Ableton Forum

So, I know this is probably a loaded question(especially in this forum), BUT, which DAW do you think would be best to learn on? I've tried both Maschine and Live, but can't seem to find the rhythm in either one of these. Had the Studio in Maschine which was awesome to get something going quickly, and currently have Live standard with Launchpad Pro. My hangup is that I'm more or less self teaching myself this stuff for an hour at night after the kids are asleep, but get frustrated because I'm usually tired, and run into roadblocks with what I want to do. I'm currently thinking of the MPC Touch (or MPC live, but not sure I'd fully utilize the standalone functionality) but I'm really not sure which one would have a better workflow for a more or less total beginner between either Live or the MPC software.

To add some context I absolutely LOVE banging out a beat with my circuit quickly and just getting completely hands on until it sounds good, so I guess I'm hoping the MPC could do this as well. I really just don't know how to go about this/which to learn and which is the "complete" solution to making a song beginning to end (I know Maschine isn't this solution now)

I just feel like I'm spinning my wheels here, any help is appreciated

What do you want to achieve? Why do you want to use a DAW at all?

Impossible question for a forum to answer:

which DAW do you think would be best to learn on?

The cop out answer would be which ever one fits your personal workflow really. There is no "best", just different. Kind of the same as asking "I want to learn an instrument, what would be the best to learn".

Trying to learn anything in-depth when tired or limited for time will be hard. By the sounds of it you get started with something, hit roadblocks then look for something else. That's probably the opposite of what you should be doing to learn something. You need to dedicate time and focus on exactly what you want to achieve and set a goal.

Both Live and Maschine are able to easily offer a similar workflow to just making beats BUT making a few beat loops is probably the easiest part of production, when you want to take the next step and figure out structure, melodies, instrumentation, mixing.... etc it gets way more involved and that is where people tend to end up with hundreds of "cool" ideas but few finished projects.

It takes focus and time to progress with anything. Each small piece of knowledge you get each day will build up. For instance i'm now 16 years into production and have slowed down now simply because I have kids and a life, where production was my life 10 years ago it's now something that I do if I could be bothered but even now I still learn new techniques and have a thirst to always know something different. If you aren't constantly wanting to know more and spend your free time getting more into it then it's probably only going to be a back seat hobby.

Only suggestion I could make would be to choose to go with a single option and just stick to it for a while. I've tried almost every DAW and tracker over the years but have really only used just a few and normally only 1 at a time. Live has been my choice for about 8 years now and as much as I would love to dive into something else for a bit I prefer to progress with what I know.

nDJw wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 05, 2019 11:31 am

So, I know this is probably a loaded question(especially in this forum), BUT, which DAW do you think would be best to learn on? I've tried both Maschine and Live, but can't seem to find the rhythm in either one of these. Had the Studio in Maschine which was awesome to get something going quickly, and currently have Live standard with Launchpad Pro. My hangup is that I'm more or less self teaching myself this stuff for an hour at night after the kids are asleep, but get frustrated because I'm usually tired, and run into roadblocks with what I want to do. I'm currently thinking of the MPC Touch (or MPC live, but not sure I'd fully utilize the standalone functionality) but I'm really not sure which one would have a better workflow for a more or less total beginner between either Live or the MPC software.

To add some context I absolutely LOVE banging out a beat with my circuit quickly and just getting completely hands on until it sounds good, so I guess I'm hoping the MPC could do this as well. I really just don't know how to go about this/which to learn and which is the "complete" solution to making a song beginning to end (I know Maschine isn't this solution now)

I just feel like I'm spinning my wheels here, any help is appreciated

Ableton is a great DAW to learn on but it takes time esp if you never made beats before.

I used many DAWS and Ableton has a good mix of tools for songwriting, production, and mixing.

Any DAW will actually work but alot depends on how you like to work.

Ableton with Push is pretty hands on but to be honest, it works just as good without it.

Learning the key commands (and making your own) is crucial to a fast workflow.

Decide the direction of what you’d like to learn. When it comes to making music on daws there are a lot of angles of approach. You’re not just learning to play sheet music on piano.

A few examples of things to consider as options:
-Learning structure. Learn by doing and by observing to get ideas for when musical ‘phrases’ and components change, come and go. And how to make a song feel like it starts, has material that moves forward, has maybe a high point, and concludes.
-Learning music theory. Basic concepts like major and minor key, and the idea of chord progressions for harmonization.
-Learning rhythm. Can experiment with melodic rhythms and percussive rhythms. This might likely be something you’re currently doing a lot as it is one of the things we tend to think of most naturally when it comes to music.
-Learn sound design with synths. This can take you only so far so it’s probably not wise to start off with this. But it’s extreeemely helpful for developing an awareness of sounds and for learning how to tweak presets and gain control of a synth as if you’re riding a horse haha
-Sound design with effects. This is actually a personal favorite. Live has a lot of cool tools and a pretty user friendly manual, as long as you take the time to Do as you Read. Maybe spend a night experimenting with and reading about one or two Ableton Live audio effects, perhaps go alphabetically. It’s important to try these effects on various types of material. Some have more observable effects on ‘busier’ content, others are great on more spaced out content. You can also mess with these while ‘djing’ in Live.

If you take the time to learn these with the resources you already have, you might find yourself with a better idea of the direction you want to go after you’ve exhausted your possibilities with Just Live and/or Maschine.

As for things to consider outside of Live as an option to consider for music creation and inspiration, I give a huge vote to the iPad (especially the most recent model), and it’s many options for music creation apps. There is nothing out there like the iPad, yet it does a great job of emulating almost everything out there. It is unmatched, unmatched by Mac PCs, Windows, google devices, hardware synths and drum machines. It is in its own tier. On top of that, it is very user friendly and inviting. You can use it anywhere and any time and learn from it. No noisy fans, no nothing. As easily accessible as your phone.

Live can take you all the way from pure noob only playing pre-made loops, passing through MPC-style pad triggering performer, to full multi-disciplinary multimedia artist creating your own instruments.

Learning sound engineering, learning a DAW, learning an instrument, learning how to create/compose/write and arrange music are different skills and each does have a steep initial learning curve.

Pretty much all the DAWs on the market are capable of turning out good results, and the sonic differences between them are mostly down to the plugins used, their way of doing Live's "warp" function and so on. They do have differences in workflow, either small ones or big ones like Live's session view which is the kind of thing most DAWs don't have, but there's nothing that makes any one easier to learn than any other. It's like driving a car - learning to drive starts off difficult with lots of new things to remember and do, but once you have learned to drive switching from one model of car to another is far easier than learning to drive in the first place was.

If you're using a Mac or iPad then it might be worth trying Apple's Garageband. It's limited in what it can do and does look a bit childish, but it's a good basic introduction to DAW concepts and doesn't bury you in options and or the need to get your head round 100 new things to get anywhere. It's also free. But Live is certainly no worse to learn than any other well-featured DAW.

Thanks for the advice guys(gals?) I'll stick with my copy of Live and try to learn it better. I do tend to look for easier ways to do things, and sometimes I catch myself purchasing something new because I believe it will make it simpler to do, but in the end I probably end up further away from my goal. I also forgot to mention that I do DJ (big surprise I know) so I do have a grasp on basic song structure, even if it's more of a feeling than an in depth knowledge of how something will/should sound 2 bars from now.

I managed to find the cymatics beginner videos, and they seem to be pretty well developed for absolute beginners, and don't assume that because you own live that you know what the basics are about. Hopefully this will help me progress. I know I'll never make money from this, but it's damn fun to see progress on something.

Thanks for all the advice, it's much appreciated.

Make sure you finish some projects. When you are learning, use those fresh perspectives as sketches for possible tracks. You never know when you’ll accidentally make something that really catches you. If you feel you have nothing yet, you don’t even need to aim for a genre necessarily yet. Just push songs towards being finished. The more experience you have starting, working at and finishing tracks, the better at it you’ll become. If you wait for something to be perfect when you have not even developed the capabilities yet, you’ll be holding out for the rest of your life. ...Additionally, I may have mentioned ignoring genres but, if a quality of a genre inspires you to mimic it, go for it. You might even mimic it wrong but they might be even better because you’ll learn from that and possibly create something new at the same time. Any little nuances you love from your favorite artists, don’t be afraid to mimic those. It can be brutal trying to get something started, so take anything you can possibly get as a starting point. Go with it. And render it and listen to yourself.