I used to HATE using computers for music making
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- It took me a while to figure how to use a computer as a creative tool instead of a hindrance. Here are some of my primary takeaways from my last decade of trial and error, from complete beginner to... whatever I am now.
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Here are some of the composition concepts that have helped my computer music sound less computer-y: bit.ly/FREEcompositionguide
Excellent perspective on this video, bravo! Thks for sharing.
Having spent 10K hours playing Unreal Tournament defitinely helps;)
that's a really sad waste of time
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol We all waste our time in different ways. its nothing new and definitely not a shocker
@@i-never-look-at-replies-lol but now he can navigate his DAW faster with his heightened reflexes
Is it a VST?
Checks all the boxes
Computers do, in fact, suck for creating music.
But they're awesome for automation, mixing, and mastering.
Mixing? I think analogue mixer is kinda the epitome of the computer interface dilemma, their the og’s of 1:1 knob:function
@@bernardlindeman739 Until you need to repeat multiple actions, or tweak something for one measure, or...
The computer makes those things trivial. Just need a usable MIDI mixer interface.
@@JeffHendricks agreed mixers are woefully lacking what seems obvious ^^
My theory and practice is to use computers for what you want to do that your instruments and hardware can't. If you have a computer, but no other instruments or hardware, then do everything on the computer, including using it as an instrument. At least get some control surface aside from a qwerty and a mouse.
@@bernardlindeman739 they have advantages, but I’d rather build an analog front end for my recording so I can add mojo from there and then mix in the box with some good controllers. Maybe some analog comps/eq here and there but mostly in the box. Mastering too, there are excellent excellent plugins for mastering nowadays. But I’ll always want to run through something like a neve MBT for a good depth of sound that analog can have. Past that I don’t see the point of spending that much unless I really needed it
Personally , my 2 problems with making music on the computer are the endless options ( spending literally hours scrolling through thousands of samples ... 🤢🤮 ) and the use of mouse and keyboard , sitting at my desk in front of a computer monitor makes it feel like a chore , i might as well do my taxes and answer to emails ...
Doing on any groovebox the exact same thing I would do on Ableton is so much more satisfying and fun , and feels more intentional , and feels like actually making music , instead of feeling like a boring work .
I can see the "power" of DAWs and all the amazing crazy stuff you can do on them , but i hate using them .
The flip side is how much harder it is to ever finish anything on a groovebox. Sure, it's much quicker and easier to get started but try arranging a track or changing the key on an MPC. Things that take 1 second on Ableton takes hours, assuming that it's even possible at all.
There's a reason every single professional music maker uses a computer.
What level did you get to with DAWs? I had the very same feeling coupled with being lost, until what I made started to pay off to my own ears somewhat. Not until I understood a some synthesis, processing, sampling, plugins, mixing and arrangement did I start enjoying it for what it was. Now I'm thinking of getting into modular!
But first and foremost I might have to swap to Ableton. Seems much more streamlined than FL. Fl is cool but I feel like an electrician laying wires all day. I guess that is also nice in a way, okay bye
@@kky10xz19 My music got "cleaner" using daws but became lifeless and tedious, especially trying to add groove and feel. Pushing through because "you can make good music in a daw" doesn't mean its enjoyable or the type of music you want to make.
@@daynemin It just depends on you and what you like so enjoy yourself either way
But I have a question. What are you alluding to, what platforms/tools/instruments do you prefer to make use of and what type of tracks are you producing?
@@kky10xz19 I like to make more downtempo stuff like Tycho, boards of Canada. But I've played guitar since highschool, and whenever I start with it I feel organic ideas come through fast and authentically. All the harmonies and basslines come out easier and better.
From travelling around etc I would just have a laptop and it just doesn't work for me. A big part is dynamics and subtle timing shifts that come out in natural playing.
When I make music in-the box I prefer to just make little jams and beats.
I use Ableton, right now I don't have any other instruments. Ideal setup for me would be bass, guitar, one mono synth, a digital poly and a few guitar pedals. Maybe a sampler/drum machine.
The first 2 mins of your video is me literally watching myself talk - music composition degree, cubase, no formal mixing/mastering training. Buying library after library succumbing to marketing. Excellent lessons learned.
Nothing wrong with computers if you can use them for music production.
I have found myself using very much a “hybrid” template.
Each of my sessions start with a “blank” DAW. But basically all my virtual instruments are saved with the settings I use most often so when I open a virtual instrument, it is already set up how I like it. The same happens with any of my hardware synths.
And I have a very similar setup for mixing. I have specific chains saved. So if I am mixing bass, for example, I can click the button for the Izotope Neutron->DBX->Mix Monolith chain or I can click a separate button for the Soothe->Neve 1073->1176 chain.
In Studio One, you can write the midi in traditional notation. It gives you the flexibility of a full midi piano roll with the flexibility of breaking out the og notation whenever it is preferred
And so can Cubase, it's called the Score Editor.
In fact, the original Cubase on the Atari ST from back in the 1990s had a score editor and it has been available on every version of Cubase since afaik. I'm surprised Jameson didn't take advantage of it since he mentioned in the video his first ever DAW was Cubase.
@@makaijin
Glad to hear Presonus aren’t the only smart ones in this regard
It was clunky at best when I tried it. Of course, I also had no idea what I was doing at the time.
Over the years I've found that I don't enjoy dealing with tech when I'm in the idea-sketching phase. Doesn't save me enough time to be worth the potential disruptions.
I know there is a way in Pro Tools where you can transfer midi info to notes.
About the first point, which is absolutely solid. Get yourself a DAW like Studio One that allows you to switch between Piano Roll View and Score View by a click of a button. Best of both worlds.
absolutely. life saver.
or just use dorico, notion, or sibelius.
@@KyleMcHattie Start by writing, yes, amen. My little colored blocks begin life as a Finale score (which is my product, for live performance). The blocks are for editing a rendering of the work - in Studio One I just toggle from scroll view to score view if i want to edit in notation. Logic Pro also has a notation toggle. (edit added a missing verb)
Jameson Nathan Jones just watching this now as I do some stuff in the background. good video.
Computers are fraught with problems when it comes to music, true. 101% agree though I'm only partically through your video.
You can you know, use a pencil and staff paper and still make a living in film music. If your name is say, John Barry.
Give touchscreen laptop or monitor a try . For me its opening fun way playing vst instrument or dabbling with fx and daw
Computers suck for "making" music because there are only keyboard instruments for them… although recently much more usual instruments got some half-working capabilities to connect to a computer via MIDI\OSC but they are really poor in terms of expression, which is vital for making music ad not just chopping samples.
this is a great video. I want to learn how to make music for films. mainly because I am trying to wrap a sci fi film.
VCV Rack led to bass guitar for me :)
I used an Alesis MMT-8 loop sequencer to record my first album in 1993. I had that, a JV880, and a cheap keyboard, and a 4 track Tascam. I was so limited, but then again, no messing around with a thousand choices. Just do it….
I had a mmt8 as well and used to achieve so much with so little.
When you only have 8 tracks, you have to make each one count!
Too many options can and often will distract.
You make so much sense, I begin to feel I’ve misunderstood. Sad.🙂
I just bought an old small desktop computer to use as an instrument. I just want to use it as a VSTi host with a mapped midi controller. Use it like an instrument to record audio into a main mixing, arranging computer. Doing it all in the box leads me to pointless detailed editing, looking at a screen fixing problems that don't exist apart from boring ideas lol. I used to have so much more fun recording as audio with guitars and keyboards. Was a bit rough but so much more enjoyable and better.
The amount of time spent trying to make something "human" with in the box production is draining and forced. I know people do it but that micro editing puts me in tunnel vision.
This struck a chord with me, and a lot of this is stuff I learned myself when I first started to make music. I came from playing traditional instruments - mostly keyboard and guitar - and only started to produce music to rival my older brother. He used FL Studio and I used LMMS, which is free. I still to this day a decade on from when I started use LMMS and all it's stock plugins and effects to make my music. While I did dabble in a few basic VST/LV2 plugins, I felt like I could create 99% of the sounds I wanted with the stock plugins. IT got a point wher I could hear a sound in my head and then just create it with a stock plugin. I even still record guitar parts in Audacity to a click track because it's distraction free. If it's out of time, I don't meticulously go in and change it like I did in ProTools in education. I'd pause and simple try harder for the next take. A DAW can build up a song, but it can't create a catchy hook. Spending money on plugins that sound great won't make your music better if your musical ideas are dead in the water.
12 min of mumbling about basic stuff....
Glad to see you address this topic! I am know from too much thinking and trial-and-error that I am at most creative in the morning. I can't sing well, but it sure works for my song-writing. Typically, I'm just in the car after dropping off a family member at work, and sing into an iPad, iPhone, or OP-1. BTW, Scaler is a great chord tool on the iPad, but even that can feel too techy.
I wouldn’t say suck but I get what you’re saying being I play multiple instruments. It’s all in how you view it. Midi Capture has done wonders for making music inside a daw. I just play like a regular instrument and capture what I like. Leads, Chords, etc etc.
Now drawing in midi notes sucks. It’s not musical to me. It’s boring. As long as I have a midi keyboard 🎹 I’m cool with the computer.
I am rather in the opposite situation. Collected lots of Eurorack stuff, hardware synths, drummachines, now i would like to do a little more than just "patches" and make noises, was looking at MPC/Digitakt/1010 Blackbox - but now think i should rather finally learn a DAW, might be cheaper and easier.
I finally learned what midi is …. not! 🎉 Totally agree computer is not an instrument ….. iPhone is! 😂 Today, 5 analogue synths later and Mac Studio Ultra, I was playing Korg Gadget, again. Can wait for you discover Gadget convenience in your pocket and instant idea capture. Wherever it’s hits you. Incl (notinstudio) when you still can hear the world around you 😊
When you think about it, the computer music tradition is very similar to the tradition of playing spoons, pots and pans as percussion instruments, or playing the jug or washboard, or twanging a metal ruler on the edge of a table. But in many senses, it's the opposite. The Fairlight CMI, a graphical computer built for making music, is older than either the Macintosh or the first version of Windows. A lot of computer-made music grew out of the tradition of video game music and amateurs using video game consoles for sequencing. The original IBM PC included a beeper speaker. Apple makes music software for their own computers and gives one of those apps for free.
In another sense, the computer has more in common with a music box... and in another, more in common with windchimes, your own heartbeat, or a workstation keyboard.
I think more mathematical or geometric forms of synthesis (that don't use samples in the traditional sense, but use waveforms) do best on the computer. The computer is a great noisemaker. And the more you get familiar with it, the more the lines between its many musical uses become blurred. Is it composing, improvising, recording, sequencing, wave bending, mixing, mastering, sampling, subtractively synthesizing, waveform generating, editing, or performing? Who knows. The computer is the perfect place to work with a sort of "abductive" reasoning, unlike either the "inductive" reasoning of performing or the "deductive" reasoning of writing music with a pen in staff notation. You can make it work like a staff, like a sequencer, or like a modular playground.
Some people like to use MIDI roll with a multi-sampler when writing drum parts. Others drag individual shot samples into audio tracks.
Some people use things like Max for Live and get really intimate with the "axons and synapses" between the "neurons" of a modular sound, or even write code. Others don't even know what a square wave is... and that's okay!
Some people buy samples to make them sound as much like an orchestra as possibles. Others have more fun screwing around with the voice of a former high school acquaintance or using no samples whatsoever.
I believe the computer is an instrument... that can't truly be mastered. Autechre could probably do nothing that Skrillex does, or vice versa. But who is judging? Compared to traditional instruments with a pedagogy, everything is an extended technique.
I think DAW-equipped computers are to synths as PC gaming rigs are to game consoles.
Love your take on this
@@anonymousphantom720 Thank you!
such an interesting convo. i’ve recently been reworking my workflow after using the sp404sx solely. the limitations are really what make the instrument shine, it only samples. on top of that starting grooves with no grid and sound design is such a breeze when its hands on. going back to ableton can be paralyzing with the amount of options
Did the "one live player over a bunch of samples" thing last year when I made an album on a tracker, thought it sounded good, then jammed guitar over it and realised I had much more work to do. Great result though I thought
I fell into the trap of not pushing outside the default 4/4 grid of my DAW for far too long.
One piece of music creation software I've found quite inspiring is called "Midinous". (th-cam.com/video/F2_C5lpb2Bg/w-d-xo.html)
Its appears extremely grid based, sitting on a literal grid, but it's node-and-path based approach is completely different from anything else I've ever seen, and it has me thinking about music in whole new ways. It's not so much that I use it to compose songs, it's more like messing around in it for a while leads to interesting things I never would have come up with any other way. Then I then take elsewhere.
If you turn off the click, take the grid out of view, you then basically have the same thing as a tape deck. If you use Reaper, you can do this, and then make a grid (if for some reason you need it) following your performance. You can also use MIDI like this, as you said it is just a series of messages, like your brain to your nerves. You don't have to sync to anything to record a MIDI peformance. Although, if you record both the MIDI and audio, you can have more options to change things later.😁😎
One comment. long, long ago I played with a sequencer that turned the Piano roll 90 degrees so that it was like an actual piano roll from a player piano. I found that so amazingly intuitive, as a keyboard player, that I am amazed that no DAW has this as a possibility. Somehow, it just made more sense.
I too wish that piano rolls had this feature.
However, allow me to play devil's advocate for a moment: computer screens are that pesky 3:4 aspect ration (the longer being width, obviously). DAWs are primarily used by musicians who focus on hyper-specialized instrument cases instead of the 88 keys of a piano. Therefore, it's more beneficial for a DAW-based musician to see how a one-octave bassline unfolds throughout all 8+ bars (which the aforementioned width of a screen should be easy to accommodate). Also if you want the bassline to go WUB... WHAOoh... BRee (technical terms, ya know)... the automations lanes for format filters, FM modulation, and other doohickeys might be easier to understand if the graphs for said automations are horizontal instead of vertical (not impossible, just easier).
However my automation-lane argument breaks down when you consider that trackers exist and are widely loved by the users. Otherwise, there you have it: limited polyphony for most cases, AND automation lanes. Back to you, Bill.
[edit] more than likely... it's just the tradition of standard notation being a left-to-right reading ordeal that is shoe-horned into piano roll as a "gotta work the same" mindset.
"Music isn't computers" stefan kijek, the temporalists.
Yeah computer music is boring af. I basically hate the sound now. Womp Womp. I also miss my friends.
I am an dawless musician. My brain is Akai MPC which I do all my work, compositions, sampling and mixing. The greats about is, the MPC is an Playstation for making music. I always prefer the hands on workflow, because for me feels like making music. Also, that can work with real knobs and play melodies and rythms on the pads. I could never make music on the pc only
My Best, Classical Music was on CUBASE 2 Nuendo Original, CUBASE 5 . Now I play live, I have more freedom and fast Workflow. I see Computer Mose Precision still I try to work with everything I have in Digital Media Data Pac, Audio, MP3 and literally any compression and RAW 192KHZ and I don't worry. I don't care. I and I are here to say that Life is Beautiful and it's really up to Artist not about equipment. But I appreciate your opinion and also for high score IQ you are talking about what I know and I agree with you 100%. It is your expression be Unison solution for just for the sake of Science , The Real one about Space Travels, Moon , Mars ( i don't know why).
My expression is complicate and looking for effort to understand and overcome, so I am trying to be the Best Resonating Tones i compose in Real time with Maschine Plus and I am blow away with how much I need to just let Go.
And then you end up with sh!tty plugins that never work as they should wasting time, money and useless support.
They tried to tech music notation at public school found it so stuffy and boring put me off the idea of ever being able to put ideas into music, thank goodness for punk rock and affordable electronics, whatever works for you Matt.
number 7 is highly debatable. Something traditionalist would say, nothing wrong with that either. I'd think computers are instruments depending how you use them. For making music, sure, making sounds yes, making your own instruments.... yes. Its not just DAW the computer does....(and some DAW's are not even just DAWs); maybe a musician coder/dev? custom controller? I sometimes think bitwig is an instrument....confused you yet?
Two things: first, I know I'm odd-man-out, but I never got along with track-heavy, plugin-heavy, highly structured DAW/mix templates. If I were mixing professionally or used tons of VI's, then maybe. But I don't, so I don't.
Second, the obvious and intentional dissonance between the title of this video and where it ultimately landed ("computers are wonderful... they are incredible tools for making music.") feels manipulative. And at the risk of sounding extra catty, I wish you muted the cinematic soundtrack and instead focused on speaking less monotone, with more drama and feeling. The things you work so hard to put into your music, is it crazy to suggest that you make a practice of embodying them? You have a lot of great thoughts and experiences, loosen up, maybe help us to feel what you feel rather than know what you know?
Humans have spent almost a quarter century now creating pop "music" using tools like auto-tune, melodyne and beatdoctor that sounds like computers. Using AI (LLM), computers can now directly create music sounding like computers. We are cutting out the middle man.
Its pronounced DAW (door) not Dee Ay Double U. There are a few oddball TH-camrs saying Dee Ay Dubble You but there's also a few people calling MIDI meedee which is even more fucked up.
Last time I made music on a computer myself was in the early 90s on my Amiga. Using a 68060 CPU and realtime software mixing this was still the most amazing machine at the time. Yet, I noticed and I am convinded up to this day, that there's no good music being made using DAWs!
Just from hearing music, seeing what music I like, and how it was made, I came to the conclusion, that the classic way of using a keyboard and a lot of racks or pedals for effects and sounds is a reuqirement for good music being produced. So it seems that it's about the haptics and the intution factor, which enables the creative process to grow.
Lately I decided that I can record with the minimal number of sounds. Guitar, synth, few drum and instrument samples. I refuse to scroll trough large sample libraries and presets. It gets on my nerve. Did I start playing music to get bogged in scrolling? And who said more is better. I am perfectly fine listening to music played with one or two instruments as long as I find it interesting. If it works for me it must work for others too. And with my pain I can't even sit for long. I think we get lost in what's basicaly filtered farts. That's what soud design is. Filtered farts.
Don’t tell me this I’m desperately trying to climb out of the analogue domain & join the new world.
Having enough trouble just navigating complex routing possibilities on my interface!
Already find my self making less music and spending more time puzzling over a screeen 🤦🏻
You're right, you don't need 50 compressors...
However. *Not all compressors are created equal* despite the fact that a lot of them will be...
It's all about finding the correct tool that does a very specific job.
Finding that tool that does that specific job is part of the journey
Pro tip: Some of the best instruments and processors are free. However, master grade gear is not.
My thoughts on this is that computers are the de-facto way to produce music efficiently. However, it does require training and practice - I don't think you could experimentally fall into the production engineering needs to make the best use of DAW and VST. Obviously you don't make dance music, but I believe a lot of producers make high quality music using only a computer and programming in midi directly. This wouldn't be the approach that works best for other styles of music, especially in your case where recording musician sessions is important - and midi wouldn't be the appropriate way to do it since after all, you want to record a performance with the actual sounds produced by your instruments. I can't imagine how I would ever recreate performances on the guitar without directly recording it, and I have used a session musician Cello recording myself before.
i think using multiple generators and sound sources will always give better results soundwise, more life. With a computer you end up lost in over treatment to get the mix not to sound super flat... my opinion though, mayne it's just me... not for producing at least, but i could add a computer as an extra generator, like kontakt typically, or to use an fx chain i guess.
It’s completely wrong to blame computers for what is essentially a lack of knowledge.
If you don’t have the skills, then you will never get the best from your equipment. This is true for most things in life.
It also explains why most professional musicians employ sound engineers, (who do know what is going on at a technical level).
Knowledge is power.
I prefer picking up my acoustic guitar and bashing something out there and then. Feels more natural and it's more enjoyable.
So...the answer is... No! Computers don't suck for making music.
Yeah. That point about keeping track of your plugins and installers etc. is gold.
Kills me all the time.
Mixing process is something that is transforming all the time because of the Ether which translates frequency resonation and on top of that ears and recently vibrating is changing so information and decent Reproduction is important.
Just play Music on the Big Sounds System in open Air under open sky and that's where Music will be in Natural form without limitations of closed spaces. It's about Music and unpredictable but not too much different. I want to hear something new and I am not interested in Main Stream and I am not alone. It's about Music and making new contacts, new friends because it's about people doing something together and greater ideas have priority over everything else. Honesty is most valuable and.. Human Is a Live
Playing an instrument = using emotions, feelings, not keeping perfect timing etc
Making music on a DAW = slave to a click track
I always failed to use a metronome 😂
The challenge I sometimes face is merging the above 2 points.
Funny how my experience was exactly the opposite, came as a developer, started on "sound" production by doing a few algos for sound generation. While studing on for the pitch I started playing with frecuency and Tamber, that led to downloading live and starting designing sounds. My sole entry point was math, chord and notes are essentially math but math cannot cuantificate the emotion on the chord so as you might imagine my music wasnt very transmiting but very design intensive.
I did had a background as a drummer (a few years of playing intensively as a child) and what took my away was reading notation. The encoding on music notation is simply awful, notes are the same but it depends on the line they are sitting which you need to see from a distance, and while drum didnt had intonation, complex rhythm its as difficult to read. I couldnt think otherwise that music notation was a mason code to obscure music to those who couldnt figure what the childish pictures on a line meant. Of course MIDI solved all this. It was simple and intuitive, notes are in their corresponding note, every note is pictured and note lenght and rhythm can be simply drawn at will. My mind would fill the arrangment with the most creative sounds I can came to imagine but I struggled to create a "musical message" a somewhat of a coherent musical piece. I still do. while math and sound have limits, music dont, you can just run your face on a keyboard and could be musical, theres no logic no sequence of thought that backs that.
It took me a while to learn the basic of music theory and im still a begginer on that field but as instruments goes, I rather have my computer but im leaning much more a humble keyboard controller after practicing for a while. Your videos help with the theory too, thanks.
what i like about audio is the production is lot tighter than midi
Amen. The computer is not an instrument as you said. It is essentially a recording studio in a plastic box and you essentially become a producer. I must say that despite my love for the art of computer music production, I very much miss the sound of live musicians on a recording. Despite how advanced DAWs, etc., have become with randomizing and attempting to create the feel of humanization, it is still not there and perhaps may not be ever. There is something to be said when listening to a pop, rock, ballad, whatever from prior to the digital era and hearing but not hearing the essence of the human touch. Much of it on the surface is not actually noticable, but the brain knows. It puts it all together and can simply tell that what you are hearing is being played and recorded from live musicians. Now I am not, nor ever been a musician trained or otherwise. I simply loved producing using computers both because I always loved computer music and the avant garde aspect and the challange of piecing together bit by bit as if a puzzle. So, my comment is not one based on bias because of being a musician, but simply from perspective and honesty. There is and perhaps always will be the battle between musicians and computer based music production, and that is sad. They're are two different things, two different mediums, producing two different sounding outcomes. It is just sad that today due to profit thinking only that the art of live musicians has been replaced for digital mimicking. But sadly it sells, and that is all that seems to matter.
Imagine being a creative and at the same time being complicit with the tools' limitation to guide your process.
This is an entire skill issue, hoping for technology to help you out if you didn't sort your head out.
I had computer before I had a proper synth, so idk what you are saying :) that being said, i started with guitar so before I moved to DAWs like ableton
this is a fantastic watch, tells the time perfectly . . .ok terrible joke, but seriously this video is amazingly thought provoking, many life lesson reminders in there, specifically how we tend to skim over the surface with sample libraries, and that translates well in life when you have too many options, but it tied in well with the point you made regarding traditional instruments being beautifully limited, as they force you to dig deeper into them, i always pondered on why we as humans are so limited, it may be for that exact reason, to dig deeper into ourselves for discovery purposes, that is assuming we have a purpose, but hey im rambling, thank you for the reminder
My playing, tone et al went way down after getting into the music production thing just to make a few recordings. Many computers, hardware, licenses, and time to learn some of it...not worth it. I was better just picking up an acoustic and going into something as opposed to playing with a mouse and screen.
No they dont , computers are the future for.music, a mini pc, macro controller, a few touch screens, ultimate control
I love that concept of using limitation to force a deeper dive to find something real.
I guess it's what you grew up with, I've been using Cubase for 33 years now. I can look at piano roll on the screen and instantly see everything, I still can't read notation.
"Adding a single live player"... Oh yes, I've always had a vocalist, and then added a guitarist in the mid 90's. And we were a band.
Yeah I definitely think whatever you start with/spend the most time with has a big effect on preference.
Free from computers music yes ,, Your I hope you dont mind this your a adorable little man ...
Pro tip: Do not update your OS when you're in the middle of a project. Just don't.
In the end, a computer is also an instrument, that must be learned. It only has no limitations, so you could easily be trapped in that endless learning process. Everyone needs to figure out, which parts of it are necessary and learn them well. And when it’s time, stop learning and start making music, which is the hard part to be honest…
I play(ed) guitar. And about 7 years ago, I was looking at buying a looper pedal so that I could jam with myself. This led me to TH-cam and then not long after I discovered "DAWs" and I had never heard of VSTs. It seemed, from my quiet place of naivety, that I could use a DAW to jam with myself and make music too! Anyway, cut a long story short: I now compose electronica (exclusively for myself). More often that not, I'll use the guitar to find inspiration and then use Melodyne to turn it into midi. I never saw any of that coming 7 years ago!!!
Meh, they are still better than reel to reel, however they could pick up a few moves from the MPCs.
Whenever I open a DAW on my computer I feel like I'm about to make a spreadsheet in Excel
then you're not using the right DAW
As a guitar and banjo player, I definitely like midi. We dont know anything about traditional notation!
If you have Cubase you can use traditional score writing.
DAW is focused on quickness and practicality. Producers and musicians outsource their ears to visual and clicking, copy-pasting. It was fun 20 years ago but now I see that it almost completely destroyed my motivation for making music. Not to mention that 50% of my VST don't function anymore, I must be a slave to subscription and updates, Native Instruments and Avid are the worst! Spent over 2000$ in the last 5 years and half of that doesn't work. I spent my energy and time with support and emails, no wonder I lost the will to make music! I am selling now my Pro Tools and Native Instruments, I bought Tascam 8 track mixer, new amplifiers, guitar, piano... And final mix and mastering I will do in real studio!
...and just to add, I replaced Sibelius with pen and paper and my productivity and quality dramatically improved! I rely on my imagination and ears. I construct phrases in my mind and improving my musical memory.
Thank you for this video man. I'm an older "genxer" and I can relate to your experience in music exploration.
I'm glad I watched this. I have fallen into many of the traps myself. Thanks.
Whats your opinion on a multitrack recorder like the tascam Dp32 as a daw.
Hear hear on - well, all of it but especially iLok which is a turd.
Good idea. Put this on TH-cam to confuse beginners even more.
The computer dying thing hit home. I made my first EP in the 12th grade and sold a bunch of copies. Then of course my computer got hit with a power surge and died. 20+ years later I haven't been able to find a copy. Granted back then storage was expensive (my hard drive was 2GB which was a big deal) but still. Organize your files and back them up regularly.
I just had a crash and lost a lot of work. Starting over, greater and better.
Computers suck for making music. You mean someone.
What is the music in the background towards the start
thank you :)
Endless depths of its limitations, huh? Gonna have to think on that one.
have you thought about microtonal harmonies?
Nah, a muscle MacBook Pro and Logic are quintessential. No issues here.
Wait a second this isn't venus theory.
Good job on the video!
must have never heard a SOPHIE song
I started with an Atari ST, Casio CZ-101 and Cubase sometime in the late 80's but actually much earlier with an Atari 800XL and a little 6502 player routine, hugely inspired by Phil Price/Gary Gilbertson collaborations (Alternate Reality and their awesome music compilation disk), then years later the incredible music of the tracker scene, and to today where FL Studio is my main instrument but I'll use Renoise and Bitwig occasionally. I've also used Csound, MaxMSP, PureData, SuperCollider, FAUST, ChucK, and many other tools. There's so many cool ways to make sounds and I love learning them all, but ultimately the best way is the one that lets you get music in your head onto a computer with less friction as possible.
I'm fascinated that you identify "weak harmonic progressions" by reading scores.
Can't you do that by listening to the music? Or rather, what makes it weak if it doesn't sound weak when listening?
I can't speak for Jones, but personally I used to find weak harmonic points during passing playback in arrangements I created in FL Studio. Upon this miniscule cringe, I would then repeat the section over and over again and then start tweaking the notes over and over again and pretty soon I realized that I was spending a lot of time on one section. I did discover a tool in FL Studio's piano roll called "Scrub" in which I could drag it over the pattern or playlist to play back and even hold down the MIDI commands/notes in a given pause of time. This helped me identify either the weak polyphony much faster. However, since your ears can become accustomed to dissonance very quickly this scrub function is a double edged sword -- you still need to listen to the previous sections again to give your ears that context once again instead of a pigeon-holed block-chord. However, during the trial and error phase of deciding what dissonance is good or bad (or something recorded was out of tune), the piano-roll/playlist scrub feature has saved time.
I imagine that someone with a lot more experience reading scores of sheet music can identify the note intervals at a much more rapid pace than the trial and error or frozen scrubs. [sigh] I'm gonna miss FL Studio when I complete my Linux migration.
I identify it while listening, but can address it more efficiently in notation.
Where were you 8 years ago when I started to make my own music? Lol. This video would have been a real time saver. But it still is a good reminder of many important tips and ideas that anyone can benefit from. Thanks for your music and your ideas.
I was still trying to figure out why my first hardware synth couldn't send audio over usb :)
Computers are great for making music. I like to create music software and filters myself, and use original tools as much as possible. Tada: infinite synthesizers, that cost a little time instead of lots of money to obtain. Throw in some MIDI equipment for more physical interaction and it's a great experience.
Very interesting watching this video. It looks like your approach to DAWs and computers were pretty rough at the beginning! in my case was the opposite, I came from traditional teaching in the early 80's and in the early 90's I started using computers and by that time computers weren't that friendly as they are nowadays. I remember myself using a Amiga 500 computer with a midi interface using a 4-channel sequencer called ProTracker. I also had a notation program that I can't remember the name, sequencers were more precise than notation, now the DAWs offers things that I would't even been dreaming when all this started for me! I mean, I always was grateful from what computers gave me and helped me to do. Great channel!
tell that to computer music
Thanks for the video. I use Score Creator to write music. I’m old😊 so it is like scoring on paper, but easier and more efficient. It will play what you wrote with various instruments and the user can write with chords too. You can export your creation as a MIDI file.
Yes, the computer most definitely IS a musical instrument. You haven't been listening to it. Grab a little Japanese AM transistor radio, and place it next to the computer and turn both of them on. Music! Oh, am I date-stamping myself? Yeah, I saw Pong at a Sears store when I was five years old. I actually did use paper tape and real Teletype machines. My first tape machine was a Tascam 234 and my first synth was a lightly used Yamaha CS-15. You want backwards tape sounds? Flip the tape over and there they are. Great stuff.
Computers don't suck for making music, it's the software that's written for them sucks for making music. I haven't found a DAW I like. Too many features are not a feature, they're a hindrance. You don't need a universe of plugins and whatnot. There are a number of channels demonstrating great music made with basically trash. "After Cooking" and "Soaring Tortoise" are good. More music is made by banging on stretched hide and blowing on hollow pieces of wood than kvetching about a black box of bootlegging binary bits.
As a human being who loves music as well as the process of creating it, I desperately want to like this video, but the clickbait elements and the here's my EBOOK link make me sad. That's the sort of thing the robots hellbent on destroying are world are doing.
I don’t really do electronic music, I do record and play a lot of folk, jazz, bluegrass. And I don’t like working on a computer, I work with notation, Nashville charts, a 1949 Hammond, an analogue console, and a two inch. I rather like my workflow, I don’t like producing on a computer.
Midi isn’t audio. Correct; Except now these new DAWs have this new stupid thing called “hybrid” tracks. Help! ;)
I apologize in advance if you've already disclosed this information, but I'm curious what film/TV/video games you've scored? I'd love to check those out!
This is absolutely so true. Clicking a mouse is always work, whereas truly connecting with an instrument is pure joy. Instruments plus a NON-PC multitracker, then... 5 minutes in audacity to run a mastering plugin or two and... Done! No fancy DAW no nonsense or walking through presets and sounds, just sit down and compose what you hear in your mind. This is is the best workflow for me.
I grew up playing traditional instruments, and I now prefer midi (for composing, though not necessarily for final production). The psychology of the workflow works well for me, but that's going to be different per individual.
As a EDM / ambient / cinematic producer I can say that I invest a lot of time making the computer sound organic & musical. With my guitar & modular system its an entirely different world. Have a nice day :)
I almost exclusively use hardware synths, drum machines, and effects. I don't really like DAWs, but simple MIDI sequencers that just record MIDI data are extinct by now. I wish I still had my old 486 with MS-DOS 6.22
No they don't, silly!