Biggest beginner struggles

[Aan'allein]

Back when I was a beginner: struggling to get my ideas down in concrete form.

Such a struggle! How long did it take you until you felt you were able to do that?

[JerGoertz]

Back when I was a beginner: struggling to get my ideas down in concrete form.

Such a struggle! How long did it take you until you felt you were able to do that?

Many years... although I wasn't really working on music seriously or with much focus during much of that time.

[Aan'allein]

Back when I was a beginner: struggling to get my ideas down in concrete form.

Such a struggle! How long did it take you until you felt you were able to do that?

Many years... although I wasn't really working on music seriously or with much focus during much of that time.

Recently took advantage of Ableton's trial period. Having fun, but I definetly feel overwhelmed sometimes with things to learn in order to get my musical ideas down into the DAW.

[javierosr]

Mmmm my problem is my country in music refered .., I live in Costa Rica , the culture here is tropical music or similar, I like trance so much but here is not the rule .

Very expensive education in musical and electronic music courses, I have a good job but in some circumstances i take a lot of responsibilities in my family, pay taxes food and is very hard for me save money.
I buy many things here and slowly I taken a lots of tools and knowledge.

[MMaarrkk]

^ As much as YouTube can be misleading, misinformed or just not that optimal, I think it offers a great community, especially for cases like these. Based on genre, it might be harder to find, but over time more and more artist start to use YouTube as an outlet to teach and share their experiences. So nowadays, it's really common for people to use it as the main tool to learn.

When it comes to hardware, it's a bit more unfortunate. I think this was covered in a different thread, but based on the country, hardware can get really expensive, due to import costs and/or how niche it is. But with the influx of "free worldwide shipping" companies, maybe one day we'll see music accessible everywhere.

[djmagn]

Hey man I've been in the same position as you months ago but I'm now having progress mainly because there was a time I just realized I just need to hear a lot of sounds and ADD them in your vocabulary, take note of it, these questions may help you "How do I do that?", what plugins to use for that sound?, what certain parameters should I manipulate? parameters that modulate and change over time? you need a step sequencer for that or an LFO and automation/modulation parameters in your daw. Know the sounds of plucks, arps, pads, chords, kicks,snare, and other percussion sounds. Immerse yourself in the process of how in every music you hear. Invest learning and mastering a single daw before jumping to another daw because you find it intimidating. Personally I started with ableton suite trial first and got overwhelmed and now switched to ableton lite, that way you won't be overwhelmed in the things you'll encounter

[andymcbain]

My biggest struggles when starting out (specifically with electronic music)

- Not finishing tracks... it's a skill in itself, and an essential one. Consistency trumps occasional perfection when you're learning.

- Refusing to accept that there isn't some magical plugin or piece of gear that gives you that "pro sound"

I still struggle with both in fact

[Googly Smythe]

I'm a life-long hobbyist.
I started recording my "music" in 1970, using a 3" reel-to-reel tape machine that was given to me for my 15th birthday, a year after I got my first guitar. The struggles I faced then are no different from the struggles I face today.

New technology always brings a new set of issues to be learned, overcome, or worked around. Just when you think you got a handle on it, something new comes along and it's back to square one.

There is a constant struggle to be disciplined. (Not being paid for my work makes me very lazy.)

There is a constant struggle to do something I haven't done before, which obviously gets harder every year.

Finding a chord sequence to fit the melody, or finding a melody to fit the chord sequence - no easier now than it was then.

These things are no different now than they were 50 years ago.

If this all comes across as a bit depressing, it's actually quite the reverse, because it means I still have the capacity to learn something new, and to get excited when things go right.

The one I've learned is that nothing beats doing things for yourself - you can look up all the tutorials you want, but until you start actually putting theory into practice, you won't know a thing, you won't learn anything.
So practice, practice, practice. And when you're done practising, practice some more.

Thank you for listening.

[handshaker]

I definitely frustrated with just only being able to create 8 bar loops, but nothing else. Think I lack creativity more than anything else!

[imrae]

I definitely frustrated with just only being able to create 8 bar loops, but nothing else. Think I lack creativity more than anything else!

I find the best way go break this is to get out of the DAW and noodle with a more traditional instrument like piano or guitar.

[Passing Bye]

I definitely frustrated with just only being able to create 8 bar loops, but nothing else. Think I lack creativity more than anything else!

What that 8 bar loop represents, if it's main/chorus theme, than just move it further and make stuff going into it, do you listen to music, it's not hard imagine some kind of arrangement in similar genre of yours, just move on from looping same thing over and over.

[andymcbain]

I definitely frustrated with just only being able to create 8 bar loops, but nothing else. Think I lack creativity more than anything else!

It's more likely that you lack the skills to arrange a track. This is common with many people when they first start, probably because a blank screen in a DAW isn't actually all that conducive to songwriting IMHO.

Get a track you like, place it into an audio track and use your DAW's marker track to "map" it out. INTRO , VERSE 1, BREAKDOWN, CHORUS, MIDDLE 8 etc etc...

Follow that structure with your track. Do that over and over and eventually you'll start to figure it out without a guide.

[Keith99]

Yes the best tip I got was to write music horizontally not vertically i.e. dont just keep repeating an 8 bar loop adding layer after layer but move quickly to the next 8 bars

[handshaker]

lots of interesting suggestions here. Thanks, will go through them and see how I develop.

[Double Tap]

1. Not knowing where to start or what to do next. (Even though I have ideas about what I'd like to do.) It's one thing to learn a DAW, but even just understanding what things are called and why they're there is steep.

2. Not understanding whether something is not working because it is broken, or because I'm incompetent. (After about a month I was mostly past this, but two months in I still get occasional flashes of mysteriousness).

3. Not knowing what to listen for.

4. Not having a clear pathway to addressing 1 - 3, or where to go to find out what I don't know. Balancing learning from videos / manuals with making the tracks I want to make is hard. I'll never know everything, but when will I know enough?

5. Not knowing what is a false economy. I can download a free DAW, free synths, free FX, free sample players, free sounds and make music for the cost of electricity and bandwidth using a set of airline headphones and an ageing laptop - but the free stuff is often not user friendly and can lead you down blind alleys. It took me several weeks to figure out what I even needed as a basic set of tools. Even here there's no "what you need to get going" thread afaik.