____twoism

Hey everyone,

I’ve been a big fan of the music discussed here for a long time, and I'm finally looking to dive in and learn how to actually make electronic music myself. I have zero experience with production or any gear, and trying to figure out where to start feels a bit overwhelming.

I really want to learn the basics of synthesis and sampling. Does anyone have recommendations for good, straightforward YouTube channels, tutorials, or online resources for absolute beginners?

I'd love to hear how some of you first got your start. Thanks!

Hi Susan
For a basic tutorial on synthesisers have a look at 'Learning Synths' by Ableton. https://learningsynths.ableton.com/en/get-started

It's a really good interactive way to learn about the basic controls and concepts of synths without buying anything or knowing how to play instruments. Even if you are new to basic music concepts, it's a great place to get started.

I prefer Ableton to other software tools, so once you know what you want to do next, download a free demo version of Ableton Live to your computer and give it a try. https://www.ableton.com/en/trial/

I don't work for Ableton. I just think it's a good way to get started and the knowledge you gain is not wasted if you decide to use it more fully after your trial demo. Also, if you buy a MIDI controller or some other hardware you often get a free limited version of the software with your device.

Have fun!
Mark

Hi Susan!

Thank you for choosing here as your place to learn more about the art of music production. Yes, ableton is a great start and easy to use at first. But it depends what territory of music you would like to create, each tool does a different job some better some worse.

For specifically Synthesis and sampling, I would first start with just Synthesis and play around with some of the simple plugins which only allow you to have 3 Oscilators, a ASDR and a filter. It is a really good starting point to familiarize yourself with the waves. For that, I have to recommend that FL Studio is in fact king. It comes with a very good plugin called "3osc" built in which does what I just said up there on the tin and it is a very simple and easy to learn from this plugin, which gives you a great the starting point to go further. Their manual as well is also a lot better than Abletons which is mostly written for people who want to produce club music or music for hollywood. I hope this helps! FL is free to download as demo and you can play around with the plugins, you just can't save it! Its a great way to dip a finger into production.

Cheers

There's two roads you can take:

If you have a bit of cash (like, say 200 bucks), I'd recommend taking the hardware route. Find second-hand garbage and make noise with it. Thrift stores can be great for this. Find a cheap digital multitrack recorder. It doesn't matter which one it is. For starters just get the cheapest thing you can find, as long as it can record 4 tracks its good enough. Then buy a synthesizer and/or drum machine that has a low barrier to entry and hook it to the recorder. Low barrier to entry here meaning a device that sounds really nice really quickly, just by pressing a few buttons. Something with tons of pre-programmed things and doesn't have too many complicated buttons and dials (The Orchid by Telepathic Instruments springs to mind, but you can thrift for similarly simple machines like a Korg X5D for 35 euros and it sounds heavenly immediately). This is very important starting out because it will motivate you a lot to keep playing and recording and you won't get lost in the intricate details of audio synthesis (a veeeeeery deep rabbit hole) right away and first make yourself thristy for vibing with the music making process.

If you don't have any money, like me back in the before times, take the software route. Pirate a copy of FL Studio (I recommend version 20), download a bunch of free VSTs (but only try a handful first) and download some drum samples. Then try making a little beat, a bassline, chords and a melody with the samples and synth vsts. Try adding some effect vst to each channel. And you're off basically. I also always recommend people to look into Sunvox which is freeware (except on iOS and android) and is a very neat little modular synthesizer kit that can run on a pocketwatch but is incredibly powerful. But it lacks support for VSTs and SF2s and comes with a tracker interface which might be a bit intimidating (though you can make entire songs without it only using the nodes).

susanmcallister wrote: I really want to learn the basics of synthesis and sampling. Does anyone have recommendations for good, straightforward YouTube channels, tutorials, or online resources for absolute beginners?

I'd love to hear how some of you first got your start. Thanks!

G’Day Susan! I have a YouTube channel where I edit down extremely long live Twitch streams of me working on and explaining the thought process behind my tracks and story time on my musical influences (modular and hardware synths, somewhat BOC-a-like but probably closer to quirky AFX style if I’m honest [but get a few drinks in me and I’m a lying ginger ). I’ll be having a few craft beers (will try not get too abusive, although having said that, enter at your own risk) in dedicated thread here: https://www.twoism.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16101
Will probably be on at inconvenient o’clock.

On the subject of picking up new skills, a mate of mine actually just put me on to ELVTR https://uk.elvtr.com/course because they do live online classes with people who actually work in the industry. Supposedly they do everything from tech to creative stuff, so might be worth a look if anyone is trying to learn something new or switch things up

Cupz is spot-on here for sure - what you want, especially early on, is to make the feedback loop between making a noise and playing back+adjusting that noise as fast and convenient early on as you can. then just trying different shit out, either how you're recording, what you're recording, where a mic is placed, what mic is used, what reverb might do, how equalizing might work, adjusting mixes, etc. etc. etc.

but keep the feedback loop tight, don't invest too much early on, and take as few bites on at a time, and you'll have some good acceleration