Finally ready to start, but...where?

[Kyro]

I joined this community a long time ago with the intent to get into making music, but the sheer burden of knowledge overwhelmed me and I cast my hopes aside. Nearly a year later, I've finally gotten the motivation to start, but I'm still unsure of how to do so. I've looked at various tutorials and "getting started" threads here but it's all French to me.

I have Ableton, a ton of samples that generous musicians uploaded for starters, various free VSTs and VSTis that were recommended in another thread, and a Mini MPK, so I think that I have at least the basic supplies and resources necessary. I have an idea of the kind of music that I'd like to make, too - I'm really into House, though I love Drum n Bass as well, and I have interest in some harder stuff as well. My inspirations include Elliptisoar and EHT, if that helps. I don't expect to sound anything like them any time soon, though; right now I'm concerned with the basics.

I suppose the main issue is that I have no idea what a lot of the terms that people throw around mean. Reverb, compression, oscillators, oh my...I'm fairly lost in general, really. I've started reading Ableton's manual and I've watched a few lessons that people in the community have uploaded but everything's really jumbled in my head.

So I suppose what I want to know is, aside from reading the manual, where do I begin? what should I know, What should I read, what should I experiment with before diving right in? I apologize if my questions seem too broad, but I suppose you can take that as a testament to how little I actually know.

Regards, a hopeful musician.

[Lavender_Harmony]

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1369

[Kyro]

Yes, I've checked that out quite a bit, but there's quite a bit of important information that it skips or lacks. It explains how to do things but not what they are.

[Freewave]

Yeah you'll need to be more specific if you want specific help. If it's general definitons you still should be able to get help on wikipedia, google, or youtube. A lot of that is stuff you should be able to search and understand for yourself.

If you're having a hard time understanding some terms this
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/TheScient ... ic_effects
might help a bit (more about effects from pedals than from an electronic pov but still should be applicable) with questions on reverb, etc

If you wanna know more about genres
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/TheScient ... te_box_set
or synth vst's
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/TheScient ... vst_synths
I have a few more lists to help out that i can pass along.

Again biggest is with docs is you will still have to do a LOT of reading, comprehension, and asking questions on what you don't understand. Just prepare yourself for a lot of work.

[Kyro]

I'm willing to put a lot of time and work into this. There's a lot of knowledge to soak in, I know, but I don't know how to order it in a way that makes sense to me. I've started by reading Ableton's manual and, by Kyoga's suggestion, researching MIDI and how it works. That first link that you posted certainly looks helpful, and I love that it gives examples of what it describes.

[Freewave]

Absolutely i think the key thing with teaching people to do anything is to show and not tell. Makes understanding a lot easier to comprehend it that way.

[Lavender_Harmony]

Honestly the best advice I can give in this case is to ditch the manual and just dive right in. Click things until something happens.

The best newbie tutorials for people who have never done this are ones that teach you a 1:1 recreation, they preview a short loop, then walk you through step by step how to make said loop. If you can find one of those for Ableton on YouTube or other tutorial sites, do that. Once you've created that loop, you'll want to change something in it, changes the notes, the drum pattern, and start being creative.

[itroitnyah]

Hold up, man. Before you even THINK about touching the software and hardware that you have, BEFORE you even decide to give it a shot, Learn music theory. And lots of it. Music theory is one of the most essential components to music making, that even if you had top notch software and hardware and knew how to use it, your music would still sound like shit without the knowledge of music theory. If you already know music theory, I applaud you in knowing it before you start. Many people, myself included, jump into music production without learning music theory, and their music has absolutely no melody or harmonics at all. Something that I am still paying for, in some aspects. If you need to learn music theory, you can use musictheory.net to learn it quickly. The stuff you really need to learn is scales, chords, and diatonic triads, but everything before cadences is pretty good to know too.

Learn what everything in the synths you're using does. I'm assuming you're going to be using NI Massive, so look for in depth tutorials on it. Although, if you could find one I would be astounded. Search for specific parts of massive. Like, "what does resonance do" if you don't know what that does.

Find people who are willing to help you out with this. This thread is a great place to find helpful people.

Don't give up hope because something seems complicated. Take a deep breath, and experiment around until you get the results you want. If you can't, come here and ask. This forum is incredibly helpful.

Don't rush yourself on a piece of work. Even if it you've been working on a piece for a month and still aren't finished, don't just throw small things in and call it done. Make it good when you're finished.

[Kyro]

Music theory was one of the parts that got to me when I tried to get into music a year ago. It's a huge burden of knowledge in itself. Luckily, I've retained a lot of what I learned about it, though it wouldn't help to refresh myself on the basics and move on to the stuff that I gave up on. Thanks for the link!