Music, a key part of our lives, I dare anyone, and I mean ANYONE to come out and say he doesnt listen, or hasnt listened to or danced to a groovy tune before.
Music is so entrenched in our cultures and way of life as humans that many has even stipulated that it is a universal language.
Indeed I as an individual, and we as a record listen to a wide range of music that has no english interpretation what so ever, anime songs have an epicness to them(fairy tail is a constant culprit) and a lot of asian songs gives a lot of deepness to their meaning(except K-pop, we join the world in saying NO to K-pop)(JKing).
Either way, music listening and music creation are two totally different things, so we decided it best to drop some tutorials as well as examples of how to use some certain tools to create some awesome music!
Quick TUT
In this tutorial session, we go about talking the basic of basic tool one needs to produce a track from start to finish these days.
I introduce to you;
DAW
DAW mean digital Audio Workstations .
Technically speaking, DAWS are devices or apps on systems used for recording, editing and producing audio files such as musical pieces, songs, speech or sound effects.
boring definition
Ok DAWS are in practical definition,very special and amazing toys(softwares) that make magic come out of your speakers, essentially, it is where youll be creating 100% of your music. It is controlled by a person that sits behind a ''console'' pretending to do some serious work by turning and twisting fancy, flashing knobs.
In all seriousness, the DAW is your gateway to music making wonderland, it takes a lot of time an energy to understand the principles of DAWs and the first thing I advice newbies to do when selecting a DAW is to try them all.
DAWs come in all shapes and sizes, most times having one function better than the other.
You often hear people say ;
"I use pro tools for mixing and logic for producing"
The truth is that both softwares can do the same thing, but the workflow of an individual makes using one for a certain purpose much easier.
This is also where the underground DAW war comes in. Users of several DAWs often claim that theirs is the best, and a healthy competition grows from there.
I have seen individuals claim that they can never use a certain DAW due to one reason or the other.
Now all DAWs are good, but picking one, means you automatically choose a side on which you stand in the DAW war community.
Workflow
Personally, I use fl studio 12 and ableton live 9 for production, then pro tools for mixing.
In nigeria here, a LOT of producers use cubase, but i dont. I have never fancied it.
So without going too far, the first thing first, is to pick your daw.
There are a lot of commercial daws in the market, many may be a bit pricy, so ill just drop all of them here, feel free to pick anyone and run a demo or watch some youtube videos to know if you like it.
List of DAWs
Ableton Live
ACID Pro
Adobe Audition
Ardour
Audiotool
Bitwig Studio
Cakewalk SONAR
Digital Performer
FL Studio
Fairlight
GarageBand
Kristal
Logic Pro
Lumit
Maschine
MAGIX Samplitude
MAGIX Sequoia
Mixcraft
Mixbus
MuLab
MultitrackStudio
MusE
n-Track Studio
Ohm Studio
PreSonus Studio One
Pro Tools
Pyramix
REAPER
Renoise
Reason
[[SoundBridge]]
SAWStudio
Steinberg Cubase
Steinberg Nuendo
Synapse Orion
Tracktion
Zynewave Podium
Z-Maestro
Like I said above, I use ableton, fl studio, pro tools and adobe audition
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Producing or mixing
The word producer is an umbrella term that could mean multiple amount of things.
For simplicity sake, i like to think of there being two types of producers.
- The beat maker
- The mixing engineer.
A beat maker makes beats, and a mixing engineer takes the beat and makes it sweet by doing some volume changes, clearing out vocals and all those things.
Often times, youll run into people who do both, and most times they will fall into two categories.
the producer who is primarily a mixing engineer, but does beat making
the producer who is a beat maker but does mixing too.
I fall into the second part.
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Before we go any deeper, well let things end here. Next time, we talk about the other aspects of mixing, but for now, pick your DAW!