Music Production & Theory

[Atramental]

This has been something I've dabbled with in the far flung past but I kinda want to get deeper into it lately.

Here's two embarrassing tracks I made 8 years ago on some crap trial version of FL studio. 
https://soundcloud.com/atramental-ghost/dark-ether
https://soundcloud.com/atramental-ghost/sky-fortress
 


If anyone *cough* toku *cough* could show me some decent starting points and/or software for a noob that just wants to make some nice electronic beats and some textural drone tracks on my mac (or pc) laptop I would be very appreciative.

[Momo]

[Trent Dole]

lol, yeah if you want lots of hits you can get your FF on, FrankJavCee has lots of tutorials on how to do various genres. There's a lot of good muso youtubers out there. As far as babby's first DAW goes uh, FL has a free version and you could probably get a fully featured 'free' version if you know where to look, lots of big shit people just use FL. Ableton Live has a 30 day trial version and if you're going to compose a bit by improvising while a beat plays that's probably the way to go. Of course if you want the full version of Ableton afterwards it costs as much as Pro Tools.

[Purrp Skirrp]

I want to get back into this. Used to mess around in FL cutting up samples posting on r/makinghiphop for other cacs to spit hot fire on.

Music Theory:
https://www.musictheory.net/
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_c9BZzLwBRK4df4kteynpwAedXdw9rul

This may not apply to your needs but this channel was great for drum breaks and samples:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3wQ-wKmOpDtj9W0ymaQjpg/videos

[seagrams hotsauce]

lol, yeah if you want lots of hits you can get your FF on, FrankJavCee has lots of tutorials on how to do various genres. There's a lot of good muso youtubers out there. As far as babby's first DAW goes uh, FL has a free version and you could probably get a fully featured 'free' version if you know where to look, lots of big shit people just use FL. Ableton Live has a 30 day trial version and if you're going to compose a bit by improvising while a beat plays that's probably the way to go. Of course if you want the full version of Ableton afterwards it costs as much as Pro Tools.

not if you know where to find it. Besides, it's good to get used to dropping dumb amounts of money on shit out of the gate when you're starting out. Makes it that much easier to transition from neophyte to bearded nerd with a room dedicated to their Eurorack setup and obscure analog ribbon synths that had a 500 unit production run in 1976

[team filler]

[Assimilate]

electronic music seems to be on it's way out.... hopefully

[Atramental]

electronic music seems to be on it's way out.... hopefully

It's probably one of the most versatile and pervasive genres out there. 

[toku]

do whatever you want play and have fun

ppl really like ableton
after that its probably fl studio and logic pro in terms of popularity
get a mini keyboard with/and pads
read/watch a lot
think about it a lot
have fun and play

[Akala]

Ableton is cool if you can afford it. You can do whatever just on a comp, but the push pads make it more intuitive.

Lot of people recommend FL still to people just starting off.

[seagrams hotsauce]

Just buy an mpc60, a techniq 1200, and a Juno 106 and record into a Tascam portastudio. DAWs are for suckers

[tiesto]

electronic music seems to be on it's way out.... hopefully

Uhh, not really, no. Maybe in super mainstream pop culture terms - but even then, the pop producers and hiphop producers will bite from underground electronic music like they have been doing for years.

[EVOL]

If you have a Mac, Logic Pro is the best bang for the buck imo. The synths and plugins that come with it are worth the price alone. A lot of EDM producers seem to prefer Live, but I come from a more traditional singer-songwriter background so I liked Logic's workflow much more than Ableton's. I never fucked around with FL Studio so no experience there. The hip hop producers I know seem to like it though.

Here's some free plugins which are quite gud

OBxd synthesizer, a digital recreation of the Oberheim synths. The sound quality is pretty good, slap on some effects and it sounds really nice.
https://obxd.wordpress.com

iZotope Vinyl plugin. It's pretty handy for making digital plugin synths sound a bit more organic.
https://www.izotope.com/en/products/create-and-design/vinyl.html

electronic music seems to be on it's way out.... hopefully

And be replaced with what? It's certainly not guitar music, guitar sales have been on a steady decline lately. There's even talks of Gibson going under. Electronic music is here to stay.

[seagrams hotsauce]

Guys assimilate is literally distinguished mentally-challenged, you can take basically anything he says and assume either the opposite is true or that it's as coherent as anything you can come up with in your phone by just hitting random words in predictive text, there's no need to pay attention to or address anything he says earnestly

[toku]

Reaper's good too. It's high priority next purchase for me music wise. I do everything in Maschine right now. Technically it's not a DAW, just a sequencer. That, Serum (if you're gonna learn any wavetable synth...this is one, easy as hell to use but versatile and a the new/premium version of a limiter I've loved and used for years.

[I'm a Puppy!]

electronic music seems to be on it's way out.... hopefully

Yes, because if the music industry has shown us anything it's that it is willing to forego technology.

[seagrams hotsauce]

IMO 'creative' stuff like Ableton, FL, Bitwig etc is the way to go for someone starting out over Reaper, Cubase, Logic and the like. All of it's daunting as a beginner but I think having software that's intentionally build for experimentation and improvisation is a lot more 'encouraging' than traditional DAWs built for recording and editing. I remember starting out with FL and Cool Edit Pro (lol) and thinking back I don't even know if I would have bothered with CE if I wasn't recording into it. I'm glad I figured it out since once I moved to Ableton it helped a lot, but that side of things was always way more boring than actually composing in FL was.

[Atramental]

Once I've saved up a bit more disposable income (since tax season really cleaned me out...) I'm going to most likely buy FL Studio 12's Producer Edition and re-learn the ropes again with that.

[Akala]

Utilize the trial and fuck with tutorials before dropping money. FL is actually pretty dope as it’s a legit current platform producers are using and free updates forever etc but see if you like it first.

[Beezy]

I've been saying I'd make time to learn how to use my Maschine and FL Studio better, but I haven't been able to so far because life. I'll watch this thread and aim to give it another shot once NBA playoffs are over.

[Atramental]

Another thing I was wondering about was great headphones for music production.

Someone recommended that I look into Shure headphones:
http://www.shure.com/americas/products/headphones

But I'm open to other options.

[Atramental]

 

I suppose one goal I’m going to shoot for this year is make one decent track that’ll be nice to groove to.

[toku]

Grab fl studio
grab some neutral sounding cans or get monitors
go on youtube and search "[type genre/beat you like and want to make] fl studio tutorial"
copy tutorial, learn the ins and outs so you can do it in your sleep
(make hundreds and thousands of this copy cat trash)
start adding more of yourself into it

congratulations! you now have another creative talent/hobby that will keep you awake at night but it will not make you happy

[Fifstar]

IMO 'creative' stuff like Ableton, FL, Bitwig etc is the way to go for someone starting out over Reaper, Cubase, Logic and the like. All of it's daunting as a beginner but I think having software that's intentionally build for experimentation and improvisation is a lot more 'encouraging' than traditional DAWs built for recording and editing. I remember starting out with FL and Cool Edit Pro (lol) and thinking back I don't even know if I would have bothered with CE if I wasn't recording into it. I'm glad I figured it out since once I moved to Ableton it helped a lot, but that side of things was always way more boring than actually composing in FL was.

Hm, I only used Ableton (somewhat extensively) so I can't talk about more linear focused DAW, but one problem I had with the loop based approach that it often led to myself to myself not finishing tracks or making to repetive stuff.
I would come up with some beats, some chords (I mainly made old school house or Nu Disco style stuff). It sounded somewhat nice after an hour of fiddling. Then I pasted that stuff into the arrangement view and tried to built a track around it. In most cases, it ended up as sounding incredibly repetetive - and that in genre that's knwon for being repetetive.
I believe, at least for some people, that the focus on loops leads to ideas that don't work for full tracks. A more linear focused DAW might help to come up with more fleshed out songs or more focus on a creative arrangement.
Or I just suck at making music, could also be

On topic, I think I will buy the KORG Gadgets for the switch. Seems like a nice tool to come up with some sketches. And I also need to find my license number for Ableton again, maybe I get some time for making music this summer...

@Toku: Are the ATH-M50x comfortable? Sold my Yamaha HS80 so I need something to make music again.

[toku]

not 100% sure as I actually own a much older model/style but the beauty of the m50s are the ear pads are easily replaceable and you have a ton of options:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006NH8768/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/Shure-HPAEC940-Replacement-Velour-Headphones/dp/B005OM06RG/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

and a ton more

[seagrams hotsauce]

IMO 'creative' stuff like Ableton, FL, Bitwig etc is the way to go for someone starting out over Reaper, Cubase, Logic and the like. All of it's daunting as a beginner but I think having software that's intentionally build for experimentation and improvisation is a lot more 'encouraging' than traditional DAWs built for recording and editing. I remember starting out with FL and Cool Edit Pro (lol) and thinking back I don't even know if I would have bothered with CE if I wasn't recording into it. I'm glad I figured it out since once I moved to Ableton it helped a lot, but that side of things was always way more boring than actually composing in FL was.

Hm, I only used Ableton (somewhat extensively) so I can't talk about more linear focused DAW, but one problem I had with the loop based approach that it often led to myself to myself not finishing tracks or making to repetive stuff.
I would come up with some beats, some chords (I mainly made old school house or Nu Disco style stuff). It sounded somewhat nice after an hour of fiddling. Then I pasted that stuff into the arrangement view and tried to built a track around it. In most cases, it ended up as sounding incredibly repetetive - and that in genre that's knwon for being repetetive.
I believe, at least for some people, that the focus on loops leads to ideas that don't work for full tracks. A more linear focused DAW might help to come up with more fleshed out songs or more focus on a creative arrangement.
Or I just suck at making music, could also be

On topic, I think I will buy the KORG Gadgets for the switch. Seems like a nice tool to come up with some sketches. And I also need to find my license number for Ableton again, maybe I get some time for making music this summer...

@Toku: Are the ATH-M50x comfortable? Sold my Yamaha HS80 so I need something to make music again.

Loop Hell is definitely a bitch, but to be honest I don't really feel confident judging wether one DAW or another makes it easier to fall into that hole. My entry into DAWs was initially just to track stuff from my MPC, so for the first year or so that I used ableton, I didn't even know how session view worked lol. I do like how easy ableton makes it to add loops to your library, so if I'm sitting on something I like but don't really know how to move forward I can just throw it in a folder with other loops in the same key and pull it out to see if it fits with something I'm working on later.

That phenomenon is really uniquely unpleasant though. I think the closest thing to it is when you have to read something over and over out loud, and after a while the words coming out of your mouth are totally divorced from any meaning. Just the other day I was cleaning up a really quick vocal hit, and after a while I honestly thought the sample playback rate had changed because I started thinking the pitch had changed. Played back the full sample from the record and nope, my brain had just flatlined after listening to it over and over

[toku]

the only way out of loop hell is to embrace it
what are most songs if not loops circling different loops
if you can get a great loop going you have a whole song already, take away elements, add some more, fuck it up for a breakdown then bring it back
I doubt most of you here are interested in purely linear songs and songwriting and if you are what are you doing at the bore you should be paying attention to your music theory lessons and classical training

[EVOL]

That phenomenon is really uniquely unpleasant though. I think the closest thing to it is when you have to read something over and over out loud, and after a while the words coming out of your mouth are totally divorced from any meaning. Just the other day I was cleaning up a really quick vocal hit, and after a while I honestly thought the sample playback rate had changed because I started thinking the pitch had changed. Played back the full sample from the record and nope, my brain had just flatlined after listening to it over and over

William Basinski made a whole career over exploring this phenomenon, check out The Disintegration Loops

[Atramental]

[seagrams hotsauce]

yeah, don't worry about that for now, or ever

[toku]

lol yeah uh worry about learning an entirely new UI and putting a couple sounds together first fam

[recursivelyenumerable]

don't listen to them, I wanna see you go full microtonaltard 

[Atramental]

I'm rather... "spectrumy" when it comes to colors and fonts.

I can only imagine how I would be with microtones. 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

Anyways, these next couple of days (or weeks, if I'm being honest) I'm going to try and reverse engineer a Carpenter Brut track.

[seagrams hotsauce]

what does that mean

[Trent Dole]

In this context I believe he's out to transcribe a tune and then emulate the sounds of it as closely as possible with the gear/plugins on hand.

[seagrams hotsauce]

If that's the case I implore you not to do that atra. That's an ambitious task for seasoned nerds. You should learn to walk before you sign up for a marathon

[toku]

https://metapop.com/pages/promos/native-sessions-bars?p=1

quickie but might enter it lol, kinda might be too industrialy tho

[seagrams hotsauce]

btw whatever happened to ur bandcam

[toku]

btw whatever happened to ur bandcam

I still have it but i gotta redo graphics

[EVOL]

Just uploaded a new track, I finished it in a day a few weeks ago. I just sat on my ass to find out if I could do anything to make it better but I just ended up keeping it exactly as it was in the end.

https://soundcloud.com/kkamaguicrow/slow-motion

I thought up the dopest bass line while I was sitting in traffic, and when I got to my destination I forgot it 

Always record musical ideas with your cellphone. I got a lot of ideas through just random shit that pops in my head.

https://metapop.com/pages/promos/native-sessions-bars?p=1

quickie but might enter it lol, kinda might be too industrialy tho

I really liked the hi hats and the main synth motif, awesome. Kinda wish it was a bit longer though

[toku]

Just uploaded a new track, I finished it in a day a few weeks ago. I just sat on my ass to find out if I could do anything to make it better but I just ended up keeping it exactly as it was in the end.

https://soundcloud.com/kkamaguicrow/slow-motion

I thought up the dopest bass line while I was sitting in traffic, and when I got to my destination I forgot it 

Always record musical ideas with your cellphone. I got a lot of ideas through just random shit that pops in my head.

https://metapop.com/pages/promos/native-sessions-bars?p=1

quickie but might enter it lol, kinda might be too industrialy tho

I really liked the hi hats and the main synth motif, awesome. Kinda wish it was a bit longer though

holy shit this was you dude? haha I was like who is this korean dude following me, this is really fucking good I almost sent an email seeing if you wanted to collab haha. Really good shit dude. Amazing atmosphere. I'm a big triphop/90s era dj krush kondo style shit and this immediately reminded me of that stuff. You're stuff is great!

Some fun with breaks:
https://soundcloud.com/wldmarks/rise-mecha-lord/s-Wh0Cm

[EVOL]

holy shit this was you dude? haha I was like who is this korean dude following me, this is really fucking good I almost sent an email seeing if you wanted to collab haha. Really good shit dude. Amazing atmosphere. I'm a big triphop/90s era dj krush kondo style shit and this immediately reminded me of that stuff. You're stuff is great!

Some fun with breaks:
https://soundcloud.com/wldmarks/rise-mecha-lord/s-Wh0Cm

Thanks man, still up to that collab offer if you're up to it lol

[toku]

def. still interested! feel free to email me (its on my sc)
Idk how you work but I'm sure we'll figure something out
bless

[seagrams hotsauce]

How's it going here lately

[toku]

https://soundcloud.com/wldmarks/kuze/s-jhdcm
made this last year but i keep coming back to it and fucking with it

[seagrams hotsauce]

i was actually gonna ask you about that. How often do you end up going back and working on older things? I probably have 300 various drafts of shit I've worked on and the amount I've gone back to work on is depressingly low. Sometimes I'll pull loops out of them for other projects, but I've probably only actually done real revisions on a dozen of them or so. Tough to get back in the headspace sometimes.


Shit knocks btw. Atmospheric. Low end pulls through really nicely too

[toku]

i was actually gonna ask you about that. How often do you end up going back and working on older things? I probably have 300 various drafts of shit I've worked on and the amount I've gone back to work on is depressingly low. Sometimes I'll pull loops out of them for other projects, but I've probably only actually done real revisions on a dozen of them or so. Tough to get back in the headspace sometimes.


Shit knocks btw. Atmospheric. Low end pulls through really nicely too

good to sketch and have sketches to pull on but I think the most important is finishing the tracks, even if its really rough. I'm more likely to go back if i think its "complete" I guess compositionally? Basically for me I like to go back and put up windows and window dresssing, not having to finish a whole house.

and sometimes i dream of pop stardom
heres something i would put under a sketch. Didn't go into it trying to make a new track, I just wanted to get some slapper beat going just to say/see if i could do it.

[seagrams hotsauce]

I do try to commit to finishing things, and I can get it done easily when it's something I'm really interested in, but I was feeling a little guilty for having so many things that I have no real desire to return to. I've never thought forcing myself to work on stuff was a good idea though, so I don't beat myself up about it too much. A lot of them don't have a clear direction as an actual track, but have something i wanted to see if I could do, like you said. Often times going back I can figure out what the idea I was going for was and try to apply it to something I'm doing more recently, so I've kind of tried to stop looking at those languishing files so much as abandoned projects as small exercises along the way to the better material.

[toku]

the work is all there is

[seagrams hotsauce]

r u and EVOL doing shit 2gether

[toku]

havent heard from him
https://soundcloud.com/wldmarks/21st/s-pC6t5

[toku]

happy world goth day

[Rahxephon91]

https://soundcloud.com/jaybainesmusic/leblanc-sessions

Stuff from my friend who is into music production.

[EVOL]

r u and EVOL doing shit 2gether

havent heard from him
https://soundcloud.com/wldmarks/21st/s-pC6t5

Been a bit busy, I had exams, been attempting and failing to finish some of my own shit and been preparing for a live gig.

Still up for a collab, just need a bit more time till my time gets freed up

[seagrams hotsauce]

any of you nerds watch pensados place? it's really fascinating watching a veteran engineer chop it up with his contemporaries from a a bunch of different genres. as an old school roc stan i really enjoyed the mike dean and young guru episodes, but his random loosies on various vsts and techniques are also great

[toku]

https://soundcloud.com/wldmarks/anothercastle/s-zirVO

[Momo]

[toku]

https://soundcloud.com/wldmarks/press-start/s-of5bj
https://soundcloud.com/wldmarks/empty/s-UX6bS

[shosta]

Was listening to some Turkish music and it was actually kind of distressing to hear sounds I've never heard before. Didn't like it at all. Then I looked into it some more and it's because babies develop the full range of notes they hear really early, just like phonemes (and it's for the same reason). I thought that was interesting.

[Rufus]

Was listening to some Turkish music and it was actually kind of distressing to hear sounds I've never heard before. Didn't like it at all. Then I looked into it some more and it's because babies develop the full range of notes they hear really early, just like phonemes (and it's for the same reason). I thought that was interesting.

Turkish classical music, I assume?

Try this: