By Jason Johann
To be honest, producing dubstep and electronic music does not take a degree in music to do. Of course having musical knowledge will give your tunes a more musical flow and feel, but I know plenty of producers who are great at making electronic music and really don't know too much about traditional music theory.
This is largely because computers do so much of the work. First of all, you DON'T need to know how to play an instrument. Some basic piano skills would be helpful as it would facilitate translating ideas into reality for keyboard skills will allow a composer to play the notes rather than program them. However, with practice, you can become a super midi note programmer and may hardly ever touch your midi controller. Some producers rely very heavily on programming their notes in sequencers.
So what do you need to know? Well, first of all, if you've been listening to music all of your life, you should have a good sense of what sounds good and what doesn't. If you don't know any music theory, this trained ear will help guide you but if you really want to make your life easier, I would suggest taking a basic piano improvisation class which will teach you basic scale and chord theory. With this knowledge you will have a much better grasp of what chord progressions work and how they work as well as what notes you can play along with these chords. It is also helpful to have some knowledge about key transposition so your songs aren't always in the same key or pitch.
You should also have some basic rhythm knowledge. Aside from knowing what a measure is and what tempo is, you should be familiar with your note values. This will help you be more efficient when you program your notes and drum patterns. You should know how to identify quarter notes, eighth notes and sixteenth notes and also triplets. If you don't know what these are yet, you should learn them!
Lastly, you should know how to structure a basic song. This will probably be the easiest to do out of all of these. To learn how to do this, just a pick a couple songs that you really like and break them down into different parts i.e. intro, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, outro etc. Mark down how many measures each part is so you know how to structure your tune.
With just this introductory information, you are armed with enough to get rocking with the top dubstep songs. And try not to get discourage if it feels like there is so much you do not know. Stick with it and what you need will come to you.
This is largely because computers do so much of the work. First of all, you DON'T need to know how to play an instrument. Some basic piano skills would be helpful as it would facilitate translating ideas into reality for keyboard skills will allow a composer to play the notes rather than program them. However, with practice, you can become a super midi note programmer and may hardly ever touch your midi controller. Some producers rely very heavily on programming their notes in sequencers.
So what do you need to know? Well, first of all, if you've been listening to music all of your life, you should have a good sense of what sounds good and what doesn't. If you don't know any music theory, this trained ear will help guide you but if you really want to make your life easier, I would suggest taking a basic piano improvisation class which will teach you basic scale and chord theory. With this knowledge you will have a much better grasp of what chord progressions work and how they work as well as what notes you can play along with these chords. It is also helpful to have some knowledge about key transposition so your songs aren't always in the same key or pitch.
You should also have some basic rhythm knowledge. Aside from knowing what a measure is and what tempo is, you should be familiar with your note values. This will help you be more efficient when you program your notes and drum patterns. You should know how to identify quarter notes, eighth notes and sixteenth notes and also triplets. If you don't know what these are yet, you should learn them!
Lastly, you should know how to structure a basic song. This will probably be the easiest to do out of all of these. To learn how to do this, just a pick a couple songs that you really like and break them down into different parts i.e. intro, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, outro etc. Mark down how many measures each part is so you know how to structure your tune.
With just this introductory information, you are armed with enough to get rocking with the top dubstep songs. And try not to get discourage if it feels like there is so much you do not know. Stick with it and what you need will come to you.
About the Author:
The author is an electronic music composer from LA. Click here to listen to some of his latest tunes. He is known to compose some of the best dubstep music in the underground arena.