10 Books to Make You a Better Producer

The Power of Books

We all know there’s an abundance of information available on the internet. If you want to learn music production or improve your skills as a music producer, it’s very simple to find articles with a quick search on Google or tutorial on YouTube. However, content of this type rarely goes as deep as a great book will. Books offer unique value in a way that differs from most Internet content.

You’re more likely to gather a complete perspective when it comes to reading a quality book, rather than absorbing quick Internet articles and tutorials which are often filled with redundancy and tend to focus more on getting clicks and reserving information for the next article than delivering you a complete and practical understanding and insight.

Below, we’ve listed our top 10 Books to Make You a Better Producer. Keep in mind, that becoming a better music producer isn’t just about the craft and technical skills of music production. Finding success and improving yourself as a music producer is about much more. It’s also about motivation, creativity, marketing, and the ability to sell your music and personal brand. That is why the 10 books we have listed below cover these various topics in a wide variety of angles.

We believe the following books can go a long way in helping you improve as a music producer…

Audio Engineering 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Music Production

Author: Timothy A. Dittmar

This first book is especially great for beginners. Audio Engineering 101 widely covers the most important concepts in music production. It covers everything from the science of sound to audio hardware, recording techniques, signal flow, mixing, mastering, and even goes the extra step to discuss and help you understand how to apply your skills for jobs and careers in music production. In its Second Edition, it has also been recently updated to keep pace with the changing music production scene. Audio Engineering 101 is a great overview and reference guide for anyone looking to start music production and should be strongly considered as the first book to purchase if you’re seriously interested in learning music production and are looking for a complete overview.

Music Theory for Computer Musicians

Author: Michael Hewitt

Many people who are aspiring to be a music producer dive right into the world of music production without ever touching a musical instrument or learning any basic music theory. This is more commonly found with aspiring music producers in today’s Hip-Hop and EDM. Today, many producers aspire more strongly to be an artist making music straight from their laptop than to be an artist playing traditional musical instruments. For this reason, this book is particularly useful.

Chances are if you don’t seek, at the very least, a basic understanding of music theory, your music production is going to be severely limited and it’s going to take you a lot longer to develop your music. This book walks you through today’s music production software, teaching readers how to use MIDI and explains the fundamentals of music theory, including practical exercises and lessons that will improve your music production capabilities.

Learning music theory can be a controversial topic among many music producers. For more information about whether you should learn music theory as a music producer, and the common misconceptions surrounding learning music theory, you can check out our article Should I Learn Music Theory as a Music Producer?

The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook: Fourth Edition

Author: Bobby Owsinski

Things can get confusing when learning the art of mixing and mastering. Authored by Bobby Owsinksi, the well known audio engineer, producer, and guru of all things audio, The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook offers a complete insight into mixing and addresses one thing that many articles, blogs, and videos miss: that mixing can be very subjective.

You’ll have a great overview of mixing with this book, combined with what we find to be the more interesting part of this book; the latter part of this book has a unique section of interviews of well known and experienced professional mix engineers. These interviews offer valuable insight into the fact that there is no single correct way to mix. This section covers unique mixing practices that various engineers implement and can expand your perspective and technical weaponry in mixing. You’re bound to walk away from this book with some new tricks up your sleeve.

Behind the Glass: Top Record Producers Tell How They Craft the Hits

Author: Howard Massey

Much like the final section of The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook, this book focuses on hearing directly from famous professional music producers and audio engineers. With 37 top music producers and a wide collection of first-hand interviews, Behind the Glass offers unique perspectives and expertise on the craft of music production. 

Famous producers share how they crafted some of the world’s biggest hits, including personal philosophies, valuable strategies and practical advice you can apply to your own music production. This book transitions very well from our previous listed book, The Mixing Engineer’s Handbook, and will allow you to see how the variation upon techniques from producer to producer and ultimately widen your perspective on the craft of music production.

This book also has a second volume, Behind the Glass, Volume II: Top Producers Tell How They Craft the Hits: 2, which we also highly recommend and offers another collection of interviews from top record producers from across the world.

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Author: Steven Pressfield

One of the greatest demons to successful music production is procrastination and lack of discipline. Even if you’ve read every book and article on music production, all this knowledge will be nothing without action and experience. Why is it that we are sometimes paralyzed by our creative goals, or can feel hesitant when we start music production?

The War of Art addresses the creative struggle that artists experience when it comes to action and self-discipline. It dives into the reasons for procrastination and the various roadblocks artists suffer from creatively and outlines how to overcome these barriers. It is a guide to self-discipline and leaping into creative action. Reading this book and following the insight and direction it brings can become a very valuable asset as a music producer.

Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio

Author: Mike Senior

This book is most useful when you already have some basic knowledge about mixing audio. It makes some great points and covers mixing concepts that many other books and articles don’t dive into. You’ll gain particular value from the blunt style of writing in this book which will not shy away from addressing misconceptions and bad practices in mixing. This book not only covers the technical practices in mixing, but particularly focuses on some of the more overlooked concepts in mixing: perception, perspective, and mix judgment.

Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio is probably not the best choice for beginners and covers some more advanced concepts, but can serve as a great bridge from a novice understanding of mixing into the next stage of a more advanced and complete understanding. This book is blunt and keeps it real when it comes to audio equipment, room treatment, arrangement, mix decisions and overall music production, and has our strong recommendation.

On a side note, the author Mike Senior also has another great book we recommend if you’re looking to specifically improve your recording techniques. Recording Secrets for the Small Studio is a great counterpart to Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio and will teach you recording tactics, techniques, and strategies to optimize your recording and music production.

Music Habits – The Mental Game of Electronic Music Production: Finish Songs Fast, Beat Procrastination and Find Your Creative Flow

Author: Jason Timothy

The importance of taking action, beating procrastination and self-discipline cannot be stressed enough. While The War of Art focuses on tackling these challenges in the context of many creative fields, Music Habits – The Mental Game of Electronic Music Production emphasizes this uniquely in the context of music production.

Music Habits covers various strategies that can be used to overcome procrastination, creative paralysis and increase confidence in your music production. It covers the psychological aspect of music production and if you can successfully utilize the strategies, tips, and tricks in this book, you will have conquered a larger part of the battle on the quest to become a better music producer.

All You Need to Know About the Music Business

Author: Donald S. Passman

Once you’ve acquired your basic music production skills and as you gain experience as an aspiring music producer, it becomes more critical to better understand the music business. All You Need to Know About the Music Business has been referred to as “The industry bible” by the Los Angeles Times and for good reason. In its ninth edition, and after more than 20 years of being widely recommended as a resource for understanding the music business, it continues to evolve and serve as a great overview of the music industry.

The music business continues to change and this book explains the economics of the rapidly evolving music market and covers the more precise ins and outs of the music business; this includes how record deals are structured, building a team, publishing, copyright law and many more important business concepts. For these reasons, we highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to get serious and begin sharing their music with the world.

How to Make It in the New Music Business: Practical Tips on Building a Loyal Following and Making a Living as a Musician

Author: Ari Herstand

Also focusing on the business side of music production and artistry, How to Make It in the New Music Business particularly stresses the do it yourself approach to making it in the music business. In a market that is now dominated by social media, this book is a great guide for Independent artists and music producers. It offers specific strategies and practical tactics for increasing your social media presence, and valuable advice and steps for building a following and your own success. If you’re interested in building your own brand and fueling your own success in music production, this is a book we also highly recommend.

How to Win Friends & Influence People

Author: Dale Carnegie

You’ll see this book on many top 10 lists. It is a book that many successful figures cite as being very influential to their success. There’s no talk about music production in this book, but as stated, a successful music producer must have more than music production knowledge under their belt. They have to know how to properly speak to others, how to negotiate and how to make the best of the relationships they form and create success from them.

You will hear many successful music producers attribute their success to someone they had a connection with. Someone that helped them on the way up. This could be a mentor, a partner or someone they’re collaborating with. If you don’t know how to properly communicate and navigate socially with the important people around you and within your career, you’re going to have a difficult time finding success as a music producer.

How to Win Friends and Influence People digs into the psychology of people and the dynamics of social situations, including how you can conduct yourself to gain favorable influence and capitalize on social situations that are presented to you. This book won’t only help you with finding success in music production, or any business you may be involved in, but it can also help you with your own personal relationships as well. All of these things matter to music production. If you wish to be a successful producer, your personal life will be intertwined with your producer life. For these reasons, it has our final recommendation.

Wrapping Up

With our top 10 books to make you a better producer listed above, we hope we’ve found one right for you and your needs at whatever stage you’re at in your music production. They all attack music production from different angles and unique perspectives. We’re confident that if you spend the time to read any of these books, that they can bring you forward on your journey as a music producer.

Did we miss anything? Feel free to let us know in a comment below or reach us on our Twitter or our Instagram.