Diminished chords are native to both major and minor keys. You’ll find them as the seventh chord of the major scale, and the second chord of the natural minor scale. They get a bad rap for being dissonant, but they…
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12 Incredible Songwriting Tips that Work
As musicians, we spend the bulk of our time improving on what we do. We’d probably all agree that every new project we start (and sometimes never finish!) is a step towards getting better at songwriting. While there isn’t a…
Circle of Fifths: Easily Navigate Every Key
The circle of fifths is a roadmap for musicians. It shows the relationship between all 12 notes of the chromatic scale, and helps us navigate key signatures with ease. A fundamental part of any beginner to intermediate theory lesson, the…
Types of Music Royalties: How to Make Money as an Artist
Music royalties are a complicated legal game. What happens behind the scenes for artists, songwriters, publishers, or other copyright holders to get paid is best left to lawyers who know what they’re doing. But’s important for artists to at least…
Understanding Music Modes and Their Role in the Studio
There are seven total music modes including the major and natural minor scales. Why learn them at all? Songwriters and producers can always benefit from music theory; when you know the rules, or at least the basics, it can help…
Scale Degrees: What Are They and Why Do They Matter in the Studio
Engineers and producers can always benefit from understanding the basics of music theory. Knowing enough of the “language of music” to get by is helpful for communicating effectively with session musicians, for example. Having the ear is most important, but…
How to Write a Catchy Chorus | Essential Ingredients
There’s a lot of pressure on songwriters when it comes to creating the grand hook. Understanding how to write a chorus that listeners can sing along and identify with is a huge undertaking. The chorus is the most important part…
How To Get Your Music On Spotify in 2023
Understanding how to get your music on Spotify is essential knowledge in 2023, when streaming dominates music sales. As of 2020, streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and others accounted for over 80% of the total revenue generated by…
Hooktheory Hookpad Review: The Ultimate Musical Sketchpad
As we all know, songwriting isn’t easy—if it was, everyone would be doing it. We can have ideas in our head, but sometimes translating those through our instrument(s) and into our DAW becomes tedious and uninspiring. Sometimes we’ll sit down…
Sad Chord Progressions: How to Create an Emotional Sound
Sad chord progressions carry a lot of emotional content and provide the backbone to compositions across genres. While it’s normal to want to create something fresh whenever a songwriter picks up their instrument, knowing common chord progressions is a huge…
Louise Goffin Interview and “I Saw The Light” Production Breakdown With Fernando Perdomo
Today's video release I am super excited for. I sat down with legendary Louise Goffin to chat about the cover of “I See the Light” produced by Fernando Perdomo. But before we get into it, I want to talk about…
Chord Progressions: Finding Chords That Go Together
Even though we only have 12 notes, there are hundreds of possible chord progressions. This can be overwhelming, especially when we’re not yet comfortable finding chords that go together right away. Luckily, the majority of progressions tend to follow established…
Diatonic vs Chromatic: What Is a Diatonic Scale?
The basic definitions of diatonic vs chromatic are pretty easy to understand, but like most music theory lingo, it sounds scarier than it is! The diatonic and chromatic scales together actually form the foundation for most of western music. Let’s…
The Secret to Writing Great Songs?
Today's featured FAQ Friday question is: What’s the best song structure for the music industry at the moment? This is a huge question! Song structure is a very broad term. This question made me think of all the knee-jerk reactions.…
How to Make Money in Music as an Artist
Whether you’re a band/artist or working behind the scenes as a producer, engineer, mixer or songwriter, the music industry has changed dramatically over the last 15-20 years. And perhaps the most important thing you’re wondering about is how to make…
Using Silence to Improve Your Productions
We don’t often consider the importance of silence when it comes to our musical productions. It’s easy to get caught up in the sounds we want to add, because that’s what music is all about! But if you use silence itself…
Songwriting Inspiration: Ways to Stay Creative
Sometimes songwriting inspiration really does come out of thin air. The other 90% of the time, we’re stuck somewhere between wanting to make music, and actually making music. If you want to spend more time actually making music and steering clear of dreaded writer’s…
From Lyrics to Mixdown: How to Record a Song
As producers, engineers, and songwriters, we sometimes struggle to transpose the sounds and ideas in our heads to “tape.” We may have all the tools at our disposal to make great music—quality instruments, microphones, all the fixings of a home…
5 Tips to Get You Creating Music
In this video, we’re going to be talking about 5 tips to get your creating music. 1. Just get started! Don’t ‘wait for inspiration’. Set aside time to work. Many people have full time jobs, are in School or are…
FAQ Friday NAMM Edition Part 2 | FAQ Friday
We’re back with another episode of FAQ Friday! While at NAMM 2019 we ran into Austen Bullard who had a marvellous question to ask me: “When you’re in the studio writing with an artist, do you have a process for efficiently…
How to Overcome Writer’s Block: 10 Tips and Tricks Used by Pros
It’s something that every creative has experienced and will likely face again: the feeling of being totally out of ideas. Inspiration comes to a halt, and starting or finishing a project seems like an insurmountable task. Writer’s block is discouraging and…
Hi! I’m Wayne G. Miller!
Hello, Produce Like A Pro viewers and readers. I’m Wayne G. Miller – a producer/mixer, songwriter and musical director in Los Angeles. As an MD I have worked with Christina Perri, Mike Posner, Demi Lovato, Snakehips, AlunaGeorge and many others.…
Recording a song with 1 mic (LCT 441 Flex Giveaway)
a Rafflecopter giveaway Over the last 3 years of doing this channel, our good friends over at Lewitt have given us many microphones to try out and give away! Recently they have introduced a new microphone called the LCT 441…
6 Ways to Avoid Writer’s Block
It’s something that every creative has experienced and will likely face again: the feeling of being totally out of ideas. Inspiration comes to a halt, and starting or finishing a project seems like an insurmountable task. Writer’s block is discouraging and…
6 Steps in Becoming a Better Songwriter
The path to improvement as a songwriter is an on-going, ever-evolving process. As a craft, songwriting is highly individualistic, dictated by a host of personal characteristics. The instrument(s) you play, the genre(s) you most enjoy, and your technical and creative…
How to Write a Song with 10 Helpful Holistic Hints
When it comes to writing music, there’s surely no substitute for a bit of creativity and the keen desire to make something new. Everyone has a method all their own, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t observable parallels between creative…
Melodyne, Waves Tune or Auto-Tune? | FAQ Friday
Melodyne, Waves Tune or Auto-Tune? Which is the best to use? Which one is your favorite? They all do the same thing technically but they all have different algorithms and different ways of working. I’ll tell you what I like…
Mixing Monitors vs. Mastering Monitors | FAQ Friday
Are mixing monitors different than mastering monitors? Yes and no. I’ve been to a lot of mastering studios where they have very expensive monitors but they’re also the same very expensive monitors that I’ve seen in some very expensive studios…
Magic Formula For Songwriting? | FAQ Friday
I often get asked about songwriting: How do I start a song? Is there a magical formula? I like to start with asking the artist “what do you want to write about? What exactly are you trying to say?” If…
