Taking on the journey of being a beat maker/music producer is not nearly as easy as one may think when looking from a distance. I’ve been a music producer for about 5 years now, and overtime there are many things I’ve learned mostly through trial and error. One of the most important, and most overlooked skills that one must possess to make the journey easier is simply staying organized. This is something that armature and industry level beat makers both struggle with, so I’ve put together a short list of 6 steps to keep you organized as a music producer that have worked wonders for my career, my computer, and my peace of mind. These steps will help you in the long run when a golden opportunity is presented to you. Let’s get to it!

• Finish what you start!

We all know how tempting it can be to start a new project before we finish the last. Take a breather if you must, but try to get into a habit of finishing every beat you complete. This method is not about forcing creativity, it’s more about building self discipline. You really want this as bad as you say you do right?

• Enter all metadata before exporting

If your music pops up on any type of music player, without the metadata entered, the listener will have no idea who or what they are hearing. Furthermore if you send your beats to industry insiders, you can potentially miss out on placements because they don’t have all the info inside the file. Most DAW’s will allow you to enter Metadata before you export. For FL Studio, simply hit “F11”

• Create trackouts and save session file/ .flp

When exporting tracks, make sure to split mixer tracks, export the session fil or .flp , export a .wav file, and an MP3 file.

• Put all contents for each beat in its own folder.

Make sure you have a folder specifically for your beats. I recommend making a folder inside your beats folder with the title and BPM or your track. Inside that secondary folder is where you should export everything mentioned in the above bullet point to. Immediately compress all of the files into a zip file, and label it as the “(beat title TRACKOUTS or STEMS)

• Separate beats by type

If you REALLY want to be ahead of the competition it would also be wise to put the individual beat folders inside of another folder that describes the mood of the beats. This way if you’re put on the spot in a session and the artist says “AYO! Play me a smooth trap beat”, maybe you’ll have a folder that contains a similar sound. Now you’re not just randomly looking at your beat titles trying to remember what each one sounds like. Furthermore if you’re sending out a pack, you can easily locate the type of beats that fit that particular artist.

• Backup to External HD or Cloud

You don’t want to be the one that learns how important backing up your music is by your PC crashing. I’ve been there and it’s not a good feeling at all!

Backup your digital real estate (beats) to an external hard drive. These days they are pretty affordable, and can possibly save your career if any unforeseen circumstances happen with your music files.

These simple steps can save you time later, work wonders for your career and make your work flow way more efficient. Other than staying organized, obviously you should put out music consistently whether it’s uploading regularly to YouTube, BeatStars, or wherever you host your beats. A VERY useful resource for fire drum kits is Modern Producers. This site has hands down the hottest sounds for the modern music producer! Drum kits, Construction kits, Loops, Vocal samples, FX packs, Presents, Expansions and much more. Don’t overlook the idea of making instrumental albums as well! Don’t let all those beats sit on your hard drive for no reason! As a bonus 7th tip for organization, try to set up a schedule of specific days of the week that you upload, and specific days that you create beats, so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Algorithms love consistency!

Thanks for checking out the article, and I wish all my fellow producer gang the best of luck in this music industry. By sharing what we have all learned collectively, we can all win.

-Sincerely,

D-Sick Aka The Rap Nerd

www.dsickmusic.com

www.rapnerd.online