New to Music Production

Hey everyone,

I'm fairly new to music production, i have been messing around with ableton trying to understand the basics and also started to read about MIDI. I recently bought a used MPC500, it should arrive in a few days and i was looking for some really useful info for beginners. I've watched tutorials here and there but they don't make any sense to me...

Do yo guys know any material that's good for beginners about MIDI, DAWs (Preferably Ableton), and music production in general. I see all these tutorials talking about chopping, sequences, and other obscure stuff. I'd like to learn what all of this means before learning to do it.

This is a sticky at the top the getting started forum. Everything you could ever want to know (for beginners at least) is contained within these pages. Like the Kama sutra for MPC heads.

http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=20082

I would also highly recommend you buy the e-book for the 500 from the MPC-samples.com sister site located at the top of the home page. Myself and countless others swear by it.


Oh yeah, welcome an good luck

I've seen the sticky, it surely provides a lot of information but i don't know where to start. I don't know what to learn first, i'd like to know what they are or how music production works in general. To put it shortly; i'd rather know what things are before knowing how to do them. Please tell me if i'm not making myself clear, i'm not a native english speaker.

Really? I wouldn't have guessed you weren't a native English speaker from your posts. At least you've nailed one thing already.

The thing is, it's such a vast topic and everyone likes to learn in different ways that I don't know what you need to know.

Tell us a bit about what you hope to do with your gear, what type of music are you in to? Which producers do you like? Would you prefer to learn more about the 500 first or Ableton?

I was thinking the same thing, Barzolff your English is just fine, and most English speakers can't speak more than 20 words of another language, (I have more than that but my Spanish is far from fluent level )


http://www.slideshare.net/memeshift/com ... ing-part-1

http://www.slideshare.net/memeshift/com ... ing-part-2

These are some illustrated full color PDF's that Computer Music UK had made. They're fantastic, and should be very helpful as you get started because you can look up stuff one at a time with the encyclopedia style layout of the documents.

As a basic starting point you could begin with reading about the differences between working in MIDI and Audio and how the two work together. Those are the backbone of everything else you will be doing so it would help to understand those thing first and then everything will be easier.

And to second what mastzsteez said, the more you tell us about you and what music you want to make the more we can help.

Barzolff you can feel free to message me anytime you want about Ableton.

My first goal is to be able to mess around with the MPC, making hip hop type beats. Then i'd like to move toward more instrumental type of music as i am a former piano player, learn how to use DAWs, basically gather as much knowledge as i can not to put limits to my creativity.

Thanks for your help!

Edit: Awesome links Metatron72, thank you

Anytime man, and hit up Music Radar the site where Computer Music UK and Future Music UK magazines post online versions of their walkthroughs and reviews.

http://www.musicradar.com/

Those can accelerate what you're trying to do 10x.

And this forum can give you all the 500 help you need. And there's a PDF book for sale on this site that includes audio examples to follow along with for the 500. That might be a great thing to think about buying, well worth the money.

Once you get the Audio/MIDI stuff understood Ableton is perfect for you to learn DAW software and your musical training will make it much easier I think even early on just getting the basics of Audio/MIDI down. Ableton handles both very well.

Ableton is designed in a way to give your very powerful Audio/MIDI tools, yet is very easy to use with a design that makes it easy to focus on the musical/creative side of it. So you're in great position to do exactly what you described as your main goals.

Barzolff wrote:Edit: Awesome links Metatron72, thank you

Yeah they are. I'm gonna be going through these at some point also

I had a 500 for a couple years so can answer a lot of questions relating to that and Meta has got you covered for Ableton. Now all you need to do is read those slides and look at some 500 tutorials for when it arrives.

These drum samples will get you started when it does arrive:

http://www.mpc-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=166597

Do you intend to sample from vinyl (the go to medium for most producers looking for grit and crackle)? If so you're gonna need a turntable, mixer or pre-amp and the necessary cables (dual phono to 1/4 inch jacks for the turntable to MP). If you just wanna sample anything - iPod, TV, YouTube - you're going to need dual 1/4 inch jacks to single 3.5mm jack (normal headphone socket).

If you don't have a set of speakers or hifi you can just use headphones to begin with but you will need an adapter if using standard headphones.

First things first. Learn how to have fun making music. Tinker around with your 500 and learn it, thats your expression tool. If you got a palette of colors bubbling inside of you, then learning how to get those out should be priorty.

A DAW, basically is the place where you record your expressions. Of course, Ableton is chock full of advanced features, but right now, you should practice just recording tracks. Yup, good old fashioned record, play and stop. Stick to that until you learn how to mix different sounds in and level them together using level, panning and EQing. Get your feet wet first, then when you feel more confident you can go out further and utilize a feature just to experiment how it affects the track. Lots of experimentation is the greatest lesson you can get than any teacher or youtube vids. Some cats are still scared shit to float on to the deeper end and therefore remain in limbo on shallow waters. Grab hold your nutsacks and conquer the machine.

It will not happen overnight. It'll take weeks, months, and years.

Thank you all for the input, every bit of information is helpful !

I also aim to learn how to perform live, i find improvising to be most entertaining.

Do you intend to sample from vinyl

This is not a priority. I'd rather invest in a keyboard first.

^ The 500 and Ableton are perfect for that as the end goal. And will still let you do big things at home in that setting.

You've set yourself great so far Barzolff, and Ill Green is one of the guys here that knows the 500 well.

So many sites out there with so much information. I'd have to say if I knew about http://tweakheadz.com/guide-to-home-and ... c-studios/ when I first started my journey, certain concepts would have been grasped sooner rather than later. There is also a section on MPC's now which wasn't there in those days.

http://tweakheadz.com/guide-to-home-and ... c-studios/

The site seems to be going through a long overdue revamp, so most of the articles are not showing as they used to. Select an item from the menu on the left hand side, and then click on the READ MORE link that appears in the middle of the screen in the white section. Worth bookmarking for future reference!