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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#161

Post by dri_ft »

adamnemecek wrote: post #74
dri_ft wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-).

Great. To be specific, what I dream of is something that can operate on higher-level musical constructs analogous to vim's text objects (works, lines, parentheses, etc). Chords, scales, rhythms, melodies? I don't really know exactly what this would look like but I suspect it could be very slick if someone got it right. I had some ideas and thought about implementing them a while ago but it got deprioritised next to making my own music and had to get to the back of the "some day I'll..." queue.

I've signed up to your google form, so I'll look forward to seeing what, if anything, you come up with :) I am on linux (and yes, I agree that music on linux is a pain), so I might not get to use it unless you port it, but I still look forward to seeing it, whatever it is.

Re: Get started making music

#162

Post by skybrian »

richardjdare wrote: post #148
_pergosausage wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What I find difficult is that by the time I've got my DAW going and found some synths I like, the tune in my head has evaporated. Do all people find musical thoughts so insubstantial, or is it just me? If I imagine a picture or a paragraph of text, it'll stick around and I can remember it more or less indefinitely. I still recall snatches of crap poetry I thought up when I was a teenager, but any music I imagine just…

Happens to me too. Ear training might help? There's an exercise where you take a song you know or a familiar recording and try to transcribe it by ear. (I find it's a pretty hard exercise.)

Re: Get started making music

#163

Post by baldfat »

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.

Right on. Anything can be an instrument from a 5 gallon bucket to a $100,000 concert piano. I never understood the snobbery, even among hacker crowds even, for people using certain tools to create music. Heck my C64 made music to the tune of Daisy and it was super cool. If someone wants to produce live music I am all for that.

PS Punk Rock and Indie Rock still is better then whatever else anyone else listens to :) Just jokes.

Re: Get started making music

#164

Post by dri_ft »

maze-le wrote: post #84
dri_ft wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm aware of extempore; it's impressive. I actually use SuperCollider quite a lot (in vim), which is not lispy (more OO) but in a similar space. But what I want is something that can operate on music how vim operates on text, not just operating on music-written-as-text in vim!

Re: Get started making music

#165

Post by adamnemecek »

nnd wrote: post #159
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…

When you say HN audience would be one of your target groups, do you mean that your DAW would be more like a development environment/programming language (like Sonic Pi), or would it have a more traditional interface?

Both actually :-). And those aren't even all of the "composition paradigms" and they are all first class citizens in the UI.

Re: Get started making music

#166

Post by disantlor »

richardjdare wrote: post #148
_pergosausage wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What I find difficult is that by the time I've got my DAW going and found some synths I like, the tune in my head has evaporated. Do all people find musical thoughts so insubstantial, or is it just me? If I imagine a picture or a paragraph of text, it'll stick around and I can remember it more or less indefinitely. I still recall snatches of crap poetry I thought up when I was a teenager, but any music I imagine just…

i spent 10 years building a project studio and optimizing the workflow and patch bay so that i can be recording almost any instrument within 30 seconds or so. that was a huge breakthrough and a huge commitment!

Re: Get started making music

#167

Post by uranian »

copperx wrote: post #48
uranian wrote: post #40

A more appropriate title would be: Get started triggering samples. Making music is really something different IMO.

There's space for all kinds of music, and for some, triggered samples under a grid is considered music.

Making music (also EDM) is really, really hard. Most people that try will fail, and Ableton knows that. They are just trying to sell their product here which is fair enough. But 'getting started making music' is like you only need their product, trigger some samples and you can be an artist too.

Try sit behind a drum kit for the first time, you think you can start making music? Most aspiring drummers need to practice for years before you can play a reasonable beat. Same with EDM, it takes many years of practice and improving all kinds of skills. This tutorial is just showing how you can trigger samples in a grid and how you can put this together in a DAW. For me that is not making music, sorry.

Btw, the resulting loops in the tutorial were not made by beginners, and listen to the result, is that music to you? Would you buy that? Another title that would be appropriate but not sell, could be: Get started making rubbish.

Re: Get started making music

#168

Post by adamnemecek »

dri_ft wrote: post #161
adamnemecek wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Great. To be specific, what I dream of is something that can operate on higher-level musical constructs analogous to vim's text objects (works, lines, parentheses, etc). Chords, scales, rhythms, melodies? I don't really know exactly what this would look like but I suspect it could be very slick if someone got it right. I had some ideas and thought about implementing them a while ago but it got deprioritised next to m…

Yes, you get it! That's exactly what this is. You sound exactly like me lol. I love higher order things and I've been chasing this "mirage" since I was like 12 but I never had the chops and time to really devote to this. Do you think that we could chat sometime? My email is my username at gmail.

Re: Get started making music

#169

Post by almonj »

hasbroslasher wrote: post #100
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…

Also people who have really hot Sound Tips generally don't want to give them away. If you can make a unique sound with some special trick you will have an advantage over your enemies (other musicians).

Re: Get started making music

#170

Post by SeanLuke »

ereyes01 wrote: post #58
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…

Can you explain what a DAW is?

A DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation, is to building music what Final Cut Pro is to building video, or what Eclipse is to developing software. Most DAWs consist of multiple tracks which hold multiple audio clips, each of which are scheduled to play at a certain time. You build a song out of these clips, which you have loaded into the DAW. You can also add various effects to the clips and manipulate them. You can store abstract music event data ("play note A here at this time, then play note B Flat at this time") in additional tracks. This data has no sound associated with it, but like a piano player roll, you can set it up to play notes in some instrument, either an internal software instrument provided by the DAW or a third party, or emitted via MIDI to a remote hardware music synthesizer.

DAWs are used to produce the huge majority of music you hear in the media, from commercials to hip hop songs. Even seemingly real orchestral pieces for movies are often composed entirely using artificial instruments. For example, here is Junkie XL showing how he composed themes for Mad Max Fury Road.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkNeXS0Lmxc

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