Help me create digital music.

April 10, 2008 6:52 PM

I'd like to find some tutorials or general guides for editing and creating music on the computer.

I'm very interested in mashups and making music out of other music, but I honestly don't know what I'm doing. I got a copy of Ableton Live from a very generous musician friend of mine for my birthday a while back and I've been using that to put stuff together. I can put together some basic A+B vocal over instrumental deals, but that's about it.

I can't do anything fancy and I'm sure I'm missing things due to my relative lack of experience with audio effects and methods. For example, just last week I discovered how to consolidate a cut-up track and make it loop without having to deal with all the pieces, which seems really obvious in hindsight.

What I'd love to find is a guide that takes me through the creation of a track, showing off what X effect does, how to do Y cleanly, ending a track successfully through Z -- that sort of thing. Otherwise, I'd like to find some general tips and methods.

posted by flatluigi to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Tweakheadz is a good resource, especially the guide. Even though the layout and navigation is a fucking mess (I really can't emphasize this enough) the info is excellent. It goes a lot deeper than what you're looking for, but it's a good place to start.
posted by lekvar at 7:00 PM on April 10

That seems interesting, but I forgot to emphasize that I don't make music in the real world -- recording tips and the like are lost on me. That seems to have some good info, though.
posted by flatluigi at 7:05 PM on April 10

Well, since you mention Ableton Live, I'd suggest their forums as an awesome resource:
This stickied thread is has all the best tips and this one has a secection of racks and presets. Ableton also has one of the best manuals on the planet that go through settings just like you seem to want.

Tweakheadz is great, and the Interruptor has some great tips about dub that can easily be applied to other styles of music.

Create Digital Music is an excellent blog to read about the subject.

The mixing eng. handbook is another great guide, it is full of insightful producer interviews where they talk about specific settings to general mixing strategies.

hope this helps some!
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 9:25 PM on April 10 [1 favorite]

Sound On Sound is a great magazine covering computer music and recording, and they put a lot of their content online a few months after publication in print. Check out this large archive of articles on technique-- there's a section specifically for Ableton Live, but also great general info about using effects, mixing, composing/arranging, etc.
posted by alb at 5:22 AM on April 11

Seconding Create Digital Music. That's just a great site. Have you worked your way through the support resources at Ableton's site? The movies are pretty helpful. The tutorials included with Live are also very well designed.
posted by wheat at 8:07 AM on April 11

I'll chime in for createdigitalmusic too, though they're mostly a product news and review site. Fantastic for inducing mad levels of gearlust.

Plus, they have an excellent forum, rife with Ableton users.
posted by lekvar at 1:39 PM on April 11