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bloodeyezack
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Hello people! I'm a newbie here and ever sense I have downloaded songs here I have always wanted to learn how you all make the music. I have no experience with instruments and I don't have any money to get equipment... so I was wondering what I could use to get started and experiment with sounds and beats on my computer?

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Well, you don't need anything other than a computer and the internet. There's free software out there, like LMMS (win, linux). I'm on mac so I don't know what to really recommend for windows or linux but that one looks good and is free.

As for instruments and samples, the net is full of soundfonts and free synths. Use google. A free, personal favorite of mine is linplug's FreeAlpha, which has a neat, clean interface making it easy to learn how to make your own sounds with it.

When you have some music you want to show us, put it in our Workshop in the forums. :D

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I can recommend Reason - maybe a bit of a steep learning curve if you've got no previous experience with sound design or music production, but, hey, I learned on it :P Only trouble is it can't do recording audio (unless you get Record as well), and it can't do external plugins, but I've not found that so much of a problem - if you get learning about synthesis, you can do pretty much anything with it. Some people prefer FL Studio over Reason, but I tried it for a while and could never get into it; you may want to try it out, but IMO it's awkward to use. As you progress, you might want to upgrade to a more serious DAW like Cubase, which you can still use both Reason and FL Studio with.

In my experience, LMMS is a bit too unstable for serious use (on Windows, less so on Linux but still not great), and I'm not a great fan of the interface. You might want to try out a tracker though, there're plenty of free ones about; they can be a little bit tricky to get to grips with at first, but they're pretty damn efficient once you get started. MilkyTracker's a good one to try out. There's also seq24, which is quite a nice, free, loop-based MIDI sequencer, though you'll need something to make a sound with as this only generates MIDI note data.

All in all, choosing your software comes down to how you work best - I'm used to hardware so Reason (which looks like a studio, of sorts) works great for me. You might prefer to track, or you might even want to stay entirely in hardware, and get something like a Korg Electribe. This is something you'll have to find out by yourself; get demos and play around with them.

General advice: learn everything you can about synthesis, sampling and MIDI. Wikipedia is your new best friend. Install MIDI-OX and MIDI Yoke.

Hope this helps ;)

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Oh, no, you don't want to read the manual! Why would you do that? ;) hehe

Seriously, though, once you've got basic operations down, playing around is the best way to learn, whichever tools you do end up using. If you're going to be using FL Studio, get yourself some good VSTs (instruments and FX plugins) - I recommend the DSK instruments, they're free and awesome (http://rekkerd.org/dsk-vsti/). Have fun and get creative! Best of luck to you :)

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I'm still reading the manual bit by bit.)

SELF

TEACH

But yeah, don't read the manual. You can't be taught music by reading. You have to listen to music, feel what's good inside of it, and create your own stuff that makes you feel the same way.

I've never heard of a musician who has never had an influential musician somewhere up the line of the generations.

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  • 1 month later...

alright I have been doing it that way (got a remix started). well I have a question then. I don't understand the mixer very well, I don't no how to make individual sounds go into the other inserts. that is what I think, I need to do for automation if I'm right.

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I learned all the vocabulary by listening to all my brothers*, who are much more skilled at music than I. But yeah, reading helps that as well. If you know any more musically-inclined people near you, ask what some words mean, try to learn that way as well. Trust me, it works. The manual is always a good Plan B though.

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  • 4 weeks later...

It's not rude if he means he's gonna learn to learn stuff himself and save the helpful ppl here for the tricky questions the manual, YouTube, and Google can't answer for him. He'll learn faster if he learns to learn stuff on his own, and the Workshop forums are there for when he hits the wall for real and not out of just not bothering to do some research himself.

Good luck dude.

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