First Attempts at Composing and Digital Music Production (A combination of review, tutorial, reflections, and original compositions)

I got bored one night and downloaded some music making/mixing programs to try out. I'm on linux, so it's easy to find and try random software. I've never composed anything before, and haven't used any music software either. But it's cool, because I know how to Google stuff.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the apps I got rid of. But I remember it that it basically always came down to a few reasons--they were either way too buggy, constantly crashing or not producing sounds correctly, or the interface was too annoying/ugly. So I've kept Audacity and LLMS (I think it stood for Linux MultiMedia Studio), and I've been pretty impressed with both of them. I'm not ripping on Linux, I mean, I'm impressed everytime I find reliable and intuitive software on Linux because it's all free 0_0.

Anyway, I kept both of them because they seem to excel at completely different aspects of music-editing, and they were both easy enough for someone with zero experience to pick up and have fun with.

Here's what Audacity looks like, even though it's not really the focus of this post. It's really good for quick, basic and practical editing jobs. I highly recommend it for those purposes, though I can only speak for the linux version (it's available for windows and mac, but I haven't tried it on either).

The interface is simple and intuitive, and I'd guess that the learning curve for basic editing is probably a few minutes if not non-existant. I did try to mix some mashups, and that's all I have to say about that. Again, that's on me, the software seems to be completely sufficient for people that have talent -_-.

I didn't really see any tools in Audacity for producing music from scratch--it could be possible, but there's probably better stuff out there anyway. LMMS, for example, is a great way to do this. Like Audacity, the interface is straightfoward enough to just jump in and figure it out while you play. Still, I've summarized the most important points in the visual aids below.

First:

Then:

I mean, that's basically all you really need to start right? The rest is just messing around with the instrument and plug-in parameters. Learning the hotkeys will speed things up, even though it's insanely infuriating that there's no undo. Like, despite the fact that I can get songs stuck in my head for unacceptably long periods of time, I can't remember a couple of notes from twenty seconds ago. It's been such a problem that I just clone an entire track if I want to try something different.

Anyway, I have almost no other real complaints. Seriously, it was actually really fun and...I almost want to say therapeutic? Like for some reason, it actually felt like I was doing something meaningful. Keep in mind, this wasn't for work and it's not really good. My guess is that a lot of us (maybe most people in modern society) have pent up desires for honest expression, because it's almost become a requirement of society to constantly repress it. It's almost like I'm getting conditioned to being out of touch with myself, so that even such a minor outlet for unrestrained thought-to-action feels noticeably alien. Or maybe I was just in an especially anti-social mood.

Really though, I think there was some truth there. Like how people report that free writing is more beneficial for them than meditation. But yea, there are definitely some parallels...I'm not sure if I'm just particularly conscious of it, but I was definitely very aware of myself noticing that I was learning about myself? Sorry, that's so terribly worded, but I don't really know how to explain it. Well, this is probably why free writing is so effective for introspection, because there are actual words with concrete meanings to examine.

Just in general, I think it's good to just pick up and follow through with arbitrarily self-imposed tasks, especially unfamiliar ones. It reminds of a really good point that Jordan Peterson (look him up, he's awesome) mentions a lot, basically equivalent to something like, what you need to find the most is where you least want to go.

Ok, that's enough reflecting. (Probably too much actually...)

Mmm...right, I didn't mention it, but youtube wouldn't let me upload just audio, so I had to make videos for these. And they sound really 8-bit to me, so I just got clips of my favorite NES games :D. So yea, randomly making up a simple, single-line melody is actually harder than I thought. I definitely have much more respect for pop song writers after this...it was just surprising how much effort is required to create an acceptable melody. How in the hell do people come up with catchy ones??? And I used to play the violin too, which is almost entirely just melodies! (so I'm probably not awesome with harmonies, keep that in mind before you judge too harshly XD)

woh, ok, I just listened on youtube and these 3 are way too loud, but youtube requires flash to edit, and linux blah blah, I'm too lazy, so all you get is this disclaimer

Yea, those three belong together. I like to imagine that if someone traveled back in time to give "Mario Paint Composer" to a terrible (and drunk) Baroque composer, that's what would happen.

In real life, I never got this far in the game...seriously though, someone agree with me that this game was made by sadistic, vicious child-haters. Anyway, notice how the melody becomes completely incoherent as soon make an attempt to add a little harmony.

Actually, I did have an interesting observation...it seemed a lot harder to try and force a melody, and way easier to create something resembling recognizable music by focusing on a single motif and then keep making variations off of it. All the tracks for this one were made from the same motif.

At least for me, when I try to start by creating a melody, it just wanders off and dies. I'm curious if it's like this for most other people too? And can talented people just pull good melodies out of nothing??

This last one's my favorite...

Did you notice that all these tracks were also based off the same motif? Also the percussion's basically the same :) But yea, I'll use the same method again and try to verify whether this technique actually helps. Something to keep in mind in case you really need to...write a song...?

Anyway, I hope this post will remind people to exercise their creativity, by force if necessary.

Goodnight!