Tips for getting the most out of youtube tutorials/studying music

[lilmartianonthebeat]

There are SO many resources and tutorials out there, I think it's important to get the most out of whatever resources you're pulling from.

I have my own process for watching tutorials, taking notes and trying to apply them. I prefer to watch a shorter tutorial that focuses on one technique or idea and not some long meandering comedic performance.

When I first started watching tutorials, I took extensive notes that ended up not being necessary. At this point in my development, I watch the tutorial for one or two ideas (song writing concepts, style concepts, production techniques, etc) and try to create a beat just using the concepts I liked. For example - in an Internet Money tutorial for how to make a Post Malone type beat, I might try to make a beat just using one of their hi-hat tricks, and maybe use similar instrument groupings (synths, samples, etc). I find this much more helpful than trying to fully recreate whatever they made.


I'm curious to hear how you all learn here. What are your tips and tricks for studying?

[reggie1979]

Hate to sound simplistic, but I am

I just watch them, when I can. Some traits I've noticed where you won't likely get any valuable information:

-When they start "icha boi" ... you'll never get anything out of those.
-People who mumble on about all the crap you don't care about considering the title. These guys are just impressed hearing their own voice.
-Please stop talking about liking, subscribing and hitting the bell until at the end That one bugs me, I haven't even watched your video yet, why would I like something or subscribe until I've seen it?
-Can't hear them, really poorly made.

I know that discredits about half, but you can usually tell pretty quick if it's worth your time or not.

[ShawnG]

-dont read the comments. Standard youtube rule.
-avoid tutorials by the unprepared. They just let the camera run while you watch them screw up for 45 minutes on a subject that could have been covered in 5 minutes by a dude with a plan and an editing suite. I give a little leeway to vids that are intended to be livestreams, but only a little. Just winging it doesn’t pay the bills.
-what reggie said
-the YT channel “you suck at Producing” by underbelly. It’s Ableton Live centered, which isn’t really my jam, but its informative if you’re a noob, and its entertaining if you're not.

[lilmartianonthebeat]

-When they start "icha boi" ... you'll never get anything out of those.

Maybe I'm just too old to understand them, but they seem like they're all fluff and no content. I can't even believe how popular some of these channels are... Does anyone actually get anything useful out of these?

I do like Internet Money, Verysickbeats, and sometimes Busyworks Beats is okay but he tends to meander around and take a long time to explain only to end with "uhh, it's complicated and you don't really need to understand it". If I have a couple bucks and I'm aiming for something very specific, I go for Groove3.

Either way I try to make any kind of video tutorial an ACTIVE experience. I don't really learn much just by listening.

[reggie1979]

I like Groove 3 also. It's tedious because they usually cover every little thing, but it's linear in that there is a start, and middle, and a conclusion which gels with my brain.

One thing though about youtube is that more and more you can type in specifics and get what you came for, sometimes it takes a bit of patience to get "to the point" though.

[dark_virus]

Most Youtube tutorials are not as valuable as they pretend to be. Usually they're mere product endorsements, and limited to show only how you turn that knob on that miraculou$ plugin, so your music become instant Ed Sheeran. Some are even worse: you see clearly the guy is hiding the important info behind screams, jokes and similar moronic behaviour. Or simply doesn't know what he's saying.

A channel I used to follow is SadowickProduction. Their production series are cool and not specially attached to any product/brand. Only problem is the fact that he doesn't show the tracking/arranging process, so the final result is just a 1 minute loop.

[Aloysius]

Hey it'z ur boi. What up fam'? Dis plugin iz dope.

[colonel_mustard]

I never got in the habit of making notes as I go, but I think I'm missing a trick by not consolidating learning after a tutorial. Writing a little summary to explicitly state learning points. It does help with retention when you've just been bombarded with info and it gives you something to glance over a week later.

I also find it helps to sit in a different room/chair/situation at tutorial time, and to drink coffee and focus, focus, focus.

Take breaks, and reflect.

And do one thing at a time. Just figure out one thing. 'Everything' is overwhelming but one thing is manageable.

I have mixed feelings about how useful YouTube is. In theory yes, great, it's amazing, what a time to be alive! but it's cost me a lot of time, panning for gold on crap mountain. Your time has a value, so you've got to factor that in. I paid for a year of Ask.Video (on a half-price sale, I think) and I don't regret that. I learned a lot of stuff that I didn't know before. Also just finished a free trial at LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com) and I'm thinking about paying for that one too for a little bit, to mine the archive. Maybe just a month or 2, though.

I think everybody develops a sense for 'this is gold' vs. 'this guy is literally stealing my life'. I have a low threshold for skipping forward.

[reggie1979]

Hey it'z ur boi. What up fam'? Dis plugin iz dope.

[reggie1979]

I never got in the habit of making notes as I go, but I think I'm missing a trick by not consolidating learning after a tutorial. Writing a little summary to explicitly state learning points. It does help with retention when you've just been bombarded with info and it gives you something to glance over a week later.

I also find it helps to sit in a different room/chair/situation at tutorial time, and to drink coffee and focus, focus, focus.

Take breaks, and reflect.

And do one thing at a time. Just figure out one thing. 'Everything' is overwhelming but one thing is manageable.

I have mixed feelings about how useful YouTube is. In theory yes, great, it's amazing, what a time to be alive! but it's cost me a lot of time, panning for gold on crap mountain. Your time has a value, so you've got to factor that in. I paid for a year of Ask.Video (on a half-price sale, I think) and I don't regret that. I learned a lot of stuff that I didn't know before. Also just finished a free trial at LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com) and I'm thinking about paying for that one too for a little bit, to mine the archive. Maybe just a month or 2, though.

I think everybody develops a sense for 'this is gold' vs. 'this guy is literally stealing my life'. I have a low threshold for skipping forward.

One thing I'm super guilty of and I would recommend this, is taking the time to really explore a new thing and really mold it into my head. I have a tendency to just move onto the next video.

I need to change this.

[lotus2035]

-dont read the comments. Standard youtube rule.

-avoid tutorials by the unprepared.

I find that going right to the comments is the best way to find out if you're wasting your time or not.
And more often than not information found in the comments can be more useful that the video clip itself.
Besides, without the comments YouTube is just another one-way media platform like TV or Public access. The world has enough of them methinks. The day they remove comments from YouTube is the day I stop using it.

[reggie1979]

So I took my own advice and went through "blocks" for Reason. I paused often and went through and kept challenging myself to actually embed in my head what was being taught. I feel pretty good about them now. Now doing the same thing with the drum sequencer.

[lwj]

Have a plan before you even start watching them. Just learning a bunch of random techniques because they're low hanging fruit isn't gonna help you make better music overall. So have an idea of what you're trying to get out of it first.

[Benedict]

I make video (and typed) Tutorials and I will say there are essentially two types of viewers:

1. those who want everything exceedingly short (and commonly dumbed down to novelty)
2. those who really want to learn the why of a thing so are happy to take the time to take in the knowledge, apply it and even ask questions.

I am one of these so my Tuts are long and detailed about the thinking side of things instead of lots of e_i_ts where I say P_t th_ red kn_b to 48 and it will be g_reat. I know most people are in the first group but I'm not that so why be that. I think the first path leads to the idea that the more people watch, the more they "power up" to Pro-dom. The second method is a slower and initially more "boring" path but I think far more productive in the long-term.

[funky lime]

I try not to mistake "watching a video" for "learning something." The video can plant the seed, but I must reinforce the knowledge on my own time to actually learn it.

There's some concept from years ago called the Wadsworth Constant, which posits that you can safely skip past the first 30% of a YouTube video without missing any important content. Of course it's kind of a half-joke, and obviously doesn't apply to all channels (don't try this with 12tone, for instance), but is generally true in my experience.

Product "reviews" are often just regurgitated press kits.

Don't click the recommended videos. That whole system is designed to suck you in and waste your time, no matter how interesting or relevant they might seem on the surface. Just get what you came for and get out, get back to being productive.

Reading comments can be useful on rare occasions. Sometimes in the "6 things you're doing wrong" genre of videos, someone in the comments will have condensed the video into a brief list, sometimes even annotated with time stamps (assuming the creator hasn't done this already in the description).

Video length is not necessarily indicative of depth or quality of information. Some people just love to hear themselves talk. Rick Beato for instance, as knowledgeable as he is, can sometimes talk for 45 minutes when 5-10 would have sufficed.