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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#71

Post by klodolph »

plussed_reader wrote: post #68
adamnemecek wrote: post #54

I'm actually working full time on a new DAW that should make writing music a lot faster and easier. Current DAWs don't really understand music. Also the note input process and experimentation is extremely time consuming and the DAW never helps. Current DAW : my thing = Windows Notepad : IDE. The HN audience is definitely one of my core groups. If you are interested, sign up here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-aQzV…

What don't current DAWS understand about music?

Same thing that pencils don't understand about writing, and paintbrushes don't understand about art.

Re: Get started making music

#73

Post by fil_a_del_fee_a »

I purchased the Ableton Push 2 a month or so ago and it has to be one of the most beautifully engineered pieces of equipment I have ever used. Look up the teardown video. Extremely simple, yet elegant. The Push 1 was created by Akai, and apparently Ableton wasn't satisfied, so they designed and built their own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YItWQdJgXLs

Re: Get started making music

#74

Post by adamnemecek »

dri_ft wrote: post #67
adamnemecek wrote: post #54

I'm actually working full time on a new DAW that should make writing music a lot faster and easier. Current DAWs don't really understand music. Also the note input process and experimentation is extremely time consuming and the DAW never helps. Current DAW : my thing = Windows Notepad : IDE. The HN audience is definitely one of my core groups. If you are interested, sign up here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-aQzV…

I think my idea of a perfect music program is closer to vim than an IDE, but you're on the right track.

There's a lot of vim too :-).

Re: Get started making music

#75

Post by stevenj »

I think the design of this is really interesting.

It's designed in a way to make the user (e.g. anyone who likes music) just want to play with it in a way that's very intuitive via its simple, visual layout. And it provides instant feedback that makes you want to continually tinker with it to make something that you like more and more.

Web development/programming training tool makers should really take note of this.

Re: Get started making music

#76

Post by milquetoastaf »

adamnemecek wrote: post #54

I'm actually working full time on a new DAW that should make writing music a lot faster and easier. Current DAWs don't really understand music. Also the note input process and experimentation is extremely time consuming and the DAW never helps. Current DAW : my thing = Windows Notepad : IDE. The HN audience is definitely one of my core groups. If you are interested, sign up here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-aQzV…

>Also the note input process and experimentation is extremely time consuming and the DAW never helps

What is so arduous about plugging a midi keyboard in?

Re: Get started making music

#77

Post by empath75 »

JasonSage wrote: post #35

This is some good coverage of the music theory behind songwriting, which is important in making songs that sound good. However, there's another part of making music which is not covered at all here, which is the actual engineering of sounds. Think of a sound in your head and recreate it digitally—it'll involve sampling and synthesizing, there's tons of filters and sound manipulation to go through, they all go by diff…

Aside from training the ear, you need a pretty sophisticated understanding of how soundwaves translate into sound.

Re: Get started making music

#78

Post by whiddershins »

calflegal wrote: post #52
whiddershins wrote: post #13

Ableton Live is my main daw. I use it every day, generally for hours, and for a wide variety of purposes. The most depressing thing about ableton is made obvious in two seconds of messing with that tutorial. A complete disregard for music in the sense of pushing boundaries of time, or doing things that are not tied to any sort of grid, and the sense of music as an emotive form. So many aspects of music are very annoy…

I feel the need to address some of the typical HN poison floating around. I've got a very expensive music education. It doesn't make me better than an "Ableton clicker". Music is open to anybody, and is defined by what moves one, not by the mechanism of its creation. America really tends to treat it as some exclusive art club (beyond required elementary school classes), and that's really just wrong.

Typical HN poison?

Please refer to my comment history and also please rebut specific things I said. I rarely say negative things and I am a user of this product all the time. I am genuinely frustrated by the lack of progress in recent years, since I use the product literally every day. This is not poison, it is legitimate criticism.

Re: Get started making music

#79

Post by weavie »

whiddershins wrote: post #66
rmxt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to be a pedant... but I'm not sure any one person gets to define what "music in the art sense" even is. Yes, Ableton is rigid. Yes, Ableton favors certain musical styles over others. Yes, Ableton, here and in their design of Live, may just be giving lip service to anything beyond rigid song structure, tempo and dynamic changes, etc. Yes, Ableton loves their little boxes. But, I find it hard to believe that Ablet…

I think either my phrasing was terrible (likely) or people aren't seriously considering what I am saying. Try just looping a sample that is of arbitrary length, not some multiple of beats. This is something that we could do fairly easily since the 1980s, and with moderate effort before that. Ableton made this in to an unusual technique. The entire arrangement view only superficially resembles protools, the automation…

If it's not a multiple of beats, would it generally sound good in any musical kind of way?

Re: Get started making music

#80

Post by adamnemecek »

milquetoastaf wrote: post #76
adamnemecek wrote: post #54

I'm actually working full time on a new DAW that should make writing music a lot faster and easier. Current DAWs don't really understand music. Also the note input process and experimentation is extremely time consuming and the DAW never helps. Current DAW : my thing = Windows Notepad : IDE. The HN audience is definitely one of my core groups. If you are interested, sign up here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-aQzV…

>Also the note input process and experimentation is extremely time consuming and the DAW never helps What is so arduous about plugging a midi keyboard in?

I can think a lot more complicated music than I can play. I don't always have access to a keyboard. Piano is a good instrument but sometimes I want to write drums. Also sometimes I want to express relationships between the single notes, not just have the notes themselves. To record 10000 notes from a piano, you need to hit 10000 keys possibly more than once to record them. My thing will let you achieve the same thing with less than 10000 actions.
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