Good educational resources for getting into making electronic music?
April 26, 2015 2:04 AM Subscribe
What are some good educational resources (Youtube, tutorials, etc) for getting into making electronic music?
I've already found some great stuff regarding music theory, and would absolutely love more of that. Specific to Garageband is a plus. Tips and tricks and anything else you can think of would be great.
An example of something that I'm trying to figure out now and will spend the next little while googling, is how to make a vocal note sustain in Garageband.
Anything in regards to mixing vocals for a layered and airy sound would be great. I'm starting to familiarize myself with what compression is, etc.
Thanks!
I've already found some great stuff regarding music theory, and would absolutely love more of that. Specific to Garageband is a plus. Tips and tricks and anything else you can think of would be great.
An example of something that I'm trying to figure out now and will spend the next little while googling, is how to make a vocal note sustain in Garageband.
Anything in regards to mixing vocals for a layered and airy sound would be great. I'm starting to familiarize myself with what compression is, etc.
Thanks!
I'd recommend the "We Are The Music Makers" sub-Reddit. There's also EDM Production, Electronic Music, EDM, Abelton, Abelton Live, and Beat Match.
Some of these are for making EDM, some are for promoting and listening to EDM.
Have fun storming the castle!
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 5:06 AM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
Some of these are for making EDM, some are for promoting and listening to EDM.
Have fun storming the castle!
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 5:06 AM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]
The production forums at tranceaddict are extremely useful, lots of links to tutorials (yes, trance-focused; production is production is production though), and full of helpful people--many of whom have had actual pro releases, some on very big labels.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:19 AM on April 26, 2015
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:19 AM on April 26, 2015
Making Music by Dennis DeSantis (Ableton’s Head of Documentation) might be of interest.
posted by tnai at 10:05 AM on April 26, 2015
posted by tnai at 10:05 AM on April 26, 2015
The IDM forum will be useful to you.
I also stumbled upon this the other day which is from SAE (expensive sound engineering school!) in Slovenia. A student seems to have recorded their electronic music lectures. We win!
This is also good. Check the 'Freebies' section for drum and synth sounds.
I don't have much experience with Garageband - it looks very basic. You need to be able to automate which means record yourself twiddling knobs using a controller (or playing with them using your mouse) for everything possible like delay, pitch.... the list is endless. If you can automate and make use of good quality VSTs then you could make something interesting.
I have heard that Ableton is good especially if you eventually want to do something live. Both Ableton and FL Studio are meant to be great for automation (I use FL). You could try downloading both demos. FL's demo will not let you access anything you save again until you actually buy it however you can always take screen shots of your work and bounce down to wav (you didn't hear it from me ;). Warbeats is a good YouTube tutorial channel for FL.
Music Radar is a good site for both learning techniques and linking to lots of good quality free instruments, samples, FX machines - the works:
The KVR Forum is a massive resource of free (and not-free) VSTs.
I would lastly recommend just messing around with envelopes and options using effects like reverb and delay and seeing what happens. Maybe keep a notebook to write it down.
Good luck to you.
posted by ihaveyourfoot at 8:21 AM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
I also stumbled upon this the other day which is from SAE (expensive sound engineering school!) in Slovenia. A student seems to have recorded their electronic music lectures. We win!
This is also good. Check the 'Freebies' section for drum and synth sounds.
I don't have much experience with Garageband - it looks very basic. You need to be able to automate which means record yourself twiddling knobs using a controller (or playing with them using your mouse) for everything possible like delay, pitch.... the list is endless. If you can automate and make use of good quality VSTs then you could make something interesting.
I have heard that Ableton is good especially if you eventually want to do something live. Both Ableton and FL Studio are meant to be great for automation (I use FL). You could try downloading both demos. FL's demo will not let you access anything you save again until you actually buy it however you can always take screen shots of your work and bounce down to wav (you didn't hear it from me ;). Warbeats is a good YouTube tutorial channel for FL.
Music Radar is a good site for both learning techniques and linking to lots of good quality free instruments, samples, FX machines - the works:
The KVR Forum is a massive resource of free (and not-free) VSTs.
I would lastly recommend just messing around with envelopes and options using effects like reverb and delay and seeing what happens. Maybe keep a notebook to write it down.
Good luck to you.
posted by ihaveyourfoot at 8:21 AM on April 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:55 AM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]