Any music producers in here?

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Blue

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And by "producers" I just mean do any of you make any music ("producer" sounds so posh)? I'm a long time "traditional" musician, like guitar and bass, but I've just recently started trying to learn a DAW. I've tried FL Studio and Ableton Live, and for some reason the former feels better to me. There's just so much stuff to learn in a DAW that it's a bit disheartening when you realise that you can't just jump in and start making the music you hear in your head right away; it takes probably at least weeks to learn the program at first.

It would be nice to hear of others making their own music, and maybe exchange tips on workflows etc?
 

Eis-T

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Hi, I used to be a musician too (played in a couple of cover bands and stuff and recorded an album with one) but now I'm more of a producer than a musician. Ableton works for me more intuitively than FL, but thats just personal preference :)
I just started last year making vaporwave and I'm finally at the point that I'm content enough with it to share it with the rest of the world. Feel free to give it a listen here: https://eis-t.bandcamp.com
If you guys here at the agora are down with it we can do a collab album. I wouldn't mind to donate a track (or two) to a compilation for the agora road bandcamp/youtube
 
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shiftycomfort

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hey, ive had the same trouble with the traditional "music production suites," FL is what i use (free version) for some stuff, but i have had success with recording you tube videos from my computer speakers to my phone. so really, imo, its what ever is the most comfortable way to make the music in your head into a song. check out some free music editing apps, for phone or computer, they are easy to jump right in and create. good luck! hope this wall of text helped.
 
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reQverb

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With my workflow i tend to stick to as much hardware as possible, as i don't generally care for DAW workflow. i'll generally go synth>TR-8/sr16>sp404>4 track, although i switch things up depending on what kind of sound im going for
 
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キラヨシ

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I consider myself a composer and producer where I think about the music itself and the sound itself. I use Cubase to make this happen.
 
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cityman900

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Nice, I use Cubase also. Sometimes I change my workflow and use LMMS or ProTools depending on what I'm working with.
 
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Isaac_Ascii

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Music always played a huge role in my life, but I gotta admit I do not have that way of musician's thinking, so I've never managed to successfully learn an instrument.
I've made an electronic music album with Fruity Loops back in 2005, but was not satisfied with the sound of it's instruments, especially knowing Reason's power, but Reason's workflow is very hard to get into.
Then I discovered Ableton and was totally hocked by the workflow and I could easily include Reason with the rewire feature.
Being not a good musician, but I do claim to have a good feeling for "flow", I've managed to host some kick-ass partys in major german citys a few years ago.
Nowadays, I still use Ableton in kind of the same way, I've Djed back then, to produce my Eccojams. It's like playing Lego. XD
I do prefer the sound of Audacity for slowing and pitching down samples, but for the life of me, I can not get into it's workflow.
 
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I use reaper for my projects but i do have a problem where my tracks sound lower in volume in comparison to others.
 

Eis-T

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That gap in loudness is a common "problem" with commercially produced music, compared to smaller artists. In the industry they call it The Loudness Wars. Tracks have to be as loud as possible to stand out in the crowd. They accomplish this overextended loudness (among other techniques) by using a brickwall limiter / compressor on the master channel. The price of pushing up the loudness is a loss in dynamic range, which by the way can often be used as an artistic choice. Eric Prydz's Call On Me is a good example of that. Just like a balloon, there is a limit to how far you can pump it up before it pops, so be careful not to overdo it.
I think it is best to just keep doing what you're doing in reaper and open the rendered audio file in a new project to boost the volume, that way you won't interfere with the mixing process. IMO it is more important that all tracks on the same album have a similar loudness, consistency over loudness so to say.
Good luck!
 
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Eis-T said:
That gap in loudness is a common "problem" with commercially produced music, compared to smaller artists. In the industry they call it The Loudness Wars. Tracks have to be as loud as possible to stand out in the crowd. They accomplish this overextended loudness (among other techniques) by using a brickwall limiter / compressor on the master channel. The price of pushing up the loudness is a loss in dynamic range, which by the way can often be used as an artistic choice. Eric Prydz's Call On Me is a good example of that. Just like a balloon, there is a limit to how far you can pump it up before it pops, so be careful not to overdo it.
I think it is best to just keep doing what you're doing in reaper and open the rendered audio file in a new project to boost the volume, that way you won't interfere with the mixing process. IMO it is more important that all tracks on the same album have a similar loudness, consistency over loudness so to say.
Good luck!

I usually just compress tracks so there aren't any major peaks.
Also not referring to the loudness wars, just a weird problem I more so used to have.
 
I played music in the hardcore scene for a few years on guitar and bass. Only in the recent months I've started really exploring FL studio and getting better plugins has done a lot to help me shape my sound to be more "3D" if that makes any sense. A "vaporwave" technique I've been using lately is to make a song in FL at about 90-114 bpm and gated reverb drums, then take the track to audacity to change the speed quickly.
 
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vh1classic

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Yes I produce music!

I studied recording about 15 years ago. Since then, I've done a lot of live sound, in addition to my day job. I got Studio One back in 2011 and I've been using it / upgrading it ever since then. It's very similar to Logic and Cubase.

Here's my newest work - with a cassette on sale!

https://powerlunch.bandcamp.com/track/millionaire-profiles
 
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Strangely enough, yes, I do produce. And then there's ビコジン協会...which, officially, I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR. Also, Chiz Naugahyde is better described as "an accident" rather than "an artist".

But this music thing...I've been doing this for over half a century. No, that's not hyperbole. You can poke around quite a bit of it by clicking the BC link to the left. Right now, I'm in the middle of upgrading my studio, which at this point involves running around 10k feet of cables of varying sorts. There's a lot of stuff in here...and if all of it doesn't blow every breaker in the house, I should be at full steam in about a month-ish now.
 

壊れたリフトBROKENLIFT

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Blue said:
And by "producers" I just mean do any of you make any music ("producer" sounds so posh)? I'm a long time "traditional" musician, like guitar and bass, but I've just recently started trying to learn a DAW. I've tried FL Studio and Ableton Live, and for some reason the former feels better to me. There's just so much stuff to learn in a DAW that it's a bit disheartening when you realise that you can't just jump in and start making the music you hear in your head right away; it takes probably at least weeks to learn the program at first.

It would be nice to hear of others making their own music, and maybe exchange tips on workflows etc?
If you're good with FL Studio, keep using it. I switched to Live years ago because it gave better sound at the time, but FL has been improving a lot and has grown bestially in users and tutorials, its difficulty curve is the best without a doubt and the best gateway.

Greetings.
 
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netdenizenlain

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I'm a producer and I use Ableton for my DAW, though recently I have been considering switching over to FL Studio.

I'm not the best at production, but if anyone ever wants some tips feel free to message me.
 
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phaeder

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I love FL Studio. I briefly thought I would move to a free DAW, and tried Cakewalk for about 5 minutes and then bailed. For FL (and likely other major DAWs, but I haven't looked), there are tons of YouTube tutorials. Here is the best FL Studio teacher I've found. I'm sure his outstanding tutorials will help get you off and running! Good luck!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIcCXe3iWo6lq-iWKV40Oug
 
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