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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#351

Post by andrepd »

adamnemecek wrote: post #197
andrepd wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you're surely over-promising, here's hoping you won't under-deliver. Do you have anything at all to show yet?

What do you think is an over promise? The resulting app will be less than 10KLOC, discounting third party libs. I don't have a demo yet if that's what you are asking about but I've open sourced this for example https://github.com/adamnemecek/WebMIDIKit Actually I do have some old demos but they don't show the best parts. It's actually kind of hard to show those right now.

>a new DAW that should make writing music a lot faster and easier.

>Current DAWs don't really understand music.

>Current DAW : my thing = Windows Notepad : IDE.

It really sounds like you're promising a lot.

Re: Get started making music

#352

Post by hashmal »

Nullabillity wrote: post #346
cmelbye wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's "free" (not open source). It's included with the purchase of a Mac.

So no, it's not even gratis, it's $500+ depending on how crappy hardware you want it to be tethered to.

when it comes to getting software, we've stopped including the price of the required computer since like… 1995?

Re: Get started making music

#353

Post by komali2 »

simonh wrote: post #349
Nullabillity wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So no, it's not even gratis, it's $500+ depending on how crappy hardware you want it to be tethered to.

That's a slippery slope to saying that OpenOffice for Windows isn't free software either because you have to buy a Windows box. This is not a useful definition of free you're using. GarageBand is not Libre software.

I dunno if it's a slippery slope starting at Garageband. I say the slippery slope starts at OpenOffice or GoogleDocs or something along those lines, given that OpenOffice could probably be run on a potato if you can find a way to install ubuntu on it and stick some RAM into it.

Re: Get started making music

#354

Post by hashmal »

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…

The people at Ableton are well aware of this (the term "the studio as an instrument" comes up quite often at their event "Loop") but I'm not sure there's a better way to learn besides experimenting. I've heard quite a lot of stories about (electronic) music creators telling about their beginnings, how they would ask for help to more experimented friends, how they would reply "no, just try things", then how they felt in the end it was a good thing once it "clicked."

Re: Get started making music

#355

Post by edpichler »

dahart wrote: post #254
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 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?). You're not alone, this is a common reaction to music notation by engineers; a lot of people have wondered the same thing, even here on HN. For example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12528144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12085844 I see some great re…

I have a theory for this. Please, do not down vote me, I am here with limited English but really good intentions.

QWERTY keyboard is something humanity found a better solution, people have developed better layouts like Dvorak, per example, and world keeps using QWERTY (not my case).

I have studied long time ago that TCP protocol is also not the best protocol, there are much betters and faster, but people keeps using the old TCP for Internet...

I believe when something is already consolidated, it's expensive to change, sometimes it's not worthwhile do update all the consolidated knowledge/investment, even when having better solutions.

World updates consolidated solutions just when the gain really worth it, it's not the case for music notation.

I also agree with you, the music notation could be easier, but I believe they don't upgrade because the masters musicians have mastered it, so they like the actual notation, and they are the fellows with enough knowledge to create a better version. I believe there is others types of notation, but it would need to be used by the masters musicians, and music schools, and universities to start a wave that could replace the actual notation (that already works pretty well).

Re: Get started making music

#356

Post by uranian »

mejari wrote: post #307
uranian wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But 'getting started making music' is like you only need their product, trigger some samples and you can be an artist too. I mean, is that wrong? Unless you stick to some elitist definition of artist, why is someone who plays with these samples to create something not being an artist?

It's not wrong, just feels misleading. For me it's like Sublime text comes with a little tutorial with the title "Get started making apps", and only give an intro on making a hello world program in C++, to sell their product.

Re: Get started making music

#357

Post by JusticeJuice »

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…

They actually disucss that in this course. They talk about pelog scales and 19 note divisions of octaves (not 12) https://learningmusic.ableton.com/advanced-topics/pelog.html

Re: Get started making music

#358

Post by hashmal »

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…

Computers are powerful but boring as hell when it comes to creating music. Lately physical machines have been getting popular again (drum machines, modular systems like eurorack, etc). The computer is then used to glue everything together (mixing and mastering)

You can do electronic music without a computer and with the immediacy of an acoustic instrument : pick up a Volca or an Analog Rytm and you can go a long way (some machines are quite expensive, but hey, guitars and piano are, too)

Re: Get started making music

#359

Post by eon1 »

_pergosausage wrote: post #108
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…

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?

Do you really mean to say you write songs without using any theory or explicitly sought knowledge whatsoever? Let's hear one.

Re: Get started making music

#360

Post by jbkrule »

adamnemecek wrote: post #197
andrepd wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you're surely over-promising, here's hoping you won't under-deliver. Do you have anything at all to show yet?

What do you think is an over promise? The resulting app will be less than 10KLOC, discounting third party libs. I don't have a demo yet if that's what you are asking about but I've open sourced this for example https://github.com/adamnemecek/WebMIDIKit Actually I do have some old demos but they don't show the best parts. It's actually kind of hard to show those right now.

I'd be really interested to hear the concept of how you are making things more IDE-esque
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