Electro beat making / track production
Guys,
Pretty happy with my recent digital dj-ing purchases but now I want to try and make some tunes.
The problem is, I don’t know how. I have looked on youtube ie. ableton and cubase, but does anyone have any experience of making tunes and what in your opinion is the best way to make high-quality tracks.
Cheers
FunkDoc
..what kind of ideas do you have for example?
i just want to be able to put dirty electro house tracks together - in the same vein as crookers, dabruck etc. but i just don’t know where to start, ie. what equipment/software should i have…
i would suggest you to start brwosing some genre-related producer forums to get a little deeper into production and also getting an idea of what you want and how you can achieve it..there are many many ways - this won´t happen over night!
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/electronic-music-instruments-electronic-music-production/
those 2 came into my mind first but there are many many more…
I use FL Studio to produce anything that I do. A lot of guys will kind of sneer at this but imo it’s just as powerful a tool as anything else when you know how to use it correctly.
I’m no master producer, but I learned everything I know really by just trial and error. I would suggest not going into production only trying to create electro tracks- even if that’s what you want to do in the end. If you just kind of mess around and experiment you will eventually figure out how to do what you want on your own.
Just my experience.
There’s no “trick” to making quality tunes, just something you have to keep at and keep working on and you’ll learn as you go along
Also, take the time to actually learn music theory. Take some piano classes just so you can learn scales, chords, chord progressions and so on. Will make life 20 times easier
exactly. do some light reading and ask questions on forums, get the software and start experimenting.
Take full advantage of the tutorials online (youtube youtube youtube) because it can increase the speed of the learning process. I’ve primarily taught myself the hard way by trial and error like lambox and although I’m starting to feel confident in my work it’s been 10 years of wrestling/tinkering to learn what I needed to know- but I wish I had access to the information I have now 10 years ago, what a difference that would have made !
what these guys are saying is the truth..it takes a lot of time and work. the artists you’ve mentioned have spent years working to be where they are now. but everyone’s gotta start somewhere, so dive in and learn all you can, lay some things down and you’ll get the hang of it. every thing you do will make you better and more aware of what you’re doing. good luck brother
i dunno how important this one is considering many of the greatest musicians don’t even know how to read music, let alone had classical training. I’m sure it helps, but if you can’t pick up how to write a song just from listening to other songs your in trouble.
I know a handful of people using everything I can think of.
One idea: any local producers that you can hit up for advice in the same genre? It always helps to run the same software as peers for questions. (A tribal house guy in my town calls me for Sonar questions, I can’t help him / when ProTools was pissing me off, he couldn’t help me either). All of these softwares can do the job, and are all ‘near’ the $500 range. Software don’t matter, It will all be in your mind what sounds can come out of the speakers.
Cubase, Ableton, ProTools LE, & Reason are for both Mac & PC
Logic & Digital Performer for Mac only
Sonar & FL Studio for PC only
Also magazines like Future Music, Computer Music, RemixMag (Online), Sound On Sound are full of tutorials and gear reviews and sometimes have beginners specials, ‘make a track in a day’, and some even have video tutorials directly shot from major producers in their studios.
Sample CD’s are another tool used by tons of people. Loopmasters, SampleMagic, or Vengeance are favs of mine.
there will be a billion of opinions how to do this. My advice is to learn from every source out there.
man the guys starting now have such a huge advantage with the new software, forums and online tutorials… When I started out it was a bunch of goons fucking about with shit like Rebirth and Fasttracker ! :s
Never hurts to know your way around a keyboard though just so you can make tunes that are in key instead of having a bassline and melody clashing with each other.
^ i hear that! i guess i shouldnt slag classes, everybody learns differently.
and knowing how different notes interact with each other and understanding basic music theory just takes your production to the next level. not necessary per say, but definitely helps 
i agree with the fact it’s SO much easier to create music these days than it was say 10 years ago. holy hell we’ve come so far.
i guess my point is that music theory can be learned just by listening to good music and experimenting, depending on the person’s memorization ability.
+1.
Also, if you know music theory, you know how to put together chords. Being able to know how to form a minor chord for a somber part of a song and a major for the buildup is extremely useful for just about anyone.
Knowing music theory just makes you a better rounded musician.
Listening to good music and experimenting will never teach you that a N6 is can be viewed like a iv with a raised 5th, or any other element of music theory…
The only thing you need is find your “weapon of choice” (scratch mag r.i.p): software hardware whatever that work for you… After that it’s practice(it’s depend if you want to make quality )otherwise you can still produce pretty wack music in a couple of month and even have overnight success, get booked in Japan etc
ya but knowing the technical terms for those kind of things are not imperative for understanding or performing them. Although the untrained artist may not know how to express the subtleties of their work in words and formula that does not mean they do not know how to express those subtleties through the work- and that is what counts. I could run off a laundry list of legendary artists who are completely self taught (probably have no idea wtf a N6 or raised 5th are and dont care) that wannabes could only hope to analyze and dissect with their art school jargon because despite their training they still could not write a hit song or create a masterpiece if it saved their soul.
case in point music did not come after music theory my friend, quite the contrary. 