about HYPERBITS

I’m obsessed. Seriously. I’m completely and hopelessly obsessed with

making music on a computer and teaching what I’ve learned along the way.

Not long ago, I was toiling away in a cubicle, yearning for something more
fulfilling. Today, I'm grateful to say that I've worked as a producer, remixer,
and engineer for some of the biggest labels in the world, including
Universal, Sony, Island Records, Virgin-EMI, and Ultra.

I've even been lucky enough to remix artists like Beyonce, Tove Lo, Nick
Jonas and Laidback Luke. My work has garnered over 50+ million streams
across Spotify, Soundcloud, and YouTube, resonating with over 100,000
fans on social media.

Yet, as I navigated the waters of music production and the industry, I was
astonished by the amount of misguided information that littered the
internet. This discovery ignited a spark in me—to debunk those myths, to
unveil the truth, and thus, the Hyperbits Masterclass was born.

The Masterclass has evolved into more than just an educational platform;
it's a community where eager, budding music producers dedicated to
refining their craft converge. It's a place where I've found immense joy in
fostering their growth.

My goal is to empower you to master advanced music production

techniques, optimize your output, enhance your workflow and creativity,
and most importantly, enjoy the process. These principles remain
consistent, whether I'm remixing a Beyonce track or collaborating with you.

So look – my parents are teachers, my sister is a teacher, my grandmother

was a teacher – it’s literally in my blood. Teaching music production is what
I was meant to do, and hopefully, you’ll see that in my energy and teaching
style when you watch one of my free production workshops.

Enjoy those free resources, and please, hit me up if you have any questions
about music, business, or life. I’m looking forward to getting to know you.
 THE LIFELINE OF PROJECT

The entire point of the ‘Lifeline of a Project’ is to showcase exactly how

emotionally rocky the journey of making a single song can be. And because it’s so
emotionally complex and draining, there is really only one solution. You need to
finish music faster — you need to get from that first initial spark, that initial point
of inspiration – to the finishing line in less time. That’s what this is all about.
Speed. This entire PDF is going to help you take advantage of what the best
producers have already figured out.

You need to move fast.

In the same light that entrepreneurs and startup culture follow a ‘fail fast’
attitude, music producers that are at the top of their game can make a track in
only a few hours. They too, ‘fail fast’. And we’re not talking about just any track —
we’re talking commercially viable hits. Songs that sound incredible and have
billions of plays.

At the end of the day, the best artists in the world know they have no choice —
they have to keep making music. And because of that, they have tried and true
systems and techniques that solve for individual, specific problems. This PDF
attempts to share the best solutions to any problems that slow down a
producer’s final output, which is their completed, finished work).
 SECRET #1

CREATE & MAINTAIN AN INSPIRATION BIN

In order to be excited to create music, you need to be collecting and nurturing
your love for music. There are lots of ways to do this, but what worked for me is
consistently listening to radio shows and podcasts, and keeping an up-to-date
inspiration bin.

There is an insane amount of music out there. No producer needs a playlist with
100+ songs on it to help inspire them, in fact, it’s the opposite. You want to pull
out at least 3 songs, but no more than 5 songs and this small selection of music
will act as the perfect guide to inspire each track you make moving forward.

That way, you’ve pulled out your absolute favorite music, the stuff that inspires
you the most, and you can borrow from it or get inspired from pieces of each of
the songs in your inspiration bin. Creating an organized, current inspiration bin
should be something you keep up with as religiously as the actual music
production itself.

Create an inspiration bin with 3-5 current tracks that

SUMMARY inspire you. Reference these every time you are
struggling to come up with a new idea.
 SECRET #2

BE RUTHLESS WITH DEADLINES

Real quick, I want to share a story about the power of deadlines.

I remember I had my first opportunity to do an official remix for a major

label back in 2013. I was beyond amped. I couldn't wait to get started. This
was my chance to take advantage of a HUGE opportunity that I'd been
working for years towards, just to have this chance.

The only catch was that I had less than 24 hours to submit the remix. Yikes.
So after a minor panic attack, I sat down and got to work. And it wasn't
easy. I stayed up half the night. I questioned everything. Things were
looking bleak for a while (see the dark night of the soul in the ‘lifeline of the
project’ earlier).

But eventually, I finished the song, and it got approved. And looking back,
my biggest takeaway was this: I finished an entire track in a day
because I had no choice.

That’s why deadlines are incredible. I don’t care how you implement
deadlines into your schedule and workflow, but they have to exist.

Make your friends hold you accountable to deadlines. Build a team that
holds you accountable. Sign up for one of those accountability apps. Make
a bet with someone where you have to pay them $100 if you don’t finish
something on a consistent schedule. In fact, that’s the best form of
accountability because it combines social and financial pressure.

Being ruthless about setting deadlines will force you to make decisions. It
will force you to commit to progressing a song, and hopefully, get away
from that terrible p-word. I call it the p-curse. Yep, you guessed it -
perfectionism. Deadlines will help you put the idea of finishing a song in
front of the idea of creating a perfect song, and that’s a really, really big
distinction.
Deadlines will also help you get into the habit of deleting everything that
isn’t 100% necessary to the track. Don’t save 1000 versions of every idea. If
you really liked it, you’ll find a way to recreate it later. I started out saving
all these different versions of tracks, but I never went back to all those
different versions! So once I stopped doing that altogether, I didn’t miss
them.

And finally, don’t forget about printing to audio. Printing to audio is the
non-DAW specific way of saying “exporting” or “bouncing to audio”. This
will save CPU, and it will help you to move forward with ideas and commit
to whatever is in front of you. Plus, editing in audio has a ton of more
freedom and malleability.

“Time will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time
your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy.”
– James Clear

Be ruthless about deadlines by placing the idea of

SUMMARY finishing before anything else. Yes, this means
quantity over quality. Commit to your decisions by
printing to audio and delete, delete, delete if
anything is not necessary!
 SECRET #3

MAKE SOUND SELECTION A PRIORITY

THE TIME DEVOTION PROBLEM

The main issue with pursuing sound design from the ground up is the time
devotion problem. And on top of that, there are TWO time-related issues
here...

First is the time it would take to learn how to get good at designing sounds,
and then even once you’ve gotten really good, there is the time that it
takes to design each sound that you’re using or making entirely from
scratch. Which, if you’re trying to focus on making and finishing music fast,
this will slow you down exponentially. So much so, in fact, that you might
not be able to finish music at all. And that’s a real problem.

THE QUALITY OF SOUND PROBLEM

Even if you got really good at sound design, and then also got really good
at quickly creating sounds from scratch, there is the issue that the quality
of your sounds won’t be as good as the people and companies who are
doing this for a living. You know, the guys that do this professionally.

There are professionals and companies out there that are really good at
this particular skill set. So it’s really hard, even if you got became proficient
at this, to even remotely compete with the companies that are doing this
on the highest level.

So the fact of the matter is, you won’t be able to get an amazing sounding
patch created from scratch as good as the professionals, unless you spend
the majority of your time, designing sounds and doing nothing else, which
would leave things like composition, mixing, mastering, and of course,
finishing music by the wayside.
ABUNDANCE OF PRESETS

Now the positive thing that comes out of all of this, is that there is a huge
abundance of presets, with super high-quality sounds that you can be
using. You don’t need to make them from scratch, in fact, you shouldn’t
make them from scratch — you can just go get them and you should really
take pride in that process. You should take pride in finding the best quality
sounds, samples, and sound banks out there because that will be your
lifeblood — and that will be the best way to consistently make high-quality
sounding music. Start with amazing sounds, and you make the overall
process a lot easier for yourself.

"You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."
– Maya Angelou

Focus your time on finishing music. Leave sound

SUMMARY design to the professionals. There is an insane
abundance of presets that are affordable and
easy to gain access to that are better than
anything you’ll make completely from scratch.
 SECRET #4

MINIMIZE DISTRACTIONS AT ALL COSTS

This may seem somewhat basic, but I’m always surprised at how few people
actually do this. Anyone who is successful in this industry has to learn to
minimize distractions. They have to learn to focus.

For me, this means turning off my wifi when I’m composing or mixing. And it also
means making my phone out of arm's reach. If I have to move away from the
computer just to check my messages or emails or socials — I will become hyper-
aware of how often I’m sabotaging my workflow because I’ll keep walking away
from the actual work. This is a perfect example of training yourself to apply and
keep productive habits in your day-to-day.

And just to add to this, collaboration is a nice little bonus inside of the minimizing
distraction idea here. What ends up happening, assuming the other person your
work is also generally focused, is that you will not allow your monkey brain to
run wild with distractions. Think about it, if someone is sitting next to you, the
societal pressure of that person being there alone will stop you from tweaking a
snare for 46 minutes and 22 seconds.

“You can’t think yourself out of a writing block; you have to write yourself out
of a thinking block.”

– John Rogers

Turn off your wifi when working, put your phone

SUMMARY in another room, and make sure to not isolate
yourself as this stagnate your growth. Also,
make sure to collaborate. Nothing will stagnate
your growth more than isolation.
 SECRET #5

GET ORGANIZED LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT

This isn’t meant to satisfy your inner OCD or anything, this is so that you
can minimize the mental effort necessary to accomplish each and every
tiny little production decision you’ll be making throughout a track. It can
become mentally exhausting to make thousands of little decisions every
time you make a song. This is why, if you’re organized, you’ll be able to
save that mental capacity to tackle more important problems.

CREATE & MAINTAIN A FAVORITES FOLDER

The absolute best thing you can possibly do for yourself is create a
favorites folder for your samples. The only thing you put in here (and I
repeat the ONLY thing) is your absolute favorite, best-sounding samples.

A great way to start this is to go through some of your recent songs, and
just pull out anything you plan on reusing again. My general rule of thumb
is if I have done something more than 2-3 times, it belongs in my favorites
folder. This means that when you want to get a song going quickly, you
won’t break the flow state that you’re in just to go sample hunting.

SAVE PRESETS & CHANNEL STRIPS FOR LATER USE

Saving presets, similar to the favorites folder, is an absolute must-have

when it comes to your workflow. This will help define your sound because
you’ll start to reuse specific patches and stop resorting to something
completely new and different every time you make a track.

How you go about organizing this is up to you, just make sure it’s
sustainable and something you can keep up with. For me, I found it was
easiest to save presets inside of my DAW instead of inside of each
individual synth — I kept my soundbanks organized in each synth, but I
actually pulled out my favorite patches in the DAW so they were more
easily accessible. But again, this is dependent on what you like most.
On top of that, you can also create channel strips of entire processing
chains you find yourself using often. You can even set certain plugins to
default to a certain setting every time you open them, so if you almost
always do something with a given plugin or synth, just set that setting as a
default and you’ll save yourself loads of time every single instance you
open a specific synth or plugin because it will be in your ideal starting
position.

UTILIZE TEMPLATES

I don’t believe templates are a saving grace or anything, but again, when it
comes to getting started, the few minutes you save at the start of each
track by using a template can be ridiculously valuable for the process of
capitalizing on inspiration.

I like to keep templates simple. My composition template has a synth, a

piano, and an empty audio track ready to go, with my sidechain trigger
already set up, and a few reverbs and effects already bussed out. That’s it.
Anything beyond that I have found to be overkill.

“If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next
whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say you’re so original..."

– Gary Panter

Create & maintain a favorites folder of your

SUMMARY absolute best sounds. Make sure to save presets
and channel strips for future use. Utilize
templates to help quick-start your productions,
but don’t rely too much on templates — this can
actually hinder creativity.
 SECRET #6

BORROW OR STEAL ARRANGEMENTS

I know the word ‘steal’ is a super loaded word, but if it helps, think of it as
borrowing, or stealing that no one will ever know about.

Because when it comes to arrangements and song structure, there is no better

way to stop that 8-bar looping phase (which some people call Loopitis, you know
— when you create an idea and play it on repeat and never progress the song)
than to simply drop a track from that inspiration bin (secret #1) directly into your
DAW.

And once you’ve done that, you can map your song directly to the reference
track. This allows the reference track to become a guide for what is going to
happen in your song.

And naturally, that will create a lot of gaps in your production, and that’s a good
thing because it will force you to fill those gaps until the song is complete. You’ll
have transitionary gaps, entire sections like breaks or pre-choruses or intros and
outros...and again because you now have a guide or a map to what your song
will become, you will be working towards solving that specific problem or need
instead of aimlessly looping your music. And please, please, PLEASE — don’t
worry about plagiarism or stealing when using reference tracks as structure
guides — no one will ever pick up on this. There’s just so many other things to
worry about in music production, and this shouldn’t be one of them.

“It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.”
— Mark Twain

Drop a reference track into the DAW, map your

SUMMARY song to the reference, and fill in the gaps!
 SECRET #7

LEARN SHORTCUTS FOR SPEED

When it comes to speed, you simply can’t get around the fact that nothing
will dramatically quicken your workflow more than shortcuts.

I’m not even talking about advanced Jedi professor stuff, I’m talking about
simple, easy-to-learn shortcuts that will dramatically improve your
workflow.

Each DAW has specific shortcuts (I’ve included the manuals of each of the
most popular DAWs for your reference below) so I’m not going to get into
the technicalities here, but simple things like a shortcut for saving your
project file, shortcuts for duplicating audio files, or copying automation, or
switching between your DAWs mixer vs. arrangement window, or even
correcting midi, duplicating midi, or moving midi around — this will go
very, very far in improving your day to day workflow.

SPEND A DAY OF YOUR LIFE LEARNING YOUR PIANO ROLL

That said, you are going to be spending a TON of time inside of your DAW
working in midi. There’s just no avoiding it. That’s the reality of the
situation. And because of that, it’s probably worth spending one full day of
your life learning everything there is to know about midi editing in your
DAW. That one day will pay off for years to come.

SPEND A DAY OF YOUR LIFE LEARNING AUDIO EDITING

And on that same note, do the same for audio editing. You’ll be
manipulating, warping, chopping, cutting, and stretching audio relentlessly
when making music, so you might as well know how to do all that like the
back of your hand. Spend another full day doing nothing but learning
shortcuts and audio editing techniques. Luckily, it’s relatively simple to
execute this stuff, but a lot of producers never learn it because they didn’t
take the time out of their first few months or even years to get to know the
basics.
For easy reference, we’ve included links to the manuals for each of the
most popular DAWs

Ableton Shortcuts Manual | Search Shortcuts

Logic X Manual | Search Key Commands

FL Studio Manual | Search Shortcuts

"Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or
bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art."

– Andy Warhol

Learn your DAW's most important shortcuts.

SUMMARY Spend one day of your life learning the piano
roll shortcuts. Spend one day of your life
learning audio editing shortcuts.
 SECRET #8

GET GOOD AT ENTERING A FLOW STATE

A flow state is also referred to as ‘being in the zone’ or ‘a creative flow’ but
the best definition that I could come up with is this: A mental state of
relaxed, high performance, a mental state of energized focus, full
involvement, and enjoyment in the process.

Quite honestly, it’s really the most rewarding part of creating music, hands
down.

What’s most interesting about a flow state is that we only enter a flow state
when two conditions are met:

1. When the work we’re doing is challenging enough to keep our minds
occupied and busy.
2. When the work we’re doing is easy enough to avoid frustration and
boredom.

And that’s an important distinction because that means that to consistently

achieve or enter a “flow state”, you need to arm yourself with the proper
tools and education to not get bogged down by all the difficulties music
producers face.

You need to have enough technical knowledge to be able to challenge

yourself in your next composition, sound design session, mixdown, or
master (or whatever facets you plan on tackling next).

This means that the formula for entering a flow state is:

Learn Something + Apply & Practice + Rest

And then rinse and repeat.

It’s important to always be learning and always fueling your mind with new
information. But whatever you do, don’t become that person that literally
never does anything other than learn.

Take in some new information, apply it, practice it, but most importantly —
use it. Then, and only then, should you rest and repeat :-)

"What separates the superstars from the average? They seek criticism, and
actually, listen to it..."

– Alex Alvarez

To enter a flow state, the formula is simple. Learn

SUMMARY something, apply and practice it, make sure to rest,
and then repeat the process. Make no mistake, flow
states are THE goal we’re seeking. And it also
happens to be the most fun and rewarding part of
the musical process.
 make sure to Visit
www.hyperbits.com/masterclass
to see how you can conquer
advanced music production
once and for all
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