Love the simplicity, though it does seem to favor EMD (for obvious reasons).
I've always loved the idea of using Live in a live improvisation context, potentially with multiple instruments having their own looping setup; or just a solo thing. It's hard to find that sort of thing, though.
It's pretty easy to get the grid idea, but when you start trying to do anything more complicated Ableton turns out to be a mess, with many limitations and arbitrary weirdnesses.
E.g. you can't send MIDI sysex out of Live (except to the Push 2 controller). That kills it for all kinds of hardware automation and advanced synth programming.
Live has no concept of a mono track, so it wastes a lot of DSP resources processing effects and mixes in stereo for no reason.
There's no simple hybrid clip arranger mode, which is something most other DAWs can do.
MIDI clip files come with an audio preview. The clips aren't associated with any drum sounds. So you hear the preview, think "I like that...", load it, and then you have to spend half an hour picking the right drum sounds for it.
And so on. I've really tried to like working with Live, but there are just too many design decisions that make no sense for it be to anything other than frustrating.
I started in that mode (since I tend to do long drones) but once I adjusted to the non-linear workflow it became super easy. It helps that the ecosystem around Ableton is so rich now.
FL Studio has a nice learning curve too, though different. FL's best features IMO are the pattern sequencer and the piano roll. So intuitive, once you get the DAWs flow you just get creative and the limits disappear.
I moved from Cubase to FL two years ago. I'm in love with the patterns in FL!
The only thing I really miss was the feature in Cubase where you could add effects to an audio pattern in a destructive way. You could create really complex and glitchy patterns and it was easy to mix them together (cross fade and such).
The other thing I would love ImageLine to do is a better workflow when you use audio samples directly in the sequencer. Things like fade in and fade out and a much bigger zoom overall in the sequencer to move samples around.
Edit : I know you can work with Edison but it isn't intuitive imo
I agree. A lot of the other UIs are insane. One of them boasts about its full physics package to accurately render the cables connecting one "device" to another. I thought it was so gimmicky but a lot of them do the same stuff and people buy it so what do I know. Ableton just makes sense.
But maybe because I'm not an artist. I just like learning these tools. I will say that with a few hundred bucks of equipment (a Launchpad and a Kaossilator2) I've had hours of fun just "jamming".
Also for more technical fun, there are 3rd party MIDI loopback interfaces available on Windows, so it's easy to write your own instruments. Took about an hour to hook up an Xbox360 controller so I got a few x-y inputs. Ableton makes it super easy to map them.
Wha? Ableton has great built-in effects and Sampler + Operator are fantastic instruments. Some of my favorite producers use almost exclusively built-ins. You can get really far with just a few stacked Operators + saturator + erosion + overdrive + multiband dynamics.
All I've felt the need for so far is a better limiter (you can't really push Ableton's) and a multi-band distortion plugin.
The Kaossilator 1 (KO-1) is available on ebay for under $100 and they are massive fun. Never a boring train/plane journey with a KO-1 and some headphones.
> Took about an hour to hook up an Xbox360 controller so I got a few x-y inputs. Ableton makes it super easy to map them.
Fun tip: You can do this with an Xbox 360 (probably Xbox One) Rock Band drum kit for a cheap e-kit. The drumkit just sends gamepad input and there are programs to convert that to MIDI.
This is not the basics of making music. It's a super advanced technique using a computer. The real basics involve pencil, (staff) paper, and hard work. Downvotes please.
One could argue that the basics involve putting sounds together in the simplest way possible - something like this. And that it takes far more work and skill to get to the advanced, low level stuff like writing on staff paper (and on the production side, compression, EQ, mastering, etc.).
To put it another way: Is learning x86 assembly the "basics of computer programming"?
If you're taking a hardline-traditionalist approach to what constitutes music, why stop at pencil, paper and hard work. Music has existed long before written notation and documented musical theory. You're not only taking an incredibly western-centric view, but you're ignoring a large amount of music by doing so.
Yikes, don't tell Dave Grohl, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and the countless other musicians who don't know how to read or write sheet music...
I somewhat agree with your first sentence, but it's not a super advanced technique, either.
It's simply teaching rhythm and orchestration utilizing a step-sequencer. Similar to how beginners to music are taught rhythm and division of the beat, or Common Core Math grouping.
I have a musician friend who doesn't think drums are a musical instrument and that drummers are not musicians. As far as I can figure it's has primarily to do with drums not having the same concepts of pitch/melody.
I feel like this is along your line of reasoning- only certain (classical, western) ways of doing music is real music.
Ableton Live is my main daw. I use it every day, generally for hours, and for a wide variety of purposes.
The most depressing thing about ableton is made obvious in two seconds of messing with that tutorial. A complete disregard for music in the sense of pushing boundaries of time, or doing things that are not tied to any sort of grid, and the sense of music as an emotive form.
So many aspects of music are very annoying or borderline impossible to do in ableton. Yet in all these years, and with so many installations, they just never addressed those issues. Instead they vaguely pretend as if music that would require features they don't have is radically experimental. Which might become true if so many people learn music only through using their software.
Seriously, Ableton. Stop pretending making music is clicking on and off in little boxes. It's embarrassing.
--
Edited to take out the "art" part and put in a couple of more specific criticisms.
It just encourages so much grid based work that you tend to lose perspective on the fact that most of the music made throughout all of the history of ever wasn't actually on a grid.
I love ableton a ton. It just encourages a limited mind set.
I really don't buy this. Ableton was created by an excellent musician (Robert Henke), and its design reflects a musician's perspective. It's intuitive and flexible. It doesn't work for every possible workflow, but no individual piece of software could.
That's arguing from authority and ignoring the meat of my point.
I know Robert Henke created Ableton Live and it was a tremendous innovation when it came out.
Over time it gradually expanded features but never dealt with a variety of things that might be development intensive but would in no way break the workflow.
For example:
Support advanced midi stuff. Like, any of it. Why is it so mind bogglingly inconvenient for me to hook up my continuum or my linnstrument to Live?
Loops of arbitrary length/non warped loops, as I mentioned in another comment, are unnecessarily hard to implement.
Why can't I midi map to certain controls, why can't I macro map to certain controls.
Why can't I easily lock stuff in the arrangement view so I am not terrified to change the master tempo.
Why can't I group things in arrangement and edit them together.
why can't I intuitively stretch a sample in arrangement view, when the whole sell of ableton is time stretching?
It's not arguing by authority, it's arguing by counterexample. Robert Henke doesn't represent all musicians, but he is a musician, so it's not possible that Ableton doesn't reflect the perspective of any musician.
All the things you mention relate to a certain workflow. It's not my workflow, it's not every musician's workflow. It'd be great if Ableton had good SysEx support, but it's not accurate to say it has a "complete disregard for music" because it doesn't fit your workflow exactly. Ableton is designed to simplify working with repetitive beats. If you don't want any of those, of course it's going to be difficult to use.
It seems to me each DAW focuses on a particular problematic.
- Ableton Live: focus on painless transition between live and written electronic music, quick producing
- Reason: focus on modulating everything with a studio feel
- Orion: focus on cleanly mixing looping music, slow producing
- FLStudio: focus on composing looping music
- Reaper: focus on customization and performance
- Protools: focus on getting the most money out of the customer
- Logic: focus on getting the sound you want and making a song easily, pre-made effect chains
- Studio One: a bit similar to Logic in spirit
- Cubase: I don't know what it focuses on tbh
A major problematic is that the topdown goal of making one song may easily be dwarfed by mixing difficulties that can then capture your focus forever (aka "loopitis").
As an audio plugin developer, I get to know a bit of every
DAW out there, for testing. A popular opinion is that tools don't matter for making music, but a more realistic opinion is that they actually do matter, by warping how you think about the problem.
Renoise: incredibly accurate timing. Yes demoscene music makers, but it's also exceptional at producing anything that's got to have incredibly tight timing. It even excels at sending MIDI data without jitter.
Also, as the heir apparent of the tracker movement (its audio can be a heck of a lot better than the early generations of trackers, and it's happy to work with multichannel DACs for outboard analog mixing) it offers a distinct way of thinking about sound-making: that old 'tracker' way of composing. Since it's based on audio samples of arbitrary fidelity, it's not restricted to 'demo-y' sounds: you can just as well use huge 24-bit high sample rate sounds, or use it as a way of layering audio tracks as one might in a DAW.
I'm not involved with Renoise as a company, BTW, but I AM completely charmed by it and own both it and Redux (the DAW plugin version).
Yes a thousand times, dude, Renoise is that good. It's my main DAW and I feel really spoiled by it, specially by its incredible stability.
Everytime I read articles or forum posts about people talking about their DAWs I hear people complaining about ableton/fl studio etc being unstable, crashing on odd occasions etc. I have never experienced a crash on Renoise, not even using multiple VSTs etc, even some buggy ones that are prone to crashing or scrambling other DAW's internal state hehehe... I have composed tracks on Renoise for over 6 hours to only them realize I hadn't saved a single time.
> Fountain pens want to connect letters. Ballpoint pens need to be convinced to write.
It takes serious effort at times to force a ballpoint pen to actually write. Which has the effect of turning off people to writing and ruining the quality of written material.
I find it best to always acknowledge that there may be a better tool for the task you're trying to do at any moment, and realize the point at which you should go and search for that tool.
But as Rumsfeld would say, the unknown unknowns are what you need to worry about. That is, the case where you don't know the tool you're using is limiting you, and in what ways.
Hate to be a pedant... but I'm not sure any one person gets to define what "music in the art sense" even is.
Yes, Ableton is rigid. Yes, Ableton favors certain musical styles over others. Yes, Ableton, here and in their design of Live, may just be giving lip service to anything beyond rigid song structure, tempo and dynamic changes, etc. Yes, Ableton loves their little boxes.
But, I find it hard to believe that Ableton has a "complete disregard for music in the art sense." If "art" inherently means "unquantifiability" or pure "aesthetics", then sure, session view Live might not be your best bet. Regardless, arrangement view is basically the same as Pro Tools as far as I can tell/remember from what I've used of Pro Tools.
I think either my phrasing was terrible (likely) or people aren't seriously considering what I am saying.
Try just looping a sample that is of arbitrary length, not some multiple of beats. This is something that we could do fairly easily since the 1980s, and with moderate effort before that. Ableton made this in to an unusual technique.
The entire arrangement view only superficially resembles protools, the automation, the time stretching, everything really, is completely different.
You can turn off auto-warp on audio tracks by default globally, and you can disable warp on a per clip basis as you go.
In your specific case... disable warping on your ambient track, line it up against your warped/synced "another sort of loop" in arrangement view, and then change the master tempo of the track until you find out what you want in terms of different tempos. (This is off the top of my head, and without the program in front of me. Apologies if it's vague.)
Live can definitely function as a "dumb" multitrack recorder that lets you do those things -- but, by default it has all the tempo/beat/quantize options turned on.
I saw your edited post above... I think people are reacting negatively to your criticisms because they're a bit harsh, and, I personally think it's shooting the messenger (Live). You can do the things you want to do in Live... but by default out of the box, it's not what's it designed for. Live lowers the barrier entry to making sound... the people/users cranking out 4-4 120bpm tracks likely wouldn't be making anything had there not been Live. If you don't want to call that sound art or music, that's on you. To many people, that's still music, and music they might not have created otherwise.
EDIT: Just saw your other post here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14300672) with some more specific criticisms. I feel your pain. You obviously already know how to do the thing I'm mentioning above, and are referring to more complicated scenarios. Thanks for sharing.
>What if I want the sound of rustling leaves to come and go across the course of a song?
Trigger it via MIDI as a one-shot in the sampler, for example. Sampler and Simpler params can be automated. If you want some 'arbitrary' looping, again use the loop points of Sampler and set the (re)triggering appropriately.
You can do all these things if you want to, you just have to invest enough time learning the tools.
Edit: If you respond, you may mention that you have invested the time. Perhaps you have, and I'm just misunderstanding your case or needs.
I recommed Steve Reich - Music for 18 musicians :-)
Composing in the DAW is the best way to make someone else's music. Create your own creative process, then you are on the way to your own sound.
I don't understand, it's easy to get arbitrary length loops, that's the reason there is a "fixed length" button on the Push 2 which you can enable if you want.
The arrangement view is not meant to be Protools.
Ableton is actually quite nice for doing experimental and unusual music, it just is built around doing it LIVE. If you want to paint outside the lines, you can with it. "clicking boxes on and off" is simply a way of perceiving layering.
This takes like a second. Drag a sample into an audio track (in arrangement view), copy it, paste it again where the last sample ended, repeat until it goes on as long as you need. Do you not know how to use Ableton at all?
It breaks. But now you're just adding arbitrary conditions. If you want it to loop without breaking when the tempo changes, load it into Simpler, turn off warping, and create loop points around all of the audio that you want. And then create a single MIDI note holding it on for as long as you need. Or if you need something really unusual, load a looper plugin into Ableton--there are tons. You're acting as if problems that only require a few minutes of cursory thought are impossible to solve.
You can disable quantizing and "warp" for clips (or just some clips if you like).
I sometimes use Ableton for noise shows, you can definitely get weird and off the grid with it. Record in 2 loops, not quantized so their lengths don't match exactly, duplicate each loop a few times. Disable warp on a few copies, enable repitching on a few others. Then when you twist the tempo knob some loops rise in pitch while getting faster, some just get faster but keep constant pitch, and some stay the same length and timbre. Record that to another track, then duplicate THAT and repeat, etc.
Music is made in your head, the DAW is just a tool to get it out. You can turn off grid snapping and use samples the way you like and many more creative methods to do whatever you please.
> So many aspects of music are very annoying or borderline impossible to do in ableton.
Like what? Scoring music? How about using a proper tool then? Nobody complains that they can't write hardware drivers in PHP.
My DAW is Reason and because it sucks in making mixtapes I got Ableton too because it's superior in that use case.
I feel the need to address some of the typical HN poison floating around. I've got a very expensive music education. It doesn't make me better than an "Ableton clicker". Music is open to anybody, and is defined by what moves one, not by the mechanism of its creation. America really tends to treat it as some exclusive art club (beyond required elementary school classes), and that's really just wrong.
Please refer to my comment history and also please rebut specific things I said. I rarely say negative things and I am a user of this product all the time. I am genuinely frustrated by the lack of progress in recent years, since I use the product literally every day. This is not poison, it is legitimate criticism.
I didn't mean personal offense in my reply. "Stop pretending making music is clicking on and off in little boxes", is the specific portion I was referring to, but more generally I just aim to promote inclusiveness.
Right on. Anything can be an instrument from a 5 gallon bucket to a $100,000 concert piano. I never understood the snobbery, even among hacker crowds even, for people using certain tools to create music. Heck my C64 made music to the tune of Daisy and it was super cool. If someone wants to produce live music I am all for that.
PS Punk Rock and Indie Rock still is better then whatever else anyone else listens to :) Just jokes.
Related, this is trending on reddit this morning. Just fascinating to watch someone build a catchy track up on such a (apparently) basic piece of equipment...
What's especially impressive is that the OP-1 has only four tracks, and only does destructive recording with no undo. Meaning that if you want more than four instruments, you have to overdub the same track, and any mistake will ruin the current loop.
In other words, you really need to know what you're doing and have a really good idea of what you want to play to be able to make a song as elaborate as this.
As someone who has no musical talent whatsoever, I'm oddly intrigued by Ableton's products. I've occasionally stumbled across the Push[0] and been fascinated by it as an input device.
This site is another thing to add to my Intriguing Stuff list.
I have a Push (v1) and it's a lot of fun. The whole idea is to pull out the functionality from Ableton onto a tactile device, and I think it succeeds in doing so. When I play with it, I stash my laptop to the side beecause you don't really need to stay glued to the screen while working with it.
Beyond its utility, it's a really beautiful device.
Yes you can. There's a dedicated button that puts it into "user" mode, at which point you can use it as a general midi input device. Every button and encoder is mapped, including aftertouch. You can program the LCD display and set the colors of the pads (via midi sysex messages).
I'm not sure how programmable the display is on the Push 2, as it's a different display tech. I imagine you send it snapshots of a framebuffer rendered on your computer.
They put Tone.js to good use.
Promoting Ableton by showing what cool stuff you can do with free js library that can work in browser, weird?
https://tonejs.github.io
This is some good coverage of the music theory behind songwriting, which is important in making songs that sound good.
However, there's another part of making music which is not covered at all here, which is the actual engineering of sounds. Think of a sound in your head and recreate it digitally—it'll involve sampling and synthesizing, there's tons of filters and sound manipulation to go through, they all go by different names and have different purposes—it's a staggering amount of arcane knowledge.
Where is the learning material on how to do this without experimenting endlessly or looking up everything you see? I want a reverse dictionary of sorts, where I hear a transformation of a sound and I learn what processing it took to get there in a DAW. This would be incredibly useful to learn from.
There's no easy way. As you mention, this is arcane knowledge--people really do study it for years or decades to train their ears to the appropriate levels. The two big components are standard music production techniques (reverb, compression, EQ, appropriate mic usage, etc.) and then domain-specific knowledge for the instrument (characteristics of different guitar amps, say, or synth filters).
Seconded. Syntorial is an awesome way to learn to program synthesizer sounds. It plays a sound, then you replicate it with the synth controls. It starts easy and gradually ramps up the difficulty, adding more knobs to twiddle, explaining the concepts as it goes along. It's a million times better than staring at a full synth control board, moving knobs and hoping that you figure it out eventually.
as other replies allude it's also highly genre/goal dependant.
if you're trying to make your rock band sound more like led zeppelin there is a fairly fixed set of tools and instructions (albeit futile, ultimately)
if you are imagining a pure sound in your head that is not straightforwardly produced by an instrument, then it gets a lot more complicated, and there are countless routes to the same goal. the experimenting is the fun part though!
This is something I struggle as a weekend hobbyist musician: There is some kind of black art involved in making music, in how to get that sound you enjoy on the music you like (which is probably the music that inspires you to make music, at least in my case).
What I found was that as your music making experience unfolds, you start amassing these little tricks here and there and they're only yours, usually tied to your stack of tools and the way you think. That is extremely hard to replicate and also very personal, imho that's why it's so difficult to actually pass that sound-sculpting knowledge to others, and that's why (besides the odd youtube tutorial on how to make a specific sound -- usually targeted at a specific vst, explaining which knobs to turn), we won't find many general sound sculpting learning material online. Even tho it is available if you gather around from forums and etc, it is still pretty much a personal experience.
Answering your question: As the time passed, the endless experimenting diminished and I got a proper sense of what does what, and after 5 years making music I'm more able to pinpoint what I need to fiddle to transform the sound the way I want/imagine in my head.
I'm still not quite there yet but if I can offer one piece of advice, that is: Don't shun the 'endlessly experimenting to find a sound'-thingy, because that's the best way you can grasp the tools. Over time you'll be able to get there faster but it's a necessity..
This is how much I evolved, without even noticing, only making tracks after tracks:
Yes, I post all my stuff to Soundcloud and Youtube, this way I can get constructive feedback and learn even more.
Here are the channels you can listen to more of my stuff, and by all means please help me get better by commenting and feedbacking me if you can. If you make music as well I will gladly return your energy and time by commenting and giving feedback. :)
Also, I usually participate on the listen thread/feedback rounds on reddit's /r/edmproduction, you'll find me there as well commenting on everyone's tracks ;)
Picking up an analogue synth with all the knobs on the front is a good way to get your head around sound design, and very quickly discovering what does what (sound-wise). An oscilloscope on the output also allows you to see what is physically happening. VSTs tend to 'get in the way' because of the interface, but obviously you could get something like Diva and experiment in the same way. I think reading up on the physics of oscillators, filters, envelopes etc. can be a real help getting that picture in your mind of how to make the sound you want as well.
I've been building up bit of an epic studio [1] over the past few years after being in-the-box for years. And the hands on nature of real synths is so much more intuitive that VSTs imho.
sir, you have already reached it: it is fucking epic, wow! Congratulations, it must be really fun being on that room, and it must be difficult getting out of it hehehe.
I want to get more into the hardware side of music making but being cost efficient is paramount to getting up and running in the cheapest way possible, specially (in my case) this is a hobby I consider myself 'just starting out'. If I have some cash to invest in it, I go to what will give me the most return (what will enable me to study the most). In my experience that meant DAW Software (Renoise), MIDI KEYS (Axiom 25), interface (Yamaha AG06) and a pair of monitors (Yamaha HS8's). Now that I've the basic kit 'sorted out' it is time to get some hardware.
What would you suggest? I've been eyeballing a KORG MS-20 mini but I don't know...
> Congratulations, it must be really fun being on that room, and it must be difficult getting out of it hehehe.
Indeed it is!
Monitoring and room acoustics are definitely the very first thing to focus on. It was something I neglected for far too long. If you can't hear what's going on it doesn't matter how much gear you've got.
My favourite hands-on synth is the Roland Juno 106 [1], it's so god damn simple to use, everything is there, and so tweakable. They seem to have gone back up in price, but I picked up a pristine version for £600 off ebay. Obviously you need to be careful with older gear, and definitely try before you buy to make sure the thing isn't falling apart.
For mono synths my favourite is the Moog Sub 37 [2], it's knob central and sounds amazing, as all Moogs do. Although I was considering replacing it with the simpler (but more classic sounding) Model D which has just been re-issued.
The best modern analogue synth I have is the DSI OB-6 [3]. Although we're getting into the expensive end of the market here, I reckon it's a future classic. These things will hold their value very well. It's also got all the knobs and controls you'll need, but with slightly different filters to most other synth manufacturers, which is good for the contrast.
The Korg MS-20 would definitely be a good place to start (I haven't got one myself, but many friends have, and rate them highly), the fact that it has all the knobs on the front for every component of the synth and has the patchbay is perfect for experimentation.
You'll never regret getting an analogue synth, the sound just dwarfs what VSTs do imho. They're _alive_ in a way that you just don't hear from VSTs.
It's also interesting how different analogue compressors and EQs sound compared to VSTs. There's a rawness and sexiness that I have yet to achieve in-the-box (not saying it's impossible, just I'm too lazy to spend ages trying to achieve the sound I can get from hardware by simply switching it on).
> making but being cost efficient is paramount to getting up and running in the cheapest way possible
I have the Chandler Curve Bender EQ [4] which is based on the EMI Abbey Road desk that was used to record Beatles and Pink Floyd albums. It is super expensive (£5000+), but as soon as I heard what it could do I just needed it in my life. I call the on/off switch on the front of it the "it's just better switch" because as soon as I press it the sound in my studio turns 3D and everything is good in the world. I have the plugin version of it (UAD), which is very good, probably the best VST EQ I've heard - but it's not a patch on the gear and doesn't invoke that emotional feeling.
The reason I'm saying this is that yeah this stuff is expensive, some of it super expensive, but if you pick up one piece of gear a year and learn it inside out you'll be in a great place - creating awesome sounds quicker than you ever could before in-the-box. Most people I know with killer studios took a decade to get there.
Thank you for your tips, my friend! You are totally right: go slow, pick your gear one at a time and after some time I will have a great little home studio to play with :-)
You're right that it's a staggering amount of arcane knowledge. But starting out I always recommend experimentation over getting too deep into the theory. It does help to have some baseline understanding of:
1. Frequency
2. Harmonics
3. Oscillators/Waveforms
4. Envelopes
5. Filters
The only problem with the last part of your request is that even if you are to watch people design sounds for a couple of hours you might find that when you try to replicate that somewhere else it doesn't sound right. This is partially because every synth/softsynth is different and will produce different sounds and have different parameters. It can be infuriating to get a tutorial on how to produce that perfect "Bladerunner Blues" synth and come out with something that sounds totally flat and bad.
To make matters worse, there are apparently 0 good tutorials on the subject - I just googled for 15 minutes to no avail. The two below cover some of it but I personally can't bear listening to the people who make these videos.
I would even narrow that list down to one: Harmonics. Once it clicked in my mind that every sound is just a combination of sine waves, and that it's the intervals, amplitudes, and dynamics of those sines that make up everything we hear, it made sound design a lot clearer for me.
Of course, finding the right waveforms, filters, and envelopes required to get to a particular pattern of sines is still the challenge, but having that understanding of the medium underlying it all makes experimentation that much more productive (and fun).
Also people who have really hot Sound Tips generally don't want to give them away. If you can make a unique sound with some special trick you will have an advantage over your enemies (other musicians).
One problem is that every machine tends to be designed just a little bit differently. Therefore, tips on exactly recreating the sound might not necessarily translate well from one machine to another.
For instance, the "Blade Runner Blues" patch as I understand it is actually one of the brass presets on the Yamaha CS-80. (Bad recording but here: https://www.firsthomebank.com/personal-banking/deposit-produ...) The CS-80 has a pretty unique architecture for a polyphonic analog. (http://www.cs80.com/tour.html) To get a patch exactly right would require replicating layout, filter architecture and structure, etc.
Knowing basics synthesis, however, can get you pretty close. I have a patch on my Alesis Andromeda (which has some CS-80 type elements such as a ribbon controller, dual resonant filters, and an unfiltered sine that goes to the post-filter mix) that someone did in a user community -- it came out decently good. I was able to Google a book page that gives a good overview of recreating it on other synths. (https://books.google.com/books?id=Jz1JMnZNO88C&pg=PA74&lpg=P...)
Now, to really get the Vangelis Blade Runner type effect, you have to be able to play a synthesizer expressively. This is unfortunately is tougher on most synths compared to the CS-80, due to the CS-80's polyphonic aftertouch that most synths lack. That being said, there are other techniques people could do. I understand that Vangelis used pedals to manipulate filter and volume, and that is something that can be done on many synths that I don't see a lot of people taking advantage of. Don't discount playing technique when it comes to the art of sound design, in other words.
That's an understatement. Vangelis improvises whole soundtracks live, playing fairly simple melodic lines and counterpoints with his hands, but manipulating LOTS of pedals to arrange on the fly. By that, I mean more than ten pedals, arrayed in an enormous bank at his feet. It's staggering, and I can't think of a single other electronic musician with nearly that proficiency at foot-pedals.
I really like that you just went off on a huge tangent about this, no sarcasm. I really agree with your last line too, Kevin Shields is another example of this. By perfecting a unique playing style (holding the pitch bar while strumming) he was able to come up with a sound so unique that it spawned a subgenre
Only if your claim to fame is primary sound transduction and not, say, being a guru of giving other people tools and help with their ideas. My own career over the last ten years or so has been based on the latter.
I will say that I think the 'power-law' nature of that is not dissimilar to being a primary sound transduction artist. You don't get a large number of people being celebrities at tutorials, or of disseminating free plugins.
And yeah, I do mean to expand upon this: got a likely domain for it just yesterday. The trick there is that you need to be inter-disciplinary enough that you can produce a really wide range of content, that by definition a newbie couldn't possibly process. I can go from 'slew rates in op-amps in boutique guitar stompboxes' to 'exploiting unusual interpretations of the Circle of Fifths' (did you know the Four Chord Song can be read as a atomically contained minimum-area space in an extended diagram of the circle of fifths?) but a newbie wouldn't cover that range.
There are no secret weapons, just secret masteries: by that, I mean 'stuff that's sensible and obvious, but to the contextless outsider seems like black magic coming out of nowhere'. Any sufficiently deep context seems like magic to someone who has no idea of the scope of that context.
It's one reason I like monosynths (or or two oscillators). Really helps you understand basic subtractive synthesis. Then you can layer on. A very simple modular system can help too because you have to understand the fundamental of sound and modulation.
Sound design is a whole another part of music. Most amateur musicians don't even bother with it because it is way to technical to master. They just use presets.
I personally hate it, but if you have a technical bent, you might enjoy it
Serum is the easiest synth I have ever used. There are a lot of controls, but they all make sense. And if one is just starting out, they can ignore most of the controls and focus on just the basics: Waveform, envelop, filter. Then move to modulation starting with LFOs. (Modulation is where Serum really shines. It is literally drag-and-drop. Compared to the modulation matrices that many synths use, it's a cake walk.)
If you think Serum look complex, take a look at Zebra 2.
The people at Ableton are well aware of this (the term "the studio as an instrument" comes up quite often at their event "Loop") but I'm not sure there's a better way to learn besides experimenting. I've heard quite a lot of stories about (electronic) music creators telling about their beginnings, how they would ask for help to more experimented friends, how they would reply "no, just try things", then how they felt in the end it was a good thing once it "clicked."
THIS, this right here. That idea has come to my mind many times, having something like a library of "recipes" for sounds. The hardest part for me whenever I try to do something in FL Studio is getting the source samples and make them sound the way I want individually. It's a shame to have an idea for a song in my head and not being able to materialize it just because I don't know what kind of plugin or instrument I should use.
I've been using Ableton Live for about a week after getting a free copy with the USB interface I bought (Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, highly recommend) and I had to turn to YouTube to figure out how to actually sequence MIDI drums in it.
I use it pretty much solely for recording, but I take advantage of the MIDI sequencer functions to program in a drum beat instead of recording to a click, because I've found my timing and rhythm is so much better playing to drums than it is just playing to a metronome.
Yes, studied music on the conservatorium and have been a professional producer for years doing pop and edm etc.. Used most of the known DAW's from FL to ProTools.
Making music (also EDM) is really, really hard. Most people that try will fail, and Ableton knows that. They are just trying to sell their product here which is fair enough. But 'getting started making music' is like you only need their product, trigger some samples and you can be an artist too.
Try sit behind a drum kit for the first time, you think you can start making music? Most aspiring drummers need to practice for years before you can play a reasonable beat. Same with EDM, it takes many years of practice and improving all kinds of skills. This tutorial is just showing how you can trigger samples in a grid and how you can put this together in a DAW. For me that is not making music, sorry.
Btw, the resulting loops in the tutorial were not made by beginners, and listen to the result, is that music to you? Would you buy that? Another title that would be appropriate but not sell, could be: Get started making rubbish.
To be fair, as soon as you start messing with swing, it's no longer strictly a "grid" you're limited to. Timing and breaking the rules is where musical talent starts dancing with grids and boxes.
> But 'getting started making music' is like you only need their product, trigger some samples and you can be an artist too.
I mean, is that wrong? Unless you stick to some elitist definition of artist, why is someone who plays with these samples to create something not being an artist?
It's not wrong, just feels misleading. For me it's like Sublime text comes with a little tutorial with the title "Get started making apps", and only give an intro on making a hello world program in C++, to sell their product.
I don't get the problem with that either? Being an "artist", or "making apps" aren't hallowed titles. Are you treating it more like they're saying "You'll be a super successful musician" or "You'll be a multi-millionaire app maker"? Because I'm no seeing it like that.
I'm not an artistic musician, but it feels really satisfying to make something that is my own, even if musically it's really simple. Your comment is nothing but unnecessarily elitist.
Love it. Great web app from a really good company. I use Ableton a lot and I'm continually impressed with their software and content marketing activity.
I'm actually working full time on a new DAW that should make writing music a lot faster and easier. Current DAWs don't really understand music. Also the note input process and experimentation is extremely time consuming and the DAW never helps. Current DAW : my thing = Windows Notepad : IDE. The HN audience is definitely one of my core groups.
Many comments here mostly mention software. But there are some interesting exceptions. Check Surgeon for example, who likes to use his custom controllers with Ableton. You actually can see him re-wire the controllers every now and then. (Great music too ;))
>The only difference is that Abelton Live and Bitwig (Runs on Linux) are designed for live performance.
Ableton, at least, also functions perfectly fine in the traditional piano-roll and timeline paradigm of DAW workflow too. Don't let the 'Live' part of the name mislead you into thinking it's only for live performers; it does everything the 'old DAWs' do, AND it's got great features to assist in live performance.
Also in terms of underlying concepts, if you know one DAW well, you can usually learn another one fairly quickly, as it becomes more a question of learning the interface more than anything else.
> if you know one DAW well, you can usually learn another one fairly quickly
I couldn't disagree more, but I am talking about doing professional work. The concepts are all the same but getting where you are proficient in a DAW takes a very long time to find the quirks and strangeness that each one comes with to produce a quality piece.
A DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation, is to building music what Final Cut Pro is to building video, or what Eclipse is to developing software. Most DAWs consist of multiple tracks which hold multiple audio clips, each of which are scheduled to play at a certain time. You build a song out of these clips, which you have loaded into the DAW. You can also add various effects to the clips and manipulate them. You can store abstract music event data ("play note A here at this time, then play note B Flat at this time") in additional tracks. This data has no sound associated with it, but like a piano player roll, you can set it up to play notes in some instrument, either an internal software instrument provided by the DAW or a third party, or emitted via MIDI to a remote hardware music synthesizer.
DAWs are used to produce the huge majority of music you hear in the media, from commercials to hip hop songs. Even seemingly real orchestral pieces for movies are often composed entirely using artificial instruments. For example, here is Junkie XL showing how he composed themes for Mad Max Fury Road.
It's gonna be the fastest piano roll. It will have semi live performance kinda like Ableton live but live is sample based, mine is music based. I don't want to reveal too much, but I've talked to professional composers and kind of described the work flow I envision and they all were like "i need to this asap".
Idk if this will appease some of your concerns but I've been around hn for a while (I'm in the top 30 karma wise), I won't spam you.
So I'm working on this mostly to scratch my personal itch. I'm aware of those but to be honest I never found them to be more than toys. When I listen to music made in these, I feel like they generally lack some structure. My thing is all about helping you structure things.
Great. To be specific, what I dream of is something that can operate on higher-level musical constructs analogous to vim's text objects (works, lines, parentheses, etc). Chords, scales, rhythms, melodies? I don't really know exactly what this would look like but I suspect it could be very slick if someone got it right. I had some ideas and thought about implementing them a while ago but it got deprioritised next to making my own music and had to get to the back of the "some day I'll..." queue.
I've signed up to your google form, so I'll look forward to seeing what, if anything, you come up with :) I am on linux (and yes, I agree that music on linux is a pain), so I might not get to use it unless you port it, but I still look forward to seeing it, whatever it is.
Yes, you get it! That's exactly what this is. You sound exactly like me lol. I love higher order things and I've been chasing this "mirage" since I was like 12 but I never had the chops and time to really devote to this. Do you think that we could chat sometime? My email is my username at gmail.
Have a look at extempore, a lispy live music/notation language and environment. Only emacs bindings, no vim, but impressive preformance nevertheless...
I played around with this a while back and there are Vim plugins for it. My biggest problem was having to compile the thing from source which involved also compiling a custom version of LLVM, which took forever. It's possible this is no longer a problem.
I'm aware of extempore; it's impressive. I actually use SuperCollider quite a lot (in vim), which is not lispy (more OO) but in a similar space. But what I want is something that can operate on music how vim operates on text, not just operating on music-written-as-text in vim!
I have. "LilyPond is a music engraving program, devoted to producing the highest-quality sheet music possible. "
I don't need or want any of that. In fact when I write music, music engraving is the least of my concerns. Actually music engraving is generally the least of my concerns period.
Also I find the current music notation to be kinda idk outdated. I can read it, but I feel like it's a system designed by someone who had the mathematical knowledge of a 15th century farmer (which is probably how it came to be).
>Also I find the current music notation to be kinda idk outdated. I can read it, but I feel like it's a system designed by someone who had the mathematical knowledge of a 15th century farmer (which is probably how it came to be).
What specifically about it?
I can read (and prefer) standard musical notation but when handwriting I use Hummingbird [0] because I find it aides itself to handwriting. But I can't really imagine a "better" musical notation than what is the standard today, except a better way to communicate natural/flat/sharp notes.
I wanted to bring up Hummingbird notation with a specific context in which I prefer it (handwriting) while still being clear that I prefer standard notation over Hummmingbird as a whole.
IMO, classical notation is the Vim of music - it looks bizarre to outsiders, it's totally unintuitive, it requires a lot of memorisation and practice to use effectively, but it's extraordinarily efficient in the hands of an expert user.
It's very quick to read and write. It contains all of the vital musical information in a very concise format. Numerous alternative schemes for musical notation have been tried, but none have achieved significant adoption.
Check out synfire, it's the only sw that somewhat similar. but it's very expensive, and the ui isn't great (sometimes it looks like writing music in excel, like it can provide "intelligence" but you have to check check boxes and click on things, aintnobodygottimeforthat.maymay. Some people might find it interesting that it's written in Smalltalk tho.
I'd argue that current DAWs expect the user to understand at least something about music. Sounds like OP is working on some "syntax-aware" features for their DAW.
> will it constrain me to its understanding about music
This is actually exactly what I'm trying to prevent. Most of the current solutions only kind of constrain you to a certain tonal space that you can maybe explore but the space of possible compositions is actually insanely large. My DAW is going to try to help you explore all that.
Microtonality is definitely something I've thought about and I think I can make it work but I'm curious to know what do you use currently to compose?
Isn't knowing something about music something of a prerequisite for someone who wants to make music? Of course everyone has to start somewhere, but as musician of 20 years who loves DAWs, I would say learn an instrument first, or at least concurrently, if you want to start producing music.
Mostly they don't understand well all the possibilities outside of typical meter and tuning systems. They can do some but tend to push you to writing 4-beat meters in 12-note-equal-temperament. Rhythm and pitch both have far far far more possibilities which DAWs either ignore or at least make second-class options you have to kind of fight for or try a few limited tastes.
I can think a lot more complicated music than I can play. I don't always have access to a keyboard. Piano is a good instrument but sometimes I want to write drums. Also sometimes I want to express relationships between the single notes, not just have the notes themselves. To record 10000 notes from a piano, you need to hit 10000 keys possibly more than once to record them. My thing will let you achieve the same thing with less than 10000 actions.
I agree with you with respect to representation. Pattern/sequence generation is something most DAWs don't have outside of something like Cthulhu which the languages can do easily.
Another thing I've been dying for is an easier way of layering sounds, for example drum hits. Multiple midi sends feels hacky in Ableton and certainly not a first class feature. On the other side of things, the pain of rearranging multiple wavs after wanting to change a note is even more painful.
I totally agree with you about the actions though. Configuring plugins etc can be a huge drain and its very mouse heavy.
I'm not sure if I understood what you meant with layering drum hits. If you mean being able with a single trigger to have layered samples go off that form a drum hit like a snare or bass, then some drum samplers come to mind like Geist. That's the one I personally chose due to wealth of flexible features, but layering a group of samples into a single "hit" is a foundational feature in the program.
> Another thing I've been dying for is an easier way of layering sounds, for example drum hits. Multiple midi sends feels hacky in Ableton and certainly not a first class feature.
Layering drum sounds is a typical feature in all DAWs, and in ableton, with it's instrument and drum racks, it's even easier to layer whatever you want. May be I don't understand what exactly are you trying to achieve?
Are you interested in anything particular? I can provide a lot more detail but I think that none of that will do it any justice. Sign up and check it out when it's out.
ofc, This is kinda standard. Generally I'll try to go well above and beyond what possible today.
Note that I'm on the core team of AudioKit https://github.com/audiokit/AudioKit which is a platform for AudioUnit development so I know all about how dope plugins are :-).
No offense, but it sounds like an empty sales pitch. You're trying to bring attention to the product you're building - and there's nothing wrong about it - but you're only presenting only vague promises, without even discussing what do DAWs get wrong about music in any significant detail.
In the spirit of constructive criticism, may be you could at least point to specific negative sides of existing DAWs that you're willing to eradicate?
It's gonna be clean and fast, no clutter. Recently there was this on HN https://github.com/peterrudenko/helio-workstation which kind of scared me cause my UI is somewhat similar (but after thinking about it more, I actually find mine a lot better). Also note that the UI is only like 20% of the whole thing, the thing that I'm really trying to improve is the workflows. I will make Hypersphere the fastest DAW in the world when it comes to expressing your ideas
When I'm in the zone, I don't care about check boxes. I have some new user interface paradigms that I haven't seen done before (I can imagine they have been tried before tho) that should make writing music super painless and should let you express yourself.
Yes, it is a shame. But: I will add it, along with Windows support.
Indeed, I'll go further. I'm really starting to believe that the only way not to get royally screwed as an app developer is by abandoning the "major" platforms -- which all want to turn you into a serf -- and target OSS platforms like Linux. I'm honestly tiring of dealing with the artificial roadblocks Apple (and Microsoft is no better) throw at me to further their own ends. I actually analysed SteamOS with this intent, but sadly it looks like SteamOS is geared towards the "living room" experience.
Anyway, long story short: there will be Linux support in 2018.
zenAud.io is designed for live use, so it currently doesn't have a piano roll -- instead, you define record loops using editing tools in the arrangement view and record MIDI or audio into it. You can also drag and drop to import standard MIDI files into the arrangement if you want to use pre-written stuff.
I realize this is a big limitation, but we intend to add a piano roll in the next few months.
When you say HN audience would be one of your target groups, do you mean that your DAW would be more like a development environment/programming language (like Sonic Pi), or would it have a more traditional interface?
I've also made a few iOS apps for the purpose of simplifying composition, though they're pretty limited in scope (on purpose). Although it seems most composers would prefer to use full DAWs from the start, I'm personally much more creative when I'm able to jot down and edit my fragmented musical ideas as quickly as possible, if only to make the initial draft. (If I were a better singer or musician, I'd just use a recorder or a looper — but my skills aren't quite there yet, and besides, it's hard to note-edit a recording.) Composer's Sketchpad[1] lets you paint notes directly onto a time/pitch canvas, bending and stretching them as they go along. (This works great for e.g. guitar solos.) MusicMessages![2] is a more basic piano roll that lets users quickly tap buttons across several layers to enter notes. (Musical bubble wrap! Works great for riffing on short drum sequences and chord progressions.)
[2]: http://musicmessages.io -- working on turning it into a full iOS app, so will probably have to shut it down and fold it into the new app at some point
If it sounds like something you're interested in please give it a go! We're always working to improve it and open to feedback.
(Android is coming soon)
I purchased the Ableton Push 2 a month or so ago and it has to be one of the most beautifully engineered pieces of equipment I have ever used. Look up the teardown video. Extremely simple, yet elegant. The Push 1 was created by Akai, and apparently Ableton wasn't satisfied, so they designed and built their own.
Oh man I've had mine for I think a bit over a year now and I love it so much. It really builds off the fundamentals mentioned on the first page of this shared post: you jam out little riffs and then mix and match them till you get something you like. There have been many days/nights where I've needed to do some programming on my game and instead burn 3-4 hours without realizing it because I hit a groove. It's so conducive to jamming it's unbelievable. Not to mention Ableton is a really powerful piece of software that doesn't get in your way when you're experimenting. The pairing makes it one of my absolute favorite pieces of hardware (that and my OP-1).
I am scared to get the OP-1 because it looks like TOO much fun! Yes, I find myself jamming with the Push, not really making anything in particular. The scale mode helps me as I have little music training. Ableton simply works for me. I am using Push 2 + DDJ-SR / Serato and couldn't be happier. Although Serato has a LOT to be desired (pitch shift + fx + vst support), it just SOUNDS great.
Push 1 is still awesome and there's a ton on the second hand market for a fraction of the price of Push 2. You get way more than you pay for at those prices.
I'm happy with mine, I like the pads and it's fine for sequencing and playing. It still receives updates and improvements.
I do like the screen on Push 2, it looks like a nice update, but you are paying a lot for that screen, so you better use it!
I also own a Maschine Mikro MkII by Native Instruments, it's my go-to machine for finger drumming beats and sonic experiments... great pads, very precise, compact and enjoyable. The Maschine software is very good, and the add-on sound packs are great quality.
Having tried both a ton before settling on the Push 2, the screen is great, but that's not why I bought it. In every way it feels better to make music on than the first Push. The pads especially are a thousand times more responsive — the Push 1's got this weird wooden feeling that never seemed to register the velocity I was going for.
I think the Push 2 is ~3x as much, and it is worth every penny.
I was shocked at how sensitive the pads are on the Push 2. A graceful brush of a finger triggers the pads. I know that sensitivity can he adjusted, but wow! I produce classic Hip-Hop / Rap music which involves sampling. The screen is insanely helpful when it comes to chopping samples.
It's designed in a way to make the user (e.g. anyone who likes music) just want to play with it in a way that's very intuitive via its simple, visual layout. And it provides instant feedback that makes you want to continually tinker with it to make something that you like more and more.
Web development/programming training tool makers should really take note of this.
Anecdotal: there's a few different approaches to learning songwriting that seem to click for beginners. The "build up" approach is the most common and is what this link offers: It first teaches beats, then chords, then melodies and then, in theory, vocals etc. These lessons in this order make sense to many people, but not everyone.
If you're interested in learning to make music and the lessons in the link are confusing or overwhelming or boring, some students find a "peel back" approach to learning songwriting easier to grasp at first. A peel back approach just involves finding a song then teaching by stripping away each layer: start with stripping away vocals, then learn melodies, then chords, then finally learn about the drum beat underneath it all. A benefit of the peel back approach to learning is melodies and vocals are the memorable parts of a song and easiest to pick out when listening to the radio so a student can learn using songs they know and like. Either way, songwriting is hard and fun. Best of luck.
P.S. I think Ableton makes good software and I use it along with FL and Logic. They did a solid job with these intro lessons. But worth mentioning, there is free software out there (this includes Apple's Garageband) that offers key features a beginner just learning songwriting can practice on and mess around on before purchasing a more powerful DAW software like Ableton.
What you said about learning melodies and beats and chords kind of confused me. Do people actually learn how to make up music? I always thought it was just some natural ability that people have. For as long I can remember if somebody told me to write a song I would just spit it out after a while. Am I unuiqe in this respect?
Very few skills are just "natural ability". Music theory is an interesting and pretty important topic if you want to make music. Since people have been creating music for millennia, they have figured out many things that help composers.
When somebody asks me how to solve a particular database problem, or an IT problem, or how to write an algorithm to do something, I will think about it in the back of my mind and "just spit it out after a while," unless it's something difficult enough to warrant a literature review.
That doesn't mean that those subjects aren't covered in detail in textbooks and university courses, or that people cannot learn how to do it.
You probably have learned most/all of your musical knowledge implicitly.
Some people have a great ear for music and can write solid songs without formal training in music. Other folks come at music from the more theoretical side, although usually with a lot of implicit knowledge of and experience with music as well.
For most people who are not formally trained in music, their songs can be improved upon on a technical level by someone who has deeper theoretical knowledge (learned either explicitly or implicitly).
For a good discussion of this, check out Tim Ferris' podcast interview with Derek Sivers. Derek talked about how he had learned a lot about music implicitly. In one summer, a teacher of his formalized that knowledge so efficiently that he was able to test out of lot of classes (1.5 years worth?) once he went to Berklee School of Music.
I created an account just to reply to your comment. As someone who has played keyboard instruments for all my life, it's not crossed my mind lately that the idea that there is structure to music is not well known.
Just for fun: chords in scales are numbered from bottom to top in Roman numerals. I feels like home base, V feels like wanting to go home. If you want to create the feeling of going home but then not really go there you can go from V to VI instead of I. 'Sad but I have closure'-type ending? Major IV - Minor IV - I. Bluesy feeling? Add a minor seventh to your I, IV and V chords. Dreamy? Major seventh instead there, except on the V.
It's even entirely possible to learn to recognize all of these types of chord progressions and sounds instantly. I'm working on and off on an ear training app that randomly generates them that musicians can use to train their musical ear.
As someone who's recently tried to get into (basic) music theory, trying out the chord progressions you mentioned was fun! Do you happen to know of any resources that go through more of these well-known chord progressions?
I'm also wondering if these chord progressions work the same way for all scales, or if, for example, the 'sad but I have closure'-type ending only sounds that way in major scales? From experimenting I think it only works for major scales, but I'm not sure :)
There are certainly people who have natural ability, and compose melodically, applying varying levels of knowledge in music theory.
There are other people who can't make heads or tails out of a keyboard, compose a tune in their head, or understand chordal progressions, but nevertheless compose music in layers and still do extraordinary work. They find what they like by playing with notes on the screen. Joel Zimmerman, a.k.a. Deadmau5, is an example of this.
I am an example of the former, with natural ability, bolstered by training in music theory. But I still use a layered approach when I am composing, generally starting with a beat or bassline, playing with melodic progressions in snippets, and eventually moving into a traditional composition process when I have something started that I like. Ableton makes this process extremely easy and productive.
Indeed. As a classically-trained musician, watching Joel's class on Masterclass and seeing him compose melodies by dragging notes around in Ableton until they "sound right to him" was eye-opening.
What surprised me was how he makes melody lines: Playing with chords until he likes the progression, and then pulling notes out of the chords to form a melody. And of course it makes sense on one level.
But I think melodically and tend to do a lot of counterpoint. Getting the chords out of my head and onto the screen is often the last thing I do. I don't know how well his approach would work with counterpoint, since counterpoint often creates and resolves dissonance using passing tones in double time.
What I find difficult is that by the time I've got my DAW going and found some synths I like, the tune in my head has evaporated. Do all people find musical thoughts so insubstantial, or is it just me? If I imagine a picture or a paragraph of text, it'll stick around and I can remember it more or less indefinitely. I still recall snatches of crap poetry I thought up when I was a teenager, but any music I imagine just disappears before I can get it down.
The most successful tunes I made were more or less "discovered" from incrementally experimenting in the DAW, and not from any kind of original plan or idea. Maybe I'm just not a musician! (I'm an indie game dev who started making my own tunes for my games)
Happens to me too. Ear training might help? There's an exercise where you take a song you know or a familiar recording and try to transcribe it by ear. (I find it's a pretty hard exercise.)
i spent 10 years building a project studio and optimizing the workflow and patch bay so that i can be recording almost any instrument within 30 seconds or so. that was a huge breakthrough and a huge commitment!
you could consciously decide NOT to use synths to lay down the bones, always use a piano to begin with, once you have the tune idea down then you can move onto orchestration and picking synths and so on. Always keep the piano track as a guide and start adding tracks for all the other components until you have what you need.
From a remembering the tune perspective, I have the same issues, but I think it's more related to not applying musical lexicon and hearing skills the same way: you remember poetry or a paragraph of text because you remember the ideas and how to go from one to the other, if you are a musician and have something in your head and start thinking along the lines of "this is using a lydian mode, the progression is ii IV V I then it modulates to the relative minor and switches to dorian, also the theme is going down in thirds for two bars, then it will stay on the chord root for one and move to the dominant 7th" you are going to remember it a lot more easily than just by remembering the melody itself
It would be like comparing how easily you can remember poetry in English vs poetry in, say, Russian, where you only have the "sounds of the words" in your head to remember, but you don't have the syntax or the meanings to help you as well.
For me one of two ways works. Most often I start designing a patch on one of my synths and that ends up becoming a full song. Other times I start by noodling on the piano or organ and ending up with something I like. I suspect the more musically gifted do the latter more often, while the more technical ones like the process of patch creation, etc.
I evolved this way, though I'm far from gifted. Starting out, anything I made was driven by whatever sounds I was noodling with. Now, I almost start on the piano, compose the outline, and then pick the sounds that I think fit it.
The first approach has a sense of creative wonder to it, where your being guided by an outsider. As much fun as that is, it is very limiting and I suspect most people abandon that approach as their skill improves.
Improvising, screwing around, experimentation are great ways to generate ideas. I think most composers work this way, most generally don't start with some huge structure, they just find some germ cell ideas by improvising that then can be build upon afterwards with analytic techniques.
I think there are two main approaches, the intuitive feelings and pure ear based approach which is what most people call the "talent" aspect and the analytic approach which is a lot like mathematics, it is about studying structure, and is a learned skill. The best composers will use both of these together. You should learn chord structures, scales and how to read sheet music. This will allow you to conceptualize a musical idea as a concrete mathematical object, and it will help you to not lose the idea. The reason you forget the music in your head is because you don't have enough reference points to define it in a memorable way.
You can understand a musical idea as a kind of memory impression, an echo that you can play back in your head, and also as a pattern of pitches and rhythmic structures . Having two reference points , sensory and abstract mathematical is very useful.
Do you have much formal knowledge of music theory? If not, that might help.
When you "get a tune in your head", if you can describe it to yourself in abstraction, it will probably be easier to remember (or even just write down).
Check on this page on 12 bar blues for some examples of easy music notations. Similar types of notations and/or terms exist for different parts of a song.
I found the same to be true. I've been trying lately to give up approaching music from the "I have this idea I want to get down" perspective. Instead, I set up my studio in such a way that I can easily "play around" and come up with ideas on the fly, and then elaborate on those.
Switching from a DAW to a mostly-hardware setup helped with this, as it's easier to "play" with knobs/sliders/keys/pads than virtual objects accessed via mouse/keyboard. Once you get things wired up, it's pretty straightforward: play around, find something you like, track it in, build more stuff over it.
Ever since making this switch, I found the parts that I used to practice/enjoy (like slicing and manipulating samples, for instance) feel much more tedious.
Another benefit is that it's easier to make mistakes, which often have more interesting results than the thing you originally intended. My guess is because this violates your internal "patterns" and forces you to think outside of your normal "music creation" schema, resulting in a more creative/unique outcome.
I've also tried to switch to "totally live" recording (i.e. minimal sequencing beyond loops and patterns, all automation and non-repeating parts done on the fly), and that's a bit more challenging, because you have to redo everything if you, say, screw up a little solo bit.
Maybe don't use synths for getting your ideas down.
If I have the beginnings of a song in my head, or I have been humming to myself, sometimes I just record the parts I have as vocals - humming or full-on beatboxing the bass/strings/lead/beats separately and as close as I can make them to my head-song (including filters with my mouth)- and then replace as I go, figuring out how to achieve the sounds that were in my head.
Imagine that you're a writer, and you have an idea, so you turn on your computer, wait for it to boot, log in, open up Word, and fiddle around with fonts for a bit... that's what you're doing.
Writers keep pens and notebooks by their bed so if they wake up in the middle of the night they can start writing right now. Or they have tape recorders. Anything works as long as it's immediately available. The iPhone has a "Music Memos" app, I'm sure there's something similar for Android. That's what I use.
Learning music theory and how to write music properly can come later. As long as you can sing, whistle, or hum a tune, you can record it.
I have the same problem too - I solve it by humming/singing the melody and recording it on my phone. Afterwards, I'll find nice synths, put chords to melodies, write horn arrangements, tweak drum fills, etc.
>by the time I've got my DAW going and found some synths I like, the tune in my head has evaporated
That's where music theory pays off. Learning to name chords, scales and arpeggios gives your brain a framework to reason about and remember musical ideas. It allows you to break the music into a more concise abstract representation, rather than holding it in your head as sound. If you understand the structure of music, it's far easier to make connections between different pieces of music.
My fiance who was a professional musician (she had record deals) always keeps a Tascam recorder. When she comes up with a melody or lyrics she puts them on that until we can get in the studio and record.
She hates music theory and trying to use her left brain for art. I'll say oh that is in F and she gets mad so, easier to just let her record it than try to notate it down.
I had exactly the same thing happen, losing the core ideas by the time I wired up the synth I wanted. So I dropped the DAW entirely. Now I create most of my music using Loopy[0] to layer the parts that I sing (or occasionally play). It's been fantastic for my creativity.
I'm starting to hit its limits for my workflow though. One of the really nice things about how easy it's getting to write software these days is that I can now fire up, say, a Swift playground, and after getting the fiddly basics of "how to record and loop audio buffers" with AudioKit, there are very few limits on what kind of idiosyncratic workflow tool I can design for myself. The UI looks and acts how I want it to, and since over the years I've trained myself to act like a human synthesizer, I can[1] compose a whole song without even worrying about having an instrument nearby.
I think your natural composition skills are unusual, but not unique. I also begain to compose music at a very early age. My knack for picking melodies up out of the air and playing them on a piano when I was 7 years old was how my parents knew that I needed lessons. Naturally, I was surprised later in life to learn that other people had to learn basic things like pitch and rhythm; to me it had always been just as natural as speaking.
I believe the same is true with song writing, in a sense. You're still applying some parts of music theory, but most by-ear learners like ourselves simply grasp the concepts and have internalized them naturally, without needing to be taught. Music is little more than patterns at the end of the day, and our brains are very good at recognizing patterns. What you and I know intuitively, others can learn through training and repetition. Both approaches are valid, and yield interesting (and often different) observations.
I went going through Music Theory classes during my brief adventure with Liberal Arts Majors in college. I felt like I already "knew" the material in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on. It was like I was finally understanding what my brain had been doing all these years. I recommend it if you haven't yet had the experience.
Songwriting can be taught, yes. In most music courses you start by analyzing the Bach Chorales, which (along with some Gregorian work from the middle ages) is what really kicked off contemporary music composition. By analyzing the Chorales and moving forward from there you learn how to manipulate chord progressions, harmony, point and counterpoint.
Composers classically trained this way tend (!) to have an easier time writing melodies, harmonies, and progressions in a consistent manner, ie not having to wait for "inspiration to strike". The composer, of course, still needs to develop an emotional connection in the music, but the point is that it can, and routinely is, taught.
My girlfriend is a trained classical singer whereas I'm a self taught musician. She doesn't really gravitate towards the rock music I like to write but because of her training she can easily jam, riff, or write anything far quicker than I can. Songwriting is a very technical skill indeed.
I know a little rudimentary theory. Just enough to get mocked by someone with a real education. "without any theory" is sort of an impossible standard to satisfy, but I will say I never think about theory consciously, and go by how things sound. Anyway, this is what I'm working on:
People have studied music and composition since at least ancient Babylon, so, well, yes?
>I always thought it was just some natural ability that people have.
With natural ability you can sing some melodies. For learning to play an instrument, adding chords to the melody, you need studying, even if you learn by yourself and by ear (as many folk musicians did). Song melody, one can have a natural feel for creating, but nobody just starts writing songs in full form "from natural ability".
>For as long I can remember if somebody told me to write a song I would just spit it out after a while.
What would that mean? You'd write a song on the guitar for example? If so, then you already know the chords. And not all of the theory, so how complex is your song? Just barebones songwriting (country/folk style)? Can you take it further? Can you write the parts for musicians to play on your song? Can you write different genres on spec?
There are more things in making music/songs than "spitting out" some melody.
Is this a common distinction to acknowledge in general education environments? You pretty succinctly described the struggles I've tended to have in my education, and described it in a refreshing/revealing (for me) way.
I love looking at systems and peeling back the layers to find out what makes something tick. That's not an approach to learning that I really encountered until I entered the workforce and was met with complex systems that I needed to understand. And I loved it!
Interesting, I've never heard of the "peel back" approach, and I can totally understand why it would be instantly satisfying for a beginner in music to get started that way. Do you have any articles or books on the subject manner?
How would this approach apply to a more traditional instrument that doesn't have the advantages of having a "good" sounding sample already preloaded that can be easily layered into a song that you are composing? I grew up learning the violin and it was endless disjointed drills until it was put together in a classical song that I never heard before nor had the desire to play. 8 year old me just wanted to play the theme song to "Jurassic Park" and roar like a T-Rex.
I think there's a difference between learning composition, and learning to play an instrument.
In my view, learning an instrument has a lot in common with learning to code, in that some people take to it, and others don't. And we probably know some of the reasons, but not all of them. Of course teachers and teaching programs vary, as do kids and their family milieu. But nonetheless, music education has huge attrition.
For instance, by way of anecdata, I took string lessons as a kid and loved it, and my kids have gotten pretty serious on violin and cello. They actually like classical music, and it probably helped that both of their parents also enjoy it. So it definitely works for some people.
If anyone is interested in a Free/Libre/Open Source Software option (cross-platform Linux/Windows/Mac) I've really enjoyed producing with LMMS over the past 18 months or so: https://lmms.io/
It's definitely got room to grow in terms of functionality/interface but the development community is of such a size that it's possible to still make meaningful code contributions. I've contributed a couple of small patches to improve the Mac UI as a way to get familiar with the code base.
Of course, the downside is that I have to decide whether to write code or make music whenever I sit down to use it. :)
There's also a new project called Helio Workstation https://github.com/peterrudenko/helio-workstation it doesn't have much built-in instruments so you need plugins for everything, but the UI looks awesome
Good to know. That said Reaper enabled me to use the 7-8 vsts I was really interested in using that didn't work (or worked poorly) in lmms. If I new c++ better I would contribute.
The Song Exploder podcast is awesome for both approaches, and I would really recommend anyone interested in writing and/or producing music to give it a go.
"A podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made." @ http://songexploder.net/
Seconding this recommendation. The more electronic- or instrumental-oriented songwriters on the show tend to get more into the nitty-gritty details of production, layering sounds, etc. (the first two episodes with The Postal Service and The Album Leaf, for instance) while rock and singer-songwriter types tend more towards the songwriting aspect (the Long Winters is a personal favorite).
I sort of wish there were more technical details as a rule, but it's understandable given the relatively short format that they can only cover so much ground. I'd prefer longer episodes personally, but I suppose not everyone might, and there's tradeoffs in producing more content. I guess I'm just glad that the show caught on and is still going strong.
+1 for SE. Also there is an amazing set of Motown tracks split into instrumentals and acapellas out there. I'm not sure if it can be legally obtained easily, but it's a great master class.
+2. Only podcast I listen to. The first few episodes are a little rough around the edges, bad questions, people not knowing exactly what they were getting into, but the rest are all incredible.
Protip: sample the guest's clips they put on his show :) I've gotten some really great material from this show sonically since most of them seem to be the individual instrument tracks.
Is Apple's Garageband free? I thought you need to own an OSX device to run it? (my understanding is OSX only runs on Apple hardware and also is not a free OS)
The point is, that kind of free is marketing speak. More accurately, you can purchase Garageband as part of a package including Apple hardware. Or you could say Apple hardware is free with the purchase of Garageband.
That's a slippery slope to saying that OpenOffice for Windows isn't free software either because you have to buy a Windows box. This is not a useful definition of free you're using. GarageBand is not Libre software.
I dunno if it's a slippery slope starting at Garageband. I say the slippery slope starts at OpenOffice or GoogleDocs or something along those lines, given that OpenOffice could probably be run on a potato if you can find a way to install ubuntu on it and stick some RAM into it.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadLove the simplicity, though it does seem to favor EMD (for obvious reasons).
I've always loved the idea of using Live in a live improvisation context, potentially with multiple instruments having their own looping setup; or just a solo thing. It's hard to find that sort of thing, though.
Checking out Tone.js now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELNiiAldfyM
PS The song is radio and has everything right about why I have always HATED mainstream pop radio.
[0] https://www.ableton.com/en/shop/live/
[1] https://twitter.com/AbletonDev/status/861580662620508160
E.g. you can't send MIDI sysex out of Live (except to the Push 2 controller). That kills it for all kinds of hardware automation and advanced synth programming.
Live has no concept of a mono track, so it wastes a lot of DSP resources processing effects and mixes in stereo for no reason.
There's no simple hybrid clip arranger mode, which is something most other DAWs can do.
MIDI clip files come with an audio preview. The clips aren't associated with any drum sounds. So you hear the preview, think "I like that...", load it, and then you have to spend half an hour picking the right drum sounds for it.
And so on. I've really tried to like working with Live, but there are just too many design decisions that make no sense for it be to anything other than frustrating.
The only thing I really miss was the feature in Cubase where you could add effects to an audio pattern in a destructive way. You could create really complex and glitchy patterns and it was easy to mix them together (cross fade and such).
The other thing I would love ImageLine to do is a better workflow when you use audio samples directly in the sequencer. Things like fade in and fade out and a much bigger zoom overall in the sequencer to move samples around.
Edit : I know you can work with Edison but it isn't intuitive imo
But maybe because I'm not an artist. I just like learning these tools. I will say that with a few hundred bucks of equipment (a Launchpad and a Kaossilator2) I've had hours of fun just "jamming".
Also for more technical fun, there are 3rd party MIDI loopback interfaces available on Windows, so it's easy to write your own instruments. Took about an hour to hook up an Xbox360 controller so I got a few x-y inputs. Ableton makes it super easy to map them.
All I've felt the need for so far is a better limiter (you can't really push Ableton's) and a multi-band distortion plugin.
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[1] https://www.applied-acoustics.com/
Fun tip: You can do this with an Xbox 360 (probably Xbox One) Rock Band drum kit for a cheap e-kit. The drumkit just sends gamepad input and there are programs to convert that to MIDI.
To put it another way: Is learning x86 assembly the "basics of computer programming"?
It's simply teaching rhythm and orchestration utilizing a step-sequencer. Similar to how beginners to music are taught rhythm and division of the beat, or Common Core Math grouping.
Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or proclaim that you expect to get downvoted.
I feel like this is along your line of reasoning- only certain (classical, western) ways of doing music is real music.
There's more -- scroll down and click next.
The most depressing thing about ableton is made obvious in two seconds of messing with that tutorial. A complete disregard for music in the sense of pushing boundaries of time, or doing things that are not tied to any sort of grid, and the sense of music as an emotive form.
So many aspects of music are very annoying or borderline impossible to do in ableton. Yet in all these years, and with so many installations, they just never addressed those issues. Instead they vaguely pretend as if music that would require features they don't have is radically experimental. Which might become true if so many people learn music only through using their software.
Seriously, Ableton. Stop pretending making music is clicking on and off in little boxes. It's embarrassing.
--
Edited to take out the "art" part and put in a couple of more specific criticisms.
Edit: fixed autocorrect typo
AutoCorrect fail? Or not-so-subtle criticism of the product? ;)
I love ableton a ton. It just encourages a limited mind set.
I know Robert Henke created Ableton Live and it was a tremendous innovation when it came out.
Over time it gradually expanded features but never dealt with a variety of things that might be development intensive but would in no way break the workflow.
For example:
Support advanced midi stuff. Like, any of it. Why is it so mind bogglingly inconvenient for me to hook up my continuum or my linnstrument to Live?
Loops of arbitrary length/non warped loops, as I mentioned in another comment, are unnecessarily hard to implement.
Why can't I midi map to certain controls, why can't I macro map to certain controls.
Why can't I easily lock stuff in the arrangement view so I am not terrified to change the master tempo.
Why can't I group things in arrangement and edit them together.
why can't I intuitively stretch a sample in arrangement view, when the whole sell of ableton is time stretching?
None of that would break the workflow.
All the things you mention relate to a certain workflow. It's not my workflow, it's not every musician's workflow. It'd be great if Ableton had good SysEx support, but it's not accurate to say it has a "complete disregard for music" because it doesn't fit your workflow exactly. Ableton is designed to simplify working with repetitive beats. If you don't want any of those, of course it's going to be difficult to use.
Do you think I don't know why Ableton Live is a great tool?
I do know it is great. And I feel I understand the tool deeply enough to give real criticism regarding unnecessary limitations.
But they are trapped in a sort of convention that makes my life hell when I want to leave it.
- Ableton Live: focus on painless transition between live and written electronic music, quick producing
- Reason: focus on modulating everything with a studio feel
- Orion: focus on cleanly mixing looping music, slow producing
- FLStudio: focus on composing looping music
- Reaper: focus on customization and performance
- Protools: focus on getting the most money out of the customer
- Logic: focus on getting the sound you want and making a song easily, pre-made effect chains
- Studio One: a bit similar to Logic in spirit
- Cubase: I don't know what it focuses on tbh
A major problematic is that the topdown goal of making one song may easily be dwarfed by mixing difficulties that can then capture your focus forever (aka "loopitis").
As an audio plugin developer, I get to know a bit of every DAW out there, for testing. A popular opinion is that tools don't matter for making music, but a more realistic opinion is that they actually do matter, by warping how you think about the problem.
Why am i giggling sooo much :-) The whole talk about it being a 'industry standard'.
I missed Renoise on your list:
- Renoise: Focus on appealing to former tracker users and demoscene music makers.
Also, as the heir apparent of the tracker movement (its audio can be a heck of a lot better than the early generations of trackers, and it's happy to work with multichannel DACs for outboard analog mixing) it offers a distinct way of thinking about sound-making: that old 'tracker' way of composing. Since it's based on audio samples of arbitrary fidelity, it's not restricted to 'demo-y' sounds: you can just as well use huge 24-bit high sample rate sounds, or use it as a way of layering audio tracks as one might in a DAW.
I'm not involved with Renoise as a company, BTW, but I AM completely charmed by it and own both it and Redux (the DAW plugin version).
Yes a thousand times, dude, Renoise is that good. It's my main DAW and I feel really spoiled by it, specially by its incredible stability.
Everytime I read articles or forum posts about people talking about their DAWs I hear people complaining about ableton/fl studio etc being unstable, crashing on odd occasions etc. I have never experienced a crash on Renoise, not even using multiple VSTs etc, even some buggy ones that are prone to crashing or scrambling other DAW's internal state hehehe... I have composed tracks on Renoise for over 6 hours to only them realize I hadn't saved a single time.
Yes, and this is a more general problem with tools. In some cases, the tool changes your attitude towards the activity in very subtle manner.
A good example of this is the creation of the ballpoint pen and what it did to handwriting (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballp...).
> Fountain pens want to connect letters. Ballpoint pens need to be convinced to write.
It takes serious effort at times to force a ballpoint pen to actually write. Which has the effect of turning off people to writing and ruining the quality of written material.
I find it best to always acknowledge that there may be a better tool for the task you're trying to do at any moment, and realize the point at which you should go and search for that tool.
But as Rumsfeld would say, the unknown unknowns are what you need to worry about. That is, the case where you don't know the tool you're using is limiting you, and in what ways.
Yes, Ableton is rigid. Yes, Ableton favors certain musical styles over others. Yes, Ableton, here and in their design of Live, may just be giving lip service to anything beyond rigid song structure, tempo and dynamic changes, etc. Yes, Ableton loves their little boxes.
But, I find it hard to believe that Ableton has a "complete disregard for music in the art sense." If "art" inherently means "unquantifiability" or pure "aesthetics", then sure, session view Live might not be your best bet. Regardless, arrangement view is basically the same as Pro Tools as far as I can tell/remember from what I've used of Pro Tools.
What is Live missing for you?
Try just looping a sample that is of arbitrary length, not some multiple of beats. This is something that we could do fairly easily since the 1980s, and with moderate effort before that. Ableton made this in to an unusual technique.
The entire arrangement view only superficially resembles protools, the automation, the time stretching, everything really, is completely different.
What if I want the sound of rustling leaves to come and go across the course of a song?
What if I wanted my piece to happen over a drone tone similar in function to a tamboura or a constantly feeding back electric guitar?
What if I wanted to have another sort of loop and while playing it back, experiment with different tempos against it to see what sounds right?
And a zillion other things.
In your specific case... disable warping on your ambient track, line it up against your warped/synced "another sort of loop" in arrangement view, and then change the master tempo of the track until you find out what you want in terms of different tempos. (This is off the top of my head, and without the program in front of me. Apologies if it's vague.)
Live can definitely function as a "dumb" multitrack recorder that lets you do those things -- but, by default it has all the tempo/beat/quantize options turned on.
I saw your edited post above... I think people are reacting negatively to your criticisms because they're a bit harsh, and, I personally think it's shooting the messenger (Live). You can do the things you want to do in Live... but by default out of the box, it's not what's it designed for. Live lowers the barrier entry to making sound... the people/users cranking out 4-4 120bpm tracks likely wouldn't be making anything had there not been Live. If you don't want to call that sound art or music, that's on you. To many people, that's still music, and music they might not have created otherwise.
EDIT: Just saw your other post here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14300672) with some more specific criticisms. I feel your pain. You obviously already know how to do the thing I'm mentioning above, and are referring to more complicated scenarios. Thanks for sharing.
Trigger it via MIDI as a one-shot in the sampler, for example. Sampler and Simpler params can be automated. If you want some 'arbitrary' looping, again use the loop points of Sampler and set the (re)triggering appropriately.
You can do all these things if you want to, you just have to invest enough time learning the tools.
Edit: If you respond, you may mention that you have invested the time. Perhaps you have, and I'm just misunderstanding your case or needs.
The arrangement view is not meant to be Protools.
Ableton is actually quite nice for doing experimental and unusual music, it just is built around doing it LIVE. If you want to paint outside the lines, you can with it. "clicking boxes on and off" is simply a way of perceiving layering.
I sometimes use Ableton for noise shows, you can definitely get weird and off the grid with it. Record in 2 loops, not quantized so their lengths don't match exactly, duplicate each loop a few times. Disable warp on a few copies, enable repitching on a few others. Then when you twist the tempo knob some loops rise in pitch while getting faster, some just get faster but keep constant pitch, and some stay the same length and timbre. Record that to another track, then duplicate THAT and repeat, etc.
> So many aspects of music are very annoying or borderline impossible to do in ableton.
Like what? Scoring music? How about using a proper tool then? Nobody complains that they can't write hardware drivers in PHP.
My DAW is Reason and because it sucks in making mixtapes I got Ableton too because it's superior in that use case.
Please refer to my comment history and also please rebut specific things I said. I rarely say negative things and I am a user of this product all the time. I am genuinely frustrated by the lack of progress in recent years, since I use the product literally every day. This is not poison, it is legitimate criticism.
PS Punk Rock and Indie Rock still is better then whatever else anyone else listens to :) Just jokes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK5cU9qWRg0
> That's actually a $900 synth/sampler/effects processing unit called the Op-1 by Teenage Engineering.
From this thread on /r/ArtisanVideos:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtisanVideos/comments/6a2yq4/guy_m...
In other words, you really need to know what you're doing and have a really good idea of what you want to play to be able to make a song as elaborate as this.
This site is another thing to add to my Intriguing Stuff list.
[0] https://www.ableton.com/en/push/
Beyond its utility, it's a really beautiful device.
I can think of a ton of things I'd like to do where having a custom "keyboard" would be awesome.
I'm not sure how programmable the display is on the Push 2, as it's a different display tech. I imagine you send it snapshots of a framebuffer rendered on your computer.
I used to be terrible at math. Then I found a teacher who basically made me work every day on math problems.
Within a few months, I found that I actually enjoyed maths, and was even good at it.
Of course, without natural talent you're not going to become the next Bowie, but even a bit of practice can make you surprisingly competent.
He even made an interactive essay about the GRAIL text recognizer from the 1960s https://jackschaedler.github.io/handwriting-recognition/
However, there's another part of making music which is not covered at all here, which is the actual engineering of sounds. Think of a sound in your head and recreate it digitally—it'll involve sampling and synthesizing, there's tons of filters and sound manipulation to go through, they all go by different names and have different purposes—it's a staggering amount of arcane knowledge.
Where is the learning material on how to do this without experimenting endlessly or looking up everything you see? I want a reverse dictionary of sorts, where I hear a transformation of a sound and I learn what processing it took to get there in a DAW. This would be incredibly useful to learn from.
For the longer route this is a classic http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/synth-secrets
http://www.syntorial.com
if you're trying to make your rock band sound more like led zeppelin there is a fairly fixed set of tools and instructions (albeit futile, ultimately)
if you are imagining a pure sound in your head that is not straightforwardly produced by an instrument, then it gets a lot more complicated, and there are countless routes to the same goal. the experimenting is the fun part though!
What I found was that as your music making experience unfolds, you start amassing these little tricks here and there and they're only yours, usually tied to your stack of tools and the way you think. That is extremely hard to replicate and also very personal, imho that's why it's so difficult to actually pass that sound-sculpting knowledge to others, and that's why (besides the odd youtube tutorial on how to make a specific sound -- usually targeted at a specific vst, explaining which knobs to turn), we won't find many general sound sculpting learning material online. Even tho it is available if you gather around from forums and etc, it is still pretty much a personal experience.
Answering your question: As the time passed, the endless experimenting diminished and I got a proper sense of what does what, and after 5 years making music I'm more able to pinpoint what I need to fiddle to transform the sound the way I want/imagine in my head.
I'm still not quite there yet but if I can offer one piece of advice, that is: Don't shun the 'endlessly experimenting to find a sound'-thingy, because that's the best way you can grasp the tools. Over time you'll be able to get there faster but it's a necessity..
This is how much I evolved, without even noticing, only making tracks after tracks:
Sep 07 / 2012 http://codegrub.org/flipbit/musicmaking/equal02.mp3 cringe
Mar 25 / 2017 http://codegrub.org/flipbit/tracks/flipbit03%20-%20Twothousa...
cya o/
Here are the channels you can listen to more of my stuff, and by all means please help me get better by commenting and feedbacking me if you can. If you make music as well I will gladly return your energy and time by commenting and giving feedback. :)
Also, I usually participate on the listen thread/feedback rounds on reddit's /r/edmproduction, you'll find me there as well commenting on everyone's tracks ;)
https://soundcloud.com/flipbit03
https://www.youtube.com/user/cadumimi
cya o/
I've been building up bit of an epic studio [1] over the past few years after being in-the-box for years. And the hands on nature of real synths is so much more intuitive that VSTs imho.
[1] https://tinyurl.com/kzl97vl
sir, you have already reached it: it is fucking epic, wow! Congratulations, it must be really fun being on that room, and it must be difficult getting out of it hehehe.
I want to get more into the hardware side of music making but being cost efficient is paramount to getting up and running in the cheapest way possible, specially (in my case) this is a hobby I consider myself 'just starting out'. If I have some cash to invest in it, I go to what will give me the most return (what will enable me to study the most). In my experience that meant DAW Software (Renoise), MIDI KEYS (Axiom 25), interface (Yamaha AG06) and a pair of monitors (Yamaha HS8's). Now that I've the basic kit 'sorted out' it is time to get some hardware.
What would you suggest? I've been eyeballing a KORG MS-20 mini but I don't know...
Indeed it is!
Monitoring and room acoustics are definitely the very first thing to focus on. It was something I neglected for far too long. If you can't hear what's going on it doesn't matter how much gear you've got.
My favourite hands-on synth is the Roland Juno 106 [1], it's so god damn simple to use, everything is there, and so tweakable. They seem to have gone back up in price, but I picked up a pristine version for £600 off ebay. Obviously you need to be careful with older gear, and definitely try before you buy to make sure the thing isn't falling apart.
For mono synths my favourite is the Moog Sub 37 [2], it's knob central and sounds amazing, as all Moogs do. Although I was considering replacing it with the simpler (but more classic sounding) Model D which has just been re-issued.
The best modern analogue synth I have is the DSI OB-6 [3]. Although we're getting into the expensive end of the market here, I reckon it's a future classic. These things will hold their value very well. It's also got all the knobs and controls you'll need, but with slightly different filters to most other synth manufacturers, which is good for the contrast.
The Korg MS-20 would definitely be a good place to start (I haven't got one myself, but many friends have, and rate them highly), the fact that it has all the knobs on the front for every component of the synth and has the patchbay is perfect for experimentation.
You'll never regret getting an analogue synth, the sound just dwarfs what VSTs do imho. They're _alive_ in a way that you just don't hear from VSTs.
It's also interesting how different analogue compressors and EQs sound compared to VSTs. There's a rawness and sexiness that I have yet to achieve in-the-box (not saying it's impossible, just I'm too lazy to spend ages trying to achieve the sound I can get from hardware by simply switching it on).
> making but being cost efficient is paramount to getting up and running in the cheapest way possible
I have the Chandler Curve Bender EQ [4] which is based on the EMI Abbey Road desk that was used to record Beatles and Pink Floyd albums. It is super expensive (£5000+), but as soon as I heard what it could do I just needed it in my life. I call the on/off switch on the front of it the "it's just better switch" because as soon as I press it the sound in my studio turns 3D and everything is good in the world. I have the plugin version of it (UAD), which is very good, probably the best VST EQ I've heard - but it's not a patch on the gear and doesn't invoke that emotional feeling.
The reason I'm saying this is that yeah this stuff is expensive, some of it super expensive, but if you pick up one piece of gear a year and learn it inside out you'll be in a great place - creating awesome sounds quicker than you ever could before in-the-box. Most people I know with killer studios took a decade to get there.
[1] http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/juno106.php
[2] https://www.moogmusic.com/products/phattys/sub-37
[3] http://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/dave-smith-instruments-o...
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUv9GtMlUwA
1. Frequency 2. Harmonics 3. Oscillators/Waveforms 4. Envelopes 5. Filters
The only problem with the last part of your request is that even if you are to watch people design sounds for a couple of hours you might find that when you try to replicate that somewhere else it doesn't sound right. This is partially because every synth/softsynth is different and will produce different sounds and have different parameters. It can be infuriating to get a tutorial on how to produce that perfect "Bladerunner Blues" synth and come out with something that sounds totally flat and bad.
To make matters worse, there are apparently 0 good tutorials on the subject - I just googled for 15 minutes to no avail. The two below cover some of it but I personally can't bear listening to the people who make these videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvQVQuV-Kys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJVlWdzoZ0w
Of course, finding the right waveforms, filters, and envelopes required to get to a particular pattern of sines is still the challenge, but having that understanding of the medium underlying it all makes experimentation that much more productive (and fun).
For instance, the "Blade Runner Blues" patch as I understand it is actually one of the brass presets on the Yamaha CS-80. (Bad recording but here: https://www.firsthomebank.com/personal-banking/deposit-produ...) The CS-80 has a pretty unique architecture for a polyphonic analog. (http://www.cs80.com/tour.html) To get a patch exactly right would require replicating layout, filter architecture and structure, etc.
Knowing basics synthesis, however, can get you pretty close. I have a patch on my Alesis Andromeda (which has some CS-80 type elements such as a ribbon controller, dual resonant filters, and an unfiltered sine that goes to the post-filter mix) that someone did in a user community -- it came out decently good. I was able to Google a book page that gives a good overview of recreating it on other synths. (https://books.google.com/books?id=Jz1JMnZNO88C&pg=PA74&lpg=P...)
Now, to really get the Vangelis Blade Runner type effect, you have to be able to play a synthesizer expressively. This is unfortunately is tougher on most synths compared to the CS-80, due to the CS-80's polyphonic aftertouch that most synths lack. That being said, there are other techniques people could do. I understand that Vangelis used pedals to manipulate filter and volume, and that is something that can be done on many synths that I don't see a lot of people taking advantage of. Don't discount playing technique when it comes to the art of sound design, in other words.
I will say that I think the 'power-law' nature of that is not dissimilar to being a primary sound transduction artist. You don't get a large number of people being celebrities at tutorials, or of disseminating free plugins.
And yeah, I do mean to expand upon this: got a likely domain for it just yesterday. The trick there is that you need to be inter-disciplinary enough that you can produce a really wide range of content, that by definition a newbie couldn't possibly process. I can go from 'slew rates in op-amps in boutique guitar stompboxes' to 'exploiting unusual interpretations of the Circle of Fifths' (did you know the Four Chord Song can be read as a atomically contained minimum-area space in an extended diagram of the circle of fifths?) but a newbie wouldn't cover that range.
There are no secret weapons, just secret masteries: by that, I mean 'stuff that's sensible and obvious, but to the contextless outsider seems like black magic coming out of nowhere'. Any sufficiently deep context seems like magic to someone who has no idea of the scope of that context.
I mean, look at the interface for Serum, probably the best synth on the market right now:
https://d84g6yundlaof.cloudfront.net/assets/serum/serumall-b...
It looks like an airplane's cockpit.
Sound design is a whole another part of music. Most amateur musicians don't even bother with it because it is way to technical to master. They just use presets.
I personally hate it, but if you have a technical bent, you might enjoy it
If you think Serum look complex, take a look at Zebra 2.
I use it pretty much solely for recording, but I take advantage of the MIDI sequencer functions to program in a drum beat instead of recording to a click, because I've found my timing and rhythm is so much better playing to drums than it is just playing to a metronome.
Making music is really something different IMO.
Try sit behind a drum kit for the first time, you think you can start making music? Most aspiring drummers need to practice for years before you can play a reasonable beat. Same with EDM, it takes many years of practice and improving all kinds of skills. This tutorial is just showing how you can trigger samples in a grid and how you can put this together in a DAW. For me that is not making music, sorry.
Btw, the resulting loops in the tutorial were not made by beginners, and listen to the result, is that music to you? Would you buy that? Another title that would be appropriate but not sell, could be: Get started making rubbish.
Ableton even recommend thinking beyond machine-perfect rhythm. https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/get-swing-drum-programming-t...
I find it funny the term "humanizing" is used in regards to adding swing. I guess no worse than a term like "moderate rock".
I mean, is that wrong? Unless you stick to some elitist definition of artist, why is someone who plays with these samples to create something not being an artist?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h5WJ6J6IlE
If you are interested, sign up here https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-aQzVbkbGwv2BMQsvuoneOUPgyr... and I'll contact you when it's released.
Many comments here mostly mention software. But there are some interesting exceptions. Check Surgeon for example, who likes to use his custom controllers with Ableton. You actually can see him re-wire the controllers every now and then. (Great music too ;))
https://youtu.be/KM558N6PJmY
The only difference is that Abelton Live and Bitwig (Runs on Linux) are designed for live performance.
I like Reaper (Cost is 1/5 but equally capable) and it also runs reasonably well under Linux. https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?t=15280
Actually many people never pay for a license it has a similar model as Sublime Text.
Ableton, at least, also functions perfectly fine in the traditional piano-roll and timeline paradigm of DAW workflow too. Don't let the 'Live' part of the name mislead you into thinking it's only for live performers; it does everything the 'old DAWs' do, AND it's got great features to assist in live performance.
Also in terms of underlying concepts, if you know one DAW well, you can usually learn another one fairly quickly, as it becomes more a question of learning the interface more than anything else.
I remember way back when I used Cubase. Couldn't find any decent help online.
With Ableton, you are spoiled for choice when it comes to tutorials and lessons.
I couldn't disagree more, but I am talking about doing professional work. The concepts are all the same but getting where you are proficient in a DAW takes a very long time to find the quirks and strangeness that each one comes with to produce a quality piece.
Video Editors are hundred times harder to switch.
DAWs are used to produce the huge majority of music you hear in the media, from commercials to hip hop songs. Even seemingly real orchestral pieces for movies are often composed entirely using artificial instruments. For example, here is Junkie XL showing how he composed themes for Mad Max Fury Road.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkNeXS0Lmxc
Idk if this will appease some of your concerns but I've been around hn for a while (I'm in the top 30 karma wise), I won't spam you.
Also nice endeavour
I've signed up to your google form, so I'll look forward to seeing what, if anything, you come up with :) I am on linux (and yes, I agree that music on linux is a pain), so I might not get to use it unless you port it, but I still look forward to seeing it, whatever it is.
[0]: http://extempore.moso.com.au/
[1]: https://github.com/digego/extempore
I don't need or want any of that. In fact when I write music, music engraving is the least of my concerns. Actually music engraving is generally the least of my concerns period.
Also I find the current music notation to be kinda idk outdated. I can read it, but I feel like it's a system designed by someone who had the mathematical knowledge of a 15th century farmer (which is probably how it came to be).
What specifically about it?
I can read (and prefer) standard musical notation but when handwriting I use Hummingbird [0] because I find it aides itself to handwriting. But I can't really imagine a "better" musical notation than what is the standard today, except a better way to communicate natural/flat/sharp notes.
[0] http://www.hummingbirdnotation.com/
> (and prefer) standard musical notation
Prefer it over what?
Most of what I write is highly dissonant or straight up microtonal.
This is actually exactly what I'm trying to prevent. Most of the current solutions only kind of constrain you to a certain tonal space that you can maybe explore but the space of possible compositions is actually insanely large. My DAW is going to try to help you explore all that.
Microtonality is definitely something I've thought about and I think I can make it work but I'm curious to know what do you use currently to compose?
Often I'll use http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/ and my synths and a fair bit of SuperCollider/Overtone.
Also why do you have to learn music theory first, why can't the DAW teach you as you go?
What is so arduous about plugging a midi keyboard in?
Another thing I've been dying for is an easier way of layering sounds, for example drum hits. Multiple midi sends feels hacky in Ableton and certainly not a first class feature. On the other side of things, the pain of rearranging multiple wavs after wanting to change a note is even more painful.
I totally agree with you about the actions though. Configuring plugins etc can be a huge drain and its very mouse heavy.
Layering drum sounds is a typical feature in all DAWs, and in ableton, with it's instrument and drum racks, it's even easier to layer whatever you want. May be I don't understand what exactly are you trying to achieve?
Note that I'm on the core team of AudioKit https://github.com/audiokit/AudioKit which is a platform for AudioUnit development so I know all about how dope plugins are :-).
In the spirit of constructive criticism, may be you could at least point to specific negative sides of existing DAWs that you're willing to eradicate?
When I'm in the zone, I don't care about check boxes. I have some new user interface paradigms that I haven't seen done before (I can imagine they have been tried before tho) that should make writing music super painless and should let you express yourself.
https://zenaud.io
Send me an email at mpercossi at zenaud.io , always fun to talk to fellow audio devs :)
And for all the vim lovers out there -- my app supports vi commands for movement and editing :)
Indeed, I'll go further. I'm really starting to believe that the only way not to get royally screwed as an app developer is by abandoning the "major" platforms -- which all want to turn you into a serf -- and target OSS platforms like Linux. I'm honestly tiring of dealing with the artificial roadblocks Apple (and Microsoft is no better) throw at me to further their own ends. I actually analysed SteamOS with this intent, but sadly it looks like SteamOS is geared towards the "living room" experience.
Anyway, long story short: there will be Linux support in 2018.
I realize this is a big limitation, but we intend to add a piano roll in the next few months.
I don't have a demo yet if that's what you are asking about but I've open sourced this for example
https://github.com/adamnemecek/WebMIDIKit
Actually I do have some old demos but they don't show the best parts. It's actually kind of hard to show those right now.
>Current DAWs don't really understand music.
>Current DAW : my thing = Windows Notepad : IDE.
It really sounds like you're promising a lot.
There's another similar-sounding project called Helio that was posted a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14212054
I hope that in time, we get more Markdown-style composition tools vs. the full DAW suite. Good luck! I'm looking forward to seeing what you make.
P.S. AudioKit is pretty dope. :)
[1]: http://composerssketchpad.com
[2]: http://musicmessages.io -- working on turning it into a full iOS app, so will probably have to shut it down and fold it into the new app at some point
If it sounds like something you're interested in please give it a go! We're always working to improve it and open to feedback. (Android is coming soon)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YItWQdJgXLs
I'm happy with mine, I like the pads and it's fine for sequencing and playing. It still receives updates and improvements.
I do like the screen on Push 2, it looks like a nice update, but you are paying a lot for that screen, so you better use it!
I also own a Maschine Mikro MkII by Native Instruments, it's my go-to machine for finger drumming beats and sonic experiments... great pads, very precise, compact and enjoyable. The Maschine software is very good, and the add-on sound packs are great quality.
I think the Push 2 is ~3x as much, and it is worth every penny.
EDIT: Wow the Mikro is very affordable!
It's designed in a way to make the user (e.g. anyone who likes music) just want to play with it in a way that's very intuitive via its simple, visual layout. And it provides instant feedback that makes you want to continually tinker with it to make something that you like more and more.
Web development/programming training tool makers should really take note of this.
If you're interested in learning to make music and the lessons in the link are confusing or overwhelming or boring, some students find a "peel back" approach to learning songwriting easier to grasp at first. A peel back approach just involves finding a song then teaching by stripping away each layer: start with stripping away vocals, then learn melodies, then chords, then finally learn about the drum beat underneath it all. A benefit of the peel back approach to learning is melodies and vocals are the memorable parts of a song and easiest to pick out when listening to the radio so a student can learn using songs they know and like. Either way, songwriting is hard and fun. Best of luck.
P.S. I think Ableton makes good software and I use it along with FL and Logic. They did a solid job with these intro lessons. But worth mentioning, there is free software out there (this includes Apple's Garageband) that offers key features a beginner just learning songwriting can practice on and mess around on before purchasing a more powerful DAW software like Ableton.
That doesn't mean that those subjects aren't covered in detail in textbooks and university courses, or that people cannot learn how to do it.
Some people have a great ear for music and can write solid songs without formal training in music. Other folks come at music from the more theoretical side, although usually with a lot of implicit knowledge of and experience with music as well.
For most people who are not formally trained in music, their songs can be improved upon on a technical level by someone who has deeper theoretical knowledge (learned either explicitly or implicitly).
For a good discussion of this, check out Tim Ferris' podcast interview with Derek Sivers. Derek talked about how he had learned a lot about music implicitly. In one summer, a teacher of his formalized that knowledge so efficiently that he was able to test out of lot of classes (1.5 years worth?) once he went to Berklee School of Music.
Just for fun: chords in scales are numbered from bottom to top in Roman numerals. I feels like home base, V feels like wanting to go home. If you want to create the feeling of going home but then not really go there you can go from V to VI instead of I. 'Sad but I have closure'-type ending? Major IV - Minor IV - I. Bluesy feeling? Add a minor seventh to your I, IV and V chords. Dreamy? Major seventh instead there, except on the V.
It's even entirely possible to learn to recognize all of these types of chord progressions and sounds instantly. I'm working on and off on an ear training app that randomly generates them that musicians can use to train their musical ear.
Sounds interesting. Please do a "Show HN" post when your app is ready for it.
I'm also wondering if these chord progressions work the same way for all scales, or if, for example, the 'sad but I have closure'-type ending only sounds that way in major scales? From experimenting I think it only works for major scales, but I'm not sure :)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chordbot/id394754767?mt=8&ig...
https://prochords.dk/
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/guitar-chord-progression-son...
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/suggester-chords-that-work-t...
There are also desktop apps and DAWs that have chord intelligence built in (e.g. Cubase and Reason do).
There are other people who can't make heads or tails out of a keyboard, compose a tune in their head, or understand chordal progressions, but nevertheless compose music in layers and still do extraordinary work. They find what they like by playing with notes on the screen. Joel Zimmerman, a.k.a. Deadmau5, is an example of this.
I am an example of the former, with natural ability, bolstered by training in music theory. But I still use a layered approach when I am composing, generally starting with a beat or bassline, playing with melodic progressions in snippets, and eventually moving into a traditional composition process when I have something started that I like. Ableton makes this process extremely easy and productive.
But I think melodically and tend to do a lot of counterpoint. Getting the chords out of my head and onto the screen is often the last thing I do. I don't know how well his approach would work with counterpoint, since counterpoint often creates and resolves dissonance using passing tones in double time.
The most successful tunes I made were more or less "discovered" from incrementally experimenting in the DAW, and not from any kind of original plan or idea. Maybe I'm just not a musician! (I'm an indie game dev who started making my own tunes for my games)
From a remembering the tune perspective, I have the same issues, but I think it's more related to not applying musical lexicon and hearing skills the same way: you remember poetry or a paragraph of text because you remember the ideas and how to go from one to the other, if you are a musician and have something in your head and start thinking along the lines of "this is using a lydian mode, the progression is ii IV V I then it modulates to the relative minor and switches to dorian, also the theme is going down in thirds for two bars, then it will stay on the chord root for one and move to the dominant 7th" you are going to remember it a lot more easily than just by remembering the melody itself
It would be like comparing how easily you can remember poetry in English vs poetry in, say, Russian, where you only have the "sounds of the words" in your head to remember, but you don't have the syntax or the meanings to help you as well.
The first approach has a sense of creative wonder to it, where your being guided by an outsider. As much fun as that is, it is very limiting and I suspect most people abandon that approach as their skill improves.
You can understand a musical idea as a kind of memory impression, an echo that you can play back in your head, and also as a pattern of pitches and rhythmic structures . Having two reference points , sensory and abstract mathematical is very useful.
Do you have much formal knowledge of music theory? If not, that might help.
When you "get a tune in your head", if you can describe it to yourself in abstraction, it will probably be easier to remember (or even just write down).
Check on this page on 12 bar blues for some examples of easy music notations. Similar types of notations and/or terms exist for different parts of a song.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-bar_blues
Switching from a DAW to a mostly-hardware setup helped with this, as it's easier to "play" with knobs/sliders/keys/pads than virtual objects accessed via mouse/keyboard. Once you get things wired up, it's pretty straightforward: play around, find something you like, track it in, build more stuff over it.
Ever since making this switch, I found the parts that I used to practice/enjoy (like slicing and manipulating samples, for instance) feel much more tedious.
Another benefit is that it's easier to make mistakes, which often have more interesting results than the thing you originally intended. My guess is because this violates your internal "patterns" and forces you to think outside of your normal "music creation" schema, resulting in a more creative/unique outcome.
I've also tried to switch to "totally live" recording (i.e. minimal sequencing beyond loops and patterns, all automation and non-repeating parts done on the fly), and that's a bit more challenging, because you have to redo everything if you, say, screw up a little solo bit.
If I have the beginnings of a song in my head, or I have been humming to myself, sometimes I just record the parts I have as vocals - humming or full-on beatboxing the bass/strings/lead/beats separately and as close as I can make them to my head-song (including filters with my mouth)- and then replace as I go, figuring out how to achieve the sounds that were in my head.
Writers keep pens and notebooks by their bed so if they wake up in the middle of the night they can start writing right now. Or they have tape recorders. Anything works as long as it's immediately available. The iPhone has a "Music Memos" app, I'm sure there's something similar for Android. That's what I use.
Learning music theory and how to write music properly can come later. As long as you can sing, whistle, or hum a tune, you can record it.
That's where music theory pays off. Learning to name chords, scales and arpeggios gives your brain a framework to reason about and remember musical ideas. It allows you to break the music into a more concise abstract representation, rather than holding it in your head as sound. If you understand the structure of music, it's far easier to make connections between different pieces of music.
She hates music theory and trying to use her left brain for art. I'll say oh that is in F and she gets mad so, easier to just let her record it than try to notate it down.
I'm starting to hit its limits for my workflow though. One of the really nice things about how easy it's getting to write software these days is that I can now fire up, say, a Swift playground, and after getting the fiddly basics of "how to record and loop audio buffers" with AudioKit, there are very few limits on what kind of idiosyncratic workflow tool I can design for myself. The UI looks and acts how I want it to, and since over the years I've trained myself to act like a human synthesizer, I can[1] compose a whole song without even worrying about having an instrument nearby.
[0]Loopy - Multitrack audio looping with very simple and expressive control https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/loopy/id300257824?mt=8
[1]The "can" is theoretical. This is my next big hobby project, and I'm still in the fiddly phase.
I believe the same is true with song writing, in a sense. You're still applying some parts of music theory, but most by-ear learners like ourselves simply grasp the concepts and have internalized them naturally, without needing to be taught. Music is little more than patterns at the end of the day, and our brains are very good at recognizing patterns. What you and I know intuitively, others can learn through training and repetition. Both approaches are valid, and yield interesting (and often different) observations.
I went going through Music Theory classes during my brief adventure with Liberal Arts Majors in college. I felt like I already "knew" the material in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on. It was like I was finally understanding what my brain had been doing all these years. I recommend it if you haven't yet had the experience.
Composers classically trained this way tend (!) to have an easier time writing melodies, harmonies, and progressions in a consistent manner, ie not having to wait for "inspiration to strike". The composer, of course, still needs to develop an emotional connection in the music, but the point is that it can, and routinely is, taught.
https://soundcloud.com/cubit/piano-concerto
People have studied music and composition since at least ancient Babylon, so, well, yes?
>I always thought it was just some natural ability that people have.
With natural ability you can sing some melodies. For learning to play an instrument, adding chords to the melody, you need studying, even if you learn by yourself and by ear (as many folk musicians did). Song melody, one can have a natural feel for creating, but nobody just starts writing songs in full form "from natural ability".
>For as long I can remember if somebody told me to write a song I would just spit it out after a while.
What would that mean? You'd write a song on the guitar for example? If so, then you already know the chords. And not all of the theory, so how complex is your song? Just barebones songwriting (country/folk style)? Can you take it further? Can you write the parts for musicians to play on your song? Can you write different genres on spec?
There are more things in making music/songs than "spitting out" some melody.
I love looking at systems and peeling back the layers to find out what makes something tick. That's not an approach to learning that I really encountered until I entered the workforce and was met with complex systems that I needed to understand. And I loved it!
How would this approach apply to a more traditional instrument that doesn't have the advantages of having a "good" sounding sample already preloaded that can be easily layered into a song that you are composing? I grew up learning the violin and it was endless disjointed drills until it was put together in a classical song that I never heard before nor had the desire to play. 8 year old me just wanted to play the theme song to "Jurassic Park" and roar like a T-Rex.
In my view, learning an instrument has a lot in common with learning to code, in that some people take to it, and others don't. And we probably know some of the reasons, but not all of them. Of course teachers and teaching programs vary, as do kids and their family milieu. But nonetheless, music education has huge attrition.
For instance, by way of anecdata, I took string lessons as a kid and loved it, and my kids have gotten pretty serious on violin and cello. They actually like classical music, and it probably helped that both of their parents also enjoy it. So it definitely works for some people.
If anyone is interested in a Free/Libre/Open Source Software option (cross-platform Linux/Windows/Mac) I've really enjoyed producing with LMMS over the past 18 months or so: https://lmms.io/
It's definitely got room to grow in terms of functionality/interface but the development community is of such a size that it's possible to still make meaningful code contributions. I've contributed a couple of small patches to improve the Mac UI as a way to get familiar with the code base.
Of course, the downside is that I have to decide whether to write code or make music whenever I sit down to use it. :)
"A podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made." @ http://songexploder.net/
I sort of wish there were more technical details as a rule, but it's understandable given the relatively short format that they can only cover so much ground. I'd prefer longer episodes personally, but I suppose not everyone might, and there's tradeoffs in producing more content. I guess I'm just glad that the show caught on and is still going strong.
Protip: sample the guest's clips they put on his show :) I've gotten some really great material from this show sonically since most of them seem to be the individual instrument tracks.