What I've learnt producing music in 2025

I started playing piano at three. For fifteen years, it was just performance—fingers on keys, reading sheets, ephemeral sound. Then, at nineteen, I discovered the timeline.

Production is a different beast. It is the ability to freeze time, layer it, and critique it. It is a shift from playing music to building it.

Welcome to the lab. Here are the notes from 2025.

Mixing an Acoustic Guitar

a.k.a. “I swear this sounded better at 2AM”

My early mixes were a mess of intention. I wanted "warm", "wide", "cinematic", and "intimate"—all at once. I stacked plugins like bricks, hoping density would equal quality.

It didn't. It sounded like mud.

After months of deleting sessions and questioning the physics of sound, I found a stripped-back chain that actually works. It doesn't fix a bad take, but it respects a good one.

EQ Clarity comes from subtraction. I roll off everything below 80Hz; low-end on an acoustic track is just noise. A gentle scoop at 300–500Hz removes the bedroom boxiness. Then, a slight lift between 2k–5k. Not much. Just enough to let the pick attack breathe.

Compression Discipline, not force. 3:1 ratio. 10ms attack. 100ms release. I aim for 4dB of gain reduction—taming the peaks, not flattening the life out of them.

IR Loader The secret weapon. I use a church impulse response. It places the instrument in a physical volume much larger than my room. It stops the recording from sounding small.

Reeverb 2 Drum Studio preset. Counter-intuitive? Maybe. But short rooms and tight decays act as glue, not effect. You shouldn't hear it. You should only miss it when it's gone.

Limiter The safety net. Ceiling at -0.1dB. It catches the wildest transients so I don't have to worry about clipping.

"A decent chain makes a good take feel intentional. That is the entire goal."

Programming Drums

learning restraint the hard way

I used to treat drums as a showcase. Ghost notes, complex fills, velocity randomization—I wanted the listener to hear the effort.

I was wrong. Good drums don't announce themselves; they support the architecture.

The kick is usage, not style. The snare is punctuation, not personality. When I stopped trying to impress and started trying to support, the tracks immediately sounded expensive.

Restraint is the loudest instrument in the mix.

Sound is only half the music

“Music is an amalgamation of sound and space.”

Pranav Swaroop said this, and it dismantled my workflow.

I realized I was filling every millisecond with signal. But notes are defined by their boundaries. Reverb is about placement, not just size. Compression is control, not just loudness.

When I stopped fearing silence, the tracks started to breathe. And breathing tracks feel human.

Motivation is fragile, ride it when it shows up

I saw Steven Wilson live. It wasn't a "show". It was a masterclass in dynamics. Watching someone exercise complete authority over sound and silence did more for me than a thousand YouTube tutorials.

I returned to the DAW with a new directive: Listen better. Respect the silence.

Tools matter, but timing matters more

I bought Studio One 7 Pro. No comparison charts. No "best DAW" forums. Just a purchase.

It was one of the best investments of the year. Not because the summing engine is magical, but because it feels invisible. When software friction disappears, ideas survive the transit from brain to screen.

Momentum is the only metric that counts.

Closing thoughts

2025 was the year I learned that production isn't about flexing knowledge. It is about taste.

It is about the confidence to delete a track. The wisdom to leave a gap. I still have moments of doubt, but the distance between "noise" and "music" is getting shorter to cross.

That is enough.