Music Production

I signed up for a 2-hour Ableton class that was being offered at work. Not sure why, it just caught my attention. I was amazed by how the instructor could write a cool song in just a couple minutes! I had no idea that was possible.

That's how I started, I bought Ableton and a small MIDI keyboard. Followed tutorials on YouTube and started writing a song every week for the song-a-week subreddit. I took a few online classes on music production and kept learning.

A few things that clicked for me:

• I don't have to do EDM just because I'm using Ableton and all the YouTube tutorials are about EDM. I can make ambient.
• Notes sound better when they're not quantized.
• There are no wrong notes to play.
• Finishing songs is really important.

Here's some perspective from an old guy:

When I was little, my dad had an Ampex reel to reel and explained to me that it could do "sound on sound," allowing you to record something while something else was playing. I was always fascinated with that idea but he never actually used that function. The "clicked" movement for me came really young: when I was 9 or 10 it dawned on me that I could use two portable cassette players (both with speakers) and do my own low-rent version of "sound on sound," recording something on one, then playing it back and recording it, plus something else, on the second...and then do it again. My friends and I made goofy little skits like Layer 1 = singing loudly and badly, Layer 2 = Layer 1 plus pretending we lived next door and yelling at them to shut up, Layer 3 = Layers 1+2 plus the neighbor on the other side telling them all to shut up, Layer 4 = Layers 1+2+3 plus "this is the police, you are surrounded"-type idiocy. It sounded terrible, but we thought it was hysterical.

In high school, that Ampex reel to reel ended up in my room, and while I never did figure out how to get the "Sound on Sound" thing to work, what I did figure out was that since it had stereo Aux inputs as well as microphone inputs, and they each had their own level controls, that I could record drums on a cassette, then while I played the cassette back through the aux I'd mic up a bass through the front. Then I'd take that drum and bass mix and do what I later learned was called "bouncing it down" to a cassette...and then do it again! I could get a drum/bass/guitar/vocal recording that was good enough to play for my friends.

When I was a senior in high school, my school bought a cassette 4 track recorder, and they let me use it. To me that thing was solid gold: I already knew how to bounce stuff down so I know I wasn't limited to 4 tracks! I'd record tracks 1, 2 and 3, bounce them down to track 4, and have three new clean tracks! And I could keep going...you know...as long as I didn't make a mixing mistake early in that process that got carried over to all my subsequent work. For me the biggest hurdle was getting good sounds out of primitive equipment and techniques. If only "lo-fi" had been a thing back then :D . When I later learned that Sgt. Pepper's was done using four tracks and roughly the same methods in terms of pre-mixing and bouncing I about fell out of my chair.

In college I got to work with 2" 24 track tape and outboard equipment with a patch bay and stuff and was in heaven. No automation on the board: if you had a big mix, you got a couple of buddies so there were six or eight hands, and you practiced your moves a few times like a dance before you mixed it down to two-track.

My music career aspirations stopped in the late 80s, but when I got back into it as a hobby in the late 90s, I got my first experience with a DAW via Cakewalk and a SoundBlaster card. Cut and Paste editing? Automated mixing? Are you kidding me?

About fifteen years ago I got an little two-input USB audio interface that came with a Lite version of Cubase. I really liked Cubase, and still use it today, upgrading it every couple of years. When they stopped making drivers for my little 2 channel interface I took the plunge to a rack-mounted 8 channel one that lets me mic a whole drum set at once...and that's my setup!

My workflow is still primitive: I still treat this stuff like a fancy 4 track recorder with unlimited tracks. But I love all the stuff that's available, from building songs from loops to pitch and timing correction to amp modelers to (of course!) mix automation :)

Take this from a guy who used to edit songs by cutting two-inch tape with a razor blade and piecing it back together: the ability to express oneself, or assist other people in expressing themselves, has never been more in reach in terms of equipment availability, budget, or ability to understand. We truly are living in the future, and I hope you're all having a blast.

i was a dj that liked all the old uncool stuff. which at that point was a few years old. So i wanted to learn how to make my own old sounding jungle and triphop. little did i know that I wouldnt really ever release shit and keep doing it for 20+ years

Apologies in advance for the novel!

I'm a little late to the party here, but here is my story. Nothing too glamorous, and admittedly I'm still very much an amateur.

In high school, I wanted to be in band. Always loved music, loved listening to it and wanted to make it. Unfortunately I came from a pretty poor household and we couldn't afford an instrument.

Five years ago (wow, it's already been five years?!) I decided "hey I'm making decent money now, maybe it's time to learn to play something." So I went to my local music store knowing NOTHING about how to actually play an instrument. But I decided to walk around and see if something called out to me.

I walk by the keyboards section, which is having a pretty slow day, and one of the guys there is just rocking out on this Korg Minilogue. It sounded phenomenal, and I just knew the synthesizer was for me. Admittedly up until that point, if you happened to ask me what a synthesizer was, I would have just said something like "it's a fancy electric piano." Yeah...real informed decision there. But I left with a lighter wallet and a brand new synthesizer.

Well, having a synthesizer is nice, but it's not conducive to making a full song, especially if you know little about making music, but at this point I am just devouring all of the synth YouTube content I can find, and stumble onto the wonderful world of grooveboxes.

"Wow, I can make full songs on a little box that I can just take with me? Sign me up!" Now, in case you don't know, my background is in tech. As such this scratched two itches for me, which are my love of music and my equally strong love of gadgets and gizmos. I may or may not occasionally be referred to as the little mermaid by my friends.

So I went down that rabbit hole. Mind you, at this point I still BARELY know anything about actually making music, and do I really have to learn about chords and scales? Where's the fun in that. So I took the "more dollars than sense" approach and tried to supplement my lack of skill with more gear. Spoiler alert: it didn't work.

Eventually I decided "I've got way too much gear and nothing to really show for it, and that needs to change." I went through all my gear and decided "this fills a practical use case, and this does not," and sold anything in the latter category. It was a huge relief.

Around that time I also ended up signing up for a couple online courses on music production, like Andrew Huang's on that site that used to be called Monthly. It wasn't bad...helped me get a better idea of how to think about music production overall, and I finally forced myself to put out my first track. It wasn't particularly good, and I've only officially released one song since then, but I'm still slightly proud of it.

Since then I've only ever officially released one other track and have worked on others off and on. I have no visions of making a career out of it, but I enjoy having fun and just noodling something out. Maybe I'll release more, maybe not, but at the end of the day I'm at a point where I enjoy what I'm doing with it all.

In regard to what made it all click for me - I naturally fell into the technical aspects of it (like how MIDI works, how to use a mixer, etc), due to the fact that I troubleshoot tech for a living and that felt like an extension. As for the more musical parts, I think what really did it for me was learning that musical inspiration is exactly that - inspiration. It doesn't have to follow a specific formula. You can start from complete randomness, and if you like it, great. If you don't, you can always build up from there or start again.

honestly, i just wanted to make stuff like my favorite video games. i believe my very beginning was flipping midis on onlinesequencer in 2013/2014, then shortly after i moved to making music in a SUPER niche software by my favorite game developer called "Bosca Ceoil". i spent a few years learning composition and pattern arrangement in there and then stepped into LMMS as my first DAW. i learned automation and basic sound design and samplework in LMMS, then finally stepped into FL Studio where i still work. FL taught me mixing, mastering, and higher level sound design. Now, I'm still learning complex arrangement for electronic genres, but I'd say I feel like I can make just about anything I can think of on a whim, so I'm trying to broaden my horizons and learn what some of the things I can't yet do are. I struggle a lot with light rock production, I've noticed, for instance. So, no, there was no click for me. It was a continuous and extremely gradual learning curve that brought me to where I am. I think my process is a very solid way to learn music production, though, as coincidental and all-over-the-place as it is.