I had an e-mail from boyinaband.com reader “Eclectic Electric”…

The Question

Hi Dave,

First off your clear, concise, intelligently worded and often amusing tutorials are awesome! I’ve learnt a lot in the past week that I’ve been watching some of your videos, keep up the excellent work!

Something any self respecting beginner producer will ask – how do I make my riffs sound better?   How do I go about learning to make good melodies?

Here’s my answer…

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I recieved another email from boyinaband.com reader Ash recently…

The Question

Hi Dave,

Thanks again for your reply.  I have been doing some soul-searching recently and have decided that 10 years of ignoring my desire to create music as a profession, is long enough, and that the regret I’ll feel if I don’t give it a bash whilst I still can (young-ish, single, no family/mortgage/etc), outweighs the irrational fear of giving it a proper go.  This is obviously a big step which I’m still figuring out, but I’ve spent 10-15 years in the IT industry moving from soulless job to soulless job and had a wakeup call recently which made me realise it’s time I thought about doing something I love.  I’ve dabbled in production for years, did my first course (weekends, for 3 months) with Point Blank back in 2003, etc.  But have never put a full effort into it – often my soulless IT jobs have hoovered up all my energy and left me a bit drained at the end of each day.

Anyway the reason for the above gratuitous information is because I’m wondering if you can help me shed some light on what options I would have.  I’ve always seen myself as a bedroom producer, and that I’d give that a bash as a hobby, see if I can ramp it up somehow into a job (doing what?), etc.  I’m not even sure what I would do and what sort of music I would produce.  As you can tell, I don’t know where to start… I just know that I love music too much to just be a listener, I want to make music too.  I would start with electronica, dance music type stuff, I think.

[in a previous e-mail I mentioned some people dropped out of my music course] You say that most of the people from your course dropped out – why is that?  Did the remaining ones get work anywhere?  Do you know what they ended up doing?  In your opinion, was your course worthwhile?  (doing a decent solid course is something I would consider maybe as my first move – I’d meet plenty of like-minded people, and would no doubt get lots of ideas for what sort of work I could do, maybe even get some job leads at the end).  I’m not worried about money at this stage, I accept that any career change would probably mean starting near the bottom again – the priority here is to at least try putting more energy & direction into music and seeing where it goes.  I’d rather get to 55 years old and say “yeah I tried that and it turned out I was rubbish!” than say “yeah, I would have liked to try that, but was too scared so I stayed in the safe IT world” …

Anyway – sorry if my email doesn’t exactly ask direct questions.  I figured you would be a good person to flick an email to though, just to compare notes, and to try and feel my way forward with figuring out my next move.  I guess what I’ve been trying to say at the start of this email is that I want to change music production from a hobby-which-I-sometimes-dabble-in, to something more structure which I will commit to seriously – starting with learning/training, exploring what areas I’m good at and could find work in, then evaluating a move into it as a career.  Does that make sense now?

chat to you soon – thanks for your time!

Some good questions that I’m sure many starting-out producers are asking themselves.   I know I did when I started.

So the question - how do you go about becoming a money-making producer?   My answer… Read the rest of this entry »

I had an e-mail from boyinaband.com reader Ash…

Hi David,

Firstly thanks for putting in so much time & energy making a great website that I’m sure many people such as myself get to benefit from.  It’s great that you’ve done all those brilliant tutorials, well filmed and narrated.  It’s funny how I found your site – my new american girlfriend told me about this Saturday Night Live sketch – “I’m on a Boat” and that eventually led me via Youtube to your site.  Being into music production, I of course then spent hours reading your site and looking at the tutorials – I love how serendipitous the internet can be!

Anyway enough waffling and onto my main question.  I’m getting back into music production (as a hobby for now but I’d like to make more of it) after a break for a few years.  Last time I was playing around with this stuff it was Cubase SX 2.0 and Reason (2.0?).  Anyway, I am looking at what software I should use now – the market has changed a lot, all the packages have tried to become all-encompassing – even Ableton Live is now purporting to be a production/recording suite.  I’m tempted to have another play with Reason 4, but I want to make sure I invest my learning curve in something that can go “all the way” …

So, the question is: do you believe that Reason 4 is a serious music production tool – can it be used to produce a professional quality track to the standard that other software (e.g. Logic, for example) can?  That is really my only doubt about Reason, holding me back from buying a copy.  I’ve had fun with Reason before and I guess it’s easy to see it as a scratchpad, something for prototyping, because it is quite dinky and novel to use – but perhaps I’m judging it unfairly and missing its power?

Anyway – I hope you can find time to answer me!

Best wishes

Ash Dando

Yeah, I left in that first paragraph partly for my ego’s benefit and partly because I frickin’ love the word “serendipitous“.

But yes – the question.   Can Reason be used as a production tool to rival the big players like Logic?   My answer…

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I recently got an e-mail from boyinaband.com reader Brandon saying:

i love music and dibble in it i make hip hop music and i love reason, the problem i have is i love to sample but i really want to create my own sounds, my question to you is where did you learn about synths? i watch you and i try to take notes on what does what and why your doing it but i still get a little lost so im just wondering where did you learn about these things there are alot of good synths in hip hop now (i.e The Dream she rocking that thing  , jamie foxx blame it on the) but what are you listening  for when you remake them?

And my response was…

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