Turn Down For What?

A Beginner's Guide To Digital Music-Making

About Me

Choirboy from age 4-18
French Horn from age 10
Guitar from age 12
Recording music since age 16
Drums from age 21
Introduction to piano in college
Sound recording and design classes in college
MIDI sound recording class in college

About You?

Know some music theory basics?
Recorded music before?
Taken piano lessons?
Worked with Garageband?
Worked with another Software? Which?

The DAW

(Digital Audio Workspace)

Some Music Theory Basics

Scale

A scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. A scale ordered by increasing pitch is an ascending scale, and a scale ordered by decreasing pitch is a descending scale.

C Major Scale:

Chords

A chord, in music, is any harmonic set of usually three or more notes (also called "pitches") that is heard as if sounding simultaneously.

Usually three or more notes played together.

Tempo

The "speed" of the music or beats per minute.

slow - 80 bmp
medium - 110 bpm
fast - 160 bpm

Key

The notes that the song centers around
You can play a song, in different keys

Time Signature

Number of beats in a measure

Some Audio Recording Basics

Stereo vs Mono

Stereo is a method of sound reproduction that creates an illusion of multi-directional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two or more independent audio channels through a configuration of two or more loudspeakers (or stereo headphones) in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing.

It is often contrasted with mono sound, where audio is heard as coming from one position, often centered in the sound field.

Panning

The distribution of a sound signal into a new stereo or multi-channel sound field determined by a pan control setting (ie. some sounds comes from the left speaker, some come from the right speaker, and some come from both [sounds like it comes from the middle]).

You might pan guitar #1 one to the right, guitar #2 to the left, and leave the bass, drums, and vocals centered (coming out of both speakers equally).

Double Tracking

Double tracking or vocal doubling is an audio recording technique in which a performer sings or plays along with his or her own prerecorded performance, usually to produce a stronger or "bigger" sound than can be obtained with a single voice or instrument.

High/Low/Band Pass Filters

Audio filters can boost, pass cut some frequency ranges

Auto-Tune

An audio processor which measures and alters pitch in vocal and instrumental music recording and performances. It was originally intended to disguise or correct off-key inaccuracies, allowing vocal tracks to be perfectly tuned despite originally being slightly off-key. The processor slightly shifts pitches to the nearest semitone (or note).

Garageband

Live Playing Demo

Set a looped spot
Turn on/off metronome
cmd+k to bring up keyboard
Click record
Play your stuff

In digital music processing technology, quantization is the process of transforming performed musical notes, which may have some imprecision due to expressive performance, to an underlying musical representation that eliminates this imprecision. The process results in notes being set on beats and on exact fractions of beats.

In Short: if you quantize your performance, it cleans up the timing of your notes.

Quantization

Common Effects

Automating Effects

When an effect is automated, the console or DAW remembers the audio engineer's adjustment of the effect.

Arpeggiators

Customizing Instruments

Drum Machines and Sequencers

http://fingerlab.net/portfolio/dm1

Some Fun Things for When You're Stuck

Try dropping out drums
Try dropping out bass
Try dropping out leads
Try transferring melody to a different instrument
Try adding background "soundscapes" or effects
Try panning instruments

More things for when you're stuck remember

Instrument choices make a big difference to your sound
The easiest way to make your stuff sound more interesting is panning and double tracking
When you get stuck, just layer and record stuff with yourself