new here, introducing myself

R

redberet

New member
In case I'm blind and there's an introduction thread I missed then I'm sorry and please move this there.

Basically I'm nobody when it comes to making music: I don't know how to play any musical instrument, I can't read music sheets, I've picked up FL Studio several times since I was an early teen (some 10 years ago) but never got anywhere good at making music. Every time I got carried away by something happening in my life and then coming back to it after few years. I do have some old projects in my old laptop, but boy are they bad. Simple melodies, stock presets and terrible mastering.
But there's a reason I always came back after a long pause, I just freaking love music and so much that the music from others just isn't enough for me, if that makes any sense. When I hear a song I like I get disappointed that it's not progressing as I had in my mind, then I search for remixes for it hoping to find something more to what I had in mind. I sometime hear melodies in my dreams, get up then can't either write it down or when I do remember the whole melody while laying it down on the piano roll with the mouse I still can't create the timbre with my synth which made it sound good in my head and then it fades away from my memory. So I really want to get 'good' at music production. I know I haven't been putting enough time nor effort during these years, but there are some concepts that I just don't get it and would love some help from someone or even better a whole community. I like all kinds of music but my main dish these days is the various subgenres of 'EDM'.
 
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Hey dude and welcome,

I'm not sure what question you're asking, but I'll comment about being good and, wanting to have that polished sound. You NEED to practice at your craft DAILY, in order for you to become good at it. Tiger Woods was known to hit 1000 balls a day AND THIS WAS WHEN HIS WAS IN HIS PEAK, before the divorce. With his level of success, you'd wonder why he'd need to. But he released you can always do better. And that's the mindset WE collectively should inherit, to become successful at anything we want to accomplish.
 
Hey dude. No question here, just introducing myself and getting an idea about the community here.
And yeah, I agree.
 
Welcome to FP bro

I feel your pain...I can make pretty good stuff, but it is really hard to put time aside for making music with so much going on in the real world.

Just try to set aside a little time every week to do it. It doesn't need to be every single day, just once or twice a week for a few hours. You'll be amazed at how much you progress.

Check out the Warbeats tutorial series too....it's free and on YouTube. You'll learn an awful lot about the ins and outs of FL Studio, which will undoubtedly help your workflow.

Any questions, just ask.
 
Thank you.

I think I'm pretty comfortable with the FL Studio UI and the different windows and shortcuts.
I've used some timeline based video programs before and know programming, that helped.

Maybe next step should be learning sound synthesis and mastering? I've experimented with the Massive VST and Serum VST for weeks but I still have no idea how to create the preset I have in my mind. There are ton of videos about "how to make this synth from X song" but they don't teach how to create the sound you have in your mind or have heard before, just how to create that exact sound, by simply showing each step they did themselves. Does that give an idea what exactly I should search for next?
 
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30 minutes a day would be better than nothing at all but at least an hour a day or more covering the gamut of things to learn and applying those newly learnt things is important to developing skills and competency - most schools that teach this stuff expect that you will spend an hour out of class for each hour you spend in class as a minimum, some expect 2 for every hour
 
Thanks all. But I think it's equally important how youre spending the time vs how much your spending, right? There are ton of tutorials out there, but what step to take after what is not clear. I mean I've spent countless hours watching or reading tutorials which, aside from the ones which half way through proved to be useless, taught things I already knew or the opposite, many things were too confusing because I had "skipped a topic or two" which were prerequisites for understanding that topic, and I didn't even know what those 'topics' were to search for them. Hope this makes sense.
An actual example: I want to learn how to create a preset for a sound I have in my mind in a subtractive/additive synth. There are kindergarten-grade topics teaching the basics of synthesizers: about oscillators, the simple waveforms (sine, square, tri, saw), adding or subtracting them, basics of filters, envelopes, LFOs, effects (reverb, chorus, echo...). And then I can't find the next step from there. I only see tutorials on "getting the sound from song X" where all I'm taught is choosing waveform X, envelope Y, filter Z with parameter A set to B and parameter C set to D... in the end I don't really learn anything besides getting that exact sound. They catch the fish for me.

It's a similar situation for me when it comes to lessons on mastering.
 
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I'm new here as well and i must say that i improved a lot when i first started to learn the basics. Dedicate at least one or two hours of your free days to learn about it, read and study. You'll notice the difference in your sound once you begin doing this. There are nice tutorials here in FP about mixing and out there as well. Aside from this, just practice a lot, make use of what you learnt in your music. The first ones will probably suck, but that's the key to progress.

Hope u do some badass music soon mate!
 
  1. leave mastering alone for now
    - seriously the topic is so wide that there are several books on it and they do not cover all the bases either
    - until you have successfully learnt how to mix mastering is only going to make your life a misery
  2. most of the xyz tutorials are only about specific sounds but you should be trying to understand beyond the specific sounds by
    - changing the envelope (ADSR) settings for either the filter or the vca (small changes or only 1 parameter to begin with) to hear the result
    - changing the source waveform(s)
    - changing the modulation settings (lfo/noise/etc)
  3. go here
    - Welsh's Synthesizer Cookbook: Analog Synthesizer Programming
    - Synth Secrets: Links to All Parts read these in reverse order (bottom of the list is the first article)
    - KVR Audio Forum
    - and of course ask at fp
 
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