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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#171

Post by seertaak »

xnzakg wrote: post #160
seertaak wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds really cool! Actually, I'm close to releasing a (looper) DAW -- kinda geared towards live use, but I've thought a lot about composition too. https://zenaud.io Send me an email at mpercossi at zenaud.io , always fun to talk to fellow audio devs :) And for all the vim lovers out there -- my app supports vi commands for movement and editing :)

That looks really nice... too bad there's no Linux support :/

Yes, it is a shame. But: I will add it, along with Windows support.

Indeed, I'll go further. I'm really starting to believe that the only way not to get royally screwed as an app developer is by abandoning the "major" platforms -- which all want to turn you into a serf -- and target OSS platforms like Linux. I'm honestly tiring of dealing with the artificial roadblocks Apple (and Microsoft is no better) throw at me to further their own ends. I actually analysed SteamOS with this intent, but sadly it looks like SteamOS is geared towards the "living room" experience.

Anyway, long story short: there will be Linux support in 2018.

Re: Get started making music

#172

Post by tetraodonpuffer »

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…

you could consciously decide NOT to use synths to lay down the bones, always use a piano to begin with, once you have the tune idea down then you can move onto orchestration and picking synths and so on. Always keep the piano track as a guide and start adding tracks for all the other components until you have what you need.

From a remembering the tune perspective, I have the same issues, but I think it's more related to not applying musical lexicon and hearing skills the same way: you remember poetry or a paragraph of text because you remember the ideas and how to go from one to the other, if you are a musician and have something in your head and start thinking along the lines of "this is using a lydian mode, the progression is ii IV V I then it modulates to the relative minor and switches to dorian, also the theme is going down in thirds for two bars, then it will stay on the chord root for one and move to the dominant 7th" you are going to remember it a lot more easily than just by remembering the melody itself

It would be like comparing how easily you can remember poetry in English vs poetry in, say, Russian, where you only have the "sounds of the words" in your head to remember, but you don't have the syntax or the meanings to help you as well.

Re: Get started making music

#173

Post by adamnemecek »

agumonkey wrote: post #106
adamnemecek wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Aight. I wasn't comparing btw, just wanted to have your point of view.

Just FYI there will be a small JS programming environment in my thing.

Re: Get started making music

#174

Post by bbgm »

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #172
richardjdare wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

you could consciously decide NOT to use synths to lay down the bones, always use a piano to begin with, once you have the tune idea down then you can move onto orchestration and picking synths and so on. Always keep the piano track as a guide and start adding tracks for all the other components until you have what you need. From a remembering the tune perspective, I have the same issues, but I think it's more related…

For me one of two ways works. Most often I start designing a patch on one of my synths and that ends up becoming a full song. Other times I start by noodling on the piano or organ and ending up with something I like. I suspect the more musically gifted do the latter more often, while the more technical ones like the process of patch creation, etc.

Re: Get started making music

#175

Post by bbgm »

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…

It's one reason I like monosynths (or or two oscillators). Really helps you understand basic subtractive synthesis. Then you can layer on. A very simple modular system can help too because you have to understand the fundamental of sound and modulation.

Re: Get started making music

#176

Post by [deleted] »

jungletek wrote: post #147
whiddershins wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! So many examples of why. What if I want the sound of rustling leaves to come and go across the course of a song? What if I wanted my piece to happen over a drone tone similar in function to a tamboura or a constantly feeding back electric guitar? What if I wanted to have another sort of loop and while playing it back, experiment with different tempos against it to see what sounds right? And a zillion other thing…

>What if I want the sound of rustling leaves to come and go across the course of a song? Trigger it via MIDI as a one-shot in the sampler, for example. Sampler and Simpler params can be automated. If you want some 'arbitrary' looping, again use the loop points of Sampler and set the (re)triggering appropriately. You can do all these things if you want to, you just have to invest enough time learning the tools. Edit:…

[deleted]

Re: Get started making music

#178

Post by almonj »

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…

Improvising, screwing around, experimentation are great ways to generate ideas. I think most composers work this way, most generally don't start with some huge structure, they just find some germ cell ideas by improvising that then can be build upon afterwards with analytic techniques. I think there are two main approaches, the intuitive feelings and pure ear based approach which is what most people call the "talent" aspect and the analytic approach which is a lot like mathematics, it is about studying structure, and is a learned skill. The best composers will use both of these together. You should learn chord structures, scales and how to read sheet music. This will allow you to conceptualize a musical idea as a concrete mathematical object, and it will help you to not lose the idea. The reason you forget the music in your head is because you don't have enough reference points to define it in a memorable way.

You can understand a musical idea as a kind of memory impression, an echo that you can play back in your head, and also as a pattern of pitches and rhythmic structures . Having two reference points , sensory and abstract mathematical is very useful.

Re: Get started making music

#179

Post by milquetoastaf »

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 see - so almost like you could have a macro that knows certain changes / scales and just hit :dorian or whatever? That's interesting...

Re: Get started making music

#180

Post by exodust »

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

Push 1 is still awesome and there's a ton on the second hand market for a fraction of the price of Push 2. You get way more than you pay for at those prices.

I'm happy with mine, I like the pads and it's fine for sequencing and playing. It still receives updates and improvements.

I do like the screen on Push 2, it looks like a nice update, but you are paying a lot for that screen, so you better use it!

I also own a Maschine Mikro MkII by Native Instruments, it's my go-to machine for finger drumming beats and sonic experiments... great pads, very precise, compact and enjoyable. The Maschine software is very good, and the add-on sound packs are great quality.

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