New to production
Sup forum! So I am an established DJ and I have been having a lot of success with DJ’ing. I’ve met a lot of ppl who have been producing for quite some time now, and I have MAD ideas for making music. I just have NO idea where to start. I met Fedde le grand and Feenixpawl and asked them to give me pointers and what not, I basically got the finger haha. So I wanna ask you guys, where to start and what to buy ? I wanna make all sorts of music, not just house!
Greetings, ERROX. Berklee College of Music runs an excellent, free online course called Introduction to Music Production. Next session (6 weeks) starts April 28th, and it’s a great place to get started. You will need a computer with a DAW (digital audio workstation) installed, but many DAWs offer free eval copies. Popular DAWs include Ableton, Bitwig, Logic, and many more. For starting out, I’d suggest Reaper since its cross platform, lightweight, and has a fully functional eval that actually doesn’t expire.
You will probably want to add a MIDI keyboard at some point, but I’d suggest waiting a bit before adding toys (like controllers) until you know what is best for your workflow. Hope this helps!
Demo the DAWs listed above and others such as Cubase, Pro Tools, FL Studio, etc. Find one that has a workflow that suits your creative flow. Once you’ve picked out a DAW that works for you, (they all pretty much produce the same output) you can go from there.
Demo Ableton and Bitwig.
This isn’t really the best resource out there - look here:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=74
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/electronic-music-instruments-electronic-music-production/
Logic Pro.
Plugins:
Massive, A.N.A, Punch, Microtonic, Ozone 5.
Midi keyboard, 32 keys is perfect.
This is probably one of the most cost effective ways to get started if you already have a relatively recent mac. Possibly swap out the keyboard for a maschine or maschine micro and you’ve got everything you need for a little over $500. Everyone’s plugins will be different but a maschine license will get you Massive, Komplete elements and some other goodies not to mention all the plugs you get with Logic.
You can do a lot without spending any money.
Ableton do a fully functional demo of Live 9 for 30 days - download that.
Fabfilter (excellent plugins) do a great demo too, for a couple of weeks for all their stuff - download those.
Native Instruments demos run for 30 minutes, then you just close and re open - download the Massive and Kontakt Player demos.
You’ll need some samples too, and you can get some high grade ones for free by heading over to Beatport and grabbing all the stems for all their remix contests. This is a brilliant way to get pro grade samples for free.
Loopmasters offer more free samples - they do tasters of their sample packs, raid all of those.
I came to production from DJing and eased into it slowly, first by doing some re-edits, then some basic remixes and mash ups, then into producing original tracks. Ableton’s great for working with all your free samples and loops, and as a DJ it should make sense to you. Collage all your free samples together into some tracks and see where it takes you.
If you have a mac, play around with GarageBand - again it’s not going to cost you anything and it kind of does everything you need! If GarageBand makes sense to you then just get Logic, you can’t argue with that price!
Once you decide to start paying for software, Massive really is indispensable and can create a huge variety of sounds. Sylenth is excellent too, great presets, which you need when you’re starting out.
Monitoring is super important, get to know your speakers, buy the best you can justify.
Lastly you’ll need lots of time. It’ll take years before you’re producing anything you would play out. Anyone who tells you they started building beats like a G is lying!