Things I Wish I Knew When Getting Started

[zerocrossing]

Plugins, but in a year or two.
it's already happening, that's why i'm shrinking my shit down to as much as i'm comfy with.
i might waste 15 minutes here and there trying to replicate some stuff with existing stuff (i.e. like 30mins today to replicate Softube's Amp Room marshall sound in Voxengo Boogex+Kelvin).
Unrelated note, Softube's Amp Room has a 50hz "mains" hum that modulates the drive. talk about authenticity

If there’s one place I’ve found that hardware helps, it’s with amp simulation. The Kemper or AxeFX really are worth having.

[Ploki]

I guess, but i got accostumed to plugins.

Been toying with running a hybrid setup - plugin preamp into a tube poweramp and box, but havent gotten around to it yet

[shockenkleid]

Try microtonic tho - it does a f**king great 808 + tons more.

microtonic is cool but I normally don't use 808's. plus everyone expects to hear a 909 in a dance record so there is that expectation. whats great with Drumazon is that you can go well beyond a 909 since it offers additional controls which are very useful especially on the kick & snare

[Ploki]

Try microtonic tho - it does a f**king great 808 + tons more.

microtonic is cool but I normally don't use 808's. plus everyone expects to hear a 909 in a dance record so there is that expectation. whats great with Drumazon is that you can go well beyond a 909 since it offers additional controls which are very useful especially on the kick & snare

Riiight nepheton is 808!
Microtonic also does mean 909 (check the vintage tonic preset pack) - and also goes beyond it

Since discovering vintage tonic I dont bother with other drum machines anymore haha

[Hink]

me, I did learn my lesson fifty years ago when I started playing, sat down with my dad and turned an old tube ham radio amplifier into a guitar amp. I had a cheap acoustic guitar and for a pickup dad taught me to take a dynamic speaker, tape it to the face of the guitar and it was a pickup...sure none of those things were great sounding or really very good at all, never taped a speaker to a guitar again, but I did use one as a mic hear and there for s&g...fifty years later though the lessons still remain, the understanding is still there and now I got a few more tube amps...not throwing away expensive, prematurely obsolete technology and defunct pretending to be what I already have and will clearly last me a lifetime

[shockenkleid]

I find it interesting that you say for "trance/house/techno/EDM", D16 Drumazon as a drum solution is enough. I always felt kind of limited with just a 909 emulation. And, I always thought that pretty much everyone in the business would rather rely on sample packs.

But, what do I know.

Saturation & EQ can drasstically alter the sound of a 909. just about every dance music drum sample pack is filled with 909 samples. A lot of people use Drumazon and are not impressed with its sound and end up deleting it. but a 909 will only come to life with saturation. You have to "Drive" a plugin like Drumazon to really experience its sound. If you have the plugin, try throwing a distortion/saturation plugin after it and just browse through the presets and patterns. you'll be amazed at the range of tones you can get out of it

[BONES]

After 10 years of being an aspiring producer I have come to the conclusion that,

All I needed to produce trance/house/techno/EDM was:
- Any D.A.W it doesn't matter (but preferably Logic-Pro)
- Lennar Digital Sylenth1
- Modartt Pianoteq
- D16Group Drumazon (sounds amazing when driven with FabFilter Saturn)
- FabFilter Total Bundle
_________________________________

- Focusrite Scarlett Solo
- Kali Audio LP-6
- Audio-Technica ATH-M20x * with better earpads like Dekoni Audio Earpads
- Arturia KeyLab Essential 49
- Sonarworks Reference 4 (software & Mic)

That's a very specific list, it seems a strange way to look at the topic you started. Do you really think you'd do worse with a Novation controller or a pair of Genelecs or good AKG headphones? I don't think that shit matters at all.

I should have spent 50% of my time:
- learning music theory
- learning composition theory
- paying for a piano tutor
- enrolling in an online mixing/mastering course

I couldn't see the point of that 40 years ago when I started and I still can't now.

Thats it. Every EDM hit song could have been made with just these

Only if you have a) the talent, and b) the drive to make it happen. And of those two things, it's the drive that really matters. In order to have a hit you have to really want to have a hit like you never wanted anything before in your life. Of course in interviews you can never admit that you want a hit but that drive has to be there. Personally, I don't give a shit about any of that, I just want to be happy with the work I do.

I can't really think of anything I wish I knew when I started. It's been an amazing journey from go to woah and I'm not sure I'd have changed any of it, except maybe to have made an effort to find a manager to do all the shit I hate doing.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

I wish I knew that the perfect studio ain’t happening ever, only the perfect use of what you already got.

[Aloysius]

I Wish I Knew How Full I Was Going To Be After The Starter

[jthekidd427]

The software, presets, and gear dont make the producer or the song

[jamcat]

• Perfection is neither achievable nor preferable.
• Air is good. Surround your instruments and your notes with it.
• Music occurs between people in a location at a moment in time. You’re not just capturing notes, you’re recording history.

[eLawnMust]

Topic Starter is pretty much right on... Many maybe even most on here don't know near enough about music so the sounds become amateur with piles of FX to cover it up... Most their tunes sound the 'same'... They need special help or a plugin or DAW feature to 'pick notes out' of simple lullabies as they have not developed their ear...

Folks, when you have gained enough musicianship you realize that the music itself is the FX, so you need way less...

Also you can say more in a tune in less time these '15-20' minute long masturbation sessions are nothing but agony... Even the Mariachi bands did it better as they would conduct a 'full stop' for a measure or two to 'shock' the audience & bring the listeners back...

Good technique I use it in even short tunes-

https://alonetone.com/TalkOrBell/tracks/axs-jazzmonger

BTW that tune done in a freeware tracker released in 2001 that is only 460 kb full size... Wish Hans Zimmer would do something in AXS...

You should be able to listen to most any tune & go "I like that Maj7 to Sus4 to Min6 segment, I think I'll try that in my next tune"... If not then you ear is not good enough...

Oh, i'm sure that many on here can obtain a 'fat sound' but that don't make music great, if it did then folk, ethnic, bluegrass, classical & many other 'non-fat musics' would be the crappiest there is... But they are NOT!... In most cases they are way superior...

[BONES]

Topic Starter is pretty much right on... Many maybe even most on here don't know near enough about music so the sounds become amateur with piles of FX to cover it up... Most their tunes sound the 'same'... They need special help or a plugin or DAW feature to 'pick notes out' of simple lullabies as they have not developed their ear...

For me, learning all that as I went along was an important part of the process. I think the problem is that people think they are doing good work when it's rubbish. It seems some find it hard to be critical of their own work.

I think patience is also a part of it. I bought my first synth in 1982, with absolutely no idea how to use it, how to play or anything else. At that time I also bought a book on how to play the organ but I don't think I ever got past the intro. I learned by doing and it was two-and-a-half years before I had made anything that even resembled an actual song, but still nothing I would ever have wanted to share with anyone else.

By 1985 I had five or six songs and had my first live performance. (In fact, on the 20th of next month it will be exactly 40 years since that fateful day.) I went into a studio for the first time in 1986 and released my first single in 1987, after my second studio excursion. So that was five-and-a-half years from clueless novice to this pile of garbage (which I am much happier with today than I was at the time, although I still think it's shit) -

You should be able to listen to most any tune & go "I like that Maj7 to Sus4 to Min6 segment, I think I'll try that in my next tune"...

Maybe if you're a f**king wanker. Seriously, do you not see how pretentious that is? I don't need to know the name of a chord in order to reproduce it, I just need to know how it sounds. It may be handy if you want to communicate it to others without them having to hear it first but it's not a useful skill for anything I've ever done. If I said shit like that to my bandmate, he'd look at me like I had two heads and then laugh in my face.

Oh, i'm sure that many on here can obtain a 'fat sound' but that don't make music great, if it did then folk, ethnic, bluegrass, classical & many other 'non-fat musics' would be the crappiest there is...

That's exactly what most of it is, although I'd suggest that a full symphony orchestra achieves a level of fatness few other genres can match. And they are crap for that exact reason. I can't listen to any of that kind of shit.

[Papuzzo]

When I started using workstation synths and then computers and DAWs I thought "WOW! I can do everything myself!" The one thing I wish I knew way back then is the best inspiration comes from working with other musicians. One man bands never sound as good as a real band. The second thing I wish I knew was to always look for musicians better than me to collaborate with. The third thing I recently learned is that those stupid arranger keyboards are actually great and allow me/force me to focus on creating ideas and not getting lost in all the myriad gear decisions early on. They force me to reduce complexity in the initial stages and then later on the ideas can be refined with the best/right gear. The best thing I ever learned is that I don't need 100 VST synths, 300 effects plugins, and 5 DAWs to make great music. Less is more.

[VOODOO U]

You should be able to listen to most any tune & go "I like that Maj7 to Sus4 to Min6 segment, I think I'll try that in my next tune"... If not then you ear is not good enough...

Yeah that's how (IE) Motley Crue did it. Mick went to Nick and said Hey I just heard a Fmin7 into a Dsus7th flat6 and golly gee willikers I'd like to do that for Girls Girls Girls.
Sometimes I think you're so full of shit you're just f**king with us. Goddamit i took the bait.

Oh, i'm sure that many on here can obtain a 'fat sound' but that don't make music great, if it did then folk, ethnic, bluegrass, classical & many other 'non-fat musics' would be the crappiest there is... But they are NOT!... In most cases they are way superior...

Folk music is for hippies. Bluegrass? No coincidence CBGBs went punk (CBGB stands for Country BlueGrass n Blues).