I have been asked how I produce music with the sounds that I use. You may want to do it yourself or just curious. Either way, I don't mind sharing.
So let me explain the process I use. I am able to produce tracks like the one below at no cost, with no musical background, (insert joke) and I'll tell you how in this posting.
The track above is called PVC RPM. You can play it while you read. It sounds like it is being played on a tubulum, or a set of PVC pipes like Blue Man Group. I have always loved the sound of a tubulum and considered building one at one time. But the entire song is produced on my laptop without the aid of a midi synth keyboard or anything else. This track, along with all my others are produced at no cost, and no ability to play a physical instrument. If you want to do the same thing, you can. Just be aware that the market is massively saturated and you will have to fight tooth and nail to get plays for your tracks.
Let me say that you will need a laptop with internet access if you don't have one. Yeah, that will cost some. It should be at least 8GB to handle everything. A passable microphone will be in order if you want to add vocals. For me, I already had those assets.
Your first step is to download a DAW. Digital Audio Workstation. That is where you build your songs. Your DAW will come with some instrument plugins and other effect plugins. VST plugins are what you will play virtual midi files on in your DAW. You can download your DAW for free. I chose Tracktion Waveform 11 Free. There are a lot of videos produced by Tracktion on how to use Waveform 11. No one personally has ever shown me anything. Was it difficult? At times, yes. But I really wanted to do it, so I figured it out with the help of the videos. I'd be happy to answer your questions here in the comment section. If you are using Waveform 11 versus another DAW, I'll know more about what you are talking about.
While you don't need to be able to play any musical instruments, you will still need to see if you have any musical talent. Can you compose a melody with the virtual instruments? I may blog with some solid tips on that later if there is an interest. You have to really REALLY want to do it. I have made around 300 songs to get to the point I am at now. I surprise myself when I still continue to get better. You can still hear some of my early stuff I posted on Soundcloud. Those songs are not really up to my standards, but they are still there. Three out of four projects I work on end up going nowhere. It is generally easier to start over than to fix some of them. Occasionally I can find a groove right away and it is amazingly easy to finish.
Okay, so I said I would get into the details of my music production. If you want songs that have great quality, and you are not a sound engineer, which I can do just a little of that now, you have to seek out the sounds you love. Sometimes I have a sound in my mind that I want to hear. Other times I will listen to hundreds of different instrument plugins and narrow them down to two or three until I settle on one. It does make a huge difference how various plugins sound together. You want to be able to hear them. Some high, low, or midrange, Sometimes you can shift an octave up or down to make an instrument sound right. You listen to these over and over in a small loop until you find the exact sound you want. It can make you insane, but worth it when they meld together. A lot of what you really like will appear by accident. You will use plugins that you never thought you would. You just have to experiment over and over and over. . .
I have downloaded several thousand VST instrument plugins. Sometimes I can't get them to work. Usually that is not a problem. There are a lot of places out there who offer free plugins to bring attention to their plugins that they charge for. So far, as I mentioned, I can produce most of what I want with the free stuff. If you can't produce some tunes you like with the free stuff, spending a lot of money on any aspect of music production will not make much difference. Will I actually buy some plugins? Yeah, there are some things I may eventually spring for that are too cool for me not to have because they would fit right in with my repertoire.
Okay, here are the sources of my favorite free plugins:
The Warden: Odin2 set is one of my main go-to sources right now. The tubulum sound is achieved if the Arp 2.0 plugin is used with mid-range notes. If you like my current music, you'll want Odin 2.
Surge has a large complement of very good instruments that can fill the role of most of what you want.
Spitfire LABS certainly has among the most beautiful sounds available. Its no wonder; they are notes sampled by the London Orchestra. Who knew I would be having such prestigious musicians playing in my lowly offerings? Those are all free, like I mentioned. When I use LABS, I always need to amplify it. For that, I use D16 Group Audio Software: Frontier. It just goes onto the same track as the instrument. You turn it up with their volume knobs.
I really wanted to try making dubstep sounds. I worked at it quite awhile. I finally was able to pull it off with the Vital plugin and watching their videos. If you want to make dubstep you will need either Vital, or one just like it and learn to engineer your own sounds. That is a little more advanced. Every once in awhile I'll throw in a little of my chaotic Vital sounds into a track for some contrast.
That pretty much covers it. I could live with those I mentioned forever, but I probably won't. I have found that getting more sounds can really shake things up. You'll have to come back here to see. Check my news section to catch all my new releases.
Questions? Please post a comment.
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