful out of the mixing and mastering section.
Then, he does a case study with one of his songs, mastering that. From there the class goes into starting your producing career. Given the statistics on the comments, most people never get this deep into the class. The end of the class is not as relevant unless you're hoping to actually play music live. If you are hoping to play music live, there are some outstanding tips.
He also goes into doing your own music and then looking at a label, but he says the labels he was on completely "f-ed" him over. Then, he talks about getting on a label. I was curious because if the labels you are on "f-ed" you over, I would think that the advice to give would just be to forget about getting on a label. Now he says a label can be very helpful getting your music out there, but he seems to be pretty down on labels in general. Once you have a basic understanding of the music business as he talks about in the end of the class, from my point of view, you might as well just put your music out to your friends and family and forget about a label, just make music you love listening to.
The end of the course goes into how to produce music live on stage, and then getting the technical side set up and doing the shows, putting everything together into a masterpiece. One of the very helpful pieces of advice that I liked is that he says he uses Macs for his live performances. Why? Because if they're on the road and something goes wrong, he can basically just take another Mac from the store and put the same software on it and run it. While he makes his music on Windows machines, he uses Macs on the road because they are interchangeable and so similar, whereas if you go get one different Windows PC where you put everything, nothing will work properly on it. That was another very helpful piece of advice.
Finally, the twenty-third lecture closes up the class and that's it. I hope this has been an effective summary of the class that takes hours to go through, and that in just a few minutes here, you were able to get a feel of what the entire masterclass contains.
Valuable skills for making electronic music
What are the basic skills this masterclass teaches and how can I communicate them to you in less than five minutes? The number one skill that this masterclass teaches is to play around and have fun with your music, and I hope to communicate that skill to you here.
How do you do that? There are two basic ways that are very helpful. I've made now 16 different tracks inspired by this class, the skills that I learned that are really helpful were to just play with stuff, and this was tough for me because I always want to do things a certain way, and I'm scared to experiment with things lots of times.
The skill I learned in this class is to just mess with things, like mess with every different knob, that I don't have to know exactly what a sine wave, a cosign wave or a saw wave is, or exactly know what the low-frequency oscillator does. I don't have to know exactly what all these things do, all I need to do is play with them and listen. I have to make sure that I like how it sounds, and basically play around with the song until I like how it sounds. It's never going to be exactly perfect. The more I went through the videos in this masterclass, the more it became clear that you don't make perfect music at any point. The best you can hope to do is make music that you love listening to and enjoy.
The skill that's behind that is to just take a leap of faith, to just throw down a chord, see what it sounds like, try a different synthesizer, and change the knobs on it. You don't even have to know what they do, just let it play, turn the knob up and down, see how it sounds. When Deadmau5 shows how he's using his beautiful, several million dollars, analog synthesizer set up in his studio, what does he do? He pulls things in and out, moves knobs around on it, switches other things around and moves those knobs on it. You can essentially emulate that right away to begin, and the more you play with it, the more you get curious as to, "Okay, why when I turn this knob does it have this effect?"
Then, you can look things up on Wikipedia and figure out all well, "Oh, this is what a low-frequency oscillator does." The skill that I hope to share with you here is to just play, just make sounds and have fun with it. Then, the second part of this is to just continue making a song that you enjoy and finish it off at some point.
Deadmau5 has made it clear that some of the music he's created has taken a long time. What I find really helpful, putting these skills into practice, is to just make something that I like the sound of, put it into a song, then listen back to it. I play it in the car, play it on my iPhone, play it on my headphones, and listen back to it.
Don't sit there forever and continue to tweak every single thing about the song because everyone's not going to respond the same. You might change something that someone else might not like the song as much about then. You should have the understanding that not everyone likes the exact same sound, and that the average person is pretty easy to please.
The skill that comes from this, then, is to just throw together a song that you like the sound of, then render it, play it back, share it with friends and family, then keep doing the same thing. A really easy creative process that I hope is useful to share here with you.
Stories Deadmau5 shares that I enjoyed
What were some of my favorite stories that Joel shared in his masterclass?
Stories are my favorite part of most things that I read and learn from. One of the stories I liked was just how Joel got into making music. He was working lots of other jobs and he says that he used to just stay up at night and play around with his music production equipment for hours, that he'd tweak all these different sounds.
He says that sometimes he just played with his synthesizer, just for days, and he didn't even record anything out of it, he just messed around and listened to the different sounds. He didn't start out trying to be a rock star, he just messed around and played music, and had fun with it.
How did he end up then getting where he has a masterclass today?
He signed up with one label after another, which he says that he felt the labels completely "f-ed" him over. He ended up starting his own record label, and he then signed Skrillex after he met him while he was doing a show.
Joel says, "I gave him a retirement package and got a little bit of money out of it myself."
At the time they met, Skrillex walked up and handed him his USB driver with his album on it, and he says that Skrillex looked, and I quote, "humble as F."
I don't think I'm willing to cuss, but that was his exact format. I like the story of how he met Skrillex. At the same time, he gave some advice based on what he'd experienced before. He says it's really annoying when artists come up to you and want to be signed to your label and they don't even have a full album out, they just have a song or two.
He says that it has really annoyed him that Skrillex came up with a full album and just handed it to him. Now based on what he shared about labels, the point of the story seemed to be to just forget about trying to get signed by a label. Just make your own music, forget about getting a label to sign you.
By the time you are worth signing to a label, you won't want to label anymore. Before you are ready to get signed by a label, it's going to just be a bunch of time and energy that's probably wasted on everyone's part. If you really need a label, I think he says something like, "Sit your ass in the studio and make music. Don't be out trying to get people to sign you when you don't even have an album out yet." I'm grateful today that this story resonated with me, as a new musician, to just make my music and forget about trying to sell it to everyone, but just to make music I love and enjoy.
Another story I like that he shared in the class is how he ended up getting to have his studio, then the uselessness of it all, that he just essentially makes the money to be able to afford all these different fancy things in his studio. Then, he says, "You don't even need all this crap, you can, just like Skrillex, make an amazing album straight on a laptop."
He works really hard and does all this stuff with the labels and other artists, which make him all this money, and he essentially just buys stuff he doesn't even need. I love that story and I hope sharing this is useful for you.
Context for my journey in learning electronic music production
What is the context of how I ended up taking this masterclass? I will be sharing the exact situation I am in, that resulted in me taking this masterclass. I hope it will be helpful for you to see the potential benefits, then available in your life today as I've realized them.
I was referred to this masterclass by a friend. He's a music producer and a sound engineer. He took the class and he said that I might really enjoy it. However, he cautioned me because I'd just have started. It's May 2017 as I'm writing this and I've just started in 2017 making music, so I'm a complete beginner. I didn't even pay attention in music class in sixth grade. I gave the teacher the finger and after that, I figured I had no potential or any type of hope to make music.
All of the sudden, in 2017, I got inspired to make music. I've been watching video classes and my friend, who's helped inspire me to just do my journey making music and show it from start to finish, encouraged me to try this masterclass. I started the masterclass, I went through the first several videos like probably most of the other students did in the class, then just like them, I stopped. I watched the first maybe five videos or so, and then I forgot about making music. After you start making music it is fun and really exciting in the beginning, then, for me, my mind kicked in.
"Well, come on Jerry, you're just wasting your time with this masterclass. You're not going to be able to make any great music. You're not going to ever do stuff that people really care about. You're never going to have a hit song, you really stink at music production. Why waste your time, why not do something you're better at?"
I took several months off of making music. I was all excited about making music in the first month of 2017, then about mid-February, I stopped. Then, about two months later, I talked to my friend again, and he mentioned the masterclass again. He said that very few artists online do a good job live-streaming their music production process. I have an amazing live-streaming setup and I was grateful he mentioned that because it helped motivate me to see what my unique opportunity was.
I don't have Deadmau5's level of skill making electronic music, but I do have a world-class live-streaming setup. Who would be insane enough to show their music production process when they were a complete beginner, when they didn't know what they were doing at all?
I find that it's inspiring to see complete beginners try and do things because then if you've never done it at all it's just one step to become at the level you're seeing, instead of looking at Deadmau5's master class. I'm a thousand of steps behind that. I think that's what happens to a lot of other students. You just start watching this class and you realize that you're not even anywhere close to this and forget it, you might as well not even try to make music. I'm grateful, once I started making music again, that I came back to this masterclass and I watched every single video in it. Then it started to be really helpful.
Instead of trying to figure out reasons that I shouldn't bother making music, which a class like this is very good at communicating like, "Well, don't even try. You're not going to be as good as him," what I started to find were little tips I could find really helpful.
Tips like: play around with the music, have fun, experiment and just do it for fun. Don't do it to essentially try and make money or have a career but just do it for fun. If you do it for fun long enough, you'll probably get the opportunity to make money and have a career.
That's the context I watched this class and I hope sharing that with you is helpful.
Actions I took as a result of watching the videos in Deadmau5's masterclass
What actions was I inspired to take as a result of watching this masterclass? In my opinion, this is the bottom line of any book that is out there for self-help and for learning. The bottom line is what did you do?
It doesn't matter much to just read a book if you keep doing the same thing. If you watch the masterclass and don't adjust your music making process a little bit, then what is there of any value in it? What I actually did as a result of watching this masterclass is I started taking electronic music production seriously. I noticed the fun I was having in electronic music production and I lowered my standards and expectations.
At least, I am grandiose enough that when I start something I have this fantasy that it's going to be the best in the world, that I'm going to be the best live-streaming gamer in the world, the best teacher in the world online, the best audio book recorder or narrator online, and I had the same fantasy with music. I literally banged on the keys of my MIDI controller playing the electronic guitar, and then put a video out and thought that everyone would just love it. After that video got a lot of dislikes, then I gave up on electronic music production for a while.
This action that came out of this masterclass is a positive reinforcement loop of making music and learning. This masterclass was the first class I ever enjoyed in my entire life to learn about music production. This class got me started with a positive reinforcement feedback loop, where I watched the class, learned about music production, then I went into my studio, where I record all my videos, and I started actually trying to apply it.
I said, "Okay, this is how Joel sits down and starts a song. So I'm going to sit down and start a song the same way as Joel did. I'm going to try and write a chord, and then, this is how Joel arranges a song."
Several of the things I do in my music production now are things that I learned right out of the masterclass. I aim at -6 db to get my tracks about there unless I need to adjust the volume by hearing. I'm grateful that the main action I've taken out of this class is to just keep playing around and keep having fun with making music. What greater action can I hope to get out of taking a class like this?
Another action I've taken is to forget about making money on my music. When I get into something, I'm always thinking, "How am I going to make money?" This often ruins whatever it is I'm trying to do. It's too early on when you're just playing around and learning something to think about making money because often all the things that come with making money require that you really know what you're doing, to begin with. I don't know enough about what I'm doing in making music to hope to make any money off of it. Even if it is possible in the future, I have a lot to learn right now.
After I finished this masterclass, I've had this craving, this desire to watch more classes. I have since watched hours and hours of video classes on how to do electronic music production, learning about music theory, and now I am consistently watching, learning and doing. I am watching how to do music production, learning new tricks, and then actually doing and applying them in my music.
I'm very grateful this master class started that loop back and forth of learning and doing.
Challenges for me using this masterclass
What were some challenges for me in going through this masterclass?
One of the main challenges for me going through this masterclass, to begin with, was the difference between my abilities making music and Joel's. As I watched Joel make music and just talk about music, while he began explaining his process I saw his studio setup and I felt the difference.
Like in video game terms, he was at a level 1,000, a master prestige, an expert at the game, and here I was a complete newbie having no idea what I was doing. I felt a bit hopeless at first.
"Why even bother? Why even try?"
That was one of the biggest challenges, getting started with the class, and I believe that this is the same challenge most people face.
When you see how good Joel is at music production, when you see his studio setup, there's this feeling that you don't have anything to contribute.
You might think:
"Joel and the people along with him, who are already successful making music, they're doing enough. No one needs my music."
That was a huge challenge with this masterclass and in fact, just like most students, I bailed. I watched a few videos and stopped. I was like, "Okay, whatever." Basically, the first thing I got out of the class was that Joel had done a whole lot playing music and there was no point in me even trying.
However, I guess the universe had other plans for me because my friend has inspired me to keep going and to keep trying. People on my YouTube channel called me out. They said, "Hey, where's your music. You said you were going to make music, it's been months. There's nothing."
I'm grateful then once I came back to this masterclass, I found it had a ton of helpful things for me in it, and I also found that there were a lot of things I could learn from Joel, things he's been through like labels. I can learn things from him without having to go through the same journey myself, and to right now upfront forget about ever having a record label.
Another challenge, that wasn't too challenging for me, but that might be for you if you don't like a lot of cursing and dry humor, is crude comments, sometimes rude or disparaging comments.
I translate those things in my head so when Joel goes off on a rant about something or someone, that doesn't bother me too much. It was a little obnoxious in some videos of the class. At some points, I got so distracted with the language, Joel saying, "F" this or "F" that, that I started laughing.
I probably missed a few key points in the class because I get easily distracted by an "F" word here and there. I'm grateful that Joel was able to honestly communicate in the class. If it was the easiest way for him to talk as it once was for me, I'm grateful he was able to do that in the class and that they didn't edit all of that out, that they actually left it in there.
Finally, the end of the class was a bit challenging for me. It was about electronic music production live and at this point I just don't picture doing a live show. So I thought this was just kind of pointless because I'm not going to do a live show, and this was a waste of my time.
Still, I got a few helpful tips out of it for me. I am able to just do my work today and not worry about whether I'm going to do live shows in the future or not, and if people want me to do live shows, I know they'll ask me to do them.
It all comes down to just having fun making music today. I'm very grateful that I've learned that out of this masterclass.
Thank you and what next?
Thank you for finishing my Deadmau5 shortcut.
I'm grateful that you are here with me, whether you've watched this shortcut as a video class on The University of Jerry Banfield at https://u.jerrybanfield.com/courses/deadmau5?coupon=steem or whether you've read this post until the end.
I am honored you've spent this time with me.
I love you. I'm grateful you're here with me today. I hope this has been helpful and I hope you had a wonderful day today.
If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed? If you would like me to follow you, would you please read this post next?
Will you leave a comment if you would like me to continue making more shortcuts like this available here for you on Steemit with suggestions on the next books you would like me to do?
Love,
Jerry Banfield