Music Making General

kurisu · 2023-08-18T21:58:26+00:00

I wonder if there are more of you who have an interest on making music, whether you prefer recording your bedroom performances or playing around with the pia...

Psittacus

Track I made inspired by Scott Brown's "Elysium". My attempt at harnessing the power of 90s UK hardcore.

Zilants

Just Got myself a roland mv-1 and i gotta say this is the most complex synth of all time. it has everything you need. The dark souls 2 of synths. im afraid it filtered everyone because its just THAT good.

Melon

I picked up making music during my studies because I really wanted to do something besides play videogames in my free time and it clicked with me super fast.
Not in the sense that it sounded good but I was really having fun. So i've kept it up since then and this is where I'm at now

I made this as a sort of cool down track after I tried to make a mini album that just ended up being kinda not good and I'm really happy with it.

Ragingether I had many times started a project with that approach. I don't see anything wrong with that.
Sometimes the music that develops around it ends up actually dominating the track and I throw away the original idea entirely.
So I guess I wanna say just because you start with a concept doesn't mean you can't move away from it.

kuolluijen huamut

any software y'all would recommend for start? I've played many instruments years ago, but now i don't have any, only laptop. so, I'm looking for not-too-complicated apps for hobbyists without any physical instruments.

kurisu

kuolluijen huamut You should try different DAWs, there are many options out there for different types of people.

FL studio is very well known and very popular, many people like how good it is, and if you ever decide to pay for it, the license lasts forever and gives you free lifetime updates.
There's also Ableton Live, it has a different workflow but it's still quite the popular option. It has a generous free trial, or, a generously bad license verification system (wink wink). I'm personally an Ableton guy.
Bitwig is what some people call "ableton if it was better". It supports Linux unlike most of the options in this list, it has a better workflow than Ableton's, from what I've heard, but some other people say that it's a bit of a barebones product at the moment.
If you have a mac, you should start out in garageband, it's free and it has some good stuff to play around with. If you end up liking it, you should upgrade to Logic Pro, the good version of garageband.
Reaper is free and some people like it. Last night I went to a friend's house who was comping for his band using Reaper, nice choice to give it a shot!
Another free option that I like is cakewalk, pretty solid choice, also used by a few friends, I like it more than reaper, personally.
There's also Reason! ...no one likes Reason.

Try out some free trials/versions, stick to what you like, and if you end up considering this as a serious career, buy the software. But if you're not gonna release anything and use it as a hobby thing, some of these are quite pricey, so you may or may not consider sailing the seven seas.

No matter your choice, enjoy making music! Good luck!

Ragingether

kuolluijen huamut I'd recommend an old version of Reason like Reason 5. It's got a great library of default instruments and was the software used by Takeshi Abo to make the soundtrack to Steins;Gate alongside other games for the studio.
I like FL Studio, but the version I got has massive memory leak issues and even with my 16 gb of RAM it gobbles all of it up whenever it's in use. Considering you're using a laptop I feel like something like Reason 5 would suit the hardware better, only takes up 300MB of ram in comparison to FL's 2-3 GB.
I'd like to emphasize the default instruments part as well, FL Studio, while a decent software with a easy to use UI, it suffers from having a mostly garbage assortment of default instruments. Ranging from decent to meme-tier levels of bad, only really suitable for shitpost music and the like. Reason does not suffer from this nearly as much and I've heard even the soundtrack of the aforementioned Steins;Gate use some of it's default instruments (One example being the Orchestral Flute sound being used as a lead in the track Cycle).

dogeatsworm

kuolluijen huamut it really depends on what kinda music you want to make and the workflow you want to conduct. ableton/fl are usually the popular choices and i personally use fl studio, though there a lot of other DAWs/trackers out there. kurisu's post is a good rundown but as a heads up pretty much every daw is easy to """""borrow""""" if you want to go down that route. there's also plenty of tutorials on youtube for almost every daw/tracker as well. just don't forget to have fun keep making stuff. everyone's gonna be ass at first but thats just the process.

yukarihinata

kuolluijen huamut Others have answered. for paid Ableton and FL Studio are the most popular choices. The other options are also good. they are all just tools. use the tool you like best and stick to it.

if you dont want to pay LMMS with some good vst instruments can get you used to some of the FL Studio layout. also the best linux option if Reaper and Ardour scare you as much as they scare me. (almost everything i have posted here was made using lmms.)

However, as said before the best thing is to try multiple paid DAWs and pick one. good DAWs dont make good music, good musicians do.

sweet-miasma

might be a silly question, but how do you go about choosing an artist name?
I've only played a few smaller shows at bars and cafes- still haven't released anything- but I really don't like using my own name and the ones I've ran by with friends haven't stuck
so yeah, how did you guys choose one?

Lumeinshin

sweet-miasma I'm not a music guy but I would imagine it would be similar to choosing a user name?
Maybe with considerations being the kind of music you make and whether you're solo or in a group.
Group names are probably quite easy and fun, I bet crafting a good solo name might be quite stressful

Toobie

Anyone else use Cubase? I’ve been using it for years now but each update adds so little and they keep making the UI uglier. Aside from that always shy from uploading my music and/or I can’t get it to a point where I feel finished. It’s hard to get over that hurdle.

Lumeinshin

Toobie

Aside from that always shy from uploading my music and/or I can’t get it to a point where I feel finished. It’s hard to get over that hurdle.

Yeah I think thats the hardest thing creatively. If possible maybe upload it as a (demo) or something like that so people can tell its not fully finished Unsure if thats the right lingo
I've never been a music guy but drawing and such left the same feeling. Better to get something out there then nothing at all though!

sonoko

Psittacus This is really great man.

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