Pedagogy of the Producer: DAWs, YouTube, and Music Education

To help support students make music in contemporary styles, music education researchers suggest focusing on how contemporary musics are made with current technologies. The purpose of our study was to understand the learning and music-making practices of music producers who use digital audio workstations. We begin our article by examining literature that focuses music production pedagogy outside and inside of schools. Following, we describe our methodological approach—using semi-structured interviews to engage with 13 practicing music producers to understand how they learn to make music with digital audio workstations. Using an inductive thematic analysis approach, we found that music producers find and make beats with YouTube, use trial-and-error approaches and YouTube tutorials to learn how to produce, and use YouTube to make and learn music collaboratively. We conclude by discussing the influence and impact of YouTube on music production pedagogy and its implications for music education.