I have been following the Digital DJ Tips blog for many years now, and over that time I have purchased a handful of their courses. Owner Phil Morse and his team of coaches have created some very educational content over the years. Music Production for DJs is no exception. I wanted to take some time to write down my thoughts on the course so that other people considering it could have an outside perspective of what to expect.
Based on my experience, I would recommend purchasing Music Production for DJs to anyone who wants to learn the basic of creating their own dance music. It is an excellent step-by-step course for beginners, and reasonably priced at $197.
What’s Inside?
Music Production for DJs falls into what DDJT calls their Essential Courses. These types of courses get right to the step-by-step learning process with very little talk of theory or other fluff.
Music Production for DJs is exactly that: no fluff. The course is designed to take you step-by-step producing a new song in Ableton Live. It assumes you are starting from scratch, and don’t even have any music production software installed. Tutor Joey Santos starts out by teaching you what a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is and how to install a copy of Ableton Live.
You will then follow along step-by-step as you produce your own copy of a song that Joey has already created. The instruction follows a similar workflow to how you would produce your own music. You will complete modules on Arranging, Drums, Synths, Reverb & Delay, EQ & Compression, Mixing and Mastering. While you are mostly using a song template, Joey will make suggestions about different sounds and instruments you can customize to make the song your own.
While this may seem like a very rote way to learn, it is actually very effective. DAWs like Ableton have a ton of features and it is easy to get bogged down. Imagine if you focused all of your energy writing a letter in Microsoft Word on choosing the font and the line spacing. It is so easy to get lost in the details of a song. Following this course quickly takes you through all of the major features of Ableton while you are creating a finished product.
Who Is It For?
This course is really designed for someone who has never produced music before. Music Production for DJs will take you from knowing almost nothing about music production to being able to create a basic song from scratch.
Because it is heavily based around Ableton Live, you may not like it if you have already learned how to create songs in another DAW. This course is really meant for a beginner. But, if you’ve only dabbled with production software, or you are really struggling to get started making music, it may be a good fit for you.
The step-by-step nature of the course can refine what skills you already have, and break any bad habits you’ve picked up along the way. If you have another DAW that you are partial to, many of the general skills Joey is teaching will translate to other software. You will have to decide if it is worth doing the translation. You will probably end up putting in enough time on Ableton Live that you will want to switch over by the end of the course.
I had a similar experience when I wanted to use a DJ controller that was built for Virtual DJ with Serato instead. While technically supported, the button layout on the controller was designed with Virtual DJ in mind. It took so much mental energy to convert back and forth that I decided the extra features in Serato weren’t worth the hassle.
Why I Bought It
I bought Music Production for DJs because I was looking for a way to expand my DJ career that didn’t involve constant late nights. As the father of a baby at the time, I was trying to keep my creative juices going without spending all night in a club. I was also thinking that I might move more into music production.
One of the paths for a DJ is the festival circuit. That seemed pretty ideal to me. While I have made most of my DJ career as a mobile DJ, I dream of rocking a big stage. I’d love to fly around the world for a few summer months making some big money playing 2 to 8 hour sets. You can work your way up to festivals through club sets, but it requires a lot of late-night networking. With my son and my day job, it just wasn’t something I had time to pursue.
When I signed up for the Digital DJ Masterclass (now called the Complete DJ Course), I was able to ask Phil directly how I could break into the festival circuit without grinding it out in the clubs. He suggested that I look at production. If I could create a few tracks and get them trending on YouTube or Beatport, I might be able to get festival DJ bookings off of that success. It’s all about being a known entity for a promoter.
I’m still waiting on my festival DJ fame, but I won’t blame this course. I really did learn the basics of how to produce my own music fairly quickly. I just didn’t get that obsessive bug that great DJ/Producers get. If you read about Avicii’s background, he was producing morning, noon and night on whatever gear he could get his hands on. That dedicated time is what made him great.
This course will teach you the fundamentals of music production, but it is up to you to keep making track after track to hone your skills. Laidback Luke once said in an interview that his label doesn’t want to hear your first song. He wants to hear your hundredth, or maybe even thousandth song. That’s how much effort it will take to be a great producer.
What I Liked
I really like the step-by-step format for very complex software. Albeton Live has so many features that I had no idea where to get started. Music Production for DJs takes the guesswork out of the software by walking you through everything. You start out with a basic overview of what Ableton can do and what you are going to cover in the course. After that, you dive right into building your first track.
The lessons give you just enough information to feel confident, but not so much that you feel bogged down in the details. My brain loves this style of learning. I feel like I master the little chunks quickly, and then I can run off and fiddle with settings or rhythms to experiment. Because I’ve got the basics down, I don’t have any fear playing around and thinking, “What happens if I do this?”
I also love that there is some built-in spots to customize the track you are building along with Joey. This gives you a real sense of ownership and encourages that experimentation. There are infinite ways to make music and, with enough time, you will discover your own sound. There’s also room for mistakes, or what painter Bob Ross would call happy accidents.
One of the DDJT mantras that you hear over and over again on their site is: “You don’t need new gear to be a better DJ. Improve your skills with what you have.” This goes double for music production. If you ask any DJ/Producer how they created their unique sound, so many will say, “I was trying to sound just like [insert famous DJ here], but I couldn’t get it quite right.” Creativity thrives under constraints.
Most importantly, you finish the track! It won’t be perfect but it will be done. That’s probably the best lesson you can take from the course. Finish a project and move on. Not all of your songs will be good enough to share with the world. But you also can’t keep them in rough draft forever. Laidback Luke himself has admitted to have hard drive full of thousands of songs that he never plans to share with anyone. Each one of your finished projects will teach you something for the next song. Music Production for DJs helps you create a song from start to finish, so you can move on to your next masterpiece.
What It Isn’t, and What Could Be Better
As you learned from my story above, this course is not going to make you a superstar producer overnight. This is a basic course designed to get you up to speed on Ableton Live and music production in as few as 4 weeks. You are going to learn a little music theory, and a little bit about how to make dance music along the way. You are definitely not going to learn everything.
You will need to research the specific genre of music you are interested in to understand what makes it sound the way it does. Personally, I’m really into Tropical House. I had to spend time on my own learning about what those songs had in common: which instruments to use, what tempo, etc.
It also doesn’t cover what to do with your music once you make it. There are no details on how to publish and promote your music. It’s strictly about learning the software and the basic ingredients in a standard house tune.
This course would be better with some suggestions on what to do next. How do I consistently work on my music production? What should I do with my completed tracks? How good should my music be before I share it with the outside world? How do I make money with my music? I still have these questions even after finishing the course.
Is It Worth the Money?
I am happy with the money I spent on Music Production for DJs. I wouldn’t say this was my favorite course from DDJT, but I feel like I got a lot out of it.
It is currently priced at $197, but if you sign up for the DDJT newsletter, they frequently offer discounts for holidays and other special events. The best deals seem to come from new course launches, so keep an eye out for those as well. I tried to figure out what I paid for it in 2015, but I couldn’t find my invoice.
Again, value to you will depend on where you are in your production journey and how you like to learn. I felt it was very valuable to me, because I knew nothing about how to produce music and I like to learn everything about a topic step-by-step. I also really need the exact steps of a process to stay disciplined and finish it. It was very easy for me to track my progress.
It may not work for you if you already have music production experience. Music Production for DJs is a basic course designed for production beginners. However, if you have parts of your DAW that you don’t fully understand, it may shed some light on these areas. I can think of countless times when I thought I knew how to do something, only to find out later that I was missing a key understanding. Even if you have some production experience, this course will make sure you fully understand the critical features of Ableton.
Also, you make not like the course if you’re not a “rule follower.” The step-by-step process may be too slow or frustrating for very creative types. The lessons don’t allow much room to jump around, because each step builds on the same file you will be working on throughout the course. It’s much better to build all the way through and go back to spend more time playing and tweaking with your sounds. Skipping lessons is a quick way to get lost. But, if you have the discipline, you could build out the song very quickly and then go back to dive deeper into the lessons you loved.
No Subscription, Yours for Life
I love the pay once, own for life courses that DDJT creates. I know there is immense value in their subscription courses, because they keep adding new content over time. But, having a course that you only have to pay for once creates a resource that you can reference over and over again. I haven’t looked at Music Production for DJs much since I first completed it, but I did log into my account to write this post. There it is, ready and waiting for me to refresh any of the skills I learned.
I have a tremendous resource to fall back on any time I get stuck making music. I also have all of the files I created while working through the course. And, none of this will cost me another dime in the future. Realistically, it won’t last a lifetime. Eventually this version of Ableton will be out-of-date and replaced with something more advanced. But these lessons will be good for at least the next 5 to 10 years.
12 Month Money Back Guarantee
Best of all, Music Production for DJs comes with a 12-month, no-questions-asked, money-back guarantee. If you decide the course doesn’t work for you at any point in the first 12 months, simply email DDJT for a full refund. It’s really a can’t-lose setup.
If you are on the fence at all on whether the course will work for you, go to the website. Read the lesson descriptions, read the reviews, and check out the samples. If you are 80-90% sure that you want it, go for it! Buy the course and take a few lessons. If you don’t like it, just ask for your money back.
The only time I asked for a refund was with the Digital DJ Lab. I signed up during an open sample period and really, really enjoyed it. The price of the ongoing subscription was simply too much for my budget. I sent my email to cancel and got a very polite response in less than 24 hours. They refunded my account in 48 hours. There was no hassle or games. They even offered to answer any DJ questions I had in the future over email for free. And, I’m still on their mailing list getting special offers on future courses. No guilt, no blacklisting, nothing like that. This is not a BS guarantee. These guys stand behind their product and they only want satisfied customers.
Final Verdict: If you are looking for a way to jumpstart learning how to produce music for less than $200, look no further than Music Production for DJs.
