1. Concept When you feel the inspiration to create, you should organize the thoughts you are having about the direction of the beat. Where to you want to go with it? what message to you want it to convey? You will find that your music will be better organized. Decide what you would like to hear sang or rapped on the beat. This step will help you accomplish a more detail oriented mix. 2. Plan After you have decided where the beat is going to go, now you want to plan out the beat. Remember that these steps are taken before you begin creating. You will have more freedom, once the creation starts to flow in the musical zone without concerning with the structure. You want to have a tentative plan about how long the song shoud be. How many verses should there be? Is there a bridge? Do you want to any drops in tonage? If so where will they be. Writing out the plan will also help you stay on course and prevent having a mix that sounds like two different ideas. 3. Flow of the Beat How many times have you heard a beat and it sounded like the producer didnt spend much time on it? The beat didnt flow and it sounded like a continous loop with no energy. That is a problem with a lot of production nowadays. You do not want the listener to get bored with the beat! You want to draw them in and keep them interested in the beat. Added different instruments at key times in the beat adds an element of surprise and break the monotony. In Addition your hook should sound different from the verses! You want to be able to kind of dictate to the listener what to feel at certain points of the beat. Remember, this beat is a relay of feeling to the listener, allow them to feel what you were planning. I personally like to build the beat like a house. I bring in instruments gradually and subtle. I also love to drop drums and bass and bring them back right before the hook. However you do it, just make sure that the beat doesnt get boring. If you get tired of hearing a loop then the listener will too. Trust your ear and your instinct. 4. Panning Now that we have the beat planned out and laid down, we need to space out the beat. Using the full spectrum of sound allows us to hear all the sounds without straining. Panning the instruments in a 3-D field will expand the mix and make it fuller. If this step is done correctly the listener will feel like they are standing in the midst of all of the instruments. So here are some tips from my own experiences. Snare-pan slightly to the right bassdrum-keep center highhat- pan hard right about 70%(reason users pan highhat R30) shakers-pan hard left about 70%(reason users pan highat L30) piano- pan slightly left guitars- pan to the right about 30%(reason users about 15) strings- pan left or right about 40%(whichever creates a balanced mix) other instruments and percussion- fill the rest of the spectrum These are basic suggestions for the panning of instruments not a law. Trust your own ear but make sure that there is plenty of space in the mix for each instrument. 5. Volume This step is very simple and obvious. After panning the instruments to cover the spectrum of sound, ensure the volumes of all instruments are equal and complimentary to one another. Again trust your ears and do not over think it. If it sounds good then it probably sounds good! Over time with practice this step will get easier. 6. Frequency Manipulation Ok, now that we have the beat sounding good, it is time to make it sound great. Understanding that each sound has a dominant frequency is huge in creating full and high quality music. All sounds are really just waving pushing through the air that our brains translate into sound as we know it. Manipulating the waves of sound is essential to quality mixes. If two many frequencies are occupying a certain frequency spectrum it will sound