The Musician

The Musician

Please visit Learning Music^[2] at Ableton, and take their music
composition tutorial.

A sample of sound, is the same as a sample of cake, it is just a little
bit of something larger. In the world of music, that little bit, would
often be a defining sound in a song that captured your attention.

Creating sounds with a synthesizer can be tiring, not every sound you
synthesize will be ground breaking. Back in the old days, listeners were
not too happy with synthesized songs, people would actually call them UFO
Sounds.

Some choose to skip sound synthesis and create/download^[6] samples.
Samples can be replayed at different frequencies, depending on which piano
key you hit. In fact if you record a single piano key, you can almost
recreate the piano entirely by replaying that one piano key at different
frequencies/notes (A note like middle C, is just a named frequency, in
this case 261.63 Hz.)

Sampling^[7] is the art of borrowing a sound, or even a little bit of a song (as in Lofi Hip Hop) and frequently replaying it at a different frequency. You can also sample sounds around you to create unique drums, hats^[8], even piano or some lo-tech violin out of flinging a doorstop^[9]. You can give beatboxing a try and build a song out of sampling/splicing the instruments you imitated with your own voice.

Downloadable Drumkits, are collections of short samples of instruments
taken from various places, including other songs. Visit r/Drumkits^[10] for
some free downloads.

Additionally, freesound^[11] has a huge library, and Splice^[12] has a well
organized one aimed at musicians for $7.99/mo (the free trial is worth it).

Please remember what Claudio teaches us. A song is a story, it is not the
back-beat, not the piano, not the twelve inch drum, or the bass head. A
song is a story told with voice and music.

Grab a pencil, draw a line. Mark all the important events along the line.
That's where the lyrics start or end, that's where the back-beat slows or
picks up, that's where your listeners will start to laugh or start to cry.

We compose music, because the greatest of stories cannot be expressed in
words.

LMMS^[19] is a free, cross-platform tool for music composition.

Take a look at the showcase^[20], albums of songs made with LMMS.

Search YouTube for Studio Acapellas^[31] to discover vocal-only tracks of
popular songs. It is much easier to understand what singing is about when
you can hear the voice without music. You can search the web for "download
youtube audio" and then load them into LMMS and create your own backbeat
and remixes.

You don't need a strong beat to make a song work. Izzie Naylor is proof
that minimalist songs are often very beautiful.

Sell your music on Bandcamp^[42] (free).

Sell^[43] your quality^[44] music samples on Splice^[45].

Consider creating less restrictive music/sample sharing platforms (see The Founder)

Upload your music to Soundcloud^[46] you get 180 minues of music space for
free (per account).