15 ms·
Get Started Making Music
- dang 7y agoA thread from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628
- thrwn_frthr_awy 7y agoAnd one from 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20272346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20272346
- dang 7y agoGood catch! We should have marked this one a dupe in that case, but missed it and will leave it now.
- cubano 7y agoOh 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 musical concepts actually relate to each other. Maybe I will shut up and, instead of bitching, actual do something useful and create such a tutorial, using my own beats, progressions, and melodies.
- gnulynnux 7y agoI don't know anything about making music and haven't really engaged much with other such tutorials. Those still exist and have their place, but I like this, and it lets me explore with concepts. This is fun and I like it
- uhoh-itsmaciek 7y agoThere are a lot of different ways to make music, and just as many ways to learn how to do so.
- fenwick67 7y agoDid you go past the first page? It does eventually start talking about scales etc.
- aylmao 7y agoExactly. It even has an advanced topics section with an intro pentatonic and octatonic scales, triads, inversions and whatnot— a pretty cool and practical intro to all these topics IMO.
- fao_ 7y ago"Better" is relative. People will learn that by looking at what other artists are doing and figuring it out themselves, and they will remember it better for that reason. Everyone I know who is into making music (which includes a large mix of professional and non-professional musicians) started out in electronic music by putting interesting sounds together, and then by imitating what their favourite artists have done. What you describe is like starting out an art course by teaching students to mix colour -- describing the colour spectrum, which colours lead to what, etc. But really the students will learn all of that and much, much more by just experimenting with combining random colours and seeing what they get out of it, and sharing and comparing with the rest of the class. I think most people have a prespondence to teach theory first -- indeed, this is how it is generally done in academic settings, but people tend to learn better practicing something first, and then seeing how the theory generalizes what they have learned. After all, you can't really learn something properly until you have experience with it. I know this, because both of my parents are teachers -- one taught an adult class for decades and is now teaching children, the other is currently long-distance tutor for a university course, and has done/is doing art classes. But here, have a quote: According to studies, students who practise what they’re learning first-hand are three and a half times more likely to retain that knowledge than when they’re sitting in a lecture room, hand-scribing notes. (https://www.studyinternational.com/news/bridging-the-gap-between-theory-and-practice-in-higher-education/ https://www.studyinternational.com/news/bridging-the-gap-bet...)
- filoleg 7y agoThank you for your comment, the post formulated extremely well what i was thinking about for a long time, but couldnt express in such a clear way. I found this holds true for me with many things, not just music or any arts in general. That’s how it worked for me with learning computer science as well. I found that lecture slides and book chapters were waaaaay more useful for me after i attempted the relevant homework assignments and experimented on my won, as opposed to the other way around, where i just read a bunch of theory concepts without much context or immediate useful application. Reading after attempting and experimenting felt like i was filling out the missing gaps of a puzzle piece, as opposed to completing a puzzle piece sequentially, starting with the top left corner and going left to right and then top to bottom.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoNo true Scotsman, eh? > Is paint-by-numbers making art? Sure, why not? I have a paint-by-numbers a mate coloured in hung up on a wall. Is there anything wrong with an 'intro to making and using loops'? Maybe it'll get a few people interested enough to go through your tutorial.
- haunter 7y agoI think you are looking from the wrong way. Imagine there is a language you don't speak but you get a phrasebook with 100 useful sentences. Like general experssions what to say, how to ask etc. Now if you visit a country where they speak this language it will be very useful. You don't know the grammar, you don't even know the proper pronunciation. Yet you already have a base to build upon and express yourself. This site is like that. You don't _have to_ know music theory and such to start making music. But that's not just the music I'd say the same applies to writing as well.
- vonseel 7y agoI have been playing and writing music for 20 years and learned by ear. I have minimal theory training and really have to look things up to tell you theory behind anything I’m writing unless you just want to know chord names. Your description is one of the best analogies I’ve heard. I can jump into a foreign country and learn the language through immersion, and I’ll pick things up and learn by trial and error, slowly improving as people point out my flaws. Eventually, I’ll speak the language fluently. Music is a rewarding hobby. I wish more people played and wrote music instead of things way more popular like video games. I bought a guitar for a nephew once, since I started playing when I was his age (10). Ultimately, I think playing on his iPad or Nintendo DS was just easier than learning something like electric guitar which requires patience and some pain for a beginner.
- indigochill 7y ago>Ultimately, I think playing on his iPad or Nintendo DS was just easier than learning something like electric guitar which requires patience and some pain for a beginner. I picked up guitar a little later than you, but what turned it from passing amusement (took some basic lessons) to lifestyle (still play almost two decades later) for me was forming a band with a friend who happened to be decent at songwriting and figuring out accompaniments to his songs. Much like with other things, a good social experience significantly improves the overall experience. I still write music solo, but I personally don't find it nearly as rewarding without a partner to bounce ideas off of and give/get ideas/critique.
- whiddershins 7y agoI agree with you but I would put it differently. The notion that music is at all a grid is just ... not true. It’s true of a tiny subset of music. I use ableton (and grids) all the time but this way of thinking about “music” is just reinforcing a weird picture of what it is. Even scales and theory and even music notation enforce a confusing deconstruction of what music is. But it’s really hard to articulate this.
- tomcam 7y agoA ridiculously high percentage of music producers these days are making serious bank by taking precisely this approach.
- vonseel 7y agoI love the grid, but if you follow the grid too strictly, all your music will sound sterile and lifeless. Especially if all the instrumentation is programmed. Maybe a real drummer playing to a click track can help avoid that.
- human20190310 7y ago> The notion that music is at all a grid is just ... not true. Nevertheless you can still make some music with a grid.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoOf course you can. But if you can only make music with a grid - in fact if you can only imagine music with a grid - that's not necessarily ideal. Ableton is actually textbook modernism - mechanised regular repeating patterns, both in the GUI and in the kind of music it encourages. Which is fine as far as it goes - as long as you realise there are other possibilities, and that that kind of modernism is more than a century old now.
- jpdarago 7y agoI don't think the grid is the problem, it just happens that it's very easy in DAWs to make patterns that are very short (e.g. a 1-2 bar loop) and then arrange them in these 1-2 bar units. Very likely that will sound a bit stiff, repetitive and predictable, which works in some genres but not others. Personally, trying to think in patterns that only repeat at 4-8 bars helped me out avoid that, while still using the grid.
- mntmoss 7y agoIt takes a whole chapter to explain rhythm because I have witnessed people spend literally over an hour stuck on "counting out a measure" with varying note lengths. This series is starting where a from-scratch musical education must start. An education for theory training does end up focused on note interval structures, and there's an endless amount to talk about there, but then, you don't need a great deal of traditional theory for simple songwriting - major and minor triads will suffice. This tutorial gets those but in my skimming of it seemed to stop short of trying to explain circle of fifths usage, which is probably the one most essential thing to make composition in the large go from "I have to guess and check" to "I have a guideline to work from that lets me calculate ahead."
- aylmao 7y agoHey pal, do follow the tutorial. Music keys, scales, chords + progressions, baselines, melodies, etc are all covered with examples and/or exercises. It's not as deep as a full music theory course but I don't think anyone is claiming this will get you a music major ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. It even has an advanced topics section with an intro to pentatonic and octatonic scales, triads and inversions; check it out in the menu.
- cubano 7y agoHey everyone...my bad...no I did not go past the first page, so my apologies about that. Thanks to all for the intense reprimands.
- tomcam 7y agoDid you, ah, actually follow the tutorial?
- AngryData 7y agoYou don't need to know anything about music theory to make music. You don't even need to know what a note is to make music, music predates every concept you just mentioned and it likely predates language. It seems pretty elitist to assume you need all or any of that to make music. Does it help? Sure, in the same way art classes help you make art. But you don't need to take an art class to paint a beautiful picture with time and dedication.
- airbreather 7y agoAnd 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.
- readhn 7y ago> Is paint-by-numbers making art? haha is this art? Do you really need to go to school for a decade /study art to be able to paint this? https://shorturl.at/krYZ4 https://shorturl.at/krYZ4
- richrichardsson 7y agoCan someone please flag this bullshit spam reply please.
- readhn 7y agoits my opinion. feel free to express yours.
- seph-reed 7y agoJust want you to know someone else agrees.
- seph-reed 7y agoIt's been kind of eating at me a bit. I want people to get into music, so what about this could feel so bad? After a day of sitting on the thought, I think it's this: They come at it from the most over-glorified, super-high, angle. The place where all of the fame to talent ratio is wayyyy on the fame side. It's not that talented people don't loop, but there's already enough people falling into that music trap without it being literally the first thing they're introduced to musically. Coming at it from drum loops first seems like a good way to ruin any chance a person had of being patient with the practice. Why work for years to hone in on an instrument when it sounds so much better to just play prefab loops?
- coldtea 7y ago>Oh my...this is hardly "making music". This is a tutorial. Learning scales on the piano is hardly "making music" either. >Is paint-by-numbers making art? I sure don't think so, so neither is this. Painting by number surely is one, albeit limited, form of expression, and thus art. And if you could re-arrange the numbers and change colors, and add your own parts (like you can here) it would be 100% art. >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 musical concepts actually relate to each other. That would be better to make e.g. a classical or jazz musician. (I was trained when young in those things). This is for another style of music, that could not give less fucks about those "musical concepts" (you can use some of them - and some are covered in the tutorial -, but you can do it instinctively too, or it can bypass it altogether -- great techno tracks using just one chord for example, or of indeterminate tonality, are very common), but which still enables all kinds of expression (to the point of creating works that can move listeners to tears and heightened emotional states).
- PavlovsCat 7y agoPro/Fasttracker in the browser: https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/ https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/ And it can load modules directly from modarchive and modules.pl, too! e.g https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.modarchive.org%2Fdownloads.php%3Fmoduleid%3D75418 https://www.stef.be/bassoontracker/?file=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.m... FWIW, that's how I learned making music, just learning the commands and making things I like by ear. Though being a kid with no internet probably helped.
- dysoco 7y agoI might be missing something here but I click record, play some notes with the A-Z keys, stop the recording, and when I click play nothing happens (I hear no audio) however with the demos I hear the audio. Any ideas what am I missing? EDIT: I was supposed to add a sample (in the Edit Samples tab) in case anyone was confused like me.
- PavlovsCat 7y agoLoading a song and using its samples is best to start out with IMO; not just beause it's easier, but because the instruments also tend to be "in tune" (relative to each other)
- CJStryker 7y agoI need karma!!
- jldugger 7y agoIntro page vaguely reminds me of DropMix, which has unfortunately been EoL'd.
- johnhess 7y agoIronically for the name, ableton turns out not to be accessible for the blind.
- big_chungus 7y agoIt'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 enough people would buy t to ever make it a worth-while investment.
- ddunkin 7y agoIt 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.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jedimastert 7y agoI just did an interview with a (blind) professor from Berklee that run an assistive music technology program and lab that has been using Pro Tools for quite some time. He's released a pile of scripts called "Flo Tools"[0] to assist with visually impaired use. [0]: http://flotools.org/ http://flotools.org/
- johnhess 7y agoPerhaps the reason to make it accessible is not because of market share. It turns out that other audio and (yes, even video!) mixing software is accessible, so it's certainly not insurmountable.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- umvi 7y agoPretty cool! It's like FLStudio-lite in the browser
- yummypaint 7y agoSpeaking of in browser sequencers/synths: https://www.audiotool.com/ https://www.audiotool.com/
- S_A_P 7y agoI 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.
- vonseel 7y agoI use both Logic and Ableton. What about the arrangement is so difficult for you!? my complaints about Ableton are much more editing-centric. I also greatly miss take folders when I work in Ableton, and I prefer mixing with busses to grouping tracks in Ableton.
- fenwick67 7y agoWait, were you arranging in the session view and not in the arrangement view?
- S_A_P 7y agoNo- It seemed that when I would try to use arrangement view to string sessions together, they seemed disconnected from the session I was just editing. I basically just end up using Push to sample chop and then move what I find to other software or hardware.
- MrScruff 7y agoI think the general workflow is session view for initial idea exploration to come up with a set of parts that you can ‘perform’. Then once you are happy you record that into arrangement and finish the track from there. Probably more applicable to loop based music where the arrangement is primarily automation and clip start/stop events though.
- rock_hard 7y agoI 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!
- adamnemecek 7y agoI've been working on an IDE for music composition. I'll launch soon http://ngrid.io http://ngrid.io.
- WhitneyLand 7y agoIs there a way to try it or learn more before signup/email list sub? I started composing about a year ago using general tools like CuBase and Garage Band and wow, it's tedious, even when the initial sketch is worked out before hand on a keyboard. There are just a ton of ideas that come to mind on how it could be an order of magnitude more efficient. Maybe there are apps that don't focus so much on production, that do a better job solely for the writing music part?
- bq313 7y agoI am not sure how familiar you are with notation, but you might wanna consider Dorico, it is focused more on writing than on production bus still has a lot of features to make it sound pleasant (as opposed to other notation programs like Finale or Sibelius.) It is a sort of notation program / DAW hybrid that I think is a really interesting crossover / niche. Another suggestion might be to check out Synfire. (I have no experience with Synfire though, yet)
- w56rjrtyu6ru 7y agoAwesome! Looking forward to it!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- chevas 7y agoThere's a delay when trying to hit stop on any of the boxes. It's really quite frustrating. I really like this idea. This is something I want to explore as a non-music person.
- yellow_postit 7y agoCheckout Pocket Operators from Teenage Engineering if you haven't seen them already. Its a lovely (to me) line of physical synths that are quite inexpensive < $30 USD and also as a non-music person really got me started down a path of wanting to learn more.
- backpropaganda 7y agoPOs were a bit too limited for me. The sequencer isn't powerful enough to make anything more complex than basic chiptunes. Not to diss on PO. I was super hyped about it as well, and would have liked to know about its limitations before buying it. Anyone of the numerous phone apps would be a cheaper and better replacement for a PO. What got me started in music was Garageband. It's free (for macos users) and quite simple and intuitive. It's not as fully-featured as something like Ableton, but quite capable for making professional-level songs.
- criddell 7y agoIt's pretty remarkable to see what people do with Garageband even on iPhones. I bought an interface for my guitar ($20) and have played around with Garageband on my iPad and just playing with the amps is a lot of fun. It's a very low friction way to record myself playing while practicing and since I'm using headphones, I'm not irritating everybody around me with my terrible playing. One complaint about Garageband (and Cubase - a copy of that came with my Yamaha amp), is the lack of tutorials for people like me. I'd love a start-to-finish tutorial for recording a toy song that includes recording my instrument on top of simple drums and maybe one or two other virtual instruments.
- badfrog 7y ago> There's a delay when trying to hit stop on any of the boxes. It's really quite frustrating. They all start and stop at the beginning of a measure so that it sounds natural/intentional no matter what you click on and when.
- milesward 7y agoAbleton works how my brain works for music. It's lovely :)
- milesward 7y agoIf you wanna hear some outputs: https://soundcloud.com/funkitekture https://soundcloud.com/funkitekture
- pacomerh 7y agoThis is great!, I thought they were only gonna do a simple piano roll and start/stop, they touch on pretty good topics including song structure, chords, modes, scales, diatonic triads, voicing, etc. This is a pretty good intro to getting into Ableton Live really. I come from using Cubase and honestly the new Live is very capable for building fluid songs, it has so many features now and the interface makes it really easy to draw automation curves, set different timings, route midi, build drum kits, etc.
- PascLeRasc 7y agoThis is incredible, I love it. I've recently switched to using Ableton exclusively for making music, it feels like more of an instrument than a computer program to me. It's so expressive and lets me make the sounds I want to hear as well as things I can't even conceive of. I can't really articulate what it is about Ableton, but I really love it and I'm so thankful that it's around. If anyone wants more, Ableton also has a synthesizer playground site at https://learningsynths.ableton.com/ https://learningsynths.ableton.com/.
- vonseel 7y agoI love the learning synths site. I envy the guys who get to make these websites for a living.
- tiborsaas 7y agoDid you edit your comment? I don't get the downvotes :/ edit: I don't get the donwvotes on my comment of not getting other peoples downvotes :) Ok, I guess I asked for it :)
- codesternews 7y agoAre you a programmer? Could you please share your creations? Why you use these tools? I wanted to learn but I do not know where to start. Just asking out of curiosity. Thanks
- dirkk0 7y agoI recommend starting with p5.js. If you need synchronized tracks, add Tone.js to the mix. The Ableton website also uses Tone.js. https://tonejs.github.io/ https://tonejs.github.io/
- NoWizards 7y agoi loved it
- timwayne16 7y agoХорошо получилось, удачи в развитие сайта!
- temptemptemp111 7y agoThere's no reason for them not to support Linux besides a deal with Microsoft/Apple. It would enable a lot of creators that can't afford Apple, and they'd sell more licenses than it would cost them to support.
- bauerd 7y agoOn a side note, this was written (partly) in Elm: https://twitter.com/abletondev/status/861580662620508160 https://twitter.com/abletondev/status/861580662620508160
- jamil7 7y agoI'm fairly sure Elm was ripped out and replaced with TS later on.
- gullibleAndVain 7y agoYeah, not sure if this is the same but here's a tweet about some recent tech usage https://twitter.com/AbletonDev/status/1143880805317525506 https://twitter.com/AbletonDev/status/1143880805317525506 "Running on Web Audio, WebAssembly and WebGL. Made with three.js, Tone.js, anime.js and React using TypeScript and much "
- klemola 7y agoThat tweet is about the newer learningmusic.ableton.com. Apparently a different project, different stack.
- fractalf 7y agoAbleton is great and paved the way for a more creative and intuitive workflow! I switched from Cubase very early on and never looked back. That is, until I found Bitwig (https://www.bitwig.com https://www.bitwig.com) which supports Linux! They also deserve a shout out taking it even further!
- kristiandupont 7y agoBitwig looks really promising. But how is the VST landscape? Is it even supported? EDIT: sorry, my question was about whether Linux supports VST. I would assume that Bitwig did at v0.1 :-)
- jcelerier 7y agoyes, both vst 2 and vst 3 ; and unlike ableton, bitwig integrates a 32 bit vst bridge and allows to run VSTs in external processes if some are crashy
- atoav 7y agoLongtime Bitwig user here that switched there after Ableton 9 which I used since the very start. Bitwig is quite similar to Ableton in terms of capabilities, I never tried this myself, but there seems to be a way (assuming you want Windows VSTs on Linux) https://answers.bitwig.com/questions/624/vst-windows-on-linux-with-bitwig https://answers.bitwig.com/questions/624/vst-windows-on-linu... I am perfectly happy with the built-in stuff however. Because of bitwigs extremely strong modulation engine the standard effects are probably the most powerful and expressive ones out there.
- w56rjrtyu6ru 7y agoI don't remember how well it integrated with Bitwig - but a few years ago VST support on Linux using Wine, Jack and Carla (https://github.com/falkTX/Carla https://github.com/falkTX/Carla) was pretty solid.
- OskarS 7y agoAs a person developing VSTs, BitWig is supports them THE BEST. BitWig handles VSTs better than almost any other host, including (optional, but you should do it!) sandboxing and proper HiDPI support. You can absolutely make VSTs for Linux, but I imagine that very few people do.
- Heliosmaster 7y agoTalking about synths, I can definitely recommend VCV Rack [0], an open-source virtual modular synth! What I mostly love is that through plugins you can find virtual versions of existing hardware modules! [0]: https://vcvrack.com/ https://vcvrack.com/
- ptah 7y agoso many toys, so little time. i played around with this for a bit but need to find time to get really stuck in
- Tepix 7y agoLooks like many of the modules need a purchase.
- jlarcombe 7y agoA lot of amazing ones don't, though. It's really worth digging in.
- caffeinewriter 7y agoIf you want to see the power of modular synths, I definitely recommend checking out some modular streamers on Twitch. Some use VCV, some use actual racks, but there's a growing community on there. https://www.twitch.tv/dronehands https://www.twitch.tv/dronehands https://www.twitch.tv/nitewurx https://www.twitch.tv/nitewurx https://www.twitch.tv/earthvomit https://www.twitch.tv/earthvomit https://www.twitch.tv/joobiedoobiedoo https://www.twitch.tv/joobiedoobiedoo
- cryptofits 7y agoThis site is the reason bookmarked were made for
- JacKTrocinskI 7y agoAbleton is top notch but for me nothing beats coming up with melodies in FL Studio's "Piano Roll", a lot of fun times spent in that program.
- taffronaut 7y agoFLStudio has a great community and Image-Line deserve kudos for their "lifetime" license model. I used it extensively for a few years and found it solid and productive. It's maybe closer to Ableton than Cubase.
- marapuru 7y agoVery cool and interesting website. I recently bought a Maschine MK2 to get into the music making thing. It surprised me how easy to use it is. My wife is a professional acoustic musician, and although she firstly was a bit hesitant with this 'instrument' she quickly turned around. And we started making music together. It's perfect for me since it is very well arranged, the buttons make sense in my head. I play a bit of guitar and always have trouble making sense of the notes in my head.
- marpstar 7y agoI'm a Maschine user as well, but I've got a background in guitar, having played in rock bands from my early teens through mid-20s. I've always been intrigued by MIDI, but always felt "limited" by piano-style keyboard MIDI controllers. Maschine really helped me break open my writers block and made playing music fun again. I can put Maschine in front of my 5 year old and he can figure it out. It makes more sense to him than my 61-key MIDI controller does.
- bartproost 7y agoI love seeing how the big brands are picking up web audio. I refuse to work on anything else these days, and it's easier than I thought when I started. Built 5 web games using tone.js for Red Bull Mind Gamers last year and just launched a site that auto generates unlimited royalty free mp3s using web audio for a dollar[1]. [1] https://strikefreemusic.com https://strikefreemusic.com
- jwyatt1995 7y agoDo you have any open source work? I've been playing around with web audio applications myself and would love to poke around.
- bartproost 7y agoI don't unfortunately. If I find some time I'll have a think about what I could open source.
- afroisalreadyin 7y agoIt's really awesome Ableton is going in this direction. Live is a beast, but it's a quite intimidating beast if you don't have experience working with DAWs and music software in general. I worked there for three years, and couldn't bring myself to learn the basics. Tutorials like these will definitely make it easier to pick the basics and start off with Live with more confidence.
- josmall 7y agohow was working there? I did a code challenge there last year but I didn't make it to the next round. Still kind of bummed about it.
- afroisalreadyin 7y agoWhen I was there it was a great place to work: Nice people, a lot of perks, beautiful office etc. Especially if you are into music, you can learn and collaborate with pretty much everyone, as making and listening to music was and is pervasive within the company. The problem was that I was in the web team, and that was not their actual focus. They have grown considerably, though, so I'm sure it has changed at least in some respects.
- josmall 7y agoSounds about right. I interviewed for a web position too. But I was really curious about the software and how I can potentially transition into it.
- rcarmo 7y agoI've been noodling with iOS music apps and MIDI hardware as a sort of ramp-up, and tried Ableton 10 Lite for a bit this summer. Really cool. Notes: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2019/09/07/1140 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2019/09/07/1140
- quirkafleeg3 7y agoTrust me, the world is better off without the sort of music I would make.
- hon3ybadg3r 7y agoI have a teenage engineering opz, I learned some new stuff in the tutorial.
- mister_hn 7y agoCan someone here say more about Ableton as employer?
- jamesb93 7y agoI have friends who work there in a number of areas and colleagues who have freelanced for them (convolution reverb for example). It is pretty nice from what I hear and the focus is very much enabling creativity before profit.
- somesortofsystm 7y agoI also have friends who work there - one in particular who has released a suite of his own creative music-making tools, which are quite popular .. and over the years I've tried to spy his influence on the Ableton product line - its there, but very subtle. It seems they've allowed him to continue his side projects (wouldn't have been easy to have shut them down, as they are quite popular) while also giving him a small piece of the Ableton product line to improve. Definitely seems like he's never gonna leave!
- mister_hn 7y agoand how's their salary compared to other Berlin companies?
- harrydry 7y agowell fuck me that wsa amazing
- floatingsmoke 7y agosee https://mixart.ist https://mixart.ist which is a great alternative.
- vectorEQ 7y agoprefer renoise, it's cheap and super easy to work with :D. Never actually liked the workflow of ableton (personal flavour i suppose), its audio engine is fairly decent, but imho for 500ish euros it costs to get the suite it's a bit expensive for what u get. Cubase has a much superior audio and processing engine like Logic Pro for mac users, and is in a similar pricing range. It has less quality built-in dps etc. ,but most DAWs lack on that. Renoise for like 50 euros is super cheap in comparison, and most dps it has have awesome performance and quality. That being said, ableton does offer a better 'live' environment for live/performance based things. on workflows, bitwig is really the innovator, as it combines workflows from different daws like cubase and ableton and lets the user itself choose its work-flow instead of forcing it upon the user.
- enqk 7y agofunnily enough, the founder/creator of renoise was working for Ableton in the early years of renoise
- vectorEQ 7y agothey mix and match a lot :) renoise is a different beast though. and Ableton is definitely not bad at all :) just a matter of preferences for me. I think some of the renoise devs used to work for cubase, so maybe this guy even whent from there to renoise to ableton. :) thanks for the info though, interesting always :)
- PavlovsCat 7y agoIs there a source for this? I never heard that before, though I know Renoise started out as a fork of NoiseTrekker so to speak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renoise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renoise > I started coding 2 years ago with this project, so I'm more musician than coder I started making music with protracker https://web.archive.org/web/20020803155023/http://noerror.scene.org/people.php?id_p=3 https://web.archive.org/web/20020803155023/http://noerror.sc...
- enqk 7y ago
- hit8run 7y agoI use Ableton for many many years now. Did this remix in one day on vacation just using the acapella and NO external plugins. https://soundcloud.com/hit8run/happyathens-finetune/s-dWSSq https://soundcloud.com/hit8run/happyathens-finetune/s-dWSSq So you can achieve alot with the productive workflow of ableton. I also bought Logic but never finished a full song with it and always felt restricted by it's workflow.
- flavor8 7y agoI got into programming as a kid through a desire to make music (my first program was a "song" written in pascal, playing a series beep tones at different frequencies and durations.) I got into trackers (fast, impulse, buzz) in my teens, and then synths. These days I have a strong preference towards "hardware"* only music making -- I spend most of my waking life staring at a screen, so I find it satisfying to step away and be hands on when creating music. The brains of my studio is a Synthstrom Deluge, which is an amazingly intuitive little gizmo - it has a built in synth and drum machine, a looper, a sampler, and a MIDI sequencer allowing you to drive all other synths in the studio. I also have an Arturia Keystep, which has a great live MIDI sequencer. Another fun gadget is the Roland RC 505, which gives you 5 independent and dubbable loops - I drive one of the two fx sends from my mixer through it, letting me build loops live from any of the other synths. Aside from those I've collected a handful of synths, both FM and analog. (* quotes because pretty much all available synths, analog included, run on software. Most come with USB ports allowing you to connect and change settings, update firmware, etc.)
- 1290cc 7y agoPrecisely why I prefer using elektron machines. As awesome as ableton and NI's Maschine is I wanted to get as far away from a screen, a desk, OS updates, driver issues and all the junk you deal with as a developer day to day with software. Its great, when I flip on the little machines I know is music making time and I wont have to deal with any hurdles.
- TomMarius 7y agoThats one of the most interesting hello worlds (like real first hello worlds) I've heard of.
- mattmar96 7y agoCurious, I was looking at a Keystep today. Can it be used as a regular MIDI keyboard as well? (No arp/sequence)
- flavor8 7y agoYeah it can. The keys are small, but it has velocity and aftertouch - it's nice and expressive. Build quality is good.
- fit2rule 7y agoYou can get a lot of the functionality of Ableton under Linux, albeit using other, modular tools. seq24 for sequencing/block-style arranging. Reaper for recording tracks. VCVRack for synthesis, Hydrogen for drums. In fact, its kind of amazing what tools a budding musician has available to them - for free - in the Linux ecosphere. I hope to see more articles describing these tools soon .. or maybe I should do one of my own ..
- cyberpip 7y agoBit of a side note, but I've been playing with http://sonic-pi.net/ http://sonic-pi.net/ and it's teaching me so much about synthesizers AND music (even though I have a bit of a background in both).
- ubermonkey 7y agoNo discussion of Ableton should omit high profile users like Imogen Heap or Zoe Keating.
- brokenmachine 7y agoZillions of electronic artists use Ableton. Although I like Imogen Heap, I don't see why she's so deserving of a special mention.
- ubermonkey 7y agoYou seem fun.
- brokenmachine 7y agoYou seem irrelevant.
- redmaverick 7y agoI want to make music that sounds like the band "Chinese Man". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqjeNSNuNPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqjeNSNuNPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9QU5-9DFC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9QU5-9DFC4 Can we do it using Ableton? How does one even approach trying to do something like this?
- gagege 7y agoYes, you could definitely make this in Ableton. Basically, all you need is samples (recordings of instrument sounds, either individual notes that you put in whatever order you like, or recordings of someone playing a whole musical phrase, preferably something that loops well) and a sequencer of some kind, which is the main function of Ableton. There are also effects and mixing and mastering techniques that can drastically change the sound of music, but all you need to get started are some samples and a sequencer.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoAs a dev, I find Ableton incredibly frustrating. The Live Object Model (LOM) allows custom automation and software control. But it's half-closed, and half-open. Access is through Max for Live, which is a dataflow language "programmed" by joining little object blocks to other object blocks - like Scratch. There's unofficial Python support, but it's poorly documented. Many things are possible, but many other things aren't possible - even though they're available on Push, so obviously the hooks are there. It would make me unbelievably happy if Ableton opened up the LOM and included a properly documented hook for absolutely every important feature - preferably one that could be used from any language, maybe via OSC, rather than M4L. To be fair Live at least has a LOM, while other sequencers/DAWs don't. So that's a plus. But it's still a shame it isn't more complete - because that would make all kinds of cool things possible.
- eric_trackjs 7y agoI agree, their object model and developer experience leaves a lot to be desired. I wanted to control Live via OSC so I made a little library to do it via node: https://github.com/BrandesEric/AbletonJS https://github.com/BrandesEric/AbletonJS It's a work in progress that, sadly, I have left dormant for awhile, but you can basically use Node/JS to control live (even over a network). It does rely on the internal JS implementation and you have to add the max plugin to a track before you can start coding against it, so still not anything to write home about.
- gosub 7y agoYou should take a look at Reaper. It has macros, total reconfigurability and deep scripting. It's the emacs of the DAW world.
- jcelerier 7y agoIf you use OSC you could be interested in the DAW I develop: https://ossia.io https://ossia.io ; a part of its object model is accessible through it, hadn't had the time to expose everything yet.
- 1k 7y agoThis is awesome. I used to think music was no big deal but after playing with this I realize I have no musical talent whatsoever.
- bratelo2308 7y agoGood afternoon! Dear writer, you have a very good occupation - a combination of work and a hobby. With this combination, people always succeed, the most important thing is not to stop there. When your job is your favorite pastime, then the key to success is in your pocket. The world of creating music has long stepped into software and without programming today, good music will not be. I support your direction. Like me!
- totoe 7y agoFruity Loops, Cubase, Reason, Reaper, Cantabile Performer, Presonus Studio One, Ableton, OpenMPT, Jazz and Logic before apple... I love to have a good sequencer on my hands to handle the recording of my creative spirits. I also love to look back in time and stumbled over some old music programs on the amiga system. I would love to learn more about working with tracker based sequencing but iam faster done in a modern daw. Presonus Studio One is a good DAW. Ideas sketching via webtools is also awesome. I love me my little beepbox.co https://tinyurl.com/y6rr2rok https://tinyurl.com/y6rr2rok At the end it only counts if you have fun, how to control or create, do things with a digital working station.