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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#401

Post by elihu »

dahart wrote: post #366
elihu wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to look at it is that the current notation system isn't the best overall, it's just the most tolerable trade-off between a bunch of mutually-incompatible requirements. Replacing standard notation for all uses may be doomed to failure, but replacing standard notation for some particular use case (especially new use cases that weren't anticipated when standard notation settled into its current form) may be…

> Another way to look at it is that the current notation system isn't the best overall, it's just the most tolerable trade-off between a bunch of mutually-incompatible requirements. Isn't most tolerable trade-off between multually-incompatible requirements another way of saying "best overall"? Totally agreed there are useful local overrides of standard notation. Tablature is one example, and there are others. I would…

> Isn't most tolerable trade-off between multually-incompatible requirements another way of saying "best overall"?

I could have said that better. What I meant was that standard notation isn't better than every other system according to every metric we could use to compare such things.

Gary Garrett has more lattice demos on Youtube. Here's one that's an animation of an example in Harmonic Experience by W. A. Mathieu (which uses lattices extensively to explain harmony and is the best reference I know of for explaining how to understand them): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I49bj-X7fH0

A 3-5 lattice is a grid where one axis is fifths (powers of 3 in just intonation) and another axis is major thirds (powers of 5). Garrett implies a third axis for septimal flatted seventh (i.e. barbershop 7th) intervals. Since the grid is leaning to the right, the diagonals that lean the left are minor thirds. Powers of 2 (octaves) are usually ignored. Triangles that are flat on the bottom are major triads. Triangles that are flat on top are minor triads.

There isn't an obvious way to encode a whole song onto a single lattice diagram in a way that could be printed on a page and still be readable. They seem to work pretty well as animations or as static illustrations to explain chord transitions, though.

Re: Get started making music

#402

Post by lunaru »

2845197541 wrote: post #235

This seems like the wrong place to start. This seems like the place to start learning a DAW and snapping together samples—to, IMO, make depersonalized unoriginal loop music in a society awash with it because DAW's and looping have created an angel's path to production and proliferation. Learn to drag and drop and you can tell people you meet that you're a musician or a producer. I've met too many mediocre people like…

I want to partially agree with you because there is just something about physically playing an instrument that is so rewarding and fulfilling, to both the artist and the audience blessed enough to witness a true master guitarist/pianist/etc in action.

However, this is too narrow a definition for music. Having some experience with both actual instruments and DAWs I think they exercise different parts of the musical brain and as an aspiring musician one would be more "complete" having knowledge of both. But I don't think one place to start is more necessary that the other.

It's absolutely possible to be a fully developed musician and have the DAW be your only and only "instrument". It's a different skillset and the best producers in the world can create brilliant music just purely in the DAW. There is another subthread here that comments on the difficulty in generating unique sounds, for example. There are lots of specific skills that separate the weekend loopers from the pros that have found their own sound and character. It just takes a different appreciation. The latter set of folks definitely have paid their "frustrated hours cutting and blistering their fingers" just in a very different way.

I will say though that this form of music isn't very interesting to me in a live format vs traditional instrumental music, but the produced/composed/recorded outcome can be just as brilliant.

Re: Get started making music

#403

Post by laurentoget »

ipqk wrote: post #392
BookmarkSaver wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Inches, Feet, & Miles are very practical units. Centimeters, and Meters much less so.

Really? Do you know how much easier it is to compute surfaces and volumes in metric systems compared to imperial? Concrete example. Figure how much soil you need to buy to fill a box knowing L, W and H. In metric it is a 10s process. In imperial i do not even know how you are supposed to do it. Does anybody even know how many quart are in a cubic foot?

Re: Get started making music

#404

Post by ptaipale »

ipqk wrote: post #392
BookmarkSaver wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

You don't really give any reason why Fahrenheit is a better scale or why inches, or why feet and miles are particularly practical units. It seems to me that people say this simply because they are used to them. You don't convert to metric units and it feels awkward because you don't use metric units.

There is an issue with "kilometer" being a complex word for everyday use (as compared to a mile) in the English language. That's more a linguistic issue that about the unit itself. Other languages have solutions to that with shorter colloquial name for the unit.

Of course the imperial units give a good opportunity for being funny, in ways like specifying speeds in furlongs per fortnight. But you can do the same in SI-derived units, like parsecs per picosecond.

Re: Get started making music

#405

Post by laurentoget »

iamacynic wrote: post #310
compiler-guy wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point. To a first approximation: Tablature is a _physical description_ of how a particular stringed instrument should be played, and the notes are a side effect of that. It is instrument specific and it doesn't contain much information about the musical details of the piece. For example, tablature doesn't describe the key the piece is to be played in. To figure that out, you have to mentally translate the mecha…

another feature/side effect is that you can use any instrument to play any part of a written piece, as long as it's physically possible to play the notes as written. and if not - you can improvise easily by dropping superfluous or unnecessary components/notes without changing the overall sound of the music.

Another side effect is that as a guitar player you can look at the tuba player's part to figure out what he is playing even if you have no idea how to play tuba, if you read music. With tablature only a guitar player will know what you are playing.

Re: Get started making music

#406

Post by ptaipale »

laurentoget wrote: post #403
ipqk wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Inches, Feet, & Miles are very practical units. Centimeters, and Meters much less so. Really? Do you know how much easier it is to compute surfaces and volumes in metric systems compared to imperial? Concrete example. Figure how much soil you need to buy to fill a box knowing L, W and H. In metric it is a 10s process. In imperial i do not even know how you are supposed to do it. Does anybody even know how many quart…

> Does anybody even know how many quart are in a cubic foot?

They know it, after they do the conversion, via metric system.

(OK, nowadays you can just enter "1 quart to cubic feet" in Google. And the funnier ones you get at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_meas... )

Re: Get started making music

#408

Post by Boerworz »

stfwn wrote: post #141
_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?

I created an account just to reply to your comment. As someone who has played keyboard instruments for all my life, it's not crossed my mind lately that the idea that there is structure to music is not well known. Just for fun: chords in scales are numbered from bottom to top in Roman numerals. I feels like home base, V feels like wanting to go home. If you want to create the feeling of going home but then not really…

As someone who's recently tried to get into (basic) music theory, trying out the chord progressions you mentioned was fun! Do you happen to know of any resources that go through more of these well-known chord progressions?

I'm also wondering if these chord progressions work the same way for all scales, or if, for example, the 'sad but I have closure'-type ending only sounds that way in major scales? From experimenting I think it only works for major scales, but I'm not sure :)

Re: Get started making music

#409

Post by tomduncalf »

Off topic, but I posted the exact same link about 24 hours earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14291332

Not that it's important but I'm kinda curious why a. my submission would only get 7 points and b. how it was possible for someone else to submit the same link so soon after and gain the points rather than my submission getting boosted?

It it just random chance/time of day of posting? Or is it because the user who posted this had more points to start with and so was more likely to be "noticed"?

Awesome site in any case!

Re: Get started making music

#410

Post by combatentropy »

milquetoastaf wrote: post #72
uranian wrote: post #40

A more appropriate title would be: Get started triggering samples. Making music is really something different IMO.

It's really not. Some of the most beautiful songs are just artfully arranged samples. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h5WJ6J6IlE

Everything is a remix, https://vimeo.com/14912890.
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