Live data from Hacker News

Get Started Making Music

learningmusic.ableton.com

21–30 of 202 posts

Re: Get Started Making Music

#23
I really tried to get into Ableton. I found a Push 2 at a pawn shop and while I can say that the push 2 controller is pretty damn amazing and turns Ableton into a pretty cool device, I can't get the arrangement to feel natural to me. I am a long term linear sequencer user, and Logic is pretty much muscle memory to me now. However, Ive used FL studio since version 1.x and that also feels much easier to use than Ableton. I can create patterns super easily on Ableton but then turning that into a song is just clunky to me.

Re: Get Started Making Music

#25

Ironically for the name, ableton turns out not to be accessible for the blind.

It's not exactly easy to make an "accessible" DAW. Especially not when you consider that there probably isn't a huge market of blind music producers relative to the amount of work it would take to, say, make a somewhat-sane interface for a screen reader for a program as complex as ableton. The interface is very complex as is, and would almost certainly require some re-jiggering before it would work well. I doubt enou…

It is possible to map most controls in a DAW via MIDI and possibly provide a touch interface, or more tactile controls (sliders and knobs). Live looping for example, only requires a few foot switches.

Re: Get Started Making Music

#26
post #23

I really tried to get into Ableton. I found a Push 2 at a pawn shop and while I can say that the push 2 controller is pretty damn amazing and turns Ableton into a pretty cool device, I can't get the arrangement to feel natural to me. I am a long term linear sequencer user, and Logic is pretty much muscle memory to me now. However, Ive used FL studio since version 1.x and that also feels much easier to use than Ableto…

Wait, were you arranging in the session view and not in the arrangement view?

Re: Get Started Making Music

#27
post #3

Oh my...this is hardly "making music". Is paint-by-numbers making art? I sure don't think so, so neither is this. What would have been way way better is a brief introduction to music keys, major and minor, then basic chords, then progressions, then melody, with each section having a few examples of each so that the person going through the article could have some understanding of how music is really made, and how mus…

And if you only ever do what is directly taught, likely at best you will be proficient but never great, and often not even entertaining.

I used to have a Fijian flatmate at uni who played guitar, totally self taught.

Played ukulele from age 3 with his sisters in acts in hotels back in Fiji. Just one thing (of many, many things) he could do musically was play along to most songs first time he heard them, anticipating chords/keys, no formal training.

He did say they had so much spare time on their hands as kids it was all he did, but he could play so many songs and lead breaks, bass riffs etc etc note for note, perfect timing.

While we were at uni he cleaned up because he could just roll up to any house band for the night and fill in on almost any instrument, pocket a hundred bucks or more, free drinks and at least one girl.

Re: Get Started Making Music

#29
post #23

I really tried to get into Ableton. I found a Push 2 at a pawn shop and while I can say that the push 2 controller is pretty damn amazing and turns Ableton into a pretty cool device, I can't get the arrangement to feel natural to me. I am a long term linear sequencer user, and Logic is pretty much muscle memory to me now. However, Ive used FL studio since version 1.x and that also feels much easier to use than Ableto…

I came from CUBASE and it took me a couple attempts to get used to ableton

Frankly thinking of it as a sequencer is a limiting mental model.

Think of it as a instrument to jam with.

When I used cubase I spend about 20% of the time with jamming together a basic idea and then 80% with arranging.

Ableton flipped that for me...now I spend 80% of the time jamming (and loving it) and only all the way at the end I quickly create the arrangement once I am already super familiar with all the parts I created during jamming.

It’s had a really super positive on my creative quality!

Re: Get Started Making Music

#30

Ironically for the name, ableton turns out not to be accessible for the blind.

It's not exactly easy to make an "accessible" DAW. Especially not when you consider that there probably isn't a huge market of blind music producers relative to the amount of work it would take to, say, make a somewhat-sane interface for a screen reader for a program as complex as ableton. The interface is very complex as is, and would almost certainly require some re-jiggering before it would work well. I doubt enou…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN