Layra-chan
(?)Community Member
- Posted: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 02:11:20 +0000
DON'T POST HERE, DAMNIT! Please post responses in the other thread
BASIC PRODUCTION GUIDE 0.1
Many fans of electronic music want to not just listen to, but make music. So we download some programs, and buy some hardware, and screw around with knobs and waveforms and samples and routing and all that fun stuff. And it turns out that making good music is hard.
So here, a joint work by anyone who wants to contribute, is a general guide to making, if not great music, at least pretty decent music which can potentially be turned into great music.
We also have a producer's thread where you can post your work and get specific critique and feedback from the other producers on this forum.
Disclaimer: This thread is for general guidelines and assumes you have at least some familiarity with how to use your program. How to get started on or troubleshoot a given program will not be addressed here.
Parts of Production/Table of Contents
As a producer, I tend to break production into four main parts:
Composition: Coming up with the usual melody, harmony, and rhythm, but also includes notions like use of non-melodic samples and sounds.
Sound Design: Exactly what it says on the tin, designing your instruments, both synth- and sample-based. What should that noise sound like, what kind of instrument should carry the melodic line. Choosing your drum kit.
Structure: Putting those melodies and bits into a larger design, controlling the amount of tension and energy. Something to turn the scenes built during the composition stage into a coherent, interesting narrative. Also dealing with transitions between sections and setting up expectations.
Mixing: Once you've designed all your instruments individually, you need to put them together so that they support each other instead of interfering, so that you, and more importantly the audience, can hear everything.
I'll be breaking up the process into these four pieces, even though really you ought to be doing all four roughly at the same time, interlaced.
Before you read any of the parts, take a look at this short glossary of common terms. It will help you get hold of the basic technical language used for making electronic music.
Popular music programs
Here is a list of the most popular music making programs:
FL Studio
Reason
Ableton
Sonar
Logic
Cubase
Pro-Tools
They range in price, versatility, and ease of use, but all are good. When picking which one to use, don't go for the one that everyone says is "the best", but rather try to find one that makes sense to you in terms of how to program notes, how to manipulate instruments and effects, and how to examine your track. How easily you can get the program to do what you want will be more important than how "powerful" it is.
BASIC PRODUCTION GUIDE 0.1
Many fans of electronic music want to not just listen to, but make music. So we download some programs, and buy some hardware, and screw around with knobs and waveforms and samples and routing and all that fun stuff. And it turns out that making good music is hard.
So here, a joint work by anyone who wants to contribute, is a general guide to making, if not great music, at least pretty decent music which can potentially be turned into great music.
We also have a producer's thread where you can post your work and get specific critique and feedback from the other producers on this forum.
Disclaimer: This thread is for general guidelines and assumes you have at least some familiarity with how to use your program. How to get started on or troubleshoot a given program will not be addressed here.
Parts of Production/Table of Contents
As a producer, I tend to break production into four main parts:
Composition: Coming up with the usual melody, harmony, and rhythm, but also includes notions like use of non-melodic samples and sounds.
Sound Design: Exactly what it says on the tin, designing your instruments, both synth- and sample-based. What should that noise sound like, what kind of instrument should carry the melodic line. Choosing your drum kit.
Structure: Putting those melodies and bits into a larger design, controlling the amount of tension and energy. Something to turn the scenes built during the composition stage into a coherent, interesting narrative. Also dealing with transitions between sections and setting up expectations.
Mixing: Once you've designed all your instruments individually, you need to put them together so that they support each other instead of interfering, so that you, and more importantly the audience, can hear everything.
I'll be breaking up the process into these four pieces, even though really you ought to be doing all four roughly at the same time, interlaced.
Before you read any of the parts, take a look at this short glossary of common terms. It will help you get hold of the basic technical language used for making electronic music.
Popular music programs
Here is a list of the most popular music making programs:
FL Studio
Reason
Ableton
Sonar
Logic
Cubase
Pro-Tools
They range in price, versatility, and ease of use, but all are good. When picking which one to use, don't go for the one that everyone says is "the best", but rather try to find one that makes sense to you in terms of how to program notes, how to manipulate instruments and effects, and how to examine your track. How easily you can get the program to do what you want will be more important than how "powerful" it is.