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This is seriously cool and interesting. Do anyone have tips on how to get off the ground for someone whos experience can be summarized to something like 1 hour

This is seriously cool and interesting. Do anyone have tips on how to get off the ground for someone whos experience can be summarized to something like 1 hour of fruity loops but who now starts to get some free time? (videos, explanations etc that start from scratch)

sgentle 5y ago
If you don't mind the, uh, colourful presentation, the You Suck at Producing series (and channel with the same name) on YouTube is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kjCxfEZZKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kjCxfEZZKo - he also does pretty regular livestreams doing critique and analysis of user-submitted tracks. If you're looking for a free wavetable synth comparable to Serum from the article, I recommend Vital: https://vital.audio https://vital.audio - there's a fairly active community forum there as well.
creamytaco 5y ago
Fruity loops is great, since it comes with everything you need. Reason used to be another good choice but I haven't used it in many years. The best advice I was given relating to this exact question (20 years ago) was to invest in a midi keyboard, stick with one piece of software and use my free time experimenting with it. That's it. Watching youtube videos is a complete waste of time in my opinion, since a lot of that crowd has fallen into the trap of reviewing one plugin after another, without really being able to create art. At best it's a circlejerk of mimicry and patterned-knowledge regurgitation.
indigochill 5y ago
There's a hands-on educational program called Syntorial that introduces you step-by-step to all the features of a typical subtractive synth using just your ear. On every step, you listen to a sound producible with the features you've unlocked so far and recreate what you hear, then it tells you which parameters weren't quite right so you learn what to listen for to hone your ear. Subtractive synthesis is different from wavetable synthesis, but most of the concepts transfer. And Syntorial even has a free download (after the initial purchase) which covers Serum specifically, as well as a couple other industry standard synths. It might be pricey depending on how invested you are in learning, but they have a demo so you can see what you're in for. From my perspective, outside messing around by yourself, I don't know of a more cost-effective way to learn everything that it covers, and it saves significant time over messing around.

sgentle 5y ago

If you don't mind the, uh, colourful presentation, the You Suck at Producing series (and channel with the same name) on YouTube is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kjCxfEZZKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kjCxfEZZKo - he also does pretty regular livestreams doing critique and analysis of user-submitted tracks. If you're looking for a free wavetable synth comparable to Serum from the article, I recommend Vital: https://vital.audio https://vital.audio - there's a fairly active community forum there as well.

creamytaco 5y ago

Fruity loops is great, since it comes with everything you need. Reason used to be another good choice but I haven't used it in many years. The best advice I was given relating to this exact question (20 years ago) was to invest in a midi keyboard, stick with one piece of software and use my free time experimenting with it. That's it. Watching youtube videos is a complete waste of time in my opinion, since a lot of that crowd has fallen into the trap of reviewing one plugin after another, without really being able to create art. At best it's a circlejerk of mimicry and patterned-knowledge regurgitation.

indigochill 5y ago

There's a hands-on educational program called Syntorial that introduces you step-by-step to all the features of a typical subtractive synth using just your ear. On every step, you listen to a sound producible with the features you've unlocked so far and recreate what you hear, then it tells you which parameters weren't quite right so you learn what to listen for to hone your ear. Subtractive synthesis is different from wavetable synthesis, but most of the concepts transfer. And Syntorial even has a free download (after the initial purchase) which covers Serum specifically, as well as a couple other industry standard synths. It might be pricey depending on how invested you are in learning, but they have a demo so you can see what you're in for. From my perspective, outside messing around by yourself, I don't know of a more cost-effective way to learn everything that it covers, and it saves significant time over messing around.