Seems like there's a lot of posts here and on other websites about everything you wish you'd known. What are some things you read or heard that looking back were bad pieces of advice, made you inefficient, or were harmful shortcuts?
Posted Mar 6, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC
"Finish every song" is an absolutist mantra repeated here every day and is the easiest way to earn karma here. Just post it once a week and get 300-500 karma.
What even is a song? we judge it from the context of things people have finished: songs on the radio, spotify, etc. How am I supposed to know whether a quick thing I made in an hour counts as a song, or just an experiment? And what counts as finishing? Is it showing it to other people, or just giving up? If so every song is automatically finished.
Also "you need to master music theory to be an EDM artist", no, basic understanding of major/minor chords will help you understand 95% of all EDM and make melodies/harmonies.
"EQ out all the low end (or high end) of everything that doesn't need it" Don't go around doing anything to everything in the song without trying it and seeing if it helps or not.
"Don't buy plugins or use non-stock plugins" no DAW that I know of covers all of these grounds well: guitar amp simulators/cabinet simulators, analog emulations of compressors/delays/etc, sample managers, synths of all the major types (analog emulation, additive, subtractive, FM, RM, AM, wavetable, phase distortion), etc. Sure almost every DAW has a delay plugin, but does it have a Space Echo emulation. Every DAW has reverb, but people still buy Vahalla plugins for a reason (they sound incredible). So if you know what you want, you may need to buy it. This advice can be helpful for people who go on spending sprees of new plugins though, because if you are using new VSTs every day you may find yourself spending more time learning how to use those VSTs than actually making songs
you need to master music theory to be an EDM artist
I have never seen this on this sub and I've been here 5+ years
I see this daily on this sub and I've been here 6 years
I was going to say this. I don't recognize it either.
However I have encountered the opposite a few times, "You don't need to know any music theory, because [insert famous artist] doesn't know any music theory". I'd say that's bullsh!t. What people probably mean is that the artist in question doesn't read sheet music, which is a completely different thing.
I have a hard time believing there is any artist who have made it somewhat big that knows no music theory at all. But it's up to anyone if they want to learn it or not. No one is forced to.
Yeah if anything you see people saying the opposite
There's an episode of In the studio with Avicii, he wrote melodies by pressing random keys on his keyboard. Half of them were out of key garbage because he knew seemingly no theory but he had such a good ear for melodies that the other half was magic. Deadmau5 does stuff similarly afaik.
You don't need to consciously know theory, but your ear has to be good enough, and learning some basic theory like scales and chords will save you time as you don't need to press notes randomly but can skip directly to the ones that have a higher chance of sounding good
I think being able to finish songs is an important skill to learn, and one which comes with frustration, taking away the fun part that attracts a lot of beginners to making music in the first place. So that’s often why I give that advice, but you’re definitely right that some things are just experiments and that’s perfectly okay too. Not every project needs to be your magnum opus—sometimes it’s best for your creative process to just fuck around in the moment and it doesn’t mean it was a failure if nothing came of it, in terms of a finished product.
That said, it also depends on who you’re talking to. Here, it seems the tendencies are toward maximalism, detail, being thorough, refined technique, etc. In hip hop production circles (sample based beats, lofi, trap, etc) there’s an obsession with quantity and speed, ie “you have to pump out x number of beats a day or you won’t get better.” And if the beat isn’t knocking within a few hours, just move on to the next one bc that idea wasn’t good. But really, sometimes you have to sit with something for a bit and let it grow into a more fully formed concept.
So from my view, both approaches could learn from the other, and balance is healthy.
My view on this is when you write a track, I’ll usually come to wall at some point in the process. Whether its because I’m out of creative juice for the day, I don’t like how the idea turned out, etc, I’ll hit some sort of hang up 80-90% of the time.
At this point, depending on my schedule and how I’m feeling, I’ll decide to either stop working on it, finish it, or salvage it for samples/loops/ideas.
In even the worst stuff I make, there’s usually at least one redeemable idea from it, so I’ll save it to my library as a track starter or to add somewhere else.
That being said though, when I say I’m going to finish a track, I do it. It might not be right then and there, but I think from a goal setting perspective it’s really important to be finishing as much as you can.
But even on the tracks I “scrap” I never delete the project. Every few months, I go back through what I have sitting around, and I usually have an idea that I totally abandoned that I suddenly know exactly what to do to it.
I think that’s kind of a beautiful thing that happens in the creative process that we should all embrace.
I think the only way to truly mess up with this sort of thing is to be definite. You SHOULD finish as much as you can, but you should work smart and determine which tracks are worth the effort, and which ones are just practice. If you learn something, it wasn’t wasted time.
Idk, it’s a tricky subject, but I think setting your goals as a musician and sticking to them are essential to your growth, and I think blanketing things can lead to being closed mindedness, which kills creativity and progress.
Also, to reference the magnum opus remark, the best music I’ve ever written has come out in a few hours, and I’ve heard many other artists say the same sort of thing. If you set out to write your “perfect song,” you never will.
All great points. I personally am a big believer in having a defined system to increase your productivity, and to stay disciplined, achieve the goals you set, etc. But music as a creative process is messy, and doesn’t always obey the rules of structure and organization that you set up. And it’s important to allow for that, and as you said it’s kind of beautiful.
I do usually work in at least some break period from my initial idea generation to when I refine and finish a track, because I think it’s important to leave time to go away and return with fresh ears, if for nothing less than to reduce listening fatigue when mixing.
But the variety in where the ideas come from, and how they get to the finish line, is the real fun part to me. I’ve had tracks that I’ve just felt super on fire with from the start, and I couldn’t wait to work on them, so finishing them was a piece of cake. I’ve had others where I felt super down on it at some point, but still believed there was something there, so I chipped away at it until I reached what I felt was a breakthrough in taking it to the next level. If I only gave attention to the ideas that came easy and developed easy, I’d be missing out on what I feel have been many of my most creative projects.
Another thing that’s helped me is actually trying to limit myself creatively. Instead of opening splice and looking at my thousands of samples, I’ll pick 10-15 and get as far as I can with what I have. If you haven’t tried it, it’s a great way to force yourself into making do with what you have, which in some ways in the definition of creativity.
But I definitely agree. I’ve finished a track in four hours and been super proud of it, but the ones that I knew I need to finish because there was just something about them also turned out to be really great and some of my favorites. The ones that are difficult usually mean the most to me, and the ones that are easy tend to be the favorites among my friends and the couple of people who actually listen to my stuff lol. There’s something weird and kind crazy about it.
I’m still learning, only a few years deep, so every time I’m proud of a song I tend to be not as impressed a few months later, but the real fun is in the process not the product like you said.
Don't buy plugins or use non-stock plugins
This is advice for beginners. FL producer edition, Ableton suite, and logic pro all come with some very powerful synths and effects. It's generally better for new producers to learn these instead of instantly paying out for expensive vsts. If they can understand the stock plugins to some degree they'll most likely come to understand why we also pay out for other plugins.
Agree with this I used only stock plugins for about a year.
Literally ableton has everything you mentioned and more. The advice is don't buy for buying a fancy plugin when the tools are already there. It is you that don't know how to use the tools you have.
It actually doesn't but OK.
agree
Lots of info here! I hadn't thought of the finish every song point but that does make sense. I would think of it as, like you mentioned, feeling comfortable showing it to someone, but I imagine that definition changes person to person and could even vary between how you're feeling that day if you'd call something finished.
yep
The thing is if you make a song that you don't like any part of, why finish it? the only point in finishing a song is if there are parts that you like.
Definitely see that
"Don't mix as you go."
Oh boy, i remember turning all the faders down and painstakingly rebuilding the balance from scratch.. (Just because some bloke on the internet told me this was the way to do it.) Only to end up with something less good than before mixing... Doing a mixdown was my worst fear.
Nowadays, i mix while i produce and it's much much much more enjoyable. Also i feel like doing it this way, makes my tracks more "pure", more authentic.
Tbh what i do 90% of the time and recommend is absolutely mix as you go, but resample as you go, too. That way your production is going to sound mostly how you want and then "mixdown" can be minimal and more about polishing.
I could never do that, It has to sound good for me to even continue producing. So I always at least eq, level and add basic fx while I'm producing.
This is what I do. I pretty much try and mix everything for the drop for example before I move onto the next section. A lot of the time, I spend hours on one drop just mixing and mixing. I think it’s worth it but most say it’s a waste of time
What exactly do you mean in mixing while producing? Like adding effects while creating the song?
Bit new to producing even though I've slowly been buying things saying this is what will get me going 🙃🙃
Like the EQ thread. It’s balancing the frequencies as they are made. Have a top end and bottom end bass? Mix as you go to bring them together as one. Have your ambient background protruding? Maybe cut the lows and turn them down. Don’t wait until the end to do all of it.
The comment above this recommends balancing as you go
Ah I see, thanks!
Relying on templates in your DAW or pre-sets. Sometimes, it’s helpful to literally do your effect chains and songwriting process from scratch each time because it helps you understand what you’re doing instead of doing it once, making it sound good and just reverting to that as a template
I'm caught between that right now. Feel like I have a lot to learn so using templates would help speed things along, but then I'm also not learning nearly as much
Yeah they definitely have their pros I would just be cautionary of using them all the time
I think that makes the most sense, maybe deciding one day is a day to focus on something else and use a template and then other days making or fine tuning your templates
I made my own template after doing a bunch of research on how my favorite producers use them. It helps a lot to make your own, Kompany said, “it’s like crafting your weapon for battle”
Using them as a tool to set initial levels, groups, and stuff like drum racks is essential in my opinion. You know you’re gonna use a clean sine for your sub before you do anything else to it. You probably default to one of like 8 kicks or hats anyway, and unless you go in knowing you’re gonna try a new one out, it really helps speed up your writing process.
Writing and finishing quickly is the “secret,” finish fast, learn, and move on to the next thing. Tweak your template after every track until it works just how you want it, and always learn and relearn the basics from as many people as you can to see if there’s any way you could improve on the stuff you think you have down.
(Separate but substantial tip, collab with others, learn from others, and observe how THEY use ableton. Everyone has something to teach you, and it’s usually something super simple, but add all those together over time and you’ll seriously learn a lot, a word of caution though, tips are just opinions, and the never work all the time. Learning the process and how it works will get you way further, and plus, the most important skill in music production is learning how to “wing it” to make your track hit right)
Templates become more useful as you figure out what works and what doesn’t for you, but making your own and sticking to improving it will make writing a whole different experience.
You can’t learn how to do something without consistency. You wouldn’t practice guitar by restringing it or picking up a different one every time. Don’t waste time, get music written, and the technical stuff comes as you figure out why your tracks don’t sound like the pros, one template improvement, rack, and track at a time.
Write a track, make notes as to what could be better in your template that’ll speed you up. Finish your track. Improve your template. Wait a few days, take notes for issues you hear in your track, and look for repeating patterns in what people say about it through feedback. Research how to fix those problems, make a list of possible solutions. Try them out, find what works, add it as a rack, preset, or to your template. Repeat.
This process has improved me literally five times faster than when I started, and the biggest step was just owning up to the fact that when I write music, I get BOGGED by all the setup. The point of the template is to make ABLETON WORK FOR YOU, SO YOU CAN WORK ON MUSIC.
ABUSE IT
but these are all just my findings lol, do what you want, but treating ableton and music like a science I’m researching has helped me improve so much. Literally document every idea, epiphany, or workflow idea you have. Try them out, document why they don’t/do work, and implement them. Im more of a science/math type, but if you think the same way, definitely try it out.
The only “tip” I will give you is to ALWAYS try to improve your workflow, you’ll finish so much more music. You owe it to yourself to to share your art with the world!
OOF ngl after a decade of producing, am tired of doing every project from scratch!!!! 10 years later I’m barely starting to create my templates and putting together my best patches, but I do wish I did this from the start because it really helps speed up the production process and get your ideas into the daw. But I do agree, starting from scratch will definitely help wrap the mind around what one wants to achieve and how to do it! >:)
Hands down, the worst thing I’ve heard’
“Writing music should be easy for you, if it’s hard then you should find a different hobby”
People give up too easily on it. From seeing a few friends pick it up and drop it a year or two later, I’ve noticed a few things.
They always expect to be good right away
They care too much about what people tell them
They don’t learn to love the process, they only focus on trying to love the product
The people who love music production are the ones who can surrender their egos. People who focus too much on the “tips and tricks” or trying to be famous always fall out.
The ones who don’t love it will always focus on their results: views, fans, shows, etc.
But the important thing to remember about any skill is that to be good, you have to admit you’re bad first. Everyone starts at a different level of bad, their baseline if you will, but everyone is unquestionably BAD when they start.
If you truly love music, and you love making it, it won’t be easy. You’ll get stuck on roadblocks at every step of the way. People saying you aren’t “good,” people calling you “boring and unrealistic,” your parents trying to talk you out of it, writers block, lost files, breakups, loss, and everything life can and will put in your way.
The most important songs to you will be the hardest to write, you’ll question every step, “is this really good?” But in asking the question, you’ve already distracted yourself from the task at hand, potentially losing the idea altogether. Your mind isn’t in the place it was when you started.
The best artists make the best art when they struggle the most. They have the most to say and express. It isn’t always with finances or love, maybe it’s drug addiction, death in the family, or experiencing major changes in their life.
So if it’s “easy for you” then I don’t believe it. Some days are definitely easy, you might feel inspired or be in a great mood. But lying about it just inflates your ego, and it ultimately causes you to be blind to learning new things, and potentially experiencing that one feeling or thought that inspires a song to start your career.
Music is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I’m proud to say it. Learning how to surrender myself to my intuition and feelings was the hardest thing for me. I wanted to tell people I was good, and that it’s easy, but truly, that was me trying to protect myself what someone might say if I said it was hard or if I failed at it.
The important thing to remember about music is that as soon as you surrender yourself to making what you feel, not want to make, you unlock your true potential. You simply can’t care about what anyone thinks! You also have to be humble enough to accept that it’s a bottomless pit of knowledge and it’s deepening every day.
To say music is easy is like saying finding yourself and accepting yourself for who you are is easy, and that’s just bullshit.
Dude, thank you so much for this. Everything you've put in this thread has been great and spot on. All you responses have been super relatable and it's nice to hear from someone experiencing the same things.
Without saying too much, music has become my life and I’m going to be pursuing it full time soon because of opportunities starting to form.
It took me a whole year to find myself and surrender to my artistic urges. Academically, I studied math in college and truly am interested, but I feel like it’s a pursuit for the 30-35 year old version of myself. 21 year old me isn’t engaged, interested, or devoted. I realized I was slipping in all aspects of my life, school, relationships with my girl and friends, and production. I was depressed, eating bad, and being anti social and I didn’t know why.
Then i figured it out, I WAS DOING EVERYTHING RIGHT.
I was pushing off music, pursuing a challenging degree for a high paying job, following what everyone said I should do.
But I wasn’t listening to myself and what made me happy and I was miserable.
While advanced math is also highly creative and abstract like music is, I knew that I would always regret missing my shot to become what I’ve been dreaming of since I was a kid. I was following the plans other people set out for me, and I wasn’t happy.
When I realized what was wrong with me it was from a ted talk. It’s kind of hard to watch at points depending on what you think of live/improv acting (my friend said it was cringe for instance) but what’s said in between those moments are so powerful and relatable. I’ll link it here
I wasn’t relating to my peers or making new friends because I couldn’t understand them. It seemed like they had already surrendered their dreams to what was expected of them. Unless they dreamed of becoming a mathematician i guess.
Then I was just so unhappy I knew I needed to change. I decided to finish this semester, and not reenroll next fall. Opportunities are beginning to line up for me in music, and just how my parents said, “going back to college isn’t easy, life happens and the opportunity might not come back for 10 years.” MUSIC IS THE SAME WAY. If you see your shot, don’t pass it up for anything.
The thing is, everyone is going to say you’re making a mistake, until they realize that you’re making a living doing what you love. Then they’ll probably still criticize you, but it’s out of jealousy, and resentment for themselves that they never did what they wish they could’ve.
If you’re under 30, no kids, in college or the like like I am, and you want music to be your career more than anything, just go for it. If you’ve already been admitted, you have your credits waiting for you if you go back.
The scary thing is that this is either the best or worst decision I’ve made in my young life, but I know deep down, that because of the recognition/placement/shows I’m starting to get, that a career is possible. Professionals are saying they like my stuff, so I know I’m on to something.
You’ll never regret trying your dreams, but you’ll always regret not trying. If there’s even a chance beginning to form from your music working out, you need to chase it. Do it intelligently, have a job, you need money, but use your talents to start making money to slowly and surely substitute your job’s income. Then, you’ll have made it to the club, you’re a “pro” musician. All that’s left to do after that is decide:
Am I going to try to cross the finish line and take this all the way?
Or
Am I going to live the life expected of me?
It’s ultimately up to you and your situation, and there’s no right answers, but for me, when I finally surrendered the expectations I had for myself set by society and started listening to my heart, my music got better, I finished more, and I’m way happier.
Listen to your heart bro, it’s your life, live it how you would want it, how you want people to remember you. Something that helped me was this,
“What is my obituary going to look like? What will it say? What would my accomplishments be as I’m living RIGHT NOW.”
If you don’t like the answer, then you need to change something.
Hope this helps bro!
Yes this is spot on.
Also if you ever feel like you have not achieved anything in the last couple of months/years just go back and listen to the stuff you‘ve made. For sure you improved in one or many ways.
I recently did that and after i listened to the most recent song i was like „damn, did i create that?“
Allthough it might not sound good to others, i was damn proud to have achieved something like that and it boosted my motivation to create even more
“You can make any VST sound good.”
NO YOU CANT. Conpress, EQ, modify however you like...You can only polish a turd so much... Unless you’re making lo fi hip hop, spend the money on a well designed and sounding instrument that conforms to your sound.
Example: making electronic music with stock VSTs vs Aftermarket (serum, spire, omnisphere, etc) Walmart piano vs Native Instruments Kontakt piano.
Fletcher Munson curves. When understood correctly it could save hearing. But when used incorrectly it can damage hearing.
Mixing at higher volumes, in short bursts, would be a proper way to reduce bass fatigue for the listener. Simply mixing at 85-90+ decibels for long periods only because “it sounds better” isn’t good in the long run.
Learning to mix and listen at comfortable and safe volumes is the most important.
Doing another one....
"Don't crank the knobs on tools/plugins."
I get the purist version of this, but I only understood how to use certain tools if you crank out certain parameters to taste, not to how much the knob moves in the UI. Also, since your plugins and DAW are likely all digital, you're not going to blow up any hardware. Crank that compressor threshold to INF and see if you like it, Phase the shit out of a sound, drown a sound in reverb and process it. Limiting how you use these tools/plugins limits not only the steepness of your learning trajectory but also your creativity.
I hadn't read that before but your reasoning is exactly what I would have countered with. The easiest way for me to learn a new effect is cranking the knob and seeing what 'too much' sounds like and adjusting from there
Go to college
Just getting lost in technical advice in general when at the end of the day it’s supposed to be fun! and diddly fantastic. Although it can’t always be fun but, that’s just a part of it!
"Dont worry about STDs"
keep at it man - if you collect enough, they will kill each other.
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"You can't do it." Yes, I've listened to such "advice", and was convinced that it was true. It's almost never true.
I write dubstep and glitch. All the advice to not EQ too much goes out the window when you are dealing with FM. FM synthesis requires a strategy to Healy with the insane (often non-harmonic) resonant peaks. If you are talking about a stable, balanced waveform like a saw or square, then sure be gentle with the EQ. When I'm FMing an E2 and trying to move a filter in the mid-range, you'd better believe I'm using MULTIPLE EQs pushing 12+ dB lowered between distortions in some parts to level out the sound and fill the mid-range/highs with harmonics. It can be hard to get an even, sloped harmonic distribution on FM without sounding blatty, but I follow the common advice for more traditional, subtractive synthesis workflows.
Try using different EQ instances for different purposes with FM, and the following is a hypothetical example. EQ1 has narrow cuts on terrible, off-key or imbalanced harmonics (sometimes more than one for this). EQ2 to help you balance the laws, mids, and highs so they are in the same ballpark. An EQ3 to drive into your saturation/distortion to select where the distortion will bloom harmonics from. Saturate and EQ the output to control the new harmonics.
I knew some of those words
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Master to 9 LUFS
That's bad advice for sure since we all know u wanna master to - 3 LUFS ;)
Word :)
sosig
Just watch tutorials of PROFESSIONAL producers that you know make banger songs and DONT follow those tips from the ones who make ok music because your music will sound ok-bad.
“Mixing the kick to -6dB always and low cut always, pumping the 200hz range”
Stupid. Mix to what is necessary for the track and HEAR what you want to achieve and execute.
So many times I will think of this old advice and implement without thinking. Seriously, slow down and just be patient with what you hear in your head and execute with precision the details you want out of a session.
Most things EQ-related.
"EQ out the low end on everything you don't need", "High pass bass sounds"
so much of my initial stuff was tinny and sounding super unnatural and it was a result of over eq-ing. Most of your composition can be fixed with note voicing, arrangement, and primarily volume
this is so fucking true dude. once i stopped following EQ advice from people on reddit my mixes got so much better because I EQ'd things the way I thought sounded best
Being new to the game, EQ is one of the more daunting things to me. I'm not even finishing songs yet, but I still worry about what I don't know regarding EQing/Mastering
EQ is super valuable, don't get me wrong, and it's also not an 8-headed beast. Learning it is relatively easy, learning when/how to properly use it during arrangement/composition is the art.
You can make a ton of your music by barely touching an EQ, assuming you have a decent sample selection and VSTs/instruments. Looking back i would've focused less on over EQ'ing evrerything, and just learned how to do proper sound/voicing selection from the get go.
Not sure what kind of music you make, but I've been referring a lot to Crystal Skies' point blank course: https://www.sonicacademy.com/courses/future-chill-with-crystal-skies/tutorial-14-mixing-and-mastering-840
A lot of the songwriting/composition is done without a single touch of an EQ.
That said, sound synthesis and cleaning up raw audio samples is a different ball game altogether, which usually relies a bit more on EQ side.
I’ve heard to cut out the non audible stuff like below 30 hz so you can obtain more headroom. Are there arguments against this?
no argument against that, that's still valid. That said, my goal isn't to obtain more headroom, it's to achieve a cleaner sound on all sound systems.
Personally I cut below the lowest fundamental frequency of my lowest sub note. (On the sub channel) It depends on the note played by the sub, so 30 isn’t always the answer.
That being said, sometimes I high pass everything above 20 Hz on my master for releases. This is because most humans can’t hear below 20 Hz and most headphones and speakers will struggle to reproduce it, so it’ll sounding super muddy. But generally speaking, I’d say (depending on the track) cut to the lowest note played by your sub, and that’s somewhere between 20-40. Generally, this is fine because it’s unlikely you’re using FX that utilize frequencies lower than that.
Doing this CAN make your kick or low sounds sound thin though, so I’d say trust your ears, learn how to match samples to the key you’re in (including the pitch of your drums) and good composition and levels will more than likely do most of the work, since with good sample selection and volumes you won’t have to process much and it’ll fit in phase because of the frequencies they resonate at, and will naturally create space for the other stuff to fit in.
I’d say do that and compose or mix in mono (depending on if you’re an all in one producer or you split projects into stages). If you use the right sounds, have good composition, and use your ears and spectrum analyzer, it makes EQ way more simple and you’ll find you won’t use it as much as you think.
DM me and I’ll hook you up with any answers to mixing questions. I’m no legend, but if you’re newer i can definitely help you figure out who to learn from on YouTube and stuff.
if you're making a film score or something where you want people to feel a bodily rumbling sensation when listening with big-ass subwoofers, keep it. otherwise, i'd get rid of it - why would you want to spend headroom on sounds nobody can hear?
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Yeah I think it's something I don't know a lot about but end up seeing a lot of tips and tricks for, so it makes it seem more complicated in my head.
I'll have to check that out, thanks for the link!
Solid sound design is super key too. It's funny, I have some mentors and such, and a song I did the least eqing I had ever done, I was told it was the cleanest sounding mix of mine yet. It's a very subtle art not to be overdone or youll risk squashing the sound.
The best advice to a beginner for EQ is probably "don't overdo it" along with "don't be afraid to use it."
If it sounds better than it did before EQ, you're fine. There's really no "wrong" way aside from overdoing it, maybe.
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I think the important thing there is knowing what low end really means, I’d say it’s safe to cut out the low end of everything that doesn’t need it, but you just have to be thoughtful in how low to cut on what.
Then you just weren't doing it correctly. I always eq the low out of instruments that don't need it.
That's EXACTLY the point. Initially when I was just learning, I wasn't doing it correctly, and following some amateur youtuber/redditor give shallow, echoed-out advice didn't help my learning ... Similarly, following a pro producer/mastering engineer tutorial, the knowledge gap is so wide that their information will be useful to me some day in the future, but not when I was just getting my production-toesies wet.
I think the tone of your response is what "newbie me" heard & took to heart, and thought that I just had to cut the low end because people "cut the low end" without understanding what was going on. And it resulting in cutting too much low end, or too much high end, or too much of the mid, and being too aggressive with additive/subtractive, just because I thought "i had to eq out sounds i didn't want". Nowadays, I know what I'm doing with an EQ. Back then, I didn't. And it made my productions extra shitty. Almost every tutorial involves slapping EQs left and right, and many times it seems like they do it by default, then find a reason to slap it on, many of those times they'll say "to clean out the low end" or "to make headroom". If you're 3/6/9 months into production you might have no clue as to what that means.
The advice is, try not to worry about EQ'ing early on as it might be a horrible rabbit hole to get lost in, and an expensive one to dig yourself out of -- you'll get to EQ'ing and understand how/when to use effectively it eventually. Focus on the 100's of other things you need to make a song first.