Just Starting Out.

Mr.Darkphoenix · Joined: Dec 20, 2010 Posts: 1 Location: Sydney, Australia

Hey, guys. To start things off, yes, I am indeed a newb to the creation side of electronic music. I've been listening to the genre (and most of it's sub-genres) for quite sometime now, and I think I've finally reached a stage where I'd like to experimenting a little. In other words, I want to try and make my own songs, and I've come to this here community to seek help with a few questions. The following points are a collection of primary questions I've had running through my mind:

- If I see a music track on YouTube, what program/site could I use to A.) save the full musical track as a popular format (E.g. MP3), and B.) Split the tracks up. This question also applies to songs that I've already got as well. For example: if I wanted to select and play with a specific part of a track, say the drum beat, and then mute out the rest of the song completely, how could I go about doing this?

- To put it simply, I know very little about creating traditional music. Things like musical notes etc... are foreign to me. Will I need to scrub up on my music theory before I attempt any experimentation or before I attempt trying to become a DJ? Or will my knowledge of different bands, the scene, and the many electronic music genres and be sufficient?

In advance, your help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks, guys.

1:11 · Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 11:59 am Post subject:

Howdy Mr. Dark,

From a NonMusician to another, the best way i know is to just JUMP IN!! With todays technology you don't need to know much about music theory or scales, or any of that.
The fun of experimental music is discovering new interesting ways to accomplish what you want. Doing cut ups as you were talking about is a good way to start becoming familiar with the programs to create. Also you might want to use samples to learn arranging. If you get good at editing, the need for musical ability fades.
Many of us here didn't have much musical ability when starting, dont let that discourage you. Its more important that you learn to express emotion through the electronics than anything else, imo.
You can use SoundFlower to take sounds from YouTube, but i'd suggest to learn about mangling samples, loops, ect. because it's actually easier, and more interesting. Abelton Live can be used to match BPM's.
For easy creation of original material i'd look into Reason as a starting point. There are plenty of how to videos online to help you figure out how to do what you're looking for.
If you're going to do mash-ups, it's always awesome to also add completely original material into the mix.
It takes some time to learn about everything, but if you really enjoy it, you'll be hooked!

Hope it helps! Confused

-1:11=

Winterbound · Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 10:09 am Post subject:

I agree with 1:11 here,

Today and especially in Electronic music knowing full music theory is non essential however it would help to learn all you can about it such as scales and chords and the like.

Music should always be about ones personal adventures in sound, this being said create the music you have inside you, that you like to make - dont feel you need to follow a commercial scene or for that matter an underground scene. Music is about expressing yourself, I would tell you to really experiment on your own stuff rather than follow the same fomulaic arrangements and sounds as thousands of others out there.

Music is about self expression so let it flow and dont worry if you dont sound the best right away, some of the guys on this site have been making music for 15/20 and more years. As soon as you gain a little experience it will become a second nature to you, you will grow into yourself as an artist and develope your own sound and style.

You will learn and trust me it takes patience and time. But it is that process of learning that is fun.

But again, I would try to learn some Music theory if I was you, it is not essential but it would be very helpful in the long run. We all had to do this when we all started out in music dude so your not alone - it can be lonely and frustrating but when you look back in years to come you will see how far you have come and the wealth of wonderful music under your hat!!

Goodluck and Godspeed.

Darren.