If you want to get an interesting take on the 'Live' part of Ableton Live, look for 'Kid Beyond Ableton' videos. He builds up tracks live on stage by beatboxing all the instruments, and uses something called a Hothand recently as his controller.
Get started making music
111–120 of 476 posts
Re: Get started making music
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any further details may be?
Are you interested in anything particular? I can provide a lot more detail but I think that none of that will do it any justice. Sign up and check it out when it's out.
Will this have any support for external VSTs like Massive?
Re: Get started making music
#113Earlier 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…
This takes like a second. Drag a sample into an audio track (in arrangement view), copy it, paste it again where the last sample ended, repeat until it goes on as long as you need. Do you not know how to use Ableton at all?
Ignoring the ridiculously insulting tone and just pointing out: using your method, what happens if I subsequently change the tempo in the file?
Re: Get started making music
#114I 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 La…
The Kaossilator 1 (KO-1) is available on ebay for under $100 and they are massive fun. Never a boring train/plane journey with a KO-1 and some headphones.
Re: Get started making music
#115Re: Get started making music
#116Wow, this is super impressive. I fell in love after adding a few chords over drums. Amazing.
Re: Get started making music
#117Earlier 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…
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 w…
Those loops are still a number of beats. When I say arbitrary, I refer to things that may not be any integer value of beats.
Re: Get started making music
#118Anecdotal: 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 confusi…
What you said about learning melodies and beats and chords kind of confused me. Do people actually learn how to make up music? I always thought it was just some natural ability that people have. For as long I can remember if somebody told me to write a song I would just spit it out after a while. Am I unuiqe in this respect?
Very few skills are just "natural ability". Music theory is an interesting and pretty important topic if you want to make music. Since people have been creating music for millennia, they have figured out many things that help composers.
Re: Get started making music
#119This 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…
At least when it comes to synths, check out Syntorial. It's very similar to what you want, though it only covers a certain kind of synthesis. http://www.syntorial.com
Seconded. Syntorial is an awesome way to learn to program synthesizer sounds. It plays a sound, then you replicate it with the synth controls. It starts easy and gradually ramps up the difficulty, adding more knobs to twiddle, explaining the concepts as it goes along. It's a million times better than staring at a full synth control board, moving knobs and hoping that you figure it out eventually.
Re: Get started making music
#120I'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?
I'd argue that current DAWs expect the user to understand at least something about music. Sounds like OP is working on some "syntax-aware" features for their DAW.