Attempting to Understand the Reality of Audio Production

[The Vagrance]

Stop asking so many damn questions, everyone starts off doing music differently and the more time you spend thinking about it the less time you're doing it. Hire a piano teacher, download a demo to a sequencer/synth, jam along to a recording on your instrument of choice, just do something now and don't worry about the rest, it will come to you.

A good song will sound good when it's just played on guitar or piano;

I highly disagree with this statement but that's not the point. Start making music however you can and stop getting bogged down in the details. If you find yourself wanting to know more about synths and samplers, then start asking questions once you reach that point, but so far it doesn't sound you've done much of anything yet as far as music goes. Its not something that will suddenly click one day where you go "and now I'm a musician/producer/what have you", its a continuous process.

[Yoozer]

My only question is in regards to this:

A good song will sound good when it's just played on guitar or piano;

Kind of a wierd question, but I guess I don't really understand what you mean by "song." I assume it means that every element/instrument of a song should sound good when played on a guitar or piano?

Basically, when you play the "skeleton" of the song - the chords, bassline and melody (and in a lot of cases, just the chords and melody) - it should still be recognizable and it should still be pleasant to listen to.

(don't pay attention to the audio quality, it's crap) - shows someone playing the theme rather literally, and you may notice that the repeating melody eventually starts to bore/grate a bit. For other songs, it works better - but Ice Cap depends on the variety between the instruments used in the original, while other songs could just depend on the melody themselves to remain interesting.

Oh yeah - most important skill to learn? Self-reliance. If you haven't Used The Fine Search, haven't checked Wikipedia, or haven't googled any key words, you better have a rocket science level complicated question. Always always be specific and tell people what you've tried, what you expect it to work like, and the point where the manual fails to explain you how to proceed. You'll sometimes discover more by banging your head against the problem for a day than asking and getting a direct, exact reply.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

I'm gonna put in my 2 cents on the monitors vs. headphones discussion:

Given a infinite budget, monitors are definitely the way to go. HOWEVER, if you don't have the option of spending lots of money ($500 at BARE MINIMUM -- $1000+ would be better. Plus acoustic treatment for the room, which generally costs even more), go with headphones.