Just wanted to write out this post to the waveform community and say my thanks to everyone who’s been participating and lurking in this community so far. It’s amazing to see your posts and projects here every day and it genuinely makes my day a little brighter to know that something I posted helped someone on the other side of the screen!
Anyways, I’d like to ask you all to help me bring you better content. I can’t really post Kush, In The Mix, or random youtubers everyday, I find a lot of channels don’t go nearly in-depth enough on a lot of topics and just scratch the surface, and well established youtubers just post the same content and advice over and over again. We should all benefit from different perspectives here!
I got a new job (yay!) earlier this week, so I’m gonna be a bit short on free time, which means if I don’t do something about the way I search for content it’ll be hard to make it consistently.
Finding noteworthy youtube channels can be quite time consuming. Writing a quality post also takes time: watching, researching, writing, reviewing, all that sha-bang! Takes me on average about 2-3 hours to do all of that. I might have ADHD or some form of inattention so that might explain if those hours seem like a bit too much.
So I thought we’d pool some interesting channels and websites in this thread, that way it’ll be easy to reference for newcomers and I’ll be able to curate the best content in here. It will also be interesting to know what your guys knowledge levels are and what areas of production you find most difficult: mixing, mastering, sound design, songwriting, etc. It will help me curate the content better as right now I really have very little idea about all that. And also, your likes in terms of genres and artists would be cool to share in the community. Let’s see what kind of music we like to make!
Here are the discussion questions in a nice order. You don’t have to answer every single question and it’s completely okay to answer just one! All of these have full potential to be a really interesting standalone comment!
- Tell us about yourself! How long have you been making music and how much time do you spend producing a week (roughly)? What made you start your journey?
- What are your favorite genres to make and/or listen to? What unites them or makes them different to you?
- What are your most favorite artists? What makes them great to you?
- What resources (websites and youtube channels) do you use for learning? How do they help you?
I’ll start with myself in the comments to this post!
Allright,
I´ve been making for 25 years now. Began with 16 and drumming on Dejmbes in tunnels broughtme initially in before I continued with Reason were I just mixed loops together and than began diving deeper into music after a friend tought me the first pieces of music theory.
After some training years I tramed up with local MCees and we had a first band called Quintesense with pretty smart story based texts and all. We had a few live perfomrances and its was huge fun.
Most of the time I spent with the next Group called Spruchpiloten and we released an Album and had a few hits like “Zurück zu Hause” ind Bombe. We had plenty of local club appearances sometimes completely improvised into electro or Drum n Bass territory comibined with rap vocals. A concept that later on Deickind started to make popular :D https://knsm.cc/kpmp3-015-spruchpiloten-starke-turbulenzen/
Maybe two hours a week is for producing if at all currently but thats fine as I prepare a massive solo comeback if all goes well.
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Primary listening genres are HipHop, Drum n Bass, Electro, Deep House as well as Jazz and classic indian music or anythin that has rhytm.
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Artists: Tribe called quest, Bad Company, Noisia, Misanthrop etc but also Khruangbin, Laufey, Lianne La Havas, Michael Kiwanuka on the softer side.
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Random stuff, sometimes, music theory for weeks than a little mixing or stranjah for DnB stuff as I never had much ressources along the way except try and error and friends here and there.
I used to have a friend back in middle school who was getting a music education at the time. That was right around the point when I just started producing and he mentioned that my music sounded like it was from a videogame. And well I kinda took that to heart and looked up a bunch of itch.io games. I found a cool project and they were just in need of a soundtrack, so I said “let me give it a go”. They liked my drafts and the rest is history. I’ve learned so much since then. Working on the game for the past couple of years boosted my skills into something release worthy. I even rewrote the whole thing twice because the skill gap was so massive between the first and the last track in the playlist. This last rewrite is gonna be final, and gonna become my portfolio in case I want to hit another studio after this. Hope it works out!
Thats a cool path for sure.
I havent even considered working for other projects except the last few years. Made a jingle for a podcast and some advertisment tracks, some for me, some for clients in other directions.
Fun experience to bring something on point along guidelines but I rather prefer the musician as an artist kind of thing where I just put out albums. When we released our album over 10 years ago we werent aware of all the sales channel that exist today. We hoped for some label that picks us up or something. We didnt even make CDs or vinyl I thin despite many people seem to like it and the forbidden and wild live impro recordings even more :D
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I started improv singing when I was a small child, did school chorus for a several years, then got sick of blending into the group. I wanted to make my own music with the focus on my voice, so I started experimenting with recording and layering things. That was about 20 years ago. I haven’t been at all consistent about it - sometimes I’d go for months without working on music at all. Then there was one year I made a finished song every month and some of it was the best I ever made.
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I listen to lots of genres, but most often some form of electronic - downtempo, synthpop, modern EDM, etc. I tend to favor music with atmospheric layers and a hint of mystery, but different moods call for different kinds of music. What I make is hard to classify, but definitely still some form of electronic.
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Artists: Pair of Arrows, Rufus du Sol, Metric, Robyn, Zhu… if I try to describe why I love them I’ll be typing way too long so I’ll just leave this one for now.
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I learned a lot of synth basics from Sonic State’s reviews - often with detailed demonstrations feature by feature, sometimes with tips on how/why you might use that feature. Some channels for more general music composition and production stuff: James Nathan Jones, Venus Theory, Benn Jordan, Andrew Huang
Ah, I used to be in a chorus myself back in elementary, though it was an after-school activity for me. One vivid memory I have of it is that I hated sitting in classes because I was so bored and wanted to move. Guess that one might count towards my ADHD diagnosis and it certainly counts towards my music taste. I actually hated music for a while after that and it wasn’t until 13 when I started to listen to a lot of cool stuff that eventually prompted me to try and make something myself. And I actually liked it! Maybe I was always meant for it? ;)
And those are some interesting channels mate, thanks for sharing. I watched a bit of Andrew Huang myself, his “producers flip a sample” series was amazing inspiration for me, but he’s got this intense youtuber vibe that makes his content hard to watch for me. Sonic state and JNJ seem really interesting, much appreciated!
I know what you mean about that intense youtuber vibe. I think it’s something that developed gradually over time and you might enjoy his older videos more. I’ve actually mostly stopped watching his new stuff.
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I’ve been making music for roughly 8 years now, starting at the age of 14. No, I’m not a child prodigy! I made some really crappy music right until I hit 18 since I didn’t really care about being good (which may have been a great thing!) I guess I’ve only been seriously producing for the past 4 years. I normally spend about 6-10 hours a week to produce, and if I’m doing a project I really like, that time can fly all the way up to 20s and 30s!
I really liked Jungle and DnB for as long as I can remember. Broader EDM was my bread and butter in my teens and I’m into electronic rock and metal these days. I suppose all of those genres are really high in energy, that’s what I enjoy about my music and the music that I listen to.
I really like Professor Kliq, he makes some great albums and soundtracks. His rhythms and arrangement are top notch, he never made a dull production. ALEPH sound is one of those producers that make you question the limits of the musical medium. He manages to make near-noise productions that sounds satisfying and don’t grate on the ears. Combichrist is great at dark moods, their lyrics are really densely packed with literary devices and their industrial (metal?) sound is something you can’t get from any other band.
You guys should know my resources by now, I’m an avid youtube learner and whatever information I can dig up, I use. Most of my recent learning was focused on vocals since I was trying to improve my voice for my metal and rock productions. If you care about that, I really like Sibila Extreme Vocal channel, the info is well condensed, nuanced, and you’ll start growling and screaming in no time. I was watching Chris Liepe for a while and I must say, his extreme vocal videos aren’t good for learning but when it comes to clean vocals, he does a great job at getting you into the right mindset of experimenting with your voice and finding out how different ways to sing feel. He helped my clean singing immensely, but if you’re just starting out, a more orthodox teaching method is definitely better.
