What's the one thing you wish someone had told you about making music when you started?

[foresense]

auto-fellatio can be accomplished with consistent practice

 

My A5000 is really cool dude, deal with it.

[Guest]

[Entorwellian]

3 things.

 

- (Back in mid 90s) - Don't back your stuff up as mp3's. At the very least put it through the outboard and record it to a tape deck if you don't have the space.

- The EQ and panning parameters are given preference on the mixer for a reason! learn them and teach your ears to know what to change and when.

- Using send channels and automation is more efficient than making a new chain of effects for each track \/ \/ Took me a while to figure out this one.

[gmanyo]

limitations limitations limitations. limit yourself to increase creativity. change your limitations with every project. make a song using only 4 tracks. use a program you've never used before. make a song in a genre you've never done. i made a track using only a MIDI keyboard worth like 20 bucks or less sequenced through logic and it's the best thing i've made so far.

[Zephyr_Nova]

- Using send channels and automation is more efficient than making a new chain of effects for each track \/ \/ Took me a while to figure out this one.

 

That's a good one! I definitely would have benefited from that advice back in the day.

[peace 7]

"Share your music more."

 

Like seriously, you dunno who's listening, mang. Fai birrion tracks just hiding on hard drives that nobody has heard, but they are good. Should've shared them publicly and not feel ashamed for spamming like a mofo. Being secretive achieves nothing.

[fxbip]

Mostly mixing stuff:

 

Watch the clipping,leave headroom space

Get a proper stereoizer vst effect for mixing

Low cut/high cut eq

Dont overdo,do weird mastering/dont overlimit you probably dont know what you are doing anyway

 

Also for the very beginners:

 

Warning RANT incoming:

 

LEARN.SOME.FKIN.SCALES/MODES AND CHORDS,

NO IDONT WANT TO HEAR ANY EXCUSES:-IDONT NEED THEM'IDONT WANT THEM-,JUST LEARN THEM!!!!YOU NEED THEM!!

EVERYBODY NEED THEM! IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT MUSIC :YOU.WILL. and i repeat YOU.WILL.NEED THEM AT SOME POINT!!!!

(you ll thank me forever and ever later,now go and learn them and then make some good music!)

 

End of RANT

 

And finish your tracks..Finish your tracks mate.

 

and maybe the most important thing:

 

Make music with your guts.Not just your brain.Put all your passion and feels into it.

[TubularCorporation]

"Share your music more."

 

Like seriously, you dunno who's listening, mang.  Fai birrion tracks just hiding on hard drives that nobody has heard, but they are good.  Should've shared them publicly and not feel ashamed for spamming like a mofo.  Being secretive achieves nothing.

 

 

This.

 

Not that figuring it out has made me any better at it.

[perunamuusi]

That in your 40s you start getting penile wind aka dickfarts

Great :(

[psn]

Oh dear.

[TRiP]

I was going to start a thread about small questions, but this seems as good a place as any:

Whats the deal with mini jack audio cables? The likes of which Volcas like to use. I've used several different kinds of aux cables but they never seem to ever want to work properly - that is to say: when they are plugged fully in either the audio doesn't run through it, or its only the high-end, or just the left side channel etc. etc. Usually I just have to half-plug them and then they seem to work

Have i just been using the wrong cables all these years, or are they just a bit awful?

[TubularCorporation]

Have i just been using the wrong cables all these years, or are they just a bit awful?

 

 

The second one.  They get used because

 

A) they cost less

B) they are smaller

 

 

Honestly, even RCA would be better than mini jacks (RCA is actually a pretty good connector type - durable, easy to repair and really well shielded if you have well shielded cables - it's just that the RCA cables people have are usually the cheapest possible).

 

Mini jacks are the worst.

[Guest]

I was going to start a thread about small questions, but this seems as good a place as any:

 

Whats the deal with mini jack audio cables? The likes of which Volcas like to use. I've used several different kinds of aux cables but they never seem to ever want to work properly - that is to say: when they are plugged fully in either the audio doesn't run through it, or its only the high-end, or just the left side channel etc. etc. Usually I just have to half-plug them and then they seem to work

 

Have i just been using the wrong cables all these years, or are they just a bit awful?

The Volcas are finicky. Depending on what Volcas you have, it's best to use mono cables and not stereo cables. However (!), if you're using the 5v sync cables to sync them, you want to use stereo TRS cables since, for some reason, mono TS cables makes the 5v sync skip steps randomly as explained in this thread.

 

My work around was to use mono TS cables and syncing all my Volcas via MIDI. The Volca sample can be output to stereo since it has panning capabilities.

 

These are the cables I use.

 

 

[LimpyLoo]

1) You are part of a long-ass lineage of music-makers;

Ignore that fact at your peril

 

2) "Technique" is the portal through which ideas manifest themselves;

Ignore it at your peril

 

3) You should aim to be a perpetual student of your discipline

 

4) Categories and genres are for record store clerks

 

5) Claims that music is mere "sonic cheesecake", or that it's mere "entertainment...but ultimately meaningless" or that it's the "one art medium that isn't figurative" are absolute fucking horseshit and the (sometimes otherwise-brilliant) people who espouse these views should be embarrassed (I'm looking at you, Steven Pinker)

[Brisbot]

Do whatever the fuck sounds right

[A Reggae Lee Bowyer]

Sketch out a rough arrangement as early as possible. Even when you only have the absolute basic foundations down.

I spent fucking years procrastinating on loops and being stuck for ideas. Once I started getting a simple arrangement down asap, I found that things move along very quickly.

 

Don't fight what comes natural to you. Play to your strengths. Make the tune that you want to listen to. Not what you think is expected of you. Genre is a label to be attached after the fact.

 

Don't ever give a single thought to loudness. Only concern yourself with balance and dynamics.

[TRiP]

 

Have i just been using the wrong cables all these years, or are they just a bit awful?

 

 

The second one.  They get used because

 

A) they cost less

B) they are smaller

 

 

Honestly, even RCA would be better than mini jacks (RCA is actually a pretty good connector type - durable, easy to repair and really well shielded if you have well shielded cables - it's just that the RCA cables people have are usually the cheapest possible).

 

Mini jacks are the worst.

 

 

 

The Volcas are finicky. Depending on what Volcas you have, it's best to use mono cables and not stereo cables. However (!), if you're using the 5v sync cables to sync them, you want to use stereo TRS cables since, for some reason, mono TS cables makes the 5v sync skip steps randomly as explained in this thread.

 

My work around was to use mono TS cables and syncing all my Volcas via MIDI. The Volca sample can be output to stereo since it has panning capabilities.

 

These are the cables I use.

 

 

Thanks for the info!

 

Jaysis, if they're just dodgy in general why skimp on the one part that's needed to actually hear the thing

 

Have similar issues with my MicroGranny + Korg monotron delay (but the delay especially is really cheap and flimsy), good to know i'm not going insane

[LimpyLoo]

Sketch out a rough arrangement as early as possible. Even when you only have the absolute basic foundations down.

I spent fucking years procrastinating on loops and being stuck for ideas. Once I started getting a simple arrangement down asap, I found that things move along very quickly.

 

Dude, totally.

I only recently started taking form seriously and magically my "what the fuck do I do with this loop?" problems went away.

[Braintree]

Regarding the OP:

 

Have fun. You won't keep coming back to make more if you treat a composition like it's hard work (even if it is).

[Bubba69]

the shit you make but then you realize sucks actually probably doesn't suck as much as you think it does. Listen to it in 10 years and be like, wtf how did I do that track.

[TubularCorporation]

Don't buy a brand new Yamaha A3000 sampler for a thousand quid back in 1999. 

 

Yeah, don't buy a highly regarded, $800 Ricoh external SCSI CD-R burner in 1999 either.  Because there is a firmware bug that inserts random clicks into audio during burn that they will never fix, and it's moot because the whole thing will start failing to burn discs within 12 months of the warranty running out (not just mine, my university had a whole lab full of them and they all died in about 2 years).  Also better drives will be under $200 by then (to be fair, in '99 a $200 burner wouldn't even do disc-at-once burning at all, so it was literally impossible to burn a redbook audio CD - or ANY audio CD without gaps between the tracks).

[Juice Patrol]

To make a track louder, you need to turn somethings down and take out useless frequencies.