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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#221

Post by calflegal »

puranjay wrote: post #211

I'm an amateur musician and one of the things I hate about electronic music is how "distant" it all feels. I'm used to picking up the guitar, playing a few chords and writing a melody. Ableton (or any other DAW) feels like a chore. I have to boot up the computer, connect the MIDI keyboard, the audio interface and the headphones, then wait for Ableton to load, then create a new track and add a MIDI instrument before I…

If you're an iOS user, I highly recommend the "Music Memos" Apple App that nobody talks about. Pretty great. Even better if you were to get something like the Rode iXY to go with it!

Re: Get started making music

#222

Post by dyim »

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 have the same problem too - I solve it by humming/singing the melody and recording it on my phone. Afterwards, I'll find nice synths, put chords to melodies, write horn arrangements, tweak drum fills, etc.

Re: Get started making music

#223

Post by sagefy »

shallot_router wrote: post #57
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…

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

Syntorial is pretty good. If you're looking for something free (and much more basic), I have a quick video series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSwjp7Zt1GY&list=PLKzX4WhkkV... I built it as part of my course I'm working on for Sagefy, so that would include some multiple choice practice questions too: https://sagefy.org/subjects/CgDRJPfzJuTR916HdmosA3A8/landing But there's nothing quite like just using the tools and getting experience directly, for sure.

Re: Get started making music

#224

Post by archagon »

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've also made a few iOS apps for the purpose of simplifying composition, though they're pretty limited in scope (on purpose). Although it seems most composers would prefer to use full DAWs from the start, I'm personally much more creative when I'm able to jot down and edit my fragmented musical ideas as quickly as possible, if only to make the initial draft. (If I were a better singer or musician, I'd just use a recorder or a looper — but my skills aren't quite there yet, and besides, it's hard to note-edit a recording.) Composer's Sketchpad[1] lets you paint notes directly onto a time/pitch canvas, bending and stretching them as they go along. (This works great for e.g. guitar solos.) MusicMessages![2] is a more basic piano roll that lets users quickly tap buttons across several layers to enter notes. (Musical bubble wrap! Works great for riffing on short drum sequences and chord progressions.)

There's another similar-sounding project called Helio that was posted a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14212054

I hope that in time, we get more Markdown-style composition tools vs. the full DAW suite. Good luck! I'm looking forward to seeing what you make.

P.S. AudioKit is pretty dope. :)

[1]: http://composerssketchpad.com

[2]: http://musicmessages.io -- working on turning it into a full iOS app, so will probably have to shut it down and fold it into the new app at some point

Re: Get started making music

#225

Post by ganonm »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #200

I always wondered why musicians keep up with the conventional musical notation system, and haven't come up with something better (maybe a job for a HNer?). I mean the conventional music notation represents tones in five lines, each capable of holding a "note" (is that the right word?) on a line, as well as in between lines, possibly pitched down and up, resp., by B's and sharps (depending on the tune etc.). Since wes…

I have played piano and guitar (piano for almost my entire life and guitar for several years) and have used both tabular sheet music and traditional sheet music.

Tabular sheet music is much easier to read initially as it provides a one to one mapping between the visual representation and the physical location of the notes - i.e. 5 frets along on this string. However, from my experience there is a cap on the 'bandwidth' at which you can sight read this. It is just too hard to mentally parse a bunch of numbers on lines and turn that into notes when playing at speed. (For non musicians, 'sight reading' means to read the notes and play fluently at the same time)

Traditional sheet music has a steeper learning curve, however, I've found that reading this music becomes much more subconscious with practice and the bandwidth at which you can parse the notes is much higher. Also, it is much easier to notice patterns in sheet music - i.e. a major 7th chord in the key of the song is visually obvious no matter what the key.

Re: Get started making music

#226

Post by drblast »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #207
tannhaeuser wrote: post #200

I always wondered why musicians keep up with the conventional musical notation system, and haven't come up with something better (maybe a job for a HNer?). I mean the conventional music notation represents tones in five lines, each capable of holding a "note" (is that the right word?) on a line, as well as in between lines, possibly pitched down and up, resp., by B's and sharps (depending on the tune etc.). Since wes…

Agreed, but reading sheet music is a very small part of playing piano proficiently (say, at the 97th percentile). Once you get past knowing the notes in a piece, there's the much more difficult task of being able to manipulate the force that you exert from your fingers to create the right volume balance. For example, your untrained thumb will naturally play notes much louder than it should, and it takes a lot of prac…

I don't know a whole lot about concert piano, but I don't think you could have picked two better videos to illustrate your point. That student is obviously very practiced and skilled but there's just no comparison.

Re: Get started making music

#227

Post by baldfat »

jungletek wrote: post #121
baldfat wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are all different beast that once you learn one you don't want to relearn another. The only difference is that Abelton Live and Bitwig (Runs on Linux) are designed for live performance. I like Reaper (Cost is 1/5 but equally capable) and it also runs reasonably well under Linux. https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?t=15280 Actually many people never pay for a license it has a similar model as Sublime Text.

>The only difference is that Abelton Live and Bitwig (Runs on Linux) are designed for live performance. Ableton, at least, also functions perfectly fine in the traditional piano-roll and timeline paradigm of DAW workflow too. Don't let the 'Live' part of the name mislead you into thinking it's only for live performers; it does everything the 'old DAWs' do, AND it's got great features to assist in live performance. Al…

> if you know one DAW well, you can usually learn another one fairly quickly

I couldn't disagree more, but I am talking about doing professional work. The concepts are all the same but getting where you are proficient in a DAW takes a very long time to find the quirks and strangeness that each one comes with to produce a quality piece.

Video Editors are hundred times harder to switch.

Re: Get started making music

#228

Post by [deleted] »

hxta98596 wrote: post #89

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 confusi…

[deleted]

Re: Get started making music

#229

Post by aoeusnth1 »

drblast wrote: post #226
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but reading sheet music is a very small part of playing piano proficiently (say, at the 97th percentile). Once you get past knowing the notes in a piece, there's the much more difficult task of being able to manipulate the force that you exert from your fingers to create the right volume balance. For example, your untrained thumb will naturally play notes much louder than it should, and it takes a lot of prac…

I don't know a whole lot about concert piano, but I don't think you could have picked two better videos to illustrate your point. That student is obviously very practiced and skilled but there's just no comparison.

Thanks! When I learned this piece, I listened to that recording on repeat. Michaelangeli is simply amazing.

Re: Get started making music

#230

Post by fefesafaea »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #200

I always wondered why musicians keep up with the conventional musical notation system, and haven't come up with something better (maybe a job for a HNer?). I mean the conventional music notation represents tones in five lines, each capable of holding a "note" (is that the right word?) on a line, as well as in between lines, possibly pitched down and up, resp., by B's and sharps (depending on the tune etc.). Since wes…

There are a lot of books on the subject, but the short answer is that it's just the most common standard at this point. Yes there are some things about it that don't make sense, but for whatever reason it seems to be the most coherent way for musicians to communicate using a common language.

It's popularity also has to do with what sounds pleasing to the ear (and brain) on a biological level.

A number of people have come up with alternative scales and notations systems over the years, but none of them have really stuck for one reason or another. Nonetheless, they are pretty fun to read about.

here's the whole history of notation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_notation

Also, if you aren't familiar with John Cage, you should check him out. His music and writing deals with a lot of the stuff you just brought up, and it's also a really great jumping off point to find other interesting artists and musicians.

Indeterminacy, a work he did with David Tudor is a great starting point https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lOMHUrgM_s

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