Music Production, Where to Begin

Greetings everyone, from a fellow switcher.

I've been thinking of gettin a mac for a few years. I'm an average geek, gotten a MacBook Pro 5.5 about three month ago, and settled myself in. Now I'm ready for serious work.

I play guitar from time to time. Work on electronic music a bit, and help guys in the drama club on music, effects, and stuff. I want to work on my music production skill more, so I want your advice on where to begin.

I guess I should start with Logic, but, after that what must I do? Which points to consider, or any sites or books you can advice?

I'm all ears.

Heruamarth said:

Greetings everyone, from a fellow switcher.

I've been thinking of gettin a mac for a few years. I'm an average geek, gotten a MacBook Pro 5.5 about three month ago, and settled myself in. Now I'm ready for serious work.

I play guitar from time to time. Work on electronic music a bit, and help guys in the drama club on music, effects, and stuff. I want to work on my music production skill more, so I want your advice on where to begin.

I guess I should start with Logic, but, after that what must I do? Which points to consider, or any sites or books you can advice?

I'm all ears.

Click to expand...

Start with Logic is a very good idea. I don't know what direction you want to go, but a very good book is "Mixing with you mind" by George Martin for a beginner like yourself. George explains the basics of recordings, editing and mixing. For example he explains very simple how a compressor works. This book should get you started.

Very important thing for me was collecting samples and plugins. Different kind of drum, vocal, guitar, ambient or whatever samples. I've got almost a terabyte with different samples They help you as a producer and composer. Same thing for plugins. Absynth, Sylenth, Vanguard, Battery, Omnicide and so on. There are tons of them.

If you like a particular sound or style of music, check YouTube for tutorials. A lot of them are explained in Logic. Check it out.

Hope this will get you started and if you have any questions, PM or mail me.

Gr. Freek

OK, I'm going to get Mixing with your Mind, and Logic.

I'm actually a metalhead, prefering Jazz, Blues or Latin stuff when need something slow, and House as a new interest. But as I've said, I help the people at drama club, so the genre they need according to the play they work on. You know, you work on the box to enchance the feeling they create on stage, support them with lights, etc.

Plug-ins and samples are useful also, I'll try to get as much as I can.

Just a question about plug-ins; most producers or DJs I've managed to meet, prefer to use instrument samples over other software. I guess I can't explain exactly, but they said something about using other software on what it does best, and linking it with their main software through plug-ins, forcing it to work like a plug-in. They talked VST a lot. Got any ideas what do they mean?

i second the sample/oneshot library, i myself have been building mine for years. if you are serious and are willing to drop cash, invest in an audio interface. a popular and inexpensive one is m-audio's fast track pro. this will aid if you want to make your own samples, record voice and instruments, sync midi hardware, and provide audio in/out channels. look into some midi hardware like a simple midi keyboard or pad controller. depending on what you want to make, plug-ins are the way to go and they range from free to thousands of dollars. in most cases you can use the hardware you buy to control the plug-ins you chose to run in your DAW. a nice all around pack is the native instruments 'komplete' collection. it does cost some money, but as far as quality and versatility go, the price is well worth it.
let me know what youd like to be making as different genres can require specific equipment/software. i also have 'logic pro 8 power! the comprehensive guide' and it is my bible. i have well over 200 different VST/AU programs and am happy to give any advice needed. also, depending on what you want, id be willing to send you some specific samples/oneshots. i have just about anything you can imagine. hope this helps, good luck, and hope to hear from you in the future!