20 ms·

Get started making music

1176 points by prhrb 3y ago

IKLOL 3y ago
[dead]
efields 3y ago
I think this is a really good primer for electronic music production if you're going to start from absolutely zero. If you specifically want to program beats, I recommend this quirky book "Pocket Operations": https://shittyrecording.studio https://shittyrecording.studio. It's basically guitar tabs for drum machines. Pick out some styles as a foundation and then build on top of it. Think of it as boilerplate code. Being a software dev by day, and a former musician in high school, the current world of digital music production tools is as incredible as it is overwhelming. It's good to have something that orients your practice and experimentation.
- filoleg 3y ago
  This is fantastic, thank you for sharing! Literally a no-fluff cheatsheet for drum patterns presented in the simplest to digest form possible, and without losing any important parts. Programming drum patterns has always been daunting to me, as it seemed like everyone just "knew" their patterns and how to play around them. Even though I knew that it wasn't the case, it was still difficult to approach. But with this boilerplate, it's like a massive blocker is just gone for me. And by going through even just a a portion of the patterns, I can easily see how one can acquire a sense for them and is able to come up with their own takes.
  - chaosprint 3y ago
    Have you tried to use the code to make drum/note patterns: https://glicol.org/tour#sequencer https://glicol.org/tour#sequencer I am open to all feedbacks!
  - dist-epoch 3y ago
    Or you could just try to reproduce the beats of your favorite songs. It will be incredibly difficult at first, but after some tens of hours you should be able to slowly program the simpler ones. Obviously you need some native beat tracking capabilities, it seems some people just lack this skill. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00771/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.0077...
    - agmand 3y ago
      There's a music teacher at NYU, Ethan Hein, that seems to be working on this exactly in the context of groove pedagogy. For example, he recently picked apart the amen break in a blog post [0] and tried to replicate it in ableton from scratch, methodically. He first lies out the basic pieces or the groove, then builds up the groove adding and removing elements, gradually complexifying it. As someone who has trouble with drum patterns as well I really liked the idea. [0] https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2023/building-the-amen-break/ https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2023/building-the-amen-break/
      - completelylegit 3y ago
        Look for the Ableton live realtime “reproducing prodigy’s fire starter in ableton”, it’s really a wonderful example. You’ll appreciate it.
        dpflan 3y ago
        Wow, thank you!
      - notmypenguin 3y ago
        Might I suggest simply playing with a basic drumset in real life for a few hours? A kick snare and hihat are the principal components needed. I contend that you will organically discover a kind of conversational dialogue between the kick and snare that known beats are a result of. It’s something that will inform your drum programming immensely, even if you never pick up drum sticks again
- poisonarena 3y ago
  > recommend this quirky book "Pocket >Operations" edit: oops
  - darkvertex 3y ago
    Uhhh... Did you read the site? That book is a free PDF.
- dcist 3y ago
  This is great! Thanks for sharing. If you have any more recommendations like this, I’m all ears.
  - efields 3y ago
    It’s the only thing I’ve found/needed. Just like any instrument, drums/drum machines can be pitched, respond to velocity, and are affected by sounds played around them. Understanding where your sounds fall in the EQ spectrum is huge. Don’t sleep on amplification, saturation, and EQ.
- smcnally 3y ago
  Thank you for reminding about Paul Wenzel’s music stuff. Building atop boilerplate is also good to remember and do. > and a former musician in high school s/former/recovering
  - ilyt 3y ago
    It's not a disease to be recovered from lmao
    - efields 3y ago
      Well…
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  I just bought that book a couple months ago. It's really cool for punching in drum beats real quick
- albert_e 3y ago
  excellent is there a simple / Lightweight software tool that will let kids get into drums and music..using this book as a starter?
  - chaosprint 3y ago
    You can use https://glicol.org/ https://glicol.org/ in the browsers.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    A groovebox in the browser: https://tahti.studio/ https://tahti.studio/
- 867-5309 3y ago
  this book needs to be turned into an interactive website
- flaviuspopan 3y ago
  You have no idea how unfathomably timely this discovery was. Truly unreal. I've scoured the internet for a while trying to collect every dataset known to humanity about beat programming in this exact sense. Thank you.
  - pbackx 3y ago
    You might also like this one: http://808.pixll.de/index.php http://808.pixll.de/index.php
- gtani 3y ago
  and anybody that wants to go serious/pro, there's Snoman's Dance Music Manual, 4th edition but earlier editions shd still be useful.
erwinh 3y ago
Love what the team over there does with these web demos. They previously made this amazing interactive synthesizer learning resource: https://learningsynths.ableton.com/ https://learningsynths.ableton.com/
- efields 3y ago
  This one is also so good!
robotnikman 3y ago
As someone who wants to start doing some music as a hobby but has 0 experience with how music works, this is very helpful and informative!
- mattchamb 3y ago
  I just started learning guitar at 34 with absolutely no musical experience, and it's such an amazing new world to learn.
  - fat-chunk 3y ago
    My wife only started learning drums a few years ago, and now she's regularly gigging with a band in a bunch of iconic venues around London. It's never too late to start! :)
  - williamcotton 3y ago
    I’ve been playing guitar for almost 30 years and it never stops being an amazing world to learn! It is endless!
  - nrjames 3y ago
    I just started at age 49 and I'm loving it! I'm focusing on fingerstyle acoustic, which I've always loved.
bsaul 3y ago
I’ve been a user of those kinds of tools for more than 30 years, as an amateur, and of course i’m amazed at the progress made. However, a part of me wonder how much we lost in the process. We’ve automated so much that i wonder if the tools don’t play a role in the lack of diversity in music production. When every part of a song has to be composed or improvised by a human, note per note, isn’t it clear that the end result should be, be definition, more original , as well as more meaningful ?
- fat-chunk 3y ago
  I'm inclined to disagree. I believe the progress in music software has opened up new avenues and genres, it hasn't stifled existing ones. Instrument players are going to keep playing their instruments, just that now it's easier than ever for them to make their own professional sounding recordings and songs. On the flipside you have more and more people getting into music without requiring any formal musical background. I also think the older we get, the more we think most music sounds the same because music inherently changes over time, and will be different to what we grew up on, but we also become more distanced from the subcultures and communities pioneering modern music trends. A young person today probably thinks all rock music from the 50s-90s sounds the same
  - notmypenguin 3y ago
    I disagree and think there are objective measures of cynicism in music today that are unprecedented. I agree that the paths you suggest are possible and that the tools available have never been so available. I see cultural problems as the root issue. We’ve reduced music to a recorded consumable and thereby reduced the role of the humans communicating telepathically via music, which is the social function of music, as I understand it
    - teknico 3y ago
      I like this use of “telepathic” as sharing emotions, rather than thoughts, at a distance.
- 3y ago
fat-chunk 3y ago
If anyone is looking for a low-barrier-to-entry start to making music, I'd recommend they check out https://audiotool.com https://audiotool.com Completely free, but very deep and powerful browser-based cloud music production software, with a tight-knit encouraging community built around it.
javajosh 3y ago
I like Ableton, but the better way to get started making music is with your voice, singing with songs that you like. Sing the melody, and also the bass and harmony parts. If you have a phone you can use the voice memo app to do two-part stuff. If you want to move up to an instrument, my favorite is the melodica, a breath-operated keyboard that is very cheap (~ $20), sounds great, and teaches the notes of a piano, and requires no electrical power to operate. In fact for some things I think the melodica is better than a piano, since in some ways it's closer to an organ with the ability to maintain and vary the sound over time.
- courseofaction 3y ago
  Good advice - no matter what you play, whether you produce electronically or acoustically, singing will help you internalize music, ready to be transferred to any sound-making object.
- asdfman123 3y ago
  Yeah, I wasted years sorta playing guitar and sorta fucking around with the computer. I knew how to practice effectively from my years in band, but I didn't use them because I was too busy rejecting who I was in high school. Now I'm learning piano and I've joined a choir, and I'm actually getting better at things instead of being a perpetually mediocre guitarist/singer.
  - askafriend 3y ago
    It sounds like you just didn't like playing guitar? I much prefer playing guitar to piano or a choir.
    - asdfman123 3y ago
      That was probably it too. I'm more wired for classical music, but I had to try to look cool in my 20s. I had discovered that music was one of my few interests that I could actually trade for social credit.
s-xyz 3y ago
Great tutorial and design
RobotToaster 3y ago
Any open source tools for this?
- roblh 3y ago
  Honestly, not really. I feel like this is one of the very few areas that doesn’t really have any great open source options. Reaper is about the closest you’re gonna get. It’s not open source, but as far as fair licence and good price without sacrificing any usability, it’s kind of in a league of its own. It was started by the guy who made Winamp.
  - dumpsterlid 3y ago
    Yeah Reaper isn't open source, but the licensing system is an amazing breath of fresh air. You can just download it and start using it with no account sign up process and once the free trial (60 days) ends all that happens is a nag screen pops up. You can literally just keep closing the nag screen and never buy the software (though this is an illegal use of the product) but why would you do that if you have the money to support the devs? I bought it as soon as I realized how easy it was to demo and start using. If one of the primary points of open source software is to promote accessibility, Reaper goes a long way towards this without actually being open source. There is no DRM, there is no need to make an account and do some long sign up process to get Reaper up and running, there is no iLok required (vomits in mouth a little). You can download it in and start working on a project as quickly as your computer can finish installing it. From Reaper's license popup: > We are showing this message, instead of crippling this evaluation version of REAPER, because we do not feel technological enforcement of licensing policy is in the best interest of our customers Reaper is the only professional artistic software (sold as a product) I have ever come across that is remotely realistic about how people use it. Nobody has ever pirated Reaper in the history of Reaper, there is no point and that is how software should work in a more sane world.
    - squeaky-clean 3y ago
      One of the Reaper devs once said on their forums (or maybe it was KVR) that they never want to add anti-piracy measures to Reaper because it's just a cost-center for development with no real payoff. It can potentially hurt paying customers, and it almost never converts pirates. If someone doesn't want to pay, music software is easy to pirate. If it's somehow not easy to pirate (Cubase was crack-free for several years), there's so many competing products with the same utilities, they will just pirate one of your competitors.
Animats 3y ago
Melody? What's that?
- pottering 3y ago
  https://learningmusic.ableton.com/make-melodies/make-melodies.html https://learningmusic.ableton.com/make-melodies/make-melodie...
marricks 3y ago
I tried this a few years ago and it was addictive and amazing. Highly recommend. I’d also like to tangent to say: music used to be a much bigger part of our lives. Before the radio a piano was a household staple. Kids would learn, family’s would play and sing to each other. We’ve largely given that up. Imagining hearing one of your family members just start singing to themselves without any background music, does that feel uncomfortable? Would you sing along? I think to many the answer is clear, music, as well as many other endeavors are something to now be enjoyed but not created. And oh boy do we get to enjoy the “best” music and “best” films and “best” books on demand. And along the way we lost the large bits of ourselves which created and enjoyed together. So, in short, 10/10 would do the tutorial again.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >I’d also like to tangent to say: music used to be a much bigger part of our lives. Before the radio a piano was a household staple. Kids would learn, family’s would play and sing to each other. We’ve largely given that up. Music fandom used to be a bigger part of lives after that. Pop/rock stars were royalty. Now with all the other stuff competing for eyeballs it's just another thing. Aside from a much smaller music-obsessed demographic, most teens could not care less today.
  - sgustard 3y ago
    This seems to ignore the phenomenon of people paying to sit in a parking lot outside a Taylor Swift concert? https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2023/05/15/taylor-swift-eras-tour-parking-lot/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2023/05/15/taylor-swift...
    - coldtea 3y ago
      That's more about the ticket price, and just going to have some fun with friends (plus the trend), than the music. People do similar shit for iPhone or console launches, movie premieres, social media stars, and so on.
- gabereiser 3y ago
gabereiser 3y ago
Making music is easier than ever! Making a living doing it is harder than ever!
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  It was never easy making a living as a musician. If you were really good, and at least a bit lucky, you could. The vast majority had to have other jobs. I agree it's probably tougher today though. The fact that producing and recording is something anyone can do with a laptop just makes the S/N ratio even smaller. And a lot of the surrounding industry jobs have probably gone away too, since big physical mixing desks and multi-track tape machines and record cutting and pressing machines are no longer used nearly as much.
- bryans 3y ago
  > Making a living doing it is harder than ever! It's extremely easy to make a living from music right now. With a weekend's worth of YouTube training, any decent musician or songwriter should be able to invest 40hr/wk and reliably generate $5k/mo within a year.
  - ben_ 3y ago
    You have anything to back this up? Seems like a stretch to say a weekend of training is all it takes
    - analog31 3y ago
      Anything can be proven possible by a single exceptional example. The question I would ask is what's probable.
    - bryans 3y ago
      There aren't that many topics to learn. If you pick one music industry content creator, they will have around two days worth of videos that you can watch. If you do the things they say, you will make money. There's no magic to it. Many thousands of live streaming musicians have had no trouble going from $0 to $5k/mo. You're welcome to check out Twitch or TikTok any time for evidence of this.
ksenzee 3y ago
I'm a classically trained pianist with a bunch of music theory under my belt but zero idea how music is produced, and this is fascinating and addictive to the point where I need to put it away or I'll get no work done today.
cmsefton 3y ago
Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055433
- dang 3y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: Get started making music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055433 - Oct 2021 (144 comments) Get Started Making Music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965386 - Sept 2019 (184 comments) Get started making music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628 - May 2017 (461 comments) Get started making music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14291332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14291332 - May 2017 (2 comments)
  - cmsefton 3y ago
    Ah, thanks for that dang, if I get that weird déjà vu feeling again, I'll try follow a similar format!
westernaccess 3y ago
i wish their native ui/ux matched this level of design side note: is there any DAW that supports realtime collaboration?
- ijustlurk 3y ago
  Spotify's Soundtrap claims to have live collaboration, haven't tested it though so I don't know if it's actually realtime or just a step in that direction.
- fat-chunk 3y ago
  https://audiotool.com https://audiotool.com
Mizoguchi 3y ago
Don't forget The Manual https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual If you can't get a number one at least you'll be left LYFAO with an invaluable lesson on business and an intimate tour of late 80s UK techno scene. Wonderful read.
musicam 3y ago
One thing that has been amazing me recently is the current state of vocal synthesis. It seems to have improved rapidly in the space of just a few years, thanks to neural network models. For example, here's a quick clip from a synth I've been using in recent weeks: https://vocaroo.com/125tAD40Gl6d https://vocaroo.com/125tAD40Gl6d It sounds almost like a real voice, and that's just using the default settings, without any effort to tweak it further to improve the realism.
- superchroma 3y ago
  In light of what we learned with vocaloid in Japan, is this even meaningful? Singers don't make the song. You can have crowds fill stadiums to watch a hologram, it has already been proven. To boot, isn't this the fidelity vs fun argument of videogames again, too? Madonna's "Ray of Light" is still a good song without her; William Orbit is a master producer after all. I hope we see a refocusing away from personalities to producers out of this.
  - musicam 3y ago
    It depends on the audience, and the producer. Some people are content with listening to robotic-sounding Vocaloid type synths, others prefer something closer to an authentic singing voice with the more complex range of emotion that can be expressed. Even just from a technology point of view, I find it fascinating to see how the envelope is being pushed via machine learning models.
    - tehnub 3y ago
      >Some people are content with listening to robotic-sounding Vocaloid type synths, others prefer something closer to an authentic singing voice with the more complex range of emotion that can be expressed. Let me just point out the nuance that many people, including myself, appreciate both types of music.
- squidsoup 3y ago
  Interesting, thanks. What's the name of the synth?
zoogeny 3y ago
I think this is awesome and I recommend anyone interested in following it through. But one problem with this kind of thing is that it has the character of "How to Draw an Owl" [1]. I have been tinkering with Ableton for 10+ years but when I got to the song structure part (especially the Photek Drum 'n Bass one) I kinda had to laugh. Making music is really difficult. This kind of tutorial is step one on a thousand step journey. 1. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-to-draw-an-owl https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-to-draw-an-owl
davidy123 3y ago
I've dabbled in making music, but it makes me bump against an existential crisis. I could make nice sounding music, but what does it mean? Often, it's just an excuse to buy more gear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXWTN1XTtI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXWTN1XTtI
- antipotoad 3y ago
  It doesn’t have to mean anything. Music is pure pleasure. Vibrations in the air that tickle our brains just so.
  - davidy123 3y ago
    I think I'd rather find a way to enjoy developing tech for universal friendly anonymous healthcare workflow identifiers. But if anyone can write supporting music, please do.
  - bowsamic 3y ago
    I listen to a lot of music but I don’t experience it in this way at all. It has to be very interesting or high quality for me to enjoy it
- mirkules 3y ago
  It’s funny, music was what solved my existential crisis. Software is always being replaced. When I die, chances are my kids and grandkids will never be able to point to a piece of software and say “my dad did this”. Even for my grandfather, who architected several buildings in my home town - his buildings are gradually being replaced and I can’t point them out to my kids anymore. Music (and other arts), on the other hand, is yours forever and exists forever, and it’s a way for future generations to connect with their ancestors and even pass on a legacy.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  As a long time dabbler in music making I’ve often felt the same. The music I make never feels novel or creative, so what am I even doing it for?
- 3y ago
ilkke 3y ago
Modern DAWs are absolutely amazing, but if you're into both programming and music I can't recommend checking out a tracker enough. In particular I recommend the Dirtywave M8 as a fantastic blend of everything that makes trackers great, and modern convenience and power.[0] [0]https://dirtywave.com/ https://dirtywave.com/
- cwillu 3y ago
  A fantastic blend of salesmanship and freedom from ethics? “This is a preorder. Estimated starting ship date is July 2023. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”
  - Applejinx 3y ago
    Patience not necessary. Renoise. https://www.renoise.com/ https://www.renoise.com/ A terrific modern tracker, runs on Win/OSX/Linux. Renoise is wonderful.
    - agentultra 3y ago
      +1. I’ve been experimenting with using it in a live setup. It’s very flexible and lets you set up macros that can be triggered with midi. It’s kind of nuts what it can do. Highly underrated.
  - JaggedNZ 3y ago
    Dirtywave have shipped plenty of M8's in the last year. They just produce them in batches, there have also been shortages of the Teensy 4.1 microcontroller used IIRC and they are highly sought after. You can also "build your own" from supplied firmware https://github.com/Dirtywave/M8HeadlessFirmware https://github.com/Dirtywave/M8HeadlessFirmware This is not the fly-by-night kickstarter you are implying.
    - cwillu 3y ago
      Fair.
  - 3y ago
munificent 3y ago
I love love love Ableton Live. It's possibly my favorite piece of software today. If you're a software engineer interested in UX, I think Live will fit your brain like a hand in glove. It reminds me very much of emacs or vi where the app is designed to disappear from view and let you focus on your content. Also, it's incredibly programmable and generative at many many different levels: * Session view lets you build arrangements on the fly in realtime. * Follow actions on clips let you automatically build sequences of clips, loop, them, randomly chain them, etc. It's like control flow for clips. * The various built-in synths and effects support all sorts of dynamic modulation to make timbres evolve on their own. * Then, of course, there is Max4Live, a full-fledged visual programming environment integrated deeply into the app. You, of course, can ignore all that stuff and just make completed fixed tracks. But if you're interested in the live aspects of Live, then the software really feels like a substrate that you can use to build your own bespoke instrument for playing your music in real time. I love it so much.
- FractalHQ 3y ago
  I agree, and with over 15 years of experience with Live and a fruitful music career thanks to it, I have a deep respect for it. It’s hard to use anything else because of how many small, seemingly insignificant workflow features it has which add up quick in a session. _But_ - man is it far behind the modern DAWS like Studio One and Bitwig in the low-level fundamentals like plug-in isolation, multithreading, and flexibility in terms of your ability to offload frozen tracks from RAM. This puts a bottleneck on the max size of a session before it becomes unstable and unusable. Even with 32GB RAM and a top-shelf CPU, my ability to finish a song grinds to a halt around the 100 track range. My songs can have 150 tracks with 1-20 plugins and 1-30 automation lanes per track by the time they are finished, and the number of hours I’ve lost from crashing or just waiting for it to respond could easily add up to months at this point. And small things like the inability to know if a plug-in is the VST2 or VST3 version have been driving me nuts for over a decade. My music is absurdly abnormal in terms of complexity though, and the vast majority of people will never encounter these problems. I worry, however, that the glacial pace of development likely due to the prehistoric tech stack at Ableton will prevent it from ever closing the growing gap made by the increasingly valuable feature sets of modern DAWs have been able to push out quickly and consistently. Either way, Ableton Live is a great demonstration of the incredibly fine nuance involved in a good UX. They got a lot of little things right, and that alone has been the largest contributor to their success in the industry.
comet-engine 3y ago
[dead]
superb-owl 3y ago
This is incredible. I'd love to see something similar for sound synthesis (how do you craft that perfect piano/violin/dubsteppy sound?) and mixing/mastering.
- squeaky-clean 3y ago
  It's not free, but Syntorial is exactly what you want. https://www.syntorial.com/ https://www.syntorial.com/ I don't know a suitable tool for mixing/mastering except many years of trial and error. Lots of things exist to get you the basics and aware of what all the major tools do, but nothing I know of (yet) really teaches you how to put them together to make a great mix nearly as well as making 100 bad mixes first. I can't remember the speaker, but I watched a lecture (probably a decade ago) where the speaker said you could give the same project file to a great engineer who is only allowed to use the volume faders, and an amateur who is allowed to use any software tools and any expensive rack hardware. And the great engineer will make a better mix 100% of the time. I very much believe that statement is true.
- smcnally 3y ago
  https://learningsynths.ableton.com/ https://learningsynths.ableton.com/
evo_9 3y ago
It would be cool if HN had a list of popular / repeatedly submitted url's/articles like this one, and a total count. Would be a great list to look over, too.
eweise 3y ago
Ableton is really expensive. Logic is just as good if not better, and much cheaper.
- pacomerh 3y ago
  Ableton is really good for live performance though. I don't know about Logic but the session view in Ableton is really good for improvisation
  - eweise 3y ago
    True. They started out with different purposes and now are trying to incorporate each others features.
  - P_I_Staker 3y ago
    Logic is garbage in all those areas.
ROTMetro 3y ago
For those interested in getting started, Knobcloud.com has cheap Ableton Live intro licenses. vital.audio is a super cool free(ish) virtual synthesizer, https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-symphony-orchestra-discover#listen https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-symphony-orchestra-discove... is a free virtual symphony orchestra. If you just use your basic PC built in sound, you will also need to install ASIO4All ASIO drivers to reduce latency. I wish I was a kid today the tools as so amazing, instead I spent my youth learning the make DX7 patches which to be fair did prepare me for the pain of being a Microsoft stack developer in the 1990s.
reducesuffering 3y ago
For a bit of inspiration after, here's Kygo's breakdown on pro production https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCe-6UprFGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCe-6UprFGo
medguru 3y ago
The tutorial is really thorough.
bandrami 3y ago
While we're here, if you get into electronic music and want some samples, the Library of Congress's "Citizen DJ" project has multiple gigs of public domain audio you can use: https://citizen-dj.labs.loc.gov/ https://citizen-dj.labs.loc.gov/ I'll also throw in some libre projects to look at: Sonic Pi Csound (front-ends include Blue and Cabbage) Supercollider Pure Data LMMS Mixxx
Lapsa 3y ago
bitwig is better
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago
  Do they have as good or better tutorial to get started?
  - Lapsa 3y ago
    can ableton do polyphonic modulation?
    - nextlevelwizard 3y ago
      I have no idea, but this thread was about getting started with making music. It is literal lunacy to just drive by yell "this software is better" if it has no comparable tutorial.
honkycat 3y ago
if you want a really cheap way to get started: - Reaper isn't free, but it has an unlimited, 0 trade-off trial period For some free open source synths: - Vital is a great wavetable synth - Dexed is a DX7 close that is phenomenal - dsp56300emu emulates a bunch of classic high quality synths, notably the virus - Surge Synth ...there are so many excellent open source VSTs you really do NOT need to spend any money. I don't really know of any high quality open source DAWs, unfortunately.
- tincholio 3y ago
  Ardour is pretty good, actually.
nologic01 3y ago
This is quite inspiring.Is there a js library to help build simple music training exercises?
- jjarvis 3y ago
  Ableton used Max’s RNBO library for these pages. RNBO is essentially Max but compiles to web assembly. https://rnbo.cycling74.com/explore/learning-synths-and-rnbo https://rnbo.cycling74.com/explore/learning-synths-and-rnbo
LelouBil 3y ago
If anyone is interested in a good book (in French) about the history of music electronic music (mixed with the history of electricity, recordings, and music itself) I recommend this book I enjoyed very much : https://www.amazon.com/fous-du-son-Laurent-Wilde/dp/2246859271 https://www.amazon.com/fous-du-son-Laurent-Wilde/dp/22468592...
antmaper 3y ago
Ableton Live, while a respected tool in music production, appears to be falling behind in terms of embracing new technologies and features.
- dkh 3y ago
  How so?
  - dottjt 3y ago
    I've switched from Ableton to Bitwig and man, you don't realise how behind Ableton is until you try Bitwig. I think it's a case of death by a thousand cuts with Ableton. For example, Ableton does not have customisable shortcuts! Which is a huge workflow blocker. Arguably, a lot of the issues are UX related, as opposed to feature related. But UX is a core part of the product and subsequent usability of the product.
    - notmypenguin 3y ago
      Meh, I disagree. I’ve owned Bitwig for about a year now and there are some frustrations with it I didn’t have with Ableton. Nothing is perfect, neither is ahead of the other. If I wasn’t on Linux I would go back to Ableton, to be honest. Bitwig has the synthesizer thing and effects thing down pat, but it’s audio editing is frustrating to say the least. I want to turn of this track comping nonsense but I can’t, I hate track comping and have used DAWs since they were invented so…
      - dottjt 3y ago
        You can turn off track comping, you need to turn off the overdub button (that big plus sign in the top left). What parts of the audio editing is weak to you? In my opinion, it's one of the strongest things it offers. I assume you're trying to edit the audio in the arranger, instead of in the clip view. What makes it so strong, is that you can chop it up in the clip view, and your audio in the arranger remains one contiguous piece of audio. It sounds like you're either trying to use the software like Ableton and you're getting frustrated that it's not Ableton, or you don't understand how Bitwig works.
tekni5 3y ago
If you want something to mess with LMMS is pretty good as a DAW, free & open source as well. Example of some tracks I made: https://youtu.be/p3y5fdZ94io https://youtu.be/p3y5fdZ94io https://youtu.be/rSD4xZTDo9Q https://youtu.be/rSD4xZTDo9Q https://youtu.be/09Hip0bRdaU https://youtu.be/09Hip0bRdaU https://youtu.be/n3JmttdUXoU https://youtu.be/n3JmttdUXoU
andrewmcwatters 3y ago
The last time I was doing music production, I was learning how not all instruments are created equally. If you want to do some pop music work, drum beats are a dime a dozen. If you want to do high quality orchestral work, you're going to have to fork out some serious cash for stuff like EastWest Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra, Vienna Symphonic Library, Garritan Personal Orchestra, and others. I'm sure things have since changed and you can now get some of these on cloud subscriptions, but you couldn't really achieve the same depth at all with some of the stuff you'd get as standard packs from your favorite DAW.
- ChristianGeek 3y ago
  The BBC Symphony is available as a free plugin that works with all major DAWs (including free versions): https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-symphony-orchestra-discover https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-symphony-orchestra-discove...
  - andrewmcwatters 3y ago
    Oh man, I forgot about the BBC Symphony library! Thanks for mentioning this.
JodieBenitez 3y ago
While we're on the subject of music softwares, let me point you to exceptional ones: https://www.bitwig.com https://www.bitwig.com : it's basically Ableton live but next gen, where everything can be modulated https://www.renoise.com https://www.renoise.com : the modern tracker https://www.beepstreet.com/ios/drambo https://www.beepstreet.com/ios/drambo : this one justifies buying an ipad, it's incredible
- raincole 3y ago
  I personally use Bitwig. It's probably the most "think like a programmer" type of DAW. But man it's expensive.
  - JodieBenitez 3y ago
    Expensive ? Of course your mileage may vary, maybe where you live it's a lot, but this is a professional tool starting at $99 with the full version being $399. Given what it does, it's effectively given. Back in the days, I can remember paying a lot of money just for RAM expansion on an Akaï sampler. These days, for music tools, we're all spoiled kids.
  - abhinavk 3y ago
    It's $99 to own. Not a subscription/month.
    - raincole 3y ago
      No, it's $399. The killer features of Bitwig are modulation and Grid, and you will need the $399 version for that. $99 version is basically a generic DAW with a modern UI but less built-in instruments than other DAWs. Of course it's still useful... but to be honest using the $99 version is hardly "using Bitwig".
- EmilyHughes 3y ago
  I also use Bitwig. I switched from Ableton because it was cheaper. It's objectively a better DAW from a technical standpoint. But I have to say the sounds and plugins it comes with are not on par with ableton, some presets really have me scratching my head and it took forever until they gave us a decent convolution reverb. For the longest time I was not able to get a simple sine-wave out of the synthesizers it comes with (wtf?). It's also worth mentioning that back in the days this DAW was promoted with a feature that lets you collaborate with others over the network, now 10 years later there is no more mention of this feature and I think most forgot it was even planned. Recently they tried to sell you stock-plugins for a premium but back-pedaled quickly. That is just ridicoulous after I sunk hundreds of dollars in their update plans. That being said I still recommend it.
ConanRus 3y ago
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makach 3y ago
I can't believe that I navigate through the entire course on that website, very interesting
osigurdson 3y ago
It would be funny if someone became a famous DJ just using this web page. I was impressed with some of the beats that I "came up with".
porkbeer 3y ago
If you start with this limited mentality, you are going to be stuck with a partucular workflow, funnay that its onky workable using ableton. Its an alright program, but look around more and focus on which works for your idea of music before investing in it,
- zerbinxx 3y ago
  Most DAW’s impose a workflow and set of tools on you. Hell, any set of notative or formal tools will do that - it’s part of what makes music-making possible. If you’ve ever messed around with a complete alien tool like the therimin or Tenori-On, you quickly figure out some hacks to cram its operations into something your mind can work with. A “limitless mentality” would be something like Cage or Reich where you’re so advanced about making music that you know how to break those boundaries elegantly. For most people “getting started with Ableton Live” will do.
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago
  You have to start somewhere or rather if you try to start with everything at once on your own you are going to have a hard time. That is sort of like saying one shouldn't start with one programming language, but instead sample all languages and various frameworks before investing their time, but that completely ignores the fact that if you start with zero knowledge you can't just randomly sample different things - most of which you haven't even heard of - before you even get to see if you like the thing you are doing in the first place.
- pottering 3y ago
  It is not "only workable using ableton", it teaches generic music theory (just the basics), which is usable even without a computer.
chaosprint 3y ago
Live coding is another way for hackers to get started with music making: https://glicol.org/ https://glicol.org/
vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago
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pahn 3y ago
their 404 error page is the best sounding one i have seen so far: https://learningmusic.ableton.com/wronglink https://learningmusic.ableton.com/wronglink
fauria 3y ago
Also from Ableton: "Learning Synths" - https://learningsynths.ableton.com/ https://learningsynths.ableton.com/
mazzystar 3y ago
My first Ableton try out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6oLysNagLQ&ab_channel=MazzyStar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6oLysNagLQ&ab_channel=Mazzy...
benniomars 3y ago
I love Live, but I just think it's too pricey. Just the standard version is $400 with taxes (in my country).
terrycody 3y ago
What a sweet site! I will learn how to music for later india gaming usage, this is very fun and useful website, thanks!
ben7799 3y ago
This tutorial comes up every couple years and it's got a pretty elegant UI and presentation. It seems to be a perennial HN favorite. But I got a free copy of Ableton (not Ableton Live IIRC) with an interface I bought and Holy cow if Ableton isn't the most painful and disgusting UI I've seen in a while. It took me about 2 seconds to get the interface working correctly in Garage Band. I literally gave up after an hour of trying to get Ableton working correctly. There were like 1000 buttons and one of them had a default value that made the interface not work right or the audio not get routed into the track. IIRC I got it to the point the audio was coming into ableton and it looked like it was working but then nothing ended up in the recorded track. I play guitar as a hobby.. I have no time do put up with something like ableton, I want absolute minimal time spent futzing with a DAW and maximum time with my hands on the actual guitar. This was all on top of me being a software engineer (which maybe made me less tolerant of figuring out the UI) and my interface coming with a long series of video tutorials on how to get Ableton working with the interface. Meanwhile again, got it working in about 2 seconds without looking at the help in Garage Band. A lot of the differentiating features don't matter that much, micing my amp and using my pedalboard/amp sounds better than the synthetic sounds in the DAWs unless I spent a bunch more money. Ableton reminds me of "configuration over convention" or something. Or ancient MS/IBM software where the user has to figure out 1000 options to get anything working.
- enqk 3y ago
  Compared to a lot of DAWs like Reaper, Ableton is actually convention over configuration! It doesn't offer that many preferences / options..
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 6581 3y ago
  > But I got a free copy of Ableton (not Ableton Live IIRC) Ableton is the company. Live is the product.
owobeid 3y ago
I started learning Live after applying for a job interview at Ableton. At that point I had only known what Live was but I never touched it and never had an interest in music making. I downloaded the trial version and after just a couple of hours familiarizing myself with it, I was addicted. I never got the job, but I still open up Live when I'm bored to tinker around. Here's what stands out to me: - Session view is great for experimenting with different arrangements and samples using the same processing chain without having to scroll through a huge timeline of different ideas. You can then go to arrangement view to work on your final arrangement. - Almost everything that you create is reusable. You can string together an instrument and/or a bunch of effects, group them together, map each their controls to a unified (and smaller) set of controls, and now you have a new instrument that you can drag and drop later on. You can then chain and group those together as well. - Max4Live is to plugins as Flash was to games. There are a ton of weird and experimental M4L devices out there available for free or for a very small price. There are some negatives though: - As others have mentioned, it is pricey, $750 as of today if you want the complete version with all their instruments and effects. - Bouncing (re-recording) to a new track or to a file is a bit convoluted. Furthermore, bounced samples are encrypted in Ableton's proprietary format which means you can't use samples that YOU created in other plugins easily. There are a few workarounds that I found but it's just a frustrating experience. This also applies to any sample packs that come with Live or from Ableton's shop, you can't use them outside of Live's inbuilt devices or M4L devices. Again, there are workarounds but it's frustrating and there's probably something in the fine print against it. - No facilities for batch exporting sample slices. Say you want to use Live to process some sound effects and export them to individual files, well you can't do that easily in Live. There's a paid M4L device out there that helps with this but I just use Reaper to do this now.
ericzawo 3y ago
Ableton's documentation is so clear and well done, and this is another example of it. Big fan of their DAW and content.
zokier 3y ago
> After playing with these boxes for a while, you'll discover certain combinations that you like. Many types of music are created in exactly this way — by mixing and matching small musical ideas to make interesting combinations This is the bit I struggle with most; expression and intent. Sure, I can throw random shit together and with some technique it can even sound half-decent, but it is very difficult for me to express anything intentionally with music. And the oversimplification that major=happy, minor=sad is not really helpful at all here, especially with modern music which is more than ready to break any such conventions many times over.
8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y ago
If I could make a couple of suggestions for people who are trying to "get serious" with their hobbies as electronic music composers, I got a lot of value out of: 1. Berklee Online courses on music production. They're not cheap, but the instructors are stellar, including the guy who literally wrote the Ableton book on creative strategies. 2. https://www.producerdojo.com/ https://www.producerdojo.com/ is incredible if you have the time for it. You get paired with a coach who is usually a seasoned electronic music veteran, possibly a regularly touring performer, and you get to work on becoming better at making electronic music at your pace, with their supervision. It's a lot of work, but the results are about as good as they can get.
gtani 3y ago
I remember getting lots of ableton tutorials after learning how to use garage band, logic and a little pro tools. I think learning other DAWs makes the Ableton/bitwig paradigm harder but I encourage everybody that's never played on a DAW to borrow a PC/mac with one and find your inner Iggy, Sheeran or Taylor Swift.

1176 points by prhrb 3y ago

[dead]

I think this is a really good primer for electronic music production if you're going to start from absolutely zero. If you specifically want to program beats, I recommend this quirky book "Pocket Operations": https://shittyrecording.studio https://shittyrecording.studio. It's basically guitar tabs for drum machines. Pick out some styles as a foundation and then build on top of it. Think of it as boilerplate code. Being a software dev by day, and a former musician in high school, the current world of digital music production tools is as incredible as it is overwhelming. It's good to have something that orients your practice and experimentation.

filoleg 3y ago
This is fantastic, thank you for sharing! Literally a no-fluff cheatsheet for drum patterns presented in the simplest to digest form possible, and without losing any important parts. Programming drum patterns has always been daunting to me, as it seemed like everyone just "knew" their patterns and how to play around them. Even though I knew that it wasn't the case, it was still difficult to approach. But with this boilerplate, it's like a massive blocker is just gone for me. And by going through even just a a portion of the patterns, I can easily see how one can acquire a sense for them and is able to come up with their own takes.
- chaosprint 3y ago
  Have you tried to use the code to make drum/note patterns: https://glicol.org/tour#sequencer https://glicol.org/tour#sequencer I am open to all feedbacks!
- dist-epoch 3y ago
  Or you could just try to reproduce the beats of your favorite songs. It will be incredibly difficult at first, but after some tens of hours you should be able to slowly program the simpler ones. Obviously you need some native beat tracking capabilities, it seems some people just lack this skill. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00771/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.0077...
  - agmand 3y ago
    There's a music teacher at NYU, Ethan Hein, that seems to be working on this exactly in the context of groove pedagogy. For example, he recently picked apart the amen break in a blog post [0] and tried to replicate it in ableton from scratch, methodically. He first lies out the basic pieces or the groove, then builds up the groove adding and removing elements, gradually complexifying it. As someone who has trouble with drum patterns as well I really liked the idea. [0] https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2023/building-the-amen-break/ https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2023/building-the-amen-break/
    - completelylegit 3y ago
      Look for the Ableton live realtime “reproducing prodigy’s fire starter in ableton”, it’s really a wonderful example. You’ll appreciate it.
      - dpflan 3y ago
        Wow, thank you!
    - notmypenguin 3y ago
      Might I suggest simply playing with a basic drumset in real life for a few hours? A kick snare and hihat are the principal components needed. I contend that you will organically discover a kind of conversational dialogue between the kick and snare that known beats are a result of. It’s something that will inform your drum programming immensely, even if you never pick up drum sticks again
poisonarena 3y ago
> recommend this quirky book "Pocket >Operations" edit: oops
- darkvertex 3y ago
  Uhhh... Did you read the site? That book is a free PDF.
dcist 3y ago
This is great! Thanks for sharing. If you have any more recommendations like this, I’m all ears.
- efields 3y ago
  It’s the only thing I’ve found/needed. Just like any instrument, drums/drum machines can be pitched, respond to velocity, and are affected by sounds played around them. Understanding where your sounds fall in the EQ spectrum is huge. Don’t sleep on amplification, saturation, and EQ.
smcnally 3y ago
Thank you for reminding about Paul Wenzel’s music stuff. Building atop boilerplate is also good to remember and do. > and a former musician in high school s/former/recovering
- ilyt 3y ago
  It's not a disease to be recovered from lmao
  - efields 3y ago
    Well…
zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
I just bought that book a couple months ago. It's really cool for punching in drum beats real quick
albert_e 3y ago
excellent is there a simple / Lightweight software tool that will let kids get into drums and music..using this book as a starter?
- chaosprint 3y ago
  You can use https://glicol.org/ https://glicol.org/ in the browsers.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  A groovebox in the browser: https://tahti.studio/ https://tahti.studio/
867-5309 3y ago
this book needs to be turned into an interactive website
flaviuspopan 3y ago
You have no idea how unfathomably timely this discovery was. Truly unreal. I've scoured the internet for a while trying to collect every dataset known to humanity about beat programming in this exact sense. Thank you.
- pbackx 3y ago
  You might also like this one: http://808.pixll.de/index.php http://808.pixll.de/index.php
gtani 3y ago
and anybody that wants to go serious/pro, there's Snoman's Dance Music Manual, 4th edition but earlier editions shd still be useful.

erwinh 3y ago

Love what the team over there does with these web demos. They previously made this amazing interactive synthesizer learning resource: https://learningsynths.ableton.com/ https://learningsynths.ableton.com/

efields 3y ago
This one is also so good!

robotnikman 3y ago

As someone who wants to start doing some music as a hobby but has 0 experience with how music works, this is very helpful and informative!

mattchamb 3y ago
I just started learning guitar at 34 with absolutely no musical experience, and it's such an amazing new world to learn.
- fat-chunk 3y ago
  My wife only started learning drums a few years ago, and now she's regularly gigging with a band in a bunch of iconic venues around London. It's never too late to start! :)
- williamcotton 3y ago
  I’ve been playing guitar for almost 30 years and it never stops being an amazing world to learn! It is endless!
- nrjames 3y ago
  I just started at age 49 and I'm loving it! I'm focusing on fingerstyle acoustic, which I've always loved.

bsaul 3y ago

I’ve been a user of those kinds of tools for more than 30 years, as an amateur, and of course i’m amazed at the progress made. However, a part of me wonder how much we lost in the process. We’ve automated so much that i wonder if the tools don’t play a role in the lack of diversity in music production. When every part of a song has to be composed or improvised by a human, note per note, isn’t it clear that the end result should be, be definition, more original , as well as more meaningful ?

fat-chunk 3y ago
I'm inclined to disagree. I believe the progress in music software has opened up new avenues and genres, it hasn't stifled existing ones. Instrument players are going to keep playing their instruments, just that now it's easier than ever for them to make their own professional sounding recordings and songs. On the flipside you have more and more people getting into music without requiring any formal musical background. I also think the older we get, the more we think most music sounds the same because music inherently changes over time, and will be different to what we grew up on, but we also become more distanced from the subcultures and communities pioneering modern music trends. A young person today probably thinks all rock music from the 50s-90s sounds the same
- notmypenguin 3y ago
  I disagree and think there are objective measures of cynicism in music today that are unprecedented. I agree that the paths you suggest are possible and that the tools available have never been so available. I see cultural problems as the root issue. We’ve reduced music to a recorded consumable and thereby reduced the role of the humans communicating telepathically via music, which is the social function of music, as I understand it
  - teknico 3y ago
    I like this use of “telepathic” as sharing emotions, rather than thoughts, at a distance.
3y ago

fat-chunk 3y ago

If anyone is looking for a low-barrier-to-entry start to making music, I'd recommend they check out https://audiotool.com https://audiotool.com Completely free, but very deep and powerful browser-based cloud music production software, with a tight-knit encouraging community built around it.

javajosh 3y ago

I like Ableton, but the better way to get started making music is with your voice, singing with songs that you like. Sing the melody, and also the bass and harmony parts. If you have a phone you can use the voice memo app to do two-part stuff. If you want to move up to an instrument, my favorite is the melodica, a breath-operated keyboard that is very cheap (~ $20), sounds great, and teaches the notes of a piano, and requires no electrical power to operate. In fact for some things I think the melodica is better than a piano, since in some ways it's closer to an organ with the ability to maintain and vary the sound over time.

courseofaction 3y ago
Good advice - no matter what you play, whether you produce electronically or acoustically, singing will help you internalize music, ready to be transferred to any sound-making object.
asdfman123 3y ago
Yeah, I wasted years sorta playing guitar and sorta fucking around with the computer. I knew how to practice effectively from my years in band, but I didn't use them because I was too busy rejecting who I was in high school. Now I'm learning piano and I've joined a choir, and I'm actually getting better at things instead of being a perpetually mediocre guitarist/singer.
- askafriend 3y ago
  It sounds like you just didn't like playing guitar? I much prefer playing guitar to piano or a choir.
  - asdfman123 3y ago
    That was probably it too. I'm more wired for classical music, but I had to try to look cool in my 20s. I had discovered that music was one of my few interests that I could actually trade for social credit.

s-xyz 3y ago

Great tutorial and design

RobotToaster 3y ago

Any open source tools for this?

roblh 3y ago
Honestly, not really. I feel like this is one of the very few areas that doesn’t really have any great open source options. Reaper is about the closest you’re gonna get. It’s not open source, but as far as fair licence and good price without sacrificing any usability, it’s kind of in a league of its own. It was started by the guy who made Winamp.
- dumpsterlid 3y ago
  Yeah Reaper isn't open source, but the licensing system is an amazing breath of fresh air. You can just download it and start using it with no account sign up process and once the free trial (60 days) ends all that happens is a nag screen pops up. You can literally just keep closing the nag screen and never buy the software (though this is an illegal use of the product) but why would you do that if you have the money to support the devs? I bought it as soon as I realized how easy it was to demo and start using. If one of the primary points of open source software is to promote accessibility, Reaper goes a long way towards this without actually being open source. There is no DRM, there is no need to make an account and do some long sign up process to get Reaper up and running, there is no iLok required (vomits in mouth a little). You can download it in and start working on a project as quickly as your computer can finish installing it. From Reaper's license popup: > We are showing this message, instead of crippling this evaluation version of REAPER, because we do not feel technological enforcement of licensing policy is in the best interest of our customers Reaper is the only professional artistic software (sold as a product) I have ever come across that is remotely realistic about how people use it. Nobody has ever pirated Reaper in the history of Reaper, there is no point and that is how software should work in a more sane world.
  - squeaky-clean 3y ago
    One of the Reaper devs once said on their forums (or maybe it was KVR) that they never want to add anti-piracy measures to Reaper because it's just a cost-center for development with no real payoff. It can potentially hurt paying customers, and it almost never converts pirates. If someone doesn't want to pay, music software is easy to pirate. If it's somehow not easy to pirate (Cubase was crack-free for several years), there's so many competing products with the same utilities, they will just pirate one of your competitors.

Animats 3y ago

Melody? What's that?

pottering 3y ago
https://learningmusic.ableton.com/make-melodies/make-melodies.html https://learningmusic.ableton.com/make-melodies/make-melodie...

marricks 3y ago

I tried this a few years ago and it was addictive and amazing. Highly recommend. I’d also like to tangent to say: music used to be a much bigger part of our lives. Before the radio a piano was a household staple. Kids would learn, family’s would play and sing to each other. We’ve largely given that up. Imagining hearing one of your family members just start singing to themselves without any background music, does that feel uncomfortable? Would you sing along? I think to many the answer is clear, music, as well as many other endeavors are something to now be enjoyed but not created. And oh boy do we get to enjoy the “best” music and “best” films and “best” books on demand. And along the way we lost the large bits of ourselves which created and enjoyed together. So, in short, 10/10 would do the tutorial again.

coldtea 3y ago
>I’d also like to tangent to say: music used to be a much bigger part of our lives. Before the radio a piano was a household staple. Kids would learn, family’s would play and sing to each other. We’ve largely given that up. Music fandom used to be a bigger part of lives after that. Pop/rock stars were royalty. Now with all the other stuff competing for eyeballs it's just another thing. Aside from a much smaller music-obsessed demographic, most teens could not care less today.
- sgustard 3y ago
  This seems to ignore the phenomenon of people paying to sit in a parking lot outside a Taylor Swift concert? https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2023/05/15/taylor-swift-eras-tour-parking-lot/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2023/05/15/taylor-swift...
  - coldtea 3y ago
    That's more about the ticket price, and just going to have some fun with friends (plus the trend), than the music. People do similar shit for iPhone or console launches, movie premieres, social media stars, and so on.
gabereiser 3y ago

gabereiser 3y ago

Making music is easier than ever! Making a living doing it is harder than ever!

SoftTalker 3y ago
It was never easy making a living as a musician. If you were really good, and at least a bit lucky, you could. The vast majority had to have other jobs. I agree it's probably tougher today though. The fact that producing and recording is something anyone can do with a laptop just makes the S/N ratio even smaller. And a lot of the surrounding industry jobs have probably gone away too, since big physical mixing desks and multi-track tape machines and record cutting and pressing machines are no longer used nearly as much.
bryans 3y ago
> Making a living doing it is harder than ever! It's extremely easy to make a living from music right now. With a weekend's worth of YouTube training, any decent musician or songwriter should be able to invest 40hr/wk and reliably generate $5k/mo within a year.
- ben_ 3y ago
  You have anything to back this up? Seems like a stretch to say a weekend of training is all it takes
  - analog31 3y ago
    Anything can be proven possible by a single exceptional example. The question I would ask is what's probable.
  - bryans 3y ago
    There aren't that many topics to learn. If you pick one music industry content creator, they will have around two days worth of videos that you can watch. If you do the things they say, you will make money. There's no magic to it. Many thousands of live streaming musicians have had no trouble going from $0 to $5k/mo. You're welcome to check out Twitch or TikTok any time for evidence of this.

ksenzee 3y ago

I'm a classically trained pianist with a bunch of music theory under my belt but zero idea how music is produced, and this is fascinating and addictive to the point where I need to put it away or I'll get no work done today.

cmsefton 3y ago

Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055433

dang 3y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: Get started making music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055433 - Oct 2021 (144 comments) Get Started Making Music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965386 - Sept 2019 (184 comments) Get started making music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628 - May 2017 (461 comments) Get started making music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14291332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14291332 - May 2017 (2 comments)
- cmsefton 3y ago
  Ah, thanks for that dang, if I get that weird déjà vu feeling again, I'll try follow a similar format!

westernaccess 3y ago

i wish their native ui/ux matched this level of design side note: is there any DAW that supports realtime collaboration?

ijustlurk 3y ago
Spotify's Soundtrap claims to have live collaboration, haven't tested it though so I don't know if it's actually realtime or just a step in that direction.
fat-chunk 3y ago
https://audiotool.com https://audiotool.com

Mizoguchi 3y ago

Don't forget The Manual https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual If you can't get a number one at least you'll be left LYFAO with an invaluable lesson on business and an intimate tour of late 80s UK techno scene. Wonderful read.

musicam 3y ago

One thing that has been amazing me recently is the current state of vocal synthesis. It seems to have improved rapidly in the space of just a few years, thanks to neural network models. For example, here's a quick clip from a synth I've been using in recent weeks: https://vocaroo.com/125tAD40Gl6d https://vocaroo.com/125tAD40Gl6d It sounds almost like a real voice, and that's just using the default settings, without any effort to tweak it further to improve the realism.

superchroma 3y ago
In light of what we learned with vocaloid in Japan, is this even meaningful? Singers don't make the song. You can have crowds fill stadiums to watch a hologram, it has already been proven. To boot, isn't this the fidelity vs fun argument of videogames again, too? Madonna's "Ray of Light" is still a good song without her; William Orbit is a master producer after all. I hope we see a refocusing away from personalities to producers out of this.
- musicam 3y ago
  It depends on the audience, and the producer. Some people are content with listening to robotic-sounding Vocaloid type synths, others prefer something closer to an authentic singing voice with the more complex range of emotion that can be expressed. Even just from a technology point of view, I find it fascinating to see how the envelope is being pushed via machine learning models.
  - tehnub 3y ago
    >Some people are content with listening to robotic-sounding Vocaloid type synths, others prefer something closer to an authentic singing voice with the more complex range of emotion that can be expressed. Let me just point out the nuance that many people, including myself, appreciate both types of music.
squidsoup 3y ago
Interesting, thanks. What's the name of the synth?

zoogeny 3y ago

I think this is awesome and I recommend anyone interested in following it through. But one problem with this kind of thing is that it has the character of "How to Draw an Owl" [1]. I have been tinkering with Ableton for 10+ years but when I got to the song structure part (especially the Photek Drum 'n Bass one) I kinda had to laugh. Making music is really difficult. This kind of tutorial is step one on a thousand step journey. 1. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-to-draw-an-owl https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-to-draw-an-owl

davidy123 3y ago

I've dabbled in making music, but it makes me bump against an existential crisis. I could make nice sounding music, but what does it mean? Often, it's just an excuse to buy more gear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXWTN1XTtI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXWTN1XTtI

antipotoad 3y ago
It doesn’t have to mean anything. Music is pure pleasure. Vibrations in the air that tickle our brains just so.
- davidy123 3y ago
  I think I'd rather find a way to enjoy developing tech for universal friendly anonymous healthcare workflow identifiers. But if anyone can write supporting music, please do.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  I listen to a lot of music but I don’t experience it in this way at all. It has to be very interesting or high quality for me to enjoy it
mirkules 3y ago
It’s funny, music was what solved my existential crisis. Software is always being replaced. When I die, chances are my kids and grandkids will never be able to point to a piece of software and say “my dad did this”. Even for my grandfather, who architected several buildings in my home town - his buildings are gradually being replaced and I can’t point them out to my kids anymore. Music (and other arts), on the other hand, is yours forever and exists forever, and it’s a way for future generations to connect with their ancestors and even pass on a legacy.
bowsamic 3y ago
As a long time dabbler in music making I’ve often felt the same. The music I make never feels novel or creative, so what am I even doing it for?
3y ago

ilkke 3y ago

Modern DAWs are absolutely amazing, but if you're into both programming and music I can't recommend checking out a tracker enough. In particular I recommend the Dirtywave M8 as a fantastic blend of everything that makes trackers great, and modern convenience and power.[0] [0]https://dirtywave.com/ https://dirtywave.com/

cwillu 3y ago
A fantastic blend of salesmanship and freedom from ethics? “This is a preorder. Estimated starting ship date is July 2023. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”
- Applejinx 3y ago
  Patience not necessary. Renoise. https://www.renoise.com/ https://www.renoise.com/ A terrific modern tracker, runs on Win/OSX/Linux. Renoise is wonderful.
  - agentultra 3y ago
    +1. I’ve been experimenting with using it in a live setup. It’s very flexible and lets you set up macros that can be triggered with midi. It’s kind of nuts what it can do. Highly underrated.
- JaggedNZ 3y ago
  Dirtywave have shipped plenty of M8's in the last year. They just produce them in batches, there have also been shortages of the Teensy 4.1 microcontroller used IIRC and they are highly sought after. You can also "build your own" from supplied firmware https://github.com/Dirtywave/M8HeadlessFirmware https://github.com/Dirtywave/M8HeadlessFirmware This is not the fly-by-night kickstarter you are implying.
  - cwillu 3y ago
    Fair.
- 3y ago

munificent 3y ago

I love love love Ableton Live. It's possibly my favorite piece of software today. If you're a software engineer interested in UX, I think Live will fit your brain like a hand in glove. It reminds me very much of emacs or vi where the app is designed to disappear from view and let you focus on your content. Also, it's incredibly programmable and generative at many many different levels: * Session view lets you build arrangements on the fly in realtime. * Follow actions on clips let you automatically build sequences of clips, loop, them, randomly chain them, etc. It's like control flow for clips. * The various built-in synths and effects support all sorts of dynamic modulation to make timbres evolve on their own. * Then, of course, there is Max4Live, a full-fledged visual programming environment integrated deeply into the app. You, of course, can ignore all that stuff and just make completed fixed tracks. But if you're interested in the live aspects of Live, then the software really feels like a substrate that you can use to build your own bespoke instrument for playing your music in real time. I love it so much.

FractalHQ 3y ago
I agree, and with over 15 years of experience with Live and a fruitful music career thanks to it, I have a deep respect for it. It’s hard to use anything else because of how many small, seemingly insignificant workflow features it has which add up quick in a session. _But_ - man is it far behind the modern DAWS like Studio One and Bitwig in the low-level fundamentals like plug-in isolation, multithreading, and flexibility in terms of your ability to offload frozen tracks from RAM. This puts a bottleneck on the max size of a session before it becomes unstable and unusable. Even with 32GB RAM and a top-shelf CPU, my ability to finish a song grinds to a halt around the 100 track range. My songs can have 150 tracks with 1-20 plugins and 1-30 automation lanes per track by the time they are finished, and the number of hours I’ve lost from crashing or just waiting for it to respond could easily add up to months at this point. And small things like the inability to know if a plug-in is the VST2 or VST3 version have been driving me nuts for over a decade. My music is absurdly abnormal in terms of complexity though, and the vast majority of people will never encounter these problems. I worry, however, that the glacial pace of development likely due to the prehistoric tech stack at Ableton will prevent it from ever closing the growing gap made by the increasingly valuable feature sets of modern DAWs have been able to push out quickly and consistently. Either way, Ableton Live is a great demonstration of the incredibly fine nuance involved in a good UX. They got a lot of little things right, and that alone has been the largest contributor to their success in the industry.

comet-engine 3y ago

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superb-owl 3y ago

This is incredible. I'd love to see something similar for sound synthesis (how do you craft that perfect piano/violin/dubsteppy sound?) and mixing/mastering.

squeaky-clean 3y ago
It's not free, but Syntorial is exactly what you want. https://www.syntorial.com/ https://www.syntorial.com/ I don't know a suitable tool for mixing/mastering except many years of trial and error. Lots of things exist to get you the basics and aware of what all the major tools do, but nothing I know of (yet) really teaches you how to put them together to make a great mix nearly as well as making 100 bad mixes first. I can't remember the speaker, but I watched a lecture (probably a decade ago) where the speaker said you could give the same project file to a great engineer who is only allowed to use the volume faders, and an amateur who is allowed to use any software tools and any expensive rack hardware. And the great engineer will make a better mix 100% of the time. I very much believe that statement is true.
smcnally 3y ago
https://learningsynths.ableton.com/ https://learningsynths.ableton.com/

evo_9 3y ago

It would be cool if HN had a list of popular / repeatedly submitted url's/articles like this one, and a total count. Would be a great list to look over, too.

eweise 3y ago

Ableton is really expensive. Logic is just as good if not better, and much cheaper.

pacomerh 3y ago
Ableton is really good for live performance though. I don't know about Logic but the session view in Ableton is really good for improvisation
- eweise 3y ago
  True. They started out with different purposes and now are trying to incorporate each others features.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  Logic is garbage in all those areas.

ROTMetro 3y ago

For those interested in getting started, Knobcloud.com has cheap Ableton Live intro licenses. vital.audio is a super cool free(ish) virtual synthesizer, https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-symphony-orchestra-discover#listen https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-symphony-orchestra-discove... is a free virtual symphony orchestra. If you just use your basic PC built in sound, you will also need to install ASIO4All ASIO drivers to reduce latency. I wish I was a kid today the tools as so amazing, instead I spent my youth learning the make DX7 patches which to be fair did prepare me for the pain of being a Microsoft stack developer in the 1990s.

reducesuffering 3y ago

For a bit of inspiration after, here's Kygo's breakdown on pro production https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCe-6UprFGo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCe-6UprFGo

medguru 3y ago

The tutorial is really thorough.

bandrami 3y ago

While we're here, if you get into electronic music and want some samples, the Library of Congress's "Citizen DJ" project has multiple gigs of public domain audio you can use: https://citizen-dj.labs.loc.gov/ https://citizen-dj.labs.loc.gov/ I'll also throw in some libre projects to look at: Sonic Pi Csound (front-ends include Blue and Cabbage) Supercollider Pure Data LMMS Mixxx

Lapsa 3y ago

bitwig is better

nextlevelwizard 3y ago
Do they have as good or better tutorial to get started?
- Lapsa 3y ago
  can ableton do polyphonic modulation?
  - nextlevelwizard 3y ago
    I have no idea, but this thread was about getting started with making music. It is literal lunacy to just drive by yell "this software is better" if it has no comparable tutorial.

honkycat 3y ago

if you want a really cheap way to get started: - Reaper isn't free, but it has an unlimited, 0 trade-off trial period For some free open source synths: - Vital is a great wavetable synth - Dexed is a DX7 close that is phenomenal - dsp56300emu emulates a bunch of classic high quality synths, notably the virus - Surge Synth ...there are so many excellent open source VSTs you really do NOT need to spend any money. I don't really know of any high quality open source DAWs, unfortunately.

tincholio 3y ago
Ardour is pretty good, actually.

nologic01 3y ago

This is quite inspiring.Is there a js library to help build simple music training exercises?

jjarvis 3y ago
Ableton used Max’s RNBO library for these pages. RNBO is essentially Max but compiles to web assembly. https://rnbo.cycling74.com/explore/learning-synths-and-rnbo https://rnbo.cycling74.com/explore/learning-synths-and-rnbo

LelouBil 3y ago

If anyone is interested in a good book (in French) about the history of music electronic music (mixed with the history of electricity, recordings, and music itself) I recommend this book I enjoyed very much : https://www.amazon.com/fous-du-son-Laurent-Wilde/dp/2246859271 https://www.amazon.com/fous-du-son-Laurent-Wilde/dp/22468592...

antmaper 3y ago

Ableton Live, while a respected tool in music production, appears to be falling behind in terms of embracing new technologies and features.

dkh 3y ago
How so?
- dottjt 3y ago
  I've switched from Ableton to Bitwig and man, you don't realise how behind Ableton is until you try Bitwig. I think it's a case of death by a thousand cuts with Ableton. For example, Ableton does not have customisable shortcuts! Which is a huge workflow blocker. Arguably, a lot of the issues are UX related, as opposed to feature related. But UX is a core part of the product and subsequent usability of the product.
  - notmypenguin 3y ago
    Meh, I disagree. I’ve owned Bitwig for about a year now and there are some frustrations with it I didn’t have with Ableton. Nothing is perfect, neither is ahead of the other. If I wasn’t on Linux I would go back to Ableton, to be honest. Bitwig has the synthesizer thing and effects thing down pat, but it’s audio editing is frustrating to say the least. I want to turn of this track comping nonsense but I can’t, I hate track comping and have used DAWs since they were invented so…
    - dottjt 3y ago
      You can turn off track comping, you need to turn off the overdub button (that big plus sign in the top left). What parts of the audio editing is weak to you? In my opinion, it's one of the strongest things it offers. I assume you're trying to edit the audio in the arranger, instead of in the clip view. What makes it so strong, is that you can chop it up in the clip view, and your audio in the arranger remains one contiguous piece of audio. It sounds like you're either trying to use the software like Ableton and you're getting frustrated that it's not Ableton, or you don't understand how Bitwig works.

tekni5 3y ago

If you want something to mess with LMMS is pretty good as a DAW, free & open source as well. Example of some tracks I made: https://youtu.be/p3y5fdZ94io https://youtu.be/p3y5fdZ94io https://youtu.be/rSD4xZTDo9Q https://youtu.be/rSD4xZTDo9Q https://youtu.be/09Hip0bRdaU https://youtu.be/09Hip0bRdaU https://youtu.be/n3JmttdUXoU https://youtu.be/n3JmttdUXoU

andrewmcwatters 3y ago

The last time I was doing music production, I was learning how not all instruments are created equally. If you want to do some pop music work, drum beats are a dime a dozen. If you want to do high quality orchestral work, you're going to have to fork out some serious cash for stuff like EastWest Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra, Vienna Symphonic Library, Garritan Personal Orchestra, and others. I'm sure things have since changed and you can now get some of these on cloud subscriptions, but you couldn't really achieve the same depth at all with some of the stuff you'd get as standard packs from your favorite DAW.

ChristianGeek 3y ago
The BBC Symphony is available as a free plugin that works with all major DAWs (including free versions): https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-symphony-orchestra-discover https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-symphony-orchestra-discove...
- andrewmcwatters 3y ago
  Oh man, I forgot about the BBC Symphony library! Thanks for mentioning this.

JodieBenitez 3y ago

While we're on the subject of music softwares, let me point you to exceptional ones: https://www.bitwig.com https://www.bitwig.com : it's basically Ableton live but next gen, where everything can be modulated https://www.renoise.com https://www.renoise.com : the modern tracker https://www.beepstreet.com/ios/drambo https://www.beepstreet.com/ios/drambo : this one justifies buying an ipad, it's incredible

raincole 3y ago
I personally use Bitwig. It's probably the most "think like a programmer" type of DAW. But man it's expensive.
- JodieBenitez 3y ago
  Expensive ? Of course your mileage may vary, maybe where you live it's a lot, but this is a professional tool starting at $99 with the full version being $399. Given what it does, it's effectively given. Back in the days, I can remember paying a lot of money just for RAM expansion on an Akaï sampler. These days, for music tools, we're all spoiled kids.
- abhinavk 3y ago
  It's $99 to own. Not a subscription/month.
  - raincole 3y ago
    No, it's $399. The killer features of Bitwig are modulation and Grid, and you will need the $399 version for that. $99 version is basically a generic DAW with a modern UI but less built-in instruments than other DAWs. Of course it's still useful... but to be honest using the $99 version is hardly "using Bitwig".
EmilyHughes 3y ago
I also use Bitwig. I switched from Ableton because it was cheaper. It's objectively a better DAW from a technical standpoint. But I have to say the sounds and plugins it comes with are not on par with ableton, some presets really have me scratching my head and it took forever until they gave us a decent convolution reverb. For the longest time I was not able to get a simple sine-wave out of the synthesizers it comes with (wtf?). It's also worth mentioning that back in the days this DAW was promoted with a feature that lets you collaborate with others over the network, now 10 years later there is no more mention of this feature and I think most forgot it was even planned. Recently they tried to sell you stock-plugins for a premium but back-pedaled quickly. That is just ridicoulous after I sunk hundreds of dollars in their update plans. That being said I still recommend it.

ConanRus 3y ago

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makach 3y ago

I can't believe that I navigate through the entire course on that website, very interesting

osigurdson 3y ago

It would be funny if someone became a famous DJ just using this web page. I was impressed with some of the beats that I "came up with".

porkbeer 3y ago

If you start with this limited mentality, you are going to be stuck with a partucular workflow, funnay that its onky workable using ableton. Its an alright program, but look around more and focus on which works for your idea of music before investing in it,

zerbinxx 3y ago
Most DAW’s impose a workflow and set of tools on you. Hell, any set of notative or formal tools will do that - it’s part of what makes music-making possible. If you’ve ever messed around with a complete alien tool like the therimin or Tenori-On, you quickly figure out some hacks to cram its operations into something your mind can work with. A “limitless mentality” would be something like Cage or Reich where you’re so advanced about making music that you know how to break those boundaries elegantly. For most people “getting started with Ableton Live” will do.
nextlevelwizard 3y ago
You have to start somewhere or rather if you try to start with everything at once on your own you are going to have a hard time. That is sort of like saying one shouldn't start with one programming language, but instead sample all languages and various frameworks before investing their time, but that completely ignores the fact that if you start with zero knowledge you can't just randomly sample different things - most of which you haven't even heard of - before you even get to see if you like the thing you are doing in the first place.
pottering 3y ago
It is not "only workable using ableton", it teaches generic music theory (just the basics), which is usable even without a computer.

chaosprint 3y ago

Live coding is another way for hackers to get started with music making: https://glicol.org/ https://glicol.org/

vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago

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pahn 3y ago

their 404 error page is the best sounding one i have seen so far: https://learningmusic.ableton.com/wronglink https://learningmusic.ableton.com/wronglink

fauria 3y ago

Also from Ableton: "Learning Synths" - https://learningsynths.ableton.com/ https://learningsynths.ableton.com/

mazzystar 3y ago

My first Ableton try out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6oLysNagLQ&ab_channel=MazzyStar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6oLysNagLQ&ab_channel=Mazzy...

benniomars 3y ago

I love Live, but I just think it's too pricey. Just the standard version is $400 with taxes (in my country).

terrycody 3y ago

What a sweet site! I will learn how to music for later india gaming usage, this is very fun and useful website, thanks!

ben7799 3y ago

This tutorial comes up every couple years and it's got a pretty elegant UI and presentation. It seems to be a perennial HN favorite. But I got a free copy of Ableton (not Ableton Live IIRC) with an interface I bought and Holy cow if Ableton isn't the most painful and disgusting UI I've seen in a while. It took me about 2 seconds to get the interface working correctly in Garage Band. I literally gave up after an hour of trying to get Ableton working correctly. There were like 1000 buttons and one of them had a default value that made the interface not work right or the audio not get routed into the track. IIRC I got it to the point the audio was coming into ableton and it looked like it was working but then nothing ended up in the recorded track. I play guitar as a hobby.. I have no time do put up with something like ableton, I want absolute minimal time spent futzing with a DAW and maximum time with my hands on the actual guitar. This was all on top of me being a software engineer (which maybe made me less tolerant of figuring out the UI) and my interface coming with a long series of video tutorials on how to get Ableton working with the interface. Meanwhile again, got it working in about 2 seconds without looking at the help in Garage Band. A lot of the differentiating features don't matter that much, micing my amp and using my pedalboard/amp sounds better than the synthetic sounds in the DAWs unless I spent a bunch more money. Ableton reminds me of "configuration over convention" or something. Or ancient MS/IBM software where the user has to figure out 1000 options to get anything working.

enqk 3y ago
Compared to a lot of DAWs like Reaper, Ableton is actually convention over configuration! It doesn't offer that many preferences / options..
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
6581 3y ago
> But I got a free copy of Ableton (not Ableton Live IIRC) Ableton is the company. Live is the product.

owobeid 3y ago

I started learning Live after applying for a job interview at Ableton. At that point I had only known what Live was but I never touched it and never had an interest in music making. I downloaded the trial version and after just a couple of hours familiarizing myself with it, I was addicted. I never got the job, but I still open up Live when I'm bored to tinker around. Here's what stands out to me: - Session view is great for experimenting with different arrangements and samples using the same processing chain without having to scroll through a huge timeline of different ideas. You can then go to arrangement view to work on your final arrangement. - Almost everything that you create is reusable. You can string together an instrument and/or a bunch of effects, group them together, map each their controls to a unified (and smaller) set of controls, and now you have a new instrument that you can drag and drop later on. You can then chain and group those together as well. - Max4Live is to plugins as Flash was to games. There are a ton of weird and experimental M4L devices out there available for free or for a very small price. There are some negatives though: - As others have mentioned, it is pricey, $750 as of today if you want the complete version with all their instruments and effects. - Bouncing (re-recording) to a new track or to a file is a bit convoluted. Furthermore, bounced samples are encrypted in Ableton's proprietary format which means you can't use samples that YOU created in other plugins easily. There are a few workarounds that I found but it's just a frustrating experience. This also applies to any sample packs that come with Live or from Ableton's shop, you can't use them outside of Live's inbuilt devices or M4L devices. Again, there are workarounds but it's frustrating and there's probably something in the fine print against it. - No facilities for batch exporting sample slices. Say you want to use Live to process some sound effects and export them to individual files, well you can't do that easily in Live. There's a paid M4L device out there that helps with this but I just use Reaper to do this now.

ericzawo 3y ago

Ableton's documentation is so clear and well done, and this is another example of it. Big fan of their DAW and content.

zokier 3y ago

> After playing with these boxes for a while, you'll discover certain combinations that you like. Many types of music are created in exactly this way — by mixing and matching small musical ideas to make interesting combinations This is the bit I struggle with most; expression and intent. Sure, I can throw random shit together and with some technique it can even sound half-decent, but it is very difficult for me to express anything intentionally with music. And the oversimplification that major=happy, minor=sad is not really helpful at all here, especially with modern music which is more than ready to break any such conventions many times over.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y ago

If I could make a couple of suggestions for people who are trying to "get serious" with their hobbies as electronic music composers, I got a lot of value out of: 1. Berklee Online courses on music production. They're not cheap, but the instructors are stellar, including the guy who literally wrote the Ableton book on creative strategies. 2. https://www.producerdojo.com/ https://www.producerdojo.com/ is incredible if you have the time for it. You get paired with a coach who is usually a seasoned electronic music veteran, possibly a regularly touring performer, and you get to work on becoming better at making electronic music at your pace, with their supervision. It's a lot of work, but the results are about as good as they can get.

gtani 3y ago

I remember getting lots of ableton tutorials after learning how to use garage band, logic and a little pro tools. I think learning other DAWs makes the Ableton/bitwig paradigm harder but I encourage everybody that's never played on a DAW to borrow a PC/mac with one and find your inner Iggy, Sheeran or Taylor Swift.