I think this is a really good primer for electronic music production if you're going to start from absolutely zero.
If you specifically want to program beats, I recommend this quirky book "Pocket Operations": https://shittyrecording.studio. It's basically guitar tabs for drum machines. Pick out some styles as a foundation and then build on top of it. Think of it as boilerplate code.
Being a software dev by day, and a former musician in high school, the current world of digital music production tools is as incredible as it is overwhelming. It's good to have something that orients your practice and experimentation.
Literally a no-fluff cheatsheet for drum patterns presented in the simplest to digest form possible, and without losing any important parts. Programming drum patterns has always been daunting to me, as it seemed like everyone just "knew" their patterns and how to play around them. Even though I knew that it wasn't the case, it was still difficult to approach. But with this boilerplate, it's like a massive blocker is just gone for me. And by going through even just a a portion of the patterns, I can easily see how one can acquire a sense for them and is able to come up with their own takes.
Or you could just try to reproduce the beats of your favorite songs. It will be incredibly difficult at first, but after some tens of hours you should be able to slowly program the simpler ones.
Obviously you need some native beat tracking capabilities, it seems some people just lack this skill.
There's a music teacher at NYU, Ethan Hein, that seems to be working on this exactly in the context of groove pedagogy. For example, he recently picked apart the amen break in a blog post [0] and tried to replicate it in ableton from scratch, methodically. He first lies out the basic pieces or the groove, then builds up the groove adding and removing elements, gradually complexifying it.
As someone who has trouble with drum patterns as well I really liked the idea.
Might I suggest simply playing with a basic drumset in real life for a few hours? A kick snare and hihat are the principal components needed. I contend that you will organically discover a kind of conversational dialogue between the kick and snare that known beats are a result of.
It’s something that will inform your drum programming immensely, even if you never pick up drum sticks again
This pings on something I've been wishing for locally: I would like there to be a music shop that has a short time studio rental (30min to an hour) where you can access a trap set (specifically for me) or other piece of gear, already setup with headphones and monitors, such that you could just go in an play for a while, without an investment.
A place to just jam for a little bit and explore, able to be separated such that any awkwardness or shyness can be reduced.
Maybe this is a common thing and I just don't know how to ask for it.
I don't have the information to say. I would say that the kit doesn't have to be top of the line gear. The fee would need to cover wear and tear (and maybe a deposit or kicker if someone gets a little overzealous,) hourly rate of whomever is maintaining the setup, plus some margin.
What I'd be willing to pay is something on the order of up to $50 for a session. I think the sweet spot would be $30-$40 for something like 20 to 30 minutes.
There's probably rehearsal studios in the burbs with a minimal drum kit and minimal backline for $25/hour, in San Francisco i remember i being at least 3x that but really worth the money. Part of the experience is going into a dungeon like environment, inhaling huge amounts of smoke and wondering if you'll survive.
You can go into pretty well any music store and play the drums there for as long as you want. Even electronic ones with headphones on. I used to work in one, and there was a guy who would come in on his lunch hour everyday and just play. Honestly don't even know if he owned a drum kit at home.
In my head, which is based on decades old experience and the occasional stop by a music store, what I'd be wailing on is demo kit, out on the main floor. To me, that's different from getting a small, private soundproof-ish room where I can pop a few songs onto the headphones and hit it.
I don't want to be a drummer and I'm not interested in performing publicly. I just want to rock out and suck as hard as I can, without feeling the social awkwardness of being out in the middle of the store.
I guess I've never been to a music store that has the drums on the main floor. Nearly all the main sections are dedicated to guitars because that's what sells. I've even been to some where the drums are on a different floor. Personally, as a computer programmer, I've embraced social awkwardness as a core part of my being though, so being terrible at drums in front of bunch of people I don't know would be right up my alley haha.
thats a pretty good idea. I went to a university that had a music department and practice rooms. (Keep people from playing in the dorms). They were pretty soundproof rooms, and many had a piano. I used to walk around and sometimes duck into an empty room and play the pianos (not a music major..) I'm not great but it was a fun break from studying.
That's what I'm thinking. Just a small room, soundproof. Cost for entry covers upkeep plus some margin. Hook your phone into the monitor or headphones and go to town.
this is a really great idea. I never played a kit until after 15 years of involuntary music lessons as a kid, including a stint in high school percussion section. Just having high hat, snare and kick is like magic.
At least i hope it's magic for somebody, playing clarinet or pedal steel for me is magic, whereas playing my best instruments, piano, guitar, flute, not really magic.
> Or you could just try to reproduce the beats of your favorite songs.
Depends! I went into hobbyist music production a few months ago probably bc I saw a cool midi controller that my kids might find interesting. Fast forward a few months and I've bought and sold a few $100s of gear and now I have these great immersive music making sessions with just a Korg Volca Beats and a MicroFreak.
I'll save you all hours of YouTube synth hype bois by stating that the MicroFreak is hands down the best way to learn synthesizers. It packs SO MUCH into a small, tactile form factor. The manual is actually a fun read and explains each and every parameter in an engaging way. It is a masterclass in approachable documentation for a complex subject, (and was probably translated from French, since Arturia is a French company).
It’s the only thing I’ve found/needed. Just like any instrument, drums/drum machines can be pitched, respond to velocity, and are affected by sounds played around them. Understanding where your sounds fall in the EQ spectrum is huge. Don’t sleep on amplification, saturation, and EQ.
You have no idea how unfathomably timely this discovery was. Truly unreal. I've scoured the internet for a while trying to collect every dataset known to humanity about beat programming in this exact sense. Thank you.
Love what the team over there does with these web demos. They previously made this amazing interactive synthesizer learning resource: https://learningsynths.ableton.com/
My wife only started learning drums a few years ago, and now she's regularly gigging with a band in a bunch of iconic venues around London. It's never too late to start! :)
I’ve been a user of those kinds of tools for more than 30 years, as an amateur, and of course i’m amazed at the progress made. However, a part of me wonder how much we lost in the process. We’ve automated so much that i wonder if the tools don’t play a role in the lack of diversity in music production. When every part of a song has to be composed or improvised by a human, note per note, isn’t it clear that the end result should be, be definition, more original , as well as more meaningful ?
I'm inclined to disagree. I believe the progress in music software has opened up new avenues and genres, it hasn't stifled existing ones. Instrument players are going to keep playing their instruments, just that now it's easier than ever for them to make their own professional sounding recordings and songs. On the flipside you have more and more people getting into music without requiring any formal musical background.
I also think the older we get, the more we think most music sounds the same because music inherently changes over time, and will be different to what we grew up on, but we also become more distanced from the subcultures and communities pioneering modern music trends. A young person today probably thinks all rock music from the 50s-90s sounds the same
I disagree and think there are objective measures of cynicism in music today that are unprecedented.
I agree that the paths you suggest are possible and that the tools available have never been so available.
I see cultural problems as the root issue. We’ve reduced music to a recorded consumable and thereby reduced the role of the humans communicating telepathically via music, which is the social function of music, as I understand it
if you think there's a "lack of diversity in music production" you're just not listening to enough music.
Not only are people taking newer music production technology in every different possible direction, they're still pushing the limits of old methods as well as combining them with the new stuff.
Literally nothing has been lost, because all of the methods available to create music are still available, and people are still using them. Aside from that, the net gain on music technology is a massive net gain however you see it.
I'm not dismissing you because you're a 'boomer', I'm dismissing the point because it's just willfully ignorant.
If you think 'modern music' lacks diversity, you're simply not looking for anything original. Because you can find it, by the bucketload.
Why not both? Lots of the live (power/symphonic) metal bands I see will have at least 5 artists singing/playing and then backing tracks that add even more depth to what they are playing.
I just use a DAW like I used a four track recorder back in the 80's. Put down a drum beat, bass line, guitar and voice individual tracks. Then do some light processing. A lot of times, I'll copy paste the music then go back and play each part all the way through so it has a looser band feel.
I think the problem is that tension creates interesting results as the limitations are subverted and the open possibilities of Ableton Live make this way harder since it is not immediately obvious what is interesting to do when you can do anything.
Even Robert Henke, the guy who made the precursor to ableton and the co founder of ableton, laments this about ableton https://youtu.be/iwOaYxSJGqI
People here are saying that you are wrong but when the creator of ableton is agreeing with you then maybe they should listen
I like Ableton, but the better way to get started making music is with your voice, singing with songs that you like. Sing the melody, and also the bass and harmony parts. If you have a phone you can use the voice memo app to do two-part stuff. If you want to move up to an instrument, my favorite is the melodica, a breath-operated keyboard that is very cheap (~ $20), sounds great, and teaches the notes of a piano, and requires no electrical power to operate. In fact for some things I think the melodica is better than a piano, since in some ways it's closer to an organ with the ability to maintain and vary the sound over time.
Good advice - no matter what you play, whether you produce electronically or acoustically, singing will help you internalize music, ready to be transferred to any sound-making object.
I guess guitar is much less of a statement these days (being in a band is no longer the coolest thing to do) so the social pressure bit feels less relatable to me. I did catch the tail end of that era though so I know what you're talking about.
What about classical guitar? I.e: Nylon stringed, Spanish guitar. I've played Beethoven and Bach pieces on one. Granted one can do that on an electric or steel string, but something about the timbre lends classical guitar to classical music. Plus it's the only style of guitar which really sees regular classical concert performance.
I do similar to this, recording to a voice notes app, but then importing the clip into my DAW, which quite helpfully visualizes an approximation of the pitch I was singing at, and using this as a template to build instrumental parts upon. Usually my vocal tracks aren't in the final mix, once I've replaced them.
That's a funny instrument! I'm definitely getting one of these since I'm a terrible singer but I always have a tune in my head that I need to hum out loud.
A few ios app recommendations I'd like to make are:
You can also go the route of dispensing with phones and learn to transcribe solfege into a notebook. This is something I just started exploring and while it does take practice to gain the ear to transcribe things, you can start by learning to write down children's songs like Baby Shark(do re fa fa fa fa-fa fa-fa)and gradually work up to pop melodies - and once you do that, songwriting becomes a very natural process. All the precision stuff, you can work out in the DAW once you have a general indication of melody and rhythm.
I think the solfege for Baby Shark would actually start with sol la do, or in the key of C, G A C. Because the phrase eventually ends by dropping down one semitone on the final "shark", which would end up being F# (Fi!) if you started at the root of the scale. The initial movement from G to C, or sol to do in solfege, is very common and something you spot everywhere once you're aware of it.
Alternatively / my personal preference and hot tip: Start with rhythm. Get a practice pad and some drum sticks and a free metronome app or website and try doing single, double, quarter and triple notes (I'm naming triples later because they're an odd number and as a first-time drummer they did me a bamboozle at the time).
A really versatile, affordable and fairly compact percussion instrument you can start off with as well is the Bodhrán; you can make some really great beats with it, see e.g. the opening scene of the film The Magdalene Sisters, just bodhrán and singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXFs8EL35o. Here's another version of the same song where the artist plays it with just his hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mjWhMn-VnU
Honestly, not really. I feel like this is one of the very few areas that doesn’t really have any great open source options. Reaper is about the closest you’re gonna get. It’s not open source, but as far as fair licence and good price without sacrificing any usability, it’s kind of in a league of its own. It was started by the guy who made Winamp.
Yeah Reaper isn't open source, but the licensing system is an amazing breath of fresh air. You can just download it and start using it with no account sign up process and once the free trial (60 days) ends all that happens is a nag screen pops up. You can literally just keep closing the nag screen and never buy the software (though this is an illegal use of the product) but why would you do that if you have the money to support the devs? I bought it as soon as I realized how easy it was to demo and start using.
If one of the primary points of open source software is to promote accessibility, Reaper goes a long way towards this without actually being open source. There is no DRM, there is no need to make an account and do some long sign up process to get Reaper up and running, there is no iLok required (vomits in mouth a little). You can download it in and start working on a project as quickly as your computer can finish installing it.
From Reaper's license popup:
> We are showing this message, instead of crippling this evaluation version of REAPER, because we do not feel technological enforcement of licensing policy is in the best interest of our customers
Reaper is the only professional artistic software (sold as a product) I have ever come across that is remotely realistic about how people use it. Nobody has ever pirated Reaper in the history of Reaper, there is no point and that is how software should work in a more sane world.
One of the Reaper devs once said on their forums (or maybe it was KVR) that they never want to add anti-piracy measures to Reaper because it's just a cost-center for development with no real payoff. It can potentially hurt paying customers, and it almost never converts pirates. If someone doesn't want to pay, music software is easy to pirate. If it's somehow not easy to pirate (Cubase was crack-free for several years), there's so many competing products with the same utilities, they will just pirate one of your competitors.
Exactly anti-piracy measures only punish paying customers because the pirated version won't have them. I think several big name musicians (with the money to pay for a software license) have been caught using the pirated version of music software simply because the pirated version doesn't require some stupid BS that the legal version does. I.e. you can get it running on your gigging laptop and not have to worry about juggling how many computers are currently using your license, stupid iLok usb dongles or some other nonsense. The pirated version just works.
Further, 99% of digital audio workstation customers start off as broke kids with no money to feasibly drop on a music production software that costs $150 or more. So a huge amount of future paying DAW customers are piracy converts anyways. Making a DAW that can't be pirated is a sure way to shove your future customer base onto somebody else's DAW that can.
Ardour (http://ardour.org/) is probably the most fleshed out one, but it's still pretty bad compared to popular commercial options (Albeton, Bitwig, Reaper, FL Studio, Logic Pro).
Hey, I think it's extremely unfair to call Ardour bad, even if only by comparison with well-known commercial options. Ardour has a very specific use case and is designed to fit that use case well.
Some "wannabe" ones, nothing to write home about compared to the quality, scope, and stability of the commercial (even the free commercial version) offerings.
LMMS is a passable FruityLoops-style clone. If you're not following a guide the initial barrier is hunting around online for quality VSTs you like but once you have them (they tend to run fine through LMMS via wine) you can make your patterns and use them to make tracks.
It really isn't worth the pain - the whole open source sound stack is a bit of a mess. If you happen to own some Apple hardware, Logic offers incredibly good value for money, and a perpetual license, although there are signs of it transitioning to a subscription model.
I tried this a few years ago and it was addictive and amazing. Highly recommend.
I’d also like to tangent to say: music used to be a much bigger part of our lives. Before the radio a piano was a household staple. Kids would learn, family’s would play and sing to each other. We’ve largely given that up.
Imagining hearing one of your family members just start singing to themselves without any background music, does that feel uncomfortable? Would you sing along?
I think to many the answer is clear, music, as well as many other endeavors are something to now be enjoyed but not created. And oh boy do we get to enjoy the “best” music and “best” films and “best” books on demand.
And along the way we lost the large bits of ourselves which created and enjoyed together. So, in short, 10/10 would do the tutorial again.
>I’d also like to tangent to say: music used to be a much bigger part of our lives. Before the radio a piano was a household staple. Kids would learn, family’s would play and sing to each other. We’ve largely given that up.
Music fandom used to be a bigger part of lives after that. Pop/rock stars were royalty. Now with all the other stuff competing for eyeballs it's just another thing. Aside from a much smaller music-obsessed demographic, most teens could not care less today.
That's more about the ticket price, and just going to have some fun with friends (plus the trend), than the music. People do similar shit for iPhone or console launches, movie premieres, social media stars, and so on.
This was my house growing up. All my siblings, including myself, learned music and instruments we picked out. It helped that my mother had a degree in music, but still. At 40 I find myself singing out loud without music often.
This feels overly pessimistic to me. Since you mentioned pianos, they are big, unwieldy, expensive, and require maintenance. They were a household staple if none of that was an issue for you. There are cheaper and more convenient paths now, and tons of content online to learn from. If you want to play music, there's never been a better time.
> If you want to play music, there's never been a better time.
People used to learn from… people. In fact, many people prefer that still.
And I’d say, I’d rather have a dozen friends who play music and actually want to hear my music than have the potential to get a million fans I’d end up rather not meeting because it’s just awkward and unnatural.
That's very true. However people on the poorer side did what they could historically (see cigar box guitars, washboards, jug bands, singing, tap dance).
I strongly disagree. My lower class sets of grandparents both had pianos. Other family members had violens, accordions, portable little organ things. Making music was the norm before the radio just like the original poster said. Do you think classic blues pianists came from rich families?
Honestly I think I just misread "before the radio" as "before the internet" and didn't realize it until it was pointed out a second time to me. I don't actually know what life was like before the radio, even my grandparents would have been too young for that.
> music used to be a much bigger part of our lives. Before the radio a piano was a household staple. Kids would learn, family’s would play and sing to each other. We’ve largely given that up.
Recorded music, and our reaction to it, has pretty much crushed that. On the one hand, it's marvellous that I can listen to Jussi Bjorling or Maria Callas any time I want, but we then tend to criticise anything less than "the best". Heck, the process of recorded music has often deceived us: the Wrecking Crew made most of the great US pop/rock albums of the late 50s and 60s[1].
The net result is that when people break out a guitar or sing, we tend to critique them harshly. Why listen to a mediocre performance when we could have perfection? And, of course, who wants to perform when you'll just be compared to the recordings of the best ever?
Internet exceptionalism is a phenomenon to watch out for in all parts of life. The internet surfaces the top percentile examples of talent, and if we aren't careful we can find ourselves unhappy with anything less. Worse yet, people find themselves unhappy with their own talents and equipment in comparison.
I can only respond anecdotally but from where I’m sitting, the DIY music world has never been larger or more diverse and younger people are a huge part of that. Friendly digital recording, platforms line SoundCloud, YouTube, and Bandcamp, plus the magic of internet communication platforms have broken down so many barriers. There’s a micro-sub-genre for every mood, combination of styles, level of production, topic, and day of the week. I’ve been performing and releasing music for 20 years and I’ve never seen so much happening at once.
Im seeing everyone stuck inside screens in consumer mode, and when playing instruments it’s for YouTube popularity contests doing cover songs or showing physical prowess and definitely copying some already cool thing, and definitely not showing us the mistakes made along the journey , just the gloss of a perfect performance…
A neighbor kid started crying when he could not ride the bicycle the first time like his online hero did perfectly.
This is a messed up transition time of some sort, no doubt we will make some cultural choices to free ourselves of this tyranny of our own mentation.
There’s certainly a lot of that but it’s still a version of music being part of our lives, even if the people trying to participate in musical “me too” experiences aren’t creating what we’d all consider art. These things have always existed, they are many people’s way of engaging with the things they love. What’s new is our ability to share it and see others do it.
Besides, popular music has existed in a “perfect performance” place for, what, two decades now? The virtues of imperfect performances are lost on most people. Speaking as a performer and occasional producer, I simultaneously enjoy the imperfections in my favorite albums and invest serious energy to purge them from my own releases, so I get it.
None of this changes the fact that DIY music scenes are thriving. Physical album sales are healthier than they have been in years. Playing guitar seems… cool again???? None of these are bad things, even if there’s one too many videos 14-year olds playing perfect Dimebag Darrell solos on YouTube.
IIRC Paul McCartney grew up listening to his father play pop tunes in a room full of guests and family members. It was a rich musical environment. As Paul got older, he started playing pop songs for the guests just like his father. It's interesting to learn that this was a common social activity back then.
There's now the meme that one guy will bring a guitar to any event and start playing Wonderwall, lol.
I was at a Wardruna concert a few months ago, and the artist had a (somewhat awkward because he doesn't like speaking English) speech about this very thing, he encouraged people to make music, to sing to their children, to bring less manufactured, casual music back into people's lives.
> Imagining hearing one of your family members just start singing to themselves without any background music, does that feel uncomfortable? Would you sing along?
No need to imagine, pretty normal at my home. (Sometimes I am that family member.) And to answer the questions, no, and yes. (And none of us is a trained musician.)
But I agree, we (as a society) lost a lot of that. I have a feeling that it's cultural; I strongly suspect that in some countries people sing a lot more.
It was never easy making a living as a musician. If you were really good, and at least a bit lucky, you could. The vast majority had to have other jobs.
I agree it's probably tougher today though. The fact that producing and recording is something anyone can do with a laptop just makes the S/N ratio even smaller. And a lot of the surrounding industry jobs have probably gone away too, since big physical mixing desks and multi-track tape machines and record cutting and pressing machines are no longer used nearly as much.
It's extremely easy to make a living from music right now. With a weekend's worth of YouTube training, any decent musician or songwriter should be able to invest 40hr/wk and reliably generate $5k/mo within a year.
There aren't that many topics to learn. If you pick one music industry content creator, they will have around two days worth of videos that you can watch. If you do the things they say, you will make money. There's no magic to it.
Many thousands of live streaming musicians have had no trouble going from $0 to $5k/mo. You're welcome to check out Twitch or TikTok any time for evidence of this.
That's a territory of 1M views per month (or more, not sure what's the pay/ad-tolerance on music videos). That's a slightly higher level of views than Postmodern Jukebox and Pomplamoose are at. Being able to pull that off easily is pretty optimistic...
Also "reliably" is optimistic given YouTube's issues with policy/copyright enforcement and channel restrictions. (I.e. do you want your 5k income to be dependent on a few sudden bogus claims you can't dispute?)
Add Patreon + Merch sales. You know, where they interrupt the song to pitch stolen t-shirt designs on their shopify site. Yeah, if you're just making YT content w/ patreon support and stuff you might be able to crack $5k/mo if you're decent at music theory. That's a lot of hustle. Where-as you used to be able to record a master, work your shitty job for duplications, go tour clubs and spots selling t-shirts you designed and your album to your audience as well as on your online shop. Now, you can just sit in your bedroom, where a mask, start up twitch, and let AI generate beats while you look like you're DJ'ing.
You're absolutely correct. And it shows how out of touch Hacker News is that the people who understand the existing market get downvoted, while the people who claim "YouTube ads are the only way to make money" somehow get upvoted. What a sad state this site is in.
You're pretending that YouTube ads are how musicians make money, and that's just not the case. YouTube is one tiny piece of the marketing map -- not the revenue one.
I also always think of a very important point that I saw concisely expressed in an interview with Daniel Miller, about fifteen years ago. (If you don't recognise the name, Miller founded Mute Records and signed Depeche Mode, and is an influential electronic musician in his own right). The journalist commented on the ever-increasing availability of inexpensive recording equipment and asked, "is making good music easier than ever?" Miller replied, "Yes. But making great music is as difficult as it ever was."
I think that was the quote I misquoted. I had heard it somewhere years ago backstage. Or maybe on a podcast. It resonated with me to the point where I remembered it (my way apparently) and put it in the old Rolodex.
I'm a classically trained pianist with a bunch of music theory under my belt but zero idea how music is produced, and this is fascinating and addictive to the point where I need to put it away or I'll get no work done today.
Spotify's Soundtrap claims to have live collaboration, haven't tested it though so I don't know if it's actually realtime or just a step in that direction.
One thing that has been amazing me recently is the current state of vocal synthesis. It seems to have improved rapidly in the space of just a few years, thanks to neural network models.
For example, here's a quick clip from a synth I've been using in recent weeks:
In light of what we learned with vocaloid in Japan, is this even meaningful? Singers don't make the song. You can have crowds fill stadiums to watch a hologram, it has already been proven.
To boot, isn't this the fidelity vs fun argument of videogames again, too?
Madonna's "Ray of Light" is still a good song without her; William Orbit is a master producer after all. I hope we see a refocusing away from personalities to producers out of this.
It depends on the audience, and the producer. Some people are content with listening to robotic-sounding Vocaloid type synths, others prefer something closer to an authentic singing voice with the more complex range of emotion that can be expressed.
Even just from a technology point of view, I find it fascinating to see how the envelope is being pushed via machine learning models.
>Some people are content with listening to robotic-sounding Vocaloid type synths, others prefer something closer to an authentic singing voice with the more complex range of emotion that can be expressed.
Let me just point out the nuance that many people, including myself, appreciate both types of music.
Prior to this, I'd been experimenting with pitch-shifting the output of Google's Text-to-Speech service (https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech), which was quite interesting and somewhat pleasant sounding for spoken word vocals, but didn't really have the range or expressiveness I was looking for more generally.
Thanks for sharing this. The Solaria AI video you linked to is impressive. Some of my favorite EDM tracks have guest vocals in them. As an electronic music producer and a terrible singer, it's mind blowing to think you can now produce an instrumental beat and attach realistic sounding AI generated vocals to it.
I think this is awesome and I recommend anyone interested in following it through.
But one problem with this kind of thing is that it has the character of "How to Draw an Owl" [1]. I have been tinkering with Ableton for 10+ years but when I got to the song structure part (especially the Photek Drum 'n Bass one) I kinda had to laugh.
Making music is really difficult. This kind of tutorial is step one on a thousand step journey.
I've dabbled in making music, but it makes me bump against an existential crisis. I could make nice sounding music, but what does it mean? Often, it's just an excuse to buy more gear.
I think I'd rather find a way to enjoy developing tech for universal friendly anonymous healthcare workflow identifiers. But if anyone can write supporting music, please do.
It’s funny, music was what solved my existential crisis. Software is always being replaced. When I die, chances are my kids and grandkids will never be able to point to a piece of software and say “my dad did this”. Even for my grandfather, who architected several buildings in my home town - his buildings are gradually being replaced and I can’t point them out to my kids anymore.
Music (and other arts), on the other hand, is yours forever and exists forever, and it’s a way for future generations to connect with their ancestors and even pass on a legacy.
For me, making music is like climbing a mountain I will never summit.
It is the journey, not the destination.
I live in a major city, though, and a lot of my friends are much more talented musicians than me. There is a musician community for me to participate in.
Modern DAWs are absolutely amazing, but if you're into both programming and music I can't recommend checking out a tracker enough.
In particular I recommend the Dirtywave M8 as a fantastic blend of everything that makes trackers great, and modern convenience and power.[0]
+1. I’ve been experimenting with using it in a live setup. It’s very flexible and lets you set up macros that can be triggered with midi. It’s kind of nuts what it can do. Highly underrated.
Dirtywave have shipped plenty of M8's in the last year. They just produce them in batches, there have also been shortages of the Teensy 4.1 microcontroller used IIRC and they are highly sought after. You can also "build your own" from supplied firmware https://github.com/Dirtywave/M8HeadlessFirmware
This is not the fly-by-night kickstarter you are implying.
I love love love Ableton Live. It's possibly my favorite piece of software today.
If you're a software engineer interested in UX, I think Live will fit your brain like a hand in glove. It reminds me very much of emacs or vi where the app is designed to disappear from view and let you focus on your content.
Also, it's incredibly programmable and generative at many many different levels:
* Session view lets you build arrangements on the fly in realtime.
* Follow actions on clips let you automatically build sequences of clips, loop, them, randomly chain them, etc. It's like control flow for clips.
* The various built-in synths and effects support all sorts of dynamic modulation to make timbres evolve on their own.
* Then, of course, there is Max4Live, a full-fledged visual programming environment integrated deeply into the app.
You, of course, can ignore all that stuff and just make completed fixed tracks. But if you're interested in the live aspects of Live, then the software really feels like a substrate that you can use to build your own bespoke instrument for playing your music in real time.
I agree, and with over 15 years of experience with Live and a fruitful music career thanks to it, I have a deep respect for it. It’s hard to use anything else because of how many small, seemingly insignificant workflow features it has which add up quick in a session.
_But_ - man is it far behind the modern DAWS like Studio One and Bitwig in the low-level fundamentals like plug-in isolation, multithreading, and flexibility in terms of your ability to offload frozen tracks from RAM. This puts a bottleneck on the max size of a session before it becomes unstable and unusable. Even with 32GB RAM and a top-shelf CPU, my ability to finish a song grinds to a halt around the 100 track range. My songs can have 150 tracks with 1-20 plugins and 1-30 automation lanes per track by the time they are finished, and the number of hours I’ve lost from crashing or just waiting for it to respond could easily add up to months at this point.
And small things like the inability to know if a plug-in is the VST2 or VST3 version have been driving me nuts for over a decade.
My music is absurdly abnormal in terms of complexity though, and the vast majority of people will never encounter these problems. I worry, however, that the glacial pace of development likely due to the prehistoric tech stack at Ableton will prevent it from ever closing the growing gap made by the increasingly valuable feature sets of modern DAWs have been able to push out quickly and consistently.
Either way, Ableton Live is a great demonstration of the incredibly fine nuance involved in a good UX. They got a lot of little things right, and that alone has been the largest contributor to their success in the industry.
Push is made by Ableton. I am not sure they are willing to help a company build by some of their ex developer who left them to build a new DAW with possibly stolen code and at least many ideas that were discussed internally.
Despite the headquarters proximity, I think they are not the best friends.
Not so sure about the "stolen" part. Bitwig code has a completely different code base (Java backend with UI written using Juce), and the sentiment at the time was that a few devs were frustrated by Ableton management rejecting several proposals that ultimately were implemented in Bitwig.
Also the multitake tracks UI that was implemented in Live 11 is basically a (slightly improved) copy of the same feature on Bitwig.
The stolen part mostly relates around the sales and distribution network, less around the code. Basically the sales equivalent of IP theft, and a really huge douche move by their CEO. Makes him very unsympathetic to me. Not as bad as Behringer but close.
Controller script added for Novation Launchpad Pro MK3
Controller script added for Novation Launchpad X (via reassigning the Rec Button)
Controller script added for Novation Launchpad Mini MK3 (via the special 4th row buttons)
Controller script added for Akai APC Mini MK2
Controller script added for Akai APC Key25 MK2
Controller script updated for Novation Launchpad Pro (MK1)
As a hobbyist musician even I notice Live's flaws. And while it does indeed get out of your way most of the time, when it doesn't you can't change it and it becomes frustrating. While other larger players in the industry are farther ahead, just how far behind Live really is becomes especially apparent when you look at Reaper. They're fundamentally different in their approaches, yes. But Reaper's pace for adding new features and how up-to-date they are in terms of the changing landscape of the industry (CLAP plugins, ARA2 support, etc.) is impressive considering their small team. But Ableton's focus with Live seems to be more towards adding content rather than features or large overhauls. At least that's my impression.
I genuinely love Live's workflow. It feels the most natural to me. But the ever growing list of annoyances and shortcomings make me look into other DAWs fairly frequently. Though sadly no other one has really stuck with me so far.
There was a defect in Live’s implementation of VST3’s UI that lead to poor UI performance (lag) that got fixed in the upcoming 11.3, it’s in beta test right now.
It most affected users with hundred of tracks and VSTs in most of them. No impact on VST2.
Ableton is great but these days I prefer Bitwig. It does most of what live does but lets you do more modular stuff without the massive context switch into Max.
I use Acid Pro 10... I think it allows me to have a more original sound to be honest. At this point I've found that tools are leveling off in terms of capability and now it's more a matter of what a producer knows how to manipulate best. There are nuances like how audio clips and knowing how built in efx work that make transitioning to a new DAW painful until you catch up, the deep learning curve is steep for advanced production... Rather than switching, I already know how my current DAW works, and it works, so there's no need to change right now.
I've used Ableton for about 12 years before making the switch to bitwig, it's the best thing I've ever done.
There are very, very few Ableton features that I miss. The only thing I can think of is the automations rescaling I wish Bitwig would implement, otherwise it's vastly superior to Ableton in any other way. Especially the bounce/audio editing workflow, this thing makes me 2 to 3 times faster than when using Ableton (no hyperbole)
It's also massively cheaper. For a lot of the things available on stock Bitwig (~399$, often discounted at 249$) you need Live Suite + Max 4 Live + Cycling Max MSP, the asking price is no less than 1300$.
Live main selling point right compared to Bitwig now is ubiquity, basically. You can expect to go into any recording studio, anywhere, and find a Live desk available.
I've always been curious about synths and how they are programmed. I'm a JS dev learning Rust and was having ideas about building my own synth. Is Max4Live a good choice for building audio plugins in 2023? Also, is Rust a viable option for creating VST plugins?
I don't think Max4Live is not a good choice for building audio plugins. It's a weird platform that was designed for 'institutionalized academic music,' as I once read someone describe it. It's difficult to program in and not efficient. None of my favorite music software is made with it. It's also quite buggy, in my experience. For doing some basic extensions to Ableton Live specifically, beyond what VST allows access to, it's OK, since it's the only official way to do so.
If you want to just dive into DSP using wires and boxes, with some additional code sprinkled in, SynthEdit or Reaktor Core are faster, more fun, and produce better results. If you don't mind C++, check out iPlug from REAPER's WDL codebase: https://www.cockos.com/wdl/ — there are some forks of it.
There's also JUCE. You'll find some people complain about it and some people regret using it, despite it being relatively popular.
There are some Rust things for doing VST (and AU) development. Here's one that I've seen a few things made with: https://github.com/robbert-vdh/nih-plug/tree/master I wouldn't worry too much about the differences between C++ and Rust in this world. Audio software tends to be buggy, so the bar for being considered 'good enough' is pretty low.
Max and M4L have a very specific jargon and tech legacy that makes them quite different compared to regular VSTs (not better nor worse, just different). Reaktor gets closer in terms of performance and limitations to regular VST development compared to Max, while still using a visual programming approach.
Handling/touching/processing MIDI events with JavaScript in Max will mess up the timing due to how Max handles scheduling — it will defer the event to a lower priority thread — so I don't recommend doing that. You can safely use JS for GUI code and using Ableton's API to manipulate the session and UI, though.
This is incredible. I'd love to see something similar for sound synthesis (how do you craft that perfect piano/violin/dubsteppy sound?) and mixing/mastering.
I don't know a suitable tool for mixing/mastering except many years of trial and error. Lots of things exist to get you the basics and aware of what all the major tools do, but nothing I know of (yet) really teaches you how to put them together to make a great mix nearly as well as making 100 bad mixes first.
I can't remember the speaker, but I watched a lecture (probably a decade ago) where the speaker said you could give the same project file to a great engineer who is only allowed to use the volume faders, and an amateur who is allowed to use any software tools and any expensive rack hardware. And the great engineer will make a better mix 100% of the time. I very much believe that statement is true.
It would be cool if HN had a list of popular / repeatedly submitted url's/articles like this one, and a total count. Would be a great list to look over, too.
250 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 254 ms ] threadIf you specifically want to program beats, I recommend this quirky book "Pocket Operations": https://shittyrecording.studio. It's basically guitar tabs for drum machines. Pick out some styles as a foundation and then build on top of it. Think of it as boilerplate code.
Being a software dev by day, and a former musician in high school, the current world of digital music production tools is as incredible as it is overwhelming. It's good to have something that orients your practice and experimentation.
Literally a no-fluff cheatsheet for drum patterns presented in the simplest to digest form possible, and without losing any important parts. Programming drum patterns has always been daunting to me, as it seemed like everyone just "knew" their patterns and how to play around them. Even though I knew that it wasn't the case, it was still difficult to approach. But with this boilerplate, it's like a massive blocker is just gone for me. And by going through even just a a portion of the patterns, I can easily see how one can acquire a sense for them and is able to come up with their own takes.
Obviously you need some native beat tracking capabilities, it seems some people just lack this skill.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.0077...
As someone who has trouble with drum patterns as well I really liked the idea.
[0] https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2023/building-the-amen-break/
What I'd be willing to pay is something on the order of up to $50 for a session. I think the sweet spot would be $30-$40 for something like 20 to 30 minutes.
I don't want to be a drummer and I'm not interested in performing publicly. I just want to rock out and suck as hard as I can, without feeling the social awkwardness of being out in the middle of the store.
At least i hope it's magic for somebody, playing clarinet or pedal steel for me is magic, whereas playing my best instruments, piano, guitar, flute, not really magic.
[1] https://www.audiblegenius.com/buildingblocks
* Convert audio clip to MIDI drum track
* Convert audio clip to MIDI melody
* Convert audio clip to MIDI harmony
None of them work exceptionally well but they get they get enough done that they’re useful for a first pass approximation in many situations.
Depends! I went into hobbyist music production a few months ago probably bc I saw a cool midi controller that my kids might find interesting. Fast forward a few months and I've bought and sold a few $100s of gear and now I have these great immersive music making sessions with just a Korg Volca Beats and a MicroFreak.
I'll save you all hours of YouTube synth hype bois by stating that the MicroFreak is hands down the best way to learn synthesizers. It packs SO MUCH into a small, tactile form factor. The manual is actually a fun read and explains each and every parameter in an engaging way. It is a masterclass in approachable documentation for a complex subject, (and was probably translated from French, since Arturia is a French company).
https://glicol.org/tour#sequencer
I am open to all feedbacks!
edit: oops
> and a former musician in high school
s/former/recovering
is there a simple / Lightweight software tool that will let kids get into drums and music..using this book as a starter?
I also think the older we get, the more we think most music sounds the same because music inherently changes over time, and will be different to what we grew up on, but we also become more distanced from the subcultures and communities pioneering modern music trends. A young person today probably thinks all rock music from the 50s-90s sounds the same
I agree that the paths you suggest are possible and that the tools available have never been so available.
I see cultural problems as the root issue. We’ve reduced music to a recorded consumable and thereby reduced the role of the humans communicating telepathically via music, which is the social function of music, as I understand it
Not only are people taking newer music production technology in every different possible direction, they're still pushing the limits of old methods as well as combining them with the new stuff.
A lot. But those born into the new era wont even know what we lost, and those born before will be dismissed as "boomers".
I'm not dismissing you because you're a 'boomer', I'm dismissing the point because it's just willfully ignorant.
If you think 'modern music' lacks diversity, you're simply not looking for anything original. Because you can find it, by the bucketload.
Even Robert Henke, the guy who made the precursor to ableton and the co founder of ableton, laments this about ableton https://youtu.be/iwOaYxSJGqI
People here are saying that you are wrong but when the creator of ableton is agreeing with you then maybe they should listen
If we have lost anything, it is due to Spotify and other corporations whittling away musicians opportunities to make money off of their work.
Tools definitely guide the music, however. Pick up a drum machine, and it is funny how quickly you start to write trap / jungle beats.
Completely free, but very deep and powerful browser-based cloud music production software, with a tight-knit encouraging community built around it.
I knew how to practice effectively from my years in band, but I didn't use them because I was too busy rejecting who I was in high school.
Now I'm learning piano and I've joined a choir, and I'm actually getting better at things instead of being a perpetually mediocre guitarist/singer.
I much prefer playing guitar to piano or a choir.
I had discovered that music was one of my few interests that I could actually trade for social credit.
A few ios app recommendations I'd like to make are:
- Rassel (a free and absurdly accurate pocket shaker app) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rassel-pocket-shaker/id1575364...
- Ableton Note (Best 6 dollars I ever spent. It's a really fun way to experiment with musical ideas on the go. You can even record vocals and add effects.) https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ableton-note/id1633243177
Then there's some exercises you can do with just paper and pens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eqLmkWOU6A
A really versatile, affordable and fairly compact percussion instrument you can start off with as well is the Bodhrán; you can make some really great beats with it, see e.g. the opening scene of the film The Magdalene Sisters, just bodhrán and singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXFs8EL35o. Here's another version of the same song where the artist plays it with just his hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mjWhMn-VnU
If one of the primary points of open source software is to promote accessibility, Reaper goes a long way towards this without actually being open source. There is no DRM, there is no need to make an account and do some long sign up process to get Reaper up and running, there is no iLok required (vomits in mouth a little). You can download it in and start working on a project as quickly as your computer can finish installing it.
From Reaper's license popup:
> We are showing this message, instead of crippling this evaluation version of REAPER, because we do not feel technological enforcement of licensing policy is in the best interest of our customers
Reaper is the only professional artistic software (sold as a product) I have ever come across that is remotely realistic about how people use it. Nobody has ever pirated Reaper in the history of Reaper, there is no point and that is how software should work in a more sane world.
Further, 99% of digital audio workstation customers start off as broke kids with no money to feasibly drop on a music production software that costs $150 or more. So a huge amount of future paying DAW customers are piracy converts anyways. Making a DAW that can't be pirated is a sure way to shove your future customer base onto somebody else's DAW that can.
I’d also like to tangent to say: music used to be a much bigger part of our lives. Before the radio a piano was a household staple. Kids would learn, family’s would play and sing to each other. We’ve largely given that up.
Imagining hearing one of your family members just start singing to themselves without any background music, does that feel uncomfortable? Would you sing along?
I think to many the answer is clear, music, as well as many other endeavors are something to now be enjoyed but not created. And oh boy do we get to enjoy the “best” music and “best” films and “best” books on demand.
And along the way we lost the large bits of ourselves which created and enjoyed together. So, in short, 10/10 would do the tutorial again.
Music fandom used to be a bigger part of lives after that. Pop/rock stars were royalty. Now with all the other stuff competing for eyeballs it's just another thing. Aside from a much smaller music-obsessed demographic, most teens could not care less today.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2023/05/15/taylor-swift...
People used to learn from… people. In fact, many people prefer that still.
And I’d say, I’d rather have a dozen friends who play music and actually want to hear my music than have the potential to get a million fans I’d end up rather not meeting because it’s just awkward and unnatural.
Uh, maybe for wealthier households. Definitely not the case for people who grew up a bit poorer than average. Piano upkeep is not a trivial expense!
https://daily.jstor.org/what-player-pianos-meant-to-american...
So… good point it was middle class status symbol, but a huge number still had access.
My real point was music creation was more a part of people’s daily lives.
Recorded music, and our reaction to it, has pretty much crushed that. On the one hand, it's marvellous that I can listen to Jussi Bjorling or Maria Callas any time I want, but we then tend to criticise anything less than "the best". Heck, the process of recorded music has often deceived us: the Wrecking Crew made most of the great US pop/rock albums of the late 50s and 60s[1].
The net result is that when people break out a guitar or sing, we tend to critique them harshly. Why listen to a mediocre performance when we could have perfection? And, of course, who wants to perform when you'll just be compared to the recordings of the best ever?
[1] An enjoyable documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrecking_Crew_(2008_film)
as it happens, that movie is my Substack post for this Friday, complete with YouTube playlist for all the music mentioned.
I just, this afternoon, talked to an old friend who played in a jam session with Hal Blaine!
A neighbor kid started crying when he could not ride the bicycle the first time like his online hero did perfectly.
This is a messed up transition time of some sort, no doubt we will make some cultural choices to free ourselves of this tyranny of our own mentation.
Besides, popular music has existed in a “perfect performance” place for, what, two decades now? The virtues of imperfect performances are lost on most people. Speaking as a performer and occasional producer, I simultaneously enjoy the imperfections in my favorite albums and invest serious energy to purge them from my own releases, so I get it.
None of this changes the fact that DIY music scenes are thriving. Physical album sales are healthier than they have been in years. Playing guitar seems… cool again???? None of these are bad things, even if there’s one too many videos 14-year olds playing perfect Dimebag Darrell solos on YouTube.
I was at a Wardruna concert a few months ago, and the artist had a (somewhat awkward because he doesn't like speaking English) speech about this very thing, he encouraged people to make music, to sing to their children, to bring less manufactured, casual music back into people's lives.
No need to imagine, pretty normal at my home. (Sometimes I am that family member.) And to answer the questions, no, and yes. (And none of us is a trained musician.)
But I agree, we (as a society) lost a lot of that. I have a feeling that it's cultural; I strongly suspect that in some countries people sing a lot more.
I agree it's probably tougher today though. The fact that producing and recording is something anyone can do with a laptop just makes the S/N ratio even smaller. And a lot of the surrounding industry jobs have probably gone away too, since big physical mixing desks and multi-track tape machines and record cutting and pressing machines are no longer used nearly as much.
It's extremely easy to make a living from music right now. With a weekend's worth of YouTube training, any decent musician or songwriter should be able to invest 40hr/wk and reliably generate $5k/mo within a year.
Many thousands of live streaming musicians have had no trouble going from $0 to $5k/mo. You're welcome to check out Twitch or TikTok any time for evidence of this.
Also "reliably" is optimistic given YouTube's issues with policy/copyright enforcement and channel restrictions. (I.e. do you want your 5k income to be dependent on a few sudden bogus claims you can't dispute?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965386
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055433
Get started making music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055433 - Oct 2021 (144 comments)
Get Started Making Music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965386 - Sept 2019 (184 comments)
Get started making music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628 - May 2017 (461 comments)
Get started making music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14291332 - May 2017 (2 comments)
side note: is there any DAW that supports realtime collaboration?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual
If you can't get a number one at least you'll be left LYFAO with an invaluable lesson on business and an intimate tour of late 80s UK techno scene.
Wonderful read.
For example, here's a quick clip from a synth I've been using in recent weeks:
https://vocaroo.com/125tAD40Gl6d
It sounds almost like a real voice, and that's just using the default settings, without any effort to tweak it further to improve the realism.
To boot, isn't this the fidelity vs fun argument of videogames again, too?
Madonna's "Ray of Light" is still a good song without her; William Orbit is a master producer after all. I hope we see a refocusing away from personalities to producers out of this.
Even just from a technology point of view, I find it fascinating to see how the envelope is being pushed via machine learning models.
Let me just point out the nuance that many people, including myself, appreciate both types of music.
https://dreamtonics.com/synthesizerv
https://www.eclipsedsounds.com/solaria
What really sold it to me was listening to some beautifully crafted covers from this YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX0lcVr9ugI
Prior to this, I'd been experimenting with pitch-shifting the output of Google's Text-to-Speech service (https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech), which was quite interesting and somewhat pleasant sounding for spoken word vocals, but didn't really have the range or expressiveness I was looking for more generally.
Too many people express this belief. It does not seem plausible, statistically. I wonder what made it so widespread.
But one problem with this kind of thing is that it has the character of "How to Draw an Owl" [1]. I have been tinkering with Ableton for 10+ years but when I got to the song structure part (especially the Photek Drum 'n Bass one) I kinda had to laugh.
Making music is really difficult. This kind of tutorial is step one on a thousand step journey.
1. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-to-draw-an-owl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXWTN1XTtI
Music (and other arts), on the other hand, is yours forever and exists forever, and it’s a way for future generations to connect with their ancestors and even pass on a legacy.
It is the journey, not the destination.
I live in a major city, though, and a lot of my friends are much more talented musicians than me. There is a musician community for me to participate in.
Honestly, that's good enough for me!
[0]https://dirtywave.com/
“This is a preorder. Estimated starting ship date is July 2023. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”
A terrific modern tracker, runs on Win/OSX/Linux. Renoise is wonderful.
This is not the fly-by-night kickstarter you are implying.
If you're a software engineer interested in UX, I think Live will fit your brain like a hand in glove. It reminds me very much of emacs or vi where the app is designed to disappear from view and let you focus on your content.
Also, it's incredibly programmable and generative at many many different levels:
* Session view lets you build arrangements on the fly in realtime.
* Follow actions on clips let you automatically build sequences of clips, loop, them, randomly chain them, etc. It's like control flow for clips.
* The various built-in synths and effects support all sorts of dynamic modulation to make timbres evolve on their own.
* Then, of course, there is Max4Live, a full-fledged visual programming environment integrated deeply into the app.
You, of course, can ignore all that stuff and just make completed fixed tracks. But if you're interested in the live aspects of Live, then the software really feels like a substrate that you can use to build your own bespoke instrument for playing your music in real time.
I love it so much.
_But_ - man is it far behind the modern DAWS like Studio One and Bitwig in the low-level fundamentals like plug-in isolation, multithreading, and flexibility in terms of your ability to offload frozen tracks from RAM. This puts a bottleneck on the max size of a session before it becomes unstable and unusable. Even with 32GB RAM and a top-shelf CPU, my ability to finish a song grinds to a halt around the 100 track range. My songs can have 150 tracks with 1-20 plugins and 1-30 automation lanes per track by the time they are finished, and the number of hours I’ve lost from crashing or just waiting for it to respond could easily add up to months at this point.
And small things like the inability to know if a plug-in is the VST2 or VST3 version have been driving me nuts for over a decade.
My music is absurdly abnormal in terms of complexity though, and the vast majority of people will never encounter these problems. I worry, however, that the glacial pace of development likely due to the prehistoric tech stack at Ableton will prevent it from ever closing the growing gap made by the increasingly valuable feature sets of modern DAWs have been able to push out quickly and consistently.
Either way, Ableton Live is a great demonstration of the incredibly fine nuance involved in a good UX. They got a lot of little things right, and that alone has been the largest contributor to their success in the industry.
I'm addicted to my ableton push... i can't move over just because of that.
I've tried the driven by moss stuff and it works great but eh... just not quite as good overall.
Despite the headquarters proximity, I think they are not the best friends.
Also the multitake tracks UI that was implemented in Live 11 is basically a (slightly improved) copy of the same feature on Bitwig.
Controller script added for Novation Launchpad Pro MK3 Controller script added for Novation Launchpad X (via reassigning the Rec Button) Controller script added for Novation Launchpad Mini MK3 (via the special 4th row buttons) Controller script added for Akai APC Mini MK2 Controller script added for Akai APC Key25 MK2 Controller script updated for Novation Launchpad Pro (MK1)
I genuinely love Live's workflow. It feels the most natural to me. But the ever growing list of annoyances and shortcomings make me look into other DAWs fairly frequently. Though sadly no other one has really stuck with me so far.
It most affected users with hundred of tracks and VSTs in most of them. No impact on VST2.
There are very, very few Ableton features that I miss. The only thing I can think of is the automations rescaling I wish Bitwig would implement, otherwise it's vastly superior to Ableton in any other way. Especially the bounce/audio editing workflow, this thing makes me 2 to 3 times faster than when using Ableton (no hyperbole)
Live main selling point right compared to Bitwig now is ubiquity, basically. You can expect to go into any recording studio, anywhere, and find a Live desk available.
If you want to just dive into DSP using wires and boxes, with some additional code sprinkled in, SynthEdit or Reaktor Core are faster, more fun, and produce better results. If you don't mind C++, check out iPlug from REAPER's WDL codebase: https://www.cockos.com/wdl/ — there are some forks of it.
There's also JUCE. You'll find some people complain about it and some people regret using it, despite it being relatively popular.
There are some Rust things for doing VST (and AU) development. Here's one that I've seen a few things made with: https://github.com/robbert-vdh/nih-plug/tree/master I wouldn't worry too much about the differences between C++ and Rust in this world. Audio software tends to be buggy, so the bar for being considered 'good enough' is pretty low.
Autechre's Confield album is what it is good at doing. There is nothing more to do with the software after that album.
https://www.syntorial.com/
I don't know a suitable tool for mixing/mastering except many years of trial and error. Lots of things exist to get you the basics and aware of what all the major tools do, but nothing I know of (yet) really teaches you how to put them together to make a great mix nearly as well as making 100 bad mixes first.
I can't remember the speaker, but I watched a lecture (probably a decade ago) where the speaker said you could give the same project file to a great engineer who is only allowed to use the volume faders, and an amateur who is allowed to use any software tools and any expensive rack hardware. And the great engineer will make a better mix 100% of the time. I very much believe that statement is true.