Why Reddit is the Swiss Army knife for any composer’s toolkit

Thirty-odd years ago, if a music producer or composer wanted a second ear for a track in progress, connections to the best musicians, or opinions on tools gaining traction, they needed steadfast contacts and mentors to help them cross the finish line. 

While both are still useful in 2023, another resource has emerged from an unlikely place: Reddit.

With its capacity to congregate professional and amateur experts alike, Reddit serves as an expedient, real-time knowledge base.

With its capacity to congregate professional and amateur experts alike, in any field imaginable, Reddit (a discussion-based forum website created in 2005) serves as an expedient, real-time knowledge base and Swiss Army knife musicians and music industry professionals can use to share and discover information about any question, opinion, recommendation, or insight related to their craft. Here’s why and how:

Remember, Reddit is worldwide

As opposed to other follower-based platforms, where your scope is delineated by your location or which followers you bring into your sphere, Reddit’s subforums (called Subreddits) can be scaled by any contributor in any part of the world. Wildly-different perspectives include users outside of America and our musical norm. As the congregation listens to more music than I ever could in one lifetime, from genres I would never consider, I can scope different styles and learn from them. Whether or not my finds are new, or tracks I even like, I can dig into how they make sense or talk with Redditors about the music theory behind the songs they share. Reddit poses an incredible opportunity to branch out from what we know, and our small, local world.

Above: As far as Coke Youngblood is concerned, Reddit's utility as a research, discovery, and educational platform goes unmatched.

Run with the right Subreddits

Whether or not you sign up for your own account, which offers the ability to engage in discussions as opposed to lurking, you can still read entertaining and informative Subreddits to start your research. 

Reddit poses an incredible opportunity to branch out from what we know, and our small, local world.

My treasure troves include r/synthesizers [this article identifies every synth used in Michael Jackson’s Thriller, for example], r/synthrecipies, r/musictheory, r/musicproduction, r/composers, r/music, r/listentothis for new music finds… the list goes on. I follow my list for a myriad of reasons. I read some as educational resources to improve my producing and composing skills, some are ways to find new music, and some don’t necessarily feed knowledge but they’re fun to read! Frankly, before I started writing this article, I didn’t realise I followed so many; they blended together on my homepage to create one delightfully tuned user experience.

Ask and you shall find

The captivating part of Reddit is that you can post a question and someone can share a response in amazing detail, sometimes very quickly, like Quora on caffeine. I’ll shout out r/synthrecipes as an example. Say I want to use a synth sound; I can post a link with a timecode, and someone will know exactly how to make it, or show me another thread where someone already did. 

Sometimes I can Google, for example, “Kaytranada, 10%, synth pad, Reddit”, and I can see threads where people already answered questions about that synth before I have to ask. The Redditor community is great in that sense. Their perspective is so global, plenty of users know how to do so many things you don’t know how to do, even if you’re an experienced composer. If you can check your pride, you stand to learn incredible things.