Beginners Guide to Music Production

Hey, everybody.

So you want to become a music producer?

But where do you start?

I’m going to walk you through the process, and some things that you need to take into consideration in order to navigate through this territory.

So the first question you’re going to want to ask yourself is, what computer do you have available to you?

So are you going to buy a new computer for this?

Do you already have an existing computer?

Maybe you have two computers and one is a Windows computer. Do you want a Mac?

So which computer should you use for music production?

Now, there is no hard and fast right or wrong answer to this question.

Some things to take into consideration are that the music software that you use might only be available on one platform.

Or maybe you don’t know that you’ve never used a Windows computer before.

So you don’t even know where to start with one.

Or vice versa.

You’ve never used a Mac before.

So let’s talk first about Macs. They are very popular in the creative field.

The reason being, from what I can understand, is mainly just their marketing, but then also their interface and their usability are very linear.

It’s just one direction, they streamline everything.

And they don’t give you a lot of options.

So, for example, the way that Macs handle audio seems to be superior to the way that Windows does, because they just have Korea that seems to handle everything.

And it’s very simple.

It just seems to work.

With windows, you can do everything that you do on a Mac.

And arguably, you can do more.

But sometimes it’s not necessarily as easy to get to that point when it comes down to dollar for dollar.

Usually, Windows-based PCs win that competition. What software are you going to use? Because that isn’t always the most obvious?

And I’m going to share some I’m going to share some very popular pieces of music software with you.

So what we’re going to do is, first of all, I’m going to talk to you about Ableton. I use Ableton and I think it is a fantastic piece of software.

I have used a couple of other pieces of software now and I keep coming back to Ableton.

So you can try it for free.

They give you a 30 day trial. You can play around with it.

You just can’t save any of your projects.

And I don’t think you can export audio out of it either.

But have a look at Ableton, check it out.

I recommend it.

So Ableton is available for both Windows and Mac.

So regardless of what you use, you can use Ableton Logic Pro logic is only available on Apple.

And it is a beautiful piece of software.

I’ve used it a little bit and it’s extremely capable.

The one thing that it doesn’t have that Ableton does have is performance aspects, but if you’re just straight up going into production, you don’t necessarily need that.

And another thing that’s worth pointing out is that logic and Ableton come with inbuilt instruments and effects.

And this is relevant because when you’re starting, when you actually want to open up the software and start making sounds, it’s quite difficult to do that when you don’t have any instruments loaded into the software because some of these pieces of software don’t come with anything, so yeah, logic and Ableton have very good inbuilt instruments and Ableton come with a lot of samples. I mentioned logic, maybe it does as well.

So you can start creating stuff straight away with these pieces of software.

Florida studio now FL is only available on Windows.

And if it was a fantastic piece of software, I know many, many, very popular producers that use it, and it’s just recently had a visual revamp as well, so it’s looking pretty cool.

And this does come with a whole bunch of its own instruments installed as well, so you can get into this and start making stuff. It is known for quite a few cool inbuilt instruments.

So check that out.

But wig bit wig is basically made by some of the old members of Ableton, so they moved over to a new software company and they started bit wig bit wig is pretty cool.

I’ve played with it a bit. It looks quite nice. I think it looks a little bit nicer than Ableton.

But aesthetics don’t always mean it’s going to be superior in terms of what it can do.

But it can do some really cool things.

And I think once they start to sort of have everything that Ableton can do covered, and then more, then I’ll definitely consider using it.

But for the meantime, I’m gon na stick with Ableton just because I feel like I’ve opened it up and I feel a little bit limited by it.

So bitwig is available for both Mac and PC. Then we’ve got Studio One. I’ve never used Studio One, but I have been hearing a lot about it. It seems quite popular amongst people that are sort of mixing and mastering live bands and like bands and singer-songwriters and this sort of thing.

So check it out, and see whether it works for you.

And I don’t know whether they have a free trial, but I just wanted to mention that you can download Bitwig and use it as a demo.

And then finally, the last one I’m gon na talk about is Reaper.

The Reaper kind of caught my attention recently.

It’s not necessarily the most user-friendly piece of software. I would probably say this is more for people that have already learned another piece of software, and then they want something that’s going to expand the possibilities.

Because the Reaper seems to have so much functionality and so many routes available to it.

So it’s a pretty cool piece of software.

But I opened it up and it didn’t seem to have too many instruments built into it.

It does have instruments built into it, but they don’t.

They’re not as friendly as Ableton or logic or the other ones.

So.

But the coolest thing about the Reaper is that it’s really, really cheap.

It’s only $60 for a license.

Cool.

So yeah, they’re the pieces of music software that I’m going to talk about.

So let’s go ahead and close them and move forward.

So what sort of gear do you need as a beginner? Because it can be quite overwhelming, especially if you’re not really into the tech side of things. You just want to create and you don’t want to worry about figuring out what you need.

So I’m going to offer you some really solid entry-level suggestions.

So the first thing first, you’re going to need a USB or it doesn’t have to be USB, but some sort of audio interface.

Okay,

Why do we use an audio interface? My laptop has got an audio jack in it. I can take my headphones, and I can plug them straight into the audio jack.

Well, the reason we don’t use audio jacks is because the audio that we get through there is sometimes, first of all, not very good quality.

Secondly, it can be manipulated by the people that have made the sound cards. They might be boosting or cutting certain frequencies that are going to color our sound.

And it does not give us a clear, clear, balanced view of what really is going on inside music.

So we use an audio interface and an audio interface.

Firstly and foremost, you can plug your headphones into it and you can listen to your headphones and you’re going to get a clean signal out of it that’s not been boosted or cut or any of these or colored in any sort of way.

The second thing is, if you’ve got a guitar, or you’ve got a microphone, like this guy, you’re able to plug it into the audio interface.

So you can see these two guys here. They are line ends or mics. You can plug them in there. You can plug your 1000. You can plug a lot of instruments that use either XLR or quarter inch. You can plug them in there.

And you’re able to set it up in Ableton so that you have the audio coming through into Ableton or whatever your software is, and you can record from that.

And then if I look at the back, you can see the USB two slots here.

Now you’re going to be plugging your laptop into this with a USB.

And then you’ve got your MIDI in and out if you need MIDI, and then your line output, which is for your speakers.

So you’ve got your left channel and your right channel here.

So that will get you connected up to a good set of headphones and you have a clean sound coming through there and a good set of monitors.

Cool.

So this is going to do everything you need.

Steinberg is renowned for this product line, and I couldn’t think of anything better to recommend to you.

So next, what are you going to listen to?

So first off, we’ll talk about headphones, because headphones are a bit more accessible to some people than studio monitors.

So these are the headphones that I used here.

They are Audio Technica.

And they, I mean, the reviews, speak for themselves.

So look, it’s almost got 5000 reviews and a hell of a They have a lot of five-star hotels, almost 80% of five-star hotels.

So they are fantastic headphones, and they’re at a decent price point.

And I just like to keep things simple.

So I just say look no further. If you’re an entry level producer, these are going to serve you for like, a good three or four years. I’ve had mine for a very long time. You can see that they’re starting to wear down a little bit.

So these are great entry level headphones.

And then, finally, studio monitors.

So if you want to get a good, balanced sound out of your monitors, I would suggest the Yamaha HS fives if you’ve got a small room, the Yamaha HS six, or what they call HS sevens, but the speaker cone is 6.

5 inches.

And that’s what I use. I use this model.

And that’s great for a medium-sized room.

And then finally, the eight inches if you’ve got a really big room.

Excuse me, sir, these are the hardware choices that I would suggest to you.

And then finally, if you do want to maybe get a little keyboard or something like this, I would suggest the Akai NPK mini mark two.

And this is a great little entry level.

MIDI controller.

It’s got knobs on there that you can program.

It’s got drum pads, and it’s only 100 bucks.

So it’s pretty good.

Now I just want to preface all of this.

I’m not affiliated with any of these companies. I don’t use Amazon. I’m not affiliated with Amazon or anything else.

I do use Ableton but I’m not.

I’m not paid by them in any way.

So this is all just my opinion.

And I can tell you from firsthand experience, that the recommendation is hardware that I’ve used.

And I’m still using it and it’s great.

So I hope this was all useful to you.

And I’ll probably do some more videos about beginning level stuff.

So keep an eye out on my channel.

So thanks for watching.

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