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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#391

Post by andywood »

eon1 wrote: post #359
_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?

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

I know a little rudimentary theory. Just enough to get mocked by someone with a real education. "without any theory" is sort of an impossible standard to satisfy, but I will say I never think about theory consciously, and go by how things sound. Anyway, this is what I'm working on:

https://soundcloud.com/cubit/piano-concerto

Re: Get started making music

#392

Post by ipqk »

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #258
dahart wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 see some great responses, but I wanted to add that you have to keep in mind that tons of people have actually tried to make a better system, and nobody has succeeded. That should give you enough pause to ask why and consider the possibility that the system we have is really good in a way that you haven't recognized yet. I think that this is the incorrect way of looking at it. I suspect it is less that the traditio…

For instance, while Imperial units aren't without some advantage, they are pretty generally inferior to the Metric system.

You say this pretty matter of factly, but I actually vehemently disagree. Many imperial measurements are better than their metric counterparts for day-to-day lay usage.

- Fahrenheit is a better scale than Celsius - Inches, Feet, & Miles are very practical units. Centimeters, and Meters much less so. - Pounds are smaller and offer better delineation than Kilograms. - Liters are pretty similar to quarts, though I admit the various Imperial sub-units are annoying.

Sure, it's easier to convert between metric scales, but the number of times I actually do that?: approximately zero.

Re: Get started making music

#393

Post by logicfiction »

xzel wrote: post #96
adamnemecek wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 agree with you with respect to representation. Pattern/sequence generation is something most DAWs don't have outside of something like Cthulhu which the languages can do easily. Another thing I've been dying for is an easier way of layering sounds, for example drum hits. Multiple midi sends feels hacky in Ableton and certainly not a first class feature. On the other side of things, the pain of rearranging multiple…

I'm not sure if I understood what you meant with layering drum hits. If you mean being able with a single trigger to have layered samples go off that form a drum hit like a snare or bass, then some drum samplers come to mind like Geist. That's the one I personally chose due to wealth of flexible features, but layering a group of samples into a single "hit" is a foundational feature in the program.

Re: Get started making music

#395

Post by tylercubell »

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.

The student asks, "how?". The master asks, "why?". That's why you feel a difference in the two performances.

Re: Get started making music

#396

Post by codazoda »

2845197541 wrote: post #336
codazoda wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I disagree. I'm a fairly untalented guitar player. I spent 2 years with several teachers and self-learning and I can't really play anything. I can improvise a bit, knowing the Minor Pentatonic scale for example, but I can't really re-produce anyone else's music. I also have a lack of motivation to do so; after all, someone already wrote and performs that. On the other hand, I am able to write my own music usi…

Not really sure exactly what you're saying but I think this says a lot: "I also have a lack of motivation to do so." So don't. Compose the equivalent of Rite of Spring without the motivation to even play a single instrument proficiently and I'll concede instruments are irrelevant and DAW's are an appropriate starting ground for actual musicians.

I consider anyone who creates music a musician. Some of my favorite sounds are the ones created by amateurs in the subway. My favorite guitar players are self taught. I won't be composing Right of Spring, but that's not what music is about for me.

Re: Get started making music

#399

Post by quadrangle »

smrtinsert wrote: post #377
follower wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

For recording, there's Ardour (among several other FLO options)
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