When you want to learn any art, the trick to learning is to deconstruct what is happening in the art you're looking at. You want to start listening to music from the perspective of a musician or composer: That's not a song you're listening to, that's a compilation of individual instrument tracks and sometimes vocals. Listen to just the bass. Listen to just the guitar. Listen to just the drums. Listen to just the vocals. Listen to what each individual thing is in the song, and where it comes in. Anyone who wants to make music needs to be able to distinguish individual sounds within a song, because you will have to build each of those elements yourself to make your own techno music, or work with other people to make real instrument recorded music. And the basics of a listening ear should be worked out on your own, by doing this listening work.
The easiest music to do this with is rock music. Rock music has a very standardized structure (this is not a bad thing, it's just what it is). Not only that, but you will find that people who make the kind of music you like today have been influenced by people who made rock music. Or they have been influenced by people who have made music that was inspired by rock music. Try these two for starters, but get recommendations from people you know too:
One Two (One important thing that you should note from these that you might not pick up on immediately: While all instruments should be played generally in sync with each other, the vocals are not necessarily restricted to it at all)
After rock music, do the same thing with every genre. Or rather AS MANY GENRES AS YOU CAN. Ones you like, ones you absolutely loathe, everything. You're not listening to enjoy yourself, you're listening to who is playing what.
There's really no shortcut to this step.
By the way, this next step does not require you to finish the step above. Ideally, you'll do this one while you're developing your ear. Do it concurrently.
Get access to a keyboard. Repeat
get access to a keyboard. You know in shows where they have people composing, they are sitting in front of a keyboard? That is not a lie. That is truth. The keyboard is laid out in a way that makes learning music theory easy. The keyboard is also laid out in a way that makes composition easy. When I sit down to a keyboard now to figure out which key a song I'm composing is in, it's easy because I learned how to compose with it;
<Me> *Starts to play scales* -- Oh, I like this one.
<Me> This major scale starts on F, so it's F major/D minor.
<Me> The notes I can play without making it sound out of place (the notes in the scale) are F, G, A, Bflat, C, D, E.
<Me> My F, Bflat, and C chords are my major chords (because Bflat is sub-dominant, and C is dominant)
<Me> My G, A, and D chords are minor chords (Because to play them using the keys we have outlined, you need to modify the standard notes)
<Me> E is my diminished chord (I have not yet learned the reason behind this one, I am still in the process of learning music theory)
<Me> The I - IV - V chord progression for this is F, Bflat, CAll of this is built on learning scales. And to learn scales, you have to read a book, or a website on scales. My stripped down version: Play every white key starting on C until you get to the next C. Note the spaces you moved to get to each of these white keys. Whole step (jumped over a key) - Whole step - Half step (got directly to the next key) - Whole step - Whole step - Whole step - Half step. THIS PATTERN is the major scale. You can start this pattern of jumps on any key on the keyboard, and you will still have a major scale. It will sound different, but it will still be major. There are other patterns out there, and they are also important to know. For instance:
This song starts off as basically an E minor scale, and then it jumps into major chords.One last thing: Get MIDI composition software. There are a lot of them out there. Some of them are free. You're going to have to experiment to find the right one for you. There are some bands that compose exclusively in MIDI, and then they play to printouts of what they've created with it.
This is one my brother listens to.
This is its actual recording. I honestly prefer the MIDI version, myself.
Anyway, I use FL Studio, which I paid some of my rather hard earned money for because I thought it was worth it. But I had some experience in using MIDI composition software already using my dad's copy of Cakewalk. FL Studio allows Virtual Instruments that use MIDI data to play a variety of sounds, but it's good to have some experience in doing it the less flashy way before you dive into it.
This is my own work in making music. This particular piece was made over a period of 2 weeks, with about 12 hours of work sunk into it to get this particular sound. The reason for the "two weeks" is because I was busy with other things, and it was relegated to the side. It uses a lot of stuff from my previous works, and you'd be surprised how much of my own recycled material went into its composition. But it turned into its own song, and stands as the best of the work I can display at the moment.
One last word of advise from the Audio department head at the school I'm going to:
Protect your fucking ears. This is good advise in general, but especially if you want to have fun making music. Wear earplugs at concerts, even if it's not fashionable. Any time you hear ringing in your ears after being exposed to loud noises, this means that you have experienced hearing damage in some way.
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Topic: Creating Music? (Techno) (Read 795 times)