Making beats is so common an occupation so common it’s almost a cliche. When you say “I make beats” and you’re trying to come off cool, people just roll their eyes. Better to do good work, let it speak for itself, partner up with artists, and when the day comes that you can call it your profession, call yourself a producer. But in order for any of that to happen, you’ve got to get past the most common mistakes of music production.
1) Repetition: Too many would-be producers want to make a fast buck, and can’t be bothered to put in the requisite energy to make beats. As a result, you get beat-makers cranking out a 4-bar phrase that repeats over and over again. It doesn’t do just to make single beats, you’ve gotta have the whole song concept in your head, or if it’s not in your head, you’ve got to build it on your production suite, and that takes time, energy and patience.
Some producers opt for minimal arrangement but still fall into the trap of repeating one instrument and one melody over and over again for the whole song with minimal breaks. Even if you’ve got a great guitar hook, listeners are going to need a break from it. So no excessive repetition
2) Flat Dynamics: To make a beat, and make it the right way, you might get away with some repetition and minimal arrangement, if everything else is great. But to make a beat great, you’ve got to have dynamics. Many wannabe producers produce songs with no dynamics, that is the instruments in their mixes sound robotic and crappy. You’ve gotta have accented notes, and quiet notes, and there has to be feel. You can’t have everything quantized all together.
Also, it’s easy to have dynamic instrumental performances, and a rock solid mix, with lots of time and energy put into it, but without quiet breaks in the song, where most of the instrumentation drops out, the listener gets tired. Arrangement must be dynamic, just like instrumental performances must be dynamic.
3) Finally, beat-makers do not mix wide enough. There are all kinds of tricks for a wide mix, including panning and automation to make beatssound wide. Look these up, and use them. Real production takes time, and if you want to make beats, you have to learn the skills of a diligent producer, and avoid the pitfalls of lazy beatmakers, of which there are hundreds of thousands.