I started out djing, as I liked to be the one with the newest music that nobody else was playing. As I progressed I just picked up more skills, got better through practice, learned to scratch, it all got better and tighter through practice, lots and lots of practice, hours a day. If I fucked up a mix on a mixtape Id stop and start it all again. I was never much of a dancer, used to be a bit socially awkward too and not a huge fan of large groups of sweaty people, so being a dj got me out the way, where my shitty dancing wouldn't make me stand out like a sore thumb.
Then one day my mate came back from Cyprus and had a joint of Double Zero hash. We smoked it on the stairs outside the flat I used to live, I went indoors after, as he went home. I laid on my bed and heard music in my head that wasnt there. It was good music too, I thought if I can imagine music, then I'll be able to make it, and thus the seed was planted.
I moved away from the djing and now exclusively produce and don't dj at all.
It took me a very long time and thousands upon thousands of hours of practice to get to where I am now. This is why I said to you a very long time ago, "Just Do It", start getting that practice in, there are no shortcuts. As you learn, you will realise there is more to learn, music is the gift that keeps on giving, there is always more to learn, its not until you are ready that you will realise what you need to learn next. No point jumping straight into scales or modes or what a Cmin7 chord is, or suspended chords and chord inversions because its like reading a foreign language until you are ready for it.
Step one, putting loops over other loops, listen to the loops and how they are structured, recreate loops, get to learn timing like swing and how it affects how a beat sounds. Hip Hop is a rhythm oriented genre, the drums and rhythms/grooves are the most important part, the rest is filler. Keep it very simple, get to grips with the very basics, sampling is a very important part of hip hop, for that "authentic" boom bap sound. Get started there. Its the quickest and easiest way to put something reasonable together, while learning as you go, there are many many ways to skin a cat, until your start skinning cats you will never discover all the many fascinating ways to do it.
Train your ears, only through practice to hear dissonance between sounds, train your ears to hear pitch a lot better, a rare few are gifted and pitch perfect but for everyone else it takes practice, a lot of practice. The longer you put things of that is hundreds of hours of potential practice and improvement wasted.
I will finish by saying, if you havent jumped right in from all the years you have been here, Im not sure you have the drive, the burning passion, and desire to just make music, it takes a real passion for this shit, because when people arent too keen on your music, and for a while, they probably wont be, you have to just keep going. Nobody just becomes a black belt, they have to work their way up the ranks, they need to put in the hard work, the dedication, driven by the passion that keeps them sucking up the punishment and conditioning themselves to become tougher, to hit harder, build endurance.
Its the same with the music production, you get out what you put in, nothing more, nothing less.
