deXtrous wrote:Hey folks. Another beginner looking to forward my production skills. Heavily into dub and I've got some ideas to mix a few electronia genres to make some pretty raw tracks. Thinking dark industrial cross psychedelic cross dubstep. Anyway, to start my quest I need to get my equipment sorted. Now please don't direct me to the bible. It's been skimmed through and notes have been taken!
I am curious if anyone produces off a laptop? I know they don't have the best sound cards which is why I am curious if they work okay? Planning to get a Monitor and MIDI controller ASAP and headphones later on.
I do value and rate the 'bible' but it doesn't do so much for a complete beginner. You guys have a nice list of equipment there but you don't say what any of it is really used for. To sort things out I just couldn't leave my questions at that.
So, if anyone was so kind to give a brief run through of what you guys do.. Very brief..
Something along the lines of...
1. Used MIDI Controller to synthesise individual beat
2. Compose relevant beats into a short loop using _________ software??
3. Add beats to DAW software
4. Compose/arrange different beats into a track using DAW software
5. Finished!
Now, that is a very inaccurate crude list of what to do and I am just using it as an pathetic example. If someone can tell me what you're doing, on what piece of equipment or software to end up with a track, that would be very helpful.
Cheers folk. Look forward to seeing you guys around once I become more acquainted with this place.
To the OP...
Caveat: this is of course a gross generalization and over simplification of many things; on others I am probably wrong. But
1. You use a DAW (digital audio workstation e.g. Ableton Live, Logic, Reason) as your 'virtual recording, making, and mixing studio'. With a computer you can do everything inside one DAW.
2. Within that DAW you can have a number of tracks, either audio or midi data (normally)
3. If the track is a midi track it will need to have something for the midi data to tell to make noise (e.g. a sampler or a virtual synthesizer).
4. So for example audio track 1 might have kicks on it, audio 2 might have snares. OR midi track 1 might have midi data where you want the kicks to go, which tells a drum machine when to play its sound (or you might have both audio and midi kicks, or whatever).
5. Virtual synthesizers can be used, which can be made to play the noises you have created, again by midi data.
6. Or samplers can be used, with midi data telling the sampler when to play the sample(s) loaded into it.
7. You then create a song (easier said than done). You obviously need progression and a number of parts. Once you have a song, you then need to mix it.
8. Mixing in production terms is not what a DJ does, rather it is the process of balancing the volumes of all the individual tracks, and the distribution of tones across the frequency and stereo spectrum. For example you want kicks and snares at similar (ish) volume so one of them isn't deafening whilst the other is inaudible. Another example, you (normally) don't want two things to occupy the same frequency space. So if your sub bass peaks at 50hz and your kick peaks at 50hz you are in trouble, and will have muddy, loud, mixes - two things in the same space makes it cluttered.
9. This is most of the way to a finished track, if you are getting things released or are feeling like you want to pay, you can then get it mastered. This polishes it. See MACC's posts on here, he is a guru. However, this is the last step. What is important is the thing underneath the polishing, you can't polish a turd.
10. Read this:
http://www.dubstepforum.com/this-thread ... 74832.html
11. Read these:
http://www.dubstepforum.com/production- ... 32399.html
11. There are about 41 million other things to learn about producing electronic music. Fortunately most of it is on teh internetz. Search, download tutorials, watch youtube, read forums, there is so much amazing information out there.
Good luck!
