* Music production on the PC can be really cheap, almost for free, but it can be really overwhelming and hard to figure out where to start.
* The hardware synth (dawless) route can be a deep rabbit hole leading to GAS (gear aquisition syndrome). Resist.
* Music is more about intervals, the distances between notes, than about the notes themselves. Let this sink in.
* If I were to only buy one piece of gear at all, I'd buy the Synthstrom Deluge. Really immediate, easy to get into and still deep and powerful. This the device you want.
* If the Deluge is out of your budget, get a used Novation Circuit on Craigslist.
* The limitations hardware synths have, can be a challenge sparking creativity. Embrace the limitations.
* Layers.
* Don't fill up all the space. Deliberately leave some room.
* Record everything.
* There are no wrong notes. There is only tension and release. Tension can be good. It is interesting. Learn to build tension and how to release it. Practice.
* Don't overthink it. Practice. Better to knock out a bunch of shitty or mediocre tracks than thinking about that one smash hit you never make.
* Modular is a money grave. VCVRack is for free. Omri Cohen is your best friend in this realm. Bespoke synth gives you even more freedom.
* Music theory is helpful if you understand that it is only a lighthouse. You can still go whereever you want.
After deciding on a DAW, IMO the first pieces of gear worth investing in are decent studio monitors and headphones. Nothing helped more to improve my music than being able to hear it properly.
This is excellent advice. I'm still learning, however the closest thing to "learning music" is "learning programming" in the sense that, at least for me, the way I learned programming was to just immerse myself in it. Let curiosity drive me but try to have some goals.
However in the beginning no one knows what their goals really are, and that learning curve is really brutal for programming and music is the only other thing that I've done that has an equivalent feeling of "I suck at this" until it just "clicks" and then you're over the hump and now you can at least understand the map of the territory vs not even know how to navigate the map. Similarly to programming, it can feel like you're in a submarine of thousands of buttons not knowing which to push for what to do whatever.
I hit my stride learning programming when I tried to build stuff instead of just follow tutorials or books. I think Music or really anything is quite the same; you just have to align motivation and discipline with experimentation. Easier said than done of course.
Besides that, I highly echo the tone of constraints that jsilence made. Leverage constraints so you narrow your field of focus to learn the fundamentals and you'll naturally grow out of the "fog of war" so to speak without overwhelming yourself, plus it'll feel rewarding working within a area of constraint. For example:
1. Pick Ableton Live - it's a great DAW for both live music and recording. They really upped their game with the last update to 11 and their overall UI is very well designed in mind of all archetypes of musicianship.
2. Use stock Ableton plugins for everything as your primary constraint. A lot of people go yak shaving on plugins similarly to text editors and language wars in programming. The stock plugins are extremely high quality and anyone dismisinng them probably doesn't know what they're talking about and just drinking the cool-aid. Side note: you'll hear extremely conflicting ways to accomplish things in Music because it has many ways to reach a conclusion similar to code.
3. Focus on a particular genre of music that you like so you can have fun and enjoy it. It's really important to try to just have fun - it helps get 'in the flow' but also be mindful of 'experimenting without getting anything done' force yourself to 'finish a track' even if it's just a 4/4 beat over 64 bars with 2 unique loops of 4 bars. Those types of 'configurations' can really make you grow quick in my opinion.
4. Most importantly as also jsilence pointed out, and I only recently really digested the significance of this: music is all about the in-between, the space, the pause which gives life to the "pulse" and if you understand three things: 1. Pulse 2. What is different 3. What is similar then you will understand all music.
tl;dr in the beginning it's okay to suck, embrace it and have fun with some constraints. Avoid overwhelming yourself with yak-shaving. The pulse is everything.
jsilence|3 years ago
* Music production on the PC can be really cheap, almost for free, but it can be really overwhelming and hard to figure out where to start.
* The hardware synth (dawless) route can be a deep rabbit hole leading to GAS (gear aquisition syndrome). Resist.
* Music is more about intervals, the distances between notes, than about the notes themselves. Let this sink in.
* If I were to only buy one piece of gear at all, I'd buy the Synthstrom Deluge. Really immediate, easy to get into and still deep and powerful. This the device you want.
* If the Deluge is out of your budget, get a used Novation Circuit on Craigslist.
* The limitations hardware synths have, can be a challenge sparking creativity. Embrace the limitations.
* Layers.
* Don't fill up all the space. Deliberately leave some room.
* Record everything.
* There are no wrong notes. There is only tension and release. Tension can be good. It is interesting. Learn to build tension and how to release it. Practice.
* Don't overthink it. Practice. Better to knock out a bunch of shitty or mediocre tracks than thinking about that one smash hit you never make.
* Modular is a money grave. VCVRack is for free. Omri Cohen is your best friend in this realm. Bespoke synth gives you even more freedom.
* Music theory is helpful if you understand that it is only a lighthouse. You can still go whereever you want.
* Start here if you are a computer nerd: https://eev.ee/blog/2016/09/15/music-theory-for-nerds/
* Start here if you are afraid of Music theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoeHDN2FVTc
random_moonwalk|3 years ago
trendoid|3 years ago
pyinstallwoes|3 years ago
However in the beginning no one knows what their goals really are, and that learning curve is really brutal for programming and music is the only other thing that I've done that has an equivalent feeling of "I suck at this" until it just "clicks" and then you're over the hump and now you can at least understand the map of the territory vs not even know how to navigate the map. Similarly to programming, it can feel like you're in a submarine of thousands of buttons not knowing which to push for what to do whatever.
I hit my stride learning programming when I tried to build stuff instead of just follow tutorials or books. I think Music or really anything is quite the same; you just have to align motivation and discipline with experimentation. Easier said than done of course.
Besides that, I highly echo the tone of constraints that jsilence made. Leverage constraints so you narrow your field of focus to learn the fundamentals and you'll naturally grow out of the "fog of war" so to speak without overwhelming yourself, plus it'll feel rewarding working within a area of constraint. For example:
1. Pick Ableton Live - it's a great DAW for both live music and recording. They really upped their game with the last update to 11 and their overall UI is very well designed in mind of all archetypes of musicianship.
2. Use stock Ableton plugins for everything as your primary constraint. A lot of people go yak shaving on plugins similarly to text editors and language wars in programming. The stock plugins are extremely high quality and anyone dismisinng them probably doesn't know what they're talking about and just drinking the cool-aid. Side note: you'll hear extremely conflicting ways to accomplish things in Music because it has many ways to reach a conclusion similar to code.
3. Focus on a particular genre of music that you like so you can have fun and enjoy it. It's really important to try to just have fun - it helps get 'in the flow' but also be mindful of 'experimenting without getting anything done' force yourself to 'finish a track' even if it's just a 4/4 beat over 64 bars with 2 unique loops of 4 bars. Those types of 'configurations' can really make you grow quick in my opinion.
4. Most importantly as also jsilence pointed out, and I only recently really digested the significance of this: music is all about the in-between, the space, the pause which gives life to the "pulse" and if you understand three things: 1. Pulse 2. What is different 3. What is similar then you will understand all music.
tl;dr in the beginning it's okay to suck, embrace it and have fun with some constraints. Avoid overwhelming yourself with yak-shaving. The pulse is everything.