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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#91

Post by edkennedy »

weavie wrote: post #79
whiddershins wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A good example of this is polyrhythm.

Re: Get started making music

#92

Post by adamnemecek »

urlwolf wrote: post #63
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…

Sounds intriging. Any chance it would work under linux?

I kinda wish it would but audio on Linux is such a pain. I think that porting it won't be too bad once it's done but I'm not promising anything.

Re: Get started making music

#93

Post by golergka »

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…

Any further details may be?

Re: Get started making music

#94

Post by Kiro »

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…

Will this be for electronic music?

Re: Get started making music

#95

Post by castis »

hashkb wrote: post #10

This is not the basics of making music. It's a super advanced technique using a computer. The real basics involve pencil, (staff) paper, and hard work. Downvotes please.

You may be new here, but asking for downvotes has been in the guidelines for ever.

Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or proclaim that you expect to get downvoted.

Re: Get started making music

#96

Post by xzel »

adamnemecek wrote: post #80
milquetoastaf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I agree with you with respect to representation. Pattern/sequence generation is something most DAWs don't have outside of something like Cthulhu which the languages can do easily.

Another thing I've been dying for is an easier way of layering sounds, for example drum hits. Multiple midi sends feels hacky in Ableton and certainly not a first class feature. On the other side of things, the pain of rearranging multiple wavs after wanting to change a note is even more painful.

I totally agree with you about the actions though. Configuring plugins etc can be a huge drain and its very mouse heavy.

Re: Get started making music

#97

Post by adamnemecek »

Kiro wrote: post #94
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…

Will this be for electronic music?

Ofc! Im working on this cause I wanted to make some electronic music but none of the current daws really let me express myself the way I want.

Re: Get started making music

#98

Post by whiddershins »

maldusiecle wrote: post #29
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 really don't buy this. Ableton was created by an excellent musician (Robert Henke), and its design reflects a musician's perspective. It's intuitive and flexible. It doesn't work for every possible workflow, but no individual piece of software could.

That's arguing from authority and ignoring the meat of my point.

I know Robert Henke created Ableton Live and it was a tremendous innovation when it came out.

Over time it gradually expanded features but never dealt with a variety of things that might be development intensive but would in no way break the workflow.

For example:

Support advanced midi stuff. Like, any of it. Why is it so mind bogglingly inconvenient for me to hook up my continuum or my linnstrument to Live?

Loops of arbitrary length/non warped loops, as I mentioned in another comment, are unnecessarily hard to implement.

Why can't I midi map to certain controls, why can't I macro map to certain controls.

Why can't I easily lock stuff in the arrangement view so I am not terrified to change the master tempo.

Why can't I group things in arrangement and edit them together.

why can't I intuitively stretch a sample in arrangement view, when the whole sell of ableton is time stretching?

None of that would break the workflow.

Re: Get started making music

#99

Post by calflegal »

whiddershins wrote: post #78
calflegal wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't mean personal offense in my reply. "Stop pretending making music is clicking on and off in little boxes", is the specific portion I was referring to, but more generally I just aim to promote inclusiveness.

Re: Get started making music

#100

Post by hasbroslasher »

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…

You're right that it's a staggering amount of arcane knowledge. But starting out I always recommend experimentation over getting too deep into the theory. It does help to have some baseline understanding of:

1. Frequency 2. Harmonics 3. Oscillators/Waveforms 4. Envelopes 5. Filters

The only problem with the last part of your request is that even if you are to watch people design sounds for a couple of hours you might find that when you try to replicate that somewhere else it doesn't sound right. This is partially because every synth/softsynth is different and will produce different sounds and have different parameters. It can be infuriating to get a tutorial on how to produce that perfect "Bladerunner Blues" synth and come out with something that sounds totally flat and bad.

To make matters worse, there are apparently 0 good tutorials on the subject - I just googled for 15 minutes to no avail. The two below cover some of it but I personally can't bear listening to the people who make these videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvQVQuV-Kys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJVlWdzoZ0w

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