Becoming a professional music producer

Depends on how u use your workflow! I like to make my entire track at -6db on every track. This way i have better mix down than when i adjust the db's on the fly. Also, use your own presets. Presets are fun and all, but u get your own sound from making your own patches. Presets are very useful to extract data and waveforms that are used to get a certain sound, but try experimenting on making your own sounds. Also try to make samples (bass, leads, keys, drums and everything) when u have free time and ur not feeling very creative. I like to make a track from my own samples, but do all of this within a day, or my creativity on a certain track drops immensely. Hope u got something from this. (sorry for my english, i'm dutch and a little drunk :D)

Hahahaha, yea thanks a bunch bud. I honestly think that that's what I need to do. Just make my own samples and presets and learn more in the process. (perfect)

I havent read most of the post so sorry if im just echoing what others have said

Top tips would be:

Learn about synthesizers in so much depth that it hurts (Harmonics and overtones n what not)

Never stop experimenting!! (play with different synths, additive, sub, FM.. Stay away from presets!!)

Download stems for a song and just throw in a drum loop and try to mix and master that for abit of practise.

i can say with most certainty that learning to mixdown your elements will GREATLY improve the quality of your tune. everything from a misplaced hihat in the sound spectrum to a top-ringing crash or clashing kick and sub can basically fuck up your whole tune. but once you get ahold of that, it will automatically sound more clearly - and more professional as well, just in a minute.

I kind of disagree with some of the comments concerning mixdowns and mastering in this thread. When you're starting out, honestly, you shouldn't be concerned with it. Put maybe like 5% of your focus towards the mixdown and 95% towards the creativity/writing/flow/sound design, etc. Listeners are going to choose a catchy but poorly mixed tune over a boring but technically sound one almost every time. I mean, just choose any artist you like and go back into their library to when they were first getting popular. Chances are that from a technical standpoint, their songs sounded like crap.

I listened to the track you posted, and really theres nothing wrong with that mixdown. Its fine. But its lacking originality. Theres nothing in that clip that makes it stand out from the thousands of other similar house tracks produced before it.

Work on designing unique basses, the flow of your drums, chord progressions, arrangements, etc. Choose a mainstream song you like then go on youtube to watch the piano tutorial so you can find out how it's played and what chords it uses. Dick around in massive for hours on end like someone else said. Use presets as a learning tool. Deconstruct them to find out why they're making the sounds they're making. Play with all the stock audio effects that come with your DAW. Most importantly, find a way to stand out. Do something weird in your tracks that no one else is doing.

Music is art. Getting overwhelmed with the technical stuff too early will only hurt you in the long run.

Well said sir