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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#371

Post by elihu »

criddell wrote: post #306
TylerE wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally disagree. Tab is LESS lossy than traditional sheet music because it encodes the string as well as the pitch. A given note could be played in as many as 5 different places, and they will ALL sound different. An open A (5th string) will sound different than the same A played on the low E string, 5th fret. (This is completely unrelated to the woeful quality of most of the tab floating around on the net. You can…

> Tab is LESS lossy than traditional sheet music because it encodes the string as well as the pitch. But it doesn't encode the note type, right? All the tab books I've bought don't differentiate between whole notes, quarter notes, etc... So that seems pretty lossy. Look at any guitar fake book for an example. Plus, I never looked at tablature as a literal transcription. That's why I would describe it as a more of a f…

A lot of the nicer tablature is in a hybrid format that borrows symbols from standard notation, like attaching stems and flags and dots to notes as appropriate to make the rhythm explicit.

Re: Get started making music

#372

Post by filoeleven »

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 had exactly the same thing happen, losing the core ideas by the time I wired up the synth I wanted. So I dropped the DAW entirely. Now I create most of my music using Loopy[0] to layer the parts that I sing (or occasionally play). It's been fantastic for my creativity.

I'm starting to hit its limits for my workflow though. One of the really nice things about how easy it's getting to write software these days is that I can now fire up, say, a Swift playground, and after getting the fiddly basics of "how to record and loop audio buffers" with AudioKit, there are very few limits on what kind of idiosyncratic workflow tool I can design for myself. The UI looks and acts how I want it to, and since over the years I've trained myself to act like a human synthesizer, I can[1] compose a whole song without even worrying about having an instrument nearby.

[0]Loopy - Multitrack audio looping with very simple and expressive control https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/loopy/id300257824?mt=8

[1]The "can" is theoretical. This is my next big hobby project, and I'm still in the fiddly phase.

Re: Get started making music

#373

Post by mejari »

uranian wrote: post #356
mejari wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I don't get the problem with that either? Being an "artist", or "making apps" aren't hallowed titles. Are you treating it more like they're saying "You'll be a super successful musician" or "You'll be a multi-millionaire app maker"? Because I'm no seeing it like that.

Re: Get started making music

#374

Post by fiatpandas »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #337
fiatpandas wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Push (v1) and it's a lot of fun. The whole idea is to pull out the functionality from Ableton onto a tactile device, and I think it succeeds in doing so. When I play with it, I stash my laptop to the side beecause you don't really need to stay glued to the screen while working with it. Beyond its utility, it's a really beautiful device.

Are you able to use the Push as a generic input device? Could it drive something other than the Ableton software? I can think of a ton of things I'd like to do where having a custom "keyboard" would be awesome.

Yes you can. There's a dedicated button that puts it into "user" mode, at which point you can use it as a general midi input device. Every button and encoder is mapped, including aftertouch. You can program the LCD display and set the colors of the pads (via midi sysex messages).

I'm not sure how programmable the display is on the Push 2, as it's a different display tech. I imagine you send it snapshots of a framebuffer rendered on your computer.

Re: Get started making music

#375

Post by ssharp »

bbgm wrote: post #174
tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I evolved this way, though I'm far from gifted. Starting out, anything I made was driven by whatever sounds I was noodling with. Now, I almost start on the piano, compose the outline, and then pick the sounds that I think fit it.

The first approach has a sense of creative wonder to it, where your being guided by an outsider. As much fun as that is, it is very limiting and I suspect most people abandon that approach as their skill improves.

Re: Get started making music

#376

Post by lightedman »

lprubin wrote: post #204
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…

Many non classical musicians use other notations. For example, many guitarists and bassists use tab notation. It's simply a visual representation of the strings and a number for which fret to play. It's not as expressive but is far easier to get started with.

"It's not as expressive"

Have you ever used Guitar Pro or Tux Guitar? It can be INSANELY expressive. Grab a MIDI of Van Halen's "Jump" (IIRC The best one was about 76kB) and import it into either of those. Guitar Pro will be noticeably more expressive vs TuxGuitar. Inside of that MIDI, the solo is 100% dead-on note-for-harmonic-for-slide-for-hammer. Both programs output the exact same tablature. You will get the solo perfect.

Most people that have read tablature haven't read the guitar-specialized notation found in Guitar Pro or TuxGuitar. It's far more instructive.

Re: Get started making music

#377

Post by smrtinsert »

follower wrote: post #158
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…

> there is free software out there If anyone is interested in a Free/Libre/Open Source Software option (cross-platform Linux/Windows/Mac) I've really enjoyed producing with LMMS over the past 18 months or so: https://lmms.io/ It's definitely got room to grow in terms of functionality/interface but the development community is of such a size that it's possible to still make meaningful code contributions. I've contribu…

I like LMMS but it has enough vst issues that I just went with a cheap Reaper license. Plus I need an audio recorder as well.

Re: Get started making music

#378

Post by elihu »

a_lieb wrote: post #302
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'm a programmer/musician and I can read on guitar and piano. I'm somewhere on the middle on this debate. I really dislike conventional notation but I also agree that the alternatives have some big downsides as well. My biggest objection to conventional notation is that it gives a profoundly misleading picture of how music and harmony really work. It defines one reference key (C Major/A Minor) with a certain pattern…

I agree with your main point -- standard notation is basically just piano tablature and it tends to confuse as much as it enlightens about how music works. However, I disagree about the "there's just one evenly spaced set of 12 tones" bit. This is a simplifying assumption of standard notation that makes it hard to express the idea of notes that are outside of the well-known 12.

Even in the key of C major, this is a problem in just intonation. Say you want to play a G major chord, so it's made up of G, B, and D (3/2, 15/8, and 9/8). Later in the song you want to play a D minor, so you play D, F, and A (9/8, 4/3, and 5/3). That doesn't sound right, though. It turns out that the D you want is actually 10/9, which is just a bit flatter than 9/8. In standard notation, you can't distinguish.

It's possible to get around this by adding non-standard modifiers to notes aside from the usual ones (sharp/flat/natural), but unmodified standard notation misleads people into thinking that those two notes are the same. Which is another example of your main point, that "standard notation gives a profoundly misleading picture of how music and harmony really work".

Re: Get started making music

#379

Post by elektronaut »

TylerE wrote: post #270
criddell wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you had been a guitar + tablature player your entire life and picked up piano a few years ago, if you would come to the same conclusion. I've tried learning guitar a few times and when I've asked accomplished players how they get by with tabs, it's been explained as tab music establishes a minimal framework that you play within. It's a lossy compression scheme (and traditional sheet music is less lossy).…

Totally disagree. Tab is LESS lossy than traditional sheet music because it encodes the string as well as the pitch. A given note could be played in as many as 5 different places, and they will ALL sound different. An open A (5th string) will sound different than the same A played on the low E string, 5th fret. (This is completely unrelated to the woeful quality of most of the tab floating around on the net. You can…

Tab is terrible at conveying rythmic information, playing anything moderately complex is very hard unless you're already familiar with the material. And I'd say it's a very lossy format if it's reliant on out of band information like a recording to make sense.

Fingering is a problem that mostly goes away as you gain an innate sense of what sounds good versus economy of movement and the ability to mute. For music written on guitar, it's usually relatively easy to tell what position works best.

Every guitar is different, too. String gauges, pickups, resonant notes, action height and intonation all play into it, and most of those are subject to personal preferences.

Re: Get started making music

#380

Post by smrtinsert »

TylerE wrote: post #270
criddell wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if you had been a guitar + tablature player your entire life and picked up piano a few years ago, if you would come to the same conclusion. I've tried learning guitar a few times and when I've asked accomplished players how they get by with tabs, it's been explained as tab music establishes a minimal framework that you play within. It's a lossy compression scheme (and traditional sheet music is less lossy).…

Totally disagree. Tab is LESS lossy than traditional sheet music because it encodes the string as well as the pitch. A given note could be played in as many as 5 different places, and they will ALL sound different. An open A (5th string) will sound different than the same A played on the low E string, 5th fret. (This is completely unrelated to the woeful quality of most of the tab floating around on the net. You can…

Voicings can be up to the conductor, the lossyness is a feature not a bug.
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