Producing for beginners

[DemiAlex]

Hope everyone's had a beneficial and positive week so far!

I've recently started spinning, bought my first piece of equipment last week and am currently in the process of finishing "How to DJ right, the art and science of playing records" and other materials aimed at beginners for DJing.

However, my main goal is to produce music, as the reason I've started spinning is to hopefully one day reach the festival level. That being said, how essential is learning how to mix when it comes to producing music? From my understanding, producing music is divided into 3 steps;

1) producing the beats
2) mixing the beats/samples into an actual song
3) mastering the final track


I'm interested in producing house/progressive house and progressive trance music, will Ableton provide the necessary mechanics to successfully produce house/trance music? What I mean is, are there any additional software you would recommend that would work with Ableton, such as an external beat maker or synth etc.

Last question, how did most of you start off producing? Did you start messing around with Ableton to figure it all out? Watch tons of youtube videos then start pouring in your creativity onto the track? I feel rather lost in how I should proceed.

[ksandvik]

Look through YouTube videos, especially if you are lost and need specific info. Otherwise do as the rest of us have done, just sit down and do it. You could read hundreds of how-to articles but the best is to try and figure out what didn't work.

You could go pretty far with Ableton Live and pre-existing loops. Drag in and arrange. Now it will sound generic, too.

Most likely you will get lots of replies where each one recommends their favorite synth. There's no ideal 'trance' or house synth. Original house was done with whatever HW synths were around. It's more the chops that are important.

[elliot1106]

Music theory.

[DemiAlex]

Look through YouTube videos, especially if you are lost and need specific info. Otherwise do as the rest of us have done, just sit down and do it. You could read hundreds of how-to articles but the best is to try and figure out what didn't work.

You could go pretty far with Ableton Live and pre-existing loops. Drag in and arrange. Now it will sound generic, too.

Most likely you will get lots of replies where each one recommends their favorite synth. There's no ideal 'trance' or house synth. Original house was done with whatever HW synths were around. It's more the chops that are important.

What do you mean by, "It's more the chops that are important" ?

[botstein]

Music theory.

+1

[Mayhew]

I agree with ksandvik. Youtube is a good place to start if your looking for tutorials and beginning instructions. But most important is just sitting down and doing it. Start with the basics and make a couple of generic house beats, then you can start to play around with different synths and effects, but keep it simple. Create your own sound. Don't follow others that you see on youtube. To reach the festival level, you really need to create your own sound.

Its like listening to afrojak, kaskade, avicii...you can recongnize their sounds.

[rdubs]

Realistically, you don't need much music theory outside of writing very basic chords. For Progressive House/Trance the best synth out there is Sylenth1 in my opinion. Nexus and Nexus2 are also fantastic though they aren't necessarily synthesizers but rather are ROMplers. NI Massive will also be a very good thing to have in your arsenal. It is important that the sounds you synthesize are very good, because no amount of effects or processing or mastering will make bad sounds good. Drums are very important, all of the Vengeance Sample Packs come with VERY good kick drum samples in comparison to the rest of the sample packs out there. Drums, while often over looked are arguably the most important part of electronic music, they must be powerful and cut through the mix. A lot of people will suggest heavy sidechain compression (google this) for this, however I have found that using gentle sidechaining and parallel compression (google it) on layered drums produces much better results. Reverb and delay are your two best friends in terms of effects, learn them inside and out and how to manipulate them. Once you have mastered all of this, you should be producing solid tracks with solid sounds, then you can start thinking about mixing and mastering. Learn to precisely EQ each element of your track so that all elements cut through the mix and frequencies do not clash. Limiters and compression are also important. As far as mastering, there is no better mastering plug than Ozone 5 Advanced in my opinion, it does however come at a very steep price ($1000USD).

Does it sound like a lot to learn? Good, it should. Producing is not easy, and can be compared to advanced calculus where as DJing as like learning to add and subtract. Above all, put in the time, take no shortcuts, and don't be afraid to experiment. I have been producing with Ableton for just over 2 years after messing about with FL Studio for about 4. The results will begin to speak for themselves, I have had Beatport releases and track's supported by huge artists such as Hardwell. If you put in the time, you will see the results.

Hope that was helpful

[elliot1106]

You do need music theory. I mean you could drive a car without zero knowledge of why it works, but then when you break down you won't have a clue how to improve stuff and make sense of it.

[ksandvik]

Lack of music theory means boring music.

[rdubs]

Lack of music theory means boring music.

I did not say you need NO music theory, I said you really only need basic music theory. You do not even need to know how to play the piano, you just need to understand basic chords, tonics, intervals, and scales.