[HN Gopher] Get started making music
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Get started making music
Author : prhrb
Score : 250 points
Date : 2023-05-14 06:28 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (learningmusic.ableton.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (learningmusic.ableton.com)
| evo_9 wrote:
| 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.
| eweise wrote:
| Ableton is really expensive. Logic is just as good if not better,
| and much cheaper.
| pacomerh wrote:
| Ableton is really good for live performance though. I don't
| know about Logic but the session view in Ableton is really good
| for improvisation
| eweise wrote:
| True. They started out with different purposes and now are
| trying to incorporate each others features.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Making music is easier than ever! Making a living doing it is
| harder than ever!
| bryans wrote:
| > Making a living doing it is harder than ever!
|
| 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.
| ben_ wrote:
| You have anything to back this up? Seems like a stretch to
| say a weekend of training is all it takes
| viraptor wrote:
| 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?)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| robotnikman wrote:
| As someone who wants to start doing some music as a hobby but has
| 0 experience with how music works, this is very helpful and
| informative!
| mattchamb wrote:
| I just started learning guitar at 34 with absolutely no musical
| experience, and it's such an amazing new world to learn.
| fat-chunk wrote:
| 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! :)
| williamcotton wrote:
| I've been playing guitar for almost 30 years and it never
| stops being an amazing world to learn! It is endless!
| nrjames wrote:
| I just started at age 49 and I'm loving it! I'm focusing on
| fingerstyle acoustic, which I've always loved.
| ksenzee wrote:
| 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.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| For those interested in getting started, Knobcloud.com has cheap
| Ableton Live intro licenses. vital.audio is a super cool
| free(ish) virtual synthesizer, https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-
| symphony-orchestra-discove... is a free virtual symphony
| orchestra. If you just use your basic PC built in sound, you will
| also need to install ASIO4All ASIO drivers to reduce latency. I
| wish I was a kid today the tools as so amazing, instead I spent
| my youth learning the make DX7 patches which to be fair did
| prepare me for the pain of being a Microsoft stack developer in
| the 1990s.
| bsaul wrote:
| 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 ?
| eweise wrote:
| 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.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _However, a part of me wonder how much we lost in the
| process_
|
| A lot. But those born into the new era wont even know what we
| lost, and those born before will be dismissed as "boomers".
| breakfastduck wrote:
| 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.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| 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.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| 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.
| fat-chunk wrote:
| 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
| s-xyz wrote:
| Great tutorial and design
| cmsefton wrote:
| Previous discussions:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14299628
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965386
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29055433
| reducesuffering wrote:
| For a bit of inspiration after, here's Kygo's breakdown on pro
| production https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCe-6UprFGo
| munificent wrote:
| 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 love it so much.
| IKLOL wrote:
| [dead]
| musicam wrote:
| 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:
|
| 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.
| superchroma wrote:
| 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.
| comet-engine wrote:
| [dead]
| westernaccess wrote:
| i wish their native ui/ux matched this level of design
|
| side note: is there any DAW that supports realtime collaboration?
| ijustlurk wrote:
| 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.
| zoogeny wrote:
| 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.
|
| 1. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/how-to-draw-an-owl
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Any open source tools for this?
| coldtea wrote:
| Some "wannabe" ones, nothing to write home about compared to
| the quality, scope, and stability of the commercial (even the
| free commercial version) offerings.
| Jach wrote:
| 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.
| roblh wrote:
| 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.
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| [dead]
| Blackthorn wrote:
| It's worth it to pay $60 for a Reaper license after using the
| trial version. The amount you get for what you pay is
| astounding.
| viraptor wrote:
| FTR, Reaper is not open source. (But agree it's ridiculously
| good value and I recommend as well)
| squidsoup wrote:
| 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.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Zrythm is on the comeup.
| input_sh wrote:
| 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).
| Blackthorn wrote:
| 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.
| efields wrote:
| 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.
| filoleg wrote:
| This is fantastic, thank you for sharing!
|
| 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.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.0077.
| ..
| murphm8 wrote:
| For anyone who is interested in structured learning around
| the idea of listening and reproducing, I suggest Audible
| Genius Building Blocks[1].
|
| [1] https://www.audiblegenius.com/buildingblocks
| agmand wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0] https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2023/building-the-amen-
| break/
| fat-chunk wrote:
| If anyone is looking for a low-barrier-to-entry start to making
| music, I'd recommend they check out https://audiotool.com
|
| Completely free, but very deep and powerful browser-based cloud
| music production software, with a tight-knit encouraging
| community built around it.
| erwinh wrote:
| Love what the team over there does with these web demos. They
| previously made this amazing interactive synthesizer learning
| resource: https://learningsynths.ableton.com/
| efields wrote:
| This one is also so good!
| javajosh wrote:
| 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.
| courseofaction wrote:
| 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.
| musicam wrote:
| 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.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Yeah, I wasted years sorta playing guitar and sorta fucking
| around with the computer.
|
| 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.
| askafriend wrote:
| It sounds like you just didn't like playing guitar?
|
| I much prefer playing guitar to piano or a choir.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| That was probably it too. I'm more wired for classical
| music, but I had to try to look cool in my 20s.
|
| I had discovered that music was one of my few interests
| that I could actually trade for social credit.
| superb-owl wrote:
| 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.
| davidy123 wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylXWTN1XTtI
| antipotoad wrote:
| It doesn't have to mean anything. Music is pure pleasure.
| Vibrations in the air that tickle our brains just so.
| davidy123 wrote:
| 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.
| mirkules wrote:
| 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.
| Animats wrote:
| Melody? What's that?
| marricks wrote:
| 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.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _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.
| sgustard wrote:
| This seems to ignore the phenomenon of people paying to sit
| in a parking lot outside a Taylor Swift concert?
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2023/05/15/taylor-
| swift...
| gabereiser wrote:
| 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.
| vlunkr wrote:
| 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.
| rodgerd wrote:
| > 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?
|
| [1] An enjoyable documentary:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrecking_Crew_(2008_film)
| Blackthorn wrote:
| > Before the radio a piano was a household staple
|
| 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!
| viraptor wrote:
| 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).
| marricks wrote:
| Half of households had a piano:
|
| https://daily.jstor.org/what-player-pianos-meant-to-
| american...
|
| So... good point it was middle class status symbol. My real
| point was music creation was more a part of people's daily
| lives.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| 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?
| Blackthorn wrote:
| 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.
| ilkke wrote:
| 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]
|
| [0]https://dirtywave.com/
| cwillu wrote:
| A fantastic blend of salesmanship and freedom from ethics?
|
| "This is a preorder. Estimated starting ship date is July 2023.
| Thank you for your patience and understanding."
| Applejinx wrote:
| Patience not necessary. Renoise. https://www.renoise.com/
|
| A terrific modern tracker, runs on Win/OSX/Linux. Renoise is
| wonderful.
| Mizoguchi wrote:
| Don't forget The Manual
|
| 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.
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