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Get started making music

learningmusic.ableton.com

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Re: Get started making music

#141

Post by loxias »

daydream wrote: post #58
loxias wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obscure, and yet technically superior in all ways... Bitwig == Ableton++, after Ableton management vetoed engineering's desire to do a major and much needed architectural rewrite. As I understand it, they didn't see how tearing down all the legacy code and building something more stable and modular would help them sell more licenses the next year. Hence, we have Bitwig. I like it as one of the rare examples of engine…

Bitwig was founded in 2009 (from Wikipedia). Seems like it’s worked out fine for both Bitwig and Ableton.

Sorry, I don't understand your comment, I mean, I don't get the point? :)

I guess it was founded in 2009? (who am I to argue with wikipedia!), but wasn't "real" until 2013 or 2014. I know this because I was there, working our booth at NAMM, and chatting with the Bitwig devs about the architecture. :)

And yeah, it's worked out fine for Bitwig and Ableton. Though I'm still not that impressed with any Ableton release after 7.

Re: Get started making music

#142

Post by ldehaan »

anonymouse008 wrote: post #128
Slow_Hand wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Record producer/writer here. You're on the nose with this. Simplicity and clarity are skills, like writing essays, that are refined over many many years to make something appear effortless. You also allude to it, but there is a staggering amount of unseen effort that also goes into the writing and arranging of the song. Listeners only experience the end product and the final arrangement. For simple melodies it seems…

Any chance we’ve heard your work just in daily browsing? Or mind pointing us to your work? Would love to associate this comment’s context to the songs we hear

It's obviously Eminem.

Re: Get started making music

#143

Post by sullyj3 »

petecooper wrote: post #80

This is a nitpick. For clarity: the company/vendor is Ableton, their flagship product is Live. Ableton Live is its full name. Ableton Live. Compare Apple Logic Pro, Steinberg Cubase, Image Line FL Studio, and so on. Respectfully, please try not to refer to the product as Ableton, e.g. "I made […] in Ableton". It was done in Ableton Live, or just Live in a pinch. (This used to really wind me up back in the old days, b…

But... why? Why is important that people use the technically correct name rather than the more convenient one that's in common use already?

Re: Get started making music

#144

Post by joeberon »

nonbirithm wrote: post #109
joeberon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty common beginner's trap, to have your motivation be to release music rather than in creating music itself. For basically any beginner you need many years to get to the point where that should be a consideration. Your main motivation should be fun and enjoyment of making the music. Ironically this is what actually differentiates the greats from those that struggle: the former make music primarily for th…

What I keep thinking is that "making X primarily for others" is intended to mean "other people are the driving influence on what kind of X you produce", in a sense that you lose your individuality by creating only what other people want. However, I often think it's intended to mean "producing X so that other people can consume X, regardless of what results." And I have frequently heard that it means "producing X so t…

> At an overarching level, my primary wish in life is to leave something in the world that serves as an artifact of what kind of person I was. Maybe this wish is at fault and I ought to get a better wish instead, or I'll be destroying my drive for creation at every turn. But in the present, this is how I honestly feel.

Yes, I'm saying you would be better off dropping that, and instead just engaging in pure creation without any dependencies.

> Why would I be doing this if I was only going to keep all of it to myself?

That's my whole point. You shouldn't need a reason beyond "fun" or "just because" or even "keeping the hands/ears busy".

People are unreliable, having reasons that depend on other people are unreliable. Letting go of that and having only reasons that depend on yourself is reliable.

> Otherwise, the entire effort is nothing but toil with no sense of reward.

Once again, it is entirely possible to just do it without any sense of reward. I know because I've developed this mindset, while I used to crave reward.

Re: Get started making music

#145

Post by Spionbil »

Kye wrote: post #42
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…

By scale limiting you mean showing you the scales? It's a setting in the piano roll which highlights the notes in the scale you select. Alternatively showing you which scale you've placed notes in if you've made something yourself.

Re: Get started making music

#146

Post by 112233 »

dfxm12 wrote: post #70

I feel like this crowd would be more interested in Pure Data: https://puredata.info/ It's an open source visual programming language for music (with some plug ins for visualizations, too). Years ago, I had fun with it, taking Rock Band guitars and turning them into synths, or "scratching" wav files with a DJ Hero controller.

The most fun I remember having with this kind of tools was with Audiomulch. Dunno if it’s still alive. Almost zero time-to-fun, no need for tedious pre-setup before your patch is playable.

Re: Get started making music

#147

Post by Kye »

Spionbil wrote: post #145
Kye wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By scale limiting you mean showing you the scales? It's a setting in the piano roll which highlights the notes in the scale you select. Alternatively showing you which scale you've placed notes in if you've made something yourself.

I mean scale limiting as in restricting to a scale. The highlighting was all I could find in FL Studio. Reaper has it in the form of scale snapping. Ableton starts with highlighting, but can fold a clip down to only show notes in the scale. Bitwig doesn't have it at all and, last I checked, broke the only workaround.

The contempt shown for people who can't remember scales on DAW forums suggests most developers don't support this either out of fear of their vocal users or because they agree. Even highlighting brings the knives out.

Re: Get started making music

#149

Post by eashman »

iainctduncan wrote: post #104
laserlight wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Music has a very small elite of people who's brains wired very differently and basically have super powers compared to the rest of us Anders Ericsson, known for his book Peak on deliberate practice, would probably disagree. He tells the stories of prodigies like Mozart, Shakespeare, and Tiger Woods. Common to all is an immersion with their practice from the early ages. Of course, this is not a proof against some pe…

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…

Where are you studying Music Tech? What was your undergraduate background? I’m curious if you found a formal tech education is as important in what today is often more an applied art compared to when these tools were so expensive and esoteric.

Re: Get started making music

#150

Post by chiefalchemist »

kziller wrote: post #126
chiefalchemist wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I didn't know that. Thanks. (WTF? Smh). After 17 yrs of selling music - to say nothing of the loads I consumed prior and since - the evolution never crossed my mind. But to take your insight to the next logic step...where is all this innovation and creativity? If the means raised raised the tide, where is the result? The trend, again following your observation, should be a continuous spiral up? Now should be The…

I’m confused why you took such offense to that, I was just trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that perhaps you were exaggerating on your distaste for modern dance music. Maybe I misspoke. If you’re aware of the evolution and still connected to the music scene, I am not sure how you could look at the state of electronic music today and not find a slew of artists and albums released in the past twenty years th…

Everywhere? But that violates my point. The lowering of the bar has lowered quality and thus increased noise. The signal to noise ratio sucks. I would hope you know this already ;)

Maybe go back and reread my comment? Keep in mind it's based on 17 yrs as a shoppe owner, in addition to the years prior and since as a dedicated music aficionado. It's not a perspective you'll get often, as it's not a life many have lived ;)

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