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The best music production tips rarely arrive in a manual. They come from people who have finished the records, played them to twenty thousand strangers, and watched in real time what lands and what dies.
In our latest masterclass, the Italian duo Parisi sat down with our community, and with Pete Tong, to talk through exactly that.
If you do not know them yet: Parisi are brothers Marco and Jack Parisi, based in London. They shared production credits on Fred again's album Actual Life 3, which won Best Dance/Electronic Album at the 2024 Grammys, and they have worked with Swedish House Mafia, Skrillex, Chris Lake, Anyma and Ed Sheeran. Their hybrid live and DJ show, Casa Parisi, has toured the UK, Europe and North America.
So when they open up the studio process, it is worth taking notes. They joined us mid-album, deep in a new sampling phase, and Pete came in partway through. The conversation turned into something closer to a working session than an interview.
Here are the seven things we took away.
Key takeaways
- Sampling is barely explored territory, and the interesting sounds live in the technique, not the source.
- Constraints create better music than total freedom does.
- When a track stalls, leave it. Some of Parisi's best records were shelved and finished months later.
- Share the second you have a bounce. You learn more from one person's reaction than a week of solo tweaking.
- Small rooms teach you more than big stages, so start with a party of thirty friends.
1. Treat sampling as unexplored territory
Parisi are multi-instrumentalists who can play almost anything, which makes their view on sampling counterintuitive. In their estimate, producers have explored maybe a quarter of what sampling can do. The other three quarters is still open.
The interesting part is not the source, it is the technique. They talked about slowing a sample down until it stops being a loop and becomes a pad, then building fresh chords on top of it. Move the same sample by a few milliseconds and the feeling changes completely.
Stop hunting for the perfect sample and start manipulating an ordinary one until it becomes yours.
2. Give yourself constraints on purpose
Here is the trap for a skilled musician. If you can play everything, you tend to play everything, and the track drowns. Pete made the point and Parisi agreed instantly: boundaries are where the spark comes from.
Their practical version is to pull a single element out of a sample and treat that as the whole sandbox. One sound, one purpose, for the length of the track. Then you unleash your ideas inside that box rather than across an empty canvas.
If you feel stuck because the options are endless, the fix is fewer options, not more.
3. When a track will not work, leave it
Ask Parisi what they do when a track gets stuck and the answer is blunt: they leave it. Not because the track is bad, but because the block is often in your ears, not in the music.
Most of the records they are proudest of were abandoned at some point, then reopened six months later, at which point what was missing became obvious.
The caveat matters too. If you are in flow and pushing through is working, keep going. The skill is knowing which is which, and that only comes from finishing things.
4. Share the moment you have a bounce
The single most repeated idea of the session was share. As soon as Parisi have a rough bounce, it goes straight to their phone, or to trusted collaborators like Fred again.. and Seth Troxler, so they can hear it in the car, away from the studio speakers.
Their reasoning is sharp. The instant you go to play a track for someone else, you already know how you feel about it. You hear the weak intro before your friend says a word.
You do not need a big audience. A partner, a friend, or another producer in the community will tell you more in thirty seconds than a solo afternoon will.
Ready to put this into practice? Our structured producer course walks you from a rough idea to a finished, shareable track, with the feedback loops Parisi lean on built into the process. See where you would start on the course path.
5. Take the hard feedback, then make more tracks
Sharing only works if you actually listen. Parisi were honest that some tracks they loved two or three years ago do not hold up now, and that trusted people told them so at the time. If six or seven people out of ten say a track is not landing, the track is the problem.
Pete offered the diplomatic version he uses: put this one to the side and start something new. It is polite, but it is also the right instinct.
Do not burn months rescuing one idea. You can make ten more, or thirty more. Volume beats attachment.
6. Small rooms beat big stages
Parisi headline festivals, but the shows they love are the small ones. They described a Casa Parisi night at Corsica Studios in London, around two hundred and fifty people packed on top of each other, as more fun than standing ten metres above a distant festival crowd. In a small room, a silent interlude can hold the whole floor, and the drop that follows hits harder.
The advice for anyone starting out is the same thing we teach through the academy's do it yourself events. Invite thirty to fifty friends, throw a proper party, and play your new records to them. Those honest reactions are gold. Next time it is fifty people, then a hundred.
That is also how you build the kind of momentum that gets an artist noticed, which is exactly what our Talent Pool and get signed programme is built to reward.
7. Commit to an album, not just singles
For a while the album was treated as outdated in dance music. Parisi disagree, and so do we. To them an album is the purest snapshot of who an artist is at a moment in time. Singles keep you reactive. A body of work forces you to answer a harder question: what is our sound today?
They pointed to the effect a strong album had on Chris Lake's career as proof. The freeing part is that the snapshot does not have to be permanent. This is who we are this year. Next year it might change, and that is allowed.
Deciding on a sound, then committing to it, is what turns a producer into an artist.
The through line across all seven lessons is momentum. Sample freely, box yourself in, finish fast, share faster, listen to the room, and commit to a body of work. None of it requires better gear. It requires more finished tracks and more honest ears on them.
Want to build on what Parisi shared? Our producer course makes it a habit, and gets your next track heard.
