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[quinnr]

Posting to follow! Music production is always something I've been interested in but have never really taken the plunge on. Ableton (one of the big industry tools for production) extended their free trial from 30 to 90 days for the current crisis so I've been playing with that. I'm starting to understand how to generate sounds with it, but am at a total loss at how to start making those sounds into actual songs or even beats, really. It's a heavy learning curve!

[MeimieFan88]

Posting to follow! Music production is always something I've been interested in but have never really taken the plunge on. Ableton (one of the big industry tools for production) extended their free trial from 30 to 90 days for the current crisis so I've been playing with that. I'm starting to understand how to generate sounds with it, but am at a total loss at how to start making those sounds into actual songs or even beats, really. It's a heavy learning curve!

Heya! There are a lot of really awesome resources out there (youtube videos are especially accessible, and there's a LOT of excellent stuff on there). I'd recommend first watching some videos on basic music theory as that's probably the most foundational starting point. This looks to be a good one.

And here's a list of youtube channels that have really good educational content:

Signals Music Studio
Andrew Huang
8-bit Music Theory
Composerily
Mangold Project
Big Z

I have so many videos on my watch-later list and I just keep adding more every day, haha.

I use FL Studio so I can't help much with Ableton, but there are tons of tutorials for that as well.

Anyway my starting tips would be, try constructing a basic chord progression, and then add a basic rhythm to it (kick-snare-kick-snare is a simple but effective one). And from there you can try adding a melody to play over the chords, and evolve the song from there. For me it's partly intuitive, partly experience. Oh one thing that's extremely helpful is to take a track that you like and try to remake it (at least the structure of it), you can learn a lot that way. If you have any questions I'd be happy to help. Best of luck!

[Quaksna]

Posting to follow! Music production is always something I've been interested in but have never really taken the plunge on. Ableton (one of the big industry tools for production) extended their free trial from 30 to 90 days for the current crisis so I've been playing with that. I'm starting to understand how to generate sounds with it, but am at a total loss at how to start making those sounds into actual songs or even beats, really. It's a heavy learning curve!

I would advise learning with an instrument. Do you have some experience with instruments?

You see, I as an organist apprentice have to learn a load of stuff, like some basic composition, music history, improvisation, I must learn to read sheets quickly... But aside from this "required education", I can tell you that by simply playing music on instruments for some time one can learn so much about music itself. Though, I grew up with piano and have some basic theory, as I understand it you do not have any prior experience, is it so?

In any case, what I would advise to do, pick some existing songs you like, and try to deconstruct them. Try to find some structures, themes, ideas. Chord progression and chords in general are something really valuable and helpful. Wish you luck!

[quinnr]

Heya! There are a lot of really awesome resources out there (youtube videos are especially accessible, and there's a LOT of excellent stuff on there). I'd recommend first watching some videos on basic music theory as that's probably the most foundational starting point. This looks to be a good one.

And here's a list of youtube channels that have really good educational content:

Signals Music Studio
Andrew Huang
8-bit Music Theory
Composerily
Mangold Project
Big Z

I have so many videos on my watch-later list and I just keep adding more every day, haha.

I use FL Studio so I can't help much with Ableton, but there are tons of tutorials for that as well.

Anyway my starting tips would be, try constructing a basic chord progression, and then add a basic rhythm to it (kick-snare-kick-snare is a simple but effective one). And from there you can try adding a melody to play over the chords, and evolve the song from there. For me it's partly intuitive, partly experience. Oh one thing that's extremely helpful is to take a track that you like and try to remake it (at least the structure of it), you can learn a lot that way. If you have any questions I'd be happy to help. Best of luck!

Thanks so much for compiling these! Definitely will be taking a look through some of these.

Posting to follow! Music production is always something I've been interested in but have never really taken the plunge on. Ableton (one of the big industry tools for production) extended their free trial from 30 to 90 days for the current crisis so I've been playing with that. I'm starting to understand how to generate sounds with it, but am at a total loss at how to start making those sounds into actual songs or even beats, really. It's a heavy learning curve!

I would advise learning with an instrument. Do you have some experience with instruments?

You see, I as an organist apprentice have to learn a load of stuff, like some basic composition, music history, improvisation, I must learn to read sheets quickly... But aside from this "required education", I can tell you that by simply playing music on instruments for some time one can learn so much about music itself. Though, I grew up with piano and have some basic theory, as I understand it you do not have any prior experience, is it so?

In any case, what I would advise to do, pick some existing songs you like, and try to deconstruct them. Try to find some structures, themes, ideas. Chord progression and chords in general are something really valuable and helpful. Wish you luck!

I'm slowly learning how to play the guitar but I've been taking a break to play around with the music production stuff at the moment. I want to play around with the software while I can use it for free before I decide whether to continue or not (I know there's free options out there but it's cool trying out the expensive stuff too, haha). I do have some (very) basic music theory knowledge from middle-school/high school classes that has been slowly coming back to me, so at least a general working knowledge of what chords and notes and all that is, and the basics of reading sheet music.

Deconstructing songs is something I was going to try to do once I'm a bit more familiar with the software, that's a great idea! I've been going back to songs I like a lot, trying to listen many times and break out the different layers in my mind, which I think has been a helpful exercise. Even after just fiddling around with the software a bit I already feel like I can understand a lot more about how the music I love actually comes together which is really exciting!

[Quaksna]

Yeah, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. It will pay off. I can remember how in last year I learned how to improvise on songs knowing their chord progression, and you just keep getting better and better.

Heh, I also started guitar recently. Interesting instrument, totally different from what I know... In terms of handling. The good thing with music is, as broad term it is, you can transfer your experience onto many different things, it's great.

Dissecting songs really useful, you can find some really interesting song structures. I think most interesting example I know, would be "Dreams of an Absolution", this particular version. It has really unique chord progression, it has only three chords, they're all in a row (moves only a single tone each time), and it never changes this scheme. And it works. On page 1 of this thread, I have my song Ykewaka, where I used this scheme too, in the same key. Well, there's one extra chord on two spots I think, maybe I changed the formula a bit, to spice it a lil' bit, but it is still heavily inspired by Dreams of Absolution.


Edit: You can really tell how little knowledge on contemporary music lil' wee Q'uaksna had, blissfuly unaware in these days, harmony doesn't shift every beat

[MeimieFan88]

Here's a new EDM track I made

[MeimieFan88]

Here are some tracks that I'm about done with:

BGM for busy RPG city (looping) - For like a pokemon game or something

Trailer music for dystopian film - Not sure about the mixing on this?

Random experimental EDM made almost entirely out of samples - idk <_>

[Zebra2]

Yes yes yes!

I know I'd be interested in collaborating with someone. I'm also doing mostly electronic music, but I also dabble in metal. This is the latest thing I've done:

https://elkbird.bandcamp.com/album/lens

I've started a few collabs with people that I thought made great stuff, but most of them fizzled before we could release anything. I'd be down to try again!

[MeimieFan88]

Yes yes yes!

I know I'd be interested in collaborating with someone. I'm also doing mostly electronic music, but I also dabble in metal. This is the latest thing I've done:

https://elkbird.bandcamp.com/album/lens

I've started a few collabs with people that I thought made great stuff, but most of them fizzled before we could release anything. I'd be down to try again!

Woah, that's a really unique sound! I love the sound design and the feel of the tracks. Fantastic stuff!

And you like metal, that's awesome. I have been a super long time fan of metal, though I haven't actually made much metal. I have listened to bands like Dream Theater, Symphony X, Sonata Arctica for over a decade now. But my music doesn't usually sound much like metal, haha.

Yeah I would be totally down to do a collab if you'd like. I don't have much experience with collabs though, so I'm not too sure where to start. My music as of lately has been more um, glitchy EDM type stuff? Been experimenting with trying to make the most chaotic/hardcore sounding EDM drops possible. I also like making jazzy stuff, like neo-soul or um, "16bit video game jazz" if that makes any sense. I would be down to make any kind of music though.

What DAW do you use by the way?

[Zebra2]

Thanks! I use Reaper as my DAW. I've dabbled in Logic and Live, but I'm definitely a Reaper guy.

Metal's definitely a lot harder to produce I think. I've only recently made some great strides in making decent metal production, which is a lot of fun now.

For a collab, I think there's a couple of approaches that would work: one would be to send partial ideas and have the other person add layers in a turn-wise fashion. This tends to involve a decent amount of coordination.

The other approach that I though worked really well the time I tried it, was each person sends tracks/snippets that they've abandoned or gotten stuck on. The other person then takes those and does whatever with them, then sends them back. Some of the really cool results from this kinda thing are when someone takes a track and samples it/warps it into something totally different. Or sometimes just adds layers. It's more open and unstructured that way.

[MeimieFan88]

Ah Reaper, cool! I've heard a little about it but haven't used it. I've always used FL Studio. Logic looks great tbh but it doesn't seem available for Windows.

Yeah I think every time I tried to produce metal it didn't end up sounding like metal haha.

Those collab approaches sound fun, I'd be down to do either one, especially the latter. I guess we can put some abandoned tracks here to start and see how things go? Let me see what I have...

Oh I actually posted a few abandoned tracks here when I started this thread but removed them after, I'll put them back up along with some other random stuff.

https://soundcloud.com/dartenvos/aquatale/s-DhipGs3eqgd
https://soundcloud.com/dartenvos/morning-dew/s-IbqIIAU3lf3
https://soundcloud.com/dartenvos/warp-in/s-eOhY9c0TWj0
https://soundcloud.com/dartenvos/dolas/s-3w8GnvP4DEw

(Everything should be download enabled)

Not sure how usable any of it is... :shrug:

[Zebra2]

Awesome! Let me PM you a link to a dropbox with various rejects/etc. I should have a chance this weekend to work on some of these.

[MeimieFan88]

Cool! Yes link me!

[Zebra2]

Well, I tried a number of things with those tracks you provided, but the creativity just wasn't kicking in this past weekend. No ideas I came up with I thought were good. I'll have to take another stab at it later.

[MeimieFan88]

Ah, ok. Btw you didn't PM me yet!