This is incredible, I love it. I've recently switched to using Ableton exclusively for making music, it feels like more of an instrument than a computer program to me. It's so expressive and lets me make the sounds I want to hear as well as things I can't even conceive of. I can't really articulate what it is about Ableton, but I really love it and I'm so thankful that it's around.
I recommend starting with p5.js. If you need synchronized tracks, add Tone.js to the mix. The Ableton website also uses Tone.js.
https://tonejs.github.io/
I got into programming as a kid through a desire to make music (my first program was a "song" written in pascal, playing a series beep tones at different frequencies and durations.) I got into trackers (fast, impulse, buzz) in my teens, and then synths.
These days I have a strong preference towards "hardware"* only music making -- I spend most of my waking life staring at a screen, so I find it satisfying to step away and be hands on when creating music. The brains of my studio is a Synthstrom Deluge, which is an amazingly intuitive little gizmo - it has a built in synth and drum machine, a looper, a sampler, and a MIDI sequencer allowing you to drive all other synths in the studio. I also have an Arturia Keystep, which has a great live MIDI sequencer. Another fun gadget is the Roland RC 505, which gives you 5 independent and dubbable loops - I drive one of the two fx sends from my mixer through it, letting me build loops live from any of the other synths. Aside from those I've collected a handful of synths, both FM and analog.
(* quotes because pretty much all available synths, analog included, run on software. Most come with USB ports allowing you to connect and change settings, update firmware, etc.)
I'm getting back into making electronic music now and I've agonized over where to go the software/computer/DAW route or hardware/groovebox/sequencer. Right now, I'm doing it all on a computer using Reason and a very nice MIDI controller (Arturia KeyLab 61 mkii <3 <3 <3). But I follow the r/synthesizers subreddit and all of the pretty blinky lights and buttons look so fun and the sounds can be amazing.
The main things I like about doing it all on a computer are:
* Great screen and interface. It's easy to drag and drop and see the composition visually. Boxes like the Digitakt look like a lot of fun, but then I watch a youTube video of it and it's like 80% knob-scrolling through menus on a tiny LCD screen and that doesn't look like fun.
* Easy file and data management. It's all just files on a hard drive. It's trivial to switch between projects, back up, restore state, etc. Managing that when the data lives on flash cards across a handful of sequencers seems really stressful to me. I'd be so worried about accidentally losing a patch or something.
* It's cheaper. If I want two separate delays with different settings, I can just add a second delay. I don't have to go on Sweetwater and drop another $200. Sure, Eurorack stuff is "modular", but each module requires shelling out cash. In Reason, I can wire up huge racks of crazy stuff without spending a dime.
But..., man, the hardware stuff looks like a lot of fun. I also feel like it can be a real struggle to get something that sounds rich and full out of Reason. I can get there, but it takes effort. It's default sound tends to be kind of brittle and dry, which is to be expected from software but can be uninspiring. (I should maybe check out a different DAW, but I know Reason well and exploring different software is a whole other can of worms.) With a lot of hardware gear — at least judging by videos online — you power it up and it sounds fat immediately.
I think what really matters the most to me is finding a path that gets me finishing music I like quickly. I don't want to just noodle, but I also want something fun and immediate enough to stay in the moment. I'm still not sure if software or hardware (or a mixture of both?) is the right path for that.
Any thoughts on how to dip my toes in the water with hardware to see if that's a better fit?
>Any thoughts on how to dip my toes in the water with hardware to see if that's a better fit?
How much money is "dip my toes"? If you're talking less than a hundred bucks for some cool toys, you can buy Korg Volca and one of PO-x0 series from Teenage Engineering.
If you're thinking $500+ you can get something like Alesis Micron (designed by Bret Victor, BTW) or Korg Electribe, or Elektron Model:Sample. If you're fine with real-time recording, you can instead get something like Behringer Neutron or Kors Minilogue. You can make entire tracks on those even if all you have is a linear recorder.
If you're in ~$1000+ range you can buy Analog Four or OP-1. The former is a very practical machine, the latter is a marvel of design, very fun and great for experiments.
Or you could go for a workstation. FA-06 has pretty good UX, although it's closer to DAW-on-a-keyboard than other things I mentioned here.
Find a device you like and learn it inside out. It's a very rewarding experience. Also, try to buy a used device. You can save tons of money this way.
Using hardware now is like using a land line with a rotary phone to make phone calls... It's pretty outdated to use hardware unless it's a unique or live instrument. Also if you use Hardware, you end up with a lot of complications in terms of recording your music into digital format, and you'll likely lose the things you create because hardware can easily get lost, stolen, reset, etc... Hardware interfaces are nothing like modern software interfaces now, so you'll also be learning a lot of stuff, but not stuff that allows you to jump into the modern world of music production.
If you are just starting out, in my opinion, the best way to get into working things out is to just dive deep into a software based music DAW, you can try Garage Band or Fruity Loops, which have a slightly lower learning curve than other tools, there are also tons of tutorials on youtube. Ableton is a bit overdone and technical as a starting point, but then again, most valuable skills don't have very easy entry/starting points in life.
Jeepers, I know your comment is coming from an electronic music mindset, but to those who learned audio engineering by setting up drum kits, amplifiers, pianos and mic'ing them by hand are probably having a bit of a chuckle at your "hardware" comment.
No malintention meant here, and as far as electronic instruments go I agree with what you're saying, I just know several drummers and guitar players who would by quite incensed by the comparison with their instruments to rotary phones.
The OP1 is one of the most delightful, inspiring and shockingly deep instruments I’ve ever played, cannot recommend enough. I’m a software + acoustic instrument based guy but I find it indespensible.
When I was younger I was a serious musician but stepped away out of creative frustration. Getting a used OP1 on a whim many years later reignited that drive. It’s helped inspire writing my first full album—which isn’t “electronic” as most would associate with it, it’s just such an inspiring tool to get things started and make soundscapes and beats etc.
That's one of the things I'm not sure of too. I technically can afford basically whatever, but there's a lot of opportunity cost and I'll feel really bad if I buy something pricy and it ends up collecting dust.
This thread has been great for getting me to think about why I might want hardware and what my actual goals are. If it's to produce finished, polished songs, I think using a DAW is a better workflow for me. If it's as a sound source, I'm not yet convinced that real analog is worth the complexity and cost.
But if it's a fun box to get inspired by and play with away from the computer, then something that has an interesting UI, can make some sounds, and has some amount of sequencing is what I should focus on. That sounds like an OP-1, Digitone or Deluge to me.
> Also, try to buy a used device. You can save tons of money this way.
> Boxes like the Digitakt look like a lot of fun, but then I watch a youTube video of it and it's like 80% knob-scrolling through menus on a tiny LCD screen and that doesn't look like fun.
Totally with you there. Menu diving on a 20x2 char display is no fun at all.
> Any thoughts on how to dip my toes in the water with hardware to see if that's a better fit?
>Menu diving on a 20x2 char display is no fun at all.
I own Elektron Analog 4 and it's extremely fun to use and make quick loops. You may need to organize your sounds a bit at first, but when you have a reasonable "palette", editing is easy. The UI is extremely well-organized when it comes to common operations. If I needed to make a professional-sounding track in hurry, that's probably what I would use.
Here are some sequencers you could look at (that I've personally owned)
Zaquencer - $200. The most sequencer you can get at that price point. But lots of knob turning, no real displays. Its fun though.
Toraiz Squid - $600. But it has some great features, and its very 'playable'. You can also drag and drop all of your midi from the device into the DAW.
I would suggest starting with purchasing a MIDI interface and a sequencer. Just use them to control software instruments in your DAW.
This is my workflow. Make a bunch of patterns in a sequencer. Record audio or MIDI into the DAW. Arrange the patterns. You get you brainstorming done on the hardware but the editing on the software.
I'm in the same boat. However, I love the flexibility of a DAW. My "hybrid" solution is the Ableton Push (small LCD screen, but not a monitor) and Komplete Kontrol S88 keyboard. Still get my soft synths, but I can do a ton without even looking at my monitor. I have both facing my window rather than my screen, and it's surprisingly easy to get in the flow.
Same here.. I went all in on NI, Maschine Mk3, Jam, S49 Mk2 and Komplete Ultimate. It feels like the best of both worlds. Step sequencing and arranging on the Jam is so nice.
My story is similar to yours. I've just recently gone from 100% hardware to a more hybrid setup. I found that while I was having more fun with the hardware setup I wasn't finishing songs. Personally, I still need a computer to do editing and arranging. My new setup is a small eurorack skiff, Bitwig 3 and NI Maschine Mk3/Jam/S49 Mk2 w/ Komplete Ultimate. The integration between NI hardware and Maschine/Komplete Kontrol is amazing, feels like the best of both worlds. I'm definitely considering the Push 2 for Bitwig, although the Maschine Jam does a pretty good job as Bitwig controller.
I'd recommend you check out the Tennage Engineering OP-Z. It's a neat little thing that can do a bunch of the stuff you mentioned, but in a crazy small form factor.
Precisely why I prefer using elektron machines. As awesome as ableton and NI's Maschine is I wanted to get as far away from a screen, a desk, OS updates, driver issues and all the junk you deal with as a developer day to day with software.
Its great, when I flip on the little machines I know is music making time and I wont have to deal with any hurdles.
Ableton is great and paved the way for a more creative and intuitive workflow! I switched from Cubase very early on and never looked back. That is, until I found Bitwig (https://www.bitwig.com) which supports Linux! They also deserve a shout out taking it even further!
Ableton is a different ballgame if you have the Push interface. Other than that Reaper needs a mention, it is the best DAW[1] in terms of functionality and power. Truly for power-users and not necessarily as a musical idea starter.
> Ableton is a different ballgame if you have the Push interface.
Bitwig, started by former developers of Ableton, supports Ableton Push and many other MIDI controllers[1], and is probably the most advanced DAW for electronic music production currently available.
It's not as popular as Ableton, because it's much newer and most people rarely switch DAWs they are used to.
> Other than that Reaper needs a mention, it is the best DAW[1] in terms of functionality and power.
That's true, Reaper might be the best DAW for any non-electronic music oriented workflows. But this separation is essential: they were designed with different primary use cases in mind.
I wish Reaper supported Linux natively (without Wine).
Recently I switched to Ardour for recording guitars on Linux - it has great VST support, allows syncing music with videos, and has automation built-in. Even Amplitube works through LinVst.
I was also blown away by their pricing - you can pay as little as $1 for the full version, which is what I did, but after seeing how well it works, I did a donation to match the recommended price of $45.
As far as I remember Ardour is GPL software, and on their website[0] I cannot find neither some kind of licensing price or any donation link. Is there some other commercial version of Ardour?
They do say they're GPL, and let you download the source, but they also say that 1) building from source is hard 2) they won't keep build instructions up to date 3) they won't answer questions about the build process. https://ardour.org/building_linux.html With that attitude I'm not sure why not just buy commercial.
Wow! You need to browse through 4 pages trying to download the program before they ask you for money! I think pay-for-binaries can be a legit monetization strategy for open source, but this is really sneaky.
In a way, you are buying commercial. The Ardour people are selling downloads of their binary builds for $1 per download (or more, if you choose), along with some access to support I think.
It's also possible to, for example, 'apt-get install ardour' and get a similar version in Debian Buster. I presume there are lots of other operating systems that this is built for, so Ardour does make a significant contribution to free software.
I've been through them all, started on Audition, then to Cubase, then to Pro Tools and finally settled on Ableton. There's just nothing like Ableton for composing, especially with the right hardware (controller or push). It allows you to get completely lost in a way no other DAW I've used can match. Although I do now use Pro Tools for mixing since I find it to be far superior in that area.
I just purchased Bitwig after evaluating all the big ones, and the decision fell on Bitwig because it just felt like a "better" Ableton. I think the Bitwig team is actually former Ableton developers that just felt they could make a better DAW if they started from scratch. They could.
It's just hundreds of little paper cuts in the other big ones, that are fixed in Bitwig. If something is clunky and unintuitive in Ableton, it's most likely better in Bitwig. And there aren't just a few things that are clunky and unintuitive in Ableton.
The unfortunate counterpoint is there are an equal number of things that are clunky and unintuitive in Bitwig. It's also not nearly as friendly and intuitive when being used as a live looper.
How many bitwig users here use it in a live performance context?
Not sure if it’s even possible, my evaluation was for my use cases only of course.
I probably use 10% of bigwig and 2% of Ableton. So the important factor is whether something is missing in Bitwig, and how polished/intuitive the bits I do use are.
Programmer/hobbyist. I dabble with writing VST's so mostly wanted to explore that, but also wanted to get into writing tunes. I also do some amateur guitar/vocal stuff so it's nice to have a recording software (Although for that task there are obviously good free alternatives).
When Bitwig was on sale, I got it (and as a nice surprise found that my Bitwig 2 license also included Bitwig 3 now)
I also use Bitwig (And Tracktion's Waveform 10) They both work on Linux and are great.
Bitwig works on a subscription program for updates. You want the latest you buy a subscription and it lasts for a year. After the subscription is over you get to use whatever version you are on for life, but no updates.
I am perfectly happy with the built-in stuff however. Because of bitwigs extremely strong modulation engine the standard effects are probably the most powerful and expressive ones out there.
I got bitwig because I am a heavy linux user and wanted to start making music.
The software itself works well, it's really great, but with VSTs it's quite tricky. I got a couple to work that explicitly support linux, but for example Serum I couldn't get to work properly.
Recently I decided that it's not work all the hassle, and setup a windows computer again. I want as little friction as possible, because the process of making electronic music is already hard enough by itself.
As others have mentioned, linux does support VST plugins, as do a number of linux DAWs. But it's worth mentioning that the ecosystem is rather thin at the moment in terms of native VSTs. One solution is to install Windows-based VSTs in a Wine installation and then use linvst, a wrapper which presents those Windows-based VST dlls to a linux host and runs them with Wine.
I found it a pain to set up in the first place, and it's hit-and-miss which plugins work in it, but once up and running it actually works smoothly enough, in my experience. (Larger, more complicated VSTs seem correspondingly less likely to work. Of ones that don't immediately work, some can be massaged into working with some tweaking of your wine setup. There's a webpage somewhere with a list of what plugins are known to work and what you need to do to get them to work.)
There are other ways of running windows-based VSTs, but that's the one I'm familiar with.
As a person developing VSTs, BitWig is supports them THE BEST. BitWig handles VSTs better than almost any other host, including (optional, but you should do it!) sandboxing and proper HiDPI support.
You can absolutely make VSTs for Linux, but I imagine that very few people do.
I don't remember how well it integrated with Bitwig - but a few years ago VST support on Linux using Wine, Jack and Carla (https://github.com/falkTX/Carla) was pretty solid.
379€ - wow, that's an absurd amount of money for personal software. Include that with every tutorial being priced too and having to buy synths and samples etc this turns into one expensive hobbie.
Its expensive because its good and the amount of engineering to make sure this doesn't drop a single sample in live performance costs time, expertise and cash.
Arturia midi controllers (eg Minilab mkII: ~$100) come bundled with a license for Ableton Live Lite which is pretty functional and might satisfy hobbyist needs.
There are some amazing free VSTs out there. Also, 379€ is about the price you'd pay for a mid-level guitar. So if you're considering Ableton or Bitwig Studio your "instrument" it's reasonable.
(obviously, this analogy breaks under pressure; software still lacks the concrete permanence of a physical instrument)
If you want to see the power of modular synths, I definitely recommend checking out some modular streamers on Twitch. Some use VCV, some use actual racks, but there's a growing community on there.
As a dev, I find Ableton incredibly frustrating. The Live Object Model (LOM) allows custom automation and software control. But it's half-closed, and half-open.
Access is through Max for Live, which is a dataflow language "programmed" by joining little object blocks to other object blocks - like Scratch. There's unofficial Python support, but it's poorly documented.
Many things are possible, but many other things aren't possible - even though they're available on Push, so obviously the hooks are there.
It would make me unbelievably happy if Ableton opened up the LOM and included a properly documented hook for absolutely every important feature - preferably one that could be used from any language, maybe via OSC, rather than M4L.
To be fair Live at least has a LOM, while other sequencers/DAWs don't. So that's a plus. But it's still a shame it isn't more complete - because that would make all kinds of cool things possible.
If you use OSC you could be interested in the DAW I develop: https://ossia.io ; a part of its object model is accessible through it, hadn't had the time to expose everything yet.
This is great!, I thought they were only gonna do a simple piano roll and start/stop, they touch on pretty good topics including song structure, chords, modes, scales, diatonic triads, voicing, etc. This is a pretty good intro to getting into Ableton Live really. I come from using Cubase and honestly the new Live is very capable for building fluid songs, it has so many features now and the interface makes it really easy to draw automation curves, set different timings, route midi, build drum kits, etc.
I really tried to get into Ableton. I found a Push 2 at a pawn shop and while I can say that the push 2 controller is pretty damn amazing and turns Ableton into a pretty cool device, I can't get the arrangement to feel natural to me. I am a long term linear sequencer user, and Logic is pretty much muscle memory to me now. However, Ive used FL studio since version 1.x and that also feels much easier to use than Ableton. I can create patterns super easily on Ableton but then turning that into a song is just clunky to me.
I came from CUBASE and it took me a couple attempts to get used to ableton
Frankly thinking of it as a sequencer is a limiting mental model.
Think of it as a instrument to jam with.
When I used cubase I spend about 20% of the time with jamming together a basic idea and then 80% with arranging.
Ableton flipped that for me...now I spend 80% of the time jamming (and loving it) and only all the way at the end I quickly create the arrangement once I am already super familiar with all the parts I created during jamming.
It’s had a really super positive on my creative quality!
Ive heard this from quite a few folks. I dont do a lot of ITB recording though, so that may be my problem. I mainly use my 2 SPs (SP-1200/Sp-16) for the jamming part along with keys/guitar/bass. By the time I fire up software the idea is already there, and I want to arrange it.
No- It seemed that when I would try to use arrangement view to string sessions together, they seemed disconnected from the session I was just editing. I basically just end up using Push to sample chop and then move what I find to other software or hardware.
I think the general workflow is session view for initial idea exploration to come up with a set of parts that you can ‘perform’. Then once you are happy you record that into arrangement and finish the track from there. Probably more applicable to loop based music where the arrangement is primarily automation and clip start/stop events though.
I use both Logic and Ableton. What about the arrangement is so difficult for you!? my complaints about Ableton are much more editing-centric. I also greatly miss take folders when I work in Ableton, and I prefer mixing with busses to grouping tracks in Ableton.
In the same boat.. I used trackers, then FL Studio, Cubase for a while, then Logic for years and I've always found Ableton Live really hard to get into.
I love seeing how the big brands are picking up web audio. I refuse to work on anything else these days, and it's easier than I thought when I started. Built 5 web games using tone.js for Red Bull Mind Gamers last year and just launched a site that auto generates unlimited royalty free mp3s using web audio for a dollar[1].
[1] https://strikefreemusic.com
prefer renoise, it's cheap and super easy to work with :D. Never actually liked the workflow of ableton (personal flavour i suppose), its audio engine is fairly decent, but imho for 500ish euros it costs to get the suite it's a bit expensive for what u get.
Cubase has a much superior audio and processing engine like Logic Pro for mac users, and is in a similar pricing range. It has less quality built-in dps etc. ,but most DAWs lack on that.
Renoise for like 50 euros is super cheap in comparison, and most dps it has have awesome performance and quality.
That being said, ableton does offer a better 'live' environment for live/performance based things.
on workflows, bitwig is really the innovator, as it combines workflows from different daws like cubase and ableton and lets the user itself choose its work-flow instead of forcing it upon the user.
someone just told me that in pub :'), so honestly i have no clue of its correctness. but the guy who told me programmed for reason at some point so i kind of assumed he knew what he was talking about.
they mix and match a lot :) renoise is a different beast though. and Ableton is definitely not bad at all :) just a matter of preferences for me.
I think some of the renoise devs used to work for cubase, so maybe this guy even whent from there to renoise to ableton. :) thanks for the info though, interesting always :)
I recently bought a Maschine MK2 to get into the music making thing. It surprised me how easy to use it is.
My wife is a professional acoustic musician, and although she firstly was a bit hesitant with this 'instrument' she quickly turned around. And we started making music together.
It's perfect for me since it is very well arranged, the buttons make sense in my head.
I play a bit of guitar and always have trouble making sense of the notes in my head.
I'm a Maschine user as well, but I've got a background in guitar, having played in rock bands from my early teens through mid-20s.
I've always been intrigued by MIDI, but always felt "limited" by piano-style keyboard MIDI controllers. Maschine really helped me break open my writers block and made playing music fun again.
I can put Maschine in front of my 5 year old and he can figure it out. It makes more sense to him than my 61-key MIDI controller does.
Is there a way to try it or learn more before signup/email list sub?
I started composing about a year ago using general tools like CuBase and Garage Band and wow, it's tedious, even when the initial sketch is worked out before hand on a keyboard.
There are just a ton of ideas that come to mind on how it could be an order of magnitude more efficient. Maybe there are apps that don't focus so much on production, that do a better job solely for the writing music part?
I am not sure how familiar you are with notation, but you might wanna consider Dorico, it is focused more on writing than on production bus still has a lot of features to make it sound pleasant (as opposed to other notation programs like Finale or Sibelius.) It is a sort of notation program / DAW hybrid that I think is a really interesting crossover / niche. Another suggestion might be to check out Synfire. (I have no experience with Synfire though, yet)
FLStudio has a great community and Image-Line deserve kudos for their "lifetime" license model. I used it extensively for a few years and found it solid and productive. It's maybe closer to Ableton than Cubase.
Bit of a side note, but I've been playing with http://sonic-pi.net/ and it's teaching me so much about synthesizers AND music (even though I have a bit of a background in both).
Yes, you could definitely make this in Ableton. Basically, all you need is samples (recordings of instrument sounds, either individual notes that you put in whatever order you like, or recordings of someone playing a whole musical phrase, preferably something that loops well) and a sequencer of some kind, which is the main function of Ableton. There are also effects and mixing and mastering techniques that can drastically change the sound of music, but all you need to get started are some samples and a sequencer.
It's really awesome Ableton is going in this direction. Live is a beast, but it's a quite intimidating beast if you don't have experience working with DAWs and music software in general. I worked there for three years, and couldn't bring myself to learn the basics. Tutorials like these will definitely make it easier to pick the basics and start off with Live with more confidence.
When I was there it was a great place to work: Nice people, a lot of perks, beautiful office etc. Especially if you are into music, you can learn and collaborate with pretty much everyone, as making and listening to music was and is pervasive within the company. The problem was that I was in the web team, and that was not their actual focus. They have grown considerably, though, so I'm sure it has changed at least in some respects.
Fruity Loops, Cubase, Reason, Reaper, Cantabile Performer, Presonus Studio One, Ableton, OpenMPT, Jazz and Logic before apple...
I love to have a good sequencer on my hands to handle the recording of my creative spirits.
I also love to look back in time and stumbled over some old music programs on the amiga system. I would love to learn more about working with tracker based sequencing but iam faster done in a modern daw. Presonus Studio One is a good DAW. Ideas sketching via webtools is also awesome. I love me my little beepbox.co
https://tinyurl.com/y6rr2rok
At the end it only counts if you have fun, how to control or create, do things with a digital working station.
It's not exactly easy to make an "accessible" DAW. Especially not when you consider that there probably isn't a huge market of blind music producers relative to the amount of work it would take to, say, make a somewhat-sane interface for a screen reader for a program as complex as ableton. The interface is very complex as is, and would almost certainly require some re-jiggering before it would work well. I doubt enough people would buy t to ever make it a worth-while investment.
I just did an interview with a (blind) professor from Berklee that run an assistive music technology program and lab that has been using Pro Tools for quite some time. He's released a pile of scripts called "Flo Tools"[0] to assist with visually impaired use.
Perhaps the reason to make it accessible is not because of market share. It turns out that other audio and (yes, even video!) mixing software is accessible, so it's certainly not insurmountable.
It is possible to map most controls in a DAW via MIDI and possibly provide a touch interface, or more tactile controls (sliders and knobs). Live looping for example, only requires a few foot switches.
So you can achieve alot with the productive workflow of ableton. I also bought Logic but never finished a full song with it and always felt restricted by it's workflow.
Checkout Pocket Operators from Teenage Engineering if you haven't seen them already. Its a lovely (to me) line of physical synths that are quite inexpensive < $30 USD and also as a non-music person really got me started down a path of wanting to learn more.
POs were a bit too limited for me. The sequencer isn't powerful enough to make anything more complex than basic chiptunes.
Not to diss on PO. I was super hyped about it as well, and would have liked to know about its limitations before buying it. Anyone of the numerous phone apps would be a cheaper and better replacement for a PO.
What got me started in music was Garageband. It's free (for macos users) and quite simple and intuitive. It's not as fully-featured as something like Ableton, but quite capable for making professional-level songs.
It's pretty remarkable to see what people do with Garageband even on iPhones.
I bought an interface for my guitar ($20) and have played around with Garageband on my iPad and just playing with the amps is a lot of fun. It's a very low friction way to record myself playing while practicing and since I'm using headphones, I'm not irritating everybody around me with my terrible playing.
One complaint about Garageband (and Cubase - a copy of that came with my Yamaha amp), is the lack of tutorials for people like me. I'd love a start-to-finish tutorial for recording a toy song that includes recording my instrument on top of simple drums and maybe one or two other virtual instruments.
>There's a delay when trying to hit stop on any of the boxes.
That's per design. They don't stop arbitrarily, but at bar boundaries, so that they stay on rhythm. In other words, it's not a sample player pads, it's clip launch pads...
I have friends who work there in a number of areas and colleagues who have freelanced for them (convolution reverb for example). It is pretty nice from what I hear and the focus is very much enabling creativity before profit.
FWIW, that's how I learned making music, just learning the commands and making things I like by ear. Though being a kid with no internet probably helped.
I might be missing something here but I click record, play some notes with the A-Z keys, stop the recording, and when I click play nothing happens (I hear no audio) however with the demos I hear the audio.
Any ideas what am I missing?
EDIT: I was supposed to add a sample (in the Edit Samples tab) in case anyone was confused like me.
Loading a song and using its samples is best to start out with IMO; not just beause it's easier, but because the instruments also tend to be "in tune" (relative to each other)
You can get a lot of the functionality of Ableton under Linux, albeit using other, modular tools.
seq24 for sequencing/block-style arranging. Reaper for recording tracks. VCVRack for synthesis, Hydrogen for drums.
In fact, its kind of amazing what tools a budding musician has available to them - for free - in the Linux ecosphere. I hope to see more articles describing these tools soon .. or maybe I should do one of my own ..
You don't need to know anything about music theory to make music. You don't even need to know what a note is to make music, music predates every concept you just mentioned and it likely predates language. It seems pretty elitist to assume you need all or any of that to make music. Does it help? Sure, in the same way art classes help you make art. But you don't need to take an art class to paint a beautiful picture with time and dedication.
Hey pal, do follow the tutorial. Music keys, scales, chords + progressions, baselines, melodies, etc are all covered with examples and/or exercises. It's not as deep as a full music theory course but I don't think anyone is claiming this will get you a music major ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
It even has an advanced topics section with an intro to pentatonic and octatonic scales, triads and inversions; check it out in the menu.
This is a tutorial. Learning scales on the piano is hardly "making music" either.
>Is paint-by-numbers making art? I sure don't think so, so neither is this.
Painting by number surely is one, albeit limited, form of expression, and thus art.
And if you could re-arrange the numbers and change colors, and add your own parts (like you can here) it would be 100% art.
>What would have been way way better is a brief introduction to music keys, major and minor, then basic chords, then progressions, then melody, with each section having a few examples of each so that the person going through the article could have some understanding of how music is really made, and how musical concepts actually relate to each other.
That would be better to make e.g. a classical or jazz musician.
(I was trained when young in those things).
This is for another style of music, that could not give less fucks about those "musical concepts" (you can use some of them - and some are covered in the tutorial -, but you can do it instinctively too, or it can bypass it altogether -- great techno tracks using just one chord for example, or of indeterminate tonality, are very common), but which still enables all kinds of expression (to the point of creating works that can move listeners to tears and heightened emotional states).
"Better" is relative. People will learn that by looking at what other artists are doing and figuring it out themselves, and they will remember it better for that reason.
Everyone I know who is into making music (which includes a large mix of professional and non-professional musicians) started out in electronic music by putting interesting sounds together, and then by imitating what their favourite artists have done.
What you describe is like starting out an art course by teaching students to mix colour -- describing the colour spectrum, which colours lead to what, etc. But really the students will learn all of that and much, much more by just experimenting with combining random colours and seeing what they get out of it, and sharing and comparing with the rest of the class.
I think most people have a prespondence to teach theory first -- indeed, this is how it is generally done in academic settings, but people tend to learn better practicing something first, and then seeing how the theory generalizes what they have learned. After all, you can't really learn something properly until you have experience with it.
I know this, because both of my parents are teachers -- one taught an adult class for decades and is now teaching children, the other is currently long-distance tutor for a university course, and has done/is doing art classes. But here, have a quote:
According to studies, students who practise what they’re
learning first-hand are three and a half times more
likely to retain that knowledge than when they’re sitting
in a lecture room, hand-scribing notes.
Thank you for your comment, the post formulated extremely well what i was thinking about for a long time, but couldnt express in such a clear way.
I found this holds true for me with many things, not just music or any arts in general. That’s how it worked for me with learning computer science as well. I found that lecture slides and book chapters were waaaaay more useful for me after i attempted the relevant homework assignments and experimented on my won, as opposed to the other way around, where i just read a bunch of theory concepts without much context or immediate useful application.
Reading after attempting and experimenting felt like i was filling out the missing gaps of a puzzle piece, as opposed to completing a puzzle piece sequentially, starting with the top left corner and going left to right and then top to bottom.
Honestly, it's something I've had to relearn. I got so used to reading academic sources and theory, and then realising later I hadn't properly grokked the information fully. It's taken me a long time to realise I should just start by digging in and using the sources as references when need-be.
The last paragraph of your comment is absolutely how it feels.
I think you are looking from the wrong way. Imagine there is a language you don't speak but you get a phrasebook with 100 useful sentences. Like general experssions what to say, how to ask etc. Now if you visit a country where they speak this language it will be very useful. You don't know the grammar, you don't even know the proper pronunciation. Yet you already have a base to build upon and express yourself. This site is like that. You don't _have to_ know music theory and such to start making music. But that's not just the music I'd say the same applies to writing as well.
I have been playing and writing music for 20 years and learned by ear. I have minimal theory training and really have to look things up to tell you theory behind anything I’m writing unless you just want to know chord names.
Your description is one of the best analogies I’ve heard. I can jump into a foreign country and learn the language through immersion, and I’ll pick things up and learn by trial and error, slowly improving as people point out my flaws. Eventually, I’ll speak the language fluently.
Music is a rewarding hobby. I wish more people played and wrote music instead of things way more popular like video games. I bought a guitar for a nephew once, since I started playing when I was his age (10). Ultimately, I think playing on his iPad or Nintendo DS was just easier than learning something like electric guitar which requires patience and some pain for a beginner.
>Ultimately, I think playing on his iPad or Nintendo DS was just easier than learning something like electric guitar which requires patience and some pain for a beginner.
I picked up guitar a little later than you, but what turned it from passing amusement (took some basic lessons) to lifestyle (still play almost two decades later) for me was forming a band with a friend who happened to be decent at songwriting and figuring out accompaniments to his songs. Much like with other things, a good social experience significantly improves the overall experience.
I still write music solo, but I personally don't find it nearly as rewarding without a partner to bounce ideas off of and give/get ideas/critique.
And if you only ever do what is directly taught, likely at best you will be proficient but never great, and often not even entertaining.
I used to have a Fijian flatmate at uni who played guitar, totally self taught.
Played ukulele from age 3 with his sisters in acts in hotels back in Fiji. Just one thing (of many, many things) he could do musically was play along to most songs first time he heard them, anticipating chords/keys, no formal training.
He did say they had so much spare time on their hands as kids it was all he did, but he could play so many songs and lead breaks, bass riffs etc etc note for note, perfect timing.
While we were at uni he cleaned up because he could just roll up to any house band for the night and fill in on almost any instrument, pocket a hundred bucks or more, free drinks and at least one girl.
I love the grid, but if you follow the grid too strictly, all your music will sound sterile and lifeless. Especially if all the instrumentation is programmed. Maybe a real drummer playing to a click track can help avoid that.
I don't think the grid is the problem, it just happens that it's very easy in DAWs to make patterns that are very short (e.g. a 1-2 bar loop) and then arrange them in these 1-2 bar units. Very likely that will sound a bit stiff, repetitive and predictable, which works in some genres but not others.
Personally, trying to think in patterns that only repeat at 4-8 bars helped me out avoid that, while still using the grid.
Of course you can. But if you can only make music with a grid - in fact if you can only imagine music with a grid - that's not necessarily ideal.
Ableton is actually textbook modernism - mechanised regular repeating patterns, both in the GUI and in the kind of music it encourages.
Which is fine as far as it goes - as long as you realise there are other possibilities, and that that kind of modernism is more than a century old now.
It takes a whole chapter to explain rhythm because I have witnessed people spend literally over an hour stuck on "counting out a measure" with varying note lengths. This series is starting where a from-scratch musical education must start.
An education for theory training does end up focused on note interval structures, and there's an endless amount to talk about there, but then, you don't need a great deal of traditional theory for simple songwriting - major and minor triads will suffice. This tutorial gets those but in my skimming of it seemed to stop short of trying to explain circle of fifths usage, which is probably the one most essential thing to make composition in the large go from "I have to guess and check" to "I have a guideline to work from that lets me calculate ahead."
Exactly. It even has an advanced topics section with an intro pentatonic and octatonic scales, triads, inversions and whatnot— a pretty cool and practical intro to all these topics IMO.
It's been kind of eating at me a bit. I want people to get into music, so what about this could feel so bad?
After a day of sitting on the thought, I think it's this: They come at it from the most over-glorified, super-high, angle. The place where all of the fame to talent ratio is wayyyy on the fame side. It's not that talented people don't loop, but there's already enough people falling into that music trap without it being literally the first thing they're introduced to musically.
Coming at it from drum loops first seems like a good way to ruin any chance a person had of being patient with the practice. Why work for years to hone in on an instrument when it sounds so much better to just play prefab loops?
If anyone wants more, Ableton also has a synthesizer playground site at https://learningsynths.ableton.com/.