How did you start off making beats?

C

Central Beats

New member
For me, I started on the Playstation 1. There was this program called MTV Music Generator. It had a wide variety of instruments and an easy to use sequencing interface. Only problem was having to make edits using the controller for the PS.

How did you guys start?
 
Junior year in high school (2004). I always wanted to make music, I went to Best Buy and bought a program called Music Maker. A bunch of years later, here I am
 
I started back in maybe 2002 or so? Me and my friends decided we were gonna be the next Beastie Boys and I was the only one of us that had any clue about music in general so I got stuck with the task of producing beats. They were total garbage at the time but I fell in love with that creative feeling. You know that one you get when you finish a beat, you listen back, and you grin ear to ear because YOU created it?

Well after High School I lost the drive to work on music, mainly had other things to deal with, like a job, or secondary school, or whatever.

I didn't get back into Producing until about 3 years ago, when I was just playing around for fun and my wife and a friend heard what I came up with and gave good feedback. Then that familiar drive came back, and I mean REALLY came back. I haven't been more focussed on anything in my life than I have my music production these last few years, and I am starting to see great progress, in myself, my brand, and my confidence.
 
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Cerberux said:
I started back in maybe 2002 or so? Me and my friends decided we were gonna be the next Beastie Boys and I was the only one of us that had any clue about music in general so I got stuck with the task of producing beats. They were total garbage at the time but I fell in love with that creative feeling. You know that one you get when you finish a beat, you listen back, and you grin ear to ear because YOU created it?

Well after High School I lost the drive to work on music, mainly had other things to deal with, like a job, or secondary school, or whatever.

I didn't get back into Producing until about 3 years ago, when I was just playing around for fun and my wife and a friend heard what I came up with and gave good feedback. Then that familiar drive came back, and I mean REALLY came back. I haven't been more focussed on anything in my life than I have my music production these last few years, and I am starting to see great progress, in myself, my brand, and my confidence.
Click to expand...

I know the feeling. You probably had all of this creative bottled up until you started back up again. Talent and Passion shine through on all projects. Good to see you got back into it.. Never too late. I like the beat in your sig. Good shit.
 
tried mixcraft in 08 one time and didn't mess with another one of those daws till 2010.
flstudio 8-11 was a main daw till 2014.
Got started with reason in 2012, stuck to it since.
Replaced fl with studio one in 2014 because of how 12 looked at the time.
 
Cerberux said:
I started back in maybe 2002 or so? Me and my friends decided we were gonna be the next Beastie Boys and I was the only one of us that had any clue about music in general so I got stuck with the task of producing beats. They were total garbage at the time but I fell in love with that creative feeling. You know that one you get when you finish a beat, you listen back, and you grin ear to ear because YOU created it?

Well after High School I lost the drive to work on music, mainly had other things to deal with, like a job, or secondary school, or whatever.

I didn't get back into Producing until about 3 years ago, when I was just playing around for fun and my wife and a friend heard what I came up with and gave good feedback. Then that familiar drive came back, and I mean REALLY came back. I haven't been more focussed on anything in my life than I have my music production these last few years, and I am starting to see great progress, in myself, my brand, and my confidence.
Click to expand...

The first paragraph is exactly how I feel at the moment
 
School project.
Most sixth forms (age 15-17) let you do something called the extended project qualification, where you go off and do a load of research on a topic and then either make something or write a big essay on it.

I chose 'merging classical and electronic dance music' so ended up writing a couple tracks. Just carried on from there
 
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Was always into music from a very young age.

1. Listened to pretty much everything growing up but mostly hiphop/rap/R&B/Pop/Rock/Indie.

2. Took Choir for 4 years in grade school.

3. Got into DJing in college. (Still doing it/pursuing)

4. DJing led to wanting to produce beats/music.

5. Dabbled with Garageband for about a month. Decided to demo other DAWs but did not like them either.

6. Gave Ableton a try and have NOT LOOKED BACK.

I have been messing around with Ableton for almost 8 months and now...Here I am on Future Producers trying to absorb as much knowledge as I can.
 
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My first music production program was acid. I was like 14 years old then, it was interesting but I didn't understand a thing, also, English is not my main language so it was even harder, eventually i uninstalled the program. Later on i discovered Fl studio and little by little i started producing tracks, they were short, simple, nothing special but after lots of breaks something similar to a Song started to come out. I'm not calling myself real producer yet but I had 3 of my tracks played by radio and the feedback was positive. I don't have any expensive gear, just laptop, headphones and my fathers old speakers. Im really encouraged and inspired by the ideas of making future house, I like tchami and all the other cool guys who make it I like the intros and sharp drops but when i try to make something similar, nothing good happens. Anyways if anyone is interested it is easy to find my tracks in soundcloud just write in search Lukaszomusic, apparently I cant post links yet :) Have a nice day
 
I started in bands. Recording songs on 4-track cassette (busted it out again last week) using a bongo set for a rhythm track, acoustic and a shit old keyboard and then later on a digital hard disk recorder (DPS12i - tracked drums on 4/5 dynamic mics with one band - used a really awful drum machine with a dude I used to write with as well. We mic'd amps, acoustics, washing machines, vocals, percussion). Spent a lot of time both recording ourselves (and several other bands) in rehearsal rooms and in Professional studios (some more professional than others), had a small rack out fx, compressors - lots of mics.
played a lot of gigs.

Then I had a gap... Played my guitar every now and again but never in front of company. Didn't record - just tinkered sometimes. Pretty much abandoned my old life. Went to Uni (Graduated at 33 - so 10 years later than most) Met a girl (married her later)

Got this urge to do something as I was finishing Uni - didn't really want to do something with other people just yet but needed to do something. Had some cash saved...

Bought Maschine as the MKII came out along with an interface.
Convinced my (now) wife I needed our tiny spare room.
Raided my mums garage and a couple of houses I'd shared previously and got back as much of my gear as I could find. A few arkward conversations.
My Tannoy monitors (among other things) were long gone so I was going through B&W hi-fi speakers for a while.
I got the DPS12i (and the Tascam) back a while ago; it wasn't getting used. Sold it.
Saved for a new mic and some monitors - bit of birthday money.

All good. Did some stuff - worked with a couple local heads - fun.

Wife got pregnant - spare room became a nursery - attic got power and a floor first.
9 months of brilliant up there while she got bigger.

Baba arrived - he's utterly amazing but I'm not getting much time in the attic studio as he sleeps with us (and not the nursery I fitted out for him...)

So I've been putting together a 'living-room' rig that packs up under the TV for when wife and baba are in bed (from about 7.30pm)

I got an MPC500 in November for messing with on the sofa but I'm not really vibing with it so I recently sold a few old mics I haven't used in ages, my Volca Keys (hated it) and an old compressor (I'll miss that at some point) and put the cash with the money my inlaws gave me for Christmas and bought a Circuit.
My first proper groovebox and I like it. Used drum machines and Maschine but never really been into synths before.

I'm probably gonna sell the MPC and pick up a Maschine Mikro at some point (should've done that anyway - the workflow of Maschine suits me) and I won an Erebus (it's nice) before Christmas in a Facebook competition.

So I'm still hooked but having to adapt how I make music due to space and responsibility as a result my output has lessened but it's also mutating ('evolving' isn't the right term) into a sound I never thought I'd make. I'm looking for a Yamaha DX200 now to add a layer (both sound and the stack under the TV) of FM to the mix

Small portable grooveboxes are the way forward. For me.
 
Used to buy and read electronic music magazines since around 06.

Had no real friends who were into the things I was, so it started there.

Finished Intro to Ableton Live with Erin Barra in November last year. Great free course, good starting point for anyone really.

Just playing around on Ableton Trial 9, not saving anything, just enjoying having a play around.

Most probably will buy an original version of live 9, possibly with push. Maybe FL too, huge assortment of video resources on youtube, so will probably go with them.

New to the forum, hope to learn and make progress with this new hobby :)
 
Way way back in 2002, my old Packard Bell had a copy of Dance Ejay on it. As a kid I'd just make really random tracks on it but I loved it. For ages I always wanted to return to that sort of stuff but I never really figured out how to... fast forward to 2011 and I'm in secondary school (high school) and the school has Cubase on it's computers. I fell in love with just making music again such that I did more research into the topic and I got into the 'scene' a little more. After trying out trials of different DAWs I decided to commit to Ableton Live. Still use it today and I still look back at what I did in good ol' '02 and smile at how far I've come. But I've still got a long way to go ;)
 
Oh man! You just brought me back memories of messing around on dance ejay with my friend in my childhood. So much fun. But I started more seriously on fruity loops, around 2005 or something. Just messing around trying to copy styles I listened to.
 
I'm not sure what counts, really...I've probably "started" around 1990 or so, messing around with NoiseTracker on the Amiga. It was way too complex (probably not, but for a 13-year old in a foreign language it seemed that way) for me at the time, but at least I got some rudimentary beats made. There was also a very rudimentary drum machine software on the Commodore64 called MicroRhyhtm - first intro to step sequencers, if not much more. I had had some piano and flute lessons as a kid; started playing guitar at around 14-15, and also started in some friends' various band "projects". Mostly your basic (then-standard, because DAWs were expensive commercial studio setups mostly) 4-track or straight live to cassette stuff. More "serious" experimentation with electronic music (as a very broad and ambiguous term) from about 1998-99 on when I borrowed a shitty Technics home keyboard from a friend and got a Roland MC-303 to play with. More serious bands and steady home studio building from about 2003 onwards.
 
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