OLD THREAD: Theory and Composition:
Music theory for musicians and normal people:
tobyrush.com
tl:dr Music Theory:
gumroad.com
>Synthesizers and synthesis:
www48.zippyshare.com
youtube.com
youtube.com
beausievers.com
analogindustries.com
Free VSTs:
bedroomproducersblog.com
bedroomproducersblog.com
Other VSTs:
pastebin.com
_________
Official /prod/ Discord: discord.me
Stop by and let the thread die, cause we're clearly sapping its life force.
Other urls found in this thread:
discord.gg
youtube.com
youtube.com
clyp.it
clyp.it
clyp.it
clyp.it
clyp.it
youtube.com
youtube.com
clyp.it
twitter.com
...
God damnit op stop with your lazy memeing it takes like 10 seconds to find the old thread -_________-
0/10
alright alright
previous thread
Serum is a pretty unique and powerful synth though.
thanks
oh no, clearly only shitty trap producers use serum and if you use it you probably suck
fm8s interface sucks major ass though.
90% of the time if i need fm sounds i just stick with operator, which sucks because i want to leave ableton behind.
are there no good FM vsts?
Not really. FM synthesis pretty much doesn't exist from anywhere other than FL's Sytrus and FM8.
>fm8s interface sucks major ass though
i'll admit it took me a good couple months to learn what i was doing with it, but once you understand it not really?
my only gripes are the effects being very meh and that when i automate the routing switches shit occasionally, but that could be ableton.
operator sucks ass in comparison imo, though i've gotten some cool sounds out of it, it takes more work.
Sytrus boi, it's like FM8 but with an actually good interface and easily automatable matrix. Also you can draw your own waveforms instead of sticking with the preset ones.
how do i "glue" stuff on the mastering to make it sound professional
compression
get the mix right first
how to
oh i have no trouble using it, i'm used to hardware fm synthesizers which are about as unintuitive as it gets, my problem with fm8 is that it's not... ergonomic, software-wise. everything is buried in sub-menus and screens, the envelope editing feels clumsy, you never really get a muscle memory for it.
its ridiculous no one ever thought of making a competitor, virtually any other fm vst i know has no-gos like non-looping envelopes.
subtle compression and saturation on the master, the types of plugins used will determine the sound. tape emulation does both at once and comes with a trendy sound, though that will get old soon.
i've also developed a habit of sticking an eq on the master once i feel like i have the mixdown fairly set. it's not exactly clever as it can make it harder to backtrack but fuck it i'm here to make music not engineer a band's recordings.
>the envelope editing feels clumsy, you never really get a muscle memory for it.
actually i feel the same way about everything from native instruments. massive doesn't demand the complicated envelopes but fm8 takes a bit to get them just right, and while absynth can get crazy intricate like nothing else, you have to know exactly what you're doing to make the envelopes do what you want them to. i'm just waiting for new versions from all of them, it's crazy to me that none of these have been updated.
shared reverb, not going overboard with seperation from eq (know where there needs to be overlap), make there aren't transients or spikes in volume sticking out. that's all off the top of my head anyway
i kinda gave up on NI. battery 4 was an absolute disaster, they actually made a much worse plugin than battery 3.
the only reason i'm still a customer is reaktor, which i gotta admit has been doing pretty great lately. apart from that i almost feel like the golden age of vst's is over, everyone is into hardware nowadays, so all the creativity and talent in the industry pile up there.
trying to quite playing dota and replace it with music production. Am i in the rigth place? I have no prior experience
It's a start. Come chill with us on discord.
You have to ignore the autists but yeah mostly
I wasn't around for that, but yeah I've read about several abandoned vsts or missteps in the past five years, especially with ni and izotope.
At least you can use the samples outside of battery lol. I couldn't imagine being stuck with that rather than drumrack though
not the dota guy but i've been slacking too much lately too, what kind of stuff do people on that discord produce mostly?
>pic related
a little bit of everything, but (((experimental))) hip hop seems to be popular
great, i was worried it'd be infested with EDM/trap/dubstep bros. guess that's not as big as it used to be, thank god.
all kinds
>(((experimental)))
actually experimental or "experimental"? i feel like most people who tag themselves with that are typically just slightly weird or quirky
it's on a scale from "you call this experimental?" to "you call this hip hop?"
as someone who's ended up in the actually experimental rabbit hole all i can say is: be glad if it's just "experimental". at least you'll end up making stuff your friends will recognize as music.
so pretty wide ranging then huh? cool
yeah i feel you man lol. i just don't encourage people to listen to my stuff- the people who actually ask are generally more receptive. the worst thing i got after some crazy drum fill that ended one of my songs was that it sounded like "art music" but that guy was plebish and got curious one day :p
after taking too long to make it in the genre i started out with (breakcore, feels old man) i had a bit of an identity crisis and ended up in this academic circlejerk scene of drone and noise musicians who one-up each other with overly complicated concepts behind their music. most of them study design or liberal arts, and it shows in the music. if you could listen to a black canvas in an empty room it would sound like that.
i honestly feel like i've wasted precious years of my life being involved in that sort of stuff.
i won't post my stuff or artists i've been involved with after having said all that, but imagine stuff like this:
youtube.com
how do i into house music? i know it's for fags but it makes me feel happy
>if you could listen to a black canvas in an empty room it would sound like that.
good description desu. i gotcha.
eh, it's worth exploring ideas for their own sake, or fun or whatever. i'd say it's not a waste of time if you can apply whatever you gained out of making that sort of stuff to other types of music
>i honestly feel like i've wasted precious years of my life being involved in that sort of stuff.
If you enjoyed doing it, I wouldnt call it wasted.
what kind of house music?
there's been a lot of genres called that over the years.
learning how to play the piano always helps with house, in the end it's those harmonies that separate it from techno and other genres.
Learn how to make music in general and then you'll figure out how to make specific things.
um idk how to describe what type. best thing i could do is link to a youtube channel that im subbed to that always uploads stuff i like
go ahead
for drums the 909 is your best friend
start practicing keys, get a midi keyboard if you have none.
build a basic beat, cut a part out of a melodic song you like (soul, jazz, anything you could sample in hiphop works) and loop it over the beat, filter to taste, start playing keys on top, mute and unmute drum parts
congrats you just made your first house track.
of course it will sound like utter garbage at first but keep doing that and you'll get better and better over time, you'll figure out all the nerdy tech shit on the way.
i'm going to screen cap and do this lol
Opinions or crituiqes on this retro beat I made? I plan on adding my friends vocals.
Made with Virus Access, MS20, in Renoise.
>Made with Virus Access, MS20, in Renoise.
WE GET IT user
I say this because I want people to critique my use of the synthesizers. If you know how ms20 works people will be able to give me specific critiques on how I use it.
Working on a cute lil tune, lil preview for lil people (ignore like the last 3 seconds)
clyp.it
this is actually sort of interesting user, sounds like it could be the soundtrack to a weird indie game about a baby lost in a forest or something
How do you decide which instrument patches you are going to use for the song? How do you compose the main melody? What are the general guidelines when choosing instruments, how do you make sure they work together, just by ear...?
I mean you could take a lead synth sound from let's say some weird analog moog type synth but then you pick up drums from modern set and bass is some cheap casio tone. That will create a conflict in sound.
clyp.it
this is rather upbeat, all things considered.
>they turned /prod/ into a namefag circlejerk
discord was a mistake
gunna put vocals of this
feeedback pls
this is fucking awesome hahha
do you have anymore things like this?
There's literally one namefag and everybody agrees that he's an autistic faggot who doesn't know what he's talking about. The discord is shitty but don't blame them for that- just let them enjoy it.
nah this was just an experiment but im planning on making more shit like it
also i like your track a lot the chord progression is pretty im always a sucker for detuned synths
makes it fun
is it normal to hear noise when my speaker volume is all the way turned off? nothings playing btw, just a buzzin from my speakers
this is supposedly the final master
clyp.it
>reverb on master
>all that shit
Maybe I'm just a minimalist but that seems like a lot *__*
really?
>light multiband compression/limiting to keep the spectrum even
>reverb
>four analog/tape sims
>eq to fix the 3k boost and the loss of highs done by the previous
>limiter
>keep the spectrum even because it wasn't accomplished in the mix
>reverb on every track
>that's okay but four is a lot
>yes usually
>duh
lalalala im not hearing
Lol okay
does it sound like its lacking high end/air, if you listened the track? thats what im worried the stacked analogs did.
Will listen later
I remember you
lmao
i like it, the chords are nice
the drums are a little quiet and weak sounding i think
and it gets repetitive but the vocals will probably help with that
subtle reverb on the higher frequencies on the master can livin up the mix a lot
Thank you man if you ever want to work on a video game like that and you need music for it hmu
I use Ableton and a vst named Omnisphere. Most of what i do is by ear, i go through several different patches until I find one that sounds good to me. I try to find patches that match one another usually by putting what i have so far on repeat while testing out the new patches. I composed the piano bit by improvising and just kept it after my first try (which is why it sounds a bit rough). Everything else is basically by ear, just playing different notes until i get something i like. Sorry if this wasn't much help, I'm pretty new to music making myself. But if you're interested in making ambient music i highly recommend Omnisphere, it's very fun to use too
Fuck off, your discord is complete shit and ruins what makes /prod/ good.
There are much better established discords for productions anyway. Your faggot containment chamber is Reddit reddit tier
I do not really mix tracks, and I usually hear my synths and guitars through a bass amp or pic related. Should I get a cheap mixer and a pair of monitors?
Zebra
>on the higher frequencies
>not doing that before your master so you don't send your fucking bass and everything to it
I don't use discord ever lol. The worst they do is ask people to join a few times a thread so I don't think they're existing is that bad desu
>just write music bro
Fuck you! Worst advice ever. When do I start understanding rhythm and harmony? Probably never if I keep up with this routine
>understanding rhythm
listen to what's actually happening in the music you listen to..?
>harmony
memorize intervals and all the major chords. listen for weird stuff and take note. you should know it when you hear it after a while
well I did actually do all the ear exercises on that music theory site incidentally. But I don't really understand what the chords and intervals do. I can bullshit some chords and rhythm and it sounds kind of neat sometimes but I never actually write what I want to (especially when it come to rhythm) and get sidetracked by my own incompetence.
write stories and poetry to get better at writing
freestyle sing, play around with melodies and shit to figure out what sounds good
then when you have an instrumental you can put the two together
In this order, from most to least important
1. Room treatment for proper listening
2. Monitors and appropriate D/A conversion
3. Cool gear
3.
I think my alacrity to generate melodies is what got me into this in the first place. Well that and my tonal sensibilities which make it hard to find a lot of music I find especially personal. At any rate hammering out the melody is never a problem but layering in the harmony and otherwise developing the idea just seems to give a result that sounds flat and doesn't go anywhere. I should also come clean that I am more interested in composition than producing but /comp/ is gone which sucks.
nice blog faggot
Not the guy you're replying to but I came here for monitor advice.
I'm looking to get a cheap pair, like as cheap as possible without being utter garbage - something better than the z623s i'm using now.
What are some brands to avoid, what specifications to avoid?
Rokit 5s are like, my ceiling as far as budget is concerned.
Yeah sorry I got a little carried away there :^)
i have a really hard time sympathizing with this sorry...
when you happen to know theory and common chords (more obvious when you're familiar with a certain artists tendencies like i was) patterns start to emerge. you hear "tension" and leading voices (high notes of the chord) create certain "implied" melodies and you just know what the next note of it should be. you start to notice things like kurt cobains vocal harmonies were ripoffs of what the beatles did with certain chord tones, etc etc
third and fifth become really obvious harmonies when you play them over and over, hovering on the seventh or fifth chord and then going into the first become really obvious ways to bridge to you (cadences), playing a minor second or a tritone sound nasty and you know when to play those when you want to sound ugly
i promise if you just internalize what every relationship sounds like it becomes natural
>as cheap as possible without being utter garbage
>Rokit 5s are like, my ceiling as far as budget is concerned.
you're shit out of luck bro sorry. just get the rokits used and upgrade when you can. jbl lsr and yamaha hs5s would be better if you can find them cheap
in that book mixing secrets POSTED BY OP, is a round up of monitoring. Try reading that chapter at least for gods sake
i'm all for shitting on new producers for not reading the op, but i don't think he needs to read some random ass book to figure out what brand of monitors to get
I've read it as well, but it was written a while ago and I just kind of wanted to get some opinions from todays perspective.
Thanks, I'll probably end up grabbing them.
Which is why everyone sucks here. They don't read the resources posted right in front of their faces
>Just memorize all the relationships
Pretty sure if you manage to do that then you write something like this
Chromaticism is a different beast.
I was talking strictly about non modulating diatonic shit lmao. mastering the basics will get you pretty fucking far though. Interesting piece you linked
lol I think you're ignoring that most of the people here posting clyps are still very new. They do need to learn to answer there own questions though...
well I didn't expect to write anything with that level of polyphony like ever. I suppose writing traditional major counterpoint is like like the composer version of drawing boxes in perspective? I guess what I want is some sort of routine to practice.
Lol it can be much simpler than that. There's nothing excessive or pretentious about it inherently.
I don't know what people who don't play instruments do.... maybe try being really deliberate with your composing? Make a i i III iv, replace chords to see what happens, inversions to see what happens, place a different melody using chord tones and non chord tones for each of those to observe and so on
I do a lot of bullshit experiments as it is. I'm looking for like the bootcamp of composition. And I really don't want to learn to play an instrument because that is a motor skill and would take years in itself to become effective at.
Cover a song? Shit just rip off a song honestly
There's no step by step instruction to writing something from scratch man. It's a lot of little skills that you have to put together for yourself.
learning an instrument is the best way, keyboard
>learning gymnastics is the best way to learn coreography
>And I really don't want to learn to play an instrument
That's /prod/ in a nutshell
No, but learning to dance is an excellent way to do that.
A composer who doesn't have hands-on experience with good music made by other people is like a coreographer who never danced and has no hands-on experience with good coreographies.
It's going to be hard to get good when you barely even know what "good" is.
By exercizing with the work of others you build a foundation to use as a reference point upon which you get better.
It's way harder for producers who don't play instrument to make good music, simply because those who do, have had a lot of experience in training their musicality, while those who don't end up being affected by Dunning-Kruger and make shit music because they don't even know when their music sounds "off".
man i just spent like 20 minutes trying to fix the eq on my speakers because for some reason the a5 note sounded really jaring, but everything around it was fine
turns out it's just a a frequency that annoys my slight tinnitus ridden left ear (the speakers point towards there when i play)
anybody else have bullshit ear problems like this?
you a dumb shit
Well I suppose I can still kill myself
Tbh his analogy sucks but the point makes sense. I'd say it's more like knowing how to read and write when you're trying to tell a story.
Concepts like punctuation and run on sentences translate to how you would say something just like playing triplets or ghost notes on a drum set will naturally translate to how you'll program midi.
Not having that instinct doesn't mean you won't notice that it sounds better or you won't be able to develops an ear for it eventually, but it's just easier to learn when you have a foundation to understand it from.
desu this sounds like when /ic/ told me to draw from the shoulder. pfft, there's no way that was happening. But at least you got a better argument than "muh scratchy lines" I'll give you that much.
Unless you really have to become a successful producer in a year, there's always time to learn.
The point isn't that the playing (of an instrument) itself will help you become a better producer/composer (although it still helps a bit, especially if you compose for instrumentalists), but that when you learn an instrument you also learn to play other people's (hopefully great) songs, so your brain gets trained deal with good music from the inside (playing it gives you a more in-depth look at the songs, compared to just listening to them carefully), so you develop your "musicianship", which is essentially a library of your musical experiences that your subconscious draws from when creating music.
By playing great music you get your brain's musicality (like a muscle memory of music) used to good-sounding music, so you don't end up making shit that sounds good only to you but sounds bad to everyone else.
If you somehow learned an instrument while only playing your own songs, you still wouldn't learn much.
Bump 4 u
How can room treatment be more important than having monitors when room treatment does literally zero before you acquire the monitors?
youtube.com
there's like this thing, I can't mix properly
