
Ask HN: How do I start making music? - keiferski
Like anyone else, music has always been an important part of my life. Occasionally I’ll even come up with a tune or beat in my head and think, “Wow, that actually sounds cool.”<p>But I have zero knowledge of how to transfer this idea into real music. I’m mostly interested in electronic, ambient, and related genres (and not playing the oboe.)<p>Tips? Thoughts? Where to start? What was your experience?
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Runkvanten
As someone who started producing just that, electronic music and mainly
ambient and techno without any musical knowledge or formal training except for
a little bit of playing the drums as a kid I'd say just jump into it and see
if you like doing it.

Try a few DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Ableton Live (my DAW of
choice) or FL Studio and start following tutorials on youtube to get the
basics down, how to use the DAW, how to play around with samples, loops and
premade sounds to get a feel for actually making something to sound like a
song, beat or anything really.

Expect and accept that everything you'll create the first few months or even
the first year will sound like shit and that's just the nature of learning and
improving.

Do not buy a bunch of hardware or midi controllers right of the bat. Stick to
learning the DAW and working "in the box" until you feel that you're ready to
take the next step. Personally I've gone from working in the box, to using
hardware only and now I'm back to a much more streamlined studio with
basically no hardware at all.

Like I said, just jump into it and see if you like it and if you do you're
mostly likely going to stick to it for the long haul.

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keiferski
Hey, thanks for the long comment. I’ll probably end up with Logic as I’m using
a Mac.

