Learning Music Production

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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Negative X
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2014 11:23 pm

Learning Music Production

Post by Negative X » Sun Jun 05, 2016 8:14 am

I want to improve in music production, but after 6 months of trying to improve myself it's not working. I can't seem to teach myself through messing with the program like many people can. I know the basics of Ableton already, and I have a few tracks on Soundcloud based on what I've learnt in the past months: https://soundcloud.com/officialmakoren/tracks

What I seem to be struggling with most is bringing my ideas to life. I go to work, get this amazing idea for a track stuck in my head all shift, but when I come home and try to build it, it ends up sounding like crap since I lack the samples or sample manipulation skills in order to get the right sound. The only reason I was able to make the little psytrance track on my Soundcloud was because I grabbed a Massive patch from a YouTube video.

Just feels like I've made no progress on my own. I want to try and find a tutor or course to help me out.

Also to give you an idea of what kind of music I'm aiming for, the genres I want to focus on the most are psytrance, deep house, future bass, and trap.
Last edited by Negative X on Sun Jun 05, 2016 10:45 am, edited 2 times in total.

Stromkraft
Posts: 7033
Joined: Wed Jun 25, 2014 11:34 am

Re: Learning Music Production

Post by Stromkraft » Sun Jun 05, 2016 9:02 am

Negative X wrote:I'm gonna make this quick, since I don't have much time left on my break at work.

I want to improve in music production, but after 6 months of trying to improve myself it's not working. I can't seem to teach myself through messing with the program like many people can.

Is there any tutor or course that could be recommended?

Since different genres work differently, the genres I'm most interested in making are psytrance, deep house, future bass, and trap.
Are you attempting at finishing off something? That's a good step one. With a focus of finishing anything — be it crap, wonderful or anything in between — it then gets more clear what is important to achieve that state and what you actually must need to learn now. With so much possible to learn on the path of becoming a music producer it's important to be able to focus.

A friend of mine took up producing last summer and just released his first EP on a label last month. I'll ask him how he learned Live. I know several people that have made multiple releases and still don't really think they know Live. So setting the bar at what you need to know to finish material should be sufficient. Learning by doing is something you can pick up even if it doesn't seem natural at first.

It could be a really good thing with an overview of Live that zooms in here and there, but that won't make you a music producer by itself. Finishing will. I'd probably recommend Groove3 for good overviews and Tom Cosm for learning how Live can be explored, but I've used neither for Live myself.

And yeah, the manual is really worth a read. I struggled with some details for a long time, got few answers and then found most of what I needed in there.
Make some music!

Negative X
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2014 11:23 pm

Re: Learning Music Production

Post by Negative X » Sun Jun 05, 2016 10:50 am

Edited the OP to clarify what my problem was, I should have given myself more time before posting. :P
Stromkraft wrote:Are you attempting at finishing off something? That's a good step one. With a focus of finishing anything — be it crap, wonderful or anything in between — it then gets more clear what is important to achieve that state and what you actually must need to learn now. With so much possible to learn on the path of becoming a music producer it's important to be able to focus.

A friend of mine took up producing last summer and just released his first EP on a label last month. I'll ask him how he learned Live. I know several people that have made multiple releases and still don't really think they know Live. So setting the bar at what you need to know to finish material should be sufficient. Learning by doing is something you can pick up even if it doesn't seem natural at first.

It could be a really good thing with an overview of Live that zooms in here and there, but that won't make you a music producer by itself. Finishing will. I'd probably recommend Groove3 for good overviews and Tom Cosm for learning how Live can be explored, but I've used neither for Live myself.

And yeah, the manual is really worth a read. I struggled with some details for a long time, got few answers and then found most of what I needed in there.
Thanks for the advice so far. I'm definitely going to read that manual when I have the time.

Also yeah, I haven't been finishing many tracks recently... I'll work on that.

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