School? Workshop? Neither? BOTH?!

M

Monolisk

New member
Hey all,

Just found this forum and joined immediately. I imagine I'll be spending some time here in the future. I'll spare everyone my entire musical history and just give the cliff notes: been playing guitar and piano since I was a kid, and am relatively confident when it comes to music theory, composition, and songwriting in general. Percussion and arranging I can do, but am less well-versed in. A few years ago I decided I wanted to try my hand at electronic music production. I got a copy of Logic 9, but hated how all the software instruments sounded. I later upgraded to Logic X, but it wasn't much better in that department. This year I purchased a Maschine and while I like the sounds it has more than Logic, the workflow still kind of baffles me. And so far my research hasn't yielded a satisfactory workflow between the two.

Long story short: I have music in my head + the skill to play it, but when it comes to recording and producing, I'm out of my depth. I just can't seem to wrap my head around which DAW to use, how to use it, choosing the right plugins, and all the little technical things like "chains" and "buses" and a bunch of other stuff that I'd probably sound stupid even mentioning. I've tried a bunch of video tutorials but none of them do it for me. Every youtube tutorial seems to have the dude droning on for the first three minutes about what he's gonna teach you before kinda sorta showing you the thing. I'm currently in a position where I work a lot and would rather spend some money on lessons with a live person than use my limited free time scouring the web for a decent guide to "getting started."

I was looking at workshops earlier today, particularly the Berklee summer one. I'd link to it but don't have link privileges yet. =O

Anyone have experience with this program? Are there better ones out there? It seems my options are either a concentrated weekend type program that I'm willing to travel to OR taking a semester somewhere local (San Francisco-Bay Area).

Thoughts on what I should do in general?

Sorry for the long post, everyone!
 
Those tube tuts are very easy to follow, even I was able to understand what was going on :/ and since all the daws have the same controls minus a few who handle sequencing differently you should be fine.

Another guy on this site said once to just do everything you can possibly do to get to where you wanna be.Basically don't choose one or the other method just learn any kind of way you can and practice it.

One more thing to point out, simply playing in the program does wonders for understanding how it works as well.By the information you have given, you might have real instruments, if so then all you'd need was a good mic and you'd be set without using the software plugins.
 
One of my friends was in a similar situation, he had been playing the piano for years but when it came to using Logic and then writing a full song, he was shocked at how difficult it was.

This is what I think you should do:
- Pick a program and learn it, seeing as you bought Logic and Maschine, I would opt for one of those, no program is better than the other.
- You just need to be patient with the youtube videos, they will definitely help if you actually watch them. If you can find a good tutorial series, that's even better (rather than watching random videos on random little things).
- Look into investing in some VSTs, they will give you the quality sounds you are after. (If you don't know what they are, Google them). The stock sounds you get with programs are usually pretty awful. I am not sure what one is best for your style of music but you need to research that. Sylenth, Massive and Nexus are just a few that might be helpful.
- This may be hard to hear but being able to play music is one thing and composing it is another. You obviously have a huge head start with that knowledge but you have to understand that there are heaps of other things you will have to learn as well (which I know you have discovered).
- The best tip though, is to just be patient with the learning process and that includes actually making songs as practice, your first one will most likely be bad but you will obviously get better with time.
 
you just gotta keep making music bro... it's so much shit to do with daw's.. it's innumerable... you have to take time and learn your daw.. no one is going to teach it to you.. like where would someone start.. just keep making music.. watching videos on youtube etc etc and eventually you will pick up on shit
 
Thanks for the feedback, guys. I get what you all are saying, but I really think I would benefit from having a live person teach it to me in real time. I'm willing to invest the time and money, just gotta find the right teacher or program. Has anyone here heard of Ex'pression College in the Bay Area? The apostrophe in the name bugs the hell out of me, but the program itself might be worth checking out.

I think another reason I'd benefit from an actual teacher is BECAUSE there are so many different DAWs and ways of doing things. I want to learn the concepts of recording, mixing, picking out and fine-tuning synths and drums, etc so I'm not completely in the dark when it comes to sitting down in front of my comp. I just always get to a place where I'm switching between Youtube and Maschine or Logic on my comp and it's a really clunky way of trying to learn something.
 
Monolisk said:
Thanks for the feedback, guys. I get what you all are saying, but I really think I would benefit from having a live person teach it to me in real time. I'm willing to invest the time and money, just gotta find the right teacher or program. Has anyone here heard of Ex'pression College in the Bay Area? The apostrophe in the name bugs the hell out of me, but the program itself might be worth checking out.

I think another reason I'd benefit from an actual teacher is BECAUSE there are so many different DAWs and ways of doing things. I want to learn the concepts of recording, mixing, picking out and fine-tuning synths and drums, etc so I'm not completely in the dark when it comes to sitting down in front of my comp. I just always get to a place where I'm switching between Youtube and Maschine or Logic on my comp and it's a really clunky way of trying to learn something.
Click to expand...

I recommend some high-quality learning resources on my blog.
You might find some of these resources helpful.

As for local schooling:
I doubt that very many of us here have had any personal experience with your local schools.

-Ki
Salem Beats
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top