How to Actually Take Your Music to the Next Level

Everyone wants to get better. Almost nobody wants to do the specific, slightly boring things that actually make you better. So they make the same kind of track over and over for two years, wait for inspiration, collect plugins, and wonder why they sound exactly the same as they did when they started.

This is the honest version of leveling up — what actually moves the needle, drawn from how producers who do improve fast really work. None of it is glamorous. All of it works.

#The gap is normal — and it's the whole reason to keep going

First, the thing that keeps most people stuck. The radio host Ira Glass said it best: when you start out, your taste is good — that's why you got into this — but your ability isn't there yet. So everything you make disappoints you, because you can hear the gap between what you made and how good you know it should be.

Most people quit in that gap. They assume the disappointment means they don't have it. It doesn't. The disappointment means your taste is working — and the only way to close the gap is to make a large volume of work, finishing piece after piece, until your ability catches up to your ear. The gap closing is what "getting better" actually feels like from the inside. If your music frustrates you right now, that's not a stop sign. That's the starting line, working exactly as it should.

#Quantity is how you get quality (not the other way around)

The counterintuitive engine behind fast improvement: focus on quantity, and quality comes free. Chase quality directly, and you often get neither.

The logic is simple once you see it. Production is just problem-solving — a thousand tiny "how do I make this part hit harder / sit better / transition cleaner" puzzles. The only way to get good at solving them is to encounter more of them. Spend three months polishing one track and you'll meet maybe one track's worth of problems. Spend three months finishing eight rough tracks and you've solved eight tracks' worth — you've composed eight times, arranged eight times, mixed eight times. You will improve dramatically faster, and it isn't close.

Your first few quick ones will be less polished than the thing you'd labor over for months. That polish gap vanishes startlingly fast as the reps add up. Make a lot. Get the reps. The quality is on the other side of the volume.

#But not just more — deliberate practice

There's a crucial catch, and it's where "just make more music" goes wrong: making track after track on autopilot, always reaching for the same moves you're already comfortable with, isn't the kind of practice that levels you up. That's repetition, not growth.

The real accelerant is deliberate practice — deliberately working at the edge of your ability, on the things you're bad at. If your melodies are weak, sit down and write ten melodies in one session, on purpose. If you can't design sounds, spend an hour building a patch from scratch even though it's frustrating. If you never finish, practice finishing fast and ugly. The discomfort is the signal that you're in the zone where improvement happens. Comfortable practice keeps you the same; uncomfortable practice is the entire point.

One of the highest-leverage versions of this: remake songs you love. Pick a track you admire and try to rebuild a section of it from scratch — the drums, the chords, the sound. You'll learn more in one afternoon of reverse-engineering a great record than in a month of aimless noodling, because you're forced to figure out exactly how the pros did the thing you can't yet do.

#Finishing is a separate skill — and it teaches the most

A folder of 200 unfinished loops doesn't make you a better producer. It makes you really, really good at intros.

Here's why finishing matters so much: the loop is the easy, fun part — the dopamine of a fresh idea. But all the skills that separate amateurs from professionals live in the second half. Arrangement. Transitions. Mixing. Mastering. Making the hard creative call to commit. You only practice any of that when you push a track all the way to done. Abandon it at the loop, and you've practiced the one thing you were already good at.

"Done" doesn't mean "perfect." It means finished and out of your hands so you can start the next one. Get comfortable with good-enough-is-done, and you'll learn ten times faster than the perfectionist polishing a single track into oblivion. (We wrote a whole piece on why you never finish songs if that's your particular curse — and it's almost everyone's.)

#Use reference tracks like a map

Your favorite songs are treasure maps. The producers you love already solved the problems you're stuck on — the answers are right there in the recordings, if you learn to listen analytically instead of just enjoying them.

Pull up a reference track in the genre you're working in and study it on purpose:

• Match the loudness first so a louder reference doesn't trick your ears into thinking it's "better."
• Compare like sections — your chorus against their chorus, not your verse against their drop.
• Focus on one thing at a time — this pass, just the drums; next pass, just the low end; next, the arrangement and how long each section lasts.
• Switch back and forth in short bursts to keep your ears honest.

Do this and a reference stops being intimidating and becomes a checklist. The gap between your mix and theirs turns into a to-do list instead of a mystery.

#Get real feedback — from people who'll be honest

Your mom thinks everything you make is amazing. Your friends don't want to hurt your feelings. Neither is the feedback that grows you.

Find people with good ears who will actually tell you the truth — other producers, ideally — and ask specific questions. Not "is this good?" but "does the drop hit hard enough?" or "does the arrangement drag in the second verse?" Vague questions get vague, useless answers. And here's the quantity payoff again: if you make eight tracks, you get eight rounds of feedback to learn from, each one feeding into the next. One track polished for months gets you one.

It stings sometimes. Let it. The producers who improve are the ones who can hear hard feedback without collapsing, take the useful part, and apply it to the next track.

#The unglamorous summary

Take your music to the next level by doing the things nobody posts about: make a lot, finish what you start, practice the things you're bad at on purpose, study the records you love like a detective, and get honest feedback you can actually use. Stay in the gap long enough for your ability to catch your taste.

That's it. It's not a secret plugin or a magic chord. It's reps, reflection, and the willingness to be bad at something on the way to being good at it. The producers who level up aren't more talented. They just kept going through the part where it was frustrating — and then they kept going some more.

#FAQ

What's the single fastest way to improve as a producer? Finish more music. Every finished track forces you to practice arrangement, mixing, and decision-making — the skills that actually separate beginners from pros. A folder of unfinished loops only trains you to start.

Should I focus on quality or quantity? Quantity — and you'll get quality as a result. Making many tracks exposes you to more problems to solve and more chances to apply feedback, which improves you faster than perfecting one. Chase quantity and both show up.

How do I practice if I don't know what I'm doing wrong? Use reference tracks to find the gaps (compare your mix to a song you love, one element at a time), and get specific feedback from people with good ears. Both turn "something's off" into a concrete list of things to work on.

Do I need expensive gear to get better? No. Skill comes from reps and reflection, not equipment. The thing that matters most is lowering the friction to start so you make more music — a setup you'll actually open beats an expensive one you avoid.

The next level is just a lot of next steps. Start making something today — and then finish it. There's more from Artist Life when you want it.