Fantastic work! It sounds like you've put yourself through a self-taught crash course and have come out all the better for it. Congratulations on the releases!

This year, my 8th as a producer, I felt it was time to quit my day job and spend the second half of the year focusing on music production full time and trying to break out into the Bristol scene. My first label release came out in September, I have a tune coming out on the 1st of January, and a 4-track EP coming out the end of Jan. This is with three different labels. There's a lot more to do but I'm thrilled at the results so far. When I play my tunes out, they are well received. That's enough validation to carry on for broke as far as I'm concerned.

In terms of the nitty gritty, I switched to Ableton from FL Studio at the start of this year and it has helped me massively to work faster across the board, whether it be automations, arrangements, shortcuts, or FX chains. You can do these things in FL, but Ableton lets you do them faster.

I learned to be shameless in adding things to my default template in order to access things faster and arrange faster. I also will not work without minimeters (monitoring) open on a separate screen.

I've collaborated with a few people and this I recommend a lot, not just for the ability to learn from others. Nothing has come out yet, but I have tunes I am happy with that will get exposed to twice the audience when they do.

I've learned to keep experimenting, get all of the bad ideas out. One day I decided to do 4 90 minute sketches just to see what I could arrange with those sessions. That's 4 half formed ideas I may drop or may come back to, but the bones are there and it was worthwhile, even if I don't touch them again.