Been playing around with Open C tuning a lot lately. I like it. It's great for acoustic relaxing jamming, very easy to do nice sounding tranquil fingerpicking and such.

If you can't actually play any instruments I don't see why you'd think you were.

And I don't mean take lessons or study the instrument in books (although those are great ideas) just find a cheap-as-free Wal Mart guitar or similar and play it until it falls apart. Get a metronome too. I'm not going to say that it will be overnight (it won't) but if you do this you will see an improvement in your music that you possibly never anticipated. Clearly you're familiar enough with the program to make music, now become familiar enough with music to make GOOD music.

Last night I spent an hour on the porch jamming on bass. My porch faces a pretty broad slab of concrete canyon and the noise carries very well, so I had a bit of fun playing around with my tuning (and my beloved Boss Distortion Pedal). Nobody screamed 'SHUT THE FUCK UP' which was literally my only fear. I think some people from the apartment building two doors down actually came out to listen for a bit. I'm planning on making it a regular thing.

Listen to him.

fuck

my mom's dog ate all my cords

i want to shit in that dogs heart

...At least he's got a taste in music?

I feel obligated to correct myself, at length. I've been reading some more in depth Music Theory books (from the fifties, they're full of references to 'qualities found in negro music'.) and I'm getting a vibe that my opinion that producing music without an instrument is not being a musician is innapropriate on a few levels. First of all, pretty much anything can be music.
You can fart on a sandwich and tonal shift it into a beautiful something or other. Further, composing music which is literally giving music a medium to translate to other people is musicianship in a pretty pure form, on paper or a mixer or a shittastic casio, whatever.
So I think my point is that while I have a bit of a pretentious appreciation for people who went balls to the wall and spent 10 years practicing an instrument and refining their bullshit to be able to play like no one else, that's a pretty fucking tiny portion of most musicians out there and doesn't give credence to the process of learning to identify how notes and melodies are supposed to tie together, which is universal to learning to create music. Maybe. Like I said I just started reading these books.

In saying this, I feel like following up with a good old "most electronic music feels like the atonal acid trip afterbirth of european Disco and R&B."

EDIT: Apparently that's not a TL;DR version of the post above:

That is not what I meant.

Anyways... what was your first guitar riff you learned?

Come as you are for me.

When I first started it took me a while to play and sing at the same time..no idea why but my riff would totally be off if I sang the lyrics to it.

First song I learned to play.

I always saw electronic music (besides keyboards) as an outlet for people with a good grasp of musical theory and some interestic melodic ideas, but not dextrous enough to play an instrument.

I know what you mean, and I actually agree with you on some levels.
But you're forgetting, it's about the sounds too. The synths used, what sounds cool, what sounds nice, what sounds agressive etc... Essentially we build our instruments first.
FUCK I know what the fucking song is, don't fucking patronise me with your big bold words.

Do you use fl studio?

I had that on my computer and it was pretty cool to make up a beat and put an acapella over it. Just basic shit really.

I'm tempted to grab some samples and mess around with it when I have time. I'm a noob when it comes to fl studio doe.

I use FL Studio currently but I prefer Reason. Although it's a major pain in the arse to figure out if you're new to it.

Definitely worth looking at tutorials before hand but it's amazing what you can produce with it when you know fruity loops well.

No, I use Ableton. I tried FL for a while but I much prefer Ableton's simple layout.

And I also have Reason, altough I only use it every now and again to make basses that can't be made in Massive. I don't use it as an actual sequencer, it's waay to advanced for me, I do love it, though.

Learning music is about discipline. Taking the easy way out is foolish.

I dived face first into Reason and never found my way back out.

Also, for some reason, FL performs very poorly on my laptop. It kills me because I have nothing that supports VSTs so I have to rely entirely on refills and my own instruments.

Seems to be quite a lot of people who know how to make electronic music than I realised. I suppose it would be a good place to ask the following then: If I wanted to make ambient music a la Tycho or Brian Eno, what sort of gear would I need?

I ask because I've recently entertained the idea of learning how to make some ambient music of my own. Honestly one of my favourite genres, would be great to contribute to the pool.

e: Actually, a better question would be: how expensive is it to get set up, buying all the equipment and everything.

Short answer for cost: an arm and a leg.

Well, I can cross that off my 'list of shit to do' then.

It's free if you're clever.
You wouldn't understand. You don't choose the DAW, the DAW chooses you. Ableton chose me.

And believe me, it's not the easy way out. It took me months to figure out how to use it and I'm still at it. Most people get FL instead because it's easier to use for them.

Learning to use a computer programme isn't the kind of discipline Mac's talking about, though. You need to have a very intimate understanding of structure and form, rhythm (it's imperative that you grasp rudimentary concepts such as rhythmic augmentation and diminution and know that you're using them), and (especially since you've expressed interest in melody) traditional harmony. Once you've grasped that, you should look more into Eastern music, which tends to be less homophonic. There's a lot of things going off at once which tends to be very interesting, and places like Iran and Azerbaijan just have the best singers in the world.
But music is a craft, and as such, it requires a great amount of consideration, and any composer should be able to explain every minute detail of his work.

Oh, I'll second Oddjob about the Middle Eastern music, I learnt a lot from looking at how music is constructed on their classical instruments such as the oud, and then how their youth has transposed that over to the electric guitar. I don't think I would have bothered learning ionian, egyptian or phrygian scales otherwise.

Anyone who wants to compose should learn all of the church modes, which is why learning jazz improvisation is useful to everyone.

Also, isn't ionian just a regular major scale built off of the first degree of the key? I can't think what you actually mean there, but you might have your modal scales confused.

I probably do, my music theory and terminology is pretty naff, I think Ionian is a mode. Actually that ties into what you said about learning Church music. I just remember learning briefly all the modes for guitar but using the resultant scales or whatever, has benefited me. And it's listening to Middle Eastern music which brought up me wanting to learn them.

Maybe you meant aeolian? In the Middle East, there's a scale which is very similar to our minor scale.

No, you chose a computer program to make shitty electronica instead of getting a Yamaha keyboard because you're unemployable.

No, I like what I do, so don't fucking put me down like that just because you don't like EDM. I know I'm bad, but I'll get better, I'll learn theory, but what's your fucking problem with using DAWs? It's the only fucking way I can produce even if I had money for a keyboard. From what I can tell, you know music, but you don't know very much about producing electronically, so don't assume things when you aren't really sure what you're talking about.

Don't get angry at him. He's actually the smarter one.

Yeah! Me smart meat man. Community college educated. I have english major, very applicable in 19th century. Not so much now though.

To be fair, Nepsotic is doing something he enjoys and something constructive which is more than what a lot of people his age are doing. I agree that dubstep isn't the most mind-boggling genre of music in the world but it's a start, maybe if he looks into ambient or minimalist music as he gets older he'll put the skills he's acquiring now to good use. You should all lay off him a bit for doing something he enjoys that doesn't actually harm you at all. I mean damn, I probably couldn't understand how to use all that technology gear if you sat there and spelt it out for me.

Number of methods of making music known by most people: 0
Number of methods of making music known by Nepsotic: 1

Still looks like a win to me.

Congratulations, Nep! You're making better music than people who don't make music!

Since you're both into expression, maybe you should wait until you perfect animation before you call out Nepsotic for his music?

My animations suck, so I can call dubstep crappy too! I'm objective!

yu r right scrapscrapscrap i am jelos of his epic computer skills and pony porn collecting abilities clarly i must give him the respeck he desorves

m sorry nepsotic plz don't hack me this is my moms computer she will stop giving me food and water if I am broking it

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!

ha ha ha what
'perfect animation'?
what the fuck does this even mean STM
Far as I can tell, Varrok makes good animation and is working hard at it
Nepsotic is not making good music and whines constantly about being misunderstood.

SO when we tell him 'Do x, it will help you make good music' or 'Try Y, it will improve your abilities' and he gets lippy this is what he gets.


Don't redirect the smarm stream because it isn't going the usual 'HAHAHAHA LICK MY PENIS' way you guys love to point it.

Okay, you're taking the 'I'm suddenly going to get aggressive' route that you like to take every couple of months. All right then.

There's a difference between helping someone along a path and berating them with 'you make shitty electronica' great fucking constructive criticism. Nepsotic is obviously working hard at his music too because I can see improvement. I couldn't stomach to listen to the first track he made but now I'm happy to press play and at least see how he's coming along. Admittedly it would be nice to see what else he could do besides dubstep but that's something for him to do if he wants to. He's 14 fucking years old for god sake, when I was his age I was listening to screamo and death metal so I can hardly take the mick out of his choice of music.

How about you tone down the aggressive bull shit a wee bit because it's a bit boring.

Okay, that's enough of that. All of that.

Any witty responses anyone is thinking of making drop them. None of you got the last word and you're all terrible people.

Now get back to discussing instruments, please.