8 Most Influential Music Production Videos of All Time

Most producers fumble music production videos the first few times. Here’s how it actually works.

These are the videos I’d almost feel required to credit for the music I’ve made and the work I’ve done for labels like Sony, Universal, Island Def Jam, Virgin EMI, and Ultra Music.

I’m talking about the ones that, the first time I watched them, immediately rewired my workflow, my taste, and the way I think about the job.

All of these are 100% free to watch out there in the depths of the internet. I figured it was worth pulling them into one place and saying why each one matters. A couple are several hours long. Don’t let the runtime intimidate you.

Compare this list to a 4-week course and you’ll see how much real material is sitting out there for free. Don’t try to consume it all at once. Take your time. A couple of these are going to rearrange how you think about the work.

Music Production Videos #1: ill.Methodology Workshop, Chapter 1 (42 Minutes)

We all hit roadblocks as producers. We get stuck. We lose motivation. We get overwhelmed.

And when that happens, we start buying new gear, downloading new plugins, treating the room, watching tutorials for days. The list of “solutions” never ends.

But, according to this workshop, the answer to most of our production woes is actually fairly simple. It’s grounded in psyche, organization, and workflow. I won’t spoil too much because this video is essential viewing. The one thing I’ll give away: learning to make music in the mornings will change how productive you are.

That tiny shift in routine ended up being one of the most useful changes I’ve ever made as a producer. It played a huge role in helping me finish 42 original tracks and remixes between 2014 and 2015. For context, I made 12 tracks in all of 2013. The morning move was that big.

Pro Tip: Try making music first thing in the morning before checking your phone, email, or social media. Your creative brain is sharpest before the noise of the day sets in.

2. UKF Meets Kill The Noise (4 Minutes)

In four minutes, Kill The Noise gets unusually honest about the mental side of making music in an over-saturated scene. Real talk: the most important production advice I come across usually has nothing to do with plugins.

Around the 1-minute mark, he talks about how he created a race in his own mind that doesn’t actually exist. Sometimes the move is to step back and say “I’m making music, I’m having fun, that’s enough.”

My takeaway? Just relax. Have fun. Making music is awesome, but you’ll have ups and downs like in any other pursuit, and that’s perfectly OK.

3. Elite Session with Steve Duda at Pyramind (2.5 Hours)

All I have to say is wow.

Producer and engineer Steve Duda spent three hours at Pyramind in San Francisco talking through his production techniques and his approach to electronic music. Duda is the creator of Xfer Records and Serum. The video covers business, sound design, and marketing.

Only in this video can you understand a musical path so obscure: starting in a cubicle for a tech help line in San Francisco, helping out Nine Inch Nails in New Orleans, becoming a proficient engineer in Hollywood, building the first realistic drum sampler, and eventually starting Xfer. It’s equal parts inspiring and technically dense, and worth watching for anyone who assumes touring is the only way to build a real career in music.

4. NGHTMRE Ableton Demo + Q&A @ The Loft UCSD (2 Hours)

NGHTMRE talks creative inventiveness, coming up in the scene, his personal Ableton tricks, and a lot more.

The good part is when he goes inside Ableton and shows exactly what his project files look like. This kind of transparency from a producer at his level is rare.

5. Avicii in the Studio: The Making of “Dancing In My Head” (1 Hour)

In 2011, Future Music headed to Stockholm to spend the day in the studio with, at the time, a rapidly rising house star named Tim Bergling.

Technically, this video isn’t doing anything wild. The reason it stuck with me is watching Avicii actually make music. You start to see how straightforward production can be when you stop obsessing over little issues.

His workflow taught me something I should’ve figured out earlier: get through structure and arrangement first, and don’t let technical fiddling slow that down. That’s where most of my early tracks died, in overthinking the bones before they were set.

6. Kill The Noise Live Production Stream

Years after the UKF interview at #2, Kill The Noise sat down for a long-form live stream and walked through how he actually builds tracks. Plugins, signal chains, sound design, the small habits that hold the whole thing together.

Where the UKF clip stays in mindset territory, this one parks at the desk for hours and shows the actual moves. You learn more from watching real-time work, mistakes included, than from any polished tutorial.

7. Illenium Live Production Stream

Illenium is one of the few producers at his level who’ll just sit on stream for hours and let people watch him work. Hours of him moving through ideas, tweaking patches, and answering questions in real time.

Long-form streams like this one show you the unsexy parts of production. The decisions that don’t make it into a 10-minute tutorial. The moments where someone mutes a layer they spent 20 minutes on because it just isn’t working.

8. The 23-Day Release Plan

Most producers run out of energy the moment they bounce the master. The track gets uploaded. It does what it does. Onto the next one.

The release rollout is its own discipline, and getting it right multiplies the work you already did. This video lays out a 23-day strategy, from teaser content to the day of release and the follow-up. If you’ve ever uploaded a track to streaming and watched it disappear into the void, this is for you.

Pro Tip: Pick one of these and watch it end to end this week. Take three notes you can actually use in your next session.

That’s it. No need to inhale all eight. The list will still be here in a year.