Sound Design/melody rhythm

[vvvs]

Hi there,

I'm pretty new into music producing and I have, wow what surprise, a lot of struggles.
However, my main troubles are not the ones I see oftenly mentioned in videos and other sources.
Basically, all the instruments I have as presets/samples sound very bad to me. I thought at first: I'll make them myself, but that turns out even worse. The question is, how do you guys find/make good instruments?

The second thing mentioned in the title is "melody rhythm", I have no clue if that's how it is called, but in fact, all of my melodies suck when it comes down to timing. They are too long, too short = don't fit into the beat at all. What can I do about this?

[Bezo]

Curious what instruments you have. Most of my virtual instruments have SOME presets I like. I start with those & tweak to personalize. I use this method to learn the instrument until I can create them on my own. That said, I'm still in the "tweaking default presets" phase with most of my VIs. I purchased much faster than I learned.

Try to find your favorite presets and start twisting knobs to see what they do. You'll find that you wanted a little more of this and a little less than that. It'll come, but it's one of those things that take experimentation & time.

[rhythmgj]

I would second what Bezo said above, and add-- "Listen, listen, listen, listen." To lots of different types of music.

You can learn "the rules" of music by studying formally, or by taking time to really do a deep dive on your own. One just takes a little longer . But to really internalize the kinds of rhythms and melodies that work, you need to spend some time (a lot, actually), listening and emulating others. Then, when you compose, you will have a basic concept and a shared lexicon to draw from. It doesn't come overnight. Keep at it.


GJ