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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#131

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

tomduncalf wrote: post #110
iainctduncan wrote: post #81

Whether you like Ableton Live or not relative to other options is a matter of preference, but regardless, the folks who run Ableton are pretty cool: - run by real musicians who play shows, it came out of a scratched personal itch - so far, good new owners of Cycling 74, the bug squash numbers in the last couple of releases were stellar - totally hacker friendly, they know people release disassembled Python code for c…

Nice work on Scheme for Max! Much less impressive, but I spent a bit of time building a simple M4L device a while back using Typescript, and put some effort into figuring out how to make TS play nice(r) with the M4L API (the JS support in Max is pretty basic). I never got around to splitting it out into its own reusable module but it might be of interest to anyone interested in playing with scripting Ableton from Max…

Ardour uses Lua as its scripting language. But then of course, it's also 100% open source, so you don't have to rely on what is made accessible via the scripting language. You can just change the actual source.

Of course, some people don't see things that way:

https://discourse.ardour.org/t/is-open-source-a-diversion-fr...

Re: Get started making music

#132

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

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…

> Also FWIW, it's without doubt in my mind the best DAW by a long stretch

You did try to add some caveats to this, but I think it's really, really important to stress that there is no "best DAW". Workflows for audio production vary dramatically, and while Live is a very, very cool program, there are plenty of workflows for which it be inappropriate at worst, and not the best choice at best.

Fortunately, these days there's a DAW for everyone, and it sounds as if you've found yours.

Re: Get started making music

#133

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

gpcr1949 wrote: post #15
HamburgerEmoji wrote: post #7

Pretty cool. If you like Ableton but would prefer to use a more obscure underdog for some reason, there's Bitwig.

which is also by far the best DAW that runs natively on Linux (warning: it costs money, though well worth it)

Bitwig is amazing and awesome, but this still applies:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29060000

Re: Get started making music

#134

Post by gavinray »

yobbo wrote: post #85

To anyone who thinks "it is easy", try this experiment: recreate a popular song (+100M views on YT for example) in some DAW. (the songs are produced in similar DAWs.) You won't be able to recreate the vocals, but you should be able to recreate the backing track almost identically. Put the original in right ear, your version in the left ear, and iterate until switching between versions sounds identical. Over 100s of h…

You can use Machine Learning tools to isolate the vocals from the original song. I've done this exact thing (song recreation/transcribing) as part of taking music theory lessons.

For anyone else who would like to try this, I will share how to do it:

  1. Use one of the popular models for Source Separation. Facebook's is called "Demucs" and one of the best. Deezer's is called "Spleeter", also very good, and then there's "OpenUnmix".
There's a webservice to separate a song using Demucs here:

https://demucs.danielfrg.com/

And a great Dockerized webapp that lets you choose from several models and parameters here:

https://github.com/JeffreyCA/spleeter-web

Otherwise you can just install them locally and run them through the CLI, it's pretty easy (one command)

https://github.com/facebookresearch/demucs#for-musicians

https://github.com/deezer/spleeter#quick-start

  2. Now you can take the isolated vocals, and build the rest of the song yourself
I've also found that it really helps to be able to listen to each of the parts of the song in isolation when trying to recreate them.

The drums, the bassline, the lead/synth, etc. It can be hard to distinguish notes when they all run together. You can use an EQ to try to single out instruments but it's harder.

Hope this is helpful to someone.

Re: Get started making music

#135

Post by dmje »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #132
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…

> Also FWIW, it's without doubt in my mind the best DAW by a long stretch You did try to add some caveats to this, but I think it's really, really important to stress that there is no "best DAW". Workflows for audio production vary dramatically, and while Live is a very, very cool program, there are plenty of workflows for which it be inappropriate at worst, and not the best choice at best. Fortunately, these days th…

I'll take that!

Re: Get started making music

#136

Post by gavinray »

tomduncalf wrote: post #110
iainctduncan wrote: post #81

Whether you like Ableton Live or not relative to other options is a matter of preference, but regardless, the folks who run Ableton are pretty cool: - run by real musicians who play shows, it came out of a scratched personal itch - so far, good new owners of Cycling 74, the bug squash numbers in the last couple of releases were stellar - totally hacker friendly, they know people release disassembled Python code for c…

Nice work on Scheme for Max! Much less impressive, but I spent a bit of time building a simple M4L device a while back using Typescript, and put some effort into figuring out how to make TS play nice(r) with the M4L API (the JS support in Max is pretty basic). I never got around to splitting it out into its own reusable module but it might be of interest to anyone interested in playing with scripting Ableton from Max…

  > "Would be interested to know how Ableton’s scriptability compares to some other DAWs… I know Tracktion and Bitwig have some degree of JS support, and Reaper has its own scripting language. Personally I’d love it Ableton made the Python API etc. a bit more official but I can of course understand why they don’t."
There's nothing that really holds a candle to REAPER's scripting API.

For interpreted scripts, it supports Lua/Python/Eel (simple C-like language):

https://mespotin.uber.space/Ultraschall/Reaper_Api_Documenta...

It also has a C/C++ native extension API, and a community Rust API. I have translated the API into C# and D.

https://github.com/justinfrankel/reaper-sdk/blob/main/sdk/re...

https://github.com/helgoboss/reaper-rs

The total number of (stock) API functions is ~1,000. Some core parts of REAPER itself like it's piano roll and media browser are written using it's own plugin API.

It supports making audio plugins with GUI's that hot-reload and have a realtime variable + debugger panel using the Eel language (called "JSFX"). Many of the user-created JSFX are better than paid plugins I've used.

https://www.reaper.fm/sdk/js/js.php

The scripting community is very large and active.

https://forum.cockos.com/forumdisplay.php?f=3

It has an in-DAW IDE with intellisense. There are multiple community GUI frameworks, including bindings to ImGui, etc.

https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=2416501

https://github.com/cfillion/reaimgui

Really blows your mind.

(I am familiar with the docs for Tracktion's JS API, know about Studio One's hush-hush JS scripting, Renoise's Lua scripting, Ardour's scripting, etc.)

Re: Get started making music

#137

Post by iainctduncan »

karmickoala wrote: post #127
iainctduncan wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have read his work, and also am friends with many university and conservatory music teachers who have know some prodigies. I'm sorry... you're wrong. The world is full of thousands and thousands of musicians who had 10k hours perfect deliberate practice from age 3 with world class teachers and don't become those people . Do they become great musicians? sure! Do they become the Pat Methenies? very very rarely. Even…

If someone is reading this and is getting demotivated to apply yourself to any field that you like because you think you don't have the skills, please, don't. Parent isn't saying that you shouldn't try. We're usually terrible to estimate our own abilities. How many times you thought you were incapable of doing something and you end up doing it? My own anecdotal example. I stopped playing music years ago because I tho…

Thanks, you're totally right to point this out. One should no more give up music because of the geniuses out there than one should stop playing golf or basketball because becoming Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan isn't going to be just a matter of practicing hard.

Most adults overestimate how fast they should improve in the short term and really underestimate how far they can get by just practicing regularly and consistently over many years.

Re: Get started making music

#138

Post by unobatbayar »

The songs artist/song they've used to teach the music concepts are astounding. (A Tribe Called Quest - “Award Tour”, Grimes, Joy Division, etc.).

They must have really talented people working with them, it's Ableton afterall.

Re: Get started making music

#139

Post by geekster777 »

iainctduncan wrote: post #92
analog31 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a long interview with Rick Beato and Pat Metheny. My opinion is that among "younger" jazz musicians, Metheny has a rare gift for writing catchy melodies. He can write melodies that sound like folk songs, or like the most advanced deep jazz tunes, or both at the same time, pretty much on demand. He said nobody teaches how to do this. You can study composition and arrangement, but they won't teach you how to cr…

Look, I'm a jazz player and do music pedagogy stuff. It's kind of silly to listen to Metheny about how to learn things, the dude was a complete prodigy (not an attack on your comment, just an aside). He was teaching at the most prestigious music school after attending for a year or some crazy thing. Music has a very small elite of people who's brains wired very differently and basically have super powers compared to…

I've struggled with the accuracy of statements like this as someone who writes a lot of music. Writing the melodies is always the easiest part (lyrics are the hardest). So how much is it brain wiring vs just practicing an order of magnitude or two more than most? I have thousands of hours spent improvising over random songs - just setting Spotify to shuffle and jamming to whatever pops up. It's fun for me, and something I generally do to procrastinate other work. I couldn't imagine someone practicing nearly as much if they didn't innately enjoy it. So it makes me wonder, is it fun because I'm good at it, or did I get good at it because I find it fun? I personally believe the latter, but it's hard to really tease apart the nature vs nurture in such a subjective art. It reminds me of comic artists trying to illustrate just how much art they have to produce to go from amateur to pro.

Note, I don't mean to imply I'm part of that small elite you mention. I'm no prodigy, it's just that I've had many musicians (in far less competitive circles) express a similar sentiment about my skills.

Re: Get started making music

#140

Post by iainctduncan »

geekster777 wrote: post #139
iainctduncan wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I'm a jazz player and do music pedagogy stuff. It's kind of silly to listen to Metheny about how to learn things, the dude was a complete prodigy (not an attack on your comment, just an aside). He was teaching at the most prestigious music school after attending for a year or some crazy thing. Music has a very small elite of people who's brains wired very differently and basically have super powers compared to…

I've struggled with the accuracy of statements like this as someone who writes a lot of music. Writing the melodies is always the easiest part (lyrics are the hardest). So how much is it brain wiring vs just practicing an order of magnitude or two more than most? I have thousands of hours spent improvising over random songs - just setting Spotify to shuffle and jamming to whatever pops up. It's fun for me, and someth…

What I'm saying is more that when people like Metheny say "you can't teach melody writing", they mean "no one could teach me melody writing, it's just there". And then they extrapolate to say "no one can teach anyone melody writing", which is complete nonsense. I can, guaranteed, teach a regular person tons on how to learn to write better melodies. Can I teach a Metheny how to improve his melodies? Of course not! (Nor will my improvisation ever by even remotely in his ballpark...)

Because for me, they were never "just there". I learnt improvisation by listening, playing, memorizing, and analyzing over many years. It never came easy. So yeah, I know tons of the obstacles regular people will face, and lots of things that might get them unstuck.

A really fascinating interview is the film of Bill Evans talking about this. Surprising, he says it was never easy for him either. So damn, he must have worked hard.

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