How did you get into making music?

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Pretty self explanatory. Just give a story about how you got into music, it can be as long or short as you like, but go into some detail at least.

I'll start.

It was about 2 and a half or 3 years ago when I started getting into Electronic Music through the mlp fandom. Back then I was like "woh poni musec wow" and listened to a whole bunch of it. Of course, I wasn't really inspired to do music because of that. I actually got on the path wanting to pick up a Gameboy and LSDJ after hearing this (although on reflection, it's not very chiptuney).

So I heard that the guy who made it used FL Studio. And after some research, I began straying away from the idea of doing Chiptune altogether, and instead (logically) decided that I wanted to be Alex S. What a smart lil' cookie I was! And that lead me to researching Ableton a little,. Of course I was still thinking of getting FL, so I made a little pros and cons list. I think one of the pros for Ableton was that Skrillex uses it. I was dumb, okay? Mostly because I was too stupid to maybe find a manual online to learn how to switch to Arrangement mode.

So after thinking Ableton was too hard, and hearing that FL was easier, I started saving up for FL Studio, ordered it through a local musical supply shop and promptly got confused by it too. BUT it was less confusing than Ableton was. So I learnt that and started writing music that I don't like to speak of anymore (some of you may remember that I showed up in Remix War 5 way back when. I kinda hope you don't).

So here I am, 2 years and a bit later. I'm still a bit confused.

[itroitnyah]

I was listening to Skrillex and Alex S and decided that's what I wanted to do. What they were doing.

[CitricAcid]

Well I've played music since I was 5 or 6 I think, piano specifically. I didn't actually get into creating music until 1999 2001; at least I'm pretty sure that's the year, since I have vague memories of writing that date on my first piece of music. It's tough to say what inspired me. I think I got bored over summer break, realized that we had blank score paper in the piano bench, and figured, "Why not?" But that's how I got into composition. I got into music production in 2005 or so when I got my own copy of Finale. Initially it was just a way of making nice looking sheet music, but I eventually discovered that I could download free soundfonts to use in Finale to make cool sounds. I didn't get a proper sequencer (Cubase) until 2011.

SUPER LATE EDIT: I found my first piece of music the other day, and it was dated 2001, not 1999. Fixed.

[ExoBassTix]

Besides that I think this doesn't fit in the Music Discussion section (but you're not alone in that), nice idea.

I got into making music by coincidence. I found some program online (Mixcraft) and got myself an installer, and started playing around for the sake of playing around, as in, giggle giggle look at me making teh muziks.
I was happy when I saw a collection of Drum 'N' Bass loops, as that was a genre I liked quite a lot at the time. So I made my first track, Midnight Pursuit. Just loops. But I was so happy nonetheless. I knew I loved music to pieces (and that never changed), that I would be able to share my love and creativity with the world in the form of music.

[FLAOFEI]

So I was listening to the radio one day and thought "Oh god! What is this shit!?!? These ppl earn millions? On something this repetitive? I could do better!!!", aaand then I wished for FL studio for my birthday, cause I had heard so much about it on youtube (I never even checked the other ones :I )
As it turned out, I was wrong! I could not do better than the people on the radio... after 2 years the "tracks" I put up on youtube had at most 50 views :I (not counting a Mayhem "remix"... but still). I have no idea why I don't just set them as private videos so I don't have to be ashamed of them any more...

Well, that's not the full story. Having taken drum lessons since age 5, having a bunch of "musical" toys as a kid, generally having music around me most of the time as a kid helped to... And I had discovered Renard, so I finally understood that mortals can make music to :I

Even though I sucked crazy bad I still had fun doing it, so I continued :) And here I am today! A whole lot better than when I started, I started at skill level -1000 though... so "a whole lot better"... you get it...

[Magnitude Zero]

It wasn't really a decision that I made. I had a pirated copy of FL Studio on my computer that I'd been dicking around with once every few months for a couple years. Christmas 2012 I got a MIDI keyboard (which I still have and use extensively) and started dicking around more consistently.

One day I decided to make a song because why not (I had a basic grasp on FL Studio from all my dicking around by this point), and decided to show a few friends from the BronyState Pinkie Pie room how bad I was. They ended up actually kinda liking it, so I kept going and made a few more songs. Like I said, it wasn't really a conscious decision, it was just something that I started doing and slowly got more and more into it.

[ClaviSound]

On my old YouTube channel I played around with Mario Paint Composer sometimes, and occasionally recorded my piano, but when I entered the fandom I switched to vocals for whatever reason. First it was doing song ponification, then I moved to rap. Not sure how else to explain it honestly, I just kind of do things until I get good at them.

[CaptainFluffatun]

In middle school, I picked up guitar thinking I'd get chicks but hate guitar. Now I have no chicks and love guitar. Then in like my sophomore year of high school I started getting really into orchestral music. The year after, I found Makkon's work, and thought to myself "hey, *I* could do this!"

And here I am a few years later.

[simonli2575]

One day my friend introduced to me the MLP fandom while I was browsing KYM, so I decided to watch the video below.

The track by Skrillex at the end was what got me into Brostep and somehow I had the idea that I wanted to make my own music. Pirating FL Studio and Massive was a start, but I never managed to produce anything until I made a DnB track using nothing but dry samples.

[HMage]

It was year 2004 or so, had a job of a studio mixing engineer — ability to go back and re-do this and that is so part of that life that I started wondering what kinds of reflexes and values people that perform live have, because they just can't "go back in time" and fix the flaw. So I started learning how to DJ.

In less than a year I started wondering if I can make music for my DJ sets — didn't want to be "just" a DJ, so started learning how to make music. Without any musician's education, this was, and is, hard. Some things didn't click until I've read a well-written explanation — most 'learn to music' books went so over my head I didn't get anything useful out of them. I still struggle, because I don't want to do music 'just randomly hit notes and see if it works'. My audio engineering's life knocked into me that you need to know what you want to do before you even do that.

I definitely don't have the talent, but I want to compensate that with knowledge, skill and experience. So, here I am.

[Injustrial]

Around June last year, I finally decided to start learning a DAW. I got the demo version of FL and started with youtube tutorials. Up until then, I had sorta frowned upon FL (completely unwarranted) because of its past. Back in the 90's, I had a pirate version with nothing but presets and samples, and I viewed it as good at making music as Eejay. I tried doing some stuff in Reason around 8 years ago, but had to let it go, since the learning curve was so tremendously high.

I picked up a few rumors that people like Tombstone was using FL. And I though, if he's able to make these amazingly cool songs with FL, I should be able to knock something out.

As to why I decided to start making brony music: I saw all these amateur hobby musicians cropping up in the fandom, but no Aggrotech or Industrial. Decided to fill the gap XD
Also, I've been slightly obsessed with this thing for a while now, so the show and fandom provide a great deal of inspiration for lyrics and settings.

I've got no education or training, and I've only done this for 6 months now. But it's getting better IMO. I hope to be able to make something I'm really proud of later, but I'm still going to keep this as a pure hobby.

[Conduit]

Started with guitar back when I was in like grade 7 because I thought it would make me cool or something. It didn't, but I kept playing because it was fun. Around two years ago I started looking for ways to record, and found that Soundcloud was giving away copies of Ableton Lite. After playing around with that for a bit I found Makkon's stuff, and realized I could do that in Ableton. I've been producing ever since, and picked up cello and piano along the way.

[GCKrastin]

I guess it kinda goes back to when I actually discovered electronic music as a whole. I was watching this video (being a large TrackMania fan at the time) and fell in love with the background song. After a month or so I started getting familiar with Noisia and other dnb and dubstep artists and decided that's what I wanted to do. Fast forward a year and I started producing super terrible house music with LMMS and some drum samples and acid bass presets I found.

Around November-ish 2012 I finally bought FL Studio, and actually started producing drum and bass like I wanted to. I still had no clue what I was doing until around the time R&R came out. (One Last Shot featured the first two tracks I was actually proud of)
Even now after almost two years I don't have any idea what I'm doing, I just mash buttons until nice things (or not so nice things) come out my headphones.

[ph00tbag]

I started out playing the Clarinet in middle school in 1998. I eventually switched to percussion because the middle school band had no percussionist, and I wanted to fuck some shit up with some huge-ass mallets. I kept with it, playing percussion for the band and orchestra (and being the timpani specialist in both areas), and playing the drums for Jazz Band. I also was in some extracurricular chorus groups and performed in the school musicals. Most of my understanding of theory comes from this background.

Sometime around freshman year, early 2001, I started writing little tunes in Melody Assistant, often with a bit of a trance bent, since a friend of mine had recently introduced me to BT, and I really liked his stuff. I eventually upgraded to FruityLoops (because it was still called that at that point) by about junior or senior year.

[Berri]

one day i was bored. so i went onto my dads computer and started messing around on logic. thats pretty much it :/

[Freewave]

I've always had a weird relationship with music i really didn't get INTO music until the end of high school and then it was going to nightclubs and discovering retro new wave, industrial, and edm in college an after that it really consumed my life. I worked at a used cd store for awhile, began dj'ing at home (eventually in a few clubs), and collected music (mostly hitting other used cd shops). When the napster revolution hit it allowed me to get even more varied music, i started blogging, got into live concert trading for a few years, and then making a lot of lists based on my music exploration.

So I guess I started MAKING music because its one of the things i hadn't tried yet with music, it was possible to do cool new things, it felt more involved then just listening to it, and it quickly became something i could do that was creative and time consuming. I made a plethera of music as thescientist for about a year and none of it was especially good because my production skills were rather non-existent but a few people really thought they were different and good in their own way at the time. Like most people you feel glad you attempted this older material even if you cringe at the quality of former work.

But i liked making music based around genres, concepts, techniques, and themes and MLP really inspired me to feel even more inspired, optimistic, and be part of a bigger community. It was really amazing seeing what other people were doing in their free time. It taught me how to make better music, have it listened by a larger audience, and be part of something larger then before. So I've been doing that for over 2 years while changing up the genres and styles from track to track, like i did before, and trying to do things for the community like bmd+fimm. I guess I'm going to keep doing it until i truly run out of juice, i no longer recognize the community, or real life makes it imperative that i stop or seriously lower my involvement.

[Docinterlude]

I got into music, firstly because I wanted to be a composer and pianist. When I first composed my first song when I was 12, my teacher said "this isn't bad, just keep going on and on until you get something even better" So I did. I started learning musical theory at conservatory, studying rhythyms, history and all sorts of things and now I'm doing a job to myself too, which I study by the book, searching and learning stuff as I go on with the conservatory.

I try to look better in every aspect, although I don't want to boast or brag anything like that at all. I just want to cover myself so I can do something decent for me that I enjoy and so other people enjoy too. I ended up being in the brony community. I don't compete with other musicians because that is stupid in a way. We all have diferent styles and sets and we all have personal choices.

Mine goes straight with orchestral, classical, piano and mostly european orchestra, so the suited VST's for me are VSL (Vienna Symphonic Library) of course, the sound is pristine, sexy and gorgeous and rather unnatural (razz)
I don't care if it is expensive as hell, I just want to have it.

I like Hollywood sound but I think it doesn't fit my style and my needs anywhere in the future, although I aim to be a cartoony composer and film score composer.

[TheAirHideous]

My musical adventure starts when I was about 4. I grew up listening to my dad and my sister playing lots of Bengali music with harmoniums and singing and what have you. I immediately decided that this was not what I wanted to do.

Snap to when I was around 9, my dad bought a keyboard for no reason. I started messing around with it, and eventually I started having music lessons. Then they got cut off when I was 11 cos I had to study for an entrance exam.

So then I hit 13 and I started going to lessons again. Then I realised; playing other people's music is cool and all, but what about making it? That'd be reaaaaallllyyyyyy coool.

So I do what any 13 year old does when they want to do something; look on Youtube for a tutorial. And then I was swamped with things about FL, Ableton and what have you. This was probably my first toe dip into the wonderstrange world of EDM, since most of my music knowledge at that time consisted of pop and Busted. I decided that EDM was what I wanted to do.

Now, realising that these programs cost, and not knowing how to and being too scared to torrent, I looked for freeware and found the piece of shit wonderful program known as LMMS. So I opened it up, loaded up a couple of TripleOsc presets, threw in some drum samples and made the worst song known to man. And continued to make the worst songs known to man.

Then high school life caught up with me (it does that veeerrrrryyyyy slowly when you go to an all boys school) and I just kinda stopped.

Snap to about one year and a couple of months ago whereupon I discovered MLP. Back into this world of EDM I was thrown into, but also with great rock, folk and even opera songs. I rediscovered my love for music, opened up my copy of LMMS that had been festering for 2 years, sampled the Extra Sprinkles scene and made the worst brony song known to man. Then I remixed Discord, cos you know, that's practically a meme now.

Then I discovered brony rap about 6 months back and decided again; I'm gonna rap. So I pulled out my crap PG58s and made the worst brony rap known to man. And continue to do so.

Discovering a whole load of EDM genres, I've pretty much settled to produce anything 'bouncy', cos I like dancing and want to produce music I can dance to. Of course, making other people dance is a plus.

So yeah, that's basically where I am now.

[Pulse Wave]

'Twas the year that Yes released 90125, ZZ Top released Eliminator and Eurythmics released their debut Sweet Dreams. The year that Flashdance and Scarface came out with soundtracks made by Giorgio Moroder. The year that Commodore presented the C64 and Yamaha killed the analogue synth market single-handedly with the DX7. In other words, it was long ago, and I was between first and second grade when I saw this guy play on an outrageously expensive electronic instrument, an electronic organ. And I decided, that's what I want to do, too.

One year later, I had my first own organ (that was even before home keyboards had their breakthrough) which cost about DM* 4,500. Another two and a half years later, I got my second organ, a DM 16,000 monster, which I still own today. Unfortunately, this thing aged quickly with the development of electronic instruments, and at the same time, it had been so expensive that I didn't dare ask for something new.

So it wasn't before the year that Prince named a song after that I bought my first synthesiser with my own money. I had saved enough for a second-hand but recent workstation. This thing is still in my possession, too, and I bought another one of the same kind several years later.

*Western German currency, defunct as of 01-01-2002

[Coloriot]

I've been a pianist since about age 6, so I knew a lot about music theory coming into this. About a year and a half ago, I joined this fine fandom and listened to a lot of Tombstone, Glaze, Twitch, and Silva Hound. Back then I considered all electronic music as 'dubstep', thanks to Skrillex. I wanted to learn how to make this stuff, so my dad told me he had a copy of Ableton Live 7 lying around. I used it, and in that month, produced my first three horrible songs: my He's a Pirate remix, Wonders (which is my most popular now and people still like it for some reason), and Twilight's New Book. Those songs used everything that came out of the box of Live 7, no VST's or nothing.

[Gray Ham]

I've been playing trumpet since 2005 after being inspired by Harry Angus from The Cat Empire. Then in 2011 I took a music class at high school, which of course used a really outdated version of ACID (version 3, iirc). And yeah, I started using ACID Xpress after the semester ended and my parents got my an updated version of ACID for passing my trumpet exam for that year with flying colours. I didn't listen to any electronic music back then, it was all just hip-hop, so I started off with just sampling *coughfiddlingwithloopscough*.

[Motivfs]

Listened to a lot of DnB.

Learned Camo & Krooked used FL Studios to make their music

Wanted to do what they do.

Here I am.

[iDeltaVelocity]

Used to play a guitar, bassoon, and my sister's clarinet when I was younger (I sucked big time at guitar). Listened to musicians like Skrillex, Avicii, Lindsey Stirling when I started listening to electronic music. Found out about guys like LivingTombstone, WoodenToaster, General Mumble, etc. when I joined the fandom.

Decided I wanted to try it out. Bought FL Studio.

Now here I am.

[Stuntddude]

I took piano lessons, and then I started composing things because I wanted to be Philip Glass, and then I bought FL for some stupid reason, and then I started producing music. That's pretty much my entire story.

[Facade]

bordem... no really i was bored so i downloaded the fl studio demo and got hooked lol