Learning a controller/instrument pays off so much!!!

[EasyWorkflow]

Hello friends....I am a guitarist of 40 years so guitar is my primary instrument & controller because of my wireless MIDI pickup. This message is for the younger, upcoming artists/producers who want to make a full time living in music production, DJing or gigging with Ableton.

This comes to mind because I know a 26 year old rapper going to SAE in NYC for 9 months. They provided him with Apple Laptop and Arturia Controller.

My best advice for him was just two thoughts. Please feel free and add others as you see fit and I will pass them on. Better yet, I will send him a link to this thread because of how important this topic is

1.) SAE provides you copies of (Pro Tools, Logic & Ableton) and gets you familiar with their unique features. In my humble opinion as a newbie in Ableton, you first should pick one DAW and master it. I believe if you play an instrument and want to produce & gig, Ableton really is the only game in town. But logic kicks ass too.

2.) He needs to understand that he does not own an Arturia 25 key controller but a Steinway Grand Piano. I told him to take keyboard lessons because three things will happen without him consciously aware of it.

* develop muscle memory and within 2 years tops, play any major, minor or 7th chord. The seven modes, Circle of 4ths, 5ths, arpeggios etc. BASIC MUSIC THEORY.
* finger dexterity automatically improves once a teacher has you running scales and arpeggios up and down the board.
* And most important in my book, he will learn the most basic of music theory which I can not begin to tell how imuch it has helped me from a single semester of music theory in my freshman year of college, 1980. I have only added to those building blocks past 37 years.

I guarantee some producers are kicking themselves in the ass for not picking up that guitar or keyboard 3 years earlier. And yes, I realize you can choose to master Push and other cool controllers/instruments instead of a traditional keyboard, to me you learn much more about music with lessons on a traditional instrument like a keyboard. I have been playing guitar for 40 years, had a Roland guitar synth 25 years ago, but when Fishman came out with the wireless midi controller for guitar, I almost cried in joy because now I can control soft synths from my axe... it's unreal.

And yes, I do belive that anyone who composes on a computer even if you are writing in MIDI notes, is a musician. You are creating the chords , bass and melodies using a mouse instead of an instrument. If you can take the music in your head and get it to audio even if it means writing MIDI notes in, at the very minimum, you are a composer and or arranger which is a musician in my eyes.

Just wondering everyone's thoughts, especially musicians because I want my buddy to read this and not just listen to me.

[InLight-Tone]

This is excellent advice! I would add that playing a traditional keyboard is good especially for composers as "writing" is much faster, fluid and intuitive, compared to mousing once you have those scales, chords, arps and what not under your fingertips.

I would also learn an alternative controller like Push or Launchpad Pro to mix things up and have a different way of approaching composition.

As far as Live goes, I would also learn Max4Live so you can create tools for composing for yet another way to approach music creation.

Working composers and those who want to make a living at this can never have too many sources of inspiration to draw from...