Last Updated on March 27, 2025 by IDS Team
Welcome back! Here, we’re presenting the best music production tips with a budget-conscious mindset. It can be tempting to buy a lot of plugins to amp up your latest track, or feel like you need a better guitar, mic, or other piece of equipment. However, the truth is, some basic skills and knowledge of the production process can go a long way to making your tracks shine. In fact, if you have this as a good baseline, you may not need more than the basic plugins available on your average DAW.
We’ve covered beginner tips and techniques before, but this article is designed to go a little deeper and assumes you know the basic process of mixing a track. That said, it’s still beginner-friendly – we’ve just added a few things to keep in mind that you may not have known about, so read on.
Use The Signal Chain In The Right Order
Here’s a tip where, if you’re looking to make your tracks sound better, producer resources don’t always necessarily disclose the full amount of detail. But the truth is, the signal chain is a crucial part of the process of getting the right sound, and it’s something that guitarists and VST plugins aimed at them know very well. So why shouldn’t producers look at this little area as deeply? If your EQ comes after your compression or beforehand, for example, you can end up with vastly different end results. Think of it like the butterfly effect – one small change can lead to huge differences in sound.
The order of compression and EQ can determine whether a track sounds crisp or muddy, furthermore, the sequence of compression, EQ, and effects such as reverb can influence how these FX play out in your end track. This is one of the best music production tips to keep in mind for beginners who are not yet used to navigating a DAW intuitively. You could even write it on a sticky note and keep it on your laptop screen. Last of all, remember to EQ your reverb.
Know Your Acoustics – And Have A Plan
This is one of the most essential music production tips if you’re working with stems from a recording studio where you weren’t necessarily present, such as mixing someone else’s track. A quick assessment of the general acoustics of the track can go a long way to helping you mix with clarity.
Is there a lot of natural reverb already? It’s easy to get carried away with features like finding the best guitar tone or compressing properly, but it’s best to work with the stems you have, not the stems you want. Even if you love the idea of creating the shape of a new space through sculpting reverb, would you have to alter the original so much that it might become messy to work with? A quick assessment of acoustic qualities of your stems and a wider plan can help you organize your vision for the mix in a way that takes into account qualities like clarity, bassiness, top heaviness, or other quirks.
Understand How Our Ears Perceive Loudness
This is one of the music production tips that could be broken down into an entire article of it’s own accord.
However, when compressing, it’s crucial to play the compressed track at the same volume as the uncompressed track. Doing this can give you a clearer idea of how the compression itself influences the track, as opposed to just giving your brain a dopamine hit because the compressed version sounds louder, crisper, and clearer – an inevitable feature of all compressors. This little tip can help you be more honest with yourself as a producer.
Learn To Sweep The EQ Spectrum
It’s a myth that you have to invest in expensive plugins to even out oddball sounds in your mix. This is one of the best free production tips that will give you a lot more freedom and flexibility once you master it.
This is one of the quickest and easiest music production tips for beginners that is applicable to fix a variety of problems. Clicking on one part of the EQ curve and dragging it up (or the equivalent, but this is the most common way of doing in in a DAW like Logic Pro) and along the full spectrum of frequencies can help you identify any problem areas where audio glitches are making your track sound just plain weird.
Double Up Sounds To Make Them Louder
Again, this is one of the best free production tips that will stop you from needing to add more FX, which can clog up your track and make the signal chain needlessly complex
If you want to make a song sound make a song sound fuller, it can be tempting as a beginner to simply load on the FX until you can scarcely tell how to find your way around your mix. Needless to say, this can lead to complicated mixes. Instead, double up your track and apply FX to one only, or less FX to one than the other. This can subtly improve the sound in a way that is hard to pinpoint for the listener, but adds a lot.
Learn About Impulse Responses
If you don’t already use impulse responses, and you’re mixing a track with guitar, it’s hard to overstate how much of a subtle difference they can make to your track. In fact this is one of the music production tips that many overlook because it’s not necessarily part of the ‘classic’ mixing process and instead normally comes in at the recording stage. However, for bedroom producers, it’s as relevant as any compressor or EQ because of the vast amount of impulse response packs available online, such as from companies like Ugritone.
Creating and uploading your own IRs is also possible with many DAWs and plugins, and it can be a great way of maintaining consistency of tone and atmosphere throughout multiple tracks, especially if you are working on an album or EP.
Layer Tracks For More Color Or Texture
Similarly to making a song sound fuller, layering tracks can be a good way to combine FX without complicating the signal chain. It works the same way as doubling tracks, but instead you can subtly apply FX to one track only, or use one track as a harmony very softly in the background, to add subtle elements to your mix that flesh out the instrumental section without distracting from the vocals.
If you are wondering how to make a song sound better production-wise, this is partially a trick to do with arrangement as well. But there is a lot of overlap between the two, and subtle harmonies layered with the right FX can bulk out a section without making it over the top.
Use The Right Reverb In The Right Spot
This is one of the most subtle ways to improve your production and we have a whole article on the differences between different kinds of reverb here.
However, it can be tempting to use a reverb just because it ‘sounds good’. In truth, as much as some reverbs sound incredibly lush, sometimes less is more, and there are many cases where what you can achieve with reverb is just as possible using delay.
However, different reverbs give different qualities, and a plate reverb may sound less obvious than a room reverb, or conversely, a room or chamber may sound more atmospheric. Thinking not just about type, but also about quality can make the difference between a track that sounds good but stilted and unrealistic, and one that immerses you.
Ensure Sounds Are Not Cancelling Each Other Out
This is not often included in compilations of music production tips for beginners, but it should be. Phase cancellation is an acoustic phenomenon where sounds cancel each other out, leading to tracks that sound dull and as if they are just lacking something.
This is to do with the physics and acoustics of sound. If you have peaks and troughs in a waveform that are roughly equivalent and which occur at the same time, these will cancel each other out just like a wave that travels through water (think of when you are in a swimming pool and waves from all directions tend to merge together).
In fact, if your track feels like it could do with modifying but you can’t figure out why, checking for phase cancellation is a good idea. There are also plugins that can do the job for you, too.
Leave Space For Mastering
It’s easy to forget the mastering process when you are mixing. After all, it can be tricky not to get bogged down in the details of the mix. However, the reality is, you should always take the mastering process into account when you are mixing – and that means leaving some headroom with your volume faders. This should generally be about 3-5 dB, as this gives you plenty of freedom to work with the master.
If you are unsure about mastering or aren’t confident in doing it yourself, there are services such as Cloudbounce online mastering, which we have covered previously, which do the job for you. Mastering conventions are also different from genre to genre, and these services often allow you to sort by genre, so they’re often worth a look for that alone to help your track sound more radio-ready.
Final Thoughts
These are an eclectic mix of production tips, mostly aimed at beginners – or beginner to intermediate producers who are more or less comfortable with working on a DAW but are looking for a few extra things to fine-tune what they do.
Lots of these are to do with how our ears perceive sound or how sound works and translates across mediums, so it’s important to have a holistic view of the recording, mixing, and mastering process before going into it, and a rough plan or outline beforehand that will allow you to account for things like quirks in recording studio acoustics, or integrating any samples you want to include.
Either way, these are the deceptively simple but often overlooked music production tricks that, if perfected, can get your tracks sounding smoother, slicker, and more professional – even if you can’t put your finger on it.
And, if you liked this article, check out the rest of our tutorials section here.
