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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#41

Post by junon »

0898 wrote: post #30

Question: with pre-made loops it seems fairly easy to make something that sounds decent. Is it okay if it’s really that easy? Could you put a few of these together and release a track? Should it be “hard”? I’m sure most producers have fiendishly complex arrangements. But do some producers basically paint by numbers?

If an artist uses premade samples (by "samples" here I'm talking about loops, not normal sampling) and do nothing to transform it, it's generally really easy to hear.

One, because it's usually quite boring. Two, usually because we've heard the samples a hundred times before and know roughly where they came from, or at least where they've been used before.

That being said, most large artists do percussion and whatnot from scratch, perhaps re-using individual sounds but almost always coming up with their own arrangements.

A notable artist (group) that used sampling almost exclusively is Prodigy. They're famous for coming up with unique ways to arrange old breakbeat samples and whatnot. I would be surprised if anyone had any issue with it.

Re: Get started making music

#42

Post by Kye »

dmje wrote: post #37

FWIW, the notion that Ableton is just for dance music is very far from the truth. Sometimes they don't help themselves with their marketing, but the software suits all kinds of music making from dance to classical to ..whatever. Also FWIW, it's without doubt in my mind the best DAW by a long stretch. For me there are many reasons for this but the killer one is that the time and effort from idea to laid track is minis…

The quality of the scale limiting is beyond any DAW I've used. That's great for me as someone who can't seem to memorize scales. I've heard FL Studio has a good scale limiting feature, but I can't figure it out. Ableton's is 1-3 clicks and, to me, intuitive. I wish they would steal Reaper's ability to load scales from files. Live comes with a lot, but sometimes I want to experiment.

Bitwig doesn't have it at all and they broke the paint scale->nudge to -1 workaround (which still works in Live) the last time I tried the demo.

Re: Get started making music

#43

Post by JKCalhoun »

thomasfl wrote: post #13

All you need to make music is an iPhone and some ideas. I make music like this on my phone after the kids has gone to bed. I simply use Garageband and a couple of plugins. Sometimes I connect to a physical keyboard. https://youtu.be/iS-gRUzPrKI

Ableton seems to have the in-the-know buzz though. Just looked at the UI for Ableton for the first time today; know how it's preferred by some over Garage Band?

Re: Get started making music

#45

Post by navbaker »

dmje wrote: post #37

FWIW, the notion that Ableton is just for dance music is very far from the truth. Sometimes they don't help themselves with their marketing, but the software suits all kinds of music making from dance to classical to ..whatever. Also FWIW, it's without doubt in my mind the best DAW by a long stretch. For me there are many reasons for this but the killer one is that the time and effort from idea to laid track is minis…

A good hardware controller makes it even better. They make the Push, which is great if you have that kind of money, but I bought a Novation Launchpad Pro for half the price and it transformed how I use Live.

Re: Get started making music

#46

Post by Kye »

numair wrote: post #38

If you’re into this sort of thing — a few years back, a little-known artist named Grimes posted a really great tutorial on using Ableton to make music. https://web.archive.org/web/20150831081620/http://actuallygr...

You can sometimes get a free Live Lite license from apps or on Splice. You can get one cheap with a controller, which I recommend having anyway. It's a lot easier to demo sounds you make/find while working on music with pads or keys.

Re: Get started making music

#47

Post by akyu »

0898 wrote: post #30

Question: with pre-made loops it seems fairly easy to make something that sounds decent. Is it okay if it’s really that easy? Could you put a few of these together and release a track? Should it be “hard”? I’m sure most producers have fiendishly complex arrangements. But do some producers basically paint by numbers?

Make the best songs you can make with the skill level you have now. Too easy or too hard is irrelevant really. Is the song good? And maybe more importantly, are you having fun? When you ask a musician about what is the best song they ever wrote, it is fairly common for them to say that their best song was the easiest to write.

Re: Get started making music

#49

Post by Kye »

junon wrote: post #41
0898 wrote: post #30

Question: with pre-made loops it seems fairly easy to make something that sounds decent. Is it okay if it’s really that easy? Could you put a few of these together and release a track? Should it be “hard”? I’m sure most producers have fiendishly complex arrangements. But do some producers basically paint by numbers?

If an artist uses premade samples (by "samples" here I'm talking about loops, not normal sampling) and do nothing to transform it, it's generally really easy to hear. One, because it's usually quite boring. Two, usually because we've heard the samples a hundred times before and know roughly where they came from, or at least where they've been used before. That being said, most large artists do percussion and whatnot…

On the history of breakbeats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJf9Jptq7VY

It's unfortunate the guy who made the drum pattern so much modern music is built on apparently died broke and unhomed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_C._Coleman

Re: Get started making music

#50

Post by Applejinx »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #32
jerrygoyal wrote: post #6

I always liked listening to edm and when I first got to know that you just need a laptop and DAW to make tracks the idea of becoming an edm artist sounded exciting and glamorous to me. (like alan walker, martin grx) I installed FL Studio and tried my hand on making some beats ( https://youtube.com/channel/UClKt2vzomuegCDA45SU6FbA/videos ). Before I spent too much time on it I released it's actually less about making…

> I installed FL Studio and tried my hand on making some beats ( https://youtube.com/channel/UClKt2vzomuegCDA45SU6FbA/videos ). Before I spent too much time on it I released From 1990 to 2007, I owned a (vinyl) record store (B&M then ecomm) that catered to DJs. I got to listen to quite a bit of "dance music". The early, mid, and even late 90s was jammed packed with creativity and innovative sounds. Eventually things…

Dance music seems awful simple but if it's being played live there's a very simple quality test which is, are people dancing to the music?

If you're just on your computer in your room, making beats and perhaps not even moving to them because to you it seems trivial and all about the marketing, you might be glossing over a fundamental part of the music. Seeing what moves an actual dance floor full of real people is important feedback.

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