Join Your Forces! Quick Tips on Team Work as Producer

What do you see when you think of music production? One guy sitting in front of his computer? Well, we don’t! Although there are undeniable advantages in working alone, working as team has turned out to be really successful for us. We want to share six quick tips that make team work more effective and fun.

1. Know your strengths

Each person has a different approach towards music and developed a distinct skill set over the course of his musical journey. As a team, you definitely have a broader spectrum of talents and strength that can enhance your music. So don’t concentrate on what both of you can do! It’s really important to know what you can do better than your team mate and what your team mate can do better than you. You will soon learn from each other and put both of your potential into your music.

In our case, one of us has more knowledge in music theory while the other is far better in technical and sound design matters. Take your time and consciously find out how you can profit from each other.

2. Be willing to make compromises

You won’t always be of one opinion, that’s for sure. Sometimes you will do something that you absolutely love, but your team mate doesn’t or the other way around. In those cases, don’t be upset. Finding compromises is an important step to a unique style as a team. Believe me, it will hurt sometimes, but it’s worth it!

3. Don’t push it too hard

• Music has to flow… like… Rocks… Having said that, your teamwork should do the same.
• Try not to fall in love with individual elements of your mix, your love will be unrequited.
• Be prepared to rip everything out ruthlessly if it is not exactly fitting in the mix.
• Even if it means that you have to wipe all your individual work out of a project.
• Do it for the sake of music, at least you learned something.

4. Do your homework!

Don’t ONLY produce together! Some things have to be learned alone and some ideas don’t fit your team project. It is critical to develop those ideas to, otherwise you will lose motivation really quickly. On top of that, if you’re not willing to learn stuff on your own, you will make your team work slower which is also frustrating.

5. Network

Networking is vital in music production, unless you want to be the only one to listen to your music (if that’s the case, that’s fine too, we don’t judge…). If you want to spread your music, make people dance and be successful as producers, use your power as a team! More people means more potential to meet new people. As you and your team mate have (probably) not the exact same character, the group of people that you will meet will be more heterogeneous which will make it easier and more interesting to step forward.

6. Meet regularly

For most skillsets, it’s essential to constantly work on it. That is also true for music production. As a team however, you can’t just go to your computer at home and start. You have to make time to meet up. The best thing to do is to settle on one day where you meet once a week (or more if you have the time). You then have constancy in your work and you can still go beyond this one day if you want to (from our experience it can go far beyond that when you’re really motivated).

Producing on your own can be exhausting, working as a team as well! You are working for two months straight and still haven’t played a festival? That however really is perfectly normal, don’t expect any wonders to happen just because you teamed up. All the same, you already made the first step by joining your forces with other people with the same interests.

For us, team work was the key to being successful in what we are doing. That doesn’t mean that you must find a team mate. Everyone is different and some people work far better alone for sure. It is still worth taking into consideration. Way to go!

[author title=”About Author” image=”https://www.producerspot.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/mathias-avatar.jpg”]KiloJoule – an Aachen, Germany based DJ / producer team that is also exploring how electronic music can be played more “in the moment”, i. e. as a live act. The music they produce ranges from Tech House to Dark Techno. Their expertise lies in team work and creative work in Ableton such as setting it up for live performances.[/author]