Computer Music Textbooks

[Radiowar]

While there had been some good recommendations, the impression I seem to be getting at this moment is "despite the fact that I haven't seen many music textbooks, I can tell you the ones you're looking for don't seem to exist", you might understand why I find that logic confusing. I really struggle to think, in 20 years or more years of computer music, nobody's taken all the things you can find in all the how-to snippets online and organized them in a cohesive way. Particularly as I own two of them that I know do it for very specific purposes.

the books i linked to - the adler and the hodgson - i believe are relevant to the questions you were asking. i was simply cautioning that these books, and any book that outlines theoretical approaches to composition, speak in generic terms and may not provide answers to the more specific or circumstantial questions you posed in the op.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Radiowar

[timaeus222]

breaking the rules can render a piece of music incoherent, but breaking the rules in a particular way can also create an effect which bolsters the intended meaning. a literary parallel which comes to mind would be the works of james joyce, or e.e. cummings, for example.

Yes, that's certainly possible, though I find that a rare occasion, or an obscure topic, at times. I think I first was introduced to something of that nature

.

[Meteo Xavier]

the books i linked to - the adler and the hodgson - i believe are relevant to the questions you were asking. i was simply cautioning that these books, and any book that outlines theoretical approaches to composition, speak in generic terms and may not provide answers to the more specific or circumstantial questions you posed in the op.

I still don't really know what that means, it either does or does not provide answers to those subjects.

This may be a dumb question, but if there's a "theoretical" approach to composition in publication, is there a "functional" approach to ask for too? Is that maybe what I should be looking for?

As I crack open my MIDI Orchestration book some more, I see quite a bit in there that is functional instruction even on random pages. Page 302: "A great way to add drama to a phrase is by building to a FFF dynamic via a crescendo. There are a number of ways to do this, and the brass section, along with percussion, can be very helpful to implement this dynamic change. One approach is to start with a quieter phrase and then add brass instruments, one at a time or group by group, to achieve a gradually increasing thickness and volume.

Now that is what I call functional instruction. It's pretty specific and talks in a tone that really seems like a natural answer to "How can I add drama to a phrase?"

What I'm looking for is more instruction like that that can be applied to a range of genres working in DAW, if such things exist.

[Radiowar]

As I crack open my MIDI Orchestration book some more, I see quite a bit in there that is functional instruction even on random pages. Page 302: "A great way to add drama to a phrase is by building to a FFF dynamic via a crescendo. There are a number of ways to do this, and the brass section, along with percussion, can be very helpful to implement this dynamic change. One approach is to start with a quieter phrase and then add brass instruments, one at a time or group by group, to achieve a gradually increasing thickness and volume.

thats interesting, because to me this is a fairly vague or generic statement (contrasts in dynamics correspond to shifts in mood, sometimes perceived as "drama") that lacks context or any specific information on how such an effect is achieved with brass/percussion instruments, except to say "add more instruments one at a time," which could be true (or not) for any instrumentation.

as far as orchestration texts go, the adler book contains plenty of "functional" information specific to individual instruments. for example, information on the types of articulations possible on a french horn, the timbral qualities in different registers of a clarinet, and so on - the type of information that, in my opinion, would help to answer the question of making samples "sound more realistic," by providing a basis in the qualities of the actual instruments in question.

when i say that it might not answer the specific questions you initially raised (how to sound more lively, fun, or emotional, for example) it might address them by way of examples from other compositions, or suggesting some subjective qualities of particular sounds and techniques, but would not likely attempt to define a 1:1 rule of such-and-such a technique yielding such-and-such a result.

[Meteo Xavier]

Well there's obviously more in an orchestral text I already have, I just was presenting an example of something simple and functionally specific. Perhaps to you (and this isn't a shot btw) having a text list out the articulations and ranges an instrument has provides an idea how to achieve realism in a DAW, but for me it's functionally useless.

I already have a text for orchestral music, I'm asking for something that teaches MIDI sequencing stuff in a more general context than orchestral or dance, which I already have, if such a thing exists. That and maybe an intermediate composition how-to book, since I'm likely to get that Mixing Secrets book mentioned earlier for production.

Not trying to sound irritated, I just wonder how my replies keep getting distorted or the message not coming across correctly. I have an orchestration book and it kicks ass, I was just wondering if one exists that teaches more general DAW sequencing and production stuff for a wider range of genres.

[PROTO·DOME]

Music Theory is the most intuitive when the concepts are demonstrated on the staff. The piano roll displays things in raw pitches (I can make another post detailing all the things you will miss out on by learning it this way, if you'd like); intervals are not as obvious for example, and harmonic analysis, which is really important for understanding key modulations and accidentals, the real meat of writing interesting music, becomes way harder. In my personal opinion, learning music theory as its own discipline instead of as something directly connected to what you're doing in the DAW makes learning it much easier.

Score is basically musical shorthand and can be a needless confusion if you're just after learning practical music theory. The piano roll makes intervals obvious and identifying keys, chords and patterns much simpler, thanks to its intuitive, visual format.

Try modulating a semitone from C to C# on score and modulating a semitone in MIDI and tell me which is easier.

[theshaggyfreak]

Score is basically musical shorthand and can be a needless confusion if you're just after learning practical music theory. The piano roll makes intervals obvious and identifying keys, chords and patterns much simpler, thanks to its intuitive, visual format.

Try modulating a semitone from C to C# on score and modulating a semitone in MIDI and tell me which is easier.

It really depends on what you learned first. I learned to read staff music at the age of 8 and I never saw a piano roll until I was in my 20s. No matter what, I always feel a lot more comfortable working with notation compared to the piano roll.

[PROTO·DOME]

It really depends on what you learned first. I learned to read staff music at the age of 8 and I never saw a piano roll until I was in my 20s. No matter what, I always feel a lot more comfortable working with notation compared to the piano roll.

I know, but I really don't think it's necessary (at all) for understanding music theory. There's a lot of symbology and needless formality to trawl through when learning theory through score alone. I've done the royal school of music grade system; it's bloated by historical practices and traditions. Edited January 19, 2014 by PROTO·DOME

[timaeus222]

Score is basically musical shorthand and can be a needless confusion if you're just after learning practical music theory. The piano roll makes intervals obvious and identifying keys, chords and patterns much simpler, thanks to its intuitive, visual format.

Try modulating a semitone from C to C# on score and modulating a semitone in MIDI and tell me which is easier.

I agree, actually. I've learned to do chord progressions on the piano roll that I don't even know how to explain with music theory at all, yet I have that feeling when it sounds good.

[Meteo Xavier]

Bringing the topic back to books, again, it seems I've found several ones worth looking into:

http://www.halleonard.com/product/viewproduct.do?itemid=333733&lid=7&seriesfeature=HLRM&menuid=2899&subsiteid=66&

http://www.counterpointdirect.co.uk/MIDI-Sequencing-Made-Easy-p/w-cos185a.htm

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=tU8LAAAAQBAJ&source=productsearch&utm_source=HA_Desktop_US&utm_medium=SEM&utm_campaign=PLA&pcampaignid=MKTAD0930BO1

http://musicstudiodirect.com/shop/Tutorial-Books-DVDs/Instructional-Books/Image-Line-FL-Studio-Bible-p1119.html

http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Guide-Game-Audio/dp/0240810740/ref=pd_sim_b_5

It seems what I'm looking for are books relating to "MIDI" "sequencing" and "Game Audio". I forgot they actually make books tailored to game audio and FL Studio these days.

Has anyone looked into these?

[Nabeel Ansari]

I would skip the middle 3 (so do Hal Leonard and Game Audio)

If you wanna learn FL Studio, zircon released an official 90+ minute tutorial on FL. Those books are literally restatements of what you find in the help file (go into FL and hit F1, there's your "textbook")

The Cubase one is an intro to sequencing... You don't need an intro to sequencing. I'd be surprised if they even cover humanization with any modern libraries.

Edited January 20, 2014 by Neblix

[Meteo Xavier]

I was thinking about Zircon's 90 minute video, but from the description, it looks like it just shows me where everything in Fl Studio is and what it does, not how to use them properly.

[Nabeel Ansari]

An FL Studio Bible won't teach you music production either, it'll achieve the same thing his video does.

Realize that you're asking for "quick final answers" on really complex art forms (composition, production), which just don't exist. If becoming a master was as simple as reading a book, everyone would be master producers.

If self-practice isn't getting you anywhere, you need to find a mentor. You're not going to learn anything valuable from survey-style "do x to get y" texts, and people who are worth learning from are too busy to write 2000 page books detailing how their brains work in the studio.

[timaeus222]

I was thinking about Zircon's 90 minute video, but from the description, it looks like it just shows me where everything in Fl Studio is and what it does, not how to use them properly.

If anything, I would try that first. Any tutorial zircon made has always been useful to me. I keep learning something from watching even his livestreams.

Chimpazilla was kind of thinking about a mentor program for OCR in the future. So maybe.

Edited January 20, 2014 by timaeus222

[Meteo Xavier]

Realize that you're asking for "quick final answers" on really complex art forms (composition, production), which just don't exist.

Wrong, I'm looking for "organized final answers" on really complex art forms as an opposition to watching 1000 Youtube "tutorials" by cockney-accented amateurs ranging from vaguely useful to "WTF, you're teaching me to program synth portamento with GROSS BEAT?" I did not ask for it to be quick, I asked for it to be practical, organized, and accessible. I am prepared to put the time in once I can get that, as my pre-existing years of experience will make that go quicker.

Short of getting access to a proper tutor for that niche tutoring subject, this is the next best course.

[Nabeel Ansari]

I did not ask for it to be quick, I asked for it to be practical, organized, and accessible.

You asked for ideally less than 400 pages... That's an insignificant and trivial amount of material for the depth of these subjects.

[Meteo Xavier]

In the context of multiple books, yes. I was hoping to digest a maximum of 1200 pages combined at this time.

Anyway, semantics. I was able to view an online version of that Game Audio book and it seems as though it doesn't actually cover anything production or composition, it's mostly just the business and technical end, which I need to read anyway, but below the priority of increasing quality.

[Radiowar]

it looks like it just shows me where everything in Fl Studio is and what it does, not how to use them properly.

i'm still having difficulty understanding what youre after, and it seems like this kind of statement is at the crux. it seems to me that there are only a couple useful types of instruction when it comes to composition and production: those that instruct on principles of acoustics or equipment, and those that provide theoretical, abstract models of form and harmonic language. outside of that, im honestly having difficulty conceiving of what you mean by books that teach "midi sequencing stuff" and "context based instruction." i must be completely missing something here, because all that says to me is you're looking for a book that teaches musical decision-making, which is like a mathematician asking if there are any textbooks out there that tell you what are some good numbers to use. if thats not the case, i apologize for continually misunderstanding you; but if it is, then perhaps theres something fundamentally skewed about your approach to composition here.

[Meteo Xavier]

It's all good man, I'm aspie as the day is long, and while I don't understand where the miscommunication is at either, I'm pretty used to this.

I'm quite sure my approach here is not skewed, as I own at least one book that provides instruction on composition and MIDI sample production without being abstract about it - THE GUIDE TO MIDI ORCHESTRATION by Paul Gilreath. I haven't read much of it, but what things I have found in there is exactly what I'm looking for. The problem is it mostly pertains to Orchestral music, and I want to see if there are equivalents of this book for other genres or just general ones. I know they exist, but for some reason, this just confuses the hell out of people and I can't figure out why.

Think of it this way, from my perspective, it's like me asking "I want to make chicken parmigiana, can anyone recommend a recipe for it?" and then having every response on a message board full of qualified chefs going, "What? What are you talking about? There are no recipes for chicken parmigiana."

"But there are. Here's some right here (links), I just wondered which ones you might recommend if you'd tried them?"

"Uh, what? No, there are no good recipes for that. Your approach is flawed. You can't make food by listing ingredients and instructions. You need to eat a lot of chicken parmigiana and study how it tastes, then you practice at it for 10,000 hours just randomly doing shit in the kitchen until you magically figure it out yourself. This is how professional chefs today have been making chicken parmigiana for decades - by spending 15 years developing a tongue, expert intuition and NEVER WRITING ANYTHING DOWN."

If that was the only answer anyone ever gave you for anything on cooking, that would be pretty frustrating, yes? I know people write this stuff down and sell it on Amazon and I know you don't have to be born with natural music savant skills to do OCR and VGM music. Music is an art, yes, but there has to be some science behind it too that isn't just abstract theory. If it was, much fewer people would be doing music today.

Anyway, I don't mean to rant on about how frustrating this process is and hopefully now I'll be done with it, I just wanted to know if anyone ever owned or read these books and found them pretty useful and reasonably specific in learning music production and composition on the computer. I know they exist.

In other news, I recently got a hold of Aaron Marks on Facebook, and he recommended his other book - Game Development Essentials. That one, according to him, teaches how to create game music and game sound effects, which is definitely a skill I could use. Anyone read that one?

[Nabeel Ansari]

Your analogy makes absolutely no sense.

Asking "how do I write good music" is not the same thing as asking "how do I make chicken parmigiana" and believing so exposes the flaw in your approach. There are recipes for chicken parmigiana because it is defined. Something is or isn't chicken parmigiana. You can look up a recipe for it because it is a thing that exists.

The only logical analogy would be picking a song and asking "how do I write it?" In which case, all you have to do is look up the sheet music, plug it into your DAW, and match the track levels of any recording of the song that you're listening to.

If you want a chef analogy, what you're looking for is "how do I start from scratch and just make an original delicious food dish, not referring to any pre-existing recipes and not trying to make any existing dish in particular?" which is an absolutely preposterous question.

[Radiowar]

Think of it this way, from my perspective, it's like me asking "I want to make chicken parmigiana, can anyone recommend a recipe for it?" and then having every response on a message board full of qualified chefs going, "What? What are you talking about? There are no recipes for chicken parmigiana."

"But there are. Here's some right here (links), I just wondered which ones you might recommend if you'd tried them?"

"Uh, what? No, there are no good recipes for that. Your approach is flawed. You can't make food by listing ingredients and instructions. You need to eat a lot of chicken parmigiana and study how it tastes, then you practice at it for 10,000 hours just randomly doing shit in the kitchen until you magically figure it out yourself. This is how professional chefs today have been making chicken parmigiana for decades - by spending 15 years developing a tongue, expert intuition and NEVER WRITING ANYTHING DOWN."

the key point that is missing from your formulation here is that you can give ten cooks the same recipe you linked and get ten different dishes. the space between the statements "chicken parmagiana is chicken, parmesan cheese, and pasta" and "chicken parmagiana is a virtually unknowable quantity" is where creativity and decision-making happen.

yet your analogy does not entirely hold up. recipes are to creating food as songbooks are to creating music. in this case, the chicken parmagiana recipe you linked is not analogous to "how to make video game music" so much as "a transcription of prelude by nobuo uematsu." it tells you how to cook a specific dish; it does not tell you how to become a better cook.

a more accurate analogy, in my opinion, is that what you are really asking here is how to make dinner - dinner of a certain "genre", lets say italian food. the feedback you are likely to get, in this scenario, would be to start by imitating dishes you know you like. how do you know what dishes you like or dislike? you need to taste some. maybe you need help around the daw - or uh kitchen - like grating cheese, or cutting tomatoes in a particular shape, or cracking an egg without getting it all over the floor. there is literature out there that will help you to these ends: cookbooks, menus, "how to cut stuff for dummies," etc. yet to ask the question "my chicken parmagiana always comes out dry and im having difficulty improving it - anyone know any good books on the topic?" would likely be met with responses similar to those in this thread.

the idea is that, at some point - and im getting the sense is that this is the point you are after - you will move away from simply recreating dishes by rote to actually having an opinion of what you like, and the ability to figure out how to achieve it. this is usually what people mean when they talk about "experience" - not the result of 10,000 hours of random, undirected experimentation, but a continuous, increasingly refined process of input and subsequent output.

Music is an art, yes, but there has to be some science behind it too that isn't just abstract theory. If it was, much fewer people would be doing music today.

i agree with you, but i think you are misunderstanding what i mean by "abstract" or "theoretical." i mean that the relationship between music theory and a given work is the same as the relationship between scientific theory and a given phenomena. i dont mean to say that abstract theoretical models are irrelevant to more practical or immediate considerations; on the contrary, they are abstract out of necessity in order to draw any specific or useful conclusions at all that arent just the *shrugs shoulders* "shit happens" mentality you're talking about.

[Meteo Xavier]

the idea is that, at some point - and im getting the sense is that this is the point you are after - you will move away from simply recreating dishes by rote to actually having an opinion of what you like, and the ability to figure out how to achieve it.

Yes. I WANT the rote. That's the point. It doesn't matter to me if there are ten different ways to cook something, I would like ONE that others say is pretty good and reasonably easy to follow, and after I conquer that method, I will improve on it personally later.

I didn't start music at the beginning, I started somewhere in the middle (as best I can describe), and hillbillied whatever skill I have on it in the meantime. I wasn't able to find much because the only music advice anyone ever gives is "just listen to it a shit-ton of times and you'll figure it out", which is nonsense. Youtube videos weren't that helpful either and there are no DAW tutors where I live. I found textbooks are actually far more useful to me than the others, based on ones I already have, so I ask if anyone can recommend others similar to them.

I've explained my position here a dozen times, I don't know what the hangup is or why we're still going in circles here. I really don't think The Dance Manual and The Guide to MIDI Orchestration are the only two books that exist in the less abstract format of teaching music creation to someone like me.

[ShrackAttack]

Honestly Meteo, there is no book that is going to do what you want. At least I have never seen one and I've looked around quite a bit because I felt I was in a similar situation as you a year ago. The best way to do what you're after is to do mockups/transcriptions of existing tracks and try to emulate them as best as possible. After you do a lot of transcription you are pretty much guaranteed to get a lot better or at least recognize what sounds good in the genre you're transcribing. Yeah, transcription can be incredibly hard especially if your ears aren't great, but it is worth it. That reminds me that I still need to do a lot more of it.

I read a decent bit of the Guide to MIDI Orchestration and there wasn't much in there for what you're talking about. It was still pretty general stuff you can learn just about anywhere on the internet and mostly sort of lower end information. I actually just sold my copy a week ago.

What is it exactly that you feel your music lacks? From the music I've heard from you your production isn't terrible and you are at least pretty creative musically.

[timaeus222]

Yes. I WANT the rote. That's the point. It doesn't matter to me if there are ten different ways to cook something, I would like ONE that others say is pretty good and reasonably easy to follow, and after I conquer that method, I will improve on it personally later.

Okay, well, I'm pretty sure you summed up the OP as:

"Is there some resource out there that can tell me how to write and produce music using a DAW that sounds good in the objective sense, both in production and arrangement?" (honestly, writing good music in the subjective sense is too hard to predictably do, no matter how good you are. It's literally luck here)

I would like ONE that others say is pretty good and reasonably easy to follow, and after I conquer that method, I will improve on it personally later.

And at some point you wanted one way each to do certain things generally, allowing you to get the hang of it and do it multiple times yourself, and from there you can experiment with that and adapt it to other contexts.

As far as I know, there aren't books for this, but then again, I did actually figure it out myself just from reading online articles. It may be a bit of a cop-out, but all I did was learn the ins and outs of my DAW (FL Studio) and any plugins I download or buy, and get some help from OCR over the years. It's not that complicated of a process, actually. I could honestly describe this way of learning production as simply trial-and-error. It's such a modern thing that I'm pretty sure people haven't written "guides" for this.

Some examples:

• To learn how to EQ quickly in FL, I worked to connect what I see on the Fruity Parametric EQ 2 to what I hear on it. Since I'm a visual person, I could shape the EQ how I picture it in my head, and based on that, it ends up sounding how I want it to sound. That's one way, and it worked for me.
  
• To learn how to use compressors (or any other plugin), I downloaded smexoscope and studied how the waveform changes when I tweak knobs on a compressor. Practice that enough, and it registers into muscle memory. Then, I put that all together to do something specific. I do an A/B comparison and toggle on/off to get the difference in my head, and after doing it so many times, your brain just wants that quality of compression to be applied to everything similar to what you just did it to.
  

If I were to refer you to any sort of production resource, http://soundonsound.com/ articles are fantastic for production values and sound design. I've found stuff on synthesizer basics, FM synthesis, compressors, EQ, reverb, delay, speakers vs. headphones, etc. I haven't even read everything there yet. For example, something on parallel compression on the master track.

As for arrangement, generic answer incoming: I studied other people's music and recomposed it by ear, learning what type of harmonies and melodies make it sound good at particular points in the song. I go into melodic contour and harmonic sensibility, and once I've done that, I just repeat this process until my ears are used to the stuff I deem good.

I don't think there's a book out there with the kind of advice you're looking for because everyone learns with different methods. Some people are more visual than others, and some are lazier than others, etc. If a book were to sum all that up, it may have to present multiple methods for each general situation, which would be quite long, like Neblix hinted at.

Edited January 22, 2014 by timaeus222

[Argle]

I think you're going to be disappointed in this quest. Most people into computer music just teach themselves or cobble together tips over the years, so there's not a whole lot of curriculum compared to say, attending a music school for classical performance. If self learning and experimentation isn't working for you, not sure there is a bunch of books that will set you on the path.