How to star producing music?

+1 on the “the dance music manual” by rick snoman.

Generally, read, read, read, read, ….lol…. The more you study, and the more you become familair with terminology, the more sense the manual of Ableton Live (or any other DAW) will make. I dunno why but sometimes I get the idea people seem to think that learning to make music is simply learning a program- if you think so, this is not the case…I’d say dont actually bother learniing a music making program for a couple of months, just find books to read that will make you familiar with terminology and the ermmmm technical aspects of music. You see, I have realised that DJs even though they have a great skill of “listening” to music, they usually have huge problems to translate what they are listening, (and what their brain is listening) to production-wise meaningful notions. “I want my sound to be beefier, deeper, warmer” mean almost nothing in the world of a producer – its all frequencies and dynamics, balances and levels, tricks and techniques. Sometimes Djs in my area starting to produce ask me to give them tips to make their sound “this” or “that” and I honestly – even though I try – I dont have the slightest clue what they mean because they are speaking from the listener standpoint. There was this guy who was asking me how to make his synth sound dirtier and I was thinking like “distortion” and the only thing he wanted was a 8 – 10 khz low pass filter to roll off higher frequencies.

So my best advice would be, try and learn to translate sounds into meaningful, scientfic terms. What is causing that effect to be so spacey? perhaps the fact that it moves from left to right? What is causing that bass to be so dirty? perhaps that fact that it has also high frequencies in it? Sooner or later, and by studying and practising you ‘ll catch yourself listening to music from a whole other standpoint, seperating the instruments subcnsciously, actually listening how the track was made. After this point, its all a matter of using the tools provided by DAWs to “imitate” behaviours of sound.

From personal experience, the beauty of making music is that its endless…you can never honestly say to yourself you mastered it. Upo finishing a tune, you think so, then you go back and listen to it 2 months later and you are like “what the hell was I thinking? the mistakes are obvious, NOW I ‘ve mastered it” and it goes on like that in cycles (no Im not joking, seriously).
In all honesty, I got like 10 releases on Beatport and I still think Im just learning music production.

The truth is, being an electronic music producer means you pretty much have to master various skills which in other genres would be required from different people….I mean you have to, first and foremost be a composer (the easy part really cause dance music is pretty simple in structure and melodies), a performer OR DAW user (either you perform with your midi keyboard or you work your way through the editing features of your DAW, sometimes you do a bit of both), an arranger/orchestrator (you got this musical idea, but what kind of instrument will you use for it, will it be an organic sounding piano or a whacked out dirty synth sound), a mixing engineer (levels of sounds, balancing, etc) and finally a producer (with the traditional meaning of the word) , not to mention that in 99% of cases as a beginner you will also have to do the mastering of your track (unless you are willing to pay a masterign engineer to do it).

The faster you realise these different aspects, the easier for you it will become to focus on each of them and learn to know which one is “bugging” you in your first attempts of writing music. Like, you had this idea, and you dabbled with your software but the result is dissapointing. Why? Is the melody poor? Or is it brilliant but played on the wronf instrument? or is it the correct instrument but the arrangement in the track chokes it? And 1000002290830123 other things.

Dont be intimitated however, I can honestly say making music is a VERY rewarding process….take it one step at a time and enjoy the ride…I can guarantee you ‘ll never grow out of it, just because its so deep and never ending…there is always more to discover! 😉

I can only say go for it. It used to be a dream for me, whn I started, or actually it wasnt even one of my wildest dreams, and when it happened it felt totally natural and not really a big deal. 😉 I can tell you though the best feeling is when you play your track in your gig and you see the crowd go wild – thats the best feeling of the world.

mr_john, post: 10994 wrote: By no means would I call myself a master. I can find my way around the program but no sir no expert here. It’s a lot to take in, very overwhelming at first but if you take it one step at a time it all starts to make sense. It’s difficult to say how long it took for me to become comfortable with it. I guess I’d say I spent the better part of spring learning and messing about. By the time summer hit I knew enough to throw together a decent song from scratch.

And no I don’t use MIDI keyboards, but I would like to. Money just doesn’t permit it at the moment so my keyboard will have to do.

Sorry, but 50 buck you get a LPK25… that should be enough… that is my next acquisition…

Keep it

Haroon K, post: 11499 wrote: On the other hand if you can be more goal orientated its better to finish a track, learn from it and do another one – which is what the pro’s do I guess.

Absolutely spot on…If I was allowed to give only one piece of advice for production, if there was a top 20 list of advices this would be my no1:

ALWAYS, always, finish the track you started.

Many beginners (and not only) fall into the trap of “ok lets see where this sound leads to, or hey lets see what this synth might add to my track” or the other trap of “hey its almost done, and its not like Im gonna release it or anything so why bother finishing the last details”. By finish I mean have a wave file ready to be played on a typical audio player.

I can only say this…..you learn more from a mediocre (for your own taste) full finished, exported wave file from your DAW than 100 unfinished DAW projects, searching for the perfect sound – true story. There are many details in the final stage just before exporting a finished track that you wont get to learn if you are always fiddling with ideas on a project you started 10 months ago. Also, you won’t be able to test your final track’s audio qualities on various systems (therefore realise and learn what “sound” and its reproduction on various system means) if all you got is a weird DAW-specific file format.

Thanks for bringing this up Haroon!