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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#81

Post by fb03 »

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…

This is something I struggle as a weekend hobbyist musician: There is some kind of black art involved in making music, in how to get that sound you enjoy on the music you like (which is probably the music that inspires you to make music, at least in my case).

What I found was that as your music making experience unfolds, you start amassing these little tricks here and there and they're only yours, usually tied to your stack of tools and the way you think. That is extremely hard to replicate and also very personal, imho that's why it's so difficult to actually pass that sound-sculpting knowledge to others, and that's why (besides the odd youtube tutorial on how to make a specific sound -- usually targeted at a specific vst, explaining which knobs to turn), we won't find many general sound sculpting learning material online. Even tho it is available if you gather around from forums and etc, it is still pretty much a personal experience.

Answering your question: As the time passed, the endless experimenting diminished and I got a proper sense of what does what, and after 5 years making music I'm more able to pinpoint what I need to fiddle to transform the sound the way I want/imagine in my head.

I'm still not quite there yet but if I can offer one piece of advice, that is: Don't shun the 'endlessly experimenting to find a sound'-thingy, because that's the best way you can grasp the tools. Over time you'll be able to get there faster but it's a necessity..

This is how much I evolved, without even noticing, only making tracks after tracks:

Sep 07 / 2012 http://codegrub.org/flipbit/musicmaking/equal02.mp3 cringe

Mar 25 / 2017 http://codegrub.org/flipbit/tracks/flipbit03%20-%20Twothousa...

cya o/

Re: Get started making music

#82

Post by whiddershins »

G4BB3R wrote: post #32
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…

What DAW you would recommend? And what features do Ableton miss?

I tend to recommend ... Ableton! I think the strengths outweigh the weaknesses, especially for beginners.

But they are trapped in a sort of convention that makes my life hell when I want to leave it.

Re: Get started making music

#83

Post by adamnemecek »

agumonkey wrote: post #65
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…

Have you toyed with live music programming ? just curious Also nice endeavour

So I'm working on this mostly to scratch my personal itch. I'm aware of those but to be honest I never found them to be more than toys. When I listen to music made in these, I feel like they generally lack some structure. My thing is all about helping you structure things.

Re: Get started making music

#84

Post by maze-le »

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.

Have a look at extempore, a lispy live music/notation language and environment. Only emacs bindings, no vim, but impressive preformance nevertheless...

[0]: http://extempore.moso.com.au/

[1]: https://github.com/digego/extempore

Re: Get started making music

#86

Post by MichaelGG »

meri_dian wrote: post #6

I can't speak for other DAW's, but Ableton was really easy for me to pick up as a complete novice to digital music production

I agree. A lot of the other UIs are insane. One of them boasts about its full physics package to accurately render the cables connecting one "device" to another. I thought it was so gimmicky but a lot of them do the same stuff and people buy it so what do I know. Ableton just makes sense.

But maybe because I'm not an artist. I just like learning these tools. I will say that with a few hundred bucks of equipment (a Launchpad and a Kaossilator2) I've had hours of fun just "jamming".

Also for more technical fun, there are 3rd party MIDI loopback interfaces available on Windows, so it's easy to write your own instruments. Took about an hour to hook up an Xbox360 controller so I got a few x-y inputs. Ableton makes it super easy to map them.

Re: Get started making music

#87

Post by adamnemecek »

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?

Better question is what do they do understand about music?

Re: Get started making music

#88

Post by khalilravanna »

fil_a_del_fee_a wrote: post #73

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

Oh man I've had mine for I think a bit over a year now and I love it so much. It really builds off the fundamentals mentioned on the first page of this shared post: you jam out little riffs and then mix and match them till you get something you like. There have been many days/nights where I've needed to do some programming on my game and instead burn 3-4 hours without realizing it because I hit a groove. It's so conducive to jamming it's unbelievable. Not to mention Ableton is a really powerful piece of software that doesn't get in your way when you're experimenting. The pairing makes it one of my absolute favorite pieces of hardware (that and my OP-1).

Re: Get started making music

#89

Post by hxta98596 »

Anecdotal: there's a few different approaches to learning songwriting that seem to click for beginners. The "build up" approach is the most common and is what this link offers: It first teaches beats, then chords, then melodies and then, in theory, vocals etc. These lessons in this order make sense to many people, but not everyone.

If you're interested in learning to make music and the lessons in the link are confusing or overwhelming or boring, some students find a "peel back" approach to learning songwriting easier to grasp at first. A peel back approach just involves finding a song then teaching by stripping away each layer: start with stripping away vocals, then learn melodies, then chords, then finally learn about the drum beat underneath it all. A benefit of the peel back approach to learning is melodies and vocals are the memorable parts of a song and easiest to pick out when listening to the radio so a student can learn using songs they know and like. Either way, songwriting is hard and fun. Best of luck.

P.S. I think Ableton makes good software and I use it along with FL and Logic. They did a solid job with these intro lessons. But worth mentioning, there is free software out there (this includes Apple's Garageband) that offers key features a beginner just learning songwriting can practice on and mess around on before purchasing a more powerful DAW software like Ableton.

Re: Get started making music

#90

Post by edkennedy »

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…

I don't understand, it's easy to get arbitrary length loops, that's the reason there is a "fixed length" button on the Push 2 which you can enable if you want.

The arrangement view is not meant to be Protools.

Ableton is actually quite nice for doing experimental and unusual music, it just is built around doing it LIVE. If you want to paint outside the lines, you can with it. "clicking boxes on and off" is simply a way of perceiving layering.

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