Music Production – I need direction

allo there,

get some free/demo versions of digital audio workstations i.e. DAW’s. this is your canvas, this is the program which you do EVERYTHING in. Ableton & Fruity loops approach music creation differently but are common DAWs to start with, however ‘propellerheads reason’ is what I personally used and still use occasionally, it is far more visually obvious in reason how to patch instruments to effects to the mixer etc then in other DAWs, once you get your head around this in reason you can apply that knowledge to any other DAW.

If you get good enough with any of the above mentioned you many never need to ‘upgrade’ to more advanced wares…

but if you’ve been at it for 5 years and finding a noticable difference in the production quality (sound quality & mix quality) of your songs, an upgrade to ‘pro logic’ or ‘cubase’ might be just the thing you need. I use cubase personally. all the above are (now) capable of recording & working with audio, and also working with ‘midi’ recordings from devices such as drum pads or midi keyboards. every single synth or multisampler in you DAW will run using midi. there is always a window called a ‘piano roll’ in your DAW which is where you edit, paste or record midi notes and other midi information in which your synth will read in order to know what to play back.

also I personally would avoid sony acid pro or digidesign protools… at all costs…

when you get fx i.e. – equalizer, compressor, reverb, delay, echo, flanger, phaser, vibrato, distortion, limiter, multiband compressor/limiter, gate, filter

OR when you get virtual sound instruments i.e. VSTs, like waveform synthesisers, grainular synthesisers, multisamplers, etc they will typically come in the form of ‘plugins’ that you install to a common directory on you pc which any and all of your DAWs read and access to bring those plugins into the DAW which is where you use them.
the folder is typically “vstplugins” and most plugins install to that folder by default.
most DAWs know to look for it too.

Familiarise yourself with every single one of the above listed devices in the “fx” category. You cannot produce good music until you know exactly what each of those things do – eq, compressor, reverb, etc. they are the herbs and spices that turn your cooked chicken into something delicious. this step is essential.

if you PC is of limited power i.e. ‘slow’ use the inbuilt fx and vsts that come with whatever DAW you choose first and stick with those, they are designed to run fast and use less resources.

If you pc is a beast from the 72nd dimension, then here’s what I reccomend, though if you can’t use every default/stock plugin available in your chosen DAW, learn those first or you won’t know what to do with these –

Synth & Drum Machines –
omnisphere (most powerful synth at time of release, multi sample and multi oscillate, grain/waveform more or less everything at the same time)
stylusrmx (drums and chaos)
trillion (bass bass bass bass)
Abysynth (complex synth similar to omnisphere)
u-he zebra (great for sequences and gated melodies)
addictive drums (drums obvi)
toontrack drummer (also drums)

MultiSamplers-
With multi-samplers the device itself is mostly irrelevant, you choose a multisampler based on the libraries available and the sounds you actually want to use. be warned though, these chew up pc resources like nothing else, literally these will destroy top level ‘gaming’ pcs.

Best service engine and packs.
garritan ARIA engine & packs
Camel audio alchemy engine & packs
east west quantum leap packs – avail. for kontakt & other samplers.
Gigasampler packs & the soundlib g-player.

You can use the latest version of ‘kontakt’ for many sample packs and libraries from many different companies. There are some great free sample packs/instruments for kontakt out there, google search & join some forums.

Finally and probably the most important are ‘fx’ & processing units –

2Caudio reverbs
Ampeg or Gutarrig or Amplitude – amp simulators & fx chains emulated from a live guitarist/bassist setup, good for anything
sound toys series of devices
anything by ‘waves’ the masarati series in particular
voxengo span, fab filter, etc
sugarbytes effectrix
izotope trash
melodyne

also note, learn how to automate. every daw can do it. this is how you create fancy effects & sounds. learn what an lfo does and use it all the time until you don’t have to guess about anything anymore. experiment all the time, experiment with everything.

fx/processors, all can be used creatively but not all are designed for that, some for creative sound modulation, others are more for production/mastering, i.e. preparing your tune for consumption by the outside world.

typically – flange, chorus, delay, echo, phaser, distortion, vibrato, stutter, filter, are meant to creatively modulate,
whereas – reverb, compression, noise gate, eq, limiter, pan are for mix production & mastering.

start with midi triggered vst and only venture into audio when you have something to record, tho this depends on the genres of music you want to produce. if its hip hop, and you’re a purist, you’ll only use audio. you’ll record samples from vinyl into your daw, and rearrange the clips manually to make a beat, this is a nice way to get used to working with audio. if on the other hand you’re a trance head, its midi and vst all the way. combining both audio and midi is the best way to go and the most liberating, i.e. audio drum loop + midi triggered vst.

the better your stereo speakers the more clarity in your mix, the easier it is to create a good and balanced mix that will sound good whether heard on your elite studio speakers, or a fans shitty ipod earbuds. you want your songs to sound great across as many different kinds of speakers/headphones/earbuds as possible. if aiming for radio airplay, learn about radio bandwidth limitations, make sure your song sounds good in stereo and mono. if aiming to only have your music sound good in clubs and played by djs, its a bit less stuffing about.

if you can’t afford great studio quality monitoring speakers, but have access to a few pairs of decent home entertainment quality speakers, then pay for a quality pair of headphones, I use seinheiser 256s due to the price to quality factor, but there are better more expensive options. use headphones when working on spatial stuff like panning, don’t have everything in the center pan position, spread stuff around the ‘space’. use every speaker and headphone available at your disposal for getting the compression and levels right across the bandwidth (bandwidth = the audible frequency range = 20hz to 20khz) learn what hz boost what sounds, for e.g. 1.25khz, 3000hz, 800hz, 5000khz can all bring the vocals forward in a mix, make them stand out, this is what the eq is for.

as for beast pc’s, I hate mac, will never use mac so if you are a mac fanboy I can’t help ya. but as for pc, you want an i7, you NEED an ASIO audio interface (external soundcard) you need at least 4gb ram, but the more the merrier. if you use mechanical internal harddrives you will struggle to have more then a handful of the more powerful/resource hogging multisamplers and vst running at the same time, and using ssd drives is preferable. back up your work to an external drive in case the ssd’s or your pc itself crashes, back up regularly.

as for tutorials, do some research into the daws avail. choose one, then youtube tutorials that will get you familiar with the daw itself, its features and the basics of how to use each component. once you learn one daw inside and out, its a much faster process learning any of the others, most do the exact same things, but in different ways, and with stock plugins of different quality (note:reason can’t use 3rd party plugins at all, fruity and ableton can) find which works best for you.

once you’ve done that, you’ll be making your own tunes and need to then learn about production/mixing/mastering. again youtube is your friend here, look up artists/producers from the genre you’re working in whose music u love and style you want to emulate, its likely they will have their own production tips & tutorial videos for you to watch, for e.g. mistabishi, noisia and brooks brothers all have production tips & tricks tutorial videos for those wishing to do dnb.

GOOD LUCK AND HAVE FUN!!!

Peace.

also, if your pc can handle it, only ever work in 24bit or higher, 41k sample rate. only render out your main stereo output as a 24bit or higher wav. if you need to convert to mp3 or acc (aac?) to upload to a website, render from the daw as 24bit+ wav first and convert after.

also regarding ASIO, if you have firewire, use it. buy an ASIO audio interface that uses firewire to connect. if you only have usb, then avoid the mbox series of interfaces. I recently upgraded from an mboxmini2 usb to a sapphire pro 24 firewire.

firewire can handle more simultaneous channels of audio then usb. ssd drives, ram & processor speed all contribute to how fast your daw can access data for the vst, instruments etc. clipping, distortion, audio drop outs & stuttering are all the result of too much strain on your pc and ASIO device.

if I think of anything else I’ll b back to post again..

Peace.

one other thing, when you’ve been doing this for a long time, and think you know everything you need to know, soundonsound magazine’s online website tutorials will show you that there’s a hell of a lot more you could learn…

Maybe the OP wants to learn more in more like “virtual class” method, where things is not scattered around here and there to avoid the confusion and the method of learning, I myself is like that, when someone pointed me out to youtube to learn stuff, I just felt like if I do that kind of learning, I’m afraid i “miss” the steps or accidentally cheating steps, kind of like when someone learned DJ for the first time, and he/she dont know any better, he/she just jumped on the laptop and just mashing sync button without knowing the basic core behind it,

To the OP, try one of these following online producing class,
– Dubspot (super expensive)
– Pointblank (so so so )
– Sonic Academy ( budgetted values)
– Quantize Course,

each of those offered you some kind of EDM Production tools for beginner, some with personal feedback video thing (with a price of course), I tend to try the Quantize Course but its so $$$