Don't know where to begin...

[Sinn Ick]

First of all I'm in clAss ATM on a iPod, so sorry for spelling. Anyway I was wOndering where to start for my song (dubstep/electro) do I use loops, all my own stuff Or what? I tried tutorials but none of them really were able to teach me anything about the Positioning of the notes or how to make them sound good and get gOod ruthum any help would be awesome,thanks

[Guestex]

What I usually do for anything dance related is I break the song down into different parts: drums, (sub)bass, lead synth, background, other percussion, sound effects, etc. Break it up into as many groups as possible and you'll find yourself making a much more complete song.
For note placement, look up a piano tutorial and learn some piano theory. This will help you learn where to place the notes and make them sound cool.
For instance, there is two main scales, major and minor, the first sounding happy (to most) and the latter sounding darker/sadder. Their patterns are (WS stands for whole step, HS stands for half step) WS-WS-HS-WS-WS-WS-HS and WS-HS-WS-WS-HS-WS-WS respectively (a whole step is moving two keys up and a half step is moving only one key. Black keys count as keys, moving from one white key to another white key when there is no black key in the middle is considered a half step because you are only moving one note)
The theory goes on and on. Basically the more you know, the easier it will become to learn where to place notes and how to make chords, etc.
It doesn't matter if you use loops or your own stuff. What I do sometimes is make my own loops and then use those.
Also, you need a program to make music. I don't know if you have one, but the most known ones are FL Studios (also known as Fruity Loops), Garageband (which comes with most Macs), Ableton (for more advanced musicians, Logic.. the list goes on and on.
Sorry I gotta go to class What I can say is learn how the notes work before anything else. search youtube for music theory or piano lessons, skip around for something you don't know.
Hope it helps!

[Guestex]

Ok back; one thing I wanted to add was that if you have no DAW already, you can start with a free one such as LMMS.
Here's a tutorial on how to use it. Most DAW's come with experience, so download it and play around with it!
http://mylittleremix.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1267
Here's a link to where to download it: http://lmms.sourceforge.net/

Have fun!

[Lavender_Harmony]

Alright. First of all, if you have no software, that's going to be your first point of concert. What sort of music do you want to make? Do you always want to make electronic, or will you want to delve into other genres further down the line?

Your options are pretty clear, where theres the lesser feature-rich things like LMMS and such, but you have a lot of choice. Reason Essentials is very well priced, and you get enough with it to get you started, covering a decent amount of genres. There are also the 'lite' versions of software such as FL Studio and Live, but these tend to be very limited as to what you can do, and definitely don't come with as much stuff. I started using Reason, and it was a great introduction to the world of music production.

After that, there is the point of knowing what to do, what notes to place in your sequencer and so forth. Experimentation will only get you so far, but there are plenty resources for learning. I highly encourage that you learn at least the very basics of music theory, so that things like scales, chords, tonality, harmony, rhythm and timbre make sense to you, and the impact on your music will be much more prominent if you put the effort in to learn this stuff. Even if you disagree, you will end up learning it one way or another, whether you do it consciously via the web or books, or through other means, ie trial and error. The latter will take longer too.

As for the actual production side, that is something I would come back to. If you get caught up in the whole concept of mixing and electronic production early on, you are going to end up frustrated and not want to continue. You want to avoid this frustration, so get yourself some tools, get some theory in you and get creative. Don't worry about standards or other peoples music, set your own goals and achieve them yourself.

Finally, read this. Whenever you feel sad or down about your music, remember it, even come back and remind yourself. Remember, what you create is unique to you, no matter if it doesn't sound as 'professional' or 'heavy' or 'omg' as other peoples, the fact is, it is music that you have made. Be proud of that.

[Guestex]

^Me gusta

[Habanc]

Ira Glass' quote is truly priceless.

Anyways, what I'd say is to NOT do what I did. I tried to figure out notes and chords by ear, and that took forever. I was really getting nowhere, and frustrated rather quickly. Then, a few months back, I decided to spend a week and a half away from the actual production of music and spend it learning the essentials of music theory.

It's really like eating cardboard, and definitely not as much fun as making beeps and boops on your computer, but it allows things to become much more efficient and well-done. Soon, you'll know what goes well with what, what not to do, and when you DO experiment, you know what to rule out (Setting the pitch down/up by 1500 cents isn't gonna work, often).

Coming back, it's easier to get the ball rolling on actually making the music so I can focus more on the technical aspects such as mixing and mastering, and how stuff such as gates and compressors work... Stuff that I am still not great at.

The hard part about making electronic music is that the digital medium requires two skillsets. It requires both a knowledge of musical structure, and a knowledge of how the technology works to create music in a digital medium. Not only do you have to be able to have everything play pretty, but you have to adjust it all to new parameters that simply don't exist in the real world (i.e. Clipping).

I'd follow Lavender's advice. Although, I would first take a week and experiement with whatever program you'll use (LMMS, Reason, FL Studio) to make sure you WANT to make music. If that's the case, then go along and study up on music theory, then work on making music.